The Fear That Lives with Joy

‘* Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in His commandments.” — Psatm cexii. 1.

But is not this a strange association? Can two such things live together? Here are two sentences wedded together as the double yet single expression of one character. And what a wedding it is! It surely looks like an attempt at the union of things which are incompatible. There is fear in the one, and there is delight in the other, and they dwell together in one life. Fear and delight a wedded pair! What sort of fear is this which can live with joy? It is quite evidently not the fear which is associated with terror or fright. Fear hath torment, and this sort of fear terrifies a crowd of lovely things and drives them all away. The mental and psychological discoveries of our time have exposed the destructive influences of fear upon body, mind and soul. In every realm fear is the minister of contraction. It is never the minister of expansion. Everything shrinks when terror comes in. It is even so in the body. The bodily channels shrink under the influence of fear. The pallor of the fearful means that the life-currents are shrinking away. And so it is with still subtler ministries. When terror comes in all the life-forces scurry away as to a secret lair.

And, therefore, it cannot be fear of this kind which the Psalmist means, for this sort of fear can never be at home with joy. This fear is destructive, but ‘‘ the fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.” The image is that of a spring of living water, and it is begetting and quickening all sorts of beautiful things, touching them by its vital influence into life and loveliness. And the fear of the Lord opens out such a spring of life in the soul, and the beautiful things of the spirit troop out at its bidding. Spiritual ferns and flowers appear. This sort of fear is the friend of the garden and not of the desert. So it is not the fear which means fright. Our Saviour was always casting out that fear. How often He said, ‘‘ Fear not, fear not,” and He was seeking to quench the destructive flames. Perhaps we may say that the real fear of the Lord is just the reverence of the Lord — only I am using the word ‘‘reverence”’ in its largest and richest meaning. In vital reverence there is something of admiration, and there is something of hope, and in its maturity there is something of love. And all these are powers of appropriation. They draw, they do not repel. They lay hold of their object, and they make it their own. And when this sort of reverence is fixed upon the Lord it is just an appropriating sensitiveness towards the Lord, and it presents to the Lord a mind and mood of eager hospitality. It is an apprehending “awareness” of God. And the awareness grows from more to more, and the line of its growth is always in the direction of increasing delicacy and refinement. It apprehends God, it apprehends Him more and more, and it becomes at last susceptible to a still small voice where once it only heard the thunder, and it becomes sensitive to a gentle breathing where once it only discerned the tempest.

And this sensitiveness to God is true blessedness, for it is vital delight in God’s will. It responds to the desire of the Lord, and in the joy of the Lord it finds the springs of its own joy. It is, therefore, the blessedness of communion, a blessedness which need never know decline. The advancing years will impoverish many other communions. As we grow older our fellowships shrink. But this awareness of the Lord, this communion with the Lord, can go on increasing even when the body is failing, and at eventide it will be light.