Deuteronomy 10:12-13 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?

Micah 6:6-8 Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Ecclesiastes 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

The numbers two and three in the Bible are indicative of witness, testimony (see Deuteronomy 19:15). When God repeats Himself in the Scriptures, it is important to pay attention to what is being emphasized. Here we have the testimony of two passages that have a very similar message: What does God require of us? The conclusion of Ecclesiastes also contains an exhortation that fits in line with the testimony of the first two passages.

What does God require of man?

1) To fear the LORD thy God… Fear God.

The fear of the Lord is a reverence for God. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines reverence as “Fear mingled with respect and esteem; veneration… The fear acceptable to God, is a filial fear, an awful reverence of the divine nature, proceeding from a just esteem of his perfections, which produces in us an inclination to his service and an unwillingness to offend him. Reverence is nearly equivalent to veneration, but expresses something less of the same emotion. It differs from awe, which is an emotion compounded of fear, dread or terror, with admiration of something great, but not necessarily implying love or affection.” Reverence therefore implies love and affection – it is not just a holy fear of God, but love mingled with admiration. Webster also defines revere as “To regard with fear mingled with respect and affection; to venerate; to reverence; to honor in estimation.”

We can only fear the Lord our God in this manner if we are saved, if we have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, and now have God as our Heavenly Father. This fear will prompt us to do what is right in His sight, and prompt us to make it right when we have done wrong. There is a saying, “We should always keep short accounts with God,” stating that we should never continue on in sin, but when we are convicted we should always repent and confess that sin to quickly restore our fellowship with God. I believe the more reverence we have for our Saviour, the less desire we will have to backslide or take our eyes off of Him, and the greater our desire will be to turn from those sins that we have allowed to temporarily come back into our lives.

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