Fear Not

Fear of Perception

Welcome

Good morning Local Christian Church. If we have not had the chance to meet yet my name is Jacob, I have the honor of serving on staff here as the Next Gen Minister. I want to welcome you all and thank you for being here this morning.

Joseph

Last week we kicked off our sermon series titled Fear Not with the story of Mary and her incredible faith and obedience to God despite the fear that she had. Last week Bruce talked about how scary it must have been for Mary to be told that she will be carrying the Son of God, and that she would be pregnant as a virgin. This was certainly not something that the people around her would believe easily including her husband to be, Joseph.

We know from the Gospel of Luke that Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel and He told her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and have a child that is the Son of God.

Matthew 1:18-25

In Matthew 1:18-25 we get a little bit of insight into how Joseph is feeling through all of this and what his thought process was.

Open your Bibles to Matthew 1:18-25 if you don’t have your Bible we will have it up on the Screen.

“18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ[e] took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). 24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.”

So Joseph finds out about Mary being pregnant before they were married and he decides that hes going to divorce her because he is faithful to the Law and thinks she was unfaithful to him. But Joseph was a just man who didn’t want to ruin her life or make a big stink about it so he decided he would just divorce her quietly and move on.

But God steps in and tells him whats going on.

God sends the angel of the LORD to Joseph and the first thing he says is “do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

Joseph obeys God and marries Mary.

This isn’t written in Scripture but i think its fair to say that Joseph was probably pretty worried about what other people were going to say about them. That’s only natural. Anyone who has placed their faith in Christ at some point has had those feelings, if you haven’t yet, you will.

Fear of Perception

Have you ever been afraid of how others will perceive you? Has God ever asked you to do something that would make others look down on you? Maybe God asked you to stick up to your friends about something they're doing? Whatever the case my be God often asks us to do things that scare us.

Becoming overly concerned with others' opinions can cause you to lose sight of God's view of you.

They know what God has told them, but others don’t.

God has called them to this, to raise the Son of God, to have a virgin birth, God has called Joseph to marry a pregnant woman. God, Mary, and Joseph all know that people are going to assume that she was unfaithful, they know that's coming.

A wonderful example of this is Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

St. Kateri Tekakwitha

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was the first native american Saint canonized within the catholic church. Saint Kateri was born to a Christian mother of the Algonquin tribe and to a non-Christian father of the Mohawks in 1656 in Ossernenon which was about 9 miles west of Auriesville, New York. At the age of four she lost both of her parents and her little bother to small pox. she survived small pox but was forever scared on her face and her eyesight was forever impared. St. Kateri was then raised by an uncle, the chief of the Turtle Clan, who was very wary of Christians and often opposed to them. At age 18 she started receiving instructions in the faith. Finally, her uncle reluctantly consented to her conversion and on Easter Sunday in 1676, she was baptized, taking the name Kateri, after St. Catherine of Siena. Although her uncle allowed her to convert, St. Kateri still had to face the hostility of her own tribe and she suffered greatly from them. They simply could not understand why she refused to work on Sundays, but since she would not work on Sundays, she would not eat on Sundays. They would regularly hide all the food from her, throw stones at her and insult her she would walk to the chapel. On one occasion, her uncle even sent a warrior to frighten her, as he pretended to attack her with a hatchet.

Eventually she was forced to flee 200 miles north to a french mission in Canada for fear of her life. Where she lived as a devout follower of Christ until she sadly passed away at age 24 from pneumonia.

The faith of Saint Kateri was incredible, Just 14 years before she was born in 1642 three French Jesuit missionaries were tortured and killed by the Mohawks in Ossernenon and two more four years later in 1646. She was born into an environment that was hostile to Christians yet she continued to stay strong in her faith facing ridicule, punishment, and even threats of death. Her faith is astounding. Her faith later inspired many of her tribe and tribes in the area to be converted and when she was officially canonized by the catholic church as a saint in 2012, more than 2,000 native American’s, the majority being Mohawk, traveled to Rome for the canonization.

Saint Kateri was the perfect example of suffering for the Gospel. Her hope in what is to come was greater than her fear of suffering. Her short yet faithful life was able to be an example for thousands of people to come and bring them to Jesus. She did not allow the culture around her to transform her but instead she transformed the culture.

One of our value statements we have here at Local is Transform the culture.

Romans 8:16-18 “16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

The Holy Spirit assures us that we are Children of God, but with that comes suffering. Yet that suffering pales in comparison to glory that we are coheirs with Christ in.

The one writing this would know better than most. In 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 Paul lists the many things he has suffered for the Gospel.

whipped with 39 lashes (5 different times)

beaten with rods (3 different times)

pummeled with stones (1 time)

shipwrecked (3 times)

adrift at sea (one night, one day)

journeys (frequent)

danger from rivers

danger from robbers

danger from his own people

danger from Gentiles

danger in the city

danger in the wilderness

danger at sea

danger from false brothers

toil and hardship

sleepless nights (many)

hungry and thirsty (often)

cold and exposed

the pressure of anxiety for all the churches (daily)

And ultimately death

All of this for the sake of the Gospel. Yet Paul still calls all of this suffering light. He writes

“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

We in america may never face threats of death, we may never have rocks thrown at us for just walking to church. But we still live in a culture that is opposed to the Christian lifestyle.

Our culture values and rewards things like; greed, vulgarity, sexual immorality, gluttony, drunkenness, use of drugs that inhibit the mind, individualism, and vengeful actions, and other things that are against the Christian value system.

There's a good chance you could be ridiculed by others for being “uncool” or maybe there's a family member who stops talking to you because your faith. Maybe you lose a friend because you’re unwilling to do the things you used to do together.

I have lost friends to Christ, and it hurts, and its painful, but its absolutely nothing, compared to heaven.

To be a little vulnerable, mother close your ears, something I used to do with my friends was smoking weed. When I found Jesus and gave my life to Him in submission, I stopped smoking. I wanted to live in a manor worthy of bearing the name of Christ. I lost almost all of those friends. One of them was very vocal and it was a big blow up but honestly whats worse was most people just drifted off leaving me isolated. That was a very hard time in my life where I felt scared and alone, but I pressed on and followed God. Praise God I was able to find a good community of believers that was able to walk with me and help me through that time.

But honestly even though it was hard and I went through a lot of heart ache I would absolutely do it again and again. Because all no amount of suffering is worth losing Christ over.

There’s a truth to this statement that may seem harsh but its true.

If you're not willing to be criticized for following God, you're not ready to be used by Him.

Now I am not saying that we cant be upset about being criticized or cant be hurt by it, but we have to be ready for it.

John 15:18–20 says,

““If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”

Christ makes it very clear that if we follow Him we are bound to run into some sort of trouble for His name sake.

But that's okay because no amount of trouble could ever stop the LORD. I know it seems like a daunting task, but thankfully we have plenty of good examples not only in Scripture but also in history of people who followed God well despite persecution. And above all of that, were not doing it alone.

We have each other and more importantly we have God, If we lean on the Holy Spirit and ask God to uphold us we cannot fail, we cannot lose.

Fear Not, Have Hope

There is no amount of suffering, or persecution, or humiliation, or any darkness that is able to take away our hope. Our hope lies in the eternal God who stepped down from glory, lived a perfect sinless life, died a criminals death that I deserved, yet was raised 3 days later by the power of God conquering sin and death forever. That is where our hope lies.

I’m going to share one more story that I think really encapsulates what this message is about.

This story comes out of John 4 and is the story of the woman at the well.

In this story Jesus and His disciples are traveling from Judea to Galilee. To get there they would usually go around Samaria because of years and years of conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans that would take me too long to explain, just know that they very much did not like each other. But Jesus being who He is decides to go through Samaria and the disciples go into the town to buy food but Jesus stops at this well alone at around noon. While He is there He meets a woman who is drawing water out of the well and so He begins to ask her to draw some water for Him. and she says to Him why are you, a Jewish man, asking for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? because Jews do not associate with Samaritans like I said before. They have this amazing conversation about water where Jesus tells her that He can give her living water then tells her that He is the Messiah the Son of God. During this conversation we find out that this woman had had 5 husbands in the past and was now living with a man who is not her husband and that she was drawing water in the heat of the day so that she would avoid seeing other people. The reason why she had been divorced 5 times is not necessarily known but theres two options that most scholars agree on. The first being that she had cheated on all of them and was now living with a man that she wasn’t married with. But scholars are now starting to think that what actually happened in this woman’s life is much sadder than that. It doesn’t make sense that she cheated on these men because at the time the punishment for a woman cheating on her husband was not divorce it was death. Also a woman could not divorce a man. So what scholars are thinking is that she was actually left 5 times by 5 different husbands over her life most likely because of infertility and the man she is with now won’t even marry her because of this. Pretty tragic honestly. This woman spends all of her time trying to avoid people because of this. Yet when she learns who Jesus is, the first thing she does is run into the town and tell all the people shes hiding from that she just met the Messiah. Encountering God changed her life and completely out shined her fear of perception. This story comes directly after the story of Nicodemus in John 3 a religious leader who wont meet Jesus in the daytime and wouldn’t follow Jesus because hes afraid of what others will think of him.

We have two choices when we encounter Jesus, to be paralyzed by fear of man, or step out in faith like the woman at the well.

Just like Joseph, just like Mary, just like the woman at the well, just like St Kateri, and just like Jesus Himself, we all are going to face some trials for the sake of Jesus. But the eternal God will uphold us and give us the strength to endure.

So what is it that you’re afraid to do?

Is it just claiming Jesus for the first time, taking the next steps in your faith proclaiming Jesus as Lord and being baptized?

Is it talking to your neighbor inviting them to church like we talked about in the last week?

Maybe its going into ministry?

Or is it something like starting that non prophet you’ve been thinking about that helps and loves on people that society says are bad or useless but God says are made in His image?

I’m not sure what it is for you, for me it was going into ministry. Leaving drugs and friends behind honestly wasn’t nearly as hard as it was going into ministry. I got the call clear as day yet I ran from it for a long time. I kept saying to God, “You don’t want me God, I’m a mess, I can’t even really read that well.” But God had other plans and He used me.

I still can’t do it on my own and I never could. But God was working in me and I am able to lean on Him and on my community of mentors and my fantastic wife.

If this is you, If you want to respond to Jesus, if you’re willing to take that step of faith please come speak to one of us, we want to talk to you. As the band comes up to play there will be some people dotted around here some in the back some in the front that would love to pray with you. IF you need to accept Jesus for the first time and find your next steps or maybe you just need support in leaving something behind for the sake of the Gospel please come share with us.

We will walk with you through whatever it is you need, we will stand next to you while insults are hurled at you. You have a home here with us.

lets pray.