10.9 Relating to God

Relating to God engages the whole inner being, and Scripture says so by formula: "with all your heart and with all your soul". That formula governs loving God (Deuteronomy 6:5), serving him (Deuteronomy 10:12), seeking him (Deuteronomy 4:29), returning to him (Deuteronomy 30:10) and keeping covenant (2 Kings 23:3). Jesus adds the mind to it: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37). The thinking self is named as part of what is given to God in love.

Prayer lives in the heart. It can be complete there without a voice (1 Samuel 1:13). "Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord" (Lamentations 2:19). "With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord!" (Psalm 119:145).
God speaks to the heart. To comfort someone, in Hebrew, is to speak to their heart. Joseph "comforted them and spoke kindly to them" (Genesis 50:21), literally to their hearts. God says of his people, "I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her" (Hosea 2:14), again to her heart. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem" (Isaiah 40:2).
God tests the heart. "The Lord tests hearts" (Proverbs 17:3). And he forgives according to what he knows there: "render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways, for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind" (1 Kings 8:39).
The soul is the self in address. It is told to bless, to hope and to rest (Chapter 5).
Life is asked of him. "Give me life" runs through Psalm 119, and each time it rests on something in God: "give me life according to your word!" (Psalm 119:25); "In your steadfast love give me life" (119:88). The life asked for is for keeping his word, praising him and calling on him: "Let my soul live and praise you" (119:175); "give us life, and we will call upon your name!" (Psalm 80:18). Chapter 2 gives the account.
He holds the breath. Daniel to a king who had praised idols: "the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored" (Daniel 5:23).
Seeing and hearing him, and living. "You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). Israel marvelled: "This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live" (Deuteronomy 5:24). Manoah feared the same: "We shall surely die, for we have seen God" (Judges 13:22). To Gideon God said, "Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die" (Judges 6:23).
Relied on in the face of death. "we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9). Chapter 2 ("Facing death") gives the account.
Asked for a brother. "If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life" (1 John 5:16).
Inquired of, not the dead. "should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?" (Isaiah 8:19).
The human spirit worships. "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24). "My spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Luke 1:47). Paul serves God "with my spirit" (Romans 1:9). At death the spirit is what is committed into God's hands.
God's Spirit prays within. "God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Galatians 4:6). The Spirit "intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit" (Romans 8:26–27). The cry to God rises from inside the heart, and it is God's own Spirit crying.
God knows the leaning before the deed. "I know what they are inclined to do even today" (Deuteronomy 31:21). "The Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought" (1 Chronicles 28:9).
God reveals in the night. "There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries … Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these" (Daniel 2:28).
God reckons, and faith reckons. God counted Abraham's faith "to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). "Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin" (Romans 4:8). Abraham, for his part, "considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead" (Hebrews 11:19).
His plans against are open to turning. "It may be they will listen, and every one turn from his evil way, that I may relent of the disaster that I intend to do to them because of their evil deeds" (Jeremiah 26:3).
Thinking done in his presence sees differently. "When I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end" (Psalm 73:16–17).
God cannot be likened. "To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?" (Isaiah 40:18). And God rebukes those who thought him "one like yourself" (Psalm 50:21).
The heart meditates on him. "On his law he meditates day and night" (Psalm 1:2). "I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night" (Psalm 63:6).
And he thinks of me. "What is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him?" (Psalm 144:3). "I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me" (Psalm 40:17). And his thoughts are precious to the one he knows: "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:17).

Anger toward God, and before God

People are angry at God, and Scripture records it without hiding it.

At his striking. "David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah" (2 Samuel 6:8). Then "David was afraid of the Lord that day" (6:9).
At his mercy. When God spared Nineveh, "it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry" (Jonah 4:1). Jonah quotes God's own name against him: "I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (4:2).
At one's own ruin, misdirected. "When a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord" (Proverbs 19:3).

God answers with a question. "Do you do well to be angry?" (Jonah 4:4), as he had asked Cain, "Why are you angry?" (Genesis 4:6). The book of Jonah ends on God's question, and Jonah's answer is not given.

Anger can also be brought to God instead of acted out. "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way" (Psalm 37:7). "Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent" (Psalm 4:4). Paul, angry at the idols of Athens, "reasoned in the synagogue" (Acts 17:16–17).

Human anger can also stand in some relation to God's own. Scripture shows four.

Given with his Spirit. "The Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled" (1 Samuel 11:6). It ended that same day in mercy: "Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has worked salvation in Israel" (11:13).
Sharing his jealousy. Phinehas "has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them" (Numbers 25:11).
Going beyond him. To Israel's army: "because the Lord … was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that has reached up to heaven" (2 Chronicles 28:9). The rage became their own guilt, and the captives were clothed, fed and carried home (28:15).
Taken up and used. "Surely the wrath of man shall praise you" (Psalm 76:10).

And there are those who carry God's anger inside them as his messengers. In them it does not come out as violence. It comes out as suffering. "I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in" (Jeremiah 6:11). "Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart … I sat alone, because your hand was upon me, for you had filled me with indignation" (Jeremiah 15:16–17). Ezekiel "went in bitterness in the heat of my spirit", and then sat "overwhelmed among them seven days" (Ezekiel 3:14–15).

The same creed is used many ways. God names himself "slow to anger" (Exodus 34:6). Moses bows down and worships (34:8), then pleads it back (Numbers 14:18). The Levites recite it in confession (Nehemiah 9:17). Jonah complains with it (Jonah 4:2). The psalmist praises with it (Psalm 145:8). Micah wonders at it: "Who is a God like you …? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love" (Micah 7:18). Nahum uses it to announce judgment (Nahum 1:3). Joel makes it the ground of returning (Joel 2:13). One name, used in many ways.

How a person lives under God's own anger (pleading, bearing, lamenting, turning) is the subject of Chapter 13.

Fear before God, and the fear of God

Section 10.1 sets out the two fears that share one word: the fear that drives a person away from God, and the fear of God that keeps a person from sin. Here I follow both as a way of standing before God.

Afraid in his presence

When God comes near, people are afraid, and they say why. At Sinai they asked that God not speak to them, "lest we die" (Exodus 20:19). Moses "hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God" (Exodus 3:6). In Zion the godless ask, "Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire?" (Isaiah 33:14). Job says, "I could not have faced his majesty" (Job 31:23). Each time the reason given is that they cannot stand before him.

That fear can also be a recognition. Jacob woke from his dream "afraid" and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God" (Genesis 28:17). His fear is how he knows where he is.

And it can come where guilt is already awake. Joseph's brothers had just said to one another, "In truth we are guilty concerning our brother" (Genesis 42:21). When they found their money returned, "they turned trembling to one another, saying, 'What is this that God has done to us?'" (42:28). The fear came after they had already named their guilt, and they read God's hand in it.

Fearing God as a way of life

The fear of God is not only a moment of fright. It is a way of standing toward him for a whole life, and the verses put it in surprising company. It is required alongside love: "to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him" (Deuteronomy 10:12). Fear and love stand in one sentence, not as opposites.

It is learned by hearing. The law was read aloud "that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 31:12). And the one who has learned it takes God's word with its full weight: "this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word" (Isaiah 66:2). I read this trembling as not before a threat, but the trembling of someone who knows whose word it is.

It belongs in the heart, and it can be missing there. It can be "a commandment taught by men" while "their hearts are far from me" (Isaiah 29:13). It can be divided: "So they feared the Lord but also served their own gods" (2 Kings 17:33), and of the same people, "They do not fear the Lord" (17:34). So the psalmist prays for a single heart: "unite my heart to fear your name" (Psalm 86:11). And God promises to do what the prayer asks: "I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me" (Jeremiah 32:40). The fear of God is also something he gives.

It is tested. "Now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me" (Genesis 22:12). The accuser questions it: "Does Job fear God for no reason?" (Job 1:9). The question assumes that fear could be bought by blessing. The book that follows tests it.

What it rests on

I expected the fear of God to rest on punishment. These verses rest it on something else.

Forgiveness. "But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared" (Psalm 130:4). The forgiveness comes first, and the fear follows from it.
Goodness. In the latter days they "shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness" (Hosea 3:5). After God says "I will forgive all the guilt of their sin", the nations "shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it" (Jeremiah 33:8–9).
What he has done. "God has done it, so that people fear before him" (Ecclesiastes 3:14). Habakkuk heard the report and said, "your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years revive it … in wrath remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2).

That is why this fear can sit with joy and delight. "Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling" (Psalm 2:11). Nehemiah speaks of "your servants who delight to fear your name" (Nehemiah 1:11). It gives confidence instead of taking it away: "Is not your fear of God your confidence?" (Job 4:6).

And it moves a person toward God. The fear at Sinai kept the people far off (Exodus 20:21). Hosea pictures the opposite: "when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west; they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt … and I will return them to their homes" (Hosea 11:10–11). They tremble, and they come home.

How God meets those who fear him

The verses describe God's side of this relationship in close, personal words. "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him" (Psalm 103:13). "The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant" (Psalm 25:14). "The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love" (Psalm 147:11), where fear and hope stand together. When they speak with one another, "The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him" (Malachi 3:16).

The God who is feared is described in the same way. In prayer he is "the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him" (Nehemiah 1:5). Awe and steadfast love are in one phrase. He is even named by the fear: Jacob speaks of "the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac" (Genesis 31:42). And trembling before him is called for in worship: "Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!" (Psalm 96:9).

"Fear not"

When God speaks to fear, he speaks to a person, often by name, and he gives himself as the reason. "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield" (Genesis 15:1). "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God" (Isaiah 41:10). "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" (Isaiah 43:1). The answer to fear in these verses is not that the danger is small. It is that the one who fears belongs to God, and God is with him.

The person can answer in the same words. God says, "for I am with you" (Isaiah 41:10). The psalmist says it back: "I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (Psalm 23:4). "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1). The reason God gives becomes the reason the person holds.

Fear of man is answered the same way, by turning to God. "Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies … and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker" (Isaiah 51:12–13). The fear of man goes with forgetting God, and it is answered by remembering who made you. Isaiah is told to turn his fear and his dread onto the Lord himself (Isaiah 8:12–13; 10.1).

When God hides his face

Scripture often speaks of God hiding his face. Here I follow what that is like for the person from whom he hides it. The Hebrew word is sātar, "to hide", and the same verb runs three ways in the psalms.

God hides a person, to keep him safe: "he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble" (Psalm 27:5).
God hides his face from a person, and the person begs him not to: "Hide not your face from me" (27:9).
A person asks God to hide his face, not from him but from his sin: "Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities" (Psalm 51:9).

The first two stand four verses apart in one psalm. Hiding from God, and being hidden by him, are in 10.11.

Sometimes the verses give a reason, and sometimes they do not.

Sin. "I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods" (Deuteronomy 31:18). "Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear" (Isaiah 59:2).
Anger, for a moment. "In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:8). Two verses before, Zion is "like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit" (54:6).
No reason given. Then the person can only ask. "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1). "Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?" (Psalm 44:24). "Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?" (Job 13:24).

What it does to the person is told in the person's own words, and it reaches the spirit, the soul, the heart and the body.

Dismay. "You hid your face; I was dismayed" (Psalm 30:7). Of every living creature: "When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die" (Psalm 104:29).
The spirit fails. "Answer me quickly, O Lord! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit" (Psalm 143:7).
The soul feels thrown away. "O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 88:14). The two questions stand side by side.
The heart grieves all day. After "How long will you hide your face from me?" comes "How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?" (Psalm 13:1–2).
The body goes down with it. "For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground" (Psalm 44:25). "Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! … My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread" (Psalm 102:2, 4).
No one else comforts either. "Hide not your face from your servant, for I am in distress" (Psalm 69:17), and three verses later, "Reproaches have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none" (69:20).
Fear of people follows. Cain says, "from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me" (Genesis 4:14).
It is spoken as a complaint. "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God" (Isaiah 40:27). God's answer is about who he is and what he gives: "He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength" (40:29).

The same hidden face is not met the same way by every heart.

A heart already seeking. "You have said, 'Seek my face.' My heart says to you, 'Your face, Lord, do I seek.' Hide not your face from me" (Psalm 27:8–9). The plea comes from a heart that is already turned toward his face.
A penitent heart. David asks God to hide his face from the sin, and in the next breath not to send him away: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:10–11).
A heart that takes it as permission. The wicked "says in his heart, 'God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it'" (Psalm 10:11; Chapter 12).
A heart that does not notice. "I hid my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart" (Isaiah 57:17). Here the hidden face is not felt at all.
A heart that waits. "I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him" (Isaiah 8:17). "Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior" (Isaiah 45:15). Isaiah calls the God who hides himself the Savior in the same breath.

Psalm 30 tells it in three verses. "As for me, I said in my prosperity, 'I shall never be moved.' By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy" (Psalm 30:6–8). Security, the hidden face, dismay, and then the cry.

The verses also speak of its end. "He has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him" (Psalm 22:24), and two verses later, "The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord! May your hearts live forever!" (22:26). "With everlasting love I will have compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:8). And the last word is a promise joined to the Spirit: "I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 39:29).

Connections: with every other activity. Each one is done before God, and heard, seen or reckoned by him. The fear of God is set out as a word in feeling (10.1); it is the beginning of knowledge (10.2), it turns from evil (10.8), and it is the ground for how others are treated (10.10). Fear under God's anger is in Chapter 13. Doubt, trust divided before God, and understanding hidden by God are in 10.2; anxiety handed to God is in 10.1; grumbling, which is heard as against God, is in 10.5; hiding from God, and his hiding of those who ask, are in 10.11.