Quote:
Originally Posted by undefined; grammar & punctuation corrected (ML)
Proverbs 8:13 says that fearing God means hating evil.
The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.
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A much simpler sentence without the conditional clause suggesting that if Proverbs says fearing God means hating evil (the condition) then we don't need to be frightened of Him. Perhaps my earlier example was not clear.
DAVID'S YOUNG SON
Anyone with children places a high value on their well being. They are the next generation; without them there can be no grandchildren just as without our grandparents there could be no us. Other than maniacs, for whom any sort of survival is not a factor in decisions, this survival across generations is so urgent that people risk certain death to protect a son or a grandson, often dying themselves in the process. But David's son had not been born when this happened.
BATHSHEBA: “Oh yes, just the spot for a bath”
GOD
The picture explains what's going better than the words alone, which may be found in
II Samuel 11:2-4. Do you think Bathsheba was surprised when the inevitable happened? I don't.
II Samuel 11:5 And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.
David immediately got up to shenanigans so the husband was killed and went on canoodling with Bathsheba. Imagine watching the child in whom all your hopes lay, for whom you'd even risk death, sat there blasted with plague, then soon—unable to sit—fallen to the floor writhing there hour after hour, day after day, each infinity longer than the last with pain and sores and dehydration and woe and grief and tears, “Help me!” but no help was possible for David to give because this is the very finger of God;
II Samuel 12:1-19 eventually the boy died.
BE AFRAID
Imagine a knock at your door. There's this goon standing there. He needs a shave and smells. In his sausage fingers there's a great big syringe. He allows you to read what is says:
Ebola Leprosy & Black Widow Venom. Your eyes move from the label to the business end: yes, it's very sharp and the serum is oozing out: the goon looks unstable and you see him casing the joint for someone to inject if you put a foot wrong. You don't quite know what transgression on your part would tip him over and make him start injecting your family. Would you be afraid? Yes (other than maniacs) even if you tried to appear strong because others were looking to you to get rid of the goon. David was in a similar situation EXCEPT that he knew what constituted a transgression because he knew about The Ten Commandments.
II Samuel 12:15b And the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick.
Christians hate evil and God defines what evil is. The consequences for transgression can be severe, as my example makes plain especially with the illustration to help you understand. If one were not frightened of God, there'd be no reason to behave in accordance with His will. There are those who don't accept The Bible as providing any useful standard or even say its standard is wicked. They would say God did the wrong thing by killing that boy so nastily when he'd done nothing wrong. They're happy to cast God as a monster and follow their own appetites, in which case we'd like to know where they get their values from? Others make up their own "God" having nothing in common with God in The Bible and feel free to misbehave in even worse ways than David. When a nation is blasted though everyone suffers, not just one boy.
That is why it's so important to be frightened of God and to remember what He's capable of. Just in case you think one day He's changed His mind about sin.