The Fear of the Lord

The fear of Me is not in you, says the Lord of hosts. (Jeremiah 2:18-20, AMP).

One summer when we were still keeping horses, we wanted to let them graze off an unfenced area of lush bush, so Greg partitioned it off with electric fence. It fell to me, a couple of days later, to get the water set up so that we could move the horses in there.

Now, I didn’t exactly grow up around electric fence, but we’ve used it here before. It was really quite amusing to see the horses get used to it. They learned to respect it very quickly. They would approach the thin little line, which hung between flimsy plastic posts; they would regard it curiously, cautiously reach out an inquisitive nose and ever so lightly touch the wire, and then wham! An explosion of surprise and discomfort, shying away and back, tail up and a mad gallop to a safer place. Forever after, they gave it a wide berth, and it was amazing to see how that single, waist-high string would keep thousand-pound animals in line.

I myself had been very cautious around that wire at first. Finally one day I risked touching it and found only a mild, prickling sensation in my finger. In fact, I discovered that I could take firm hold of it, in order to step over it, with nothing more than a gentle surging through my hand. I found this rather curious, that such a mild current could elicit such fear and respect from the horses. But I was completely overlooking one important variable: I was always wearing running shoes with thick rubber soles. There was a very effective insulator between me and the ground.

Now I had to drag the watering trough from the pasture to this new temporary enclosure. I tipped it over to empty it out and dragged it maybe eighty feet to the electric fence. I planned to slip under the wire and pull the trough after me. Given how nonchalantly I’d come to handle that fence, there was no reason to disconnect the current. But now there was a different variable. Sure, I was wearing rubber-soled shoes as usual, but both hands were wet, one was still hanging on to the side of that metal tub, and the other was reaching out to that live wire.

Wham! My whole body convulsed violently and flew up in the air; then I landed with a crash on my side. The upper leg came down a split second behind, and as it descended, the toe tagged the wire again, causing a secondary spasm. All of this was accompanied by an unearthly shriek, emitted involuntarily from my lips, trailing off in a sustained groan as I lay there temporarily stunned.

A distraught wail came from 12-year-old Rachel: “Mom! Are you all right?!”

Then I started to laugh, and she started to laugh, and we both just about came unglued.

But seriously, there is a spiritual application here. We who have been born this side of the Cross, believers and unbelievers alike, have been walking around, however obliviously, in rubber-soled running shoes called “grace.” We’ve touched the things of God lightly without consequence and have become progressively less reverent, both in our individual lives and in the general trend of our culture from generation to generation. I hear God lamenting: “The fear of Me is not in you."

It’s a sad thing, because the fear of God brings great blessing into our lives. It is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7) and of wisdom (Psalm 111:10): it is a fountain of life (Pr. 14:27) and it prolongs our days (Pr. 10:27). Furthermore, and in context with this story, if we do not foster a reverential awe of God—if we do not continue in faith and gratitude and hope regarding the amazing grace that has been extended to us, we risk judgement. See what I Cor. 11:27-29 says about partaking in the Lord's Supper thoughtlessly and irreverently. It’s like my walking around in those rubber soles while failing to realize that they allow me to go where horses fear to tread.

Some pastors are afraid to preach the true message of grace, fearing that their sheep will go playing with electric fences. New Testament grace is a profoundly powerful and forgiving thing. And yet God has seen fit to include in the New Testament this warning: if we deliberately go on in willful independence "after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” (Hebrews 10:26-30, NIV). The writer of Hebrews finishes with a grim warning that makes my "shocking experience" fade into insignificance:

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31, KJV).