“O . . . that they would fear me”. Deut. 5, 29.
There were many in Israel, no doubt, who had a dread of the God of Israel because of His awesome power and majesty displayed on Mount Sinai. It is not enough, however, to have a dread and awe of God. This may be no more than a slavish fear of God. What God requires, and what is pleasing in His sight is a gracious, holy, reverential and filial fear. It is of this He speaks when He says: “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me”.
God had revealed Himself as Israel’s Covenant God. As their Covenant God He was a God nigh unto them, and not a God afar off. But how few in Israel really understood this! It was only those who were brought in a spiritual way into a covenant relationship to Israel’s God who could be sensibly affected by the infinite condescension of the God of heaven in graciously choosing out a people for Himself, and bringing them nigh unto Himself in and through a promised Messiah. How full of meaning the sacrifices of the Old Testament sanctuary would be for such true Israelites as they perceived, however dimly, yet truly, the good things to come in the typical ordinances which foreshadowed them. These true Israelites all took God to be their God, and to be their God for evermore. They were enabled to make this blessed choice by divine grace vouchsafed to them, and it is the same choice which living believers make today when they take God to be their covenant God in Jesus Christ — a God reconciled and no longer a God afar off. By this blessed choice we are brought into a new relationship to the God of eternity.
All those who truly fear God, love God as God and as their God with a gracious, holy, reverential and filial fear. They thus fulfil the end of their creation — to love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. They love God who has made Himself known in Jesus Christ. (This love they bear to Him because He first loved them.) In Christ they have beheld His face as a reconciled God and have tasted of His love and have obtained the forgiveness of their sins. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”. (1 John 4: 10)
A gracious and loving heart is a heart in which the effects of the work of the Spirit of God are seen. God imparts grace to the soul and makes the graces of the Spirit to appear in the heart and life of the individual. The Lord’s work is always glorious and, consequently, His work in the soul of the sinner is wonderful. It is in this and in this alone that the Lord can take delight. It is the fruit of the Spirit’s work in the soul of the individual believer that causes the Beloved of the Church to say: “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk”. (Song of Solomon 5: 1) May we be of those in whom the graces of the Spirit appear.
Do you have such an heart — we now ask — a gracious and loving heart, a heart to know God and to love and serve Him? Do you fear God with a holy, gracious, reverential and filial fear? Do you have the fear of which Job spoke when he said: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding”. (Job 28: 28) If so you will cleave to Him, come what may, and you will say with godly David: “Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow”. (2 Sam. 23: 5)