“Yielding All Things: Faith Vs. Fear”
Genesis 3:1-15, 21-24
Let’s try and imagine the original Eden.
Animals roam freely and peacefully.
A mist goes up from the earth, watering the green land and the blooming flowers.
The birds chirp, the fish swim in glistening water.
Trees are filled with delicious fruit, ripe for the picking.
Each day is magnificent.
Humankind lives in perfect harmony with creation and with the Creator.
And then, with a whisper, the scene changes.
Discord and distrust build.
Fruit from the forbidden tree is eaten, and, as promised, the eyes of the first man and woman open.
And they suddenly experience brand new feelings of shame, humiliation, and overpowering fear.
“We disobeyed the God Who made us.
We are going to die!”
In 1st John we are told that Perfect love casts out fear, but Adam and Eve learned another thing.
Perfect fear casts out love.
What had started out as a story of trust and obedience now becomes an account of crime and punishment.
What started out as a life of faith, relationship and love has been twisted into a life of fear.
They had wanted knowledge rather than trust.
And now that they have it; they now know more than they could ever have wanted to know.
And there is no place to run.
And here we have the tragedy of the Fall of humankind.
But through it all, God remains faithful.
We are told in verse 7 that when “the eyes of [Adam and Eve] were opened, and they realized they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
They made “the first clothes, so to speak” and not very good ones we might add.
And then they hid from God.
But God sought them out, and did for them something they couldn’t do for themselves.
In verse 21 we are told that “The Lord made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
In the Bible, to be clothed is to be given life!
In Romans 13:14 Paul instructs us to “cloth [ourselves] with the Lord Jesus Christ…”
In Galatians Chapter 3 we are told, “all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ”…and… “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Let’s try and take in the magnitude of this for a moment.
I mean where did the skins come from that God used to make their clothing—in order to cover their nakedness (and nakedness here is a metaphor for sinfulness)?
They came from an animal, and scholars down through the ages have contended that it was a lamb.
So, the first sacrifice in the Bible was made by God and this was a hint of the ultimate sacrifice to come.
And those hints turned into reality when God took on flesh and lived among us, died and was resurrected in order restore those who will believe back to life as it was before sin and fear entered the picture.
And so, those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, die with Christ and are clothed with Christ—just as God graciously made Adam and Eve clothes out of the skin of the first sacrifice.
Pretty amazing stuff, wouldn’t you say?
And so, through the ages, at all times and in all places God remains faithful to us.
As we are told in Hebrews, “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
And because of this, God offers us faith and Perfect Love which drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.
Let me ask you this morning, what are you afraid of?
What keeps you up at night?
What causes you to want to run and hide?
What makes you feel naked?
Remember, how, last Sunday, I asked “How many of you have had those kinds of dreams where you show up for a test at school totally unprepared?”
Often, in those dreams, somehow you have missed all the classes until the final exam.
It seems to be an almost universal dream folks have.
At lunch this week David and I got talking about those universal dreams.
And another one that many of us have is showing up to school either naked or in our underwear.
Or we may be giving a presentation or whatever.
It’s an awful dream, and I don’t know if I have ever met someone who told me that they have never had a dream like that.
According to a website called DreamStop:
“Dreaming of being naked is a sign of great vulnerability and insecurity.
You fear others seeing you for exactly what you are, and you desire to hide some part of yourself which you feel to be shameful or embarrassing.
There might be something that the dreamer is subconsciously hiding and scared that people might discover this secret.
Because clothes are used as a form of protection from the outside world, when we strip away our clothes, we become vulnerable to people around us because we don’t have any layers of protection.”
Whether that is completely true or not, I have no idea, but it does make a bit of sense to me.
But since we all have these dreams, and we are all sinners in need of being clothed with Christ—it makes even more sense.
When I am feeling afraid, scared, anxious or at my wit’s end I have found that one thing which helps me greatly is to pray the prayer we used as our proclamation for this morning.
Next week, everyone will be given a laminated copy of this prayer to take with you.
Please pray this prayer every day, especially during this season in which we are prayerfully deciding what we will pledge to give the Church, and thus God, out of our paychecks in the coming year.
One of the things that causes the most anxiety is money.
And it can be difficult for us to trust God enough in order to give a share of it away for the good of the Kingdom, for the good of others.
But this Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition is something I call the “Prayer to Perfect Freedom.”
And what I mean by that is if I were able to get to the point where I can pray this prayer to God in complete 100% honesty it will mean that I am able to completely trust in the love, goodness and presence of God for all things, in all things and during all things—no matter what.
And when we do that---fear fades away and we are free.
Paul experienced that, when he was experiencing some kind of thorn in his flesh—some kind of problem that wouldn’t go away.
He said that he prayed to God about “a thorn” in his “flesh” a “messenger of Satan” that was tormenting him.
He wrote in 2 Corinthians that “Three times [he] pleaded with the Lord to take” whatever the trouble was away from him.
But then God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
And so, Paul learned to delight even in “weaknesses, insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties,” for he said, “when I am weak, then I am strong.”
In a similar way, our faith grows stronger when we trust God with our finances.
It’s kind of like that game that kids sometimes play.
One person stands behind the other and asks: “Do you trust me?”
And if the person trusts the other, they fall backwards believing that their friend will catch them and not allow them to hit the ground.
Do you want to trust God THAT much?
Do you want to be THAT free?
We will again, at the end of the service pray together the Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition.
And as you pray it, be asking God to enable you to mean what you are praying.
Because this prayer is some really radical stuff.
I mean, “I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with who thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.”
You will notice in your bulletins that there is an insert.
It is not a pledge card, we will collect those on Sunday, November 3.
But, in a sense it is a pledge card.
Because we will be pledging that we will ask God’s direction as to what God wants our financial commitment to Red Bank United Methodist Church to be in the year 2020.
Please write your name on the card and bring it forward and lay it on the altar rails as you come to Communion.
And during the next month pray the Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition every day or several times a day as you are trying to make up your mind.
You know, the God addressed in the Covenant Prayer is the God Who clothed Adam and Eve with skins from the first sacrifice.
He is also the same God who has come to us in the flesh, taught us how to live, died as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins once and for all, rose again and Who calls us to a Perfect Faith which ultimately drives out fear.
May it be so.
Amen.
