Fear God, Not Man!
"The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength
of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
Psalm 27: 1
Senator Joseph McCarthy is remembered for intrusive searches
for Communist sympathizers in American government and society
in the 1950s. In a Senate hearing, a
outraged target of McCarthy’s
investigations exclaimed, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at
long last? Have you left no sense of
decency?”
Those are rhetorical questions, a literary
device used to make a statement in the form
of a question that anticipates no answer.
There are rhetorical questions in Scripture.
For instance, in Psalm 27, David asks, in light of the Lord in his life,
“Whom shall I fear?. . .Of whom shall I be afraid?” (verse 1) David is
making statements in the form of questions that imply a “No” answer:
“I shall fear no one; I shall be afraid of no one.” It’s a powerful way to
say, “Since I fear God, I will not fear man.”
If you fear (honor, respect, obey, worship)
God, then you have a divine Protector.
Why would you fear anyone or anything else?
