Faith amid the Fear

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Well, you know, if I could sit down with each of you one-on-one and ask you about what kinds of things you’re afraid of, I’m sure I’d get some interesting answers from the whole group. Because we’re all afraid of something. We’re all afraid of something.

And there are some fears that are pretty common. There are some fears that are much less common. You know, some of the common fears are things like snakes.

I’ve got that one big time, if you all know this. Public speaking is a big fear for a lot of people. Some of you would rather go wrestle with the snakes than do what I’m doing right now.

Public speaking is a big fear that a lot of people have. Heights. Heights.

I thought my marriage might be over on day three when I decided to drive down the side of the Rio Grande Gorge. My wife has a fear of heights. That’s pretty common.

Clowns. I remember a few years ago when people were dressing up like clowns and jumping out trying to scare people. I’m amazed nobody got shot, at least that I know of.

I think there’s a reason why there wasn’t a lot of that clown nonsense that went on in our area. People knew better. But things like that are a pretty common fear, but there are some less common fears.

And I did a little research on this this week and found that some of the less common fears are things that occur in my own home. There’s something called telephobia, which is when somebody’s afraid of the telephone. I’ll tell you what, I worked for several years in insurance, and I took so much verbal abuse over the phone that I still have serious anxiety.

I’m not joking. I have serious anxiety about using the phone. I have to give myself a little pep talk before I make a phone call.

Earlier in the week, Charlie said, we’ve got a problem with the air conditioner. I need you to call somebody out. I said, can I just drive over there and ask them to come look at the air conditioner?

I need you to call them, so I did. But it took a serious pep talk for me to call them. Then there’s something called ombrophobia.

I couldn’t remember the name of it. Ombrophobia, fear of rain. Our dog has that.

We can tell when it’s going to rain within 15 miles of here because he’ll try to fling himself through the glass door to get into the house. There’s something called somnophobia, which all four of my children have, which is a fear of falling asleep. They’ve all got it.

They’ve all got it. We are all afraid of something. And a lot of people are afraid of a lot of things in our country today.

There’s a lot going on that we can be afraid of. There’s a lot going on that maybe we ought to be afraid of, depending on the circumstances, because it seems like we’ve been from one nationwide calamity to the next over the last six months. Six months.

It’s only been like three or four. Feels like six. Feels like a decade.

It feels like actually in March we went to sleep in 2020, Woke up the next day in 1918 with the pandemic. Then a couple months later, woke up in 1968 with what’s going on in the streets. It just feels like we’ve been from one thing to the next.

And don’t get me started on the murder hornets and the cicadas and everything else. We don’t know what’s about to happen. It’s kind of to the point where I wake up each morning, my eyes open, and I think, oh, dear Lord, what’s going to happen today?

I’m almost afraid to have Alexa tell me what’s in the news. It’s just easier not to think about it. We don’t know what’s about to happen.

We don’t know from day to day what’s going to happen, and that’s a scary thing. With everything in an uproar, it just seems like there’s nowhere to turn. It’s just bad news and things to be scared of everywhere we turn.

And that fear comes from the feeling that we don’t have control. If you think about it, the things that we’re afraid of are things we don’t have control over. We have skinks that live in our flower beds, kind of little lizard, And they look a lot like the snakes that also live in our area.

And Charla has asked me before, why are you okay with the skinks? Because I may just sit out there on the porch and they’ll run around the base of my chair and they’ll chase each other and they don’t bother me at all. Why are you okay with the skinks and not okay with the snakes?

I said, because the lizards have legs and I can tell which way they’re about to go. Those snakes, they curl back on themselves. You can’t control where a snake goes.

I don’t care what Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, said. You can’t control where the snake goes. There’s no control with snakes.

They scare me. There’s no control with how somebody’s going to react to me on the phone, so it’s a scary thing. Our fears involve things that we don’t have control over.

They all involve life throwing something our way that we worry that we can’t handle. And it’s possible for us in those moments of fear to become so paralyzed by the fear that we get to the point where we can’t function. And there are people, I hear from people, there are people that are on the verge of that in our country today.

They just feel like they can’t move because of all the stuff going on. And when we get to that point where the fear gets so overwhelming, the good news, though, is that the Bible has wisdom for us on how to deal with that. This morning, I’d like to take a detour from what I’ve been doing in 1 Peter and spend a few weeks on a series about how to navigate through these difficult times in a way that glorifies God, in a way that brings honor to God, in a way that lifts up Jesus Christ. And each week through this series, I want to look at one of the things that we go through in times of trouble and what the Bible teaches about it.

We’re going to deal with some of these things like, in these times of trouble, we’re afraid. We’re going to look at that today. In times like these, we may be angry.

We’re going to look at what the Bible says about how to deal with that anger. We may feel like our rights are being trampled. We’re going to look at what the Bible says about things like that.

Today, we’re going to look at fear. And if you’ll turn with me to Mark chapter 3, we’re going to look at one incident the Bible describes, which was a time of uncertainty when God’s people were afraid. Mark chapter 3.

Actually, it’s Mark chapter 4. For some reason, I’ve got Mark chapter 3 in my notes, but it’s Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 35.

On the same day when evening had come, he said to them, that’s Jesus, he said to them, let us cross over to the other side. Now when they had left the multitude, they took him along in the boat as he was, and other little boats were also with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling.

But he was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Then he arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace, be still.

And the wind ceased, and there was great calm. But he said to them, Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?

And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, Who can this be that even the wind and sea obey him? Now this is a story I’ve preached about a few times before here. But it’s applicable to a number of circumstances in our lives.

And when I got to thinking this week about everything our country’s going through, everything our community’s going through, and fear being a natural reaction to that, this was the story that leapt out from me, that the Bible can give us wisdom from. So we look at this story, and one of the first things that I noticed is, as they were afraid, being in the boat in the middle of the storm, they were afraid of all this, but they were in the boat because of Jesus.

you know they they were worried about what was going to happen to them over in this boat it’s a terrifying experience but they were in the boat because of jesus it’s not like jesus didn’t realize they were in the boat they were there because of him they had spent the day listening to jesus teach about the kingdom and you know his teaching about god and his kingdom should have increased their faith should have I’m not saying that to pick on them because you could easily say that about me all the study of God’s word should improve me in this area or that area, and yet here I am. It should have increased their faith, but their faith was still something they struggled with.

So they were only in the boat on the Sea of Galilee that day because after listening to him teach, he said, let’s go over to the other side, and they got on the boat with him to go with him to the other side so he could go and teach on the other side. Now, sometimes the reason I think that’s important for us to notice first thing off the bat that they were in the boat because of Jesus is because sometimes we get fearful because our circumstances get so bad that we think God has forgotten us or we think if this is going on in my life surely it’s got to be because I’ve wandered out of God’s will if I were in God’s will this wouldn’t happen to me that that’s not necessarily the case they were right where they were supposed to be they were with who they were supposed to be with, they were in that boat because of Jesus, and Jesus was right there with them.

They weren’t suffering this time of trial because they were in the wrong. They were suffering because they were exactly where they were supposed to be. I know in our minds it’s not supposed to be that way, but that’s how it works a lot of times.

So they were in the boat with Jesus. They were in the boat because of Jesus, and when all of this erupted, they reacted in a reasonable way from a human standpoint. They saw the storm.

They became afraid. Jesus reacted in a reasonable way from God’s perspective, and yet they misunderstood. They misinterpreted his reaction.

They misunderstood his stillness as thinking he didn’t care. So they panicked when the storm hit their small boat. I think I’ve talked about this before, some of the reasons why the storms get so violent in the Sea of Galilee.

It’s really just a large lake, but you get out there in the middle of the sea, And the storm, the storms can get pretty violent. It began to sink their boat. They were being tossed around.

They were taking on water. Everybody on the boat was gripped by terror except Jesus. And they really couldn’t understand why he wasn’t afraid.

Because they were so afraid, they were scared out of their minds. They couldn’t understand why he wasn’t afraid. He was asleep in the back of the boat.

Now, my wife says I can sleep through anything. Once I get to sleep, you could send a mariachi band through. That’s not entirely true.

But this is incredible. I don’t think I would have even slept through this kind of storm. Jesus is just back there as calm as can be, as comfortable as can be, sleeping in the back of the boat.

And his ability to sleep through this, this attitude, this posture of, I’ve spent the whole day faithfully teaching about my Father’s kingdom, and now I put myself, I entrust myself to his care while I drift off and have the sleep I need to carry on with that work. I’m entrusting myself to the Father. And so he rests.

They misinterpreted that as indifference to the peril that they were in, to the terrible situation. And they even asked him in verse 38, do you not care that we’re perishing? Now a question like that a lot of times is a statement.

You don’t care. Oh, all the times, all the times that we look at God, or even we look at others and say, you don’t care just because they don’t react in the way we think they ought to. But this question was accusing Jesus.

You don’t care. But what we see is it wasn’t indifference to their situation. It was confidence in God.

Confidence in his father, confidence in himself, but confidence in God. He had confidence in the father’s providential care. That means he had confidence that the father is always watching from heaven.

The father’s going to take care of it. The father wasn’t going to let anything happen to him or them until they had completed the work that he had called them to do. And he also had confidence in his own ability to handle the storm.

Because remember, Jesus is not just a man. He’s not just a good moral teacher. He is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity in human flesh.

If he can’t handle that storm, nobody can. All right? But he can handle the storm, and he knows it.

What’s there to get worried about? He’s got it all under control. But they misunderstood his stillness.

And so they accused him. But Jesus didn’t argue. Jesus really didn’t say anything at the beginning to set them straight he just got up and he dealt with the storm he did what only God could do he stood up and in verse 39 it says he rebuked the wind he commanded the sea in verse 39 peace be still it says now those words in there peace and be still those are two different Greek phrases and I won’t get into the into all the nitty-gritty details with you but just understand that those are two verb tenses there that basically he’s telling the sea, get still and stay still.

All right? Do it now and continue to do it, like we would tell our kids. We tell our kids, settle down.

Five minutes later, running wild again. No, I meant settle down and stay settled down. That’s what he’s telling the sea.

Peace and be still. And as a result of him just saying that, I mean, he didn’t even have to say abracadabra. He didn’t have to wave a magic wand.

He didn’t have to do anything special. He just said it. And because he’s Jesus, They obeyed. The seas stopped churning and the wind stopped raging.

Everything calmed down, verse 39 tells us. And Jesus turns to them in verse 40 and questions their lack of faith. They questioned his lack of care.

Where is your care for us? Where’s your concern for us? We’re afraid.

So when they’ve been asking this accusing question, where is your concern? He turns to them and says, where is your faith? How is it that you still doubt?

How is it that you still doubt? and then verse 41 tells us the disciples were now terrified for another reason it says they were exceedingly afraid they feared exceedingly they feared excessively they they were they just thought they were afraid of the storm it was a lot scarier when the storm stopped because jesus said so the reason why they were even more afraid now is they had encountered a power that was even greater than the storm. We know here in Oklahoma how powerful storms can be.

Imagine coming face to face with somebody more powerful than that tornado that levels the town. And that’s what they just experienced. Imagine the toughest storm you can picture coming through, and then somebody just says, knock it off, and that storm stops.

I think we would be a little afraid. I know as we read through it, a lot of us have heard this story over and over, maybe since we were kids, and we sort of lose our sense of wonder about what happened here. But they were afraid because they saw the power of God in full display.

He could speak this storm out of existence because he’s the one that spoke the whole universe into existence. Jesus was there and was just as much involved in the creation of everything as the Father was. And so if he could tell nothing to become something, he could tell something to become nothing.

All right. So they were afraid and they doubted that Jesus stepped up and handled it. Didn’t even have to lift a finger because there’s nothing in life that life can throw out it, throw at us.

That’s out of his control. It may be out of our control. There’s not a whole lot we do control.

As a matter of fact, sometimes we say, well, I’ve just got to let go of control. No, we’ve got to let go of the illusion of control because that’s all we had to begin with. There’s a lot in life that’s out of our control, but there’s not one thing in your life this that’s out of his control.

And so Jesus said they should have had more faith. And I want to be clear about this. Faith, I’m not telling you, I’m not telling you, oh, don’t be afraid of anything ever.

No, fear can be good. I think God instilled in us a sense of fear to let us know to prepare us when something bad’s about to happen or we’re about to make a mistake. Now, there are some things that we ought to be, that we ought to have a healthy fear of.

All right, faith is not a total lack of fear. Sometimes faith means trusting in God in spite of the fear. You know what?

It’s okay to be afraid when there’s a pandemic loose. It’s okay to be afraid when there’s civil unrest in the streets. It’s okay to be afraid when some kind of mutant bug is threatening to come over from Asia or wherever.

It’s okay to be afraid. Faith doesn’t mean you have to bury your head in the sand and pretend like there’s nothing to be afraid of. You know, here in the land of sunshine and roses.

No. Faith says, I’m afraid, but I trust God anyway. I’m not going to let my fear grip me to the point where I start doubting God’s care for me.

When we’re overwhelmed by fear of the storm, we need to take our eyes off of the size of the storm and focus our eyes instead on God. Because when we stop looking at the storm, stop focusing on that, we realize how big God really is. We’re overwhelmed by fear when we focus on the power of the storm, but we overwhelm that fear with faith when we focus instead on the power of God.

And I think just like the disciples this morning, when you’re most afraid, those moments when you are most afraid, those are the moments when you most need to trust God to be God. The bigger the fear, the bigger the faith needs to be. That you say, no, I’m not going to give in to the fear.

I’m not going to panic. I’m not going to be gripped by terror. I’m going to stand here and I’m going to trust God to be God while the storm rages all around me.

Because he’s bigger than any storm. So what are some of the storms this morning that hold your focus? You could probably get some interesting answers from this as well.

What are some of those storms? Is it the unrest in the streets? I’ll admit to being a little worried about that.

I’m enough of a student of history, in particular the cultural revolution in China in the 70s, to know that if some of these things, if some of the unrest spreads, it doesn’t lead anywhere good necessarily. Violence is not a good answer. Is it the unrest in the streets that is the storm you’re focused on?

Is it the remaining threat of the coronavirus? Is it still that fear of getting sick? Maybe it has nothing to do with what’s going on in the news.

Is it a financial struggle? Is it a family situation? Is it the news from the doctor?

We’ve got to figure out what those storms are that grip our focus. And we’ve got to realize that faith is where we trust God while the storm rages around us. Are you panicking about the storm or are you trusting God to handle it?

Do you have faith not that God can do what you want, but that he will do what he says? See, I heard this a few months ago, and I realized it was a profound statement. Somebody said that faith is not believing that God can do what you ask.

It’s believing that God will do what he said. I can ask God to do a lot of things that are not in keeping with his will, and he’s under no obligation to grant that. Faith is not saying, oh, I think he’s going to do it just because I asked.

Faith is believing that He’s going to do what He said. Faith is believing that He’ll always be true to His Word. And trusting God means resting our entire weight in His promise.

It means we don’t have a plan B. I’m not saying don’t plan for anything. I’m just saying we’re not looking at this and saying, I believe God can handle it, but if He doesn’t, I’m going to make a backup plan.

You know, faith, the old example I’ve heard for years, When we sit down in a chair, we don’t typically hover over the chair in case the chair doesn’t hold our weight, do we? Unless you’ve got a really rickety chair and then you don’t need to sit there anyway. But all of you sitting today look fairly comfortable in these seats because you are trusting.

You’re putting your full weight in that seat. You are trusting that that seat is going to hold you up. That’s what faith is.

We’re putting the whole weight of our trust in God to handle all of these problems. And yet we try to control our lives instead of submitting to God and trusting in His care for us. When we do that, we grow fearful like these disciples in the boat when we realize we can’t control the circumstances. But we ought to realize we never control the circumstances.

The only thing we really control is whether we respond to those circumstances in faith or in fear. so this morning I challenge you whatever you’re most fearful about whatever your biggest problem is whether it’s one of these things going on in the news whether it’s something that’s just news in your world whatever you’re most fearful about whatever your biggest problem is ask god to have his way in it and then leave it there with him doesn’t mean that you’re not going to feel some fear about it. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to feel some worry about it.

But in the midst of the fear, in the midst of the storm, say, I’m going to trust God to be God. I’m going to trust God to do what God does. I’m going to trust Him to handle this situation.

Even in the midst of my fear. Because we’re all afraid of something. And especially in times like these, we’ve all got problems that plague us.

We’ve all got something that we could give in to fear about it. But it’s so much better, as the disciples learned, it’s so much better and so much more effective to have faith and let God do what only he can do. God can deal with any problem, big or small.

Because if you think about it, the biggest problem that mankind has ever faced, the biggest problem that we face, I say it’s the biggest because it has the longest lasting consequences and it’s the thing we are least able to do anything about. The biggest problem that mankind has ever faced is the problem of sin. And I tell you what, we can work ourselves to death trying to do enough good to work off our sin debt.

We can work ourselves to death. We can exhaust ourselves trying to make ourselves good enough for God, and it will never work. Because all the good we can do will never erase any of the wrong that we’ve done, any of the times that we’ve disobeyed God.

So we’re powerless to deal with that problem of sin, and yet it’s got dire consequences. It not only is devastating in this life, but it’s devastating in the life to come. It will separate us from God here.

It’ll separate us from God in eternity and send us to hell away from Him. It’s destructive. And it’s a problem because God created us to have a relationship with Him, to live in perfect fellowship with Him.

That sin messed everything up. When we chose to go our own way and reject God, it messed everything up. It destroyed that relationship, separated us from him in a way that we can’t resolve.

We can’t resolve it, so God did. He dealt with that greatest problem that any of us face. And he dealt with it by sending Jesus once again.

Jesus didn’t just deal with the storm in the boat. He dealt with the storm of sin that rages in our souls. Jesus came and took responsibility for that sin that you and I have committed.

That sin that we’re guilty of, that sin that we owe the payment and the penalty for. Jesus came and took responsibility for that sin, for every bit of it. And he was nailed to the cross to shed his blood for us and to die in our place so that we could be forgiven.

And now because of that, God offers to forgive us. He offers to wipe the slate clean. He offers to count that sin as having been punished and paid for and dealt with in Jesus Christ. He promises to clear our account and bring us into a relationship with him.

Not because of any good we can do. Not because of anything we can deserve. But because Jesus died to pay for it in full.

So this morning, if you realize that you’re struggling under the weight of that problem of sin. Maybe you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior. You know God is distant.

You know you’ve sinned against God and you feel like He’s miles and miles away. And no matter how hard you try, you just don’t feel like you’re right with God. Today, cry out to God for help, just like they did.

But do it in faith. They cried out to Jesus in an accusing way. We’re supposed to cry out to Him in faith.

Admit that you’re a sinner. Admit that you know that sin is wrong. Tell God that you believe in Jesus Christ as your one and only Savior.

Believe with your whole heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for your sins in full, every single one of them, and rose again to prove it. And then ask God to forgive your sins because of what Jesus Christ did. And if you’ll call out to God this morning, wherever you are within the sound of my voice, if you’ll call out to God this morning, admit your sin, acknowledge Christ as your Savior, and ask God’s forgiveness, God will answer that prayer.

He promises in His Word that He will forgive you, that He’ll save you. He’ll give you a clean slate with Him and a relationship with Him that can never be broken.