[Re]sponse to Fear: Do It Afraid
Nehemiah 6:10-14
One of the victims in the tragedy at Virginia Tech was a man named Liviu Librescu. He was a 77-year-old engineering professor and a Holocaust survivor. How people react in a moment of chaotic terror tells a lot about a person, because heroes always stand out in a crowd. They heard shooting and screaming in the hall and in the midst of chaos, immediately Professor Librescu ran to the door and braced his body against the door and yelled for his students to jump from the windows. The students ran to the windows, kicked out screens and dropped to the bushes below. As shots were coming through the door, Professor Librescu continued to yell to his students as he barricaded his body against the door. Bullets pierced the door killed him and one other student. That’s a leader. That’s the kind of man that I would want to be to my children. That’s the kind of man that I would want to be as your pastor. My question is, in that moment of chaos, in that moment of terror, what is in a person that makes them decide to either flight or fight? A majority of people in those moments of threatening terror are tempted to run and hide. So what makes the difference between choosing one over the other and how do you do that?
In our scripture today, we see that temptation to choose flight over staying and fighting from one of Nehemiah’s supposed friends, "Come on, Nehemiah, you’re going to die in this situation. Let’s run into the church and lock the door, where we will be safe." Many ancient peoples recognized a religious "right of asylum" in a sanctuary or temple, protecting criminals (or those accused of crime) from legal action to some extent. No harm or danger would fall upon them as long as they were on holy ground. In fact, this is how our word sanctuary came to mean a place of safety. So Nehemiah’s supposed friend tries to lure him to the temple to hide from his enemies. Many times people who you think are your friends are really your foe. One of the greatest tragedies of all, this is when the enemy wins, is when you begin to use faith for personal security and comfort.
The prevailing attitude of the culture toward the church is that the church does just this. We’re about and for ourselves and thus have become basically irrelevant to the needs of most people today. From their perspective, all we do is hang around in these little buildings where we have shut the door. We might not have actually locked the door, but, because of our irrelevance and inaccessibility, the door seems locked. We get together in our little religious clubs and have reduced the radical mission of Jesus to this little personalized salvation, safety and security thing. What do we mean when we say, "I’m saved!"? The rest of the world is going to hell, but I’m saved. We sing our songs and have our dinners and our bazaars, and at best, we pray for the world, we may even send some to help the needy but no one ever gets dirty. We insulate ourselves from the plight and pain of the world for whom Jesus died and in the process forget we’re at war for the soul of the world. Our fear of really committing ourselves to the radical purpose of Jesus, and not just play church, prohibits people from entering God’s saving purpose and presence.
I don’t remember much from high school biology but I do remember one term: homeostasis. Homeostasis is the tendency of a system or organism to remain the same. There is a great drive within us to stay the same. In fact, it’s said that most people don’t change untl the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. And that gets to the heart of fear. Fear is like the thermostat in my house. Throughout twelve months of the year, it is always set somewhere between 68-72 degrees. It doesn’t go under that or over that when we’re at home. Sometimes we’ll be lying in bed at night and I’ll say to Giovanna, "Did you turn the air up?" I can tell when the thermostat is above 70 degrees at night. If it is, I can’t sleep because, I don’t like to be outside of my comfort zone. To really commit yourself to the radical mission of Jesus Christ, and not just play church, has the same factor in our lives - it keeps us in our comfort zone. When you allow fear to control, it has lifelong repercussions. The desire for homeostasis is a powerful force in the life of every person’s life and every organization, including the church.
You’ve heard of the last seven words of Christ but do you know the last seven words of the church? “We’ve never done it that way before!” Churches get distracted from doing what God wants them to do when they baptize the methodologies of the past and fear changing anything. When we do, we sometimes confuse the message and the means. Listen to me carefully: the message of Jesus Christ never changes, but the methods must! This is the founding principle of the Methodist church and the reason it came into being. John Wesley saw that the Church of England kept doing things the same way at a time of massive cultural change as England moved into the industrial age and 100’s of 1000’s of the poor were losing their homes and farms and moving into the cities looking for work in the factories which were being built. The methods of the Anglican Church were not culture friendly and the poor were not attracted to their worship or liturgy nor we they welcomed in the churches. So Wesley, believing that salvation and eternity for 1000’s of poor people were hanging in the balance, did the unthinkable. He refused to be assigned to a church, instead declaring “The world was his parish.” Image If the people didn’t come to church, he’d take church to the people. So he began to preach in the town squares in the very place that town criers would share the news of the day. In other words, he used modern methods of mass communication in preaching the Gospel. His brother Charles realized the unchurched wouldn’t know the great hymns of the church or their tunes. So he went to the bars and listened to the drinking songs, borrowed the tunes and then put the Gospel message to them. You didn’t realize you were singing drinking tunes in church, did you? That would be the equivalent of borrowing the tunes from radio today and putting Christian words to them. That is why contemporary Christian music and praise choruses are helping the church to reach generations today who were not raised in the church. Wesley loved tradition but he was not going to allow tradition to become a stumbling block to the church’s mission. He chose instead to put the desire to do what we needed to reach people for Jesus Christ ahead of his own personal preferences. Times changed and the church needed to change. In Psalm 96:1, God says, “Sing to the Lord a new song!”, and I take from that, among other things, that each generation of His people needs to find out how to effectively bring Him glory in fresh ways that fit each new generation. Remember the men of Issachar, described in the Old Testament as men who “knew the times, and understood what Israel should do.” Times change, so must methods if we want to reach new generations for Christ. The church cannot be held captive by fear.
Well, Nehemiah’s Verse 13 reads, "He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this." The sin is more than entering the temple as a layperson. This is an act of disbelief in God driven by fear of the future and unknown. If Nehemiah would have sought sanctuary in the temple then he would have in effect been saying, God I don’t trust you, your calling on my life or your protection and equipping to accomplish the job. That lack of faith in God leads us to go our own way which is rebellion against God and is considered a sin. When we react to fear and allow it to guide our actions, the consequence is sin. Here’s the affect of sin: it diminishes your capacity to achieve God’s purpose through indecision, procrastination and disobedience.
There are two consequences to sin.. First, Sin causes us to fail to act against injustice, to fail to step out in behalf of the poor and the powerless and to fail to take a stand on that which opposes God and His will. We fail to act against destructive causes or issues. Fear paralyzes you from acting on all that Christ is calling you to be and do. Last year was the 400th anniversary of when the first slave ship reached Jamestown. Except for the Quakers, the church was silent for over 250 years, until the 1860s. You can’t tell me there wasn’t a boatload of people in the church who thought there was something wrong with that. But, what did we do? We ran into our churches, closed the doors and were irrelevant to God’s rebuilding and renewing purpose in the world. We made it about heaven and our purpose on earth instead of bringing God’s purpose of heaven to earth. It’s out of fear that we don’t speak or act.
The second consequence of sin is loss. There is a loss when you sin, when you allow yourself to be controlled by fear. Not only is it sin, there is a loss of credibility and reputation. You damage your name but you also damage the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are His representative, His spokesperson and His witness. The Chinese have this saying, "A reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the choice of one hour." When you allow yourself to be controlled by fear, you lose respect for yourself. Great leaders are few and far between. I think about that - would I have been the one that threw myself up against the door or would I have run for the window? Great leadership is about the commitment not to flight, but to the fight. So how can we overcome our fears?
First, name your fear. We all feel fear. Fears can run the gamut from a fear of death, a fear of conflict to a fear of heights. Let me ask you a question: What are you afraid of the most? And what is it holding you back from doing, being or accomplishing for God. If we don’t begin to deal with our fears, they begin to deal with us. In dealing with your fears, you can overcome them. But if you don’t deal with them, they will overwhelm you. I don’t know what you’re fear is but I fear failure. I fear that I will fail at what God wants me to do and accomplish for Him. And if I’m honest, there’s a lot of my self-esteem and identity tied up in what I do and what I accomplish. It’s one reason I’m a workaholic and why I have difficulty getting away from work.
But what I fail to realize is that God has dealt with failures before and it has never stopped his plan of salvation or his ability to redeem a situation, a failure or even a life. We all need to remember that. There were two people who failed in Jesus’ last days: Judas and Peter. Peter’s failure wasn’t any worse than Judas’, it’s just that Peter did it 3 times and Judas did it once. Judas could not forgive himself and committed suicide by hanging himself. Peter was able to forgive himself but only because he was able to stand in the presence of Jesus after his failure. Judas didn’t. God didn’t have a chance to redeem him. It’s the only difference.
II Tim 2:1 says, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." That speaks to me in my fear of failure. I may not be able to forgive myself and I may beat up on myself as a result of a failure. But then I hear, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." It doesn’t say in the power that is in Jesus or the righteousness that is in Jesus but the grace. Grace is undeserved favor. It’s love and forgiveness that isn’t tied to merit or favor but rather is tied to our need and God’s love for us.
Second, recognize the source. You need to realize the source of that fear. Look at verse 12 with me, "I realized that God had not sent him." Nehemiah realized that fear doesn’t come from God. Here’s what the word of God says, "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and sound mind." When fear overrides your mind, you become reactive instead of proactive. Fear is really faith in the devil. Faith is the proactive resolve to feel the fear and do it anyway. Faith is living from the perspective of Easter. It’s living with a resurrection worldview. On Easter morning, the women were the first ones to see Jesus. Why wasn’t there a man to be found? The Bible says they were afraid and hiding behind locked doors. Five hundred years after Nehemiah, the temptation still is to run into the temple or the church, and lock doors. You’ve got to admit, when you buried someone three days before and in that kind of desert climate, they did it quickly, but you smelled smells - he had been hanging on a cross all day. Then you see Jesus standing in the garden and the first words out of his mouth after the resurrection are, "Do not be afraid." The enemies plan isn’t so much to defeat you but rather to neutralize you and get you out of the game and sitting in the pews or on the bench. Fear does just that. It paralyzes us and hold us back from joining in the radical mission of Jesus Christ. So recognize the source. I John 4:1 puts it this way: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
Third, pray. When confronting fear, prayer is crucial. Verse 14 reads, Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.” Once again, Nehemiah turns to prayer to get him through the difficulties and challenges he’s facing. The believer fights the battle with knee mail. He can’t do anything about Tobiah and Sanballat, or even Noadiah but he knows God can and so he places it in His hands. When conflict comes and fear strikes, it’s time to pray because in reality, it’s an attack against God. If only we were so impassioned about those who oppose the work of God! We need to become people of prayer.
Fourth, trust God and step forward. verse 11, "But I said, ’Should someone like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!’’’ The definition of faith is don’t run. That’s exactly what he was saying. Rosa Parks is one of my great heroes of our day. She was a youth worker in her church and in Montgomery, Alabama, at age 43, after her day job, she got on a bus and broke the law by refusing to give up her seat for a white person. As a serious follower of Jesus, she really was the one that started the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. couldn’t have done what he did without Rosa first trusting God and stepping out in faith on that bus. Rosa Parks didn’t react, she was proactive. She said, "I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, when you know what you have to do and you commit yourself to do it, this diminishes fear." Knowing what must be done does away with fear. It’s feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
Paul described this commitment to follow Jesus Christ, this Jesus lifestyle and he never said, come into this church and find how Jesus can make your life better. Nowhere does it say in the Bible that Christians make more money, or won’t get sick or that Christians will have better things happen in their life. What Paul said was this: "Come and join the fight." He describes this lifestyle as a commitment to fight the good fight of faith. Are you ready to join in the fight?
I want you to bow your head in prayer with me because God wants to do some great things and he wants to do them through you. But first you’ve got to deal with that fear, that thing which is holding you back from stepping out in faith and taking great risks for God. I want you to identify a place of fear that is impeding God’s progress and purpose in your life. Name it to yourself; identify that fear that’s impeding your progress. God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. Right now, through the grace that is in Jesus, recommit yourself to fight the good fight of faith and that you will not be diminished in your capacity through indecision, procrastination or disobedience in any area, not your marriage, not your giving, not your service, or even your witness. Identify an unresolved anger that’s tied to unforgiveness in your life. A resentment that you have against another person or even yourself, that you haven’t released to God. Judgment belongs to the Lord. Release that person. You don’t have to trust the rat or hang out with the rat, just release that person to the judgment, the mercy, the love of God, while you get on with God’s work.
"Father, we are so thankful that in these days of confusion in the world - of mental illness, of disease, of poverty and the murder of innocents, that we get to be a part of Your redeeming work in the world. Let us not hide behind the traditions of church. Let us fully engage the world everywhere we work and live and play and right here in our worship and ministry so that when we come to that day where we meet You, Lord Jesus, face-to-face, we can hear the words "Well done,my good and faithful servant. Well done." We love You, Lord Jesus, use us this week. It’s in Your name we pray. Amen."
