The Fear of the Lord Is His Treasure

By Michael Walker

Do not be misled by the title of this book “The Fear of the Lord Is His treasure”. The fear of God is a wonderful and astonishing gift that He chooses to offer to us, along with many promises. Not wanting those promises, I believe, is akin to not wanting the work of the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. In today's modern world, it is a rarely talked about facet of the Christian faith that is shrouded in negativity arising from the use of the word “fear”. This is an unfortunate limitation of the English language, but I hope to dispel such myths by revealing what the Bible itself has to say.
Michael Walker

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244170929

Michael Walker

Michael Walker is the bestselling author of Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood and What You Want Is in the Limo: On the Road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and the Who in 1973, the Year the Sixties Died and the Modern Rock Star Was Born. He has written about popular culture for the New York Times and is a contributing editor at the Hollywood Reporter. He lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

The Fear of the Lord Is His Treasure

The Fear of the Lord is His treasure

A Bible study

Unless otherwise stated, all Scripture is taken from the

Modern King James Version of the Holy Bible

Copyright © 1962 - 1998

By Jay P. Green, Sr.

Used by permission of the copyright holder

Scripture quotation taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP),

Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation

Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Word definitions taken from oxforddictionaries.com,

Copyright © 2019 Oxford University Press.

The image in the introduction is licensed under the Creative Commons

Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Philip De Vere.

The large grey X was added to the original image.

Some of the material used in this study is derived from a Derek Prince talk entitled The Lord's Treasure – the fear of God available, as of 6th October 2018, on Youtube by searching for Derek Prince the fear of the Lord

Front cover photograph / Marketing image photography by Ruth Walker

Thanks to Ruth Walker and Peter Marks for their proof-reading

This publication is Copyright © 2019 M. Walker

All rights reserved. You may copy it as much as you like free of charge and distribute any copies free of charge. This page must be included in any complete copies or partial copies. No charge shall be made for any material costs. No part of this publication may be changed or removed without the prior written agreement of M. Walker.

First Printing: 2019

ISBN 978-0-244-17092-9

M Walker

3 Wood Road

Alford

Lincolnshire

LN13 9BA

United Kingdom

www.walkerworldweb.or.uk/fear-of-god.html

Preface

I strongly encourage you to check out Bible references and particularly the context of those references. Sometimes it is useful to refer to multiple versions of the Bible so as to build up a more accurate picture of a particular verse or phrase. Also a Bible dictionary can prove to be invaluable because the Bible was written in Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) and was also initially written to people in a quite different culture to our 21st Century Western European one. There are, in the Bible, many culturalisms. That is, words, phrases or entire passages that can only be correctly understood by knowing something of the culture of the people who wrote it or those to whom it was written.

I will also give a word of warning about Bible translations. There are some modern versions and paraphrases (e.g. New Living Translation (NLT) and Today's New International Version (TNIV)) that have diluted some of the more politically incorrect verses or, more relevant to this study, have used weaker words than e.g. fear. I suspect this comes partly from a humanist influence that seeks to make the Bible more user friendly, but, who knows? I could be wrong. As always, you the reader must decide for yourself.

I have tried to keep to a minimum any of my own interpretations, though it would be impossible to not include some. If you have a different interpretation then that is fine – you must hear what God is saying to you personally. I would only caution you that your interpretation should not contradict the overall revelation of God in the Bible. This work expresses my theology as at the time of writing and I reserve the right to change my theology should God reveal different things to me, or illuminate passages of scripture that could change my theology.

If you disagree with any of my interpretations of Bible verses, that is fine. Because the Bible is living and active, you need to hear what God is saying to yourself.

As with all other Christians, I am on a journey and would appreciate your grace and mercy for any errors you may find here.

Introduction

I'd better just explain this interesting picture – it's a medieval artist's impression of the episode when Nadab and Abihu were incinerated by fire from Heaven. At the time, the tabernacle was undergoing commissioning under Moses. Possibly out of an emotional zeal, these two men burnt an incense they were not commanded to burn (see Leviticus 10 verses 1 and 2). The large X indicates this is not what I mean by the fear of God. This is much more a manifestation of the wrath of God. We should NEVER be afraid of Him. He is not a God who is waiting for us to slip up so that he can inflict some terrible punishment on us. We have one advantage that Nadab and Abihu did not have and that is the atoning sacrifice of the Christ.

We must remember that when we are in Christ (e.g. 2 Corinthians 5:17), that is we have made a serious commitment to the Christian faith, we are, as far as God is concerned, the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). Or, put another way, hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). When God sees us, rather than ourselves, He sees His son, Jesus, the sinless, spotless, perfect Son of God who can be in God's holy presence.

He is the God who created us, who knows us inside and out completely, and who has plans for us for our good and who ultimately knows what is best for us and, above all these things, is love. All that He does for us and gives us is out of love. His love for us is such that sometimes He corrects us and that can be painful, but always we later become so aware that the pain was worth it. Generally, that is the only form of pain or torment that God deliberately puts us through, though God does also allow other forms of pain and torment.

If we have any fear of God that would prevent us approaching Him, then that is NOT the fear of God. One reason why we use the word fear is that there is really no better word in the English language. As I shall show, there are many types of fear, but the fear of God is unique and not the same as other types of fear.

The Bible tells us it is God's will that no one should perish, but that all should have eternal life (for example in 2 Peter 3:9 and John 3:16). But, it is my belief that God made each of us and that therefore He knows what is best for us and that best is written down in His word, the Bible. As we shall discover through this journey, the fear of God is one of those things that He has instituted for us for