Psalm 111:10 – The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who
do His commandments.
So often in
life, I have heard others talk about how they want to believe in God but they
just can’t seem to come to an understanding about certain things that are
involved with believing in a sovereign creator. Topics such as follows commonly
come up:
Why do bad
things happen to good people?
Why does He
allow children to suffer and die?
Why does God
allow people to die in natural disasters or at the hands of evil rulers and
regimes?
Why does it
seem like God isn’t answering when I pray?
The list
could go on and on. Unfortunately, there really isn’t an answer that can be
given or found to appease the minds of most, including me. I don’t understand. The
good news is that we can get to a place where we don’t need to understand
everything before God becomes real and important
in our lives.
When I think
about being asked to accept things that I don’t understand, I am immediately
brought back to my childhood. There were times that my parents would do
something that I didn’t agree with. There were also times that they would
inform me that I was expected to do (or not do) some specific thing for no
reason more than they were the parents, I was the child and I was to obey. Back
then, as a child, these things may have rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t
understand why my parents were doing what they were doing or why they wanted me to do
(or not do) something. I wasn’t always capable of fully
understanding the reasoning behind decisions and rules that they made, even if
they took the time to try and explain it to me. For example, if my parents were
to ask me to stop eating out of a bag of candy, I likely didn’t understand that
if I ate too much candy I’d have a sour stomach shortly after. All I knew was that candy tasted good. It was
not that they weren’t explaining it properly. They had a higher level of
understanding than me because of the wisdom that they had accumulated over the
years through their experiences in many different circumstances.
As children
of God, there is a great parallel in this relationship. God, the Father, in His
sovereignty, possesses knowledge, wisdom and understanding in levels which we
cannot even begin to comprehend. As His children, sometimes, He looks to us to
simply obey when we don’t understand. One great example of this is the story of
Abraham and Isaac. In Genesis 22, God came to Abraham and asked him to do
something that seemed totally absurd. Let us remember that, previously, Abraham’s
wife had been unable to provide a child for him. God promised Abraham a son in
Genesis 18:10 and this son was meant to fulfill the promise of God given in
Genesis 15 that Abraham’s descendants would be as innumerable as the stars. Now
God was asking Abraham to take this one and only son and offer him as a burnt
offering. I can only imagine what must have gone through Abraham’s mind as he
obediently took Isaac up the mountain to do what the Lord had asked. “I don’t
understand. This doesn’t make any sense!” Yet he went up that mountain fully
prepared to do what had been asked of him. Thankfully, in Genesis 22:12, God interrupts
the preparations of Isaac and says, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do
anything to him; for I now know that you fear God, since you have not withheld
your son, your only son, from me.” Abraham’s fear of the Lord was so great that
he was willing to obey Him at any cost.
Fear of the
Lord is something that is sorely lacking in our current times. As a world of
prodigals, we very rarely look upon God as someone to respect and hold in reverence.
With my father, there is a respect that I hold because, as his child, I have
come to an understanding that when he says we will do something, he does it,
whether that is in the form of discipline or reward. It is the same with my
Heavenly Father. My fear of the Lord comes from a personal understanding that
He rules over my life and that when He says He will do something, whether
discipline or reward, He will do it. Isaac must have learned well through his own
personal experiences that it was good to have a healthy fear of the Lord and
Isaac must have also passed the importance of the fear of the Lord to his own
children as well. In Genesis 31:42 Jacob refers to God as “the God of my father
(Isaac), the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac”. Such reverential submission
must Isaac have had for God that his child would refer to Him as the “Fear” of
Isaac.
While this level of “Fear of the Lord” is an extreme example, we can see that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob still held a healthy understanding of the fear of the Lord hundreds of years later. We can see that the fear of the Lord is seen as an enticement to obedience and service: to fear God is to do his will. As we can see in Deuteronomy 10, the Israelites see the correlation between fear of the Lord and obedience. “And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?”(Deuteronomy 10:12, 13).
If we turn to the book of Proverbs, we see that one of the first topics is the fear of the Lord. Proverbs 1:7 says simply, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”. Similarly, Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” If we tear these verses apart we can see a progression.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. However, we can despise wisdom and instruction. An instruction (or commandment) is simply being directed to do (or not do) something. When we are given instructions we have the choice to obey or not to obey. Psalms 111:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments”. It is logical to see the progression as follows then:
Fear of the Lord -> Obedience -> Understanding, Knowledge, Wisdom
As I sit here a 30-year-old man, I have a much greater understanding of many of the decisions that my parents made. I also have a greater understanding of many of the instructions and rules that they gave me to follow. Through my obedience to them, I built up my own understanding of why certain rules were important and I am now giving many of the same instructions to my own children. It is my conclusion that before we are able to understand, we are called to obey. One of the final verses of Ecclesiastes sums up well the point that I hope I have been able to make.
Let us hear the
conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments:
For this the whole
duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13 KJV)
With Love,
Mike
