Psalm 111:10 – “King Business”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

¹⁰[The] beginning of wisdom [is] the fear of the LORD.

  Good understanding to the all of their doings.

  His praise [is] one standing forever.

I’ve been pondering over v9 a lot and praying for understanding of its last line, “Holy and fearsome is His name.” As I asked in an earlier post, what does it really mean? Can I actually say those words with understanding, or are they just a religious cliché, easily spoken utterly without the slightest idea what the words mean? “Holy and fearsome is His name.” That holiness moves Seraphim to endless praise. Do I even know what it means?

Since I couldn’t seem to come to any conclusion, I had to just move on to verse 10. I think in a perhaps small way verse 10 helps me understand verse 9. I hope by gathering my thoughts here they will coalesce into something helpful.

Here’s the deal: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Pretty much my whole life I’ve listened to people trying to put their finger on what that means. On the one hand, the Pharisees have loved to threaten people with God’s harshness – “You’d better not sin, or God will send down lightning bolts to utterly destroy you! You’d better fear the Lord!” On the other hand (and perhaps in reaction to that), people rush to say, “No, no, no! It doesn’t mean to be afraid of God! He is a God of love!” The one loves to warn of hell, the other can’t bear to talk about it. So which is it? Is it most important to be afraid of God or to love Him?

I would suggest that our inability to answer that simple question, to even define “the fear of the Lord,” is at the root of our inability to comprehend holiness.

Here is what I mean: We live in America. The very foundation of our nation was built to protect us from tyranny. Our forefathers suffered under the cruel oppression of a king who cared nothing for us and used us mercilessly. That’s why they dumped the tea in the harbor. And that is specifically why they wrote the Declaration of Independence. The whole idea goes all the way back to the Magna Carta and the idea that kings rule by the permission of their people. Our forefathers established a nation built to protect our freedoms.

In so doing, we created a world where rulers have limited power. That is the point of the three branches of government, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. No one of them has absolute rule. No one of them can be a tyrant because everything he does is subject to the others.

Rewind to 1000 BC. As with pretty much all of human history, the people of the ancient world lived under absolute tyrants. A king, by definition in their minds, not only made the laws, he also enforced them. He could grant your request or have your head cut off. He could send an army to protect your village or send another one to wipe you out. He could enrich you or destroy you – and all at his own whim. I’ve heard the story that a Shah was visiting an English king and while there, someone brought a case to him in the Shah’s hearing. The Shah said to the king, “Why don’t you just kill him?” The English king responded, “We don’t do things that way.” The Shah responded, “What’s the point of being king if you can’t kill people?

The Shah’s world is still run where rulers have absolute power and hence are greatly to be feared. Here is where I think we struggle. In that Shah’s world, as it has been throughout human history, even the very best of kings obviously is someone to be feared. Even if you are assured he is a good king and loves his people, still he bears that absolute power and is someone to be feared.

My point is that our Constitution has created for us a world where we don’t have to “fear” the king. Everyone who rules over us is themselves limited.

And that is, in itself, a good thing.

People cannot be trusted with power.

But.

That doesn’t change the fact that God does rule in absolute power. He can take you to Heaven or throw you in hell, bless you or curse you. He absolutely rules in the lives of men and nations. He is in fact greatly to be feared.

But that doesn’t change the fact that He is a very good King who absolutely loves His people and is constantly doing us good. He is a God who can be both feared and loved at the same time. If I let myself wander back into that ancient world, let myself see “the king” through their eyes, I can see how the most basic thing with any king was to fear him. All kings were to be feared. That was a given. Whether or not you could also love him depended on who he was. And so it is with the Lord. The first thing we’d better understand is that He is THE KING and only after that are we free to also embrace His love and grace and mercy, His tenderness and kindness, His Fatherhood and friendship.

I’ve said for years, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom … but it is only the beginning. The end of wisdom is to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind and with all our strength.” I think the key here in Psalm 111 is perhaps that you can’t have the end without the beginning. In the OT, they were big on “the fear of the Lord” while the NT seems to camp more on loving Him. But both are present in both Testaments. And both should be present in our hearts today.  Either without the other becomes a monstrosity. But together they make our world everything it ought to be.

Our God does rule.

And He rules in love.

“His praise endures forever!”