Is it not because I have long been silent
that you do not fear me?
(Is.57.11)
When God withdraws himself from us the result is one of two things: either our hunger for God intensifies, or we become ambivalent toward him. If ambivalence rather than hunger dominates then we become like the people of this verse. We end up with no fear of the Lord. And since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, when we have no godly fear we end up as fools.
The fool in scripture is not primarily a silly person. The fool is someone who has no perception of God’s moral or ethical requirements. The fool is ignorant of what God requires and is therefore incapable of obeying him. Which is why God laments to the Prophets that his people “do not know.…”
My people are fools;
they do not know me.
(Jer. 4:22)
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
and no knowledge of God in the land;
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
(Hos.4.1,6)
“Knowledge”, in Hebrew is more than simply intellectual assent. It involves a commitment that leads to action. But, as if not knowing the Lord and what he requires of them isn’t bad enough, these people go one step further: they also do not ask.
They followed worthless idols
and became worthless themselves.
They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord….
The priests did not ask,
‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who deal with the law did not know me….
(Jer.2.6, 8)
They don’t merely not know. It’s not simply a case of unfortunate ignorance and disobedience. It’s that they don’t want to know. They have no sense that God is absent and so they make no attempt to find him. They don’t question his silence. They don’t ask why? They just get on with their lives.
They have followed worthless idols and, without realizing it, have become insensitive to the presence of God and as worthless as the things they worship.
We follow worthless idols too: food, sport, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix – practically anything that we want to do as much as spend time with God can be an idol. Or, as my friend Jim said to me last night, Wherever we turn for comfort is our god.
Some of our idols are harmless; some, like fitness, can even be beneficial. They may not be, themselves, intrinsically evil. But the Hebrew word for these things means “vapor”, and that’s about all they’re worth in the light of eternity. They have no eternal value. And so through Jeremiah, God says that his people have become as empty as a vapor.
Of course, none of this is a surprise since one of life’s universal rules is that we become like what we worship.
- If we worship the Lord wholeheartedly, we become like the Lord
- If we worship the Lord and other things, we become syncretistic – split people; tepid people; mediocre people; powerless people (Hosea 7.8-9).
- If we worship other things, we inevitably become what they are.
We take on the character of the thing we give ourselves to.
You can see this clearly in Hosea 4-5 where God is speaking about his people. At first he says, “a spirit of prostitution leads them astray” and makes them unfaithful (4.12). But by the next chapter that “spirit of prostitution is in their heart” (5.4). It’s gone from influencing them to being a part of who they are, and they haven’t noticed. In the same way, we become worthless and empty without even noticing it’s happened.
The pastors don’t recognize God’s absence – what kind of priest can’t tell when God is there or not?
The teachers have nothing of value to say since, for all their reading of the scriptures, they don’t really know God.
And the people’s desire for God is tepid at best.
How has it happened? The same way it happened to those in Romans 1 who didn’t give God the glory he was due: God gives them over to their sin and their thinking becomes futile (literally, worthless). But that’s the ungodly. How do we know God gives us over to the things we worship? Well, because Isaiah says the same thing.
No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have given us over to our sins.
(Is. 64:7)
In God’s silence, in the time that he has withdrawn from us, very few of us have laid hold of him. Most of us have followed distractions, whimsies, worthless time-wasting things. And he has “given us over” to them.
As Jeremiah discovers, the same disease has afflicted both people and leaders.
I thought, “These are only the poor;
they are foolish,
for they do not know the way of the Lord,
the requirements of their God.
So I will go to the leaders
and speak to them;
surely they know the way of the Lord,
the requirements of their God.”
But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke
and torn off the bonds.
(Jer.5.4-5. Cf. Hos.4.2)
Jeremiah understands that it’s not simply ignorance; it’s not even just wilful blindness. The people of God have, with one accord, thrown off their yoke to God. What was that yoke? It was God’s covenant (You will be my people and I will be your God) expressed through his Torah (his instruction on how to live as his people).
And all of this comes about because no one – not people, not leaders, not prophets, not priests – fears the Lord. And the consequences of this lack of fear are ignorance of God and his ways, deception, syncretistic religion, worship of other gods in his Temple, corruption, lying, oppression of the poor, and societal breakdown.
What does it mean to Fear the Lord?
The fear of the Lord has gotten a lot of bad press in churches in recent years. We’ve been conditioned by psychologists and counselors to believe that fear is bad. We even quote scripture to ourselves that God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear; that perfect love casts out fear. Over and over the scriptures tell us not to be afraid. It’s funny how we readily believe these passages but conveniently ignore the ones that tell us to fear the Lord. After all, how could God want us to fear when he’s told us not to? Crazy.
And then there are the Christians who want us to believe that God is too nice to fear. My Dad was a nice guy. But he had some very clear boundaries. And I was afraid to step outside of those – with good reason. But, these people argue, that’s exactly what God is not like. He’s not some scary father waiting to smack you down when you step out of line.
No, he is not. But if you had the fear of the Lord you wouldn’t ever consider stepping out of line. You would understand that God isn’t a kindly, bearded Santa Klaus, waiting to provide you with all the presents you’ve wished for. If that’s the sum total of your God then it might pay to go back to paragraph one and read what I wrote about fools.
The NT records the use of phobos (from which we get the word phobia) no fewer than forty-seven times. Phobos is not akin to terms like homophobia or islamophobia – neologisms created by modern Social Justice Warriors and words which have more to do with ideologies than actual fear. What the NT shows us is genuine fear. It’s predominantly translated simply fear, but also terror, awe, alarm, respect, and reverence.
Let me choose a well-known example to illustrate.
In Acts chapter 5 we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira who try to make themselves look good in front of everybody but end up lying to the Holy Spirit. As a result, they drop dead at the Apostles’ feet. And Luke records that “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events” (Acts 5:11). In fact, it seems so important that he says it twice.
What kind of fear do you think he’s talking about?
Do you think everyone who heard that thought of God as a kindly old grandfather, or Jesus as simply a loving teacher who had roamed the countryside doing miracles? If they had in the past, they didn’t anymore.
They feared.
There’s no definition of the fear of the Lord in scripture. It’d probably grip us suddenly if some sinning Christians dropped dead in front of us. But in days like these, when God has long been silent, it comes as we draw close to the Lord and encounter his holiness. And the closer we get the more we tremble. If there’s no fear of God in our lives we might need to consider that we’re not as close to the Lord as we think we are.
Dennis Johnson writes:
Fear is the appropriate response when God’s presence and power are revealed in the midst of frail human beings […]. In contrast to the abject terror evoked by some pagan conceptions of capricious and malevolent deities, the fear of the Lord is rooted in the assurance of his holiness, constancy, and justice. Those who fear the Lord rejoice in his grace, but are vividly aware that to violate his holiness is dangerous.
If we feel that heartfelt joy and awestruck fear are incompatible emotions, we have not fully grasped what it means to stand in the presence of the Lord of glory, who is ‘good and terrible at the same time’[1]
-Dennis E. Johnson, The Message of Acts
To fear God as his child is not to cower before him, but to behave in such a way that nothing we say or do brings dishonor or shame to him; that we allow nothing to impugn the dignity and majesty of the Almighty; that our utmost desire is for his glory. And so we would not dare, not ever presume, to allow anything of ourselves or another to sully the sanctity and holiness of his Name.
Now the thing is, that the closer we get to the holiness of God, the more his light reveals things in us that are contrary to that holiness. Things that we never considered before, or things we believed were harmless are exposed as an affront to the Almighty and we become increasingly aware of the uncleanness of our lives and our lips, which is what Isaiah 6 describes.
When we are casual in our relationship with the Lord we are cavalier in our actions and loose with our tongues. We forget that all of us will have to give an account for the idle words we’ve spoken (Mt.12.36). Sadly, many of the Christians I know today are more concerned about offending their boss than they are about offending the Lord.
Again, that’s due, in part, because they just don’t know what God’s holiness requires. And that’s partly their own fault but also a fault of our ineffective preaching. But it’s also because they don’t want to know. They’ve thrown off the yoke. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you.” But we don’t want a yoke. We’re happy to follow – at our own pace – but we don’t wish to be bound to the Lord. That’s a cost too high to pay.
This is one of the reasons worldly Christians can’t relate to those who truly fear the Lord (and vice versa).
But until we’re willing to pay it the Presence will remain absent from us. Ichabod will be our lot.
These are the ones I look on with favor:
those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
and who tremble at my word.
(Is 66:2)
If you still don’t know what the fear of the Lord is, the best statement I’ve ever read can be found in Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows.
“Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror – indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy – but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near…. ‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’ ‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet – and yet – O, Mole, I am afraid!'””[2]
Is it not because I have long been silent
that you do not fear me?
[1] Quoting C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
[2] Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (London, Methuen, 1908), chapter 7. Cited in Dennis E. Johnson, The Message of Acts.
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