Good morning. I’m Pastor Jack from New Testament Baptist Church. It’s good to be with you guys again. I think this is my fourth or fifth time here this year. I enjoy coming down and getting an opportunity and a pleasure to get to share the word of God with you. For this morning, I am assigned the subject of conforming our mind to Christ in regards to not being afraid. So we’ll deal with the subject of fear. This morning, the subject of appear. Let’s start with a reading in second Timothy chapter one and verse seven. We’ll start with a reading there. Second Timothy chapter one and verse seven, Second Timothy 1:7.

Paul says to Timothy, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. You know, we are taught in the word of God that we are to have a fear of God. And it’s a fear as it comes, children, a fear of respect, a fear of reverence. As a child of God, we don’t have to fear the judgment of God against our sin if we’re already saved. We are in Christ. We’ve trusted Christ. We believe that he bore our judgment on the cross, took our sin debt upon himself, died in our place, was buried and rose again. So we don’t have to fear the judgment of God against our sin if we’ve trusted in Christ who bore the judgment of our sin.

But there is still a fear that we have of God as a child of God with great awe and reverence and respect. That kind of fear we still should have. Paul is speaking to Timothy about his fear of man. That’s what we want to talk mainly about, his fear of man. It’s obvious that’s what he’s talking about. When you read the next verse there in verse eight, when he says, therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God. God makes it clear that one he has not given us the spirit of fear. So when we talk about the fear of man, who is it that gives us that fear?

If God does not give us the spirit of fear, then that fear obviously is not of God. And so it would be of ourselves. It would be, of course, possibly the devil.

Right?

Does the devil want us to fear man? Sure he does. But when you have a fear of man, it can controls you. And that’s one of the things we’ll mention a little bit later, that fear controls you. So if we fear man, it must not be of God. I appreciate the passage that was read before we started in Psalm 27. Very good on that. You see, fear is a useful tool of Satan to paralyze us in the service of God. If we fear somebody, then you know what? We don’t love them. And if we don’t love them, we don’t serve them. And listen, our culture is full of trying to get us to fear People. When we fear people, we don’t minister to people. But when we love people and we don’t fear them, and we minister them.

See, perfect love in First John, we’re told, casts out fear. So long as we fear, we are paralyzed in all of our service to God. If we fear, we don’t cross the red seas. If we fear, we don’t face our Goliaths. If we fear, we’re like Peter. We deny the Lord. If we fear, then we don’t witness. See, fear is paralyzing to us. When a child of God fears man, it brings discouragement, it brings sadness, and ultimately it brings defeat. But when we have a proper fear of God, it brings courage, joy, and victory. See, the reason we don’t have courage, joy and victory, and we have the opposite of that is that we are fearing man more than we are fearing God. God is constantly telling us in the Word that we are not to fear man. It’s in there hundreds of times.

Fear is something that all of us will struggle with. Sometimes, almost every day, you will face something or somebody that will cause you to want to be afraid. So we need a constant reminder in our life to not fear man, do not fear defense feet, to not fear circumstances, but to trust in the Lord. Fear is the opposite of faith. And we’ll talk about that in just a moment. But this morning I was listening to my worship music, and on my worship playlist, I had Zach Williams come up on Fear is a Liar. How many of you know that song Fear Is a Liar? Isn’t that a good song? It’s a really good song. Fear is a Liar.

You see, fear tells us things that are not true, tells us things are not true about God, tells us things aren’t true about other people, tells us things aren’t true about ourselves. And so it comes down to this. Are we going to have faith and trust what is true and what is according to God? Or we want to trust in what fear says? Because fear has many voices and tells us a lot of things. And so I want to encourage you to think about that. Let’s move on here. For the sake of time, I want to, first of all, talk about the cause of fear. If I was to ask each one of you here today, what are some of your greatest fears? We’d probably come up with a lot of different things.

Not just people, but you might be afraid of snakes or spiders or whatever that might be. Those kind of fears of things that can actually hurt you.

You.

You know, those are. There’s a fear of certain things that are actually good because it protects you. I’m afraid of falling off of a cliff. That’s a good fear, right? That’s why. So I’m going to be careful. There are certain fear. I’m afraid of snakes. I hate snakes. So I don’t want to get too close to them. So there’s certain fears that we have that are legitimate fears. So we’re not talking about those kind of fears. So don’t come out on their side of this message that today and say, well, I can’t. I don’t be afraid of anything. Then you go do something stupid. So certain fears that are there to protect us. So we’re not talking about those kind of fears.

So if we talk about what we’re afraid of, you might talk about some of those things, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Isaiah 12:2 says this Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. He also is become my salvation.

Listen.

We become afraid of men. We become afraid of circumstances in life when we start trusting in ourselves rather than the Lord, or when we fear man and problems more than we trust God. You see, the only true way to overcome our fear is to trust in the Lord. No matter what our fear or worry may be, it’s often caused. If it’s a fear we shouldn’t have, it’s caused often by not trusting the Lord as we ought. I want to read another passage to you. You should turn there if you Matthew 14 I love this account here. I know it would be familiar to many of you may have read it, I’m sure, in Sunday school classes and such. But it is a great account here to help us with this subject of fear. In Matthew 14.

How many of you are familiar with the account of Peter walking on the water? Do you know about that? Raise your hand. All right, good. Matthew 14 and start with verse 22. Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Now when evening came, he was alone there, but the boat was out in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary. Now in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went to them walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, it is a coast, and they cried out for fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke To them, saying, be of good cheer. It is not. I do not be afraid. So what’s the opposite of fear there? Cheer.

Right.

Joy. See, fear will rob you of your joy. And Peter answered him and said, lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. So he said, come. And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go with Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid. So what caused him to be afraid? What he saw.

You see?

So now, though Peter had faith, obviously, to walk on water, now he’s walking by sight. He’s looking at the winds and the waves and beginning to sink. He cried out, saying, lord, save me. Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him and said to him, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And we may be able to say that Peter was afraid because of what he saw in verse 30. I think that’s very obvious. But if you really get down to it, he became afraid because he stopped looking at Christ. Listen, anything can almost make different people fear. I mean, I could be afraid of somebody or something for some reason, and maybe you wouldn’t. Some things might make you afraid. It maybe would make me afraid.

But the bottom line is, the really source of our fear is that we get our eyes off of Jesus Christ. When we keep our eyes on Christ, then it doesn’t matter if it’s the winds or the waves or whomever it may be in our life. The circumstances we can overcome fear when we look to Christ and we. We have our eyes on him and have faith. In Psalms 1:12 and verse 1, it talks about not fearing. And in verse 7, it talks about not fearing. Evil tidings. I don’t have time to turn there, but that word tidings speaks of news. Speaks of news. Something that’s heard a report, a rumor. And you know what? We can get fearful for lotteries. If you watch the news as an adult. All right, maybe young people, maybe you watch the news. Some of you probably don’t.

Some of you probably do. But there’s a lot of things that would make you afraid. If you focus in on the news, it affects you spiritually. And it causes a spirit of fear and anxiety and uncertainty because of how much bad. How many bad things have went on in the world. And when we see these things, what it needs to cause us to do is to run to the Lord and to trust in Him. Our heart needs to be fixed, set upon Him. There’s a lot of reasons why we may fear people. On this occasion in Matthew, Peter wasn’t fearing people, but he feared the circumstances around him, the wind and the ways. But most of the time our fears are sometimes just towards people. Edward Welch in his book wrote this. He said, we allow people’s opinions to bring us into bondage.

He said, one, we fear people because they can expose and humiliate us. Two, we fear people because they can reject, ridicule or despise us. Three, we fear people because they can attack, oppress or threaten us. These three reasons have one thing in common. They see people as bigger than God. I think the title of his book was that when people are bigger than God. And so he deals a lot with that. And when he said, when people are seen as bigger than God, he says, then out of fear that creates in us, we give other people the power and right to tell us what to feel, think to. And do you see, fear has a way of controlling us. Politicians do it, media does it.

People in your life can do it because fear is used as a tool of Satan to control us, to do certain things and to think certain ways. Now, some of the results of fear in our life I think would be pretty obvious. We get discouraged. What is the word discovery discouraged mean? Does anybody know what the word discouraged means? Not having the courage. This right, Courage. It’s a remove courage. We. And so that’s what we’re talking about, right? The opposite of having courage is to be discouraged. Mean you are afraid, you don’t have courage. To discourage can mean to break down either maybe by violence, confusion or fear. And you know, God is not the author of confusion. But so many times we get discouraged and our minds are racing in so many directions.

Fear is an instrument of Satan because when we fear, we don’t have courage and we don’t have faith to fight the good fight when we’re discouraged. Guess what? When you’re discouraged, you want to what? You want to quit? You want to give up? You don’t want to go on. We deal with this subject. We deal with fear very often in our life. You might deal with it even today. You might be afraid of something. You just want to quit. You want to give up. I’m just going to. And so what you’re really feeling, what you’re really hearing is you’re fearing failure. Well, I just won’t try. Guess what? You’re still failing. You’re still failing. So you’re letting your fear control you. Preachers, I’ve seen them get discouraged and they give up.

On preaching, parents sometimes get discouraged and look like they give up on raising their kids. Kids, you can get discouraged in school and give up. And let’s see if I want to do that. We get our eyes on our problems and all the what ifs and what may happen if this happens and that happens. And we just think more about things to be afraid of rather than the victory we want on the other side. And we get our eyes off of Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us. There are several other results of fear. Isolation was something that Edward Welch had mentioned in his book. And listen, when we fear people, they become bigger than God to us. And you know, when you’re afraid of people, you know what? You don’t. You don’t ever want to be around them, right?

Like I said about the snake earlier, because I fear a snake, I don’t want to be around them. You know what? So oftentimes we. When we fear people, we don’t want to do anything to be close to them. And that’s exactly what causes so much of our problems in our world and our society. We’ve got all this fear that’s being promoted between different people for different reasons. And what happens is it creates a division between people. And whenever we are divided between people, guess what? We don’t reach out to them. We won’t be close to them. And we stop communicating. We stop talking, and we don’t get anywhere then. And so we become isolated from the things or the people that we fear, and so we avoid them.

We cannot fear people’s opinion of us, for when we do, we will not ever get close enough to reach out to them. What? Snow wasn’t so afraid of what people might say or think or feel about us. Therefore, we don’t get close to them at all because we’re just afraid of rejection or ridicule or whatever it may be. We become afraid of maybe their sneers or their mockery or their reaction to us. Another one results of fear is overreaction. Overreaction. I’m sure all of you have done this. This at some point in your life. It’s something you’ve been very afraid of, and all of a sudden you overreacted. I would overreact. If a snake got me in the corner, I would act like a madman, all right? That’s how much I hate those things. But we do that with other people out of fear.

We overreact. Now, very quickly, let me just tell you some reason. Reasons why you should not be afraid. One, as a child of God. The Lord Jesus Christ has saved you. What else is there to be afraid of? I mean, if you’re right with the Almighty, you’re right with God, your Creator, the one who gave His Son for you, died for you on the cross, was buried and rose again, gave you eternal life. You’re on your way to glory and nobody can take that away from you. You’re grounded in the finish work of Christ. Why should we ever be afraid of man? Why should we be afraid of anything for that matter? If we are saved by the grace of God, why should we fear the wrath of man in any way? Don’t fear because God is your shield and protector.

Our Lord God has said that he has measured the water in the hollow of his hands as same God holds us in his hands. Don’t fear because God, the Lord Jesus is witness. You’ll often find in the word of God that many times, in order to encourage the people of God, the Lord will just encourage, especially the nation of Israel. Don’t fear for the Lord your God is with you. So we don’t have to fear because he has saved us. He’s our protector and he’s with us, and his powers are with us. We would be amazed at what would if our eyes could be opened at the angels of God that are with us in our life. There’s so many reasons we should not fear. But finally, when fear is gone, these are the things that you have in its place.

You have one, you have peace. The opposite of fear is peace. The Lord said to Gideon, peace be unto you. Fear not. I want peace. How about you? Well, you can’t have peace as long as you have fear. In God, I have put my trust. I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me. That’s peace talking. When fear is gone, we reach out back to what we mentioned just a little while ago. You know, when the Lord called his disciples out, he said at one point he was calling some of them out and he said, fear not. From now on, you will catch men.

Listen.

Fear keeps us from being a witness. Fear keeps us from evangelizing. When we fear man’s opinion, when we fear other people’s resentment or attacks, when we fear failure, when we fear messing up, when we fear saying the wrong thing, when we fear the possible imaginable evils that we could possibly think of, we will not reach out to individuals. You see, fear will control us if we don’t control it by faith in God and belief in his love for us. If we truly understand this morning how much the Lord our God loves us. And we grow, seek to grow in the knowledge of that love that Christ has for us. Then it helps us to escape the bondage of fear. Back to the passage I mentioned earlier. In First John 4, it says in verse 18, There is no fear in love.

But perfect love casts out fear. Because fear has tormented. Fear has torn me. I found that when I had a love for people that I ought to have, I wasn’t afraid to reach out to them. I wasn’t afraid of their rejection. Because love is greater than fear. See, that’s the thing we must overcome the most. In order to reach people, we’ve got to overcome our fear. And we overcome our fear by having the love of God in our hearts and loving them more than we fear their rejection. Loving them more than we fear their mockery. Loving them more than we fear their unkind gestures or looks. When you truly love people, then you don’t have to be afraid of them. When you are afraid of them, you will reach out to them. You see, the love of God casts out fear of man.

So listen to you that are saved. You know Jesus Christ. Be certain of this. God has not given you a spirit of fear. That’s not from the Lord. But he’s given you what? Not the spirit of fear, but of power. Of what? Of love. And of a sound Father in heaven, I pray that you would use this lesson today to encourage these young people, those that maybe don’t know Jesus, that they would trust him today and see that they need him more than anything else and that they need to fear your judgment. If they don’t know Christ, may they find, though, that when they trust Christ, the fear of judgment can be gone. Then help us, Lord, as your children, Lord, to not be afraid to put our trust in you.

And to know, Lord, that when we grow in the love of God, then also we will also not be afraid of man. Help us, Lord, to not be isolated. Help us, Lord, to reach out. Help us, Lord, to be willing to face our fears by faith in you. In Jesus name I pray and amen. Thank you very much.