Whom Shall I Fear?

What is it that you fear?

Death.  Disease.  The loss of a loved one.  Dying alone.  Poverty.  Not having control.  Pain.  

 

I know some of your fears.  There’s this handy dandy social media site called Facebook.  I don’t know if you’ve heard of it.  I can’t tell you the amount of fear I see on there on a daily basis.  Many of you will say, “I’m not afraid of anything.”  And I will say, “I see your statuses.  You’re not fooling anyone.”  You see, fear causes us to act out in certain ways.  It can reveal itself with worry or anxiety.  It can cause you to lash out with hatred.  You can tell what people are afraid of by their visceral reactions to things.  How animated and emotional someone gets about something shows a lot of times how much control they feel that thing has over them.  Of course, most people would never admit that anything has control over them.

My first point is:

Whatever you fear has control over you.  

I’ll give you an example.  

I have a christian friend on Facebook who went on a rant about people receiving government assistance.  The rant was against the government for giving it out and against the people receiving it.   Now, say what you want about government assistance being good or bad or broken or whatever.  That’s not the point.  It was in the way she came against it.  It wasn’t a measured response.  It was visceral.  It was emotional.  What came through to me, was her lashing out at a system and a group of people that she somehow thought had control over the well-being in her life.  That somehow these people and the government were keeping her from living the life she wanted to live.  It is impossible for you to extend love and grace toward people that you fear.  Man is not the one you should fear.  That may seem like a no-brainer to some of you but it’s amazing how quickly we forget this.  And it is in these situations it is revealed where your hope and faith truly lie.  

Let me tell you people of God, your circumstances, your race, your job, your age, your health, your country, this world’s systems… cannot keep you from achieving and experiencing everything that God has for you.  God is bigger than all of those things.  Nothing limits Him.  And your fear of those things reveal what you truly worship.

 

Let me ask all of you...  How are you feeling about this dumpster fire of an election?  Is it causing you anxiety?  Does it cause you to fear?  Does it cause you not to have grace for those who have differing opinions from you?  If this election is causing you to fear, you’re approaching it the wrong way.  God wants to ease your mind.  He wants to take off the pressure and anxiety that this election has stirred in people.  So without further ado, let’s dive into the Scriptures.     

 

Psalm 2

¹ Why do the nations conspire

    and the peoples plot in vain?
² The kings of the earth rise up
    and the rulers band together
    against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
³ “Let us break their chains
    and throw off their shackles.”

⁴ The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
    the Lord scoffs at them.
⁵ He rebukes them in his anger
    and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
⁶ “I have installed my king
    on Zion, my holy mountain.”

⁷ I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;

    today I have become your father.
⁸ Ask me,
    and I will make the nations your inheritance,

    the ends of the earth your possession.

⁹ You will break them with a rod of iron;

    you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

¹⁰ Therefore, you kings, be wise;
    be warned, you rulers of the earth.
¹¹ Serve the Lord with fear
    and celebrate his rule with trembling.
¹² Kiss his son, or he will be angry
    and your way will lead to your destruction,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.

    Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Isaiah 8

¹² “Do not call conspiracy

    everything this people calls a conspiracy;

do not fear what they fear,

    and do not dread it.

¹³ The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy,

    he is the one you are to fear,

    he is the one you are to dread.

Romans 13

13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Here’s a couple quick points here that I want you to grasp.

 

No matter who wins the election, God’s will cannot be thwarted.  God will still be God no matter who wins.

⁴ The One enthroned in heaven laughs;

    the Lord scoffs at them.

God is enthroned and he laughs at whatever scheme the world comes up with to come against His anointed One, Jesus.  Jesus is installed as King and nothing will ever change that.   

I love the Isaiah 8 scriptures because that’s what I tell people who tell me their conspiracy theories.  After they give me their long, convoluted theory about how Oprah and Tom Cruise conspired together with Beyonce' to throw up Iluminati signs at the Super Bowl, I ask them, “Is Christ still King?  Is God on His throne?  Then what do I have to worry about?" 

And when it comes to Romans 13:1, you either believe it or you don’t.  Either you believe that God puts every authority in power or you don’t.  Once you realize that God puts good and evil people in power for His purposes, you’ll sleep a lot easier at night.  There are many many Scriptures about God using evil people to accomplish his purposes.   

Judges 3

3 These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan ² (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience):  ⁴ They were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the Lord’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses.

When the Israelites first went to Egypt they lived under a good Pharaoh that treated them well.  It wasn't until there was a bad Pharaoh that the Israelites wanted to leave.  And it wasn't until God hardened his heart that the Israelites decided to leave.  Ask yourself this... would the Israelites have left Egypt and gone to the Promised Land if the Pharaoh treated them well?  The Israelites were never meant to stay in Egypt.  In order for God to get the Israelites where He wanted them to go He used an evil Pharaoh.  

 

There is nothing that’s going to happen on November 8th that God doesn’t know about.  I’ll go a step further and say that whatever happens on November 8th is what God has purposed.  He’s either sovereign or He’s not.  Either Romans 13 is true or it isn’t.  You can’t have it both ways.  

People have put too much emphasis on who these candidates are and have ascribed to them power that only God has.  That is dangerous for you and for them.  

Acts 12 (Talking about King Herod)

²² They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” ²³ Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

There is a price to pay for putting man on the same pedestal as God.  Many are holding these candidates up to a standard they can never hope to achieve.  Fearing or praising these people serves no purpose other than to take glory away from God.  And honestly, it’s not going to be politicians that lead this country to Christ, but it will be the Church doing everything God has called and created it to do, going into this world and showing it Jesus.  Our country could create every law we have in favor of the devil and it wouldn’t matter if the Church does its job.    

All I can tell you is pray and ask God who to vote for and then go do that.  And can I blow you’re mind for a second… He may tell you to vote for someone different than your Christian brother and sister.  Whaaat?!  He may tell you to vote for one.  He may tell someone else to vote for the other.  He may tell someone else not to vote for anybody.  It all depends on what God’s purposes are and what He’s up to.  

 

When I was first dating my wife, she broke up with me.  She told me that God told her that we weren’t supposed to be together.  Now I thought that God was telling me that we were supposed to be together.  So yeah, that was a problem.  So what happened?  I had a choice to make.  My choice was either to believe that Alaina had heard from God or to believe that she hadn’t.  Now, my choice wasn’t as clear cut as you might think.  If I told her that she was wrong, what I would really be saying is that I don’t trust her to be able to hear the Holy Spirit for herself.  Which, if I believe that, why would I want her to be my wife?  But I felt that what I heard from God was true as well.  It never dawned on me that God could tell both of us different things for His purposes.  So I honored her belief that God spoke to her and we broke up.  I respected her decision.  It wasn’t until four years later that God told her that we were indeed supposed to be together.  But because I trusted her four years earlier, she was comfortable knowing that I believed she knew how to hear from God.  And man, is that important in a marriage.  If I was a jerk about it, it would have undercut our whole marriage.  Keep this in mind when you encounter believers who don’t think exactly like you.  God is in control.  And as a fellow believer, I would just ask this: Pray about who to vote for and then do what God tells you.  Easy Peasy.  Let me share one more Scripture on this.      

 

Joshua 5

¹³ Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

¹⁴ “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”

What is fascinating to me is that when asked if God was for the Israelites(His people) or their enemies, God said neither.  God is for Himself.  God is looking for Himself.  God established that HE was the one to be catered to.  Not His people.  Not their enemies.  But He, Himself.  We get it twisted in church sometimes and think it’s all about us.  It’s not.  God is for us.  But let me take this a step further.  God is for the unique expression of Christ in you.  Anything in us that is not joined with Christ, God is not for.  The great thing is that when you become a Christian, your spirit becomes joined to Christ’s Spirit, so that every time Father God looks at you, He sees His Son.  The Scriptures talk about being hid with Christ Jesus.  God is out there looking for Jesus uniquely expressing Himself in each one of us.  That is what God is for.  

 

So now that we have established everything we aren’t supposed to fear, let me turn your attention to what we are supposed to fear… namely God, himself.  Now before some of you saints tune out and say, “God doesn’t want us to fear Him.  That’s ridiculous.”  I’ll ask you to bear with me and hear me out and more importantly, hear the Scriptures out.  My next point is this:

 

Fear is the appropriate response to God.

 

There are 144 references to “Fearing God” in the bible.  And for those of you who think that it’s probably all Old Testament references or pre-ressurection, let me tell you that 19 of those are in the New Testament, several of which are post resurrection.  It’s interesting that it’s the number 144.  144 is a number of perfect completion.  It pops up a lot of places in Scripture.  God is to be perfectly and completely feared.  Now what do I mean by this?  If you’re like me, you’ve spent your whole life reading these Scriptures about fearing God and not being quite sure what to do with them.  Does it really mean fear?  Like how we mean fear?  I’ve read a lot of commentaries that talk about the fear of the Lord as feeling reverence and awe and wonder toward God and those are true, but those are just a part of it.  The other fear… the classic definition of fear is also how we are to relate to God.  There are around 20 different words used for “fearing the Lord” in the Hebrew and Greek.  I’ll share two of them with you here.   

 

Yirat - Hebrew

dreadful, exceeding fearfulness, reverence

 

Phobos – Greek

fear, terror. alarm or fright -- be afraid, fear, terror. 

    

These sound like your classic definitions of fear. 

Mark 4

⁴⁰ He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”  ⁴¹ They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

This shows the disciples after Jesus calmed the wind and the waves.  They were terrified of Jesus!  Why were they terrified?  Because in that moment, they knew two things.  Jesus was super powerful.  And that they weren’t Jesus.  It is this miracle that Jesus showed them His vast POWER.  If Jesus could control the wind and the waves, He could easily do whatever He wanted to do to them.  Couple that with Jesus obviously finding their faith lacking, the disciples were thinking not only is Jesus all-powerful, He isn’t super pleased with us in this moment. What if His favor towards us runs out?  This wasn’t just awe, wonder and reverence.  This was terror-inducing panic!  This was Jesus’ 13th miracle He had performed for them.  So this wasn’t the first one but it was the one where He showed them how powerful He was.  

Fear is the appropriate response to God.  I’ll even say this… Fear is an appropriate initial response to God.  If you look at all the situations where God or Angels show up, you see that pretty much everyone falls on their face in fear before them.  Like pooping your pants frightened.  Not once does God or the angels say that is an inappropriate response.  In fact, it’s only when this fear causes people to start to worship the angels that they correct the behavior saying that worship is saved only for God Himself.  Usually it’s after all this that God or the angels say, “Do not be afraid.”  They aren’t saying, “Why were you so scared?  That’s so dumb.  Little old, me.  I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”  The inappropriate response is to not be afraid.  Let me read you a few more scriptures.    

 

Proverbs 1

⁷ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,

    but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 9

¹⁰ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,

    and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Now what I love about these passages is that the fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of knowledge and wisdom.

 

Let me ask you a question.  How many of you love the ocean?   

 

I love the ocean.  But I have a healthy fear of it.  The ocean is vast and it is deep and it is much more powerful than I am.  I love the ocean.  The ocean brings me a ton of peace but I do not play around with the ocean.  When I get in the ocean, I test it.  I feel if there are any undertows or riptides.  I’m mindful of the depth.  I don’t go out too far.  I would never want to just be dropped in the middle of the ocean by myself.  

 

Have you all every looked on Imgonnadie.com?  Also known as WebMD.  Have you ever had a symptom and you weren’t sure where it was from?  So you researched and researched and maybe even went to the doctor to find out that you have allergies and are not, in fact, dying.  Over the course of a few hours you have earned your Master's Degree in the sniffles.  It’s amazing the vast amounts of knowledge we collect for the things that we fear.  

Proverbs 23

¹⁷ Do not let your heart envy sinners,

    but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord.

¹⁸ There is surely a future hope for you,

    and your hope will not be cut off.

Fearing the Lord births hope in the Lord.  Until you identify who is in control, you will have nothing to hope in.  A lot of our problems come from fearing other people... thinking that they will deliver us or that they are responsible for delivering us.  Remember, we fear what we think has control over us.    

Proverbs 14:27

The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life,

To turn one away from the snares of death.

Proverbs 19:23

The fear of the LORD leads to life,

And he who has it will abide in satisfaction;

He will not be visited with evil.

Matthew 10

²⁸ Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Jesus was commissioning His disciples and sending them out.  Previously, He told them to not be afraid of those who follow satan and all those who would persecute them.  But He does say to fear God, who destroys both the body and soul in hell.  Why?  Because it is a reminder of who has control over them and who they are to cater to.  Sometimes God has to remind us not only how powerful He is, but also that our actions should reflect how powerful He is.  Also it is a reminder that no matter what man may do to you, God has the final say.  If you fear man, you won't be able to achieve all the God has for you to do.  The fear of the Lord helps us to be able to do everything He calls us to do even in the face of opposition from the enemy or people.

Acts 9

³¹ Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.

2 Corinthians 5

¹¹ Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others.

   

What does not fearing the Lord look like as a Christian?  It’s when Christians play with God.  They give lip service to loving Him but they have not made Him Lord of their life.  The live like what they do has no consequences.  Many times God is one of many crutches that they use to get through life.  I’ll tell you a story. 

 

I did a mission trip to Africa where we went to a country called Niger.  Now 90% of the population were Muslims.  The other 10% were Animists.  A religion called Bori.  They worshipped animals.  These people lived in remote villages.  Were were ministering in one of these villages when a mother brought her child to be prayed over because it was very sick.  Now this mother had recently became a Christian in the last year and she couldn’t understand why God wasn’t healing her child.  My Pastor started to pray for her and then he noticed something around her neck.  It was a talisman.  Talismans are what the villagers wore to help control the animal spirits.  Basically, demons would come to their village and turn into animals.  So they would wear these talismans to ward off or appease these demons.  My Pastor told her that she needed to renounce all of her other gods in order for her child to be healed.  Once she did that, her child was healed. 

You see, she didn’t understand that being a follower of Christ means you renounce all other gods.  She was collecting every god she could.  She was open to any religion as long as she thought it could help her.  But the one true God doesn’t co-habitate with other gods.  You may laugh at her but many Christians do the same thing here in the states.  Except here, they aren’t animal gods.  Our gods show up in other ways.  "Oh I love you Jesus.  But I also love money.  I also love drugs and alcohol.  I also love the praise and opinions of other people.  I also love me some me.  If you’re cool with that Jesus, I’d love to have you around.  Can you take care of that hell part for me?  That would be great.  Now scoot over, Jesus.  I am going out tonight!"  But eventually all those other gods let you down.  And God says, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to Father but by me. Get rid of those gods and worship me."  We've got to stop playing with Jesus.  Once you get that fear of the Lord… when you start to process everything that He is.  When you realize how vast and powerful and holy and perfect He is… And how you, apart from Christ, are none of those things.  You realize that God deserves nothing less then your everything.  All we are.  No less.  

 

Now that may have been a little heavy, but let me tell you some good news.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom.  It’s not all of it.  That knowledge and wisdom leads you to understanding how much Jesus loves you.  Loves you so much, in fact, that He gave His life for you and was crucified to pay for your sins so that you could have a relationship with Him.  To be loved by Him.  To be known by Him.  And to never have to be afraid of Him again.  To hear God say, “Don’t be afraid.  I love you.  You are mine.  And since you are one with my Son, I am for you.”               

1 John 4:18

¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Once you let perfect love invade your life, it begins to drive out all of your fear.  Because the only one that you should fear, has said, “Don’t be afraid.”  Once you are in Christ, there is no punishment.  Now you get to walk in the type of fear that means awe and reverence and wonder.  The kind where you are mindful of God Almighty because you know He’s in control and that He deserves to be catered to.  Anything less, would be to worship another God.