Encouragement series - "Dealing With Fear" Key Texts: Genesis 3
Preached at St.Stephen's Anglican Church Willoughby, in about 1997.
G.S.Munro. From http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsmunro/resource.htm
What is your greatest fear? I want you to think for a moment, and just admit to yourself what you are most afraid of.
Fear is the most basic human emotion. You may think that's an overstatement. But I am convinced that fear is at the very core of our human condition.
Samuel Johnson, the great English writer, said, "fear is one of the passions of human nature, of which it is impossible to divest it."
Shakespeare, possibly the most respected English authority on human nature, puts these words in the mouth of a character from Richard the Third, Act II Scene 3.
"Truly the hearts of men are full of fear." I think he's right.
Fear is the natural emotional state of humanity. Think about it. So many people live life in a state of constant anxiety. The British rock group Pink Floyd commented on this when they said in a song called Time, "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way."
Think about how much fear controls what we do and say. We live our lives in fear of many things, from the trivial to the life shattering. And all we can do is hang on in quiet desperation.
The A.L.P. used fear in their election campaign. So did the Liberals. I loved that cartoon in the North Shore Times. There's Keating and Howard pointing at each other and saying simultaneously, "the reason you should vote for me is that if you don't you'll get him as Prime Minister." Seriously though, I know that some of you, who didn't back the winners, are afraid of what the next three years will bring under the new government we have.
Fear is what makes our society function. It even provides the basis for whole industries. The insurance industry. Or the advertising industry.
[overhead]. Look at this advertising leaflet. I received this in my letterbox a couple of years ago. I kept it because I thought it would make a good sermon illustration! "Are you REALLY safe?" the heading reads in large red letters. (It came out black on the photocopy of course). And there's a picture of a nasty looking man with big boots kicking in your front door. "Don't live in fear. The Safety Door Company is here." Whew, what a relief. Who are they kidding?
Other advertising is more subtle. Like shampoo, beauty care, clothing, diets, and all that stuff. All those ads play on our fears about what other people think of us. Do we have the right look? Are we slim enough, shapely enough, popular enough? We spend lots of money because of that kind of fear.
Fear is costly in other ways too. I wonder what percentage of national health costs are directly related to conditions caused by fear. Think about it. All the mental conditions brought about by psychologically exagerrated fears. The phobias. Irrational fears. The stress-related diseases, high blood pressure, ulcers and the like. Fear costs our society millions each year in health costs.
Behind all these fears lurks that most sinister fear of all. The fear we try to ignore, and spend all our lives trying to distract ourselves from. T.S.Eliot said "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." From dust we came and to dust we must return. Death.
Before I was a Christian, I lived in constant fear of death. It made it very hard to see much reason in life. It dominated my every waking moment. Now most people of course just try not to think about it. The french philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal said, "everything we pursue in life is just a distraction from the fact that we must die." But try as you might, you can't always pretend that you will forever. There is still the spectre of the void, opening up to swallow us all.
There is someONE we fear too. We must fear him, because in our natural state we do all we can to run away from Him. God.
We fear God, we fear death, we fear life. We fear the world we live in, and we fear other human beings. We fear our past, we fear our present, and most of all we fear the future. Our fears cover the whole range of human existence. They are Spiritual, Physical, Psychological, Rational, Emotional. There is no part of human nature that fear does not touch.
Now it was not always so. The bible gives us the clearest and most reasonable explanation for the current state of humanity. The Fall. Before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no fear in the world. Can you imagine a world without fear? I find it hard to comprehend. A world where you don't need locks. A world where you don't even need clothes.
Before the Fall, in the Garden, humanity was in perfect relationships. With the Creator. With each other. With the created order.
After the Fall, all relationships soured. And fear became the core emotion which motivates human beings.
Consider for a moment Adam's reaction to God in Genesis 3 verse ten. God knows what they have done. But he calls to Adam, to see what his reaction will be. "Where are you?" What does Adam say? "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid."
We see here the core emotion, the core motivation, and the core strategy of Adam, and of every man and woman.
The core emotion? I was afraid.
Before he sinned, there was nothing to fear. He had a perfectly honest, perfectly open, perfectly good relationship with Eve. He knew nothing of marital squabbles. God put them in a perfect environment with no death or suffering. The animals did not fear them, nor did they fear the animals. Adam didn't have to worry where his next meal was coming from. He didn't need to worry that he'd get skin cancer from the hole in the ozone layer, or be poisoned by pesticide residues. He had a job that was secure and meaningful. And he was on friendly terms with God.
But now, fear. And the beginning of all those human questions we know so well. Will life work? Will I survive? What will become of my children? Will I lose my job? Will people make fun of me? Will my marriage fail? Will anyone love me? Will my sin overtake me? Will God condemn me? The common element in all those questions is the emotion of fear.
Do you remember when you were a kid, what was the best thing about being afraid? You'd wake up in the middle of the night, and your mum or dad would come in, and reassure you, and hold you, and tell you that it will be alright. When you got a little older, you began to realise that parents can't always make it all right. But when you're a little kid, having someone you trust to tell you that it'll be okay, is just the best.
God is like that. He didn't leave humanity in their sin and fear. All through the Old Testament, he repeatedly deals with the fears of his people. Because God touches us at the centre of our being, and because fear is at the centre of our emotions, God touches our fear. He deals with it. He said to Abraham, when Abraham feared for his future, "Do not fear, Abram, for I am a shield to you, and your very great reward." Last year in our series on Jeremiah, we saw how that prophet was afraid to preach an unpopular message. God said to him "do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you."
Jesus told his disciples not to fear, and he tells us, "behold I am with you even to the very end of the age." And we saw in the reading from 1 John, how God's perfect love can replace fear as the motivation for our life. I'll say more about that in a moment.
I want you to come back to your answer to the question I asked at the beginning. What do you fear most? What if I asked you to share that with the person next to you? When I said that, how did you feel? Did your heart skip a beat? Relax, I'm not going to ask you to do that. I just want you to admit to yourself how afraid you are of what others think.
I'm not going to tell you my greatest fear until later in the sermon. But let me tell you one of my greatest fears. One of the things I fear most in my relationships with others. I am afraid that you will find out what I am really like on the inside, and that when you know, you won't like me. And I think most of us are the same, if we really are honest. We are afraid of people seeing us naked. I don't mean physically naked, I mean naked of all pretense, of the defences we put up, of all the masks we wear. As we really are. The true us, that only God and we ourselves see. And sometimes only God, because we can even fool ourselves. We pray in the communion service, "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden." God really is like that.
Well, Adam was afraid, and so are we.
Why was Adam afraid? What was his core motivation? I was afraid, because I was naked."
It is often said, "we fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them." I don't think so. It certainly wasn't the case with Adam. Before he knew he was naked, he knew not fear. He was ignorant of sin, because he was sinless. After the fall, he became a sinner. An imperfect creature. And what's more, he knew it. He knew he was sinful. He knew that he was rotten at the very core of his being, and he felt shame.
He realised that by his imperfection, he had become unacceptable to the Perfect God. He feared exposure. He feared that God would reject him.
Although OUR ultimate fear has to do with rejection by God, we learn to attach our fear to someone more tangibly present. We come to fear the rejection of our parents, friends, spouses, children, employers, pastors, congregations, and society.
But if this is true, if fear is at the core of every person, why don't we see more evidence of this fear in people's lives? After all, I look around at you and I see a lot of you who seem to have it all together. Nice families, nice homes, cheerful faces. Most of you seem quite relaxed. Some of you are too relaxed - wake up! In most settings, people display all kinds of emotions - anger, sadness, boredom, but rarely fear. Where is all this fear I'm talking about?
Well, it's the same place that the pink bunny is. What pink bunny? You didn't know there was a pink bunny in this room? Well there is. It's hidden. And that's where our fears are most of the time.
What was Adam's strategy for dealing with his fear of exposure?
"I was afraid, because I was naked, AND SO I HID."
Adam also hid from Eve. And she from him. They made coverings for themselves from fig leaves. Their perfect relationship was marred forever. No longer could they be completely open with each other as before. They felt the need to cover themselves.
Hiding from God, hiding from each other. That's the natural way that unregenerate, unconverted human beings act. Fear is the core emotion in our human personality. And the source of our fear is an awareness of our profoundly unnacceptable condition.
So what is our strategy for dealing with it? We hide from each other. We put on defensive layers. Masks if you like. And Satan stands there happily handing them to us to try on. He offers dozens of ways of feeling better about ourselves and making ourselves look better to others, instead of admitting what we are really like and finding acceptance in Christ.
Money, fame, power, luxury are among the most obvious things that people hide behind. But other strategies are more subtle. Social assertion; a critical spirit; shyness; respectability; dogmatism; sociability; sarcasm. One strategy I used to use all the time was flippancy. Always play the clown. Make a joke of everything. That's a great way to hide how you're feeling about yourself.
When we find strategies that work, we put them on as protective layers. A layer is whatever we do or don't do to protect ourselves from exposure and help us avoid what we fear.
If you're in a home bible study group, think about the dynamics of your group. There will be some in the group who never offer an opinion because they fear it may be ridiculed or exposed as incorrect. If that becomes a habit, we might say they are a shy person. Some go to the other extreme. They thrive on being noticed. They give a strong opinion about everything. For them, being talkative may be a layer designed to ward of rejection and win acceptance.
What happens when Christians only have fellowship on a layer to layer basis? We relate by merely bouncing off one anothers' layers, never really touching each other. We feel unsatisfied, distant, untouched, superficial, and safe.
The price of that safety is surface community. A shallow set of relationships where we are afraid to help each other with the real issues below the surface. We won't deal with them because we fear rejection. Because we think we have to be a certain kind of person to be accepted in the church. And surface community won't produce encouragement.
What is God's solution to fear?
It's very simple, yet very profound. Love. The passage we read from 1 John had much to say about love, and I suggest you go home and meditate on it a lot. Read it through at least five times.
God is love. Perfect love drives out fear.
My greatest fear I guess, is losing God. Getting to the gates of paradise and hearing those awful words, "I never knew you, depart from me, you worker of iniquity."
But God has dealt with that fear in the gospel. He gives me assurance in the blood of Christ shed for me, that I will never hear those words.
And if Almighty God, who knows everything there is to know about me, if he accepts me in Christ, then why do I need to fear you?
Love is the only possible antidote to our core emotion of fear. Why? Because only love can convince us that we won't be rejected.
Only a great act of love can take away our fear. How do I know God loves me and is no longer angry at me? Jesus, God in the flesh, died in my place.
Jesus knew fear like you and I will never know. In the garden of Gethsemane, he was so afraid of bearing the sins of the whole world, that he sweated great drops of blood as he prayed. Yet despite his fear, he accomplished all the Father sent him to do. He did the ultimate act of love so that our fear could be taken away. Perfect love drives out all fear.
God's perfect love drives our fear away, and gives us confidence to approach him as his forgiven and dearly loved children.
If we experience that love from God, then we will relate to each other on the same basis. If we act towards one another as a community of forgiven sinners who love one another despite all our failures, then, and only then, will real encouragement take place. Only then will we feel confident to be more honest with other, and to take off our masks.
Now, as we will see in two weeks time, when Ken preaches on openness versus commitment, that doesn't mean just airing all our dirty washing in public. It doesn't mean just saying anything to anyone anytime. You have to consider the effect it will have on the other person. But it does mean fostering an atmosphere of mutual trust.
When Cath and I got married, I said this to her. "I want you to know that no matter what you tell me about yourself, it will not make me think any less of you, or love you less." As a pastor of this church, I want to say that to you all. I speak for Paul, and Ken, and the other pastors. We are here not to be your moral policemen, waiting to catch you out. We are here to help you up when you fall down, to love you, to lead you to faith in Christ. Please, if you are struggling with anything, come to us and let us share the burden, or tell some other Christian friend you trust and who is able to bear the load. And you must treat us that way too, when we reveal our fears and weaknesses.
Conclusion:
What is the opposite of fear? It's trust, isn't it?
Fear is the opposite of trust. Trust is just another word for faith. George Macdonald said, "Fear is faithlessness." Fear is faithlessness. That's not talking about the kind of fear that you feel before a battle, or when you're about to undergo a painful operation. It's not talking about the fear Jesus felt at going to the cross. But it's true of the kind of fear we feel towards God our heavenly Father, when we are tempted to believe that our sin is too great to be forgiven. As if Jesus dying on the cross wasn't enough. It's true when we relate to each other always on a mere surface level. That kind of fear is faithless, because we put it ahead of God's assurance that he loves us.
Someone said this. "Fear knocked at the door. Faith got up and answered it. No one was there."
God can deal with your fears, but you have to be willing to face them. When fear knocks, answer the door with faith.