Fighting Our Fears
- Tim Cain
- Jan 30, 2010
- Series: Topical
Genesis 20 Fighting our Fears
Kaleo El Cajon
January 30th, 2010
Tim Cain
Today I want to talk about our fear of other people and how we often times allow it to control our lives. Now, what do I mean when I say fear of other people? Primarily I am talking about how we allow people or circumstances to control us. Fear of people can be expressed in all sorts of different ways. I pride myself with being pretty tough and unafraid and yet I know that time and again I really struggle with the fear of other people. I struggle with it in both its physical and non-physical forms.
I am definitely more familiar with its non-physical form because I live in such a safe society. So, let me tell you what this fear looks like for me on probably a weekly basis. I miss a call from someone, someone who I think might not be happy with me or might have a problem with me and my mind begins to go crazy. It begins to wonder if I did something wrong, if I screwed up, or what they could possibly want. Just this week it happened. I had another pastor in town on Wednesday night and I wanted to show him around the church so I took him here and showed him around. On Thursday morning I had a message from the pastor here to call him about something and Kevin doesn’t call me too often. And inside I am thinking did I lock the door when I left? I always lock the door, but did I lock it this time? Did I turn off all the lights? These are the fears that are running through my head. All of us struggle in different ways with this sort of fear of others. We see people whispering, we get a message that just says call me a.s.a.p, someone doesn’t say hi to us like they normally do. All sorts of things. We get asked an innocent question and we feel defensive. Or sometimes people really are mean. Sometimes we really are in trouble and so our fear doesn’t seem too unreasonable. What do we do with our fears? What do we do when we are so afraid, so anxious we feel willing to tell a little lie or to blame or gossip about someone else in order to get the attention off of us? When I look at my life I know there have been many times that I have felt so insecure that I have lashed out or exaggerated a story, or purposely avoided a question out of fear. What do we do with our fears?
And of course there are physical fears aren’t there? Fears of sickness, fears of physical danger, and fears for our children. I will never forget one night when it was really late and I was going to my office at a church in valley center. It was really dark all around the church and I was all by myself. I walked all the way around the church to the back to go into the room where my office was, I opened up the door to the large teen room and walked in, turned on the light and went to turn off the alarm before noticing that it had already been set off. I looked up and right in front of me was a broken window with something thrown through it and I got scared. I was really, really scared. My heart was racing and I didn’t know what to do. This was before I owned a cell phone, it was after midnight, and I had no idea how long the alarm had been going off but I knew it had to be recent since the police were not there yet. My office, where the phone was, happened to be quite a ways away. I didn’t know what to do, lock the door? But what if the person was inside? Run back to my car, which was all the way around the front of the church? But what if the person was outside? I felt my heart racing so fast and I was seriously scared. Scared I was going to die. I know that the situation probably wasn’t that bad, but inside that is how I felt. And I remember standing there thinking wait, wait I don’t want to die like this. I don’t want to die scared. If I am going to die I want to be ready, I don’t want to die scared. I don’t want to die running, I don’t want to die clinging to my life like I had to have it. So what was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do with this crazy fear that felt like it was taking over my body and making me feel like I would do anything in order to cling to my safety?
In the book of Genesis we come across the story of a man who found himself in a very dangerous situation. He found himself in a situation where he truly felt and in many ways it truly appeared that his life was in grave danger. Before we begin this story let me tell you a bit about this man. The mans name was Abraham and in Genesis 12 we see that God chose Abraham, called him to leave his country and go to the land that God would show him. And God promises to bless Abraham and to make him into a great nation. A nation that God would bless and that God would use to pour out his blessings on the whole world. Abraham was chosen by God to receive his blessing and to be a blessing to the nations. And Abraham obeyed God. And he left and followed God. And Abraham was seventy-five years old and his wife Sara was sixty-five when this happened. And so Abraham probably figured if he was going to be the father of a great nation that God was going to get started really soon. And so he probably waits with anticipation for his wife to get pregnant. But nothing happens. And for years and years nothing happens. Sure God blesses him and he gets richer and richer but still no children. Finally, after years Abraham took a younger wife who was not barren and she bore a son named Ishmael. But God said that Ishmael would not be the child of promise. Instead God promised that Sarah would have a child. And so after twenty-four years when Abraham is ninety-nine years old, God comes with two angels and he visits Abraham. And he says, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” (Genesis 18:9). The bible says that Sarah overheard God make this promise and she laughed. And then God leaves and he sends his two angels to Sodom, he rescues Lot, then sends fire down from heaven on Sodom and Abraham watched. Even though he had begged God not to destroy Sodom because his nephew lot was there, Abraham watched. Genesis 19:27-28 says, “And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.” Ok, this is the background for the story we are going to look at today. Now the story today is amazing, I want you guys to listen and to remember that this really happened.
So, after Abraham watched Sodom burn, he left that place and began traveling in a new region. Imagine he is probably a little bit upset, he doesn’t know that Lot has been rescued, and he is probably quite confident that God has killed his nephew. And so he leaves and travels to a new region. Now, because Abraham had left his family, his country and was wandering around as a stranger in this land; he often found himself feeling very insecure, especially when he moved into a new place. These feelings of insecurity and loneliness were probably heightened by the fact that he thinks the one person who had once traveled with him and been family to him is now dead. So, as Abraham entered this new area he understood the real dangers he faced. He was a man without any protection. In an age where your family and your clan were the ones who provided you with protection, Abraham was a stranger in a strange land.
And so as Abraham moves into this new land, he finds himself fearing for his life. And he knows that his wife is beautiful and he is afraid that someone will see her and want to take her, so they will just kill him so that they can have his wife. Basically he is afraid someone will do what David would do years later when he killed Uriah in order to take his wife Bathsheba. So Abraham began to tell people that Sarah was his sister. And of course because she was beautiful it was not long before the king, whose name was Abimelech, sent for Sarah and took her. Can you imagine what is going through Abraham’s head as he watches this man come and take his wife? Can you fathom what this would be like? Sarah, the wife of Abraham’s youth, the love of his life, and the woman that God had promised would bear a child within a year. That means she would need to get pregnant in the next few months. Abraham lets her go. Oh how devastated he must be. How angry at God he must be feeling. God, what are you doing? What are you doing? You promise me Sarah will have a kid and then you let some king take her away to his harem. Yeah, lets see her pregnant in the next three months. You know how we feel when everything seems to be going wrong. Imagine how Abraham is feeling. God, you killed my nephew, now you take my wife, seriously what next? What next? I can’t imagine the despair and frustration, and anger, and shame and guilt that he must feel for somewhere he must understand that it’s his fault that Abimelech took Sarah.
But now watch what happens. Watch what happens behind the scenes. At the same time that Abraham lies awake in the middle of the night, sleepless, confused, devastated, and wondering what on earth God is thinking this is what is happening. Abimelech is having a dream. And God is proving himself faithful. As Abraham lies in his tent feeling absolutely helpless so save his wife. Imagine him, thinking tonight my wife may be sleeping with the king. But she isn’t. She isn’t because God is protecting her. Yes Abraham is helpless but God is not and look what he does. He comes to Abimelech in a dream and he says, “Behold you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” Look at that. Look at our protective God. Look at how he does not mess around. And Abimelech is scared and he says, “Lord will you kill an innocent people?” Did he not himself say to me, ‘she is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘he is my brother’? In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” Abimelech calls out to God and says, “God, seriously I didn’t know?” I didn’t know, they lied to me and I believed them. I promise my heart was innocent. And I love what comes next. Look at our God. Our God knows our hearts. He knows. Listen to him. He says, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart.” He knows. Abimelech doesn’t have to prove it. God doesn’t need any evidence, God knows his heart. And then listen to what God says; “It was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.” You see God knew Abimelech’s heart and so he did not let the lies of Abraham and Sarah cause him to sin. He kept him from sinning against him. Look at our God. Look at how he holds the kings hearts in his hands. He says I am the reason you didn’t sleep with her tonight. You might of thought it was because you were tired, or you had a headache, or because of whatever the reason Abimelech had given for not sleeping with Sarah yet, but the real reason was God. God was protecting him, and he was protecting Sarah, and he was protecting Abraham, and he was protecting his promise.
And so God tells Abimelech to return Sarah to Abraham and have Abraham pray for him because Abraham is a prophet. And then God reminds him that though he is merciful he is serious about protecting his people. If he doesn’t God will kill him and all his family. God is a protective God and he will protect his daughter Sarah.
So, Abimelech rises early in the morning, immediately tells his servants and they were afraid. They feared God. And he called Abraham and he rebuked him. Though Abraham might have been the prophet, it is Abimelech who acts the prophet in this story. It is Abimelech that God came to in a dream and now it is Abimelech who will call God’s people back from their sin. He tells Abraham, “You have done to me things that ought not to be done.” Abimelech is upset because he has been sinned against and he knows that if God had not protected him than he would have been put to death. And so he lets Abraham know that he has sinned against him and he asks him why. He says, “What did you see, that you did these things?”
And here we are going to see what could possibly have caused Abraham to do what he did. Listen to him. He says, “I did it because I thought, there is no fear of God at all in this place and they will kill me because of my wife.” Do you hear that? Abraham lied about his wife because he thought, “There is no fear of God in this place.” What he really means is that because these people don’t believe in God there is no way that God will be able to protect me. Do you see that? Do you see that he is really saying, because these people don’t fear God he will not be able to protect me and if he can’t protect me than I will have to protect myself? When Abraham says, “There is no fear of God in them” he is not doubting them as much as he is doubting God. He is saying if these people feared God than God could protect me but because they don’t, because these are pagan people who are out of control, I can no longer rely on God to protect me. Abraham doubts God, specifically he is doubting his power and the moment he begins to doubt God’s power he begins to fear people. Do you see how that happened? Instead of fearing God, trusting him and knowing that he would keep his promise no matter what, so that he could boldly proclaim the truth without being afraid of the people, Abraham began to doubt God and the moment he doubted God he began to fear people. He took his eyes off of God and began to look around and grew afraid. And as he looks at things from an earthly prospective he begins to cling to the most important thing in the world to him. His own life. Remember last week we talked about how from an earthly perspective life is the chief value and so Abraham fears for his life and is willing to do anything to protect it. His main concern becomes protecting himself. He no longer cares about anyone else or anything else, he can’t, his fear has caused him to focus on protecting himself. And so he is willing to disobey God to protect himself, he is willing to hurt his wife to protect himself, and he is willing to let Abimelech sin against God in order to protect himself. That is what fear does. Fear turns our focus off of God and trusting him and loving others and instead we focus on our self and protecting ourselves from others. And this is ugly. What Abraham has done is absolutely ugly, it is pathetic, it is ridiculous, and it is something to be completely ashamed of. It is indefensible. Abraham should be full of gratitude to God that he has saved his wife, that he has brought her back, he ought to be overwhelmed, yet he isn’t. He isn’t because now he is embarrassed and decides that he needs to protect his reputation. You see first he feared for his life and it led him to lie and now he fears for his reputation and it causes him to try and excuse his sin. Listen to him.
He says, “Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother and she became my wife.” Listen to his pathetic excuse. Listen to it. Again he is living in fear. Again he refuses to trust in God but instead believes that he must protect his reputation. Now the first time we see his sin was based primarily on a doubt of God’s power, there was no fear of God in this place so Abraham lied to protect himself because he was afraid he would be killed. Now Abraham can no longer fear God’s power. The lie had been exposed. God is all-powerful. The people here do fear God when he comes to them in dreams and says I will kill you if you touch that woman. Yes, Abraham was wrong, he believed a lie, his God is powerful and he is able to save his wife even from the hands of pagan kings. I mean notice the irony. Abraham is afraid that God will not be able to protect him and his wife from this pagan king, while they are minding their own business living out in the fields as husband and wife. He is afraid that God won’t be strong enough to protect him, that the king is going to come and kill him and take his wife, and that is what he is afraid of. And God says, hey, hey, look at this. I am strong enough to keep your wife safe when she is in the king’s harem and I am strong enough to protect you even when the king finds out that you are a pathetic liar. That is how strong I am.
We see that while Abraham now knows that God is all-powerful he still is struggling to believe that God is good. That God is for him. He may be struggling because it has been twenty-five years and he still doesn’t have the son God promised. He might be struggling because he believes he has just watched God kill his nephew, even after he begged him to not destroy Sodom. What he says is this, “And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, “This is the kindness you must do to me; at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.” Listen to the way Abraham excuses himself. He says, “When God caused me to wander” I realized this was my only option. He is basically blaming God for putting him into such a difficult situation. Oh how many times we sin like this don’t we? Look at what has happened. Abraham begins to doubt God’s goodness and pretty much says, “If God is going to put me in such difficult situations he ought to know that I am going to have to lie to protect myself.” If God didn’t want me to sin he shouldn’t make me wander around all alone without any protection with such a beautiful wife. He ought to know better. If he is going to do that then what does he expect me to do? Abraham doubts God’s goodness and so he continues to protect himself. He doubts God’s goodness and that is why he can’t humbly confess his sin to Abimelech, but instead he needs to defend himself and shift the blame. He justifies himself by saying it’s a half truth and he shifts the blame of the other half, the lie part of it, on God for causing him to wander around everywhere by himself.
So, we have already seen how God has come over the top to show Abraham the lies he was believing. When Abraham doubted his power he showed him just how powerful he was. And now, now that Abraham still doubts him, this time doubting his goodness, look at what he does. Look at it. He has Abimelech, the one who Abraham sinned against, give him tons of stuff. Abraham has just failed God’s test, he has just doubted God’s goodness and power and God has said I will show you. I will show you not by punishing you but by wielding all my power and goodness upon you. Here, here is your wife back unharmed, and here are sheep, oxen, male and female servants. Here, all Abimelech’s land is before you, go wherever you want, live in peace, here, here is one thousand pieces of silver, here take these.
Seriously, what a God! Abraham is a total punk, and God gives him blessing after blessing. And that is not all. The next thing we see is that God hears Abraham’s prayers. Even though Abraham ought never to be able to come before God again, God lets him pray and God hears his prayers. And then, then God opens the womb of Sarah, and after twenty-five years he gives Abraham and Sarah a child. Oh my friends that is our God. That is our amazing God. Even though Abraham is a sinner and failure, even when Abraham doubted God, God remained faithful. God kept his promise despite Abraham’s failure. He didn’t let Abraham mess it up.
Now, I want us to take a moment and notice just how much like Abraham we are. Think about it. How often do we doubt God? How often do we find ourselves either doubting his power or doubting his goodness? Today I want to talk about how these doubts play themselves out in fear. Like Abraham our fears come because we are doubting God. You see we live in a culture of fear and self-protection. We live in a culture of alarms, locks, gates and fences. We live in a culture where a huge portion of the news is intended to play off of our fears. Our lives are dominated by fears. Fears for our physical safety, fears for our health, fears for our children, fears for our property, fears over our reputation. And these fears lead to anxiety, to self-protection, to isolation, to distraction, to anger and frustration. They lead us to a frantic clinging to anything that we think might save us from danger. Things like lying and violence are willingly embraced to protect our lives.
You see this type of fear comes when we take our eyes off of our God. It comes when we begin to doubt his power and his goodness. You see our problem is we don’t feel like there is anything wrong with most of our fears. We feel like certain situations demand our fear. Yes we agree we shouldn’t be afraid of some things but what about situations that are really frightening? Some situations demand that we be afraid, right?
Yes, yes if we look at situations from an earthly perspective than we should all be living in fear. Fear of terrorist, fear of drunk drivers, fear of swine flu, fear of cancer, fear of our children being harmed. Yes, from an earthly perspective there will be many situations in your life that will warrant fear. Abraham’s situation certainly warranted fear didn’t it? But that is from a human perspective. Guys, we fear when we limit the power and goodness of our God. Let me give you a hypothetical. Someone breaks into your home and kidnaps your wife and or child and intends to do them harm. You run to the police but they don’t think they will be able to do much because you didn’t see the person and there are no prints. Do you think this is a situation where fear would be justified? Why would you be afraid? Well because the police don’t think they can help and there is nothing anyone else can do, so you feel utterly helpless and without any real hope. That is why you would fear.
But look at Abraham. He is in the same situation. He is alone in his tent, his wife is in the hands of a man who intends to sleep with her, he feels totally and utterly hopeless, there is no one to turn to because he is without family and the man who took his wife is the king, but Abraham forgot something. He forgot about God. He did fail to take the power and goodness of God into consideration. You see even while he was afraid his God was protecting his wife. His God was coming in a dream, and preventing anyone from touching her.
Guys what I want us to get into our heads is that our God is real, he is powerful and he is good and any fear that fails to account for these truths is not of faith. Yeah its ok that your heart races when something dangerous happens, yes its ok to run if someone is chasing you, yes fear as a physiological response to danger is not sin and is a gift of God to help us survive in a world full of danger. However, most of our fears cross this line and actually come about because we are forgetting God. We are forgetting that he is powerful and he is good and He is able to protect things that we can’t protect. He is able to protect always. He is better than the police, a dog, an alarm, or any lock. There will never be a situation where he is out of control.
Now your God may or may not physically protect you or your family like he protected Sarah, but know this, he is able. If something ever happens to you or your family it will not be because your God was not able to stop it. Can you hear that? If anything terrible ever happened it would not be because your God could not stop it. And, it would not be because your God was not good. Listen, whatever happens to us, whatever, picture the worst thing that could ever happen to you or your family and know this, if it ever happened, your God would be in control, and through it all he would be good. And his goodness may not protect your life, or your health, or your family, but his goodness will protect your soul. It will protect the part of you that truly matters. This, look at this (pointing to our bodies), this is going to be dust. All of you, it will be dust. Don’t live to protect it. Don’t. Don’t live to protect this. Don’t be afraid of people who could hurt this, no. Fear the one who is not only in total control over everything that happens to our bodies, but holds our eternal souls in his hands. Look at Matthew 10:28-31. Our God is powerful. He and he alone controls the destiny of our eternal souls. But he is more than all-powerful. He is good, he is kind, he is caring, he notices when a sparrow falls, how much more will he take notice of his children? Our God will protect our souls. He will protect the souls of all his family. There is nothing to fear. Nothing in all the world. First of all, no one touches us without our dad saying they can. No one. You don’t have to be afraid of anything because no one will ever harm you without your dad saying so. And if he says so it will be because he loves you and because he knows it is the best thing for you. So let go of it. Let go of it, lets stop living to protect ourselves like the world does and lets live to spend ourselves for our God. You see when we fear people we can’t love them, and we can’t serve them. Fear only sees itself and it objectifies everything else. It objectifies people into those who will protect you and those who you need to be protected against. Fear of people comes when we loose sight of God and when we loose sight of God what we become is very ugly.
Just as Abraham became very ugly when he began to doubt his God, so we too have sinned so many times because we have failed to trust in our God. When I contemplate all the lies, all the exaggerated stories, all the gossip, all the defensiveness, all the anxiety and frustration that has flowed out of me because I have feared other people, it is a heavy and a tragic thought. Oh my friends we have caused much pain with our self-protectiveness.
But tonight I want to tell you of someone who never feared other people. He did not live like Abraham or like us, but instead he always trusted in his God. Like Abraham he left his home and his family and wandered in a place that was not his home. However, unlike Abraham he never doubted the goodness of his God. Even as he wandered around on this earth he never doubted the goodness of his Father. And because he didn’t fear people he was able to truly love them. Because he did not fear disease he was able to touch lepers, because he did not fear what the religious people thought of him he was able to heal people even on the Sabbath day. This one came and he perfectly loved and served people because he never feared them but instead he lived his whole life trusting in the goodness and the power of his God. And he went through some dangerous situations. He was slapped, he was threatened, he was spit upon, he was whipped, and finally he was drug out to a hill, strapped to a wooden cross and men with hammers and nails came to nail him to that cross. But he wasn’t afraid. Do you hear me? Our Jesus was not afraid, even when people with hammers and nails came to nail him to a cross he wasn’t afraid. Even when he hung dying on the cross he was not afraid. Do you see that? Do you know that hanging on the cross our savior was not afraid? You can tell. You can tell he is not afraid, not even of soldiers with hammers, cause he is able to look down from that cross and say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Look at that. Look at our savior. Look at how he can love and serve his enemies because he is not afraid of them. Look at how he can love and serve people who are killing him because he trusts his God. He trusts that though his God has let his body hang on the cross, that though his God has not chosen to protect him physically from death, he knows that his God will raise him up on the third day. He knows that his God will not let his body see decay. He is not afraid. He knows that even though his God is letting him hang on the cross, that even though his Father is pouring out his wrath upon him, he knows that he can trust him. He knows that His God is good and that he is powerful and that he will raise him up again and so he says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
And we see that God has chosen to treat us failures like he treated Abraham. Do you remember when God had Abilimelech bless Abraham even though he was a failure? When God had the righteous Abimilech give Abraham sheep and oxen and servants and property and silver even in Abraham’s sin and failure, it was meant to be a type, to be a shadow of another righteous king who would come to bless sinners. It was meant to be a shadow of Jesus who came and gave his life in order to bless sinners. You see Jesus is even better than Abimelech. He is better because he didn’t just give us perishable things like sheep or oxen or silver but he redeemed us from our sin with something imperishable. He redeemed us from our sin with his precious blood. Even though we are like Abraham, even though we so often doubt our God and fear people, he has chosen not to punish us and give us the hell that we deserve, but instead he has chosen to pour out his blood so that he can forgive us. To give his life so that we can have his righteousness.
Oh my friends what a savior we have. What a savior to come over the top of our failures with lavish love. What a savior that while we yet sinners he came and died for us. That is our God. A God who has proven himself to be both good and powerful and who calls his people to come and to put their trust in him. Who calls his people to stop doubting him and living in fear and instead to trust him and find peace and rest. To trust him and find freedom to love and serve others. That is what he calls us to do and because of what he has already done for us through his precious son we can know that he is trustworthy. And so I pray that all of us will find the freedom from our fears that can only be found in trusting our God and what an amazing and trustworthy God we have.
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