When Obadiah met with Elijah, he gave him no worldly and fantastical compliment, nor did he glory in his promotion by Ahab the king of Israel, but gravely and after a gracious manner said, “I thy servant fear the Lord from my youth.”  Also, when the mariners inquired of Jonah, saying, “What is thine occupation, and whence comest thou; what is thy country, and of what people art thou?” this was the answer he gave them:  “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.”  Jonah 1:8, 9.

Indeed this answer is the highest and most noble in the world, nor are there any, save a few, that in truth can thus express themselves, though other answers they have enough:  most can say, I have wisdom, or might, or riches, or friends, or health, or the like; these are common, and are greatly boasted in by the most; but the man that feareth God can say, when they say to him, “What art thou?” “I thy servant do fear the Lord:”  he is the man of many, he is to be honored of men, though this, to wit, that he feareth the Lord, is all that he hath in this world.  He hath the thing, the honor, the life, and glory, that is lasting; his blessedness will abide when all men’s but his is buried in the dust, in shame and contempt.

Dost thou fear God?  The least DRACHM of that fear giveth the privilege to be blessed with the greatest saint:  “He will bless them that fear the Lord, small and great.”  Psalm 115:13.  Art thou in thine own thoughts, or in the thoughts of others, of these last small ones, small in grace, small in gifts, small in esteem upon this account?  Yet if thou fearest God, if thou fearest God indeed, thou art certainly blessed with the best of saints.  The least star stands as fixed as the brightest of them all, in heaven.  “He shall bless them that fear him, small and great.”  He shall bless them, that is, with the same blessing of eternal life.  For the difference in degrees of grace in saints doth not make the blessing, as to its nature, differ.  It is the same heaven, the same life, the same glory, and the same eternity of felicity, that they are in the text promised to be blessed with.  Christ at the day of judgment particularly mentioneth and owneth the least:  “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least.”  The least then was there, in his kingdom and in his glory, as well as the greatest of all.

Dost thou fear God?  Why, the Holy Ghost hath on purpose indited for thee a whole psalm to sing concerning thyself.  So that thou mayest even as thou art, in thy calling, bed, journey, or whenever, sing out thine own blessed and happy condition to thine own comfort, and the comfort of thy fellows.  The psalm is called the 128th Psalm.

“Ye that fear the Lord, trust in the Lord; he is their help and their shield.”  Psalm 115:11.  Now what a privilege is this:  an exhortation in general to sinners, as sinners, to trust in him, is a privilege great and glorious; but for a man to be singled out from his neighbors, for a man to be spoken to from heaven as it were by name, and to be told that God has given him a license, a special and peculiar grant to trust in him, this is abundantly more; and yet this is the grant that God has given that man that feareth the Lord.