Fear or Faith?
By Jeff Fry adapted from "If you want to walk on water …" by John Ortberg
Matthew 14:29 - 33 Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
For questions, comments or further information contact:
Rev Jeff Fry
Darwin Park Community Church
[1]
Judges 6:1-40 Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. 2 Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. 3 Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. 4 They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. 5 They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. 6 Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the LORD for help.
7 When the Israelites cried to the LORD because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
11 The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. 12 When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
13 “But sir,” Gideon replied, “if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.”
14 The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
15 “But Lord, a” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
16 The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together…..”
|
Theme: We should respond to God in faith rather than in fear and doubt. |
I. Intro
A. We continue to look at the passage of Peter walking on water in Matthew 14:22-33. This week we will examine verse 30 where Peter cries out in fear.
B. The single command in Scripture that occurs more often than any other - God's most frequently repeated instruction - is the two words "fear not".
C. In other words :
1. do not be afraid
2. be strong and courageous
3. I am with you
D. Why is this God's most frequently repeated instruction to us? Why did God pick "fear not" to repeat the most often and not "love one another" or " do not sin" or something like that? After all fear does not seem like the most wicked thing in the world.
1. you will never receive church discipline for being fearful.
2. It doesn't even make the list of the Seven Deadly Sins
3. so why does God tell us not to fear more than anything else in the world?
E. It seems to me that God picked "fear not" because
1. fear is the number one reason human beings are tempted to avoid doing what God asks them to do
2. It is one of the main schemes the enemy uses to neutralize our faith.
a) Satan wants to increase and build up fear in our lives so that we run and hide instead of step out in faith for God.
b) One of the ways to combat this fear is to know the truth of God's word and to act upon it. That's why we have the reading plans for you over on the window sill.
II. We should respond to God in faith rather than in fear and doubt.
A. State
1. Let's look at a person in the Bible who responded to God's call in faith when everyone around him was responding in fear. Let's look at Gideon in Judges chapter 6.
2. In the book of Judges Israel has been freed from slavery to the Egyptians and have entered the promised land which God said they would possess. Judges is a book of up and down repeating cycles. Israel, God's people, fall away from God until things get so bad that they cry out to God at which point he sends them a judge or leader who turns them back to God.
3. This time it is Gideon who is the appointed person to turn them back to God.
4. Since they didn't evict the pagan tribes when they entered the promised land like they were instructed by God to do, they are now being pillaged and plundered by the pagan Midianites. Judges 6:1-6 says that for seven years,
a) The Midianites camped on the land of the Israelites
b) They took all the food from the fields of the Israelites leaving them nothing
c) They destroyed all the livestock and cattle leaving no living thing for the Israelites
d) They oppressed the Israelites to such a degree that the Israelites were hiding in caves and clefts in the rocks
5. One word: fear
a) The Israelites responded to their situation in fear, not faith. And it cost them greatly. Their goal and wish was to setup the rule of God's kingdom in the promised land. They didn't reach their goal because they responded in fear instead of faith.
b) Faith would have:
(1) Evicted the pagan peoples completely.
(2) Insisted on setting up Yaweh as the only God to be worshipped in the land.
(3) Caused them to stand and fight the oppression of the pagan nations
c) Fear caused them to:
(1) Compromise theLord's command to evict the pagan nations completely
(2) Accept the religion of the pagan nations and to worship their images and idols
(3) Run and hide from the pagan nations
d) Fear threatens to keep people from trusting and obeying God.
B. Illustrate
1. What about you? How is your fear factor on a scale of 1 to 10?
a) Compromise
(1) Are there areas of the your life which you know God wants you to give over to him, but you are holding back? You are allowing a little bit of sin. You are justifying it by saying well a little sin won't hurt too much and you are a bit afraid what might happen if you do give it to God.
(2) I can get by without regular times in God's word. After all I can't afford the time. I'm too busy. What I really need is a bit of extra sleep, a bit of extra time on the internet, a bit of extra time watching tv.
(3) I won't give my ten percent right away. I'll wait until the end of the month and see what's left over and give that.
b) Running and Hiding
(1) When you face a difficult situation, do you approach it, take action and face it head on, or do you avoid it, wimp out, and run and hide?
(2) Research even suggests that self-esteem depends on one thing - how you respond to difficult situations - do you face them or do you run and hide?
(a) If you take action, you get a surge of delight even if things do not turn out perfectly. "I did a hard thing". "I took on a challenge" . You grow.
(b) When you run and hide and wimp out inside you say, "But the truth is, I wimped out. I didn't do the hard thing. I took the easy way out".
(3) Application #1: Running and hiding from your difficult situations right now?
(a) Is there a friend with whom you want to share your faith, but you are afraid to do it? You don't know how they will respond or how it will affect your relationship?
(i) Faith, not fear!
(b) Is there an area of your life you feel the Lord is not pleased with and you would like to change it. But it will be hard and you don't know if you have the strength, time and energy to put into it - to pray about it, to tell a friend about it who will pray with you and hold you accountable to working on it.
(i) Faith, not fear!
(c) Is there an honest conversation you need to have with someone and you are not sure how they will respond?
(i) Faith, not fear!
(d) Some of you may be running and hiding from Christ, not sure if you can truly trust Him to run your life, to steer your life as the driver of a car steers the car.
(i) Our need to be in charge of ourselves, others, and situations often makes our relationship with Christ life's biggest power struggle. We are reluctant to relinquish our control and allow Him to run our lives. But this is what God wants - faith, not fear!
(ii) We may even believe in Him and be active in the church and Christian causes, but trusting Him as Lord of everything in life can be scary. Even though we pray about our challenges and problems, all too often what we really want is strength to accomplish what we've already decided is best for ourselves and others. Meanwhile we press on with our own priorities and plans. We remain the script writer, casting director, choreographer, and producer of the drama of our own lives, in which we are the star performer.
(iii) Faith, not fear!
(4) Application #2: Running and hiding from yourself
(a) John Ortberg writes:
In the movement associated with John Wesley, people met together in little communities to help hold each other accountable for their deepest values and most important decisions. Wesley had a beautiful phrase for this: He called it watching over one another in love.
Before someone entered into this community, they would be asked a series of questions to see if they were serious about living in mutual accountability. Sometimes when I speak on community I'll read these to church leaders, and ask them to imagine these questions being posed to attenders at their churches:
(i) Does any sin, inward or outward, have dominion over you?
(ii) Do you desire to be told of your faults?
(iii) Do you desire to be told of all your faults—and that plain and clear? (By this point, church leaders are inevitably laughing at even the idea of people putting up with such pointed questions.)
(iv) Consider! Do you desire that we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you?
(v) Do you desire that in doing this we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?
(vi) Is it your desire and design to be on this and all other occasions entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart, without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?
III. Conclusion
Luther "sees the wind"
Martin Luther was a catholic Augustinian monk in the 1500's who was responsible for reforming the church of the middle ages. Professor Luther's life was marked by faith in God's word. The result was that Luther's faith changed the course of history. A little snippet from his biography reveals how Luther responded to "the wind" - the trials, tribulations and difficulties of life. From his biography we note this:
It was the worst of times--1527--one of the most trying years of Luther's life. It's hard to imagine he had the energy or spirit to compose one of Christendom's most memorable hymns.
On April 22, a dizzy spell forced Luther to stop preaching in the middle of his sermon. For ten years, since publishing his 95 Theses against the abuse of indulgences, Luther had been buffeted by political and theological storms; at times his life had been in danger. Now he was battling other reformers over the meaning of the Lord's Supper. To Luther, their errors were as great as those of Rome--the very gospel was at stake--and Luther was deeply disturbed and angry. He suffered severe depression.
Then, on July 6, as friends arrived for dinner, Luther felt an intense buzzing in his left ear. He went to lie down, when suddenly he called, "Water or I'll die!" He became cold, and he was convinced he had seen his last night. In a loud prayer, he surrendered himself to God's will.
With a doctor's help, Luther partially regained his strength. But this depression and illness overcame him again in August, September and late December. Looking back on one of his bouts, he wrote his friend Melanchthon, "I spent more than a week in death and hell. My entire body was in pain, and I still tremble. Completely abandoned by Christ, I labored under the vacillations and storms of desperation and blasphemy against God. But through the prayers of friends, God began to have mercy on me and pulled my soul from the inferno below."
Meanwhile, in August, the plague had erupted in Wittenberg. As fear spread, so did many of the townspeople. But Luther considered it his duty to remain and care for the sick. Even though his wife was pregnant, Luther's house was transformed into a hospital, and he watched many friends die. Then his son became ill. Not until late November did the epidemic abate and the ill begin to recover.
During that horrific year, Luther took time to remember the tenth anniversary of his publication against indulgences, noting the deeper meaning of his trials: "The only comfort against raging Satan is that we have God's Word to save the souls of believers." Sometime that year, Luther expanded that thought into the hymn he is most famous for: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." The hymn he wrote says this:
"And though this world with devils filled
should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God has willed
his truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim? We tremble not for him.
His rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure.
One little Word shall fell him."
A. Satan would have you respond to difficulties with fear and doubt.
B. God would have you respond with faith in His word. God's word rightly understood will never fail you. It is infallible truth.
1. Take a reading plan:
(1) Beginners - the near window
(a) 30 days with Jesus - birth, Jesus and the Samaritan woman, Jesus encounters the Pharisees, Jesus heals a man, woman and girl, The last supper, Jesus' crucifixion and death, the great commission of Jesus
(b) 30 days for new Christians - the fall of humanity, the ten commandments, cycles of disobedience, an eternal king promised, Jesus fufils the law, Jesus' death and resurrection, God's judgment explained, righteousness by faith, etc.
(c) 30 days in the psalms and proverbs
(2) Intermediate - in the middle window
(a) 2 Week Guided Tour - the most commonly referred to passages in the Bible grouped into meaningful subjects like "2 weeks on the Life and Teachings of Paul" or "2 weeks on the Old Testament" or "2 weeks on becoming a Christian".
(3) Advanced - on the far window - read the whole Bible through
C. Through such faith God changes the world.
D. How will you respond to the wind in your life?
1. Maybe you are facing a difficult situation in your life and you are not sure how God would have you respond. Talk to myself or a friend who is a Christian and pray together about it trying to discern how to respond in faith to this situation.
[1]The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.) . Zondervan: Grand Rapids