Many people are familiar with the term the fear of the Lord. However, there is a lot of misinformation about what that term means. Many people interpret the fear of the Lord as something pleasant like awe and respect. They deny the fear of the Lord is ever unpleasant. However, many times the fear of the Lord is unpleasant, and Haggai contains an example of this.
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Transcript:
Many people are familiar with the term the fear of the Lord. However, there is a lot of misinformation about what that term means. Many people interpret the fear of the Lord as something pleasant like awe and respect. They deny the fear of the Lord is ever unpleasant. However, many times the fear of the Lord is unpleasant, and Haggai contains an example of this.
Yahweh delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt around 1500BC. He took them into the wilderness and instructed them to build a portable tabernacle as the centerpiece of their religion. Around 1000BC Solomon built a permanent temple in Jerusalem which replaced the portable tabernacle. The permanent temple was a fabulous and expensive structure.
In 586BC the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, took many Jews to Babylon as exiles, and destroyed the temple. Roughly 70 years later some Jews were allowed to travel back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, however, they were slack in rebuilding the temple. Yahweh sent prophets to confront their lack of action. Haggai was one of those prophets.
In the first 11 verses of Haggai, Yahweh informed the Jews that the reason their crops were failing and they didn’t have enough food, drink, or money was because they had built houses for themselves, but had neglected Yahweh’s temple.
Hag. 1:12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, listened to the voice of Yahweh their God and the words of Haggai the prophet, as Yahweh their God had sent him. And the people feared Yahweh.
First, notice the leaders and the people listened to Yahweh. They did not ignore Him.
Second, notice the people feared Yahweh. Why were they afraid? They were afraid because they now understood there were negative consequences for failing to rebuild the temple. Yahweh was not just a benevolent force that would always do pleasant things for them. Instead, they had proof from their own lives that failure to please Yahweh could result in unpleasant consequences, in this case, the consequences were hunger, thirst, and poverty. In their case the fear of the Lord was not a pleasant experience.
13 Then Haggai, the messenger of Yahweh, spoke by the commissioned message of Yahweh to the people saying, “‘I am with you,’ declares Yahweh.”
Even though Yahweh was displeased with the lack of action on His temple, He was still with the Jews and He told them so. However, this does not negate the fact that the fear of the Lord was an unpleasant emotion.
14 So Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work on the house of Yahweh of hosts, their God,
Yahweh’s message via Haggai had the intended effect. The Jews began working on the house of Yahweh.
Hag. 1:15 on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the second year of Darius the king.
The work began on the 24th day of the sixth month. Haggai 1:1 tells us Yahweh began speaking through Haggai on the first day of the sixth month. It took 24 days for the Jews to respond to Yahweh’s message and begin rebuilding the temple.
Many people believe the fear of the Lord is always a pleasant experience. However, fear itself is an unpleasant experience and Haggai illustrates that the Biblical concept of the fear of the Lord is also an unpleasant experience. When the Jews learned Yahweh was causing their hunger, thirst, and poverty because they were not building the temple, they had an unpleasant emotion toward Yahweh which motivated them to do the right thing and start working on the temple.
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“Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.”