Why Are You Afraid?

WHAT WOULD JESUS ASK? WHY ARE YOU AFRAID? DR. JIM DIXON OCTOBER 13, 2013 2 PETER 5:7-11, PHILIPPIANS 4:6-7, JOHN 14:27, HEBREWS 2:14-15 Gunther Gebel-Williams is regarded by many zoologists and many historians as perhaps the greatest wild animal tamer in world history. From 1968 to 1990, he worked with Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. He worked with lions, and he worked even more frequently with tigers, and particularly Bengal tigers. He worked as well with elephants. He was a world famous wild animal tamer. His show was called The Greatest Show On Earth. He was oftentimes called the Lord of the Rings, the Lord of the Rings and he performed before 200 million people in audiences with Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Nobody will ever forget the night that the lights went out in the big tent. Gunther Gebel-Williams was in the midst of his performance. He was surrounded by 20 Bengal tigers, and suddenly there was an electrical short, the lights went out, and the whole tent went completely dark. Gunther Gebel-Williams could not even see his hand in front of his face. It was pitch black. And of course, you must understand that Bengal tigers are huge. It is the largest member of the cat family. The females weigh up to 450 pounds and the males weigh up to 900 pounds. They can leap 30 feet through the air, and they can kill a human being with a single swipe of their forepaw. And they can see perfectly in the dark. Gunther Gebel-Williams knew that they could see him, but he also knew that they didn’t know that he couldn’t see them. So he faked it. And for the seconds and the minutes, which much of seemed like hours, he held his chair out and he kept striking with his whip as he went around 360 degrees again and again and again until finally the lights came back on. And there he was, still alive. Now, I don’t know what you’re facing. I don’t know what kind of darkness you feel like you’re in the midst of. I don’t know what kind of tigers are in the dark for you. I’m not sure what you’re afraid of. I only know that we all have fear and we all have tigers in the dark. And I know that for some of you it might be economic. It’s possible that, you’re thinking, well, here’s Jim retiring, and I’ll never be able to retire. You might be thinking that. You might be thinking, I’ll never have enough money to retire. You might be thinking, I’ll never have enough money to own a house of my own. You might be thinking that you’ll never get out from under the debt that you have. Maybe you are really fearful financially, with regard to your security. Maybe what you’re going through is medical, but you don’t know what you’re going through. Maybe you have some surgery that is scheduled and you’re kind of afraid, as you know you have some pretty serious surgery ahead of you and you’re already anxious. Maybe you have some tests that are kind of scary and you don’t know what the results are going to be, and you’re very anxious about what the outcome is going to be. Maybe you’ve been told that you have cancer. Maybe you’ve been told that you have cancer, and you’re kind of worried about what the outcome’s going to be and whether you’re going to make it. Life is filled with so many fears and anxieties. Maybe you have something relationally that you’re going through. Maybe you’ve lost somebody you love and it doesn’t seem like life could possibly be the same without them. Maybe somebody you love has rejected you, but walked away from you and you just can barely bear the pain. I don’t know what kind of anxieties or fears are kind of like tigers in the dark for you. I just know we all have these things. And I know the Bible deals constantly with this subject. The Bible deals with this constantly, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Again and again and again God talks to us about this subject of fear and anxiety. So in the Old Testament you have books like the Book of Daniel. You have stories like Daniel six—Daniel in the Lion’s den, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. These are stories that relate to fear and courage and faith. And the whole Old Testament is filled with stories that have to do with fear and courage and faith in the midst of that fear and how we can trust in God. Then, of course, in the New Testament, there are so many passages. And you think of the Sermon on the Mount. Shane is going to be leading us starting in two weeks with a series on the Sermon on the Mount, from Matthew five, six, and seven. That’s going to be a great series. but you think about Matthew chapter six and how Jesus told the parable the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. And He said, “Why are you anxious about your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, what you shall wear? The nations seek after such things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Seek first His kingdom.” Jesus asked this question and probes with this question again and again. And He might be talking there about a kind of economic anxiety as we learn to trust God in this world. But the Bible just deals with this subject again and again. And that’s why we had some of the scriptures we did today from one Peter chapter five, Philippians chapter four, Hebrews chapter two, and John chapter 14. Again and again, God wants us to learn to trust Him in the midst of our anxiety. The Bible uses a variety of Greek words for fear, and they don’t all mean the same thing. And I want you to understand, God has great compassion on our fears. He understands our frailty. He understands the dangers of this world. He understands how hard it is to live life in a world where there is so much darkness and where it’s so easy to be afraid. So God does have great compassion. There’s a variety of Greek words used in the New Testament. One is “phobos,” from which we get the word phobia. It can refer to fright or terror or fear, but it can also refer to reverence or awe and even worship. So this is a word with scope, and with considerable variety of meaning. There’s the word “merimna,” which is a Greek word meaning anxiety. Jesus used this word many times. But normally it means a kind of anxiety that’s rooted in fear. And there’s the word “deilia.” In fact, in John 14, where Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives give I unto you. Do not let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,” the Greek word is deilia, and this word is always negative. This word is never positive because it refers to a fear that oftentimes produces cowardice or timidity. It literally keeps us from doing what God wants us to do. It’s fear that prevents us from doing those things He’s called us to do. So this is kind of a paralyzing fear. So God looks at fear in all of its scope, and He has compassion, but He’s particularly concerned about those fears in our life that keep us from doing what He wants us to do, what He’s calling us to do. So I want to look at a few forms of fear briefly this morning. First of all, there is the fear of rejection. A lot of people in this world have a fear of rejection. I know I sometimes do, and throughout my life I have. I share a birthday with Emily Dickinson. Both of us were born on December 10th. She was born a little bit before me, on December 10th, 1830. You might be thinking, surely Jim was around already by then, but no. Emily Dickinson lived her whole life in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was introverted, She was shy, and kind of reclusive. But at the age of 30, her father died, and it became worse. Her introversion, her shyness, her reclusiveness grew deeper. She had loved her father, and he was gone. So, incredibly, for the next 26 years of her life, until she died at the age of 56, she spent almost all of her time in her bedroom on the second floor of that Amherst house in Massachusetts. She almost never came out. When she did, she went into her backyard to the garden. She always, when she came out, wore white. And when she died everybody in the community wanted to have a chance to go and see that bedroom where she had spent almost 27 years. What was up there? What was it like? What was she doing? And they went up there and they found over 1,700 poems, almost 1,800 poems. Today, many literary historians view her as one of the two or three greatest poets the world’s ever seen. There’s a lot of discussion and a lot of debate about what brought about her reclusiveness, but most believe it was fear of rejection. They trace it back to her teenage years when she really loved this teenage boy, and she longed to marry him and hoped desperately that they could be married. And he ultimately rejected her, and she could not bear the pain. She resolved that she would never experience that pain of rejection ever again. She would never love like that, she would never open herself up like that, and she would never be vulnerable like that, not ever again. She just went into her room and she expressed all of her emotions in her poetry. I know there’s nobody in this place today that has a fear of rejection so deep, or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be home in your bedroom. You would not be here if your fears of rejection were so deep. But we do have fear of rejection. We all have it. Love is risky. When you love, you make yourself vulnerable. And yet, this is the great commandment of Christ. So you look at John chapter 13 and the words of Jesus are, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.” So, this charge has been given to the people of Christ, that we would be known and characterized by our love. And yet, love is risky. We’re to love not only in our homes and to love our families, but we’re to love our neighbors and we’re to love at work and we’re even supposed to love our enemies. So you talk about a fear of rejection and the possibility of rejection rises if you really are loving your enemy. And yet, this is clearly the charge of Christ, that our love would be so great and so deep and have such scope that we would even love our enemies. So you look at Luke chapter six and the Sermon on the Plain and the words of Jesus, where He says, “I say to all who hear, love your enemy. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those that abuse you. To him who strikes you on one cheek, offer him the other as well. From him who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs of you, and from him who takes away your goods do not ask for them again. But as you would have men do to you, do so to them. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again. “But I say to you, love your enemy. Do good. Lend, expecting nothing in return, and you shall be called children the Most High, for He is kind even to the ungrateful and the selfish. So be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful.” Have you ever wondered what would happen if Christians really believed the words of Christ? Has that thought ever occurred to you? What would happen if the church of Christ actually believed the teachings of Christ? It’d be so radical. The power of the Holy Spirit would just descend from heaven. We would shake the foundations of the earth. We would transform cultures if we really believed the words of Christ. So we’re called to be people of risk and we’re to go out and we are to love. We are to love outside of our homes. We’re to love beyond our neighborhoods. We’re to love beyond our places of work. We’re to love even our enemies, despite the risk. It’s His command. There are people, too, who have a fear of failure. And I think fear of failure is a little bit like fear of rejection. But many people go through life with a great fear of failure. I want to tell you about a guy whose name was Sparky. That wasn’t his real name, but that was his nickname and that’s what everybody called him. Actually, what most people called him was loser. I mean, as a kid growing up, that’s what other kids called him: loser. Sparky was pretty much a failure. He flunked every single class. In eighth grade, he didn’t even have one class where he managed to get like a D minus. He flunked every single class and had to take eighth grade over. “Loser.” Then in high school he flunked a lot of classes. He flunked Latin. That’s kind of understandable. But he also flunked English and algebra and physics and many other more difficult courses. But again, everybody just called Sparky a loser. He wasn’t any good at sports. He just wasn’t very coordinated. And yet he wanted some popularity. He tried out twice for sports and never made the team. The coaches told him, Sparky, you’re just not coordinated. Find something else to do in life. But of course, the other kids called him loser. He wasn’t good relationally. For some reason, Sparky just always had a hard time making friends. In his heart, he long to have friends, but it was very hard for him to make friends. And in high school, he never had a single date. He wanted to go out, but never had a single date in high school. There’s one thing, though, that Sparky could do. Sparky could draw cartoons. Sparky could draw comic strips. I mean, even there, he was something of a failure. The first time he actually wanted people to see his comic strips, he submitted them through the school yearbook and it was rejected for the yearbook. When he was looking at a career, he tried to get a job with Disney Corporation and they turned him down. But ultimately, Sparky created a comic strip that wound up making more than $1 billion—not bad for a loser. That comic strip was called Peanuts, and Sparky was the nickname of Charles Schultz. It was Charles Schultz who created Charlie Brown and Lucy and Linus and the Peanuts comic strip. And if you know anything about his story, have you ever wondered how he managed to keep getting up every day and just giving it another try? Have you ever wondered, “How does a guy like that—who is just called loser and just does so poorly at so many things—find the strength and the courage to keep on keeping on?” And the answer is Jesus. Sparky had given his life to Christ when he was young. He died in the year 2000. He’s with the Lord today. But he always knew, he said, that Jesus loved him. He knew that wherever he was, whatever he was doing, that Jesus loved him. And he believed that Jesus not only had secured his soul, but was always at work for good in his life. So no matter what the day held, no matter what people said to him, no matter how he failed, he always knew that Christ was at work and that he was going to bring some good—some how, some way—out of everything. So I would ask you how you’re doing. I mean, I’ve noticed as a pastor that a lot of people are kind of afraid and a lot of people won’t even offer themselves in the service of Christ and won’t even volunteer because of fear. “I can’t sing in the choir. I just can’t take that chance. I might be embarrassed. My voice is… I don’t know how good it is. I don’t want to be embarrassed. So I don’t want to risk the choir.” And, “I don’t want to teach Sunday school. I care about kids, but I don’t know whether I know the Bible well enough. I don’t want to embarrass myself in the Sunday school. I don’t think I should try that.” Of course, I hope you understand that we have a lot of mercy around here, and we understand, because we’re all in this together and we really help people prepare for their service of Christ. And every week you have an opportunity to prepare a little bit, so you don’t just go into the classroom feeling completely unable. But you see, you must remember this word, deilia, as we looked at those Greek words. This is the word that offends Christ. It’s a kind of fear that keeps you from doing what he wants you to do. It’s the kind of fear that keeps you from doing His will. It’s the kind of fear that leads to cowardice. It’s the kind of fear that’s never confronted by courage. Some people think, well, I’m not even sure I could be a greeter because maybe my smile is not that natural, not that good. My hands are cold. I don’t know. There are lots of problems. People just are paralyzed by fear. And I hope you understand that I have been so honest with you to the point where Barb will say to me, “Why did you say that?” But I’ve been so honest with you about my fears. And I’ve told you how, through 31 years, I feel like my heart is just pounding with an accelerated heartbeat, tachycardia or something… it feels like it’s going to come out of my chest every time I walk up these steps to share the Word of God. I have fear. I have insecurities. I hated speech class, as I’ve told you. I couldn’t stand homiletics in seminary. I feel like I’m outside of my skillset, outside of my gift set. That’s where I spend most of my time. And yet, at least I’ve said yes to God. At least I’ve said, okay, I’ll give it a go. If there’s any reason (and believe me, I have no confidence that this is going to happen) that Christ might someday say to me, “Well done,” it would only be because I said yes when I wanted to say no. So, do you have any situation in your life where you think He wants you to say yes but you’re saying no because of fear? Because I think that’s what kind of puts Him off, when we allow fear to triumph in our lives and we don’t do what He’s asking us to do. Well, there’s another kind of fear, and we need to say a word about it before we are done. That’s fear of death. I know that fear of death is a very common thing in this world. You probably all have heard the phrase, “Houston, we have a problem.” You’ve all heard that. Who said that? It was it was Jack Swigert, the astronaut who lived right here in Colorado. When you go out to DIA, you see a big statue of Jack Swigert. It looks so cool. Jack’s real name was John. he went to Regis High, East High School, and CU—he was a buff. And he was on Apollo 13. Hollywood made a movie about Apollo 13. It was Kevin Bacon who played the part of Jack Swigert. And of course, Tom Hanks probably was the more famous character in Apollo 13, but they were supposed to be the third lunar landing, the third group to land on the moon. It never happened. When they were 200,000 miles from the earth, one of the oxygen tanks exploded and crippled some of the vital systems that controlled air and water, et cetera. I mean, it took the grace of God, a miracle, to bring those three astronauts home to earth safely. Just this week, Barbara and I went and saw the movie Gravity. And you think back to Apollo 13 and how that movie had some kind of cool special effects. It looks so primitive now when you go and see the movie Gravity, which is state-of-the-art, with incredible technology. The three-D is unbelievable. You really feel like you are out in space. And it’s kind of an amazing movie with a little bit of spiritualism, some kind of hope of life beyond this life. Nothing is explicitly Christian, but it shows the risk, the scariness, of outer space. But think about this: earth is pretty scary too. Have you ever thought, what is the death rate? I mean, I think we’ve discussed this before. If I’m not wrong, it’s a hundred percent right. The death rate is a hundred percent. So earth is a pretty scary place. I mean, when you look at a movie like Apollos 13 or even a movie like Gravity, there’s this “thanatophobia” that you see, this fear of death. The Greek word “thanatos” is the biblical word for death, and it refers to two types of death. It refers to spiritual death and physical death. Physical death is separation of the soul and spirit from the body. Spiritual death is separation of the soul and spirit from God. People should be afraid of spiritual death. Most people don’t give it a thought. What most people are afraid of is physical death. And you see that in these movies and in these outer space things. But on this earth, too, you see a lot of people with fear of physical death. Certainly, as a pastor, I’ve seen a lot of people with fear of death. And I’ve seen people respond to it in a variety of ways. Seen people respond to it with just an incredible focus on health, an incredible focus on diet and exercise. And understand, I’m all for health. I’m all for diet. I’m all for exercise. I might not look like it, but I’m all for diet and exercise. I think that’s part of good stewardship. But I think some people, in their fear of death, in their thanatophobia, have a kind of neurotic preoccupation with health that just almost consumes their days. They talk about health all the time. I think my dad was a little bit this way. My dad loved Christ, and he was a great Christian guy and certainly a servant of the church. He is with Christ today. But he had this kind of fear of death like many of us do. I think he kind of was a little bit preoccupied with staying alive and health and diet and exercise. And he talked about it too much. I think I kind of found myself sometimes thinking, I don’t want to talk about this, dad. But I think we live in a world where a lot of people are sort of like that. Then I see this fear of death as it impacts ministry. I know in the early days of my ministry, as I look back on the 31 years here, in those early years I had to wear a lot of hats, because we didn’t have the staff to do everything we needed done. So in those early years, I did pretty much all of our counseling and I did virtually all of our hospital calls in those early days and all of our funerals and most of our weddings. So I was constantly going to the hospitals up on 17th and virtually all the hospitals on hospital row, seeing people with all kinds of maladies and diseases. Of course, you must understand that I kind of am a hypochondriac, which I’m sure relates to fear. It might even have something to do down deep with fear of death. I remember as a kid, when I was very young, I had a heart murmur, and I remember going to Kaiser Permanente and the doctors huddling right by my bed, discussing my heart murmur. And I remember just being so afraid. And you go through your life and you can have some trauma points and you can, as you mature and as you want to be tough, find yourself trying to just rationally overcome some of those deep fears. Yet they’re deep and not so easily overcome. I know that when I would go to the hospitals and just visit people (I’d go almost every day) and try to serve Christ and do the best I could, by the time I got back to the church I usually felt like I had whatever it was I had observed in them. God’s got a sense of humor. But in the ministry, I’ve seen a lot of people die. I’ve been at hospitals with people while they’re dying. I’ve seen people who die well, and I’ve seen people who die poorly. And let me just say, I think how you live is more important to God than how you die. I think how you live is far more important to God than how you die. I don’t think you’re going to stand before Christ and He’s going to say, “Well, you sure did die well.” But I have noticed, as a pastor, being with people in their moments of death, that some of them had great clarity of thought, even as they were getting close to passing. People die differently and some die well, some die poorly. Some have great faith and some not so much. I’m just reminded of the fact constantly in the ministry that there are a lot of fears out there. I hope you understand that, for us, everything’s about Jesus. I hope you understand my whole ministry is about Jesus and our church is about Jesus. And the answer to fear and anxiety is Jesus. That’s why he says, “Cast all your anxieties on Me.” And from the very beginning, we’ve invited people to come to Jesus and to receive Jesus. It’s Jesus who died for our sins. He’s the one who died for my sins. It is Jesus who went to the cross, who died in substitutionary atonement, who died in my place. It is Jesus who paid the penalty for me. It is Jesus whose blood was shed and whose body was broken. It is Jesus whose offers to be our savior. So from the very beginning, we’ve invited folks to come to Jesus and to receive Him as their Savior and to find forgiveness of sins and that feeling of being totally forgiven and washed whiter than snow. And it was Jesus who conquered death, whom death could not hold. And we’ve celebrated this every Easter now for 31 years, many of them over at Fiddler’s Green. Jesus is risen and He’s alive, and He is the hope of the world. We’ve invited people to come to Jesus, not just to have their sins forgiven, but to have their soul secured with the promise of heaven and with an eternal future. Constantly we’ve invited folks to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. So as I conclude and preach kind of my last real sermon today, I just want to make sure that maybe, even at this late hour, perhaps you’ve not yet come to Jesus. Perhaps you’ve not given your sin and trusted your forgiveness to Him. Perhaps you’ve not trusted your tomorrows to Him. Perhaps you’ve not trusted your fears to Him and given everything to Him. So this could be the day, even at this late hour. So as we look to the Lord and as we close in prayer, would you pray with me?