The word ‘fear’ translates an enormously adaptable word in the original, which means to turn, or to screw round. It can mean to quiver, or literally to squirm, if you are afraid of something, or to fear. It is also used in the Old Testament to mean to dance, and can signify joy, and so you have got an enormous range of choice as to how to translate this word. Is it a fear, squirm, terror, word? Is it simply a react word, when you hear the name and the word of the Lord, in the sense that I am sensitive to God's word? I will respond to it, if it cautions me, if it checks me. If it encourages me, I am delighted. We must react to God's word. Don't be the kind of person who can hear it, and it doesn’t move you, it doesn't convict you, it doesn't change you. Is it to react, or to be very joyful. The context must decide, and because it is a negative context, the translators have given it a negative word. ‘Let us now fear the Lord our God.’ But actually it isn’t necessarily solely negative. Let us be responsive; let us be cautioned; let us be alive to the word of God, and then God will provide for us.
Here is God’s diagnosis of their failure: ‘Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you.’ Sin drives whole direction of their lives. It takes control and is powerful enough to stop the mind working, to prevent it listening to what God has to say. What the Lord says to us is powerful and it is not hard to understand, but we even suppress our own understanding in an attempt to continue with our sin. It is the hardening of the heart.