Suppose someone were to read through his Bible with pen and paper in hand and jot down every explicit, overt reference to the fear of God he came across. In addition, he would record passages that contained, although not the explicit words, yet the thought and illustrations of the reality of the fear of God.
I am quite confident that he would be able to fill many pages with references to this great theme. For the fear of God is one of the most dominant themes in Holy Scripture. It is that which the writer of the Proverbs says is the beginning or the chief part of all knowledge (Proverbs 1:7).
We have seen the fear of God illustrated and defined from Scripture. Now, we need to consider what are the essential ingredients of the fear of God. First, there must be correct concepts of the character of God. Second, there must be a pervasive sense of the presence of God. Third, there must be a constant awareness of our obligations to God.
Correct Concepts of the Character of God
God is Majestic in Holiness
Revelation 15:3-4 asks a question: “Who shall not fear, O Lord, and glorify thy Name?” Here are the victorious saints—the redeemed who have overcome the beast and his image. They are in the presence of God, and we read, beginning in verse 3:
And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages. Who shall not fear, O Lord, and glorify thy Name? For thou only art holy; for all the nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy righteous acts have been manifest.”
As they behold their God, they ask the question, “Seeing You as You are, and therefore having right views of Your character and Your ways and Your judgments, who shall not fear You?” They ask this rhetorical question, saying in essence, “Anyone who sees You as we see You must fear You.” It is the acknowledgement that correct concepts of the character of God are an indispensable element, an indispensable ingredient, in producing the fear of God.
One of the great problems in our day is that we have lost sight of those aspects of the character of God that are calculated to produce His fear—namely His majesty, His immensity, His holiness. It is as though we are looking at a landscape. In the foreground there is a beautiful meadow, the perfect picture of tranquility and peacefulness. But the backdrop of that landscape is made up of massive mountains, with rugged, snow-capped peaks. Off to the sides and behind and above those mountains are great thunderhead clouds with lightning flashing and playing off the edges. If a man only focuses his attention on the foreground of the picture, he may have a very accurate view of one part of it, but his response is inadequate to the totality of that picture. If he can look at the scene and feel nothing but tranquility and ease and have no sense of awe and breathless wonder, it is because he is only looking at the foreground and not looking at the background. If you have ever been in the Rocky Mountains, you know what I mean. There is that sense of being overpowered by the might and the grandeur and the sheer massiveness of those mountains.
So it is with the character of God. The Scripture sets before us the softer lines of God’s mercy and His compassion and His fatherly tenderness. But never do the Scriptures set those attributes before us in isolation from the more awesome and breath-taking characteristics of His holiness, His wrath, His immensity, His eternity, His omniscience and His omnipotence. In our day, we have lost this aspect of the character of God. Therefore we have greatly lost the fear of God.
The Cross Intensifies our View of God’s Holiness
Many tend to think that, now that God has revealed His love in the cross of Jesus Christ, it only remains for us to be enthralled in that love rather than to tremble in fear. But if, as Scripture tells us, sinless creatures hide their faces in the presence of the God of burning holiness (Isaiah 6:1-3), why should we ever think that the sight of the wounds and the sacrifice of Christ will negate the necessity for us to draw near with veiled faces and with trembling hearts? It is accurate to say that perhaps nowhere in all of Scripture is this principle more clearly seen than in the cross itself. For what is the cross but God’s clearest revelation of His inflexible justice? What a display of inflexible justice it is when God spares not His Son but brings upon Him the full brunt of His wrath against sin! What a display of spotless holiness! God is so holy that He will turn His back upon His only Begotten, the One of Whom He said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). An enlightened view of the cross of Christ, rather than canceling or negating or diluting any of the scriptural teaching on the fear of God, serves to heighten and to seal that concept so that all of our relationship to God through Christ is a relationship in the climate of the fear of God.
There will not be any measure of the fear of God in your heart until you begin to take seriously the revelation He has made of His own character and begin to tremble before Him with the fear of dread and of terror—until you would cry for rocks and mountains to hide you from His face. And dear friend, the Gospel will then become good news to you—the good news that One was hidden from the face of the Father so that you and I might be forgiven. That One is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if you are a child of God, you must be convinced that you will not grow in the fear of God unless you grow in your awareness of and sensitivity to the scriptural teaching of the immensity, the majesty and the holiness of God. This is not something that is incorporated into the life once and for all. I would be intensely practical and exhort you to spend much time meditating upon such portions of the word of God as Isaiah chapters 6 and 40 and Revelation 1 and 19 and some of the other passages that especially set forth God in His transcendent majesty and holiness and immensity. Meditate on them until you begin to feel something of the climate of the biblical patterns of thought and to take your place before Him in true godly fear.
It is this profound sense of His majesty and holiness that becomes one of the great motivations for a life of holiness and godliness. The first essential ingredient of the fear of God is a correct concept of His character. If your thoughts of God have been such as to leave you devoid of His fear, there is something wrong with what you are thinking about God. May God help you to begin to conform your thinking to the statements of Holy Scripture, that you might have that fear of the Lord which is the chief part of knowledge.
This is only a small part of a series of sermons on the fear of God, preached by Albert N. Martin. The sermons were transcribed, and will soon be available online in this form.