ALL OF US are prone to anxiety from time to time as we face an uncertain outcome that seems quite important to us. Once in a great while we may be reduced to abject fear as we anticipate some great loss, perhaps of health, or finances, or life itself. Even less frequently we encounter dread at a scale of alarming events that extend beyond ourselves to family, or city, or nation. So it was for Ezra the scribe, as the Israelites began to filter back into the Promised Land after the seventy-year exile. From commoner to priest, the people had disobeyed God by inter-marrying with the people who worshiped false gods, “mingling the holy race with the peoples around them.” (Ezra (9:1) Ezra says, “When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.” (Ezra 9:3-4)
The beginning of wisdom and knowledge, says Proverbs, is “the *fear of the LORD, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Prov. 1:7) The fear of the Lord, like a coin with two sides, has two separate meanings. One is abject fear, indeed fear of loss of life itself, as Jesus makes clear. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matt. 10:28)
Isaiah addresses this fear of God from an O.T. perspective. “Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?” (Isa. 33:14) He is most likely referring to the incidents at Mt. Sinai, where God’s awesome power is on display as the Ten Commandments are given to Moses. “When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear.” (Ex. 20:18) Of this incident, the author of Hebrews tells us that “Moses said, ‘I am trembling with fear.’” (Heb. 12:19)
The second aspect of fear of the Lord is far different than an abject fear so deep that we are terrified of what might happen. Even though that meaning is still inherently part of the fear of the Lord, the greater meaning is most closely to *“have reverence for the awesome power of God.” Both Moses and Ezra are driven by the Shema, which is at the core of Judaism’s Covenant of the Law: “Fear the LORD your God as long as you live, and be careful to obey. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut. 6:2-5) Ezra and Moses ‘tremble’ before the Lord not because of fear of punishment for themselves, but in respect to their own reverence of God’s awesome power as they witness the sins of the nation which put their people in peril of God’s wrath.
It is the character of Ezra and Moses, and those like them, that fascinates us as we witness their faithfulness before the Lord in the face of the prodigious tasks set before them. Moses is tasked with leading the people to the promised land; Ezra, with leading a revival and rebuilding the temple as the people come back to the land after a long period of exile. Both had witnessed God’s wrath in response to a pervasive depth of sin in the community of faith. Both stood willing to witness God’s power to a rebellious people and hold them accountable to the truths they had known, but violated. The unique distinctions that shaped these men were forged in their willingness to believe God as they acted in his power to overcome all adversity. God speaks through Isaiah, saying, “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.” (Isa. 66:2)
People who tremble at God’s word, perhaps even you and I, have a reverence for God that is reflected in their belief in the power of his word. We have a deep sense of yearning as we read what the Psalmist says: “My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.” (Psa. 119:20) We do not consider the laws of God to be onerous to the soul nor burdensome to the Spirit within us.
Instead, as with the beginning of this ode to obedience—again with the Psalmist—we believe in our hearts that, “Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart.” (Psa. 119:1-2) We ‘tremble,’ not because we cower before the wrath of God, but because we have been given sight into “the things angels long to look into.” (cf. 1 Pet. 1:12) We have “seen the king in his beauty” and “viewed a land that stretches afar” (Isa. 33:17), and we have been forever changed.
Q. Where am I in Spirit in the continuum between the fear and reverence of the Lord?
*Strong’s 3374 has two meanings for “fear.” One is literal fear, the other is reverence. These are often intermingled in scripture.
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