The seminar clears away two common misconceptions about the fear of the Lord: that perfect love simply cancels all fear (1 John 4:18 concerns craven, tormenting fear, not reverence), and that fearing God is only warm respect with no element of holy dread (Luke 12:4-5, “fear Him who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell”). It surveys the benefits promised to those who truly fear Him and answers Deuteronomy’s question, “What does the Lord require of you?” – to fear Him, walk in His ways, love and serve Him, and keep His commandments – before turning, in a second session, to Israel’s history with the ark of the covenant (1 Samuel), where Eli’s wicked sons, the plague on the Philistines, and the men of Beth-shemesh struck down for looking into the ark all show how seriously God’s holiness must be regarded.
The afternoon session presses this same reverence into a single Latin phrase, coram Deo – “before the face of God” – anchored in the Westminster Larger Catechism’s answer that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. It contrasts a regenerate life, oriented toward God’s kingdom and glory, with an unregenerate one bent toward self and worldly desire, and grounds both in the inescapable reality of God’s presence (Ps. 139) and the centrality of His law-word to a life lived consciously before Him.