Away with Fear 2
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II. We shall now occupy a little while in considering GOD’S COMMAND AGAINST FEAR. "Fear not; do not be dismayed."
That precept is absolute and unqualified, we are not to fear at all. He does not say, "Fear so much, but not beyond that," but he gives an unlimited exhortation, "Fear not." He does not say, "Do not fear so often," but, "Fear not." It is an exhortation without any time to it, and therefore it applies to all times. "Fear not." Fear not at all. "Do not be dismayed." He does not say, "Do not be utterly dismayed;" there is no qualifying adverb, but it means, "Do not be dismayed at all." This command, then, chides fear and forbids dismay.
Why should not the child of God be afraid? There are several reasons which justify the divine command, let us meditate upon some of them. First, my brethren, we may not fear because it is sinful. It is usually sinful to be afraid and dismayed, because such a state of mind almost always results from unbelief. Have you ever thought what a great sin unbelief is? No, we talk about it, and confess it, but we do not sufficiently consider the deep heinousness of it. We will confess unbelief of God without a blush, and yet nothing could make us acknowledge dishonesty to man. I pray you, my brethren, tell me which of these two is the worst fault? Is not unbelief a robbery of God, a treason felony against him? If I were in conversation with any one of you, and you should say to me, "Sir, I cannot believe you," nothing you could say would sting me more. It is a very strong thing to say to any man, "I cannot believe you." Why, if there were two of the lowest men or women, fighting in a street quarrel, and one of them said to the other, "I cannot believe a word you say," the veriest drab would feel the insult. Every truthful man feels that he has a right to be believed. He speaks upon the honor of an honest man, and if you say, "I cannot believe you," and even begin to lament that you have no faith in him, the reflection is not upon yourself, but on the person whom you cannot believe. And shall it ever come to this, that God’s own children shall say that they cannot believe their God? Oh, sin of sins! It takes away the very Godhead from God, for if God do not be true, he is not a God; and if he do not be fit to be believed, neither is he fit to be adored, for a God whom you cannot trust you cannot worship. Oh, deicidal traitor, you sin of unbelief! Oh, Godkilling sin! May we be delivered from it, and not think it light or trifling, but shake it off from us as Paul shook off the viper into the fire.
Doubts and fears also breed sin. It was said of Jeroboam, that he sinned, and made Israel to sin, and so does unbelief. It carries a thousand other sins in its loins. The man who believes in God will fight with temptation, but the man who does not believe in him is ready to fall into any snare. See yonder tradesman, he is just now in low water through the badness of business. Be is a believer in God, and he says, "I believe that God will carry me through it, if I keep to the straight line of integrity. I trust in God, and come what may, I will not pawn my reputation." Now, whatever may come of it, that man’s character will be safe, because his faith is firm. But here is another man, he says, "Well, I am in a very awkward predicament, and I must look to the main chance; I am not sure that God will be with me; I must help myself, for I am very likely to be ruined." That man will take up with one of those dodges in business by which men raise money. I need not tell you what those dodges are, because I dare say a great many of you know them, either by using them yourselves, or by having them used upon you. They are part and parcel of the are of stealing other people’s money, without being locked up as a thief. Well, he avails himself of one of those schemes; of course he does, he who has not faith is sure to have much craft. He who cannot trust God soon begins to trust the devil, and he that begins to trust the devil soon finds himself in the mire. Faith it is that holds a man as the great bower anchor holds a vessel when the winds are out. Believing that God will not fail you enables you to defy temptation.
Now see how the man who has faith beats the devil! There the devil stands; he says, "If you will serve me I will give you — "Well, what will you give me?" "I will give you the whole world." "But I have that already, for this world is mine, given to me in Christ, and as much of it as is good for me I shall always have." "Well, but I will make you great." "I do not want to be great, my joy is to make Christ great, and my greatness is in him." "But I will give you silver." "Oh, then!" says the Christian, "put it down." No sooner is the heap spread out than the believer covers it all over with ten times its weight in gold, and so laughs the fiend to scorn. I mean that for every blessing that sin could bring grace brings ten times as much of a greater blessing, and so faith checkmates Satan, and temptation is put away. Unbelief has no such power, but readily falls into the lion’s jaws. Therefore, fear not, lest you in the hour of trial be overborne with temptation and hurried into sin. Fear not, again, because it injures yourself. Nothing can weaken you so much, nothing can make you so unhappy, as to be distrusting. Nor is this a small thing, for Christian joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and he who causes it to wither robs the Lord of glory. Is it not written, "Rejoice evermore"?
Fear weakens the believer’s influence, and so causes mischief to others. Converts are not brought to Christ through unbelieving Christians. It is faith that wins souls. Let me give you an instance of it. There is a good woman over there who has lost her child, her only child. Now when her husband saw that dear child die, he was exceeding mad against God, and said many a hard and bitter thing, but his wife did not. She loved the child with as tender a love as the father did, but she laid it down on the bed, and she said, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Good woman, your husband did not say anything, but he felt the difference between himself and you, and who can tell what good results will follow? Now, if a professed Christian under trial acts just like a worldling, the worldly man sums it all up and says, "There is nothing in religion." But, if in the time of difficulty, the time of affliction, the time of bereavement, the Christian man’s faith makes him happy, resigned, content with the Lord’s will, why then even the coarsest of ungodly minds see the power of grace, and it may be that they will be led to reflect, and to ask themselves, "If there be such a choice grace as this in the world, why should not I have it?" and perhaps they will come to seek and find it. Oh, for your own sake, for your neighbor’s sake, for the church’s sake, for the world’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for God’s sake, fear not, neither be dismayed!
III. Time fails me to dwell on this, and so now I must come to the very heart and soul of the text — THE PROMISES WHICH GOD GIVES TO PREVENT FEAR AND DISMAY.
Five times in this verse you get some form of the pronoun "you," and five times you get the pronoun "I." Whatever there may be of you, there shall be as much of God. Whatever there may be of your weakness, there shall be as much of God’s strength. Whatever there maybe of your sin, there shall be as much of God’s mercy to meet it all. May the Holy Spirit reveal all the fullness of this wonderful verse to your hearts.
"Fear not; for I am with you." Many a man fears because he is afraid of loneliness. More or less we must be alone in the service of God. Christian companionship is a great comfort, but if a man becomes a leader in Israel, he becomes a lonely spirit to a certain degree. So, too, in suffering, there is a bitterness with which no stranger can intermeddle. A part of the road to heaven every man must tread with no companion but his God. Now, I know some of you are getting old, and your friends have died one by one, and you are saving, "I shall be left quite alone." Others of you have come up to London from some country village where you used to have many Christian friends; and there is no place so desolate as this horrid London, when a man dwells in its teeming streets, and meets not a friend among its millions of passers to and fro. I know well what your state of mind is. Or perhaps, you are going to the States, or Canada, or Australia, and the thought in your mind now is — "I cannot bear being separated from all I love." Now, here is this precious word for you, "Fear not; for I am with you." The Lord of Hosts is the best of company. His society is the angels’ delight, and the bliss of glorified spirits. Be thankful, believer, that you are not alone, because the Father is with you, the Son is with you, the Holy Spirit is with you, and what does that mean? It means that omnipotence will be with you to be your strength, that omniscience will be with you to be your wisdom, that immutability will be with you to be your support, that all the attributes of God will be with you to be your treasury. "Fear not; for I am with you."
Another fear comes over men, and that is, that they may lose all they have in the world, and they know very well that if they lose their property, they usually lose their friends. Like the swallows which come to us in the spring-time, and are gone when the summer has departed, such are our worldly friends; when our goods are gone they are gone. But here the second promise comes in, "Do not be dismayed, for I am your God." Jonah’s gourd was withered, but Jonah’s God was not. Your goods may go, but your God will not. Those around you may rob you of your loose cash of present comfort, but your invested capital, your God, they cannot take from you. That was a sweet word of the child when he saw his mother month after mouth in her widow’s weeds sitting down and weeping, because her husband was dead. "Mother," said he, "is God dead?" Ah! if our God were dead we should be poor orphans indeed, but while it rings out from the precious Book, and rings in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, "Do not be dismayed; for I am your God," we have not come to absolute poverty yet. "Look," said the ambassador of France to the Spanish ambassador as he took him into the French king’s treasury, "Look at my master’s gold; how rich he is!" The Spanish ambassador took his walking stick and began to thrust it down into the bags and into the money chest. "What do you do that for?" said the Frenchman. "I want to see if there is a bottom to it," said he. "Oh!" said the French ambassador, "of course there is a bottom." "Ah!" said the Spaniard, but my master’s treasury has no bottom, for he has all the mines of Mexico and Peru." Now, what the Spaniard said boastfully we may say truthfully.
The treasury of our God is without a bottom, it is fathomless; and while you can hear God say to you, "I am your God," you may laugh at penury and distress, at destruction and famine; for you shall lack no good thing; you shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and your mouth shall praise him with joyful lips. Another fear that every good man has at times, unless he is buoyed up by faith, arises from a sense of personal weakness, "I have a battle to fight, and I am very weak; I have a work to do for God before I die, and I have not sufficient power to perform it." Now, here comes the next word of the text, "I will strengthen you." The strength which I have to do my work with does not lie in me; if it did it would be all over with me. How little strength there is in this arm I sorrowfully know, but there is no man on earth who can tell me how much strength God might put, if he so willed, into that same arm. If so he willed it, he could enable me, a poor, weak, trembling man, to pull down Gaza’s gates as Samson did of old. He can put physical strength of the most gigantic kind into an infant’s arm if he wills it. But, my brethren, transfer the figure to spiritual strength. Yon have God’s command to preach.
Ah! it would be but a poor preach, if you were let alone to do the preaching; but no tongue can tell how God can make you preach if he pleases to help you. You have to take a large class of boys and girls, or of young men and young women, and you feel you cannot do it. Of course, without his help you cannot, but go and try; for he has said, "I will strengthen you." There was a bush in the wilderness, and it was nothing to look at, nothing but a bush; but oh I how it glowed with splendor when God came into it so that it burned with fire, and yet was not consumed. God can come into you, my brother, and into you, my sister, and can make you on a blaze with glory like the bush in Horeb. He can make you so strong that you can endure anything. Why, he has done it up until now. If somebody had told you years ago that you would have passed through your last trouble, you would have said, "I shall never be able to bear it." But you have borne it.
"Ah!" your unbelief would have said, "that will be the death of me." But it has not been the death of you. You can at this very moment tell of the widow’s God; you can sing of him who strengthens the weak against the strong, who delivers those who are ready to perish, and makes the faint heart to sing for joy. Here is a word, then, for timid, trembling workers for God. "I will strengthen you." Then comes the next consoling promise, "Yes, I will help you." This is intended to meet the fear that friendly support will fail. There are some who say, "I believe that God can strengthen me personally, but I need to have those around me who will help me; I desire to see raised up in the church of God other ministers, other Christian workers; I want to have some at my side who will with equal earnestness and with greater talent contend for the truth." Note, then, this word, "I will help you." I will not only give you strength to use yourselves, but I will exert my strength both in other men and in my providence to help you. Well, you know what a grand matter is God’s help. I told you once before a story I heard from a minister, but I must tell it you again. He said be was one day bringing his books up stairs into another room, for he was going to have his study on the first floor instead of downstairs, and his little boy wanted to help father carry some of the books. "Now," said the father, "I knew he could not do it, but as he wanted to be doing something, to please him and to do him good by encouraging his industry, I told him he might take a book and carry it up." So away he went, and picked out one of the biggest volumes — Caryl on Job — and when he had climbed a step or two up the stairs, down he sat and began to cry. He could not manage to carry his big book any further, he was disappointed and unhappy. How did the matter end? Why, the father had to go to the rescue, and carry both the great book, and the little man. So, when the Lord gives us a work to do, we are glad to do it, but our strength is not equal to the work, and then we sit down and cry, and it comes to this, that our blessed Father carries the work, and carries the little man too, and then it is all done, and done gloriously. It is a simple illustration, but may it comfort some desponding heart. "Yes, I will help you."
The last word of the text is, "Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness." Many a child of God is afflicted with a fear that he shall one day bring dishonor upon the cross of Christ, and in an unguarded moment shall slip with his feet. This is a very natural fear, and in some respects a very proper fear. "Ah! Lord, with such a heart as mine, Unless you hold me fast, I feel I must, I shall decline, And perish at the last."
It only needs, we think, the temptation to take us in the weak point, and then it will be all over with us. But now again I beg you to grasp this precious word, "I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness," that is the selfsame hand which holds the stars in their place. That is the hand which bears up the unpillared arch of heaven, that spans both sea and shore. Can it not bear you up? O rest upon it, and you shall not be cast down! The right hand of his righteousness is the very hand that you and I once had cause to fear, lest our offended King should smite us with it, for we righteously deserved his wrath; but ever since the hand of Christ was pierced, the right hand of God has never smitten a believer so as to destroy him. That same hand which might have crushed, is now placed under us to bear us up in all our afflictions. I wish I could have clipped the wings of time, for this last half-hour, that we might have tarried longer in these rich pastures, but dear friends, I give you the words of the text to take away with you. Here you have wafers made with honey, such as Israel fed on in the wilderness.
Here you have angels’ food; no, the very bread of life itself lies within these choice words. The only fear I have is lest you should miss them through unbelief. "O taste and see that the Lord is good." Do not merely "see" that he is good as you read the text, but "taste" the text. Let it lie on the palate of your soul; absorb it into your very nature. Try to know that it is true, and true to you, though you are the very least of God’s people in your own estimation, and the most unworthy sinner this side hell. "Fear not; for I am with you: do not be dismayed; for I am your God: I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you; yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness." Go home, and take the text with you in the hand of faith. It shall prove to you like the widow’s barrel of meal and cruse of oil; it shall not fail you until the day when the Lord shall bring you out of this land of famine to eat bread in his kingdom with his dear Son.
My heart mourns to think that this text does not belong to some of you, because you do not belong to Christ. O my dear friend, how I desire that you may yet have the promises of the covenant for your own. If you believe with all your heart, you may. Trust Jesus Christ, and the promises are your. I tried to preach my Master’s sacrifice for sin this morning. I have now set before you one of the sweet fruits that grow from the bitter tree upon which he hung. O come to the tree of the cross, and look up to his sufferings, and rely upon him; and then, when you have sat under his shadow with great delight, may this text, which is one of the fruits of that tree, be sweet unto your taste.
May the Lord bless you, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
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