Faith Beyond Our Fears

[Below, you'll find the message prepared for today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You can also view the live stream video of both the services. Have a good week and God bless you!]

Genesis 15:1-6

Often in both the Old and New Testaments, when God or an angel sent by God encountered human beings, the first thing God or His messengers told people was, “Don’t be afraid.”

One reason for saying this is that it’s intimidating to be in the presence of God or of angels who directly reflect the glory of God.

But there are other reasons for these admonitions. In one of his Christmas sermons, Martin Luther recounts how, on Christmas night, an angel visited shepherds.”Fear not,’ said the angel,” Luther noted. Luther then confessed: “I fear death, the judgment of God, the world, hunger, and the like.”

Luther is right, isn’t he? We fear many things.

Parents fear for the safety of their kids when they send them off to school and when they see their teens get behind the wheel of a car.

Grandparents fear that their children and grandchildren will turn from Christ and the Church.

Employees fear being laid off. Consumers fear that inflation will eat up their savings and retirement accounts.

And with things like COVID, monkeypox, and the re-emergence of polio among the non-immunized over the past few years, people have feared for their health, the health of their loved ones, and for their lives.

Fear is the opposite of faith.

Faith trusts in God, in the promises of God, in the finished work of the crucified and risen Jesus assuring us that God will never leave us nor forsake us and that all who trust–who believe, who have faith–in Jesus will be raised from the dead even as Jesus was raised.

To Christians who receive the Holy Spirit at their baptism, God’s Word says: “The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. If the same Holy Spirit [The Holy Spirit Who enables you to believe in Jesus. If the same Holy Spirit…] lives in you, He will give life to your bodies in the same way.” (Romans 8:11)

Because faith is foreign to our natures, God even gives us faith in Jesus. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” we’re told in Ephesians 2:8.

Faith overcomes fear when, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in God’s Word, we trust that “the one who believes in [Jesus] will live, even though they die…” (John 11:25)

In saying that fear is the opposite of faith, we’re not saying that we should throw caution to the wind! When the devil tempted Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus didn’t do it. Stupid is still stupid, even when you have faith!

God’s Word tells us that our “bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit…You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

Jesus, by His death on the cross, has bought us out of our slavery to sin and death. We believe that these bodies, even after they’ve aged and deteriorated, even after death when we’ve been reduced to dust, will rise to live eternally with God. Since God values our physical bodies so much, we also are called to treat them with reverence. 

But, friends, we need never fear that God has forgotten us.

Or that we are alone.

Or that our sins are too great for Him to forgive.

Or that our prayers are too insignificant for Him to hear.

Or that Jesus’ resurrection promises are for everyone but us.

Because God acted on Good Friday and Easter Sunday to save us from sin, death, and condemnation, we need not fear anything!

But as long as we live on this earth, the battle between faith and fear will rage within us.

We see this battle in Abram, later renamed by God, Abraham, the ancestral father of God’s people, ancient Israel, in our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 15:1-6.

The book of Hebrews tells us: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8)

Abraham had faith in God. He also often caved into fear, afraid that God couldn’t be trusted to keep His promises. Twice to save his own neck, he lied to kings through whose territory he traveled, claiming that his wife was actually his sister, nearly tripping the kings into adultery with Sarah. Afraid that God had forgotten His promise to provide Sarah and him with a son and many descendants, he went along with Sarah’s plan of impregnating Sarah’s slave Hagar.

Fear causes us to underestimate God and to take sinful shortcuts because we don’t trust God to fulfill His promises.

When we join Abram today, God has just done two amazing things for him. First, he helped Abram, in concert with some local potentates, to save the family of his relative Lot after they were kidnapped by several strong armies. God had accomplished this impossible thing, giving Abram a front-row seat on God’s grace. Then, God sent Melchizedek, the king of a place called Salem, now Jerusalem, and also a priest of God, to Abram with bread and wine as signs that He hasn’t forgotten His promises.

After these things, Abram should be fortified in faith.

Instead, God finds Abram wallowing in fear.

God tells Abram: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” (Genesis 15:1)

Listen, friends, the Law is of God. It’s His perfect will for human beings. Among those laws is that we trust in God. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…” God’s Word tells us. Proverbs 3:5)

But, have you noticed that being told things like, “Trust in God” or “You shall have no other gods before Me” doesn’t make us less prone to putting other things ahead of God? At most, hearing God’s Law, even from the mouth of God Himself, makes us conscious of our need for repentance.

But God’s Law, perfect though it is, cannot save us. It can’t make us righteous, acceptable to God, or prop up any self-driven self-improvement program.

So, after God tells Abram to not be afraid, Abram vents his fears: “‘Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abram said, ‘You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.’” (Genesis 15:2-3)

Think about Abram’s words. “Elohim Yahweh,” he’s saying, “you’ve done some interesting things in my life. But when are you going to come through for me? When will you start paying off on that promise of nations of faithful people descending from my wife and me then?”

Now, God would have been justified in giving Abram a big smackdown at this point.

But it’s now that God speaks not the Law to Abram, but words of promise, what we could call Gospel, good news. “This man [Eliezer] will not be your heir,” God tells Abram, “but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” Then God takes Abram outside and God tells Abram, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them….So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5)

Nothing about Abram’s objective situation has changed as of this moment.

He and his wife are still childless.

They still aren’t sure where they’re going to live permanently.

They can’t see the multitudes of nations that were to issue from them.

But, by the power of the Word of God, by the power of God’s good will for fallen, imperfect human beings like Abram, like you and me, faith supplanted fear.

God, you remember, once brought the universe into existence by speaking His Word into lifeless, disordered chaos. God brings faith into the lives of sometimes fearful people as He speaks His Word of promise and love into our chaos.

And so, the last verse of our lesson tells us that after God had preached His Word of promise to Abram: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)

Abram’s faith wasn’t Abram’s accomplishment. Faith, faith that saves us from sin and death, that takes hold of the promises of God, comes to us through God’s Word as a free gift.

Standing under God’s Word of promise, hearing it, receiving it, is what gives us a faith that, in spite of our sins, including the sins of fear, dread, and despair, God reckons to us as righteousness.

It’s the kind of faith that Abraham had when He heard God’s Word.

It’s the kind of faith that turned back to God again and again, even after sin and failure.

It’s the kind of faith that today, the Word of God about Jesus Who died and rose for you, gives to you as you receive it.

In the Law, God tells us, “Do not fear.”

In the Gospel, God says, “I have already overcome all that causes you to fear.”

Today, friends, God tells us we need not be afraid. Nothing this world or our sins can do to us can separate those who take refuge in Jesus, God the Son, Who enables us to trust in the Gospel from the God Who loves us.

Just like Abraham, we may not be able to see how God will fulfill His promises to us. Nonetheless, His Word comes to all who confess in Christ again this morning and tells us, “You belong to God, now and forever.” Amen!

Tonight's Weeknight Study of the Gospel of John, Chapter 18

The actual study begins at 12:08. I was unable to edit it from the video. I had gone on earlier in hopes of including some pictures and links in the comments but was unable to do so.

Get Up; Don't Be Afraid!

[This message was shared yesterday morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 17:1-9

Ann and I had lived in the house we rented from our home church in Columbus for only a short time when, early one Friday evening, an emergency squad went to the house across the street. 

Later, I saw EMS personnel pack up their things and leave. 

I had just returned to faith in Christ. As I saw the squad pull away without taking anyone from the home on a stretcher, I prayed, “Lord, what should I do?” My thought was that someone was ill and that maybe I could run to a drug store and pick up a prescription for them. I didn't want to be a busybody, but God kept impressing on me the need to cross the street and find out what I could do.

Within seconds, I found myself crossing the street to the house of neighbors I hadn’t yet met. 

The elderly man who answered the knock on my door looked dazed, in a state of shock. 

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I saw the squad and wondered if I could do anything to help.” 

At that, the man flung open the front door with his left hand and waved his right hand, gesturing to the figure of an elderly woman on the floor. 

“My wife just died. We were having dinner. She didn’t feel well. I brought her into the living room. She collapsed. I called the squad. She had a heart attack. They couldn’t do anything.” 

It was, at that moment, the last place I wanted to be. I had always been terrified of death. I even avoided funerals whenever I could. 

I prayed as I spoke next. “Why did they leave your wife here?” I asked, trying to make some sense of the situation. “The police have to come to certify her death before they can take her,” he told me.

The next forty minutes or so, I called my neighbor’s adult children, his priest, and the funeral home. After that, I sat with him as we waited for the police and the others to arrive. 

Once people got there, I  walked back across the street, thanking God that I had listened to what He had told me to do (you know, “Love your neighbor”) and thanked Him for banishing my fear. 

God had moved me from cowering in fear to being emboldened by His grace. That seemed like a miracle to me. It still does.

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 17:1-9, tells the familiar story of the Transfiguration. 

In it, the trio of Peter, James, and John, three of Jesus’ disciples, go to the top of an unidentified mountain with Jesus. 

There Jesus’ appearance is transfigured, His face shining like the sun, His clothing as white as the light. Then, Jesus is visited by Moses, Israel’s great giver of God’s Law, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet.

But what exactly does the Transfiguration mean? What is the Goe we know in Jesus telling us in this incident? 

Above all, I think, in the Transfiguration, God demonstrates that in Christ, He can move all of us who cower in fear before the realities of life, be they the reality of death and that of the infinite perfection--the holiness--of God, Who has every right to condemn us for our sin, to a place of assurance and peace and life through faith in Jesus. 

Jesus shows us that, despite what we may deserve as sinners who have violated God’s holiness, God wants to save us not condemn us. God wants to comfort us, strengthen us, give us life with Him that never ends.

Six days before the events recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells His disciples: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)

In today’s lesson about the Transfiguration, surrounded by the light of eternity itself, Jesus’ promise comes true. 

In Jesus, the kingdom of heaven comes into the world and Peter, James, and John know that it’s true, even if they don’t understand exactly what Jesus means when He speaks, as He often does, of suffering, dying, and rising, or when He tells us of our need to take up our crosses--to own our sin and morality and need of Him for life--and follow Him.

Imagine being those three disciples with Jesus on that mountain, especially after they heard the Voice from heaven tell them: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” 

Matthew says that the three fell on their faces, terrified. 

What happens when human beings, mortal and marred by the imperfection of their sin, come into the presence of God? 

Well, if they have any sense, they do what we do when we begin our worship each Sunday: They recognize that they “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

Hebrews 10:31 tells us that, “It is a dreadful thing [a dread-filled thing] to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Friends, it is a dreadful thing, unless, hear me now, your sins and imperfections are covered over by God’s grace through your faith in Jesus. 

And it’s precisely at the moment that the moment the disciples realize how imperfect they are and how perfect Jesus is, how Jesus is God and they need Him for life and forgiveness, that the grace of God comes to Peter, James, and John. It comes to loud-mouthed, impulsive, know-it-all Peter and it comes to the two other disciples who, just like us, were mortal, imperfect, and sinners.

After the Voice spoke heaven’s affirmation of Jesus as the Messiah Who would suffer, the sinless God Who would die for His sinful children, Matthew says--in a beautiful passage of Scripture--that “Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.” (Matthew 17:8)

For God to banish our fear, to give us the power to live each day, to give us the certainty that God has us in the palm of His hand for all eternity, we need to look to Jesus and no one except Jesus. 

That’s because no one but Jesus can overcome the terror we feel in the face of this world’s realites: The realities of death, suffering, adversity, relational discord, self-doubt, prejudice, fear, our own inadequacies, our pride, our ego, and all the other horrors wrought by human sin, by our sin. 

We may try to cover our fears over with bravado or false notions that if we’re good enough or work hard enough that death and suffering won’t touch us or that God will owe us a place in His kingdom. But listen: God owes us nothing. On our own, we can never be good enough and we will forever live or die in our fear or our bravado. 

But when we listen to God’s Word about Jesus--”This is My Son...listen to Him,” God creates within us a faith in Jesus that vetoes, overpowers, and negates our fears. 

He gives us the capacity to trust in the resurrected life Jesus promises to all who trust in Him. 

That isn’t to say that we never feel fear as human beings; as long as we live on this earth, we will know fear, especially in the face of death. We will be like the guy who said, “I don’t fear dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

But when Jesus comes to us--as He does today in His Word, in the fellowship of believers, and in His body and blood in the sacrament, He touches us again and He says, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.” 

And when we respond to that call, we will find that wherever we look, we will see Jesus. I saw Him that night long ago in the dazed and grieving features of a neighbor who had just lost His wife. 

Jesus, Who touches us and calls us to get up and follow Him, empowers us, as He did Peter, James, and John, to go into the places where life and death, birth and suffering, joy and sorrow intermingle. 

With Jesus, we can face anything: Readied by His gracious forgiveness to look our Lord face to face, to face life and death, to love God and love neighbor, to share the good news of new life through faith in Jesus even with skeptical friends. 

When you turn to Jesus each day, He will move you from being one who cowers in fear before life’s realities to one emboldened to live--fully live--in the kingdom of heaven, now and always. 

Today..and tomorrow too...don’t be afraid, friends. Follow Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Faith or Fear (AUDIO)

The contest happens within us every day: faith or fear? Listen to the message here. I hope you find it helpful.

Faith or Fear?

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 1:18-25
I was ordained as a pastor, serving my first parish. Even before I was ordained, I had preached and led worship every Sunday of my year-long seminary internship and done these things at lots of churches all over Ohio. 

But now, Sunday mornings were agony. Each week, I woke up feeling sick to my stomach, feverish and faint. I had stabbing headaches. This went on for my first five years as a pastor. 

One morning as I prayed about all of this, the thought crossed my mind--a thought I’m sure came from God: I had stage fright and I had it because I was terrified that I would embarrass myself, that I would say the wrong thing, that people wouldn’t like my worship leadership or my preaching. I would fail in this calling, letting down God, my wife, my family, and the Church. On Sunday mornings, instead of seeing a group of fellow sinners in as much need of the gospel Word of forgiveness, new life, and godly power as I was, I saw them as potential judges ready to condemn me. And I thought such condemnation was completely warranted. I covered my fears up with bravado, but really, I was just waiting to be exposed for the fraud I assumed people would eventually see me as being. 

In the contest between fear and faith constantly exploding within me, I was letting fear get the upper hand. I put more trust in my fear than I put in Christ.

Faith versus fear. 

Have these two contestants ever jousted in your gut? 

You know a struggling friend could use your offer of prayer in Jesus’ name. But you’re afraid that she or he will be offended. So you say nothing. 

You know that a victim of injustice, whether at school or work or in society, could use the support of a Christian advocate. But your fear of what others might say if you spoke up keeps your mouth clamped shut. 

You know that a ministry of the church could use your help far more than it needs your “ideas” or criticism. But you’re afraid of not doing a good job, or of losing free time, or of being accountable to yet another person. So, you don’t get involved. 

You’ve hurt someone. You know that the faithful thing to do is to apologize. But you’re afraid of the humiliation that goes with acknowledging a wrong, a fault, a sin. So you let the wounds to your relationship fester. 

You feel inadequate as a parent or friend or professional and you’re sure that soon, everyone will know.

Each day, as baptized believers in Jesus, the contest of faith versus fear happens within us. 

Fear is the voice of our sinful nature that may tell us that protecting ourselves from pain and death or promoting our own interests are our highest callings. 

Or fear may insist that we’re not good enough. 

Faith happens when we hear the voice of the Holy Spirit drowning out the screams of our fears, telling us that Jesus Christ died and rose for imperfect people like you and me and that He has us in His loving grip now and forever. 

When the Word of God moves over us--over our imperfections and doubts and our fears--to create faith in Christ within us, there is nothing that this world or the devil can do to us that will allow us to be separated from God and His love. 

Faith assures us that, in the words of the apostle John, “...love [the love of Christ living in us] has no fear, because [Christ’s] perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” (1 John 4:18, New Living Translation]

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Matthew 1:18-25,  features a man in whom this contest between fear and faith is happening. 

The man is Joseph. Mary, the woman to whom he is pledged to be married, announces that she is pregnant, not through the usual means, but from God the Holy Spirit, and that the child she carries is the promised Messiah. 

Although there had not yet been a marriage ceremony and Mary and Joseph were forbidden from having marital relations until after that happened, by Jewish law they were viewed as husband and wife. Joseph naturally assumed that Mary had been unfaithful to him. But the appointed punishment for adultery was that violators were to be stoned to death. And even if that punishment weren’t meted out by the people of Nazareth where they lived, Joseph knew that if Mary’s sin were exposed, she would be forever disgraced. 

He resolved to divorce her quietly.

But then, in verse 20, an angel of God appears to Joseph in a dream. “Joseph son of David [he says], do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

“Do not be afraid, Joseph,” God was telling him. “The child Mary bears is the Savior of the world, Whose very name, Jesus, Yeshua, meaning Yahweh, God, saves, is coming to save you and everyone who repents and believes in Him from sin and death and separation from God.”

Why did the angel tell Joseph not to be afraid? 

What was Joseph afraid of? 

I can think of several possibilities. 

• Joseph may have been afraid of personal humiliation. What if Mary was just telling him a story and the angel was just a figment of his imagination. Joseph couldn’t know until God’s Word called him out of fear and to faith. 
• Joseph may have been afraid of exposing Mary to rejection and death. He’d made his decision to divorce Mary quietly. But even after the decision was made, Joseph considered--or agonized--over doing the right thing. 
• Joseph may have been afraid that by protecting Mary, he would be going against the will of God. Joseph may have feared that in treating Mary so compassionately, he was simply enabling her sin and displeasing God. 
• Joseph may have been afraid of what others would say about him. If he took Mary as his wife, people would always say--as they still say today--that he was the actual father of Jesus. They would refuse to believe that Jesus was the sinless Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary. They would write Joseph off as one more sinful religious hypocrite. 

Maybe, by turns or simultaneously, Joseph feared all of these things. 

But the angel says, “Do not be afraid, Joseph!”

And that’s God’s message to you and me this morning: Do not be afraid!  

Do not be afraid of what might happen. Have faith in what has already happened: Jesus Christ has already died and risen for you, you have been baptized into His death and resurrection, and He has given you the gift of faith. 

Do not be afraid of the world, its violence, or the human race’s penchant for self-destruction. Jesus has conquered the world. 

Do not be afraid of having less than what you need. The Savior Who refused to test His Father by jumping from the pinnacle of the temple has taught you to pray confidently for your daily bread.

Do not be afraid to be kind to or to love others. Jesus says that you’re to see everyone around you as you see Christ Himself, as people to love as Christ loves you. 

Do not be afraid to say no to sin because in doing so, you will say yes to God’s grace and new life.

Matthew says that after Joseph was visited by the angel, Joseph did what God commanded him to do. He took Mary as his wife. When faith defeated fear in Joseph, Mary’s life was saved, of course. 

But so was the life of Jesus, the Savior Who assures us by His resurrection that, no matter what we may fear, we can have faith in the God Who, through the baby born in a manger--crucified, risen, and ascended to heaven--makes us His own for all eternity. 

That day God made me aware that I was afraid, I sensed Him telling me, "Get over yourself, Mark. Turn to Me. Christ has shown you my loving face. Don't be afraid. Believe!"

When you turn to Christ, He gives you a faith bigger than all your fears. And He gives you a life with Him that makes all our fears eternally irrelevant. 

If you remember nothing else of this message today, please remember this: Faith trumps fear. 

Turn to the God we know in Christ and He will conquer your fear. Amen 

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]