Holy fear a reasonable element of true spiritual worship.
"Come and see," etc. Joy and terror seem so diverse and contrary, that one might seem to shut out the other. Yet this psalm, which opens with a note of exultant joy, follows it with a note of terror (Psalms 66:1-3). So in Psalms 2:11, "Rejoice with trembling."
I. AS INSPIRED BY GOD'S CHARACTER AND GLORY. "Perfect love casteth out fear." "Ye have not received," etc. (1 John 4:18; Romans 8:15; 2 Timothy 1:7). But there is a fear which love does not cast out, which is not tormenting or slavish, but salutary and akin to "a sound mind." To contemplate the infinite greatness, majesty, power, wisdom, and eternal unchangeableness of God, and the fact that we and all creatures live, move, and have our being in him, with no emotion of profound awe and sacred fear, argues rather clodlike insensibility than childlike confidence. Hence in so many passages, "the fear of the Lord" stands for the whole of true piety. The word here (Psalms 2:3, Psalms 2:5) translated "terrible," and in very many other passages, is elsewhere rendered "reverend," or "to be had in reverence" (Psalms 111:9; Psalms 89:7).
II. GOD'S DEALINGS. "Terrible things in righteousness" (Psalms 65:5). These especially referred to here (Psalms 2:3-5). As the cloud which gave light to Israel in their flight was darkness to their pursuers, so the redemption of Israel involved the destruction of their tyrants. They trembled as they rejoiced (Exodus 14:30, Exodus 14:31). God's holiness must needs have a severe side of justice, as well as a gracious side of redeeming mercy. The cross reveals both. Christ would not have "died for our sins," but that "the wages of sin is death." As the psalmist says of the Egyptian plagues, the Red Sea and Sinai, so we, of the cross, and of the place where the Lord lay, "Come and see!"
III. THE SENSE OF OUR OWN UNWORTHINESS AND SIN. (See Job 42:5, Job 42:6; Isaiah 6:5; Luke 5:8.) To this is sometimes added personal experience of troubles in which faith and joy find it hard to stand ground against terror and despair (Psalms 2:10-12; 2 Corinthians 1:8, 2 Corinthians 1:9). Yet the outcome is to be joy in God. "There did we rejoice" (Psalms 2:6); or, as margin of Revised Version, "let us rejoice." This is the strict translation, but has been set aside because of supposed difficulty as to meaning. But "Faith makes the past as well as the future her own" (Perowne). What the greatest heathen historian wished his work to be (Thuc; 1:22), is incomparably truer of the record of God's mighty works for his Church—it is "a possession forever."
PRACTICAL.
1. Holy fear must not lose its place in our religion.
2. But must not eclipse joy in God.
3. Faith must call memory to her aid, and joy and gratitude.