Psalm 2:11 “Serve the Lord with fear; exult with trembling, accept correction lest he become angry and you perish along the way when his anger suddenly blazes up. Blessed are all who take refuge in him!” Today's episode talks about the meaning of the phrase "fear of the Lord." I think we get the wrong idea when we hear this verse. It does not mean that we should be afraid of the Lord. In this episode I go into more depth as to what this phrase means and what the rest of this verse is talking about as well. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
“Fear of the Lord” What does that even mean?
Psalm 2:11 “Serve the Lord with fear; exult with trembling, accept correction lest he become angry and you perish along the way when his anger suddenly blazes up. Blessed are all who take refuge in him!”
When I was at adoration yesterday I asked the Lord which verse He wanted me to talk about today and then opened the Bible. I don’t do this often but this was what I felt led to do yesterday. I opened up to the first page of the Book of Psalms and the ending of the Book just before Psalms which happens to be Job. I read both pages that I opened to and I was unsure what I was supposed to talk about. However, when I read the verse above it seemed to stick out to me. Has that ever happened to you before? Have you ever been looking for an answer when reading the Bible and a verse just jumps our at you? This is the verse that jumped out at me last night.
I am always hesitant to talk about the verses that mention fearing the Lord as I struggle with them. I don’t think the Lord is someone to be feared. I think when we hear verses like this we go back to thinking we are supposed to think of the Lord as a mean old man sitting in heaven on His thrown looking down at us and judging all we do. This is not how I picture God and this is not how I think He wants us to picture Him. When he gives us words of prophecy at our prayer group meetings, this is not the God that He is showing us. He is showing us a loving God, a gentle God, one who cares more about us than we could possibly imagine.
If this is the case, why are there so many verses that teach us to “fear the Lord.” The reason is that “Fear of the Lord” doesn’t mean what we think it means. It does not mean that we are afraid of the Lord or that we are scared of the Lord. “Fear of the Lord” means that we are in awe of the Lord. Fear of the Lord means that we never forget His awesomeness, His greatness. The Lord is amazing and we should always keep that in our minds. When I just looked up online what fear of the Lord means in the Bible I found an article that really unpacks what that phrase means and I think that may be what the Lord is wanting me to share with you today. For God’s people, fearing the Lord is a response of reverent awe, obedience, and trust in the Lord. The article I found is called What is “The Fear of the Lord”? and was written by Mitch Bedzyk. Click Here for the article. I only used a small portion of the article and yet there were so many scripture references about what "fear of the Lord" means. I highly encourage you to read the article. In the article Mitch talks about what this phrase means in the Old and New Testament.
Here is what he says at the beginning. One of the best places to look for a concise unpacking of this concept is found in the book of Deuteronomy: “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees” (Deut. 10:12-13). What a great verse to help us understand what “fear of the Lord” means. It does not say we should be afraid of him or hide from him, quite the contrary actually. It says we should love Him, walk in His ways and serve Him with our of our hearts and souls. It also says we should observe the Lord’s decrees.This is an important one. I think sometimes we think that because God is so merciful and so loving that we can kinda do what we want. We come to believe that everybody is going to heaven as long as we are a good person. We forget that although God is merciful He is also just and that believes very strongly in free will. He will not force us to love Him or to follow His rules. This means that we can make our own decisions and yet when we do we also have to live with these decisions.
I think that might be what He is talking about in the second half of the verse above. The part that says, “accept correction lest he become angry and you perish along the way when his anger suddenly blazes up.” God has given us rules to live by and He expects us to live by those rules. If you want to know the two most important ones according to Jesus, they are found in Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” So, although there are many laws, they all depend on these two.
Are we truly loving the Lord our God and are we loving our neighbors? These are the things we should be doing. The verse above says to accept correction. This can be a hard thing to do. We may feel like we know what we are doing. We may feel like we are walking in the light and doing a good job. Then someone we know, love and respect mentions something we might be doing that we didn’t really even notice we were doing. If they love us and respect us then they are just trying to help us on our faith journey and we can take what they have said and discern it. Ask the Holy Spirit to put it on your heart to change if that message was from the Lord. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to change and to show you what you need to change.
If you received criticism from someone you don’t know, love or respect, you might want to just throw that criticism away. The enemy definitely speaks to us through others sometimes and when that happens it might just be to make you feel bad. The enemy is a liar and what he says is not the truth. However, I feel I should tell you to take what they say to the Lord to make sure it is not the truth. Sometimes our loved ones are trying to help us and yet they say it in a way that is hurtful. Sometimes that could be the enemy using them to get to us and sometimes it could be that they just don’t know how to say it correctly. If you get criticism or advice from someone take it to the Lord and ask Him if it is something He wants you to act on or not.
Usually, from what I have learned, if the Holy Spirit is convicting you of something you don’t feel bad about it. You don’t feel shame about it. You might get this sense that you need to change something you are doing but it comes as more of a realization that what you are doing doesn’t align with your love of the Lord. It does not come wrapped up in shame and guilt. It is more a feeling that you want to change, not because you have to or because someone told you to, but more because you love God and you want to do all you can to please Him and honor Him.
This verse ends with “Blessed are all who take refuge in him!” I think this is a great way to end this verse. It is a great reminder that although we are called to fear the Lord, we can and should also take refuge in Him. He is our everything. He is our protector, He is our savior, He is our Father, He is our everything. When we are in trouble, He is where we should turn. He is the one that will save us if we take refuge in Him. We don’t have to do that though. He gives us the choice and if we wish to try and save ourselves, He will let us. If we want to go at it alone, He will let us. This verse is telling us that if we take refuge in Him instead then we will be blessed. I don’t know about you, but I can use all the blessing I can get. I chose to take refuge in the Lord, our God and our Savior.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and want to fear you in all the right ways. Teach us not to be afraid of you but to walk in all your ways, to love you, to serve the you with all our heart and with all our soul, and to observe your commands and decrees. Lord, open our eyes and help us to see you as you truly are and not in the distorted ways we have come to see you. Help us to not be afraid of you and yet to never lose that awe and that reverence for you. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I know some of you noticed there was not a Witness Wednesday yesterday. Someone even reached out to make sure all was ok. I really appreciate that, it was sweet. We did have something come up in our family late Tues night and I was at the hospital all day on Wednesday with one of my sons. He is ok now, thanks be to God however, we could always use your prayers for our boys as they are teens and being a teenager in this day and age is really difficult. There was not an episode posted yesterday because I was not home to pose it. I have since posted the Witness Wednesday so it is there to listen to. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!