[Friday's Devotional] - Fear of the Lord

Fear of the Lord Of late I have been studying what fear of the Lord means and the Strong Concordance led me to this example.   Pharaoh had been stubborn and refused to let the children of Israel leave Egypt for the Promised Land. God therefore sent Moses to warn Pharaoh that if he continued in his ways he would see God's punishment - a series of progressive plagues. One of these was hailstorm and we pick the story up in Exodus 9. Here Moses was instructed to tell Pharaoh;   "Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. But those who ignored the word of the Lord left their slaves and livestock in the field." Exodus 9: 18-21 [NIV]   So in very simple terms, fear of the Lord means great reverence (deep respect and honour) of God. It means, whatever He says, people should treat with great respect and obey immediately and exactly as instructed out of fear of the consequences if they don't do so.   The good thing about God is that, He is like a teacher who asks his students a question and gives them a choice of two answers- one that is correct and the other incorrect. The teacher then tells the students the correct answer to choose.   I have read the book of Exodus many times, but until now I had not noticed that even though the Egyptians did not know God, some of them were beginning to tremble with fear each time Moses came to them with a word from God.   Just as the Lord had said through Moses, the hailstorm came and the land and all who disobeyed were devastated. Pharaoh came to his senses (but only for a short time) and sent word to Moses to come back to the palace and pray that God would stop the hailstorms. (The children of Israel were living in the same land yet, in their community called Goshen, there were no hailstorms).   "Moses replied, "When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the Lord. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the Lord's. But I know that you and your officials still do not fear the Lord God."  Exodus 9:29-30 [NIV]   I pray to the Most High God (El Elyon) to manifest Himself in your life so that others may be drawn towards Him.     Farai Mutsambiwa   Twitter Website Copyright © 2017 St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the Daily Devotionals Our mailing address is: St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church 1a New Street Rugby, Warwickshire CV22 7BE United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list Want to be added to our mailing list? - sign up here!