Proverbs 16:6, Sins Forsaken!

October 22, Proverbs 16:6

Job 28:27-28; Rom. 3:9-31 “Reverential love is the motive for obedience an the desire for holiness.”

Sins Forsaken!

By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil. The first clause tells how the sinner’s guilt is purged; the second shows how its power is subdued and broken. The first tells of pardon that comes down from God to man; the second shows obedience offered up from man to God. Perowne observes that “it is a lifting of man’s appropriation of the atonement out of the ceremonial and ritual into the moral sphere of action.” So much that goes for Christianity today, is empty ritualism and vain worship, making little or no moral or spiritual impact on everyday life. “Christian names are everywhere; Christian men are very rare.” A reverent regard for the Divine will is a major proof of true Christianity.

1. The Fear of the Lord – A Blight! Some rudely assert this is so! They appeal to reason. That is the god they worship. Make no mistake, reason, as well as religion, has its fanatics and bigots too. To do anything motivated by fear, they assert, is immoral and beneath their rational dignity. All “service” must be disinterested, rendered independently of fear or favour, of punishment or reward. Well, if we were all sinless beings, this might indeed be safely affirmed, but such we are certainly not! Human depravity has robbed man of that former glory and infected even the “noblest ideals” of reason. Morals, apart from the Divine will, are little more than the expression of our own degenerate nature. We see this reflected in the consensus of a society that can legitimise abortion, homosexuality and every form of immorality sinful reason can devise. This is the “morality” that the pollsters assure our parliamentarians that the enlightened, progressive minds will now accept. Man is thus shut up to himself to determine what is “right” and “wrong.”

2. The Fear of the Lord – A Blessing! Fear embraces all those feelings and motives which keep sinful man from going against the Will of God. It is this dread of displeasing God that provides the positive impulse for doing the higher and better things. Have we not all too often witnessed the appalling crimes in a society where law and order have broken down, even for a short time? “No law can long maintain its authority without reference to the Supreme Will.” “The fear of the Lord is at once a bridle to sin, and a spur to holiness. It changes the slave into a child” (Bridges). This fear is of a righteous and merciful Lord, not the fear of some demon-god, clothed with man’s own evil lusts. It is not the fear of a God whose “mercy” is to indulge man’s sins, and who can “go easy” with truth. The Jews often fell to worshipping such gods, but the God whom they forgot was what He had ever been, the God whose mercy and truth were “as constant as the hills.” He was no capricious God, like the idols of the nations around them. Many of them came to see that only a perfectly righteous God, could be a perfectly merciful God, and He alone was the God they should fear. Nehemiah, referring to the former governors’ “power grab,” said, So did not I, because of the fear of God (Neh. 5:15).

Thought: “Better fear of God than fear of ghosts.”

Prayer: Thank God that the fear of the Lord delivers from all other fears.