Fearless Campaign Week 5 Series

Fearless #5 Fear of Global Calamity

Do you ever look at the small print? Do you ever pay attention to the warnings while watching a commercial pushing a certain medication? While your staring at a happy couple, hand in hand, walking through the beautiful golden leaves there is that voice in the background warning you of all the side effects that can happen if you take their drug including coughing, wheezing, diarrhea, Lhasa bladder control, going cross eyed, growing hair on your back, your head popping off and that’s just warnings on acne medicines!

It is a scary world.

And how many times of I heard grandparents or maybe even potential parents question whether they want to bring a baby into this present world? We are all more than aware of the difficulty and the anxiety that we are all suffering on this planet right now. Let me name a few in case you’ve been living in a bomb shelter…

- Global warming is going to melt the oceans and either drown us or burn us up

- Powerful madman are developing nuclear weapons that they will not hesitate to use to further their political ideologies

- Political movements in our country that threaten to undo the constitution, freedom, all decent moral law, and protect the privileged few

- Open attacks on anything Christian, a division in the land, a gap between rich and poor, liberal and conservative, black and white that seems unbridgeable.

- Swine flu, German flu, Asian flu,Siamese cat flu, one flew overt he cuckoo’s nest

- The softening of educational standards and moral standards that leaves America behind

- Health Care, bailouts, government’s intervention, higher taxes, recession, depression, no jobs, too many bills,

- Dupont’s moving, GE’s moving, everybody’s moving!

We are in the fifth week of a series called fearless. We are trying to become people of great confidence and boldness when facing the fears that plague our culture and this very city where we live. Today we want to gain some confidence when it comes to the big fears, global fears, “what if things get worse” kind of fear.

We live in a scary world. We live in a scary time. It seems that nothing is stable and everything is shifting. What we used to count on we worry will be gone tomorrow. And we’ll be left in the dust without a job, without income to pay our bills, and maybe without a roof over our head. But in the midst of all of this Jesus tells us that his followers can be brave and fearless because we have a father in heaven.

Let’s read some scripture! These verses are Jesus’ predictions for coming trouble.

Matthew 24:1-14 As Jesus was leaving the Temple grounds, his disciples pointed out to him the various Temple buildings.

The disciples were impressed with the massive stones of the temple and the temple buildings. Some of those stones were 24 feet home. The gold and the silver and the intricate carvings of those buildings were impressive. I’m sure that those buildings probably represented images to those disciples of something that would never go away. They would be there forever and I’m sure they thought that Jesus would make sure they would be there forever!

2 But he responded, “Do you see all these buildings? I tell you the truth, they will be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!”

This did happen as Jesus said! It was witnessed and recorded in 70 AD when the Roman army grew tired of the rebellion of the Jews and sieged the city and decimated it completely. The only evidence of that old city is what we call the Wailing Wall in present day Jerusalem.

Let’s note that those very same buildings that the disciples thought would be permanent and never changing would be completely destroyed within 40 years in some of these very same disciples with live to see it happen.

This may be a warning to us that we are going to see things in our lifetime that we never thought possible. Things that we thought would stand forever will be dismantled and left in the dust.

3 Later, Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives. His disciples came to him privately and said, “Tell us, when will all this happen? What sign will signal your return and the end of the world?”

Jesus is about to reveal 4 key crises that would take place before he returns. He begins to prepare his disciples to not only know these things but to be prepared for these four things. And they will not be pretty. And they will not be easy. And it won’t be a time to play church. It will be a time of temptation to turn back. It will be a time where things just seem to get worse and worse.