PRÉCIS ON THE SIMPLE PATH TO GOD’S WISDOM AND FAVOR: FEAR HIM AND KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS!

SCRIPTURE. “The [reverent] fear of the Lord is the beginning (the prerequisite, the absolute essential, the alphabet) of wisdom; A good understanding and a teachable heart are possessed by all those who do the will of the Lord; His praise endures forever.” – PSALM 111:10, AMP

KEY TERM: ‘Yirah’ [יִרְאַ֬ת]: “Moral, dreadful reverence;’ fear that acknowledges God’s good intentions; produced by God’s Word and delights the Messiah; identified with wisdom from above; may be lost by despair [unbelief] of one’s own situation; helps rulers and judges to find justice; results in good sleep; true piety defined as highest esteem and respect for the Lord.”

QUOTATION. “As the fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of Foolishness.” ― R.C. SPROUL, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, 1998; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘The fear of the Lord’ — That is, piety, or True Religion, which consists in the fear, or worship and service of God; ‘is the beginning of wisdom’ — Is the only foundation of, and introduction to, all True Wisdom: or, is the chief part, the first and principal point of Wisdom. ‘A good understanding have all they that do His commandments’ — That conscientiously walk according to them; for the practice of them, as Bishop Patrick observes, ‘Gives men a better understanding of what is good for them, than any politic maxims can infuse into them.’ 

‘His praise endureth for ever’ — Let the Lord be for ever praised, Who hath given us these good and wholesome Laws, and thereby shown us the way to eternal honour and happiness. But the Hebrew may be rendered, ‘the praise of it,’ that is, of the Wisdom and good understanding of those that fear the Lord, ‘endureth,’ or ‘standeth fast,’ as עמדת, signifies, ‘for ever.’ This will procure them such a substantial happiness as they can never be deprived of, either in this world or the next.” – JOSEPH BENSON, Notes on the Holy Bible, 5 vols., 1811-1818; edited

DK’S TAKE. This is indeed the simplest possible of Lessons to the Church and the most important of all. Yet has she largely abandoned it for the ‘Fear of Men,’ and ‘Henchmen’ at that! A fatal Faustian exchange at the behest of the Beast of Babylon himself, for which she is about to lose all that she so treasured on the earth.

Yahweh’s Last Breaths of Grace are upon us; do not relinquish them to the Spirit of the Age, beloved.