Disciple's Handbook

Fear Of The Lord

7 min read

What does the Bible say about fearing God?

Proverbs 1:7 (ESV) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, let’s start there.

One of the definitions of fear is reverence or awe. And that is the definition that’s associated with the fear of God. So what do reverence and awe mean?

According to the dictionary reverence means honor or respect. And awe means wonder that is inspired by authority, the sacred, or the sublime.

From that, I take the fear of the Lord to mean that we have an intense sense of respect and honor that goes beyond any other sense of respect or honor that we may feel toward anyone or anything else. Fear of the Lord is sacred respect and honor.

If fearing God is the beginning of knowledge, well, that sounds like an invitation to increase our knowledge, so let’s do that by learning more about Him.

Reading is one way of learning, but a much more effective way of learning is by experience. So I encourage you to take a moment and try to allow yourself to feel an intense sense of honor and respect for God by thinking of all the ways that you experience Him in your life.

If you’re having a hard time, go outside and look up at the sky. Think about how big the earth is, and then how big the universe is. And then remember that He created all of it by speaking it into existence.

Or you can turn inward and think of all the functions that happen in your body. and how complex it all is; how it just works automatically. And then remember that he made all that from dust.

Then realize that God created all of it, and everything we can imagine is just a small part of what God has actually created, and what He can actually do.

If you can’t wrap your head around the enormity of God, you’re not alone. I don’t think we’re supposed to. I think that even in heaven we may not know everything there is to know about God. That’s what makes Him awesome - He created us and exists in ways that we can’t comprehend.

I think us understanding God would be like a 2-dimensional character understanding a 3-dimensional world. We can fully experience God to the limits of our own understanding, but there are other dimensions to Him beyond what we can perceive. We can fully experience Him, and yet still not fully understand Him.

Where does life come from? What is our spirit? What is love? These are things that we can’t explain even though we experience them. These are the things that should lead us to feel that sacred awe and reverence, that fear, of God.

But enough from me, let’s look at what the Bible says about the fear of the Lord.

Bible Verses That Mention Fearing The Lord

I ran a few searches to get as much as I could on what the Bible has to say about fearing God - and got back quite a few results:

“fear the Lord” occurs 32 times in 32 verses

“fear of the Lord” occurs 27 times in 27 verses

“feared the Lord” occurs 12 times in 11 verses

“fears the Lord” occurs 8 times in 8 verses

“fearing the Lord” occurs 1 time in 1 verse

“fear God” occurs 15 times in 15 verses

“fear of God” occurs 10 times in 10 verses

“feared God” occurs 5 times in 5 verses

“fears God” occurs 3 times in 3 verses

“not fear other gods” occurs 3 times in 3 verses

“feared other gods” occurs 1 time in 1 verse

That’s 113 search results that specifically mention the fear of God - plus 4 more that mention the fear of other gods.

This is a topic that the Bible actually talks about a lot. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard much being preached about it in church, so I know a lot less about this topic than I thought I did.

There’s quite a bit here to work through, and it’s probably going to take more than one post to get it all out.

Right now I’m going to read through all the results of these searches. I encourage you to do the same.

Fear Of God In Different Contexts

From those search results it looks like there are several distinct contexts that the fear of God is used in.

Many passages talk about the nations around Israel fearing God because He gave Israel power over them.

There are a lot of passages that command us to fear God. And some more that tell us to learn to fear God.

Quite a few passages talk about the fear of God in reference to belief in God.

Many other passages say that the fear of God leads to wisdom, knowledge, and a good life. Among them are passages that talk about the fear of God in terms of blessings and also in terms of overcoming sin.

There are also a few passages in Isaiah that talk about Jesus fearing God.

And there are a couple that mention how the church grows by the fear of the Lord.

Still Learning

This study is already bearing fruit for me. I didn’t know that there were so many verses throughout the Bible that talked about fearing God, and certainly not in so many different contexts.

The only verse I really remembered about it was that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. But the fear of God is talked about all through the Bible - from Genesis to Revelation.

For my next few posts I’m going to dig in to those different contexts that I mentioned above to see what I can learn from them.

And, just in case you’re interested, here’s the outline I compiled while reading through the verses and identifying the different contexts. Feel free to rearrange it for yourself if you think I put anything in the wrong place.

Outline

με αγαπη,

BJ

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

Acts 9:31

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