Fear and Honor

Deb preached on the ominous story of the writing on the wall from Daniel 5, helping us consider the story from the perspective of Babylon’s Queen Mother, Nitocris. This scene is like something out of a horror movie, and the emperor Belshazzar was indeed terrified. Deb, however, imagined a more appropriate response from his mother:

But there is another kind of fear, a fear that’s more like respect. When the Hebrews say they fear God, they don’t mean that they are cowering in a corner because they expect to be harmed, but that they have a healthy respect for his power, for his authority, for his holiness. They can live and move and make decisions bearing in mind that they are under his authority, that they must answer to him. That is what it means to fear God.