One day when Pastor Kubke was doing his routine hospital visits in a former parish, he was surprised to find the name of his next door neighbour on the admissions list that was kept in the clergy office of that hospital.   He went to her hospital room to visit her and found that she was very seriously ill indeed and also quite depressed.  Her dark mood was understandable enough, considering her illness, but it wasn’t the illness that had her the most upset.  It turned out that her husband absolutely refused to come into the hospital with her when he left her there.   As ill as she had been, he had simply dropped her off in front of the emergency ward door.   After that, when she was admitted, he refused to go in to see her.   He sent friends in to see her and even sent gifts along with those friends, but he could not be persuaded to walk through the hospital doors himself.  

Why was that?  He was terrified of hospitals.   He was a strongly built, aggressive military man.  He was the kind of man who fit nicely into most people’s idea of what a motorcycle gang member would be like, but he simply did not have the ability to face his fear and overcome it.    His problem with hospitals meant that he left his wife feeling very unloved indeed, but even at the risk of his own marriage, he would not go to see her.

What are you afraid of?   We have our fears, some of which are quite understandable and normal, and others that truly hinder us and rob us of a sense of satisfaction and joy in life.  We have our fears, fears that can protect us in some ways, and fears that can cause us to lose some of the people or some of things in our lives that we cherish the most.  

In our lessons today, we see that God recognizes our fears and gives us the gift by which we can cope with them.  Thank God that He gives us that faith that trusts in Him especially when we are filled with fear!

 

Abraham had just encountered something quite unexpected before God spoke to him with such words of comfort as He spoke in our Old Testament lesson this morning.    Some time before this, Abraham and Lot separated from one another because they had too much livestock between them for the land to support them properly.  Lot had taken the low road, choosing the best lands down in the lowlands near the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which were extremely fertile and well-watered at the time – and wealthy.    Abraham himself stayed up in the drier, rockier high country.    

It didn’t take long, however, for Lot and his family to get caught in the middle of a war that was being fought between the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and the kings of neighbouring cities.   Both Sodom and Gomorrah were conquered and their people were carried away, and Lot and his family were carried off with them.  

This is when Abraham did something he had never figured he would have to do.   He got together with other tribes living in the high country and went after the kings who had conquered Sodom and Gomorrah.  Under Abraham’s leadership, those other kings were defeated.  Lot and his family, as well as all of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, were saved.  Abraham became a hero to the Canaanites of the south country, who were quite prepared to make Abraham a king in his own right.   They offered to serve him as their subjects.   

However, Abraham refused, risking the anger of the people who could easily have declared war on Abraham and his tribe in order to save face.    Abraham did not even want to be paid for his expenses in saving those Canaanite tribes.    He knew that God didn’t want him to make compromises with the Canaanites.   He knew that if had allowed himself to be just like his neighbours, the whole point of his call to the Promised Land would have been lost.  It was a risky thing and a dangerous thing to stand his ground for God, but that is what he did.  Abraham was afraid, but he knew he had done the right thing.  That was the point, then, when God came to Abraham in a vision and told him that he didn’t have to be afraid.

Fear’s the thing.  When God said to Abraham in our Old Testament lesson this morning, “Do not be afraid, Abraham”, He wasn’t talking like a father does to a child who is convinced that there is a monster in the closet when there is really nothing more menacing in there than a rack full of clothing.  It wasn’t a warm, tender shoulder over the arm or some kind-hearted bout of spiritual cheerleading that God was offering Abraham in our text today.   The Hebrew word used in this passage is ??? (yare).   It is the word that described what Moses felt after killing the Egyptian slave driver, realizing he had to escape into the desert or himself be killed.   It was the word that described Solomon when he was overwhelmed by the task of building the great temple in Jerusalem and was sure that the project would destroy him as a person.   It is the word used in the 23rd Psalm in which King David said, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”   God knew that Abraham was genuinely, sincerely afraid, and it is no wonder.

  In all of these cases, and in the many, many in which  the Old Testament speaks about fear, the idea is this: fear is the helplessness you feel when you realize you can’t do anything to save yourself.   It is an expression of the feeling that you are vulnerable and weak and at the mercy of that which you fear.

On the one hand, then, fear is actually a good thing.   It’s been a puzzle to many people why the memory work in the Small Catechism explains each of the Ten Commandments with the words, “We should fear and love God.”   The answer is that our relationship before God is only healthy when it starts with that humble sense of helplessness that fear describes.    Our love has to be balanced with the idea that you can’t do anything to save yourself or help yourself as you stand before God.  You are completely at God’s mercy.

Therefore, you have no right to set the terms as to how God should show His love to you.  You have no right to judge God’s love according to how well He might be pleasing you.    You have no right to act as if you can do anything you please before the Lord because He owes it to you to forgive you.   

Instead, God requires this of us: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  (Micah 6:8)   We are simply sinful human beings who are the farthest thing from holy or godlike according to what we were born to be.   We are people who would be nothing and have nothing if it were not for the mercy of God.   

If you understand that, you will certainly feel how inadequate you are in the presence of God.   You will feel the helplessness that only a truly honest person can feel as we stand before God completely aware of our sinfulness and fear what God has every right to do to us.   Fear, then, is really the very basis of humility.  Without that fear, you could never truly be humble before the Lord.

Are you afraid?  You really needn’t be afraid if there is a healthy dose of fear in your life.  Where you really need to be afraid is if you have no fear at all.  This, “I’m not afraid of anything” attitude that people take when it comes to their spiritual life really shows nothing more than great arrogance before God.   

Those people who so much like to say, “I’m against organized religion because people are such hypocrites” certainly aren’t anywhere near as afraid as they should be.  They are slapping God in the face when they say that because they are openly despising God’s gifts.    Those people who think that religion can be anything they want it to be and that they have the right to choose any path to God that pleases them really need to learn a healthy dose of fear.   People who just don’t go to church or just don’t spend time with God in prayer because they see no pressing need are people who don’t respect  the fact that they should be afraid of turning their backs on what God has commanded them to do.  

You can walk in a bull pen and tell yourself that there is no way that you are going to be scared of some dumb bull.   Climb into that pen, though, and you are going to miss the point.   The issue is not whether or not you are afraid of that bull.  The real issue is whether or not the bull is afraid of you.   The bull has the power to tear you to pieces.  The less afraid he is of you, the more likely he is going to be to use that power to get rid of you.   That bull will definitely take the time to teach you a lesson in humility if you are going to be that foolish as to give it a chance.

The question, then, is not how fearless a person can be when it comes to sinning openly and boldly.   That won’t hurt God, but it certainly will hurt you.   The issue is what God Himself thinks of you and what you are doing.  The truth is, God can’t attack sin and tear that sin to pieces without doing the very same thing to the person who is holding so tightly to their sin and being so arrogant in their attitude toward Him there is almost no distance at all between that person and his or her sin!  

Yet, God is merciful.   He gives us the change to learn about the danger before we get so foolish about things that we invite our sins to destroy us.  

Just before the people entered the Promised Land, God called Moses to explain a few things to the people about how God’s children should approach God.    The command given by God didn’t change through all the years and certainly was not changed by Jesus.  It was this: “Assemble the people – men, women and children, and the foreigners living in your towns – so they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of the Law.  Their children, who do not know this law must hear it and learn it to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”  (Deuteronomy 31:12-13)

What an interesting connection.  In our Old Testament lesson, Abraham was afraid.    He was afraid not just of the temptations that the neighbours provided, but also that he had failed God by not being able to produce a son.    He was feeling helpless and overwhelmed because everything that he was doing to help God along with God’s plan only made things that much more complicated.      Abraham had learned very well that he was not good enough; he was afraid.  God responded by saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your shield, your very great reward.”  

Abraham was open to hearing something now that only a humble, God-fearing person can truly understand.   Now, at this point, God said, “I am your very great reward”, knowing that Abraham was final in the right frame of mind to understand something about faith: saving faith itself is enough to lead us through the complexities of our fears.   Saving faith is enough to guide us along through those times when we shouldn’t be so scared and those times when we should be a great deal more scared than we are.   Saving faith is enough, because it holds onto God’s Word itself so that God’s Word can prepare us to recognize when our fears are good for us and when our fears are something that are pulling us away from God!

God is the very great reward of those people who believe in Him with a humble faith.  In our Old Testament lesson this morning, the Hebrew word, ??? (sakar) is translated as reward.

When we think of the word, we think of someone getting something to acknowledge a job well done, or at least of someone getting what he deserves.   In the Hebrew mind, reward is about being hired out.    ??? (sakar)  has more to do with getting paid your wages for doing what was expected of you than of getting some kind of recognition to show how wonderful you are.   It is more about consequences than it is about surprises.    If you have a job, your wages are a consequence of your working – you normally don’t get paid if you don’t work, and if you do work, you have every right to expect to get paid fairly for that work.   

For Abraham, the very presence of God was a consequence.  Abraham had been given the gift of saving faith; as a consequence of that faith, Abraham was near to God and God was with Abraham.   God was not there because Abram was entitled to have God in his life.   God was not a part of Abram’s life because Abram worked very, very hard to attract God.   It wasn’t the work that mattered to God or the lifestyle or even any of Abram’s promises.  Instead, our Old Testament lesson tells us that “Abram believed the Lord, and God credited it to him as righteousness.”   

In the same way, God’s presence in your own life is a consequence.   His own Son, Jesus Christ risked His perfect, sinless life so that by that sacrifice there would be an awesome consequence.   Jesus died on the Cross.  He descended into hell.  He rose again from the dead.  As a consequence of the price that Jesus paid for you, the mercy of God has been extended to you.   As a consequence of our saviour’s work, the gift of faith has come upon you.    Jesus made saving faith available to you  in a fearful way.    He brought it to you in such a way that He Himself had to meander through the deepest, darkest fears that could ever be imagined.    Jesus faced those fears and stood square on in front of them so that He could knock the feet out from under Satan Himself.   As a consequence of all that, Jesus has made it possible for you to believe and to be saved.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews said, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”    Faith is being sure that God loves us and that God is with us even when we are so aware of our sinfulness and so afraid of what our sins deserve that we are tempted to believe that God would never forgive us.   Faith is being sure that God knows our hearts and will be near to us in His Word even when our hearts are too filled with sorrow or disappointment for us to see anything but the challenges that scare us.   Faith is understanding that we really have no choice but to rely on God’s mercy, but that God has offered us that mercy and invited us to use His own gifts He has given us so that we can trust in that mercy even when we are so afraid that it is the hardest thing to do!

There is a balance between fear and certainty when it comes to faith.    The more we believe in God, the more we understand the dangers around us.  The more we understand just how spiritually dangerous the world is, the more saving faith moves us to approach God, who has promised us His mercy.    The closer we are brought to God through His Word, the more we realize that God has indeed forgiven us and has indeed promised to give us what we need so that we can cope with the fears that are all around us.  We both fear and love God as saving faith works in us, and that combination of both brings peace.  

That is what Jesus meant when He said in our Gospel lesson for this morning, “Do not be afraid little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”    Fears will indeed surround us.  At times, they will even overcome us.  Evil will assault us, and at times it will make our lives miserable and even be the cause of our death.   There is much to be afraid of, but there is also much to give us courage.   Your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  He has made you His own.   He has promised to give you the balance of caution and wisdom, fearfulness and boldness that belongs to those who are in His Kingdom of grace.  He knows your heart; He understands your fears.   He will be with you because you believe with the faith He Himself has given you.  He will be with you because the reward of that faith is Jesus Christ Himself; it is the very presence of God in your life as His Word lives within you and you live according to that Word!

“Abide with me,” wrote Henry Lyte, “fast falls the eventide.  The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.  When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, Lord, abide with me.  I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless, Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness.  Where is death’s sting, where grave, thy victory?  I triumph still if Thou abide with me!”  

Remember this always, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.