Back in the early 2000s, there was a show called Fear Factor. Three contestants would face a series of challenges — walking a plank suspended hundreds of feet in the air, getting into a box while thousands of roaches were poured over them, eating the most stomach-turning combinations of food imaginable. Some people looked at what was in front of them and walked off without a second thought. Others made it through every round completely unfazed. And at the end, the host, Joe Rogan, would look at the winner and say his signature line: Fear is not a factor for you.
Being fearless is a great quality. In battle, in adversity, in the face of life’s hardest moments — fearlessness carries you through. But there is one area where being fearless is not a virtue at all. When it comes to the things of God, fearlessness is actually a problem.
The Beginning of Wisdom
There is a scripture that Belinda and I practically have memorized from years of hearing it at camp growing up. Psalm 111:10 says it plainly:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding have all those who do his commandments. His praise endures forever.”
Notice it does not say the fear of the Lord is the destination, or even the middle of the journey. It is the beginning. It is foundational. A life of wisdom, a life of following God well, starts here.
But what does it actually mean to fear the Lord? The word carries more than one shade of meaning, and getting that right matters. On one level, it can mean what we usually think of — trembling, being genuinely scared. But depending on the context, it also carries the meaning of awe. The kind of awe Isaiah experienced in his vision of the Lord. The kind of awe that causes everyone in Scripture who comes face to face with the glorified Christ to fall flat on their face. It is overwhelming, breathtaking, holy awe.
And out of that awe comes something else: reverence. Living in the fear of the Lord means being so moved by who God is that it reshapes the way you live. It creates a hunger for holiness. It produces a desire to be set apart, consecrated, separated unto him.
A Lesson Learned in a Church Pew
When I was about ten or eleven years old, my mom and dad were involved in getting a Christian radio station off the ground in our city. To raise funds, they would sponsor Christian music artists who would perform at churches around town, and the love offering would go toward building the station. As a kid, that meant a lot of evenings at big churches — and once the service wound down, a lot of running around while the adults cleaned up.
One night, my brother, our friend Nick, and I were doing what kids do — running, diving under pews, and generally having a great time. A young woman, probably in her early twenties, stopped us. She told us we shouldn’t be running in the church. This was the house of God, she said, and it deserved reverence and respect.
I thought I had a pretty sharp answer. I told her, with all the confidence of a ten-year-old who had been to Christian school, that the church is not a building — the church is God’s people. So this place isn’t holy.
Reverence Is a Way of Living, Not an Event
At Mount Sinai, something remarkable happened that helps frame all of this. When God came down to give the Ten Commandments, the scene was unlike anything the people of Israel had ever witnessed:
“Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him with thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.” (Exodus 19:18-20)
God was not casual about who could approach. He told Moses to warn the people not to break through to gaze at him, because they would perish. Even the priests were given specific instructions:
“Let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, or else the Lord will break out against them.” (Exodus 19:22)
Consecration — holiness, being set apart — was not optional. It was the requirement for entering the presence of God. And when the people witnessed everything happening on the mountain, the thunder and lightning, the smoke and the trumpet sound, they were terrified. They told Moses they would rather hear from him and let him relay what God said. They did not want to face God directly.
Moses’ response to their fear is one of the most important things in this whole passage:
“Do not be afraid, for God has come in order to test you and in order that the fear of him may remain with you so that you may not sin.” (Exodus 20:20)
Don’t be afraid — but do fear him. What looks like a contradiction is actually a distinction. The terror of that moment was not the destination. It was a lesson. God was establishing a way of living, not staging a one-time event. The fear of the Lord was never meant to be something reserved for Sundays, or for high and holy moments. It is a posture that carries through every single day.
There is something honest in the response of the people of Israel. They were scared and they wanted Moses to go to God on their behalf. That human instinct — to keep a safe distance from anything that might require us to change — shows up all the time. A friend of mine demonstrated it perfectly.
Belinda and I used to spend a lot of time with this friend in our early married years. When his marriage fell apart, partly because of an affair, he drifted from the church. I reached out and brought him to a service with us. God moved that day — not in a vague or uncertain way. He felt it. We went out to eat afterward and spent the whole day together. When it came time to go back for the Sunday night service, he pulled back.
He told me he knew exactly what would happen if he kept coming to church. God would deal with him and call him to stand in faith for his marriage — to pray for his wife, to wait on God. And he did not want that. He was hurt and angry, and he did not want to be changed. So he walked away.
The last I knew, he had been through a couple of failed marriages and was on his own. He knew the truth. He felt the presence of God pulling on him. And he chose to leave rather than surrender.
What Happens to a Stubborn Heart
The people of Israel had a long history of that same pattern. The prophet Jeremiah, given one of the hardest assignments in all of Scripture, addressed it head-on. In Jeremiah chapter 5, God speaks through him with unmistakable directness:
“Declare this in the house of Jacob and proclaim it in Judah, saying, ‘Now hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear. Do you not fear me?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do you not tremble in my presence?'” (Jeremiah 5:20-21)
God was watching a people who had the temple, the priests, the rituals — all the outward forms of religion — while their hearts were somewhere else entirely. He continues:
“But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart. They have turned aside and departed. They do not say in their heart, ‘Let us now fear the Lord our God.'” (Jeremiah 5:23-24)
And then verse 25, which deserves to be marked and returned to:
“Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have withheld good from you.”
That is not the language of an angry deity looking for reasons to punish. It is the language of a father watching his children cut themselves off from the very blessings he wanted to pour out on them. Stubbornness and rebellion do not just result in spiritual distance — they actively withhold good things from our lives.
God closes out the passage with a question that lands like a weight: “But what will you do at the end of it?” The prophets were prophesying falsely. The priests were operating on their own authority. And the people loved it. They preferred comfortable falsehood over the challenge of holiness. But at the end of all of it — what then?
The New Testament Didn’t Change the Standard
A common response to passages like these is to write them off as the God of the Old Testament. The idea being that the New Testament brought something softer, more patient, more forgiving of spiritual carelessness. The early church discovered otherwise.
In Acts chapter 4, Barnabas sold a piece of land and brought the full proceeds to the apostles. It was a generous act and no doubt a source of encouragement and blessing. Then in chapter 5, a husband and wife named Ananias and Sapphira decided to do the same — except they held back a portion of the sale and misrepresented the amount they brought as the full price.
Peter confronted Ananias directly:
“Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” (Acts 5:3-4)
Ananias fell dead on the spot. Three hours later, Sapphira came in, not knowing what had happened. She gave the same false answer to Peter’s question. He told her the feet of those who buried her husband were at the door, and she fell dead as well.
“And great fear came over the whole church and over all who heard these things.” (Acts 5:11)
This was the Mount Sinai moment for the early church. It was not Old Testament. It was the very beginning of the church age, and God was establishing a precedent: the holiness he required at Sinai was the same holiness he required of those who gathered in his name. Don’t bring deception into the presence of God. Don’t treat holy things casually. The fear of the Lord is not a relic of a different era — it is the foundation of a life lived well before him.
Don’t Give What Is Holy to the Dogs
Jesus spoke to this with the kind of directness that sometimes surprises people who assume he only spoke in gentle reassurances. In Matthew 7:6 he said:
“Don’t give what is holy to the dogs and don’t throw your pearls before the swine.”
Most people read that as instruction about evangelism — don’t keep pressing the gospel on people who want nothing to do with it. That is a legitimate reading. But it applies equally to the way we handle the holiness of God in our own lives. In Jesus’ day, dogs were not family pets. They were scavengers. To call someone a dog was an insult. Don’t take what is consecrated, set apart, and sacred and hand it over carelessly to that which has no regard for it. Don’t throw your pearls in front of swine.
Jesus was serious about this. The fear of the Lord — reverence, holiness, being set apart — is not something to be treated lightly, explained away, or quietly discarded when life gets complicated.
Are You Living in the Fear of the Lord?
There is a saying that has been floating around Christian circles for a long time: Don’t be so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good. The implication is that faith needs to be balanced with engagement with the world, or people will be turned off. That sounds reasonable. It is not.
The influence of the world is relentless and powerful. When believers drift from the holiness and the presence of God, even a little, that drift accelerates. By the time most people realize how far they have moved, they are a long way from where they started. The answer is not better balance — it is to be more deeply rooted. Everything is spiritual. When that foundation is right, when the relationship with God is alive and the Spirit is leading, everything else has a way of falling into place.
That is what Matthew 6:33 has always meant: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Seek first. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Seek first the kingdom of God. These are not two different ideas — they are the same idea said two different ways.
With everything pressing in — work, relationships, politics, news, the general noise of life — the question worth asking yourself every single morning is a simple one: Am I living in the fear of the Lord?
Not fear as in trembling in dread, but fear as in awe, reverence, and holiness. The privilege of being in the presence of a holy God and choosing to live like it. That is where wisdom begins. That is the foundation everything else is built on.
Peace,
Todd