Fear Not, But Why Not?

Life of the Church

Happy Sunday morning everyone, and welcome to Stuarts Draft Baptist Church. We’re happy to see you here in person to worship with us today.

I have a few announcements I’d like to mention that are in your bulletin.

The men’s group will meet this evening at 6:30 but will be taking next Sunday off. All men are invited to attend that.

During the month of June, the WMU is helping Love INC in their ministry to local families. You’ll see some paper items (UP HERE) scattered around the church. If you’d like to help, you can leave your donations at the church entrance back there, or in Randal’s Sunday school classroom.

Danny says the new roof will be put on either this week or next, and insurance will pay for all but a thousand

Windows July 7

Augusta Health is calling for volunteers for their Hospice center, and I’ll tell you, the hospice folks at the hospital are amazing people who do amazing things. Their next training is planned for July 25 from 9-5:30. If you’re interested in volunteering, you’ll see the contact information in your bulletin.

We’ll be having our monthly deacon meeting this Tuesday. If you’re a deacon, please do your best to attend that.

Jesyka, would you like to give us an update about how vacation Bible school went?

And lastly, I’d like everyone to pray for Sue this morning as she lends her musical talents to her church back home for their final service before closing their doors.

This is going to be a hard day for a lot of those folks, and unfortunately they’re not the only ones. Churches everywhere are doing the same, even churches in our area.

I’ll talk about this more maybe next week, but it’s never been more important than to come to church. Never been more important to bring your families to church, your kids and grandkids. Churches have always been what holds communities together. They’re spiritual first-aid stations for life. And we all need spiritual first-aid.

So invite your friends here. Get your kids and grandkids here. Invite your neighbors here. And please pray for Grace Baptist Church in Cumberland, Maryland.

And with that, we’ll begin our service with the prelude.

Our hymn of praise is #426. Would you please stand.

Opening Prayer

Lord, you are so great, and the heavens speak of your glory. You do wonders in heaven and we see the signs on earth. As the work of your hands we worship you today, and we ask that you accept our worship in Jesus’s name.

We have not forsaken the gathering of the brethren, we have come to fellowship with each other in your presence, and we ask you to let us feel your presence in this place. As we continue in today’s service, we want to see your great power move us. Let every one of us encounter you in a different way. Bless us in our lives and give us everlasting joy in you.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Our revival hymn this morning is number 469.

Sermon

What’s the most repeated phrase in the Bible? Any idea? Or how about this, what’s the second most repeated phrase in the Bible? It’s “Praise the Lord.”

You would think something like that might be first. After all, from the act of creation through the miracles in the desert, through the birth of Christ to his resurrection, to the final images of the new heavens and new Earth, all of it could be summed up pretty well with: “Praise the Lord.”

But still, that’s number two. “Praise the Lord” is the second most repeated phrase in scripture. The first one is “Fear not.”

In fact, that first command to “Fear not” occurs about a hundred times more in scripture than “Praise the Lord.”

When God calls people, He says, “Fear not.”

When angels appear, they say, “Fear not.”

Often when Jesus appears, he says, “Fear not.”

Have you ever wondered why God goes to such great lengths to tell us we shouldn’t be afraid? I think the answer to that one is easy. I think He tells us “Fear not” over and over because He understands the power that fear can have over us. Fear is something we all live with.

Fear of death, even if we’re Christians who know that heaven awaits.

Fear of our loved ones dying. Fear of being left alone.

Fear of sickness. Fear of sickness without cure.

Fear of growing old.

Fear of passing through this life without making a difference in it at all.

If we’re honest, fear rules our lives to varying degrees. And it’s no wonder, because it’s a scary world. It’s a hard world. Bad things happen. Unfair things happen. Tragedies happen. Life is tough.

God says the secret to overcoming the fear that always seems to stalk us is faith. And the essential ingredient of faith, the thing that makes faith so powerful, is trust.

There can be no belief without trust. To believe that something is true means to trust that it’s true. Basic stuff, right? To hold on to a truth, or to base our lives on a belief, means that we trust that those truths and beliefs are accurate.

That’s why at the heart of the Christianity is trust in God, and faith in Christ for our salvation. And that’s why the whole point of living the Christian life is to live out that trust by faith every day.

But then there’s all that fear we fight. There’s that nagging dread that we can’t chase away but we also can’t ignore, and here’s what that dread says. I’m going to say it as plainly as I can.

When everything starts going wrong in our lives and the world feels like it’s spinning out of control, that dread comes and says, “Lord, I know You’re the Creator and Sustainer of all, and I know you love me, but deep down I just don’t trust that You’ll make everything okay. I don’t trust that You’ll see me through. And so I’m scared.”

Am I right?

And what’s the advice that we as Christians usually receive when it comes to fear? For that matter, what’s the advice that we as Christians usually give?

“Well, you just have to take God’s word on faith.”

Maybe, and to an extent that’s very true. But that’s also tricky, because saying we just have to take God’s word on faith comes awfully close to blind faith, and let me get this out of the way right now: Christian faith is never, in any shape or form, blind faith.

If you think the trust and faith that God calls you to have is supposed to be blind, then you’re lost. You’ll never get either.

Our trust and faith in God is rooted in clear and absolute reasons. That’s where trust and faith are born, and that’s why most of the times you see the phrase “Fear not” in the Bible, the word “for” comes right after: “Fear not, for …”

“Do not be afraid,” God says, or the angels, or Jesus, then they say, “and here’s why.”

But is that enough to keep us unafraid? It should. We believe that God is real, that He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. Those things tell us that God is good, that His nature is perfect in every way.

So the basic answer we as Christians should give when someone asks why they should trust God is that they should trust God because God is trustworthy.

That’s exactly how we should live our lives. The Christian life is a life of trust in Him rather than fear of the world. That’s the commandment given by God. But there’s maybe no commandment harder to obey than that one.

But we have help here, and that help is found in Genesis chapter 15. Turn there with me now. We’re going to be reading verses 1-17:

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”

And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?”

He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.

Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

And this is God’s word.

This can be a tough bit of scripture to understand what’s happening, because what’s going on here seems so strange on the surface.

But we need to understand it, because what God does for Abram here isn’t just almost beyond comprehension, it’s also done for us as believers to show that fear has no place in our lives.

First, notice what’s happening in verse one. Abram is still Abram, he’s not Abraham yet. And the Lord comes to him in a vision and not a dream.

The Bible talks about visions and dreams as two different things, the difference being that dreams come, of course, when a person is sleeping. Visions are received while the person is awake and when they’re often “in the Spirit.”

Abram is fully awake — that’s very important. What’s getting ready to take place is happening in reality. It’s not a dream.

God’s word comes to him, and what’s the first thing God says? “Fear not.” There we go. There is God’s command to Abram, and there is God’s command to us. We are not to fear.

But again, we cannot let go of something as powerful as fear unless we have good reason to. We cannot have true faith unless we have a reason for that faith. And God gives the reason for that faith right after:

“Fear not, Abram,” God says, “I am your shield.”

Remember what I said: Every “Fear not” in the Bible is followed by a reason why we shouldn’t fear. God calls Abraham to live by faith, but it’s not a blind faith that God wants. Instead, God gives Abram the reason why he can let go of his fears: because God is his shield.

If you know without question that God is your shield, it wouldn’t be reasonable at all to be afraid of anything, would it?

You’d have absolutely no reason at all to be afraid of anything if you knew beyond all doubt that God was shielding you. In fact, you could do anything if you really believed that God was your shield.

But God’s not done there. He doesn’t just say to Abram, “I’m your shield,” God takes it further and says, “your reward shall be very great.”

Now, this is exactly what God will do to you a lot of times. He’ll tell you to not be afraid, and you’ll say “Yes, Lord. I believe you. I will not be afraid.”

And then He’ll say, “You don’t have to fear, because I’m your shield.”

And you’ll say, “I believe you, Lord. I’m claiming every promise and I’m trusting You. I have faith that You are my shield.”

And right after that, God will say something that seems so ridiculous, so impossible, that all the faith and trust you thought you had disappears, and in that empty space inside you all the doubt and fear rushes back in.

That’s what happens to Abram in verse 2. Fear comes back in. Doubt comes back in. Because Abram doesn’t have a child. We’ve talked about this before. God’s promised Abram a son for years, Abram still doesn’t have one.

That’s why Abram responds in verse 2 by saying, “A great reward, Lord? What reward can you possibly give me that would be better than the son you keep promising but won’t give? Because right now, everything I have won’t go to my family, it’ll go instead to Eliezer of Damascus.”

And who is Eliezer of Damascus? He runs the household. He’s a servant. In modern terms, he’s Abram’s butler.

But God says no, that man won’t be your heir. Then in verse 5, God takes Abram outside the tent. And remember, Abram is not dreaming. The Spirit of God has come upon him, but he is fully awake and this is actually happening.

God takes him outside and says, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be.”

Now comes the big verse, verse 6: “And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

Abram’s entire life is in verses 6-8 of Genesis chapter 15. I’ll go further than that and say your entire life is in verses 6-8 of Genesis chapter 15. Because here’s what happens.

Years ago, God called Abram out of the land of Ur and said, “Go where I tell you, do what I tell you, trust and have faith in me, and I will make you a great nation.”

And Abram believed.

But God didn’t fulfill that promise right away. Abram had to learn faith. He had to learn trust. Over and over again in Genesis we see this battle between Abram’s faith and Abram’s fear, each one taking turns ruling his heart.

But here, underneath so many stars that he can’t count them all, Abram finally believes. He believes truly.

So much so that in Romans 4, Paul refers to this verse right here, verse 6, as proof of what’s known as the doctrine of free justification.

That’s a fancy phrase, but it just means this: Abram was a holy man who always proved his faith by his works. But only under the stars when he truly believed what God told him did God called him a righteous man.

It’s belief, not works, that saves us and makes us righteous.

But in the space of a single verse, in just the 20 words that God speaks in verse 7, Abram’s fear returns.

Look at verse 8: “But how will I know, God? How will I know that You will do what You say?”

In other words, Abram’s saying in verse 8, “I know You’re the God of all, I know You know everything and I know You love me, but Lord, how can I trust You?”

It sounds silly, doesn’t it? It sounds silly until we understand that we do the very same thing.

We know who God is. God is truth. God will not break His promises. God does whatever He says He’ll do. But even with all that we know of Him, we still doubt Him. Even with all we know of Him, we still give ourselves over to fear.

God should blow his top at this point, shouldn’t He? Abram just believed, truly believed, but in the next breath he doubts. How often does He have to promise Abram? How often does He have to say “Fear not, trust Me” before Abram finally gets it?

But this is important: God understands that Abram wants to believe, he’s just struggling. He’s struggling to live by faith and to trust that God’s going to do what he says.

Remember the father in Mark 9 who brings his son to Jesus for healing? Jesus says, “All things are possible for one who believes.” Do you remember what the father says? “I believe; help my unbelief.”

That’s us. That’s Abram. I believe, help my unbelief. I trust, but I’m scared.

“I’m going to bless you,” God says.

And we don’t answer, “Thank you,” we answer, “But how can I be sure?”

So God deals with Abram’s fear in a way that’s almost unbelievable, in a way that settles Abram’s fears forever, and through what God does here, He settles our fears once and for all as well.

What’s God do? He says to Abram, “Go kill some animals, and then cut the animals into pieces, and then arrange the pieces in two rows with space so you can walk through them.”

Makes total sense, doesn’t it? Actually it doesn’t make any sense at all to us. But it did to Abram. He knew what was happening here. God was asking him to perform a covenant ceremony.

In those days, when a great master wanted to make a covenant with a lesser person, the covenant ceremony was done exactly as verses 9 and 10 lay out.

Animals were killed, the pieces were arranged, and then the servant took the oath of loyalty to the master by walking between the pieces.

Abram does what God says, and then he waits until God tells him to fulfill the ceremony. But then night begins to fall, and what happens in verse 17 is to many Bible scholars the most shocking words contained in the entire Bible.

We have a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. Now, what is that? It’s called a theophany. It’s a visible manifestation of the invisible God. And in the Old Testament, God most often appeared as some form of fire. The burning bush was one, the pillar of fire was another.

You can read verse 17 a thousand times and still miss what’s happening and what it means. But it’s so important we understand this, because this verse describes exactly why you have every reason to let go of your fear once and for all and live by real, true, genuine faith and trust.

When two people completed a covenant ceremony, they didn’t say, “A covenant is now made between us.” What they said instead was, “A covenant is now cut between us.” Because that’s what the ceremony involved, walking in between those animals cut in half.

That expression is illustrated to a greater degree two chapters later in Genesis 17, when God institutes another ceremony called the rite of circumcision.

Abram and his household and descendants are commanded by God to circumcise themself as a way of marking themselves as God’s people, as people who have been cut between a covenant with God.

There was both a positive and a negative element to this. The positive meaning of circumcision, of cutting the skin, was being cut off from the wickedness and evil of the world and being consecrated to God.

But the negative meaning was this: the one being circumcised was saying to God in very graphic terms that if he didn’t obey the terms of the covenant, if he didn’t do as he promised, then he would be cut off from God’s presence and from all the blessings that being in a relationship with God provide.

He would be cast off into outer darkness from the kingdom of God, just as he had cut off the foreskin of his flesh.

That’s how serious the rite of circumcision was, and the rite of circumcision did not even come close to the seriousness of what God is telling Abram to do in verses 9 and 10. The covenant ceremony was beyond every other.

Because it was a vow. It was an outward act from a servant to prove his undying loyalty to his master.

A servant would take a heifer and a goat and a ram and cut them in half. You he’d lay them out in a line, one here and one there, and by walking between them he would say, “I swear my loyalty to you, O Master, and if I do not keep my promise, may I be cut into pieces like this.”

Abram thinks this issue of always waffling between faith and fear is something God’s going to put an end to once and for all.

Abram thinks God’s had it with him, so God’s going to make him go through with this ceremony. God’s going to make Abram swear faith and trust by making him walk through those pieces.

And to Abram’s credit, he obeys. He gets the animals, kills them, divides them, lays them out, and then waits for God to tell him to get walking. And he waits. And waits. Just as he’s waited all these years for a son, right?

But what happens? Darkness comes down. It’s the darkness of judgment. And in the midst of the darkness is God Himself.

But God doesn’t say, “Walk through these pieces and swear your love and word to me, Abram my servant.” Instead, God walks through the pieces Himself.

Do you see how amazing this is? In Genesis 15:17, we are witness not to the Abram’s circumcision, but God’s. It’s God who is taking on the negative meaning of this covenant ceremony.

God passes through the pieces, and this is what he’s saying to Abram: “If there is one promise to you and your descendants that I fail to keep, Abram, then may I, the Lord your God, be cut in half. May the indivisible God be divided. May the infinite God be destroyed.”

Abraham is shocked, just like every biblical scholar and commentator who’s ever tried to understand Genesis 15 is shocked, because God’s not just saying, “I will bless you.” God is promising to die if He doesn’t bless Abram. He’s promising to be torn to pieces if he doesn’t bless Abram.

On that day, God said to Abram and to all those who would come after that He keeps His promises. God swore it, and He swore by the highest and holiest and most powerful authority possible: God swore it upon Himself.

And as amazing as that is, that isn’t all. That’s just the first shock of watching God move past those pieces. The other comes in the next verse, verse 18: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram … ”

God makes a covenant with Abram, and then he ends the ceremony. That’s it, and that was unheard of.

Because it was amazing for the master to come and walk through the pieces instead of the servant. And it was even more amazing that the master in this case is the Lord and Creator of all. But for the servant not to even have to make an oath? Abram couldn’t believe it.

God makes the oath and then ends things. He doesn’t make Abram swear to anything.

Abram doesn’t see how that can be, but he understands what it means. It means that God is making the promise for both of them. God is taking on both meanings of this covenant ceremony. He was taking on the promise and the curse.

In other words, God is telling Abram, and God is telling us, “Not only will I be torn to pieces if I don’t keep my promise, I’ll be torn to pieces if you don’t keep yours.”

And that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? Because try as we might, we can’t keep all of our promises. We’re broken. Sinful. And so God was torn to pieces on the cross, so we wouldn’t be. God endured the punishment we deserve.

One final point I want to make here. We can look at this story and we can even appreciate the untold power of it, we can understand what it means, and still miss the point because we can say, “Well, that’s amazing. But God did that just for Abram and his descendants, not for me.”

Okay, so who are the heirs of this promise God makes to Abram?

In Genesis 17, God gives Abram a new name — Abraham, which means “father of a multitude.” God says, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.”

A multitude of nations. So that means the heirs of Abraham won’t be limited to the Jewish nation. That matches with what God tells Abram in Genesis 12, where he says that in Abram “all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

And then we come to Paul, writing in Romans 9, verses 6-8:

“But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”

What’s Paul saying? Sometimes we almost have to translate Paul. He’s saying that this promise God made to Abram, this covenant ceremony, wasn’t made to every physical descendant of Abraham. Otherwise Ishmael would have been as blessed as Isaac, and Esau as blessed as Jacob.

It’s not the human family of Abraham who are heirs, Paul says, it’s the spiritual family of Abraham. It’s the people who don’t necessarily share Abraham’s blood and ancestry, but do share his faith and obedience.

In other words, this room is filled with the descendants of Abraham. When God walks through those carved animals and vows his vow, when he says may I be torn into pieces of one word I say doesn’t come true, he’s making that vow to you.

If you understand Genesis 15, you understand the heart of what the Bible is all about. If you understand Genesis 15, you realize that fear has no place in your life. God is your shield, and that shield is His promise. That shield is His vow.

“Oh Abraham, Abraham,” he says. And to all of us, “Oh world, Oh world. You can trust me because I will bless you no matter what.

“You can trust me because I will bless you even if it means that my immortality must become mortal.

“You can trust me because I will bless you even if my glory must be drowned in darkness.

“You can trust me because I will bless you even if I have to literally be torn to pieces.”

Does that sound like blind faith to you? No. That is as far from blind faith as it can be. Because our God is completely trustworthy.

People will risk what they own for us. They’ll risk their reputations for us. They’ll even risk their lives for us. But God risks His eternal being. God vows all that He is and all that He has as proof that He keeps his promises, every one.

That’s why you don’t have to be afraid. Not for today. Not for tomorrow. Not for what is happening or for what could happen, not for what people are saying or what the world is looking like.

Every moment when fear takes hold, what does God tell you? “Fear not, I am your shield.”

We look at stories of these heroes of the faith like Abraham and we say, “I wish I could be like them. I wish God could do things through me the way He did through them. I wish my life could be one of miracles and meaning.”

Do you know what those great heroes had but we don’t? Nothing. Not a thing. They were broken, fragile people like you and me, and God gave them the same promises that he gives us. The only difference is they leaned on those promises. They used those promises as a shield to fight off their fear. If you do that, God will work in ways you can’t imagine.

All through scripture — Moses leading Israel out of Egypt, Joshua bringing the people into the Promised Land — we see how God’s servants believed in and depended upon Him doing what’s impossible.

And they did it by trusting in the God who will not break His promises. The God who took an oath to always be trustworthy. The God who chose to be torn into pieces rather than let you down.

That is the God who lives today, and this God is the God of every child of His, including you.

Let’s pray:

Father we are so thankful for so many of your blessings, but today and everyday we are thankful for your patience. Patience in the face of our sin. Patience in the face of our worry. And patience in the face of the many fears that present themselves to us every day. Help us to remember, Father, that fear has no place in the Christian life, because you are our shield. Because you are the God of the unbroken promise. Because your word is holy, and pure, and completely trustworthy.

In a world where it often seems we can trust nothing and no one, help us to remember that you transcend the world. Help us to remember that you are the friend who will never turn away, the Savior who died for us, and the Father that will never allow his children to know the pain of being alone. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.

Our hymn of response is number 411. Would you please stand.

Benediction

Now may God grant to the living, grace; to the departed, rest; to the Nation, peace; to us all Your servants the promise of everlasting life, light to guide us on our way, courage to support us, and Your blessing to unite us in service to You our God and this our Country. Amen.