The End of Everything
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." Proverbs 9:10
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Losing the fear of the Lord is the end of everything.
A reverent respect for God is the foundation upon which one gains the attention and favor of God.
God does not lie. If God states something, it’s a fact. Read slowly what the Lord said of this man.
”…my servant Job, there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity…”. Job 2:3
This is not an obligatory comment. This is God presenting Job as a man HE respected and honored.
Satan knew that if he could inspire Job to cease to fear God, it would destroy everything.
God had great confidence in Job, and Job proved to be a keeper of God’s confidence.
My point is that there are others in scripture that missed the Memo.
Sadly, the list of those who ceased to fear God is a cautionary tale for everyone to consider soberly.
Fear is a gift.
Parents spend most of the formative days teaching their kids to have rational caution, respect, and gravity to the world around them.
A father takes a son out to learn to shoot a gun. He will spend more time instilling fear and respect for the Gun than firing the gun.
Annias and Saphira, respected people of substance, lost their fear of God and were struck down by God himself.
New Testament example,
“But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. Acts 5:3-5
The Old Testament is chocked full of examples, let us look at UZIAH, the King during the days of Isaiah.
"But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense." 2 Chronicles 26:16
Three verses later.
Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense: and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord, from beside the incense altar. 19
He spent the rest of his life in a separate house until he died of leprosy.
The End of Everything.
When you lose the fear of God, the judgment of God will cause others to fear God.
And as offensive as it may be to the modern sentimentality of a generation who has very little understanding of the God of the Bible,
That is the God of the Bible.
To drive home this point, I will conclude with the following.
The END of the Bible paints a grim reality that we would do well to reacquaint ourselves with.
“We therefore, knowing the terror of the Lord, persuade men.”
I hope we will all be persuaded so that, with greater conviction, we can be more effective in persuading others.
Revelation 20
11 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
The END
The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning... Losing the fear of God, for all intents and purposes, is the END of Everything.