Worship and the Wisdom of God

The phrase the fear of the Lord is used throughout the Bible to describe worshiping God. To fear the Lord does not mean to be afraid of Him, but rather to have great respect and honor for Him. It is to know God as God, as the One who is greater than anything in the natural universe, because He created all there is, according to His word. It is also to know that His power is eternal. It understands, from His word, that God is holy. You fear the Lord as a response to the revelation of God, of Himself in Christ, according to His Word.

Proverbs 9:10 states, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…” The word beginning means the first thing or the entrance. The first step in receiving and entering into the wisdom of God is to learn to worship Him, to fear the Lord, to know Him from His Self-disclosure, according to His word. As you trust what God has said concerning Himself, you fear, or respect/honor Him as God. This is the beginning of wisdom, which is essential in worshiping the Father in spirit and truth. Wisdom pleases the Father. It is what we worship Him with!

The Hebrew language has several words for wisdom, each with a particular aspect and meaning. The first time the word is used in the Bible is in Genesis 3:6. In that verse it states that Eve “…saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise…” The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil was her counterpart in the Garden (more on that later), and its fruit was not to be eaten. The consequence would be death, according to God’s word.

Satan had already planted his two-fold lie that they would not really die if they ate of the fruit of the Tree and that God knew that if they did eat their eyes would be opened, like God, and they would know good and evil. She decided to follow the lie, according to Satan’s word, rather than the truth, according to God’s word, in order to get wisdom. She was deceived into believing that eating the fruit would be the beginning of wisdom, rather than fearing the Lord. Adam and Eve decided to get wisdom on their own rather than receive it according to God’s word, as the fruit of worship.

The Apostle John defines loving the things of the world in 1 John 2:16 as “…the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life…” He warns in that passage of having the love of the world rather than the love of the Father. This statement directly corresponds to Genesis 3:6. It interprets it with the comparison of the pride of life to the desire for the tree to make one wise, which gets at the heart of true worship, trusting and loving the Father in spirit and truth.

Today, respond to the invitation of the Father from His word to fear Him in awe and wonder because of His goodness, His greatness, His wisdom and love.

Tomorrow we will study the Hebrew word that is used in Genesis 3:6, sakal, and how it relates to worship.