It seems that at the moment, the Lord wants to teach me about fearing him alone. He has also been educating me about true wisdom, and that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as stated in Proverbs 9:10.
I did some research into what it means when we talk about the fear of the Lord. In brief, it is foundational to true wisdom, and all other types of learning are worthless unless they are built upon the knowledge of the Lord. WE need to remember that our loving heavenly father is watching and evaluating everything we think, say and do. I remember when I was a child, I was convinced my mother had eyes in the back of her head, because she always seemed to find out about everything I did, especially the bad things. Looking back, I think this gave me a healthy fear of her, and although this can’t truly be compared to the fear of the Lord, it did give me an understanding, at least from an earthly point of view, of how it should work. After all, my mother was a lot wiser than me. When she disciplined me, she was doing it for my good not to make me miserable.
I believe that in order to develop the fear of the Lord, we must recognise God for who he is. That may sound simple, but it isn’t when we truly sit back and consider how powerful, mighty, brilliant, and beautiful he is. Our minds can’t fully comprehend Him. However, all this should lead us into having a continual awareness of him, a deep reverence for him, and a sincere commitment to obey him.
All wisdom comes from having the fear of the Lord as its foundation point. The minute we start downsizing God and trying to make him into something we can fully understand or contain within the scope of our human minds, we start losing our fear of him, and we may find ourselves fearing people and therefore becoming more hesitant to obey God. As we read his Word and get to know him more, our fear and reverence for him grows, and god willing, we will grow in wisdom.
Recently, I was reading an incredible story from 2Kings chapter 1 that had a lot to teach me about the fear of the Lord. I love the stories of Elijah and Elisha. They were such powerful and amazing men of God. However, I believe one of the biggest keys to their success as prophets was that they understood the fear of the Lord. Their life experiences had taught them God was much bigger than any man, even the king himself. And my hope is that by the time we’ve looked at this chapter and a few things surrounding it that our fear of the Lord will have gone up a few notches, and our fear of men will have diminished.
At this point, I have to be honest and admit that fear of men is something I struggle with. I am a people pleaser. I hate rocking the boat or causing disruption, and while sometimes this is a good thing, it can also mean I can be rather weak, and I don’t always stand up for the things I should. If something confrontational comes up, I either get tongue tied or burst into tears before I can make my point. Yet in the difficult and increasingly dark days in which we are living, we may be called to make a stand for the things of God as Elijah did. So the question is: if that happens, how will I react? Will my reaction be the same as Elijah’s in 2Kings chapter 1, or will it be more like his reaction in 1Kings 19, just a few chapters earlier?
Let’s start by thinking about the 1Kings 19 story because is very well-known. Remember Elijah’s wonderful victory over the prophets of Baal in 1Kings 18? Recall how he jeered at them when they couldn’t get their so-called God to answer their cries? Then he made an utter mockery of them by saturating his sacrifice with water, then calling on the name of the Lord and watching while fire came down to consume the offering, licking up the water lapping around in the trench for good measure.
That was bold as brass Elijah, but just one chapter later, when wicked queen Jezebel makes a threat on his life, bold as brass Elijah turned into running scared Elijah. Before we criticise him, let’s ask ourselves: do we have moments like that? One minute we’re eager to make a stand for the Lord, but as soon as we come under threat from a higher authority we cower or run away in fear.
It’s hard to equate the Elijah of 1Kings 18 with the Elijah of 1Kings 19. Yet God ministered to him in his fear and weakness, and after he was done, Elijah was strengthened. The evidence of that can be found in 2Kings chapter 1. Take a moment and read it, because it’s an incredibly exciting story.
On this occasion, Elijah wasn’t just speaking out against the false prophets of Baal. He was challenging the king himself. King Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice work of an upper room at his palace, resulting in grave injury. Ahaziah was the son of wicked queen Jezebel, so we’re hardly surprised when instead of seeking answers from the Lord, he sent to the temple of a false god for prophecies about whether he would survive. However, we need to remember that Israel was God’s chosen people, and they weren’t supposed to have anything to do with pagan worship, so God wasn’t going to let Ahaziah get away with this.
Ahaziah needed to be reminded that the one and only true God was very real, and very aware of what he was up to, despite the pagan lies his mother had taught him. Verse 3 of 2Kings 1 says that the angel of the Lord told the prophet Elijah to go and confront the messengers the king has sent to the false prophets and ask them: “Is there no king in Israel? Why are you going to Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to ask whether the king will recover?” Then Elijah was to prophecy the death of the king, which was clearly part of his punishment for seeking after false gods.
In 1Kings 19, Elijah was afraid of the royals. He ran away because of Jessabelle’s threats. Yet here he was – willing and eager to obey the Lord in confronting the messengers, knowing full well they would take his words straight back to the king, who would be angry, to say the least. Something had changed inside Elijah. Let’s go a little further into the story before we discuss what that something might be.
The message was given to the king, and the king knew it came from Elijah. Clearly, Elijah was a very recognisable man. The furious king then sent a captain and 50 soldiers to arrest his enemy. That’s a lot of soldiers to arrest one man, and shows the king acknowledged the power in Elijah, even though he didn’t want to bow to it.
I’m sure that being a prophet, the Lord would have warned Elijah the 50 men were coming. Maybe now was the time to run, as he did from Jezebel. But no. he sat boldly on top of a hill. If you were going to even attempt to hide, the last place you’d do so is on top of a hill. He was in public view.
When the king’s captain spoke to Elijah and demanded he come down with him at once to see the king, Elijah rather calmly responded: “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your 50 men.” Now I’m not advocating calling down fire from heaven to destroy our enemies, but the Bible clearly states that’s what happened here.
I can just imagine Elijah sitting calmly on the top of that hill totally unphased, calling down fire, and then watching those men being consumed. Yet maybe king Ahaziah knew the old story about Elijah running from his mother, because he tried the 50 men trick again. And again, exactly the same thing happened. Elijah hadn’t even moved. He was still sitting there on top of the hill waiting.
In the end, when the third captain was sent with his 50 men, he actually pleaded for his life in front of Elijah. He had more respect for him and the power of God inside him than his king did.
Finally Elijah went with this man and actually appeared before the king. He told him outright he was going to die, and the king died. He didn’t have Elijah killed. Maybe now he realised he’d come up against the power of an even greater King who lived inside Elijah.
However, my point here is that something had changed. Elijah wasn’t running scared anymore, like he did in the previous story when his life was under threat. He went boldly into the situation, having received God’s word on the matter. I believe what had changed is that he had grown in the fear of the Lord. He was now absolutely convinced that the God he serves was way bigger than any man, even the most powerful man of the time – the king.
Next week, we will discuss how that change had taken place.