The Conclusion Of The Matter Series

Then he basically comes to the conclusion of the entire matter. He says “Now that all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” What he is saying is after everything I wrote in these past 12 chapters, after all the perplexities of life, the puzzles of life that I tried to uncover, all the dark alleys that I visited, life and death, and all this kind of stuff, it all boils down to this. Here is what you need to do: you need to fear God and keep his commandments. You read this and think this is all you got? All 12 chapters and this is what I am left with. It almost sounds too elementary. But if we think about, this is the heart of a relationship with God. This is what God wants us to have with him. A fear of him and to keep his commandments. But as I said earlier, the fear of God is not something where you are terrified of God, although some people probably should be terrified of God. He is talking about a reverent respect for who God is. For his power and his authority. It is less like a relationship between a master and a slave than it is with a father and a son or a father and a daughter. That is what he is talking about. A relationship where you understand that God has this incredible power and at any second he can pretty much squish us all like a bug. But at the same time, we sense that this Father has this incredible love for us. He has our best interest in mind. The more we meditate on this idea of his power and his love, the more we really begin to comprehend the whole character of God, what happens is we begin to really trust God. In spite of all these perplexities and these things we don’t understand in life about life and death and everything else, what happens is we tend to rise above it. We say it is going to be okay. I am safe in God’s kingdom. When I dwell in the shadow of the Almighty, I am safe there. It is an assurance that God is in control, so I don’t have to be in control. So I can rise above those complexities of life that I don’t get that Solomon spoke of. The natural response of knowing you worship a God who is powerful but loves you unconditionally is basically to obey his commandments. He goes on and says later “Fear God and to keep his commandments.”

When we talk about keeping his commandments, we are talking about obedience. Not just the Ten Commandments but the commandments that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. Love our enemies. Praying for those who persecute us. That type of obedience. When we think about obedience, it generally sends off a negative tone to people, but that is because they are looking at maybe the relationship between them and God as maybe a master and a slave relationship rather than a parent and a child. When you look at it as a parent and a child, obedience becomes an action of love to God. It was John who wrote in 1 John “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.” A child who loves a parent obeys not out of obligation but out of love. Why do we need to obey his commands? Because he knows what is right for us. When we obey his commands, we begin to come in line with the will of God. When we are in line with the will of God, the one who controls all things, we know that we are safely in his hands. We are going to be protected. We might not understand the perplexities of this world, but we know again that we are safely with him.