Beyond Sunday: Be Afraid [Editors note: Beyond Sunday is a Monday refresher to carry you through the week.] Focus Verse of the Week Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. (Psalms 2:11, ESV) Classic Commentary Serve the Lord with fear; let reverence and humility be mingled with your service. He is a great God, and you are but puny creatures; bow, therefore, in lowly worship, and let fearful reverence mingle with all your obedience to the great Father of the Ages. Rejoice with trembling - There must ever be a holy fear mixed with the Christians joy. This is a sacred compound, yielding a sweet smell, and we must see to it that we burn no other upon the altar. Fear, without joy, is torment; and joy, without holy fear, would be presumption. There are two kinds of serving and rejoicing in God. First, a serving in security, and a rejoicing in the Lord without fear; these are peculiar to hypocrites, who are secure, who please themselves, and who appear to themselves to be not unuseful servants, and to have great merit on their side, concerning whom it is said (Psalms 10:5), Thy judgments are far above out of his sight; and also afterwards (Psalms 36:1), There is no fear of God before his eyes. These do righteousness without judgment at all times; and permit not Christ to be the Judge to be feared by all, in whose sight no man living is justified. Secondly, a serving with fear and a rejoicing with trembling; these are peculiar to the righteous who do righteousnesses at all times, and always rightly attempt both; never being without judgments, on the one hand, by which they are terrified and brought to despair of themselves and of all their own works; nor without that righteousness on the other, on which they rest, and in which they rejoice in the mercy of God. It is the work of the whole lives of these characters to accuse themselves in all things, and in all things to justify and praise God. And thus they fulfill that word of Proverbs 28:14, Blessed is the man who fears the LORD always; and also that of Philippians 4:4, Rejoice in the Lord always. Thus, between the upper and lower millstone (Deuteronomy 24:6), they are broken in pieces and humbled, and the husks being thus bruised off, they come forth the all pure wheat of Christ. -Martin Luther (Adapted from Charles H. Spurgeons the treasury of david, psalm 2:11.) A Thought to Keep When you approach God in prayer and praise, do you remember just who He is, the Creator and Sustainer of all things?
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 10:21:39 +0000
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