The Fear of God versus Modern-Day Flippancy
I am enjoying a daily devotional given to us by our son,
Dave. It is called, “How Great Thou Art”, compiled by Steve Halliday and
William Travis (Multnomah Publishers). Whereas I have often had to move back a
generation or two and look outside of America to find someone with a proper
concept of God, this book includes excellent writers, modern and historic, from
different parts of the world.
I have often deplored the exaggerated familiarity that
translates “Daddy” for the endearing Aramaic
term, “Abba”. Have you heard people
address God as Daddy in their
prayers? Please allow me to quote a devotional taken from the modern author and
teacher W. Bingham Hunter (Phoenix Seminary) and then go on to another by John
Daniel Jones of Wales (1865-1942).
“Go into the rocks, hide
in the ground from dread of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty.” Isaiah 2:10
Christian appreciation
for God’s astounding gift of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation in Christ
has been allowed to consume the awesome reality of His terrible holiness… We
have turned statements about freedom to speak openly during prayer (what the
New Testament calls ‘boldness’) into license for flippancy… We have forgotten
that Jesus, who taught us to call God Abba
(Dear Father), also called Him Holy Father,
Righteous Father and Lord of heaven and earth.
Many of the arguments
against holy terror are based on faulty theological systems (“the ‘fearful’
image of God belongs to the dispensation of Law”), imprecise exegesis (“God has
not given us a spirit of fear”) or the existence of psychopathology (“some
Christians do have phobias about God”). But without a sense of God’s awesome
holiness, and the consequent “fear”, we
simply do not have biblical religion (my emphasis)…
Fearing God is not
irrational. It is the only course open to a thinking Christian. Those who do
not fear God in the biblical sense either do not understand, or find themselves
forced to deny, the facts of existence.
W.
Bingham Hunter
“The
LORD reigns, let the nations tremble…” Psalm 99:1
We are constantly
deploring our lack of the sense of sin. Is that because we have obscured God’s
holiness? Sometimes I wonder whether the very emphasis we have laid on the
tenderness and gentleness and patience of God’s fatherly love has made it easy
for men to sin. We have made God’s forgiveness so cheap that sin has come to
appear a light and trivial matter.
If that is so, let us
this day remind ourselves of the holiness of God; let us lift up our eyes to
the shining peaks of His ‘awful purity’. Let us remind ourselves that this Holy
God is on the throne – and that He is on the throne to maintain purity and
righteousness. The will that rules is a holy will. The power that governs is a
holy power.
All who sin bring
themselves into collision with theh sovereign will and power of the universe.
No wonder our Lord said, “Whosoever
shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it
will grind him to powder” (Matthew 21:44, KJV)
John
Daniel Jones
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