Fear God?

My Bible opens naturally to Psalm 146. I do sometimes open up my Bible randomly when I want to look at something different, and I land on Psalm 146 quite often. Because I have looked at it so often, I decided to go to Psalm 147 this morning. This is what I found.

Praise ye the Lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely. (Psalm 147:1)

This is a happy psalm. It is true, it is a beautiful and attractive thing to lift up others, particularly God. It is enjoyable to focus on the good things in life. I am fairly quick to notice the problems around the place, and without people like me the world would be a very inefficient place. But to fix my attention on the bad does me no good and Christ is teaching me to fix my attention on him and what he will do instead. The next few verses of the psalm describe some of God's wonderful attributes, it is worthwhile to spend a moment thinking about them...

God is supporter, restorer, comforter, counsellor and creator. His intelligence is beyond computation. What is it that he particularly likes? What does the heart of God find appealing?

...he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. 11 The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy. (Psalm 147:10b-11)

As much as it is natural to get exited about other people's legs, that's not what gets God exited. It seems a strange thing that God takes pleasure in people fearing him. We cannot divorce this statement from its plain meaning simply because we do not like it. The word translated "fear" really does mean "fear" in Hebrew and Greek, I've checked, hoping to find it meant something else. The Greek word used is "phobos" which of course is where we get the word "phobia" from. But you will be glad to know that the Hebrew word has got "morally reverence" as its figurative meaning (as opposed to its literal meaning which is simply "fear").
But I would pose the question, what does "morally reverence" mean? What do you revere? You may revere a very famous person, and get nervous around him. Reverence is the fear of offending another or lowering one's self in his estimation (his opinion). I'm not sure how well that fits the idea of being reverent in a place of worship… Well, it is the supernatural being that you are showing reverence to when you revere his temple, not the bricks and mortar that make the temple itself. The more important a person is to me the more I am afraid of hurting that person in any way, damaging our relationship or losing some of that person's respect. It can keep me up at nights, cause me to wander around listlessly or struggle to speak. What is reverence if it is not fear? Reverence is not the same as respect. I respect lots of people, and I show respect to everyone (I hope) but there is no way I revere everyone. I do not fear many people, but those I love deeply I (re)fear (fear/revere). Fear and reverence are really very similar things, but reverence is where fear and love meet. To go back to my analogy of the famous person, the reverence or fear that Psalm 147 refers to could be referred to as: starstruck.

God enjoys it when people are starstruck by him. I guess that's not too unusual, we all do.

But perhaps I should have gone on to the second part of the verse earlier. The idea of fear of God is closely bound to this idea: that hope in his mercy. God does not really want us to gaze at him in wonder because he is glowing with light or because he is the most famous being in the universe. He wants us to be starstruck by him because we know we are in trouble and he is our only chance.
It is such a good feeling to be able to help someone who is in distress, and our way of feeling that (I believe) was given to us to reflect a greater truth about God.

The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth (Exodus 34:6)

Helping people is what God does. He wants to help people, he wants to care for people, even if they don't care about him. We are made in God's image and so we share his character to a greater or lesser extent. It was part of Jesus' mission to cause us to reflect his character fully, that is a goal worth reaching for!

The question we need to ask ourselves is this: Who do I (re)fear the most? Do I (re)fear my friends the most? If they make my decisions for me then I probably do. Do I (re)fear my religious leaders the most? If I accept everything they say then I probably do.

Fear God and give glory to him.