Sermon Tone Analysis

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.

The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

As many of you know, Mary and I have been volunteering three days a week at the visitors center at Catalina State Park.

One day a couple weeks ago, a couple that was checking into the campground asked about whether they might see mountain lions or bears and what they should do if they happened to encounter them during their stay.

Not more than five minutes later another couple asked about whether or not there were spiders and snakes in the campgrounds.

In both cases I reminded the campers that they were essentially invading the home of these wild animals, but I also tried to assure them that they shouldn’t be afraid since those animals were probably more afraid of them than they are than they are of the animals - well okay, maybe not the spiders.

Tension

For me, that was a reminder that as humans we often live fearful lives.

Some of our fears are well-founded and often they actually do prevent us from harm.

It is healthy to have a fear of walking out in front of a car or touching a hot stove, for instance.

And even at Catalina State Park we remind people to watch where they are walking or placing their hands in order to avoid being bitten by a snake.

But there are other fears in our lives that aren’t so healthy.

They often paralyze us and keep us from doing things that we need to do or we ought to do.

And sometimes, if we don’t deal with those fears in the proper way, they can even keep us from doing what God has called us to do.

This morning as we continue our study of the book of Exodus, we’re going to see how fear paralyzed the Israelites, even after they had been freed from their bondage in Egypt.

But even more importantly, we’re going to learn how they overcame that fear and how we can apply those same principles to our own fear.

Truth

Most of us are probably familiar with what happens next after the ten plagues that we looked at last week - if not from the Bible at least from watching Charlton Heston in the iconic film, The Ten Commandments.

After the Israelites leave Egypt, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened once again and he readies his chariots and his best officers to pursue them.

They finally overtake the Israelites where God has instructed them to camp.

And in the middle of chapter 14, we read this verse:

I want to call your attention to the phrase “they feared greatly”.

And I also want you to see why they feared greatly - it is because of what they saw, or i think it would be fair to say, because of their circumstances.

I’m going to come back in a moment and fill in some of the blanks, but for now let’s skip ahead to verse 13:

Notice Moses’ command to the Israelites: “Fear not...”

He is trying to encourage the people to deal with their fear by reminding them that they are about to see the salvation of the Lord.

Apparently something happens that allows them to overcome their fears because they obey God.

And because of that, by the end of the chapter, the object of their fear has changed.

The Israelites no longer fear the Egyptians.

Now they fear the Lord.

With just those three verses, we can now identify the main idea we’re going to develop today:

Fear gets off the throne of my life when the fear of the Lord gets on

What we’re going to see today is that the way to battle fear in our lives is somewhat counterintuitive.

The world generally tells us that we need to face our fears.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say something like this:

Never be afraid to try something new.

Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.

And I suppose that there is a degree of truth in that philosophy.

But as we’re going to see there is another, better way.

Rather than trying to battle our fears head on, what we need to do instead is to make sure we’re growing in the fear of the Lord.

The idea of the fear of the Lord is found throughout the Bible.

It’s a concept that we talk about a lot in the church.

But like many of you, I’ve really struggled to understand exactly what that means.

Over the past month or so I’ve had some additional time to really dig into that idea more deeply.

I don’t normally recommend books, other than the Bible, in my sermons.

But as part of my study I’ve read two books that have been really helpful to me in better understanding the fear of the Lord.

So if you’re dealing with fear in your life, I’d suggest you read one or both of them.

Rejoice and Tremble: The Surprising Good News of the Fear of the Lord by Michael Reeves

Fearless: Free in Christ in an Age of Anxiety, by Rachel Starr Thomson, Mercy Hope, and Carolyn Currey

These books, along with my own study have helped me to better understand that the fear of the Lord is actually a positive thing.

It is not being afraid of God and His punishment, but rather, as Reeves defines it is...

...the intense love for, delight in, and enjoyment of all that God is.

- Michael Reeves in “Rejoice and Tremble”

And, as our main idea for this morning proclaims, the best way to overcome my fears is not by focusing on those fears at all, but rather by developing a healthy and biblical fear of the Lord.

So with that in mind, let me fill in some of what occurs between the three verses we’ve already looked at and then we’ll see if we can learn from the example of the Israelites and develop some principles that will help us to develop that kind of fear of the Lord.

There are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 million Israelites who flee from Egypt.

As soon as they leave, God instructs Moses to have them camp on a large plain next to the Red Sea.

He also tells Moses that He is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart once again and that the Egyptian army is going to pursue them.

God is going to do that for two reasons - so that He will get glory and so that the Egyptians will know that He is the Lord.

It didn’t take long for Pharaoh and all his chariots to overtake the Israelites in their camp.

Although they have just witnessed God’s mighty power in the ten plagues, when the Israelites look up and see the Egyptian army approaching, they are afraid of that army, just as we saw earlier in verse 10.

To their credit they do cry out to God, But at the same time they also complain to Moses and claim that it would have been better for them to stay slaves in Egypt than die in the wilderness.

But we see in verse 14 that Moses has grown a lot in his faith and he tells the people not to be afraid because the Lord will fight for them.

God instructs Moses to lift up his staff and divide the seas so that the people can walk through it on dry land.

The pillar of cloud that had been going before the people now moves around behind them.

We’ll address the significance of that in a moment.

And the people of Israel do exactly what God has told them to do and they walk through the parted sea on dry land.

When the Egyptians pursue them, their chariots get stuck in the mud.

But by the time they realize this is the hand of God, it is too late to retreat.

The waters cover the Egyptian army and drowns them.

But every single Israelite makes it safely through.

Finally, having seen the hand of God at work once again, the people feared the Lord and believed in Him and they also finally believed Moses.

And then the people sing:

And Miriam, Moses’ sister also sings:

So I hope you can see why we’ve said this morning that...

Fear gets off the throne of my life when the fear of the Lord gets on

Application

As I mentioned earlier, we can learn a lot about how to develop the fear of the Lord in our own lives by taking a look at how the Israelites did that.

HOW TO PUT THE FEAR OF THE LORD ON THE THRONE OF MY LIFE

Admit my fears

Overcoming our fears is not a matter of convincing ourselves that nothing bad will ever happen to us.

In fact, as we’ve seen consistently throughout the Bible, God never promises we won’t have trials and difficulties in this life.

He never asks us to pretend like everything is okay and that there are not valid reasons for us to have fear.

There were certainly valid reasons for the Israelites to fear the approaching Egyptian army.

They were hemmed in on one side by the Red Sea and on the other side by the powerful Egyptians in their chariots.

On their own they were no match for that army.

So I don’t really think that God had a problem with them expressing their fears.

Just read the Psalms.

A good number of them begin with the Psalmist expressing some fear to God.

The problem for the Israelites is that they continued to dwell on their fears.

And the more they did that, the more they allowed their fears to become bigger than their God.

It is normal and healthy to admit our fears.

We don’t have to try and pretend that we don’t have real reasons to fear.

As we’re going to see, overcoming our fears is not about convincing ourselves that nothing bad can happen to us or even about pretending we don’t have reasons to fear.

So...

If you loose your job, it’s okay to admit you’re fearful about how you’re going to pay the bills.

If your doctor schedules you for some tests because he or she has some concerns, it’s okay to admit you have some fears about your health.