Fear Marks the Spot: The treasures are waiting to be found!

Isaiah 33:5-6 has been the basis for the past two posts. If you haven’t read the past two posts, I suggest you do a little catching up…click here.

The Lord is a rich store full of an infinite inventory of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. What is the key to these treasures? Fear. The fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is so important to our walk with God. In fact, it’s a must have! We must fear Him in order to know Him more. If we don’t fear Him, we don’t know Him at all! But you say, “The Lord is full of grace, mercy, and love. We shouldn’t be afraid of that.” Well, good point. And you’re right. So, what then does it mean to fear the Lord?

The Lord is the only One who can destroy both body and soul. Nobody can destroy the soul except God. God has an infinite amount of strength, power, rule, and authority over all things. There is no person, nation, or entity of any sort that He cannot destroy at any moment. He is the Great King over all the Universe. Therefore, He can make any decision He wants at any time with the snap of His finger. With the snap of His finger, He could destroy the world. With one word, God could destroy both you and me regardless of who we are and what we believe. Nobody has power that compares to His, nobody has power that rivals His, and nobody has power that can dismantle His.

So you say, “How then can we have assurance of our salvation? Are we supposed to live our lives in total fear that God might change His mind and choose to destroy us?” The answer to that is, absolutely not! The beauty of it all, is that when we recognize that which we must fear in God, we will also be assured that even though He can destroy us if He wanted, He won’t because He has shown us all throughout scripture that His love for us is immeasurably deep. He has made promises that He will keep because that is who He is. He is a promise keeper. He does not break His promises.

Here’s why we need to fear Him. If we don’t fear Him, we clearly don’t recognize His authority over us. In fact, if we don’t fear God we are saying that He is incapable of punishing us and incapable of exercising any type of authority over us. By denying that side of God, we also deny Him as the One who is able to sustain us and save us. God is able to punish and even destroy us only because He is also the One who gives us life. The only way someone can have the authority to take something away is if they also have the authority to give it (example: I can’t fire you unless I also have the authority to hire you). God can take away our lives because He is the giver of life. No one else has that authority. Therefore, when we don’t fear Him, we also deny Him as the sustainer of life. He gives us every breath that we take. If we deny that God is the One who gives us our breath, then surely we deny that He is the source of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. And if we deny Him in this way, we become the “destroyer” and the “traitor” that Isaiah 33:1 speaks of!

Therefore, the fear of the Lord is the key to the treasures of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.

The treasures are waiting to be found!

~ by Austin W. on August 19, 2008.