The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom. We have lost a sense of the fear of the Lord
in the church today. The fear of the Lord
is based in awe and wonder. The writer
here finds the place to recover fear in creation and the knowledge the Lord
alone possesses. If we think of the
power necessarily inherent in a creator God we will indeed find plenty of
reasons for fear. We exist simply
because He chooses to allow it and our reaction is to deny Him and to turn away
from His wisdom. The writer suggests
that if we want to get wisdom the best way is to align our lives with God's
commands we already know. There is a
wisdom in that first step but it is also the step that brings us into a place
where we can grow in wisdom because we are walking on the right path. If our boss tells us to do certain things, we
tend to do those things for two basic reasons, fear he/she might fire us and to
get promoted. The same is true of God,
we should fear judgment but also realize that if we want to get more of Him we
should obey what we know. Fear is an
appropriate reaction to the Lord, life lived in accord with that fear, trusting
in His self-revelation as merciful to those who fear Him, is wisdom.
The disciples didn't know what to make of the scene that had
Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah. Peter
thought perhaps Jesus was on par with these other legends of the Jewish faith
and then, suddenly, Jesus stood alone and the glory shone forth from Him and
the voice came from heaven in proclamation of Jesus as the Son. The other two were chosen but the glory of
God shone on them not through them. When
John writes that he has seen "His glory, the glory of the One and Only",
he is clearly reflecting on this moment.
Fear was surely their response to this revelation and encounter.
The Lord continues to work through Paul, even as the result
of shipwreck while he is a prisoner. What
excuses do we make for not being useful and bearing fruit? Clearly there is no situation or circumstance
God cannot use to extend His kingdom through us if we are but available to
Him. To make matters worse in this
instance, Paul is bitten by a poisonous snake after the lives of all on the
ship have been spared as the Lord promised.
Even this additional difficulty is used by God to prove Himself to the
people of the island. Paul is allowed
even to go to the king because of this miracle and to lay hands on the man that
he might be healed. Do we give thanks in
all things that God is being glorified or do we spend our time complaining
about difficulty?
No comments:
Post a Comment