Thursday, August 28, 2008

Fear vs. Hardening

"Blessed is the man who always fears the LORD, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble."
Proverbs 28 verse 14

During the month of August, my church is closed. So a few of us have been gathering together for fellowship on Sunday mornings. I may describe this is greater detail in some future post. The reason I mention this here is that for those of us who met up these past weeks, the fear of the Lord was a recurrent topic.

Indeed, to fear the Lord sounds strange to our contemporary ears. Its archaic, isn't it? As you probably know, King Solomon's thesis, in the book of proverbs, is that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1v7). However, what struck me in chapter 28 (quoted text above) is the opposition Solomon makes between fearing the Lord and having a
hardened heart. To soften your heart is to fear the Lord. To harden your heart is to ignore God and rebel against Him.
So I find this verse helpful in explaining the fear of the Lord and
thought of our conversations the past two Sundays.

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