The first time I fasted seven days was a challenge, and a surprise.

A surprise because I didn’t know going in that after the first three days, that gnawing hunger stops coming in waves. The science says this phenomena happens because your body, seeing that you aren’t going to offer it food, turns to your fat stores and burns them for energy. I truly did not crave food those last few days, which left me with a lovely sense of rest.

That is, until we drove to the Fort Worth Stockyards, where the aromas from Riscky’s Barbecue assaulted my senses. What the absence of hunger didn’t do, the aroma did: it moved me, stirring a desire in me so strong it challenged my commitment to not put any food in my mouth. Barbecue is one of the things that smells like love to me.

I managed to resist the temptation to chow down on some of Riscky’s awesome brisket, but I was still thinking about them hours later when I laid my head on the pillow. Though we moved away from Fort Worth years ago, I can still remember how their barbecue smells and tastes. (I was happy to learn recently that even in the midst of a pandemic, Riscky’s still offers those ribs. If one can only get to Fort Worth, that is.)

Smell is a very powerful sense with the ability to change your state of mind. I was clueless about the joys of aromatherapy until a participant in one of my women’s retreats thoughtfully gave me a gift set of lavender body wash and lotion. I was in heaven from the first whiff. That lavender smoothed me right out. Helped me relax. I smiled big every time I bathed. It was an instant addiction and I made sure I didn’t run out of that stuff for about ten years.

There is an aroma that makes God smile and relax, too.

At first, it struck me as odd that God smelled stuff — as if a spirit being would somehow not have that capacity. A study in the Old Testament cured my ignorance, especially in Exodus and Leviticus.

When God commanded the people and priesthood to bring sacrificial offerings to the Tabernacle of Moses, He called for two types. The first kind was to confess sin and ask forgiveness; the second was an act of worship towards God and dedicating one’s whole being to Him. The latter was known as the whole burnt offering.

The sin offerings, especially those brought by one of the priesthood, were required to be burned with the animal’s hide on. If you have ever smelled burning hair you can imagine the stench produced by a whole animal hide. The whole encampment around the Tabernacle would know someone offered sacrifice for sin when that stench wafted over the camp.

Worship offerings, on the other hand, were always burned without skin. These offerings caused a wonderful aroma to waft about. I’m pretty sure it smelled a lot like Riscky’s barbecue. I’m pretty happy that God invented barbecue.

The Bible says the aroma of such offerings was soothing or pleasing to God. To Him, it was the aroma of worship, of love and total dedication coming from His people.

Worship is the outward expression of an inward fear of the Lord

In writing the Wisdom Series of devotionals, I identified the seven pillars of Wisdom’s house spoken of in Proverbs 9:1. These represent seven values Wisdom establishes in your heart, to keep your faith life with God strong and healthy.

The first pillar represents the fear of the Lord, because Scripture tells us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Jesus modeled all seven of Wisdom’s pillars or values for us, including the fear of the Lord. Long before he was born, Isaiah prophesied of Jesus:

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord — and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah 11:2-3

So what did that mean? How did Jesus do that? The gospels don’t speak of Jesus fearing God, and Jesus never used those exact words concerning His relationship to the Father.

What Jesus did do was model that value by living a life of total obedience to God. Obedience is the primary way any soul expresses genuine fear of the Lord.

Fear of the Lord arises first from the appropriate fear of displeasing Him or incurring His rightful wrath. The Spirit strives with God’s children to turn that fear into a healthy reverence and desire to honor Him. When fear of God ripens to its best, it looks like adoration, worship and love. What was first commanded of you becomes a delight for your heart to offer.

That ripening develops as you obey God.

Jesus modeled for us a life of healthy fear of the Lord, of a reverence that has to be expressed by obedience. It is the first step in the cycle of ripening that becomes love, and it looks like this:

• Reverence leads to obedience.
• Obedience takes you to new places of reliance on God.
• Reliance draws you closer to God, because you can’t lean on someone from a distance.
• Your reliance and commitment call on God’s strength to be released on your behalf. He shows up with you and in you.
• Amazement and genuine worship happen. Not because God demands it, but because you’ve seen Him in action.

Repeat this cycle a few times, and you begin to love this Guy who is always faithful, always shows up, always awakens and nourishes life and potential in you. The love is real.

When you begin to live a life of obedience and worship, you are loving God with all your might by choice. Yet in that way of living, as you know God more and more, your true affections for God become full and captivating.

In the end, you come to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.

What does it mean to delight in the fear of the Lord?

The Hebrew word translated as “delight” in Isaiah 11:3 is reach (not our English word, but pronounced RE-aach). It actually means to perceive an aroma. It is related to the Hebrew word for spirit (ruach), so it conveys the idea of a delightful aroma carried on the wind, savory and pleasant. Think of the barbecue smell that wafts over the neighbor’s fence. You can’t see what he is doing over there, but you know, from the smell.

Aromas — unlike stenches — make you smile. The first time the Hebrew word reach is used is in Genesis 8:21, where it says God smelled the “soothing aroma” of Noah’s sacrifice of worship, and that it was pleasing to Him. We see the word again in Amos 5:21, where the opposite is true. Here, God complains that he dislikes the smell of meaningless religious offerings! These are offerings presented as worship, but brought by hearts that are far from God, who do not truly love Him. God can smell hypocrisy, too.

I marvel at how a translator apparently grappled with a word that means to perceive the smell of something and called it delight. The original author and his centuries-later translator partnered to convey an accurate picture. A portrait of Jesus, not only having the Spirit of the fear of the Lord, but demonstrating such fear, such obedience, that his whole being life would be a sweet aroma to God. Even to the point of becoming the ultimate sacrifice whose aroma would delight to Jesus to offer, and delight the Father to smell.

Jesus went beyond duty: He aimed to honor the Father. He was destined to become our sin offering, but loved the Father so much that His sacrifice smelled to the Father like the whole burnt offering of worship, instead.

Fear of the Lord protects you from temptation

Jesus said in John 14:30-31:

I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. (NIV)

The New American Standard version renders this as, “he has nothing in me.” Other translations say, “he has no power over me.”

What does this mean? It means that Jesus chose to live a life of total dependence on the Father. Jesus worshiped the Father with total trust and obedience. This made him immune to the inroads of the devil.

Folly couldn’t get to him. Foolishness never enticed him. He had no need of knowledge from the tree of knowledge, like Eve did, because he totally trusted in the Father’s provision in the Tree of Life.

Jesus delighted in showing His fear of the Lord by obeying everything the Father asked of Him. He proclaimed this in John 5:30:

I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

We can wear the aroma of Christ.

Jesus didn’t live a lifestyle of wrestling with obedience and yielding to God. Self-sacrifice and love became his perfume, his smell. Ephesians 5:1-2 refers to this fact when it says,

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

My Dad always wore a certain aftershave. The smell of Daddy was always on his clothes, on his chair, in the car. After he went to heaven, his smell lingered. When I smell that aftershave today, I smile and love him anew.

Jesus tells us the Father desires those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. By this He acknowledged we cannot truly worship God unless the Spirit is alive in us. When He is, He will enable us to worship God in honesty and sincerity.

The Spirit of the Lord must reveal the Lord to you.

Apart from the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we have a tendency to make God in our own image — whatever we need or want Him to be. Genuine fear of the Lord begins with a complete dependence on the Holy Spirit to reveal the Lord to you.

When He does, genuine, true worship arises. You don’t have to make it come.

However, you can have that experience and still not follow through with acts of honor, reverence and obedience.

When Scripture speaks of worshiping the Lord, it doesn’t envision you standing in a church singing songs. It expects a heart saying, “Yes, Lord, your will be done, and it shall be done in me.”

To delight in the fear of the Lord — according to the example Jesus set for us — is to live a life of closeness and utter dependence upon the Spirit — the Spirit of wisdom and counsel and understanding, of power and knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

It is to take on the aroma of Christ.

Featured image photo by Ion Ceban