The Fear of the Lord

We live in an age that suffers from a lack of the fear of God. That statement may surprise some of you at first hearing. How can a lack of fear be something bad? Doesn’t the Bible say that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18)? In fact, most churches today go to great lengths to assure people that when they come to church there will be absolutely nothing to be afraid of. For example, one evangelical church advertises their services as follows:

  At———you’re free to enjoy yourself.
Enjoy God as you experience Him through the timely message, caring people, and inspiring music. And it’s okay to laugh at church—in fact we encourage it! We’ve got a casual atmosphere where you can enjoy your morning with a cup of Starbucks House Blend, a donut and some new friends.

In such churches, worship services increasingly seem to resemble coffee shops more than encounters with a holy God. While I’m sure that the people at this church mean well, their advertisement is certainly not designed to encourage the fear of God. Rather, they suggest that worshiping God is a casual and non-threatening activity, an enjoyable and fulfilling experience for everyone. They make coming into the presence of Almighty God sound like the spiritual equivalent of a visit to a favorite uncle.


THE PROBLEM OF THE ABSENCE OF FEAR

So what is the problem with an absence of fear in approaching God? Am I just a grumpy old-fashioned preacher, upset because other people seem to be having too much fun? I don’t think so. Even while as a culture we flee from all kinds of fear, we need to recognize that proper fear is essential to healthy living. Wise parents know that a large part of raising children is training their fears in the right direction. Some of our children are filled with irrational fears, and we have to teach them not to be afraid. They don’t need to be afraid of the dark or of terrible monsters hiding under their bed. They don’t need to be afraid of going to the doctor or having a haircut. Other children, however, seem born without fear, and so we spend a great deal of time teaching them to be afraid. Be afraid of touching the stove. Be afraid of climbing forty feet up a tree, especially in your best clothes. Be afraid of strangers who offer you candy or ask for your help looking for a lost puppy. Be afraid of what drugs can do to your brain. In our modern world a child who grows up completely without fear may not live to grow up. Life is not a casual and non-threatening activity, a fun and fulfilling experience for everyone. Some things truly ought to scare us to death. As the popular proverb wisely reminds us, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

For sinners, the prospect of standing in the presence of a holy God should be one of those truly frightening things. As a culture we resist that truth because we have lost our awareness both of God’s transcendence and holiness and of our own sinfulness and unworthiness. This trend was noted by J. Gresham Machen more than half a century ago when he observed, “There are those who tell us that fear ought to be banished from religion; we ought, it is said, no more to hold before men’s eyes the fear of hell; fear, it is said, is an ignoble thing.”

The fruit of that attitude is evident all around us. Somewhere in our church doctrinal statement, we may still confess the desperate danger that faces sinners in the hands of an angry God.2 But even in Christian circles, this note tends to be a subdued element in the contemporary chord. We should hardly wonder, then, that there is so little fear of God in our culture at large. Why should others be afraid of a God in whom they do not believe when we who confess his name stand so little in awe of him? Our churches have been radically infected by the spirit of the southside rebellion (see Numbers 16) that views everyone as by nature essentially holy and able to enter God’s presence without fear.


THE CURE FOR THE ABSENCE OF FEAR

We have seen how God dealt with that spirit in Numbers 16. The Israelites saw with their own eyes the earth open and swallow rebels alive (vv. 32, 33). They saw fire come out from the Lord’s presence and incinerate Korah’s 250 priestly pretenders (v. 35). They saw nearly 15,000 of their fellow Israelites killed by a plague of judgment from the Lord because they grumbled about the earlier deaths (v. 49). Then they saw the Lord confirm through a dramatic sign that only Aaron and the Levites could approach his presence (17:1–11). Little wonder that the Israelites cried out, “Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of the LORD, shall die. Are we all to perish?” (17:12, 13).

An absence of fear was no longer Israel’s problem at the end of Numbers 17. They had learned through bitter experience to be afraid of the consequences of their sin.

Yet in their panic they missed the gracious aspect of the budding of Aaron’s staff, which through the symbol of the almond blossom spoke powerfully of the Lord’s purpose to bless them. This is typical of our spiritual experience: when we discover that we have made a mistake in one direction, we overcompensate in the opposite one. Until the Israelites understood God’s mercy and grace, they did not fear the Lord properly. The God whom they were called to serve is both the God who “will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” and “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6, 7).

Satan will always try to separate these two aspects of God’s character in our thinking. If he can persuade us that the Lord is all love and mercy and will not judge anyone, he will do so. But the moment it becomes clear to us that there is indeed a reckoning for sin, Satan immediately switches tack and tries to push us in the opposite direction, to make us believe that the Lord is hard and judgmental and that there is no forgiveness to be found with him. As the Puritan Thomas Manton put it:

  Satan labors to represent God by halves, only as a consuming fire, as clothed with justice and vengeance. Oh no! It is true he will not suffer his mercy to be abused by contemptuous sinners; he will not clear the guilty, though he waits long on them before he destroys them; but the main of his name is “his mercy and goodness.”

The true fear of the Lord flows out of an understanding of the whole character of God as both holy and merciful.

This is what Numbers 18 is about: the Lord in his grace had taught Israel to fear, and now the Lord was able to retrain and relieve those fears. Yet unless we first learn to identify with them in their fear of God, the remedy for that fear will make no sense to us. There is certainly a place for laughter and fun in church, but there must also be a place for being deadly serious. Unless you see with compelling certainty the fact that sinners cannot approach the Lord without being destroyed by his holiness, you will never understand the remedy that God has provided for our sin, which lies at the heart of Numbers 18.


THE MINISTRY OF THE PRIESTS AND LEVITES

The remedy to which God drew their attention was the Aaronic priesthood, who together with the Levites were given the task of taking care of and guarding the tabernacle so that wrath would not fall on the Israelites again (18:5). As we saw in the last study, this ministry was implied by the sign of Aaron’s staff. The priests and the Levites, like the lampstand of the tabernacle, were a sign of the Lord’s favor and determination to bless this people. The goal of their ministry was that the people should not die (17:10). So what kind of ministry did the priests and Levites have, and how did it deliver the people from their fear of death?

First, it was a ministry that was ordained by the Lord for the sake of his people. This is a central theme in these chapters of the book of Numbers: the Lord himself chooses those who come close to him and serve him. It was the Lord who chose Aaron and his sons for the priesthood (18:1), and it was the Lord who chose the Levites to assist them (18:6). All roads do not lead safely into God’s presence; that much has been made abundantly clear. Even the Levites could not help with the altar ministry and the work inside the veil of the tabernacle. Yet at the same time, one road does lead safely into the Lord’s presence. The Lord could legitimately have closed off access for Israel into his presence forever, but he chose not to do so. In the Aaronic priesthood, the doorway to Heaven was still open. The ones whom he had chosen could still approach him and serve him safely. The sacrifices they offered would be accepted by the Lord, just as Aaron’s incense offering was in Numbers 16:47. Through this means, the Lord would bless his people. The calling of the Aaronic priesthood by the Lord was thus a sign that his plan for his people is life and fellowship with him.

What is more, this ministry of the priesthood was a gift from God to Aaron and his sons (18:7). It was not something they had earned or deserved; on the contrary, what Levi had earned for his descendants was the sentence of being scattered in Israel. Because he slaughtered the inhabitants of Shechem, along with his brother Simeon (Genesis 34:25–29), Levi was cursed rather than blessed by his father Jacob:

  Simeon and Levi are brothers;
  weapons of violence are their swords.
  Let my soul come not into their council;
  O my glory, be not joined to their company.
  For in their anger they killed men,
  and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.
  Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
  and their wrath, for it is cruel!
  I will divide them in Jacob
  and scatter them in Israel. (Genesis 49:5–7)

Yet now there was an eternal covenant between the Lord and Aaron, and his descendants after him (18:19),4 a relationship that involved a number of privileges, most notably that of access into the Lord’s presence. The Levites would still be scattered, just as Jacob had prophesied, but their curse was turned into a blessing for the whole people. This transforming grace in the lives of the Levites was a demonstration in sample form of the Lord’s plan for his people. Even though the sin of Levi had earned his descendants a just punishment, the Lord’s grace was greater than all their sin. So too, the sin of the people did not necessarily mean their death. Even their ultimate scattering among the nations for their sin would be turned by the Lord from a curse into a blessing, as through them the gospel would eventually come to the whole world. God’s grace could redeem them also, just as it had the Levites.


THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRIESTHOOD

Yet the ministry of the priesthood was not only a gift to the family of Aaron—it was also a responsibility. This responsibility is the primary focus of the passage here. It was the priests’ responsibility to prevent fools from rushing in where angels fear to tread. Their ministry was to be a ministry of exclusion, protecting the sanctity of the most holy things against encroachment by profane people (18:1). Such encroachment in the last two chapters had very nearly led to the destruction of the whole community, but now the Lord charged the priests with the responsibility of ensuring that such problems didn’t happen again. If there was a similar encroachment in the future, instead of the whole community being held responsible and liable to death, now only the priests would be held responsible. That is what it means when it says that the priests “shall bear iniquity connected with the sanctuary” (18:1):5 the buck stopped with them. They were now to carry sole liability for protecting the most sacred things.

Assisting them in this task were the Levites, who were to keep guard over the tabernacle as a whole. The priests were to guard the most sacred items and areas, while the Levites kept watch over the outer environs (18:3). Together they were to take responsibility to guard and protect God’s holiness. If they failed in that mission, both they and the one who encroached on the sacred things would be liable to death—but not the entire community. The priests and the Levites were thus assigned a substitutionary ministry, bearing the danger of death for sin on behalf of the people.

This aspect of the job of the priests and Levites is in some ways like the work of Secret Service agents who are charged with protecting the President of the United States. These citizens surround our leader and guard him against anyone who would try to get too close to him. It is a responsibility that must be undertaken with the utmost seriousness, even to the point of being willing to take a bullet in place of their Commander-in-Chief. They are required to bear the danger of death on his behalf. However, unlike the Secret Service men, whose job is to protect an essentially harmless President against potentially dangerous citizens, the purpose of the priestly guard was also to protect the citizens of Israel against a potentially dangerous God. It was not on God’s behalf that they risked death, but on behalf of their people. The goal of their ministry was to keep the people at a safe distance from God so “that there may never again be wrath on the people of Israel” (18:5). They freed the people from the fear of death by being willing to substitute for the people in paying the penalty of death should someone sin by trespassing on holy ground.


THE MINISTRY OF EXCLUSION

Who carries a similar responsibility in our situation? We do not have priests in the New Testament church because access into the Lord’s presence is now available to all who come through Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. Yet those who are leaders in Christ’s church—ministers and elders—are still called to a ministry of exclusion as well as inclusion. They are assigned the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, welcoming some people into the fellowship of the church and keeping others out. The Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 83) puts it like this:

What are the keys of the kingdom?
The preaching of the holy gospel and Christian discipline toward repentance. Both preaching and discipline open the kingdom of heaven to believers and close it to unbelievers.

Ministers and elders are responsible, through preaching and church discipline, for guarding against careless intruders who would encroach on the sanctity of God. That is a serious responsibility, which is why James warns that not many should presume to be teachers because we who teach will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). We need to proclaim clearly the message of God’s fearsome holiness and righteousness, as well as his grace, to those who are presently living careless lives. The task of the church is not to suggest to everyone that they are already “in” when it comes to God; rather, we need to show them that by nature they are excluded from his presence. We need to make it clear to people that they cannot simply approach God casually, with a designer coffee in one hand and a donut in the other, and wave a cheery hello. By nature they are God’s enemies, objects of his wrath (Ephesians 2:1–3).

Thus, when God summoned Adam and Eve into his presence after the fall, they didn’t come eagerly expecting to enjoy a timely message about how to make their marriage better, an inspiring song or two, and great refreshments. They came in fear and trembling, knowing that they had transgressed against the Lord’s power and majesty. They could not but come when God called them, but they came knowing that they deserved nothing but death. Until their desperate need for forgiveness was dealt with, nothing else mattered. This somber reality is part of the message that we have to communicate to our culture. The fact that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) is perhaps not a popular or appealing part of our message, but until this truth is understood, the gospel itself will make no sense. We need to show people the gulf that exists between them as sinners and a holy God for their own sake, lest they be consumed by his wrath. It is not that there is anything necessarily wrong with preaching on marriage or providing great music and offering refreshments. Yet the atmosphere we foster should be one that matches the serious message that we have to deliver to those around us.


THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS

The ministry of the Old Testament priesthood was well designed to communicate that serious message because it was built around sacrifice and exclusion. The armed guards who kept the people out of the Lord’s presence communicated vividly their separation from God. The constant shedding of blood and burning of flesh kept the reality of the consequences of sin very much in front of the people. You couldn’t visit the temple without being visibly confronted with both your exclusion from the Lord’s presence and the necessity of death to restore you into a relationship with God.

This is why our ministry must constantly be centered around the cross of Jesus Christ, which is the culmination of all those Old Testament sacrifices. We must be resolved, as the apostle Paul was, to proclaim only “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). The cross of Christ shows us the death that is the Lord’s answer to our spiritual exclusion from his presence. There at the cross Jesus Christ himself bore the responsibility for all of our transgressions against God’s holiness. It is not pastors or elders who substitute themselves to death for our sake: it is Jesus Christ. God’s wrath fell on him so that it might not fall on us and crush us forever. He was put to death so that you and I would not have to be put to death. He was cut off from the Lord’s presence so that the door might be opened for us to walk right in.

Does the cross mean no more fear for the believer? Certainly it means no more fear of the wrath of God. Because of the cross there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). As a result, believers in Christ have a peace with God that cannot be challenged. Even the reverses that I may suffer in my ongoing battle with sin cannot cause me to fear the loss of my salvation, for Jesus has undertaken to bear the responsibility for all my offenses. That kind of fear is gone forever. There is now no exclusion for all of us who are in Christ Jesus: precisely because we are in him, we have the right to go where he goes and to stand in God’s presence as he does. Now even when I have sinned, I can run to God without fear of judgment and confess my sin, asking for his cleansing.


FITTING FEAR

Yet the nature of God has not changed, and there is still a fitting fear in the life of the believer. Indeed, the Lord promises such godly fear to believers in Jeremiah 32:40, where he says, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” Our God is still a consuming fire, as Hebrews 12:29 reminds us, a God who must be worshiped with reverence and awe (Hebrews 12:28). It is a solemn truth that many will be excluded from the Lord’s presence on the last day who are much smarter, better-behaved, and more sincerely religious people than we are: it is only God’s grace that allows us to enter in.

What makes the believer’s fear of the Lord distinct is that it is a fear that flows not simply from the prospect of God’s judgment but from a knowledge of God’s mercy. It is one thing to fear the Lord’s judgment, as Adam and Eve did when they heard the Lord walking in the garden. It is something else entirely to fear the God who combines judgment with mercy. Psalm 130:4 makes the connection between mercy and the fear of the Lord explicitly: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” Why should God’s forgiveness lead us to godly fear? The answer comes once again as we contemplate the means of our salvation and inclusion. What was the cost of my sin? Nails piercing the hands and feet of my Savior; a sharp spear penetrating his heart; a crown of thorns adorning his head; a back beaten to a bloody pulp; a Son’s face turned upward desperately seeking his Father and hearing no answer to his cry. Look at Jesus stretched out in agony, and tell me that our sin doesn’t really matter. Contemplate the cross, and sin will never again seem like a light thing to us. Pondering the Lord’s mercy will give us a healthy fear of the Lord and an abhorrence of sin.

After we have stood at the foot of the cross, coming into God’s presence will never again seem like a casual thing either. The Creator of the universe loved us enough to curse his own Son so that we might enter his presence. Giving him the thanks and praise he deserves is therefore no light matter. Coming to church to worship this God is not something to fit into our schedule whenever it suits us. It is not something to be undertaken casually, as we might meet with a few friends at a coffee shop for a stimulating conversation. What in the world could be more precious, more glorious than this? As we gather with other believers, we proclaim Christ crucified, our means of access to God, our way to life, our hope of glory. Worship is an awesome and fearsome event, yet at the same time deeply joyful and profoundly inspiring. For in Christ we now have an access into the Lord’s presence that is even greater than the special access God promised his chosen Aaronic priests. There are no longer any “Keep out” signs, warning us to stay at a safe distance, not even around the Holy of Holies. Dressed in the bloodstained robes of Christ’s holiness, we can draw near to the very presence of God himself and sing our praises to him.

The Lord is ready to receive our worship and praise in the assembly of his people Sunday after Sunday. In Christ the doorway is open, and we may go in. By his Spirit, the Lord is there as we offer our sacrifices of praise and lay our lives on his altar. The elements of the Lord’s Supper are there to communicate to us afresh the profound realities of the gospel of Christ crucified: the body of Christ was broken for us and his blood poured out to establish a new covenant relationship with us. Church is therefore always a place for doing serious business with God—business that is joyful, to be sure, but also serious and solemn. We must come ready to respond with deep gratitude for his gift of a perfect priest, Jesus Christ, who has stood between us and the judgment of God, bearing the responsibility for all our transgressions and sins. Our hearts must be filled with reverent fear as we contemplate the cost of our redemption. We must be touched with fresh wonder at the new and eternal life in God’s presence that was purchased for us. Then we will be prepared to stand in God’s presence and worship him.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 219–229). Crossway Books.