"Having the Right Kind of Fear"

Mark 6:45-52

Dangerous Wonder Series: 6/15/08

Introduction: Have you ever noticed that fear is something that we dislike, but are also attracted to? People love scary movies; roller coasters that set you on edge; haunted mansions; doing activities that are potentially dangerous.

Example- The other day I took something from Tyler and then I ran away. He started to chase me, but I was far enough ahead of him that I was able to hide downstairs. Actually, I went out the front door and hid right outside the door. A few minutes went by and I didn’t hear any voices, so I finally came back inside. When I went upstairs to find them, Tami told me that they were too afraid to look for me because they thought I was going to jump out at them. And yet, there was a part of them that liked what I was doing, even though it was kind of scary!

In the end, they weren’t really scared, because they knew that I am their dad, and they don’t need to be afraid of me. Even though I am bigger and stronger, and can yell out louder, they know I love them and would never do anything to harm them.

In the same way, we believe in, worship, and follow a God who is bigger and stronger than us, and there is a sense of fear in regards to Him; but yet there is not.

I. Do we fear God?- (Luke 2:9; Exodus 3:5-6; Psalm 36:1)

a. What happened to terror?- There doesn’t seem to be much terror

in the Christians of today. When I talk about fearing God, often I get this look from people that says: Why? When you read the stories in the Bible, you see how people reacted in the presence of angels, much less the presence of God. For example, in Luke 2:9 we read: “An angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” The shepherds weren’t terrified of the angels as much as they were of the glory of the Lord. And in Exodus 3:5-6, when Moses goes over to the burning bush to see why the flames aren’t consuming the bush, we read: “‘Do not come any closer,’ God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’ ⁶ Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” But people don’t seem to have this same awe, fear, and worship of God and God’s glory.

The question we need to ask is: Are modern followers of Christ capable of being terrified of God? Why is there no fear of God today? No fear of Jesus Christ? No fear of the Holy Spirit? Because we lack this fear, we have ended up with a feel-good gospel. This feel-good gospel might attract thousands of people, but it won’t transform them, because they are not meeting the One True God.

It is time for Christianity to become a place of terror again; a place where God continually has to tell us, ‘Fear not’; a place where our relationship with God is not a simple belief or doctrine or theology, but the constant awareness of God’s terrifying presence in our lives.

We need to have a healthy, childlike fear of God. A healthy, childlike fear should make us more in awe of God than we are of our government, our problems, or any earthly concerns. God is capable of calming the storm, AND putting us right in the middle of the storm. God is capable of crushing a nation (like with Sodom and Gomorrah), as well as saving one (like Ninevah). God is big, and holy, and frightening, and gentle and tender. God is our God, whose love should both frighten us, AND draw us near to Him. But somehow we have become too comfortable with God.

b. Comfort with the familiar- We live in a country that is familiar

with the Christian faith, and has the thinking that we live in a “Christian nation.” A large percentage of Americans still attend church on a fairly regular basis. We know about God and Jesus and the Bible. We’ve heard the stories, sung the songs, gone to Sunday school, been baptized and confirmed. We know all about God. God is part of our culture, part of our upbringing, part of our daily lives.

But this has become dangerous, to be too comfortable with God.

EX. There was a man who was traveling to Northern Ireland. When he arrived he was met by a college student, who was assigned to take him to his hotel. The man asked the student how he managed to live in a country that had so much violence. The student responded: “You Americans. You watch too much television. There is more crime in one day in New York that there is in an entire year in Belfast.” As they continued driving the man then asked the student what his hotel was like. The student responded: “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I forgot to tell you, the original hotel you were booked in was blown up about a month ago. We had to change your hotel.”

As you think about this, you realize that this young man was so used to the violence that it didn’t bring him fear anymore. He had become oblivious to a terror that could destroy him.

There is similarity here to the Christian faith. We have become comfortable with the radical truth of the gospel; we have become familiar with Jesus; we have become satisfied with the church. The Bible is no longer a double-edged sword, it has now become dull and slow. The world-changing church has instead become changed by the world. The life-threatening Jesus has become an interesting enhancement to modern-day life.

If Jesus is the Son of God, we should be terrified of what He will do when He gets His hands on our lives; if the Bible is the Word of God, we should be fearful every time we read its soul-piercing words; if the church is the body of Christ, our culture should be threatened by our intimidating presence. But because we have reduced the gospel to a set of principles, Bible verses, moral absolutes, and theorems—we think we can understand and control God.

As Psalm 36:1 says, “An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes.”

II. Our God is too small- (Mark 6:45-52; 1 Corinthians 13:12)

a. Familiarity- Not only does familiarity take our fear away from

God, but is also makes God seem smaller. The disciples were very familiar with Jesus. They knew Him inside and out. Or so they thought. In our scripture reading this morning, we see that Jesus had spent a long day in ministry, and He decided to send the disciples on ahead while He went up on a mountainside to pray. While they were rowing their boat to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, the winds picked up and the water became rough. The disciples were making little headway. All of a sudden they looked up and saw Jesus walking on the water. But they didn’t recognize Jesus at first; they thought He was a ghost. Then we are told in verse 50, “They cried out, because they saw Him and were terrified.”

The disciples had been with Jesus for 2 years at this point; they had seen His miracles, healings, and people brought back from the dead. And still they were terrified when they saw Jesus walking on the water. Why? Because they didn’t understand the power Jesus possessed. They thought they knew Jesus, but the Jesus they believed Him to be, was too small to walk on water.

When you and I are in the presence of the mysterious Son of God, the mystery becomes more mysterious. God shouldn’t shrink when we know Him well, He should expand; God shouldn’t become smaller, He should become bigger. As the apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” Often times here on earth we only see in part, as if you were seeing your reflection in a pond; a poor reflection of what is really there. Here on earth we only have part of the knowledge of who God really is. It won’t be until we get to heaven that we will see God in full. The veil will be lifted, and the mysterious will be known. Even then we will feel a sense of fear, because we will know who God is, and what God is capable of doing.

But even though we can’t see fully here on earth, there will come many times in our faith that we will get past what we don’t believe God can do, and see God doing the miraculous, the powerful, the awesome. As our faith matures, we begin to understand better, which helps us to see clearer, and the familiar will actually allow God to become bigger in our eyes.

b. Darkness- Another place where people have fear is in the dark.

When we are in the dark, we can’t see anyone or anything. We start to panic as our mind plays tricks on us. We think we see things that aren’t really there. We feel lost, confused, and frightened. And we can even feel alone because darkness isolates us; disorients us, and causes us to exaggerate reality. It was late at night when the disciples saw Jesus, and because of the darkness, their reality was distorted. They were overcome with panic and confusion.

In C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia book “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the boat the Dawn Treader has sailed into Dark Island and everyone on the boat is terrified except for a lone courageous mouse named Reepicheep. At one point in their journey, when it looks as thought they will never get out of the Dark Island, Lucy, one of the visitors to Narnia, whispers: “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.” (Now Aslan is the Christ figure in the story) Lewis writes next: “The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little—a very, very little—better.” Almost immediately one of the crew spots a tiny speck of light ahead, which again did not alter the darkness, but did light up the ship.

You see, God does not always rid us of the darkness; He joins us in the darkness. “Lucy looked along the beam of light and presently saw

something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked

like a kite, and at last with a whirring or wings it was right

overhead and was an albatross. It circled 3 times round the

mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the

gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet

voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them…

But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had

whispered to her, ‘Courage, dear heart,’ and the voice, she felt sure, was

Aslan’s and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.” (pp. 159-160)

When the disciples saw Jesus, they were terrified. But in the midst of their terror they heard Jesus whisper, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” The truth is, even when we feel alone, even when we are in the dark, we are not alone, we are not without help; Jesus Christ is Lord even in the darkness.

III. Fearing the complicated- (Matthew 11:1-19)

a. Confusion- In our world, people have much confusion about God.

They might believe God exists, but have a fuzzy understanding of the truth. Like the STORY of the mom who picked up her second-grade daughter from her Christian school one day and asked her daughter what she had learned. “I learned about the bees,” she said. Then her mother asked: “Oh? What did you learn about bees?” The daughter responded: “My teacher said that God made the bee and the Devil made the stinger.”

So many people want to attribute all good things to God and all bad things to the Devil. By doing this, it limits the complications of God; it limits the issues that have to be resolved. And it makes God out to be One that does not have to be feared.

But the teacher was wrong. God made the bee and the stinger. We live in a world where bees can sting us, and for some it can cause death. And that is scary! The truth is, reality is complicated, life is complicated, and God is complicated. Because of this, there is much that happens in life that we don’t understand, and this, not being able to understand is terrifying. But it is okay to not know what God is doing.

But here is the good news. Remember how at the beginning I told you how there are times when we like to be afraid. Even though kids are afraid of the dark, they still play games in the dark. Even though I might jump out and scare them, they know I am not a monster, and that I will not hurt them. One of the glorious complications of God is His ability to reveal Himself in the unrevealable. God is not lost when we are. God is waiting for us even in the darkness.

We see this illustrated in the life of John the Baptist. His job was to prepare the way for Jesus. And by his doing this, he was put in jail. When his followers questioned him, John the Baptist sent them to Jesus. Jesus said to them: “Yes, I am the Messiah. Yes, I am healing the sick and raising the dead. And no, I am not getting John out of prison.” In other words, life is complicated, and for John the Baptist, it meant that he would suffer for Jesus. John knew to trust Jesus and that Jesus would be with him even in his death.

b. The upside-down life- Here is a story that represents the challenge

of life: A woman was vacationing on one of the islands in South Carolina. One day, a loggerhead turtle (about 300 pounds) dragged herself up onto the beach and laid her eggs. The woman did not want to disturb the turtle, and so she left and came back the next morning to check on the eggs. To the woman’s alarm, she noticed that the turtle had walked in the wrong direction. She followed the footprints and found the turtle on the hot sand dune. If the turtle stayed there much longer she would surely die. So the woman, thinking fast, covered the turtle in seaweed, and poured some cool seawater over her, then ran to notify a park ranger. The ranger was there in a jeep within a couple of minutes. He then flipped the turtle upside down, attached chains to the turtles front legs, and then dragged her to the beach. He was going so fast that sand went in the turtles mouth and her head bent back as though it would snap off. Once at the ocean’s edge, he flipped the turtle back over where the water began to lap over her body. But at first the turtle did not move. Finally she began to move, slowly at first, and then when the water was deep enough she pushed off into the water and disappeared. The woman made this observation about what she had just seen: “Watching her swim slowly away, and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noticed that sometimes it is hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”

Do you ever feel like God is turning your life upside-down? And when this happens, you wonder if you are being killed or saved. But the turtle couldn’t have survived that ride on its belly, and the ranger couldn’t have gotten a 300-pound turtle to the beach any other way. Sometimes we are going through trials and struggles that could lead us to spiritual death, if not physical death. And God sometimes needs to turn us upside down and drag us to safety. This upside-down life makes life seem very complicated. But if we remember that God is there for us at all times, in all situations, then we can survive the journey!

Conclusion: We as adults don’t talk about fear and terror much. Children do though. They talk about monsters, and the boogie-man, and fear of the dark. That is another reason to be more like a child. It is important to remember that sometimes we need to have fear; we need to talk about our fear. There is a “right kind of fear.” And at its core, we need to fear God. As we are told in the Bible, in Matthew 10:28- “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” And yet this God whom we fear is the same One who loves and tells us in 1 John 4:18- “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” We need to have a healthy awe and respect of who God is, and what God can do. And this fear draws us to the love of God, who then watches over us and guides us in right paths. Amen.