Fear Of The Unknown Series

INTRODUCTION

• PC VIDEO

• SLIDE #1

• Today we continue our Haunted House series. In this series, we are examining the effects that fear can have on Christians as well as the church.

• Fear shuts us off from engaging in God’s calling for our life, which in turn keeps the church from fulfilling her calling to reach into the lost world to try to help lead people to Christ!

• Fear makes us inward-focused, isolating us from the world around us and removing us from God's plan to save the world.

• Another thing that fear does to us is that fear causes us to divide people into two categories: us and them.

• This polarized thinking is more combative than missional because of its tendency to isolate.

• In our video clip from Doomsday Preppers, we saw what a spider hole was used for.

• A spider hole is a tactical tool, a strategically placed hole in the ground used to hide as a means of escaping in warlike situations.

• It’s dark, cramped, and isolated. “My plan is to retreat, ride it out, and live to fight another day,” says this man who is taking extreme measures on National Geographic’s show Doomsday Preppers.

• The church is not a spider hole, but some of us might treat it as such.

• Instead of looking at our faith as a way to hide away from an evil world, we need to shine as lights in the darkness so that others can know Jesus and be reconciled to God.

• Our society markets based on fear gets web clicks based on fear, and self-protects based on fear.

• While caution and discernment are biblical, refusing to engage in God's mission to share the gospel and to love others without condition is not.

• Today we are going to look at the issue of FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN. By the way, I am not crawling in the snake-infested tunnel!

• SLIDE #2

• When we seek to engage people with the gospel, we are stepping into the unknown. We do not know how they will respond; we do not know if we will have the right answers, and we think of all the bad things that can happen.

• In our passage today, we will examine three things that will help us to not be stifled by fear of the unknown.

• Let’s turn to 2 Corinthians 5. We will begin with verses 14-17!

• SLIDE #3

• 2 Corinthians 5:14–17 (CSB) — 14 For the love of Christ compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: If one died for all, then all died. 15 And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised. 16 From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

• SLIDE #4

SERMON

We can overcome the fear of the unknown by understanding…

I. Our drive.

• One of the ways we can overcome fear of the unknown as we seek to take the gospel to dark sometimes scary world, is to have a grasp on what drives us, what motivated us to even consider sharing the gospel, to carry out our calling?

• We see two main drives in these three verses and one of the results of those drives.

• First, in verse 14, we see that we are to be driven or COMPELLED by the love of Christ.

• The word COMPEL means to HOLD, to KEEP TOGETHER, or to ENCIRCLE, or to HEM IN.

• It refers to someone whose activity has been restricted or narrowed in some way.

• Thus, it can describe someone who is ill or bedridden, as in Matt 4:24 and Acts 28:8 or even someone who is under guard (Luke 22:63).

• It can also refer to someone who is stressed out about a tough decision about their life's direction, as in Luke 12:50 concerning Christ and Phil 1:23 regarding Paul.

• In this context, we see that our driving force, the same thing that drove Paul to do all he did for Jesus, is the love of Jesus!

• When we start to have an awareness of how much Jesus loves us, that love should put us in a position of doing what we do because we are compelled to do so, that we will not let anything stop us for doing what we are called to do!