Let me give two very simple examples of this. Before you can think or learn anything you must have implicit trust, absolute trust, in the word of God. The Lord does all things well. Now here is an example. How often it falls to friends to be struggling their way through thinking out the doctrines of grace. And here they are trying to work out the points of the TULIP, trying to work out whether it is or it is not so. They can see that the Scripture does teach certain definite things, such as irresistible grace, but the big problem in the mind is this – that wisdom will not come and insight will not come and the mind cannot grasp and resolve it, because they have not started with this principle: everything God does must be right, must be fair, must be absolutely kind, must be absolutely perfect. Because that reverence or fear of God has not been the starting point, our minds cannot grasp the doctrine. Supposing I feel that predestination is unfair. I shall never wisely understand it or apply it to my life. I might say, ‘Alright. I will accept it somewhere in the back of my mind’, but I shall never have the wisdom to see how it applies to me, how it speaks to me; predestination seems so unfair to me. But if I start with this: ‘Look, one thing I know, that whatever my God does is perfect, it is absolutely fair, it must be the most wonderful thing possible because he has done it.’ Now I come to the doctrine of predestination and I say, ‘One thing I can be certain of: because God has done this it must be absolutely fair and loving and kind, it must be perfect; it must be a doctrine full of love. Therefore if it seems to me to be unfair it is because I cannot see all of it. There is some aspect of this I do not understand. We cannot see into the eternal councils, we do not know on what basis God did these things, we are not in possession of a great many facts which are beyond the understanding of our mind. If I could see into the dark areas, one thing I am certain of: any last misgivings or problems I may have would be more than adequately solved.’ Somebody says, ‘Why did somebody have a little child taken? Why this? Why that?’ The answer is that if you are a Christian believer, you start by saying, ‘I know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, that whatever God does is perfect, absolutely perfect, so I will not question what God does on the basis of my poor standards of judgment, my idea of what is fair and what is not fair. If I start there, then as time goes on I will grasp more and more of the facts which prove that to me. I may be puzzled over one or two things now but with this principle reigning supreme, I know my God has done it in the most loving, fair and kind way possible.
Take the matter of the church, the organisation of churches. Now, you see, there are many good, born again people who take their Bibles and look at the book of Acts and the epistles and they say, ‘Well, I suppose you could say that there is a kind of pattern church. But you can hardly say that something which was a pattern nearly 2,000 years ago would be relevant to modern society now. So I prefer to believe that it is better for Christian people to organise things totally afresh in every day and age and that there is not a pattern church to which we are bound. So if it is more expedient to evangelise by setting up a big company, a big evangelistic society, and incorporate it and make it a proper limited liability company; if it is more intelligent to install a computer somewhere and do it by experts and business professionals, well surely that is the way in which it should all be done?’ But you see if you start, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, you start by saying, ‘God does all things well. My God who is everywhere and has all knowledge, all power, has constructed something here in the New Testament which is more than sufficient for every day and age. The church is a work of divine genius. I am not going to say that my God could not have designed a thing which would endure, which would be set up to anticipate every day and age and to be perfect for it.’ I have got an absolute foundation for my thinking. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and we have got to start there.