Joy and Fear of God

Doesn’t it sound like an oxymoron to have joy and fear at the same time regarding God? But this is exactly what the Bible tells us in Psalm 47:1-2.

Clap your hands, all peoples!
Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared,
a great king over all the earth.

People who don’t know the Lord through Jesus can’t understand what it means to fear the Lord and have joy in it. The big reason is that they can only conceive of a fear of the Lord that means punishment. They think that God is up there just waiting to catch someone doing something wrong and thump them for it or send them to hell when they die.

Since that is so odious for them, they reject any idea of God. They think that by denying God, they don’t have to worry about a future judgment.

But look back at the Psalm. God wants everyone to be joyful and glad in their fear of Him. How can that be? Now, his fear isn’t the fear of punishment, but it is what should be a natural, a natural fear of being in the presence of someone who is so powerful and different from us that we can’t comprehend Him.

To help you about this, imagine meeting some alien from outer space with technology so superior to ours that we are overwhelmed. We don’t know if this alien is good or bad. Even when we learn he is extremely good, we would still be in awe of him.

But this we know, that in Christ Jesus, God has demonstrated His love for us. When we trust in Jesus, the fear of punishment is replaced by His love. But the Lord is still powerful and beyond our comprehension so that reverent fear will always be with us, and it is good. It leads us to worship Him as described in the Psalm.

If you don’t know the Lord through Jesus you will never know His awesome love and this wonderful fear, watch my video on the Gospel on YouTube or read on this Gospel link.