Calvary Road Baptist Church
“The Repugnance Of Being Ruled By Fear”
Job 41.33; Second Timothy 1.7
Every time I go to a mission field, I am profoundly affected. Jhanisus and Monica might have observed it in Nepal. Daniel and Mara might have observed in Nepal. Stephen, Sophia, and Sarah were undoubtedly so affected in Israel. I suspect Emily was so affected in Romania.
Among the many aha moments I experienced in Ukraine, a country fighting for its survival, was related to fear. Americans are a fearful people, fearful in many ways. I am a longtime believer that most men in the USA are more affected by fear than they are affected by anything else, something wise women need to realize because wicked women already have realized it.
A few opening declarations to men who live in a country that boasts a bad boy decal on cars, with the phrase “No Fear!” Understand that the whole notion of “No Fear!” is a lie, a delusion, a pretense, a deception, and frequently a self-deception.
If you imagine you are without fear, you are wrong, and you entertain error. Perhaps it is because you have no realistic notion of fear, which does not necessarily feel scared. You fear! All fear! No one does not fear! You fear God, or you fear men! You cannot fear both God and men!
How can you know you do not fear God, you who are Churchgoing, you who are Bible-reading, you who are ministry-involved, you who are well-positioned in the congregation? How can you know what your children already know, loving you anyway?
You can know you do not fear God if, #1, you have no serious commitment to keeping His commandments, if #2, you have no ongoing practice of studying (more than just reading) God’s Word, if #3, assembling with other believers to worship God is not an overriding feature of your life, and, if, #4, you do not pray. Remember, when Adam and Eve improperly feared God, they hid from Him, did not seek to commune with Him, and did not seek Him out when they had wronged Him. When the child of God possesses an instructed fear of God, his conduct and reactions are very different.
By the way, fearing your father and your mother is a proper derivative of an instructed fear of God, while parents fearing their children is a derivative of not fearing God, Leviticus 19.3. I am not speaking of being scared of your parents but reverence them and doing what you can to avoid dishonoring them.
These things established, I observed a significantly different attitude toward fear in Ukraine than is almost universally true among my countrymen, which is one of the many benefits of traveling outside your country. The United States is a vast country with a terrified population, for the most part.
It has been a significant aspect of my ministry at this Church to point out this fear. However, what I learned in Ukraine deepened my appreciation of this issue. So, I bring it before you in two main points:
First, ALL HUMANITY EXPERIENCES FEAR
We learn of fear initially in Genesis 3.10, when Adam, answering God’s query, said, “And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” But the universality of fear is communicated poetically in Job 41.33, where the LORD declares to Job about leviathan, of all God’s creatures, “Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.”
Thus, you fear, I fear, we all fear. And we tend to fear wrongly, to fear like Adam feared. “So, what’s wrong with that?” you ask. First John 4.18 declares that “fear hath torment.” This Greek word for fear gives us phobia and refers to alarm, fright, and terror. And isn’t that miserable?
Are you up for examples of this crippling, debilitating, irrational scaredness?
How about the propaganda the left has waged on this country for years? First, it was global warming. Then, it was nuclear winter. Then, it was climate change. Then, “We are running out of fossil fuels!” After that, “There’s too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere!” Only last week, they tried and succeeded in scaring people with “A terrible hurricane is coming!” And what? It rained hard for a day.
Then there is the counterpropaganda coming at us from the right. Oh, yes. As the left seeks to scare people with lies about gun violence, the right uses the same logic to push an irrational fear in the opposite direction. “They are coming for your guns!” “But, pastor, they are!” I know that, but I realized in Ukraine that fear-mongering is counterproductive even when your side does it because he becomes reactive and irrational when someone is scared.
Here is another one, fear of a loud and boisterous woman. My wife’s father was such a sweetheart of a guy, but he was crushed for more than fifty years of marital misery by a big-mouth bully of a wife. She scared him into paralysis. I have told you of her nice guy but scared dad, but never before have I told you of my mother’s sister, Ruth. Everyone who knew her was scared to death of her. She was stunningly beautiful, intellectually brilliant, and ruthless in her determination to get her way, usually by bullying and threatening men. Only two men in her entire life were unmoved by her browbeating approach to men, my dad, and me, because I observed my dad dealing with her. That helped tremendously in my first pastorate, with a woman named Pat Ketner. Her husband and two sons lived in terror of her. She lasted a couple of weeks after I arrived as pastor. I always treated her kindly. I never raised my voice or expressed anger to her. But when she realized her shrieking bullying tactics did not work on me ... she left. Big-mouthed bullying women are all bluster and no reality. They try to intimidate and disrupt everyone around them. But their tactic only works with people who are afraid of them. So, if you are not afraid of them, they must hate you to justify not wanting to be around you. No matter how nicely you treat them, loudmouthed bully women will hate you for not being afraid of you, because their influence is ultimately the result of people being afraid of them.
Fourth, there is the fear of the bullying and cowardly man. Here there is the added physical threat of a bigger man intimidating and oftentimes actually assaulting a more petite woman. However, other than the added physical safety threat, the dynamics are the same as with a loud boisterous woman. The cowardly bully guy needs others to be afraid of him. The counter? Same as with anyone else. Fear God and not that person, as Sarah is the example to all women to fear God, First Peter 3.2, without fear of any man, First Peter 3.6.
But the epidemic of fear in our population doesn’t stop there. It extends to so many young single men who are still single long past marrying age, not because they prefer the single life, but because they are scared. They are scared of female rejection (and women can be brutal as a result of feminism) and are afraid to approach women, are afraid to ask for advice, and are afraid to risk embarrassment by breaking free from their low-risk adolescent approach to life as a single man. It is so heartbreaking that their sin of pride and perhaps addiction to Internet pornography dooms them to a life of single misery, men who might become great husbands and fathers were they ever converted to Christ.
An even more widespread problem than fear of rejection by women is fear of adverse pressure from their peers, other boys, and young men. Many young men fear other young men, especially their friends, even more than they are scared of being rejected by women. Why so? It goes more directly to their identity as a young man. They crave acceptance from a group whose common denominator is their craving for acceptance. They fear the disapproval of those most like them, so they must look like them, walk like them, dress like them, embrace their approach to life, and live for their approval.
Here is an undeniable one that will make far fewer people angry than my recent observations, the fear of COVID-19 by almost everyone. Does anyone deny the entire catastrophe was a man-made experiment to exercise control over an almost worldwide population that successfully made people afraid of not only their neighbors but also their family members and closest friends? Isn’t it disgusting how many pastors have demonstrated cowardice in the face of the Covid lockdown? It infuriates me, the betrayal of so many flocks by their undershepherds.
One last example. Parents who are afraid of their children, whether they are young or grown. They are afraid their children will reject them, leave them, and move on without them. And because their identity is their relationship with their children rather than their relationship with Christ, their children can exercise leverage over their parents they ought never to have. But they do because mommy and daddy are afraid of what the kids will do.
Then, THERE IS THE INSTRUCTED FEAR OF THE BELIEVER
The individual who denies he or she fears is either an idiot or a sociopath. We all fear, but there are uninstructed fears and there are instructed fears.
Throughout the Bible there is a persistent Biblical theme, expressed repeatedly in positive and negative terms. Fear God, but do not fear men or circumstances. Read through the Bible, and you will see for yourself.
When He called twelve to be His apostles, the Lord Jesus sent them forth as sheep among wolves, Matthew 10.16. He then told them how awful it would go for them and to what lengths they would suffer. It would be tough, and they would face grave challenges. But He directed them, in Matthew 10.28, establishing a standard for every other Christian to follow:
“fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
From Christ’s earthly ministry directive, we now consider the imperative of the letter to the Hebrews, Hebrews 12.28 and Hebrews 13.6:
“Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.”
“So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.”
From there we turn to the Apostle John’s declaration, in First John 4.18:
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”
The context shows love for God to be the issue addressed, as the next verse proves. But the point of the verse is that love for God and fear are incompatible. Perfect love, mature love, which would be the love that only the student of God’s Word can know, the maturing Christian is the one growing in his love for God. So, if you are scared, you do not love God, at least not in a mature way. Thus, the torment you experience from your fear is a giveaway that your relationship with God is not healthy, not mature because your fear shows that something is wrong!
Our terminus is Christ’s directive. Not His little flock of apostles, but a congregation in the city of Smyrna. Revelation 2.10:
“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
Our glorified Lord forewarned the congregation of coming persecution, including terrible suffering. It will result from Satanic opposition to their Christian lives and service to God in the congregation. It would be the worst experience of their lives because some of them will die. But He directed them to “Fear none of the those things which thou shalt suffer,” and promised, “and I will give thee a crown of life.” God’s plan, and the Savior’s purpose, has been for us never to be afraid, but to fear God. And He will make it worth our while. Methinks those who are genuine Christians will take Him up on His proposal.
I am not suggesting my trip to Ukraine introduced me to a perfect people who live in a perfect country. Not at all. However, as every nation has pros and cons, I observed an attitude in Ukraine. Am I reading into them what is not there? Possibly. I wasn’t there very long, and my exposure was to Ukrainian preachers, refugees, and fighting men. So, it was not a scientific sampling by any means.
But I think I detected a healthy attitude and a proper way of addressing a perceived threat. The Ukrainians don’t take kindly to anyone trying to make them afraid. They rejected the Covid lockdown mandate. They rejected the mask mandate. And both of those measures resulted from fearmongering, not science.
Interestingly, they expressed no animosity toward Ukrainians who left the country. Strangely, they were not antagonistic toward or challenged the motives of those who disagreed with them. I like that reaction, because one indication that someone is scared is that they judge the motives of those who are not scared like they happen to be. “I am reacting to the threat with fear, and if you do not also react with fear, your motives and concerns must be suspect.” I find that admirable.
Let’s bring this home. Are you scared? Are you afraid? That is not the same thing as exercising caution and discretion. I am wondering if you are scared if you are afraid. If so, you exhibit a telltale sign that you do not fear God and are denying Christ’s directive not to fear impending suffering.
The worst-case scenario of an individual who is afraid, who is scared, who is frightened, is a person who is not converted to Christ, and is not a believer in Jesus. Of course, a lost person will fear. His soul’s safety is not securely in Christ’s hands.
But fear what? Fear anything! Others or circumstances, Christians are directed to fear not, and unsaved people will undoubtedly be unable to fear not.
Of course, it is possible for a Christian to waver, to be weak in faith, and to stumble. Am I correct in my recollection that the pastor in Smyrna, the renowned Polycarp, wavered and then recovered to die a martyr’s death?
Fear is related to a sinner’s consideration of Christ and the Gospel. Many sinners fear the reactions of the unsaved around them, spouses, family members, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. It may be why you have rejected Christ to this point. You are afraid. Afraid of what? You don’t know. But you are afraid.
Read your Bible and note how often people are told to “Fear not.” Why so? When you are afraid, your decision-making is irrational and unreasonable. Remove the fear of all but God, and the wisdom of coming to Christ is apparent.
Also, reflect on how miserable you are as a scared person, always considering the opinions of others and how they will react. Does that not make you a slave? Be free. Think for yourself. Come to Christ.
Question? Comment?
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