Isa.11:1-3 – Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch from his roots will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
And He will delight in the fear of the LORD,
What an unusual statement for the natural mind to try to understand, “he will delight in the fear of the Lord”. The unsaved have no comprehension of the fear of the Lord. It is not something you can just kind of develop in your life, the fear of the Lord comes from being in the presence of the Lord. It is in His presence that we are touched by His greatness, His holiness, and His goodness. Our response to that is to tremble in godly fear. When we develop a lifestyle of private and corporate worship in our lives the fear of the Lord will be the result. Here is how Jonathan Edwards describes the fear of the Lord.
“The principal thing meant by the fear of God in Scripture is a holy fear to offend him by sinning against him. Now if men do truly fear to offend God, and have a dread upon their spirit of sin against him, this will surely tend to a man’s avoiding sin against God. That of which men are afraid, they will shun. If a man professes that he is afraid and has a dread of any poisonous serpent, but at the same time is seen to take no care to avoid the snake, but is very bold with him, who will believe him? Fearing God and observing to do all his commandments are joined together as necessarily arising the one from the other….Joseph gives this reason of his righteous and merciful dealing towards his brethren, that he feared God. Genesis 42:18, “And Joseph said unto them the third day, This do, and live; for I fear God.”
So Joseph did not retaliate against his brothers because he feared the Lord. This is quite amazing, the fear of God in our lives will drastically change our behavior. We will instantly know how to respond in certain situations because of this God awareness in our lives. The fear of the Lord is dominate in the one who learns to live in His presence. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is the fear of God.
HOLINESS unto the LORD