Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him! 9 Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. 10 The young lions lack and suffer hunger; but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. —Psalm 34:8-10
Do you ever feel confused about the fact that sometimes the Scriptures, as in our verses today, tell us that if we love and seek the Lord, we won’t want for anything? Yet as we look at our own lives, we wonder how this applies, considering our circumstances. What David is doing here is drawing a contrast between those worries that occupy our feelings and emotions and the things that really matter, which are the things of God.
I’m not saying that poverty and hunger don’t matter, but David is making a personal statement regarding his own experience. I mean, when you wind up in Gath holding Goliath’s sword in the city where his family lives, you want to call to mind that the fear of the Lord will help you to deal with the fear of man, in this case, a man named Achish (see 1 Sam 21). Psalm 14:27 says, “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to turn one away from the snares of death.” And Proverbs 15:16 reads, “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure with trouble.”
In fact, the takeaway from these verses might be that there is nothing we need more than the fear of the Lord! Why would that be? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7); “ . . . the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10); “ . . . a fountain of life”; “ . . . better than treasure”; and the list goes on.
But what does it mean to fear the Lord? Some think it means to respect or revere God, but it’s more than that. For the believer, a biblical fear of God includes understanding how much He hates sin. It also includes a fear of His judgment on sin—even in the life of a believer.
The word “fear” in these verses means “moral reverence,” but it can also have the connotation of being frightened. This simply means that we should have such a reverence of God that it impacts the way we live our lives, and we fear that our own flesh will fail us and disappoint Him. We are to respect Him by obeying Him, submitting to His discipline, and worshiping Him in awe. After all, He’s the Creator of the universe! He holds our lives in His hand. He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins, so that we could spend a glorious eternity with Him! Is it unreasonable to ask that we offer Him our deepest respect and love, and, yes, even our fear of displeasing Him?
So, back to our point, we’re to fear the Lord for our own good and for His pleasure. I don’t know about you, but I long for nothing more than to know that I am pleasing Him. If we fear the Lord, we will lack nothing that is good. That shouldn’t be a difficult decision to make. The right kind of fear for God will conquer all circumstances and will defeat all of our enemies. Even when in Gath, with Goliath’s sword, acting like a nut—even then, David did not lack any good thing, and the Lord delivered him. And that is what we, too, may expect from our perfect, loving Father.
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