So I was asked, this was a great honor for me, I was asked this week to teach a class on preaching for our denomination. Now I know some of you were thinking, John, you should have been in the class on preaching for our denomination. And the truth is I was actually signing, this is the truth, sorry, I was actually signing up for the class when they emailed me and told me I'd be teaching it. So I said, okay, I'll give it my best shot.
And did a little talk for about 16, 18 guys that were trying to be better communicators. And one of the things we discussed was how we choose what we're going to talk about at Mendeblek. What filter do we run it through? It's hard if you don't have some plan.
And these Sundays come with great regularity. And so the thought was like, how do you guys know what to talk about? We went through our model, how we disciple heart, shape minds. So we talked about those things.
I tell you about that because there's something going on. In our church, in our culture that has made me in the many years I've been up here now, never more certain that we needed to talk about something. And I've never received more confirmation about this, even from a friend walking in the Starbucks this week, that this is something that God wants his people to be thinking about and talking about. I've never been more certain of that, going into a series than this one right now.
We looked at it together, some friends of mine in a smaller venue about eight years ago. But I need to look at it again. I need to study it again. Now, I've heard whispering about the subject online.
I've seen them over the air. I hear my friends talking about them. But this series, maybe more than anything, was initiated by me. I got a few weeks ago from a friend.
Here's what they wrote me. Because I'm going through a season of life right now where some things are some stuff up in the air. And I was getting scared. So out of the blue, they wrote me.
And they've been going through some similar things in their life. And they wrote me, hey, John, let me know if you have any time over the next week or so to talk. God has revealed some big things to me during this course of struggle that I was familiar with, that her family was going through. She said, I'm learning a lot about my relationship with fear.
So my ears prick them. She said, it occurred to me then in church. I saying, quote, I'm no longer a slave to fear. I'm a child of God.
We sing that song here a lot. She said, I sing it with all my heart. But I think my truth that I should be singing is, I'm completely a slave to fear. I've forgotten I'm a child of God.
She wrote in 2017, I'm committed to surrender in my mind, in my body, in my spirit, to the Lord. Because it's also connected to my fear causes, my anxiety, my anxiety causes, my physical pain. I want to be able to say, I'm no longer a slave to fear. And I want to meet it.
And so I'm going to launch us off for the next bunch of weeks on this topic with two questions, one of which we're going to answer today. And then the next one we're going to answer over the coming few weeks. So here's the first question. If you went to guess, what do you think the most common command in the Bible is?
The most frequent instruction of God were to give a frequent instruction to humanity, to the human race. What do you think he would say over and over? Now, if you don't get anything more out of today, I want you to get this, OK? Because this has been resonating in my heart for eight years since I taught through it eight years ago.
And just so you know I couldn't find any of those sermons. So I had to start from scratch. The most common command in all of the scriptures is not be more loving, although of course, that's right at the core of God's will for us. A lot of writers of the spiritual life talk about our struggle with pride.
That's at the heart of our sin problem, of our human fallenness. But the most common command, it doesn't have to do with fighting pride or cultivating humanity. Guys, the most common command in the scripture doesn't have anything to do with sexual integrity. It doesn't have anything to do with walking and truth.
Those are all real concerns, OK? That God does have something to say about. But the most common command, by far, in all of the Bible is to words. Fear not.
Give you some perspective on this. The gospel actually lists 125 Christ-issued commands, imperatives. Of these, 21 of the 125 urges, don't be afraid. Do not fear.
Perspective the second most common command appears eight times. 2028. We have quantities any indicator. Jesus takes our fears, our struggle with fear seriously.
Don't be afraid. So here's my question. Why am I so afraid? Maybe if you read the email I sent you this week, you know, the news is out there in North Korea, right?
They're right on the verge of an interbolicic nuclear missile. It looks like the old Russian bear is on the prowl again. The stock bubble, you know, it's over 20,000. It seems like it's ready to burst at some point.
Technology is robbing all of my friends' jobs. The planet is warming. The economy might be cooling. We're afraid of all of these things.
We fear being sued, finishing last, going broke. We worry endlessly about the mole on our back. The new neighbor. The sound of the clock is it kind of ticks us closer to the end.
Why am I so afraid? Why am I so afraid? I mean, have you seen what's going on in our world, in our country with my job, my health, and my house? Why am I so afraid of me?
What if my husband leaves me? What if my wife cheats on me? What if my boss fires me? What if something happened to my kids?
I mean, why am I so afraid? Are school shootings, mall shootings, club shootings? You can't be safe anywhere. And maybe, maybe, just perhaps.
This is why I listen to this. The average child today, parents, your kid, the average child today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s. Am I afraid? I mean, excuse the language.
You're damn right, I'm afraid. At the time I'm scared to death. Now that resonates with you. You're not alone.
The New York Times, just this summer, in August, in an article entitled, The 50 States of Anxiety, reported over the past eight years, Google search rates for anxiety have more than doubled. They're higher this year than they have been in any year since Google was first created. In 2016, it has topped, their top searches were, for driving it, make sure I don't quote this statistic correctly. So far, 2016 has been the top year for searching, driving anxiety, travel anxiety, separation anxiety, anxiety at work, anxiety at school, and anxiety at home.
American anxieties are up 150% compared with 2004. So why are you so afraid? See, it's not just the cute title of a series. It actually was a question from somebody a lot brighter than me.
His name was Jesus. Do people much like us, in a storm? Now at first blush, when you understand the storm that we're in, you might look at Jesus and go, you can't be serious, right? It was kind of like one swimmer asking another swimmer, how'd you get so wet?
I mean, but Jesus, when he asked the question, he doesn't ask you with like a rive smile. He asks it earnestly. So we're the men to whom he asks the question, just like us, concerned and afraid. Let me show you the story.
It's their story, but metaphorically, it's kind of ours too. There was a real fisherman whose name was Matthew, and he started following Jesus. It was a historical account. This is one of the most documentable things of the time period.
This actually happened. There's a man named Matthew, and he is a man of imperfect faith, which makes him like me and you. And here's the story that he writes in a book in the Bible called Matthew Chapter 8. He says, Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him.
And check out the writing here. A great storm. I want you to look at that. That's how Matthew writes it down.
Of course, that's the translation of what Matthew wrote into English. A great storm arose on the lake so that the waves covered the boat. If you know this story, raise your hand. Raise your hand high so I can say, see, here's the problem.
The problem is you know the story. It's not that you know it. That's good. I mean, you know some of the word of God.
You've spent some time in the scripture. But there's only one problem sometimes. When stories become familiar, familiarity can sometimes lead to the domestication of the story. It loses its teeth.
You might know the story, but here's the question. Have you entered it? Have you entered the story? Have you entered their storm?
Let me explain. You might not know this. I'm trying to describe what was going on on that boat. This Matthew, he doesn't actually speak of just rough seas.
Our translation does not merely do justice to what is happening on that boat. It's not merely a great storm. Matthew, to his first century writers, he's able to convey something that our English version just misses. Here's what he says in the original language.
He says, a great seismos arose on the lake. A great seismos arose on the lake. Max Okaru in his brilliant book, Führerless, a book that you'll hear me referencing throughout this series. The term, he says seismos still occupies a pretty big spot in our vernacular.
You know this term, seismologists study earthquakes. A seismograph measures them. And so here's Matthew, along with a crew of recent recruits. He's feeling a seismos in the earth and wanting his soul.
Now I want you to understand how big this is, OK? Perspective again. Matthew, in all, and you know so many Matthew stories, OK? He only uses this word three times, this seismos word, in all of his writing.
Three times he uses the word. One is when Jesus dies on Calvary on the cross, and they say he says the earth shook. There was a seismos on the earth. Again, at Jesus' resurrection, when the graveyard tremor, there was a moment of seismos there, and apparently the stilled storm on the sea shares equal billing in Jesus' great victories.
There was the defeating of guilt and shame on the cross. There was the defeating of death on the tomb. And now there is the defeating of fear on the sea. That's how important this is.
It's that big deal. Sun fear. Sun fear. I know all fear is in sun, but the story is kind of relating to sun fear.
There's an older version of the story that translates this way. Suddenly, a great tempest arose on the sea. We all know about fears that come on suddenly. I can get you.
Anybody you want to remember what it feels like? When's the last time your phone rang at 2 AM? Sun in fear. The swerving car, the unexpected call into the boss's office.
You ever hear a knock on the door? There's a policeman standing there. Sun fear. And there's so much irony in here for those of us that are trying to follow Jesus.
Darren, if you put that verse back up, Jesus got into the boat and his followers went with him, a great storm arose on the lake. Check this out, because this is not the bill of good. So many of us got sold when we started following Jesus. He says, Jesus got in the boat.
His followers, they followed. And then a beautiful rainbow flashed across the sky to celebrate their faith-filled decisions. Jesus got into this boat. His disciples followed.
And Jesus began taking prayer requests. Jesus got into the boat. His disciples followed him. And suddenly, go for an Isaac.
And Julie, the cruise director, started serving drinks. This is not what it says. It might be that you were led to believe it one time in your life in regard to following Jesus. That's what happens.
But here is what it says. Jesus got in the boat. His followers went with him. His followers who left family and jobs and security behind and a great storm arose.
Breaking news, friends, getting on board with Christ can mean getting soaked with Christ. Disciples are not guaranteed smooth sailing. It was the captain himself who said, in this world, you will, not might, not may, not could. You will have trouble.
Christ followers get diseased. They bury children. They battle addictions. And as a result of all of those things, we face fear.
It's not the absence of storms in our lives. See, this is where the church gets messed up. It's not the absence of storms in our lives that set us apart. It's who we discover in the bow of the boat, in the storm that sets us apart.
Here's what Jesus says. He says, in this world, you will have trouble. But have good courage. Don't be afraid because I've overcome the world.
You want to know what overcoming the world looks like in that situation? A great storm arose on the lake. And again, I love what Paul uses. It's another just giant big butt.
I know that sounds funny, but you should get used to this thing. Now, when you see these butts, this is a big butt. Jesus is sleeping. Jesus is asleep.
You know what's amazing here? Now, this is so true, OK? What's amazing here is Jesus is calm. Does not translate to the disciples.
Nobody goes, oh, see, Jesus is asleep. I'm going to go. You would think you might run and grab and hold him tight and say, OK, if he's going to be God with him, I'm going to hold on to him. This is when the sudden fear comes in.
You would think that our natural inclination would be to run and grab hold of Jesus. Grab on to him tightly, believing is, we said he is. But that's not what fear does. This is why it's so dangerous.
You ever been in that storm? A bad one? And it just seems like Jesus is nowhere to be found. Like he's asleep.
I had some difficult things going on in my life a few weeks ago. I was driving home from the source of this frustration. And I was in the car and I was banging on my dashboard. Where are you?
Where are you? Do you see what's going on down here? This is what I want you to see. The reason that this is the number one command of the scriptures, not all the other stuff that we think that we should be telling people all the time.
The reason this is the number one fear to not fear, is because fear has terrible consequences for us. And this is the first consequence. And it's a big one. Fear erodes our confidence in God, but not just our confidence in his existence, but our confidence in his character.
Fear erodes your confidence, not just in his existence, but in his character. You ever felt that? If you're supposed to be so good, if you're supposed to be all knowing, if you're supposed to be all loving, what are you doing sleeping right now? Let me show you.
I'm gonna take it back to the story as Mark tells it in chapter four. He says, Jesus was in the start and sleeping on a cushion. The disciples are welcome and said, don't teach her. Look at their question.
Don't you care if we drown? That's what fear does. They don't ask Jesus about his strength. Jesus, can you steal the storm?
They don't ask Jesus about his knowledge. Jesus, you're aware of the storm. They don't say to Jesus, have you had any experience with the storms, but they raised doubts about his character. Hey, Jesus, do you care?
Do you even care? I've had this. I've felt this. This is what fear does.
It doesn't do your pastor. Fear will corrode your confidence in God's goodness. Not only that, fear has a way of completely dreading our recall. If you know any of the stories of the Bible, every time God shows up in kind of powerful ways.
He asks his people to put a marker there, because he knows that sometimes in life you're going to need to look back and remember that God did something there. What happens is in our lives when fear comes in, it just wipes out our memories of where God has been and what he's been up to in our lives. Let me show you just before in this same chapter in Matthew, just before they had gotten in the boat, they had seen him heal all kinds of sicknesses, all kinds of diseases. Just before getting in the boat, they had seen him heal a leper with a touch of his hand and a servant with a command.
Just before getting in the boat, they had seen demons scatter like bats out of a cave. Just before they got in the boat, five minutes later. Do you even care? You think somebody would mention his track record or his resume, his accomplishments, but fear creates this spiritual amnesia first, so we forget about how good he is and what he really has done.
And now here's where it gets really scary, okay? This is why it's the number one command. Fear is so dangerous, the Bible is so replete with warnings about it, because when fear begins to shape your life, then safety becomes your God, and you'll do anything to get at it. When fear begins to shape your life, then safety becomes your God, and you will do anything to attain it.
What happens is you begin to abandon God's goodness and his promises, and you embrace a new God, a new idol, not one of carved wood or stone, but a new idol nonetheless, and it's called safety. Say church, as you know, it's not a matter. We all worship, everyone worships, it's not a matter of if you will worship, it's a matter of what you will worship, and when fear rules your life, you will begin to worship safety. But the truth is, can a safety lover ever do anything great?
Can the risk of verse accomplish noble deeds for God or for others? Can the fear-filled person love deeply? You wanna know what might be at the root cause of some of the relational distancing or marriages and in our relationships with our kids? Fear, because if I loved you with all abandon, what would happen if it didn't work out and you left me?
The fear-filled cannot love deeply, love is risky. They cannot give to the poor, because the Netherlands doesn't guarantee a return. The fear-filled cannot dream wildly. What if their dreams didn't come true?
The worship of safety emasculates greatness, no wonder Jesus, because he loves you and cares for you and created you with purpose and intent to serve him. No wonder Jesus wages a war against fear. Over and over in the Bible. It's fear of the threatens that keep people from trusting and obeying God.
Over and over in the scripture, there are two kinds of mindsets, two kinds of possibilities for life laid out for the human race. One is based on faith. You can trust God. You can trust his goodness and his power.
He's sufficient for your life. You can live with a sense of relaxed confidence in him. That's the mindset of faith. Or you can live with a mindset of fear.
You see this as soon as the fall takes place in the garden, right? I'm on my own. I'm on my own. Nobody's coming for me.
Nobody's going to help me. Unless I'm real careful and cautious, something really bad might happen to me. And I might not be able to handle it. And when you believe that way, here's what happens.
You get deluded into thinking. I get deluded into thinking that the problem is the circumstance. It's the circumstance that made me scared, but it's not the circumstance that produces the fear. Here's how I know, because historically the Bible just over and over shows two different sets of people who face the exact same storm, the exact same difficulty, the exact same circumstance, and they live very different lives.
Moses sends 12 scouts out to explore the promised land. Ten of them come back and say, oh man, the land is great. It's flowing with milk and honey. But the enemy's over there.
They're really big and powerful. We'll never be able to come there. God will never be able to help us here. We should just go back.
But two of the scouts, Joshua and Caleb, look at the same promised land. They look at the same enemies and they go, we should go forward and it's about land. Because I think God's going to give it to us, just like he said with his help. The story, there's a young shepherd boy named David.
He's bringing supplies to his brothers who are serving in the army. He sees what they see, this giant named Goliath, who's out there mocking the armies of mocking God all day long, all the soldiers see him. They're terrified to challenge him. David sees the same thing, same storm, same problem, and he goes in with a slingshot.
See, it's not the circumstance that causes the fear. Jesus and his disciples are in the boat one day. The storm comes up, the disciples are scared. They're screaming at panic.
Jesus is asleep. In all of these stories, and many like them, there are two sets of people. They face the same situation. They scout the same promised land.
They look at the same enemy. They endure the same storm. Some respond with peace. Some respond with panic.
What's the difference? It's not the situation. It's not the circumstances. It's their understanding of who God is.
It's their mind that's set. One writer put it this way. He said, I would say it's a single word, perspective. The most important determinant of whether you want to live in faith or fear is your perspective.
Your perspective makes all the difference. Perspective determines how we respond to things. So I read this letter this week. Relative to perspective, it was from a college girl that she sent home to her parents.
Everybody had, we don't get letters anymore. We get emails, maybe texts. So she wrote home to her mom and dad, dear mom and dad, I have so much to tell you. Because of the fire set off by the student riots, I experienced temporary lung damage.
I had to go to the hospital. But while I was there, I fell in love with an orderly, and we've moved in together. I dropped out of school when I found out I was pregnant. He got fired because of his drinking.
So we're going to move to Alaska, where we might get married after the birth of the baby. Signed your loving daughter. P.S., none of that really happened, but I did flunk my chemistry class, and I wanted to keep it in perspective. It's a power of perspective.
Perspective is a sense of proportion. Problem, God. Problem, resource. It's the ability to sort out what's a big deal and what's not.
An unhealthy fear is the product of an oft-kilter sense of perspective, of who God is, who you are to him. The single most common command in all the Bible is the command not to live that way. Don't live like this. Live in the mindset of faith, not a mindset of fear.
Fear erodes our confidence of God. It makes this question, it's character. Fear makes us forget what he's done, and most importantly, it causes us to break God's first and primary command. Many of you would go, I look at the 10 commandments.
I think I keep them pretty well. The first command was, I'm the Lord your God, you shall have no other God other than me, or as Jesus restated it, the great command is you shall love the Lord your God will love your heart, soul, mind and strength. And fear turns us into idolaters, and safety becomes our God. Here's what I know about every God that exists, other than the one true God.
Every God that our hearts start to follow after will always enslave you. It will turn you into a slave. Jesus comes to set you free, and we keep returning to the chain gang of another God. The God of safety will paralyze you, he'll hold you in your place, he'll make you dance and perform for him.
You will literally be stuck in place, unable to move in your job, in your relationships, towards your hopes and dreams. You will cash them in at the altar of the God of safety, we do it all the time. And the God of safety turns out just like every other false God came home, you can kill your dreams, take your life and steal your attorneys. That's why fear is so important.
That's why it's the number one command. Now I don't know if you have family sayings around your house. We have some of ours, I've told you them over the years, I wake the kids up, you need to get up today because today could be the best day ever. And so they're sick of that one.
And I told them when they leave for school in the morning, you need to remember, remember the name, your grandfather worked in a sister factory, told her to bring other name, remember the name. We have other things. When they would say something, cutting or biting or one other, I would say, well is that encouraging? And so that was just kind of a thing.
And so they would just look at me and say, yeah, yeah, I know, is that encouraging? And we used to play a game in the diner, when the kids were young, the church after church would go to the diner, you're trying to kill some time and you got young kids. And so we created a little game called Blood or No Blood. And so we would say to the kids, we'd name a miscellaneous anor alcohol and say blood or no blood.
And they would sit there for a while trying to figure out is this a blood relative or is this related by marriage? And you know when the kids are young, they take from quite a long time, it's so much fun and it loved it. And they got older and so the game kind of lost some of its charm. So we started a new game recently in the diner, which is called I Name the Relative, you name their problem.
I see a relative shaking your head. We don't do that, I told that joke to my sister, and my sister's like, you're so mean. We don't do that, but we would play a game called Kingdom or Non-Kingdom, right? We talk about something, I'd say, okay, give an example, I'd say, is that a kingdom example of what it's like in the kingdom of God or what it's like in the kingdom of the world.
So we have these things, Kingdom or Non-Kingdom, that kind of stuff. I think if you followed Jesus around for three years, he had some family sayings. I think if they got together afterwards all over at the family reunion, they would have looked back and they would have said one thing, do you remember what he kept saying? Let me just give you a little piece of what he kept saying.
Starting in Matthew 10. So don't be afraid, you're worth much more than many spirals. Matthew 9, take courage, son, your sins are forgiven. Matthew 6, don't worry about everyday life, whether you have enough.
Luke 8, don't be afraid, just believe in your daughter, we'll be well, Matthew 14, it's all right, I'm here. Don't be afraid, Matthew 10, do not fear those who will kill the body but cannot fill the soul. Luke 12, do not fear, a little flock, for it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. John 14, don't be troubled, you trust God, trust me.
I'm gonna come for you so that you'll always be with me where I am. John 14, do not be troubled or afraid. Luke 24, why are you frightened? Why are your hearts filled with doubt?
Matthew 24, you'll hear, is this something from us? You'll hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you're not alarmed. Matthew 17, Jesus came and touched him and said, arise, don't be afraid. God always calls people to trust them.
He says to Abraham, leave your home, go with your wife, Sarah, and as an old man you're gonna give birth to a son and he's gonna become the father of a nation, but you're gonna have to leave everything familiar and comfortable, you're gonna have to trust me. God says to Moses, go confront the most powerful man in the world, tell them to let my people go, I'm gonna start a new community, it's gonna give hope to the world, you're gonna be the beginning of it, but you gotta trust me. God says to Daniel, I want you to defy the king, I want you to pray even though there's a rule against it. I want you to go into the lions then I'm gonna shut their mouths, but you're gonna have to trust me.
Friends, this is a good inspirational talk, but friends that would say with me that I believe Jesus is who he said he is, that he is the most, that his life death and resurrection are the most provable events in the history of that time period, more provable than Plato's writings. Okay, this is a true story. If you believe that, here's what you need to know. God did not send his only begotten son in the world to pursue you, to woo you, to love you, to die for you, to reconcile you back to himself in order for you and I to live lives full of fear and dread and doubt and regret and slave to another God called safety.
That's the truth of the gospel. You know the apostle Paul, he wrote most of the New Testament. He was shipwrecked, he was imprisoned, he had lots of reasons to doubt and fear. Here's how he summed it up.
He says, if God is for us, who could be against this? He, just like I said, who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he also, along with him graciously and how will he not give us all things? Paul says, who could separate us from the love of Christ, trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? He goes back to an old writing, he says, for your sake, we faith death all day long, we're considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
Paul says, no, no, no, no, no, don't get scared. We need all things. We're more than conquerors through him who loved us. I am convinced, I can tell you this, I've been living long enough and I'm starting to become convinced.
I'm getting towards convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth or anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, perspective. If God is for you, why are you so scared? You don't have to go through life with fear, do you know the gift you've been given? You can go through life without being afraid.
You are literally in the hand of God. I came across a modern parable that shows this better than I can describe it. I'm gonna close with letting you watch it. It's a documentary from the 80s, so it's kind of back there.
Anybody remember the movie, we just called simply The Bear? I'm showing my age here, but nobody, the Euler? So it was a movie called The Bear, it was actually fascinating, the reason it kind of resonated with people was it was like a nature film. There's no words.
It's a camera crew that literally follows a little bear cup. Now in the story, and it's not a story, it's just real life, the camera following it, in the story of this bear cup, the mom dies in an accident, early on in the movie, and if you're watching it, it becomes apparent quickly that the bear, because it's so little, it's not gonna make it on its own. But then if you're watching it much to your surprise, and certainly the bear surprise, this giant big daddy bear, Kodiak bear comes along and adopts this little cub, and then he can do life together. And he teaches a little bear cup how to live, how to grub for insects, how to fish in the stream.
And so this little cub begins to do everything he sees his dad doing. But one day, hear me on this now, one day he gets separated from his dad. He starts to think, fear comes in, and he starts to think, I'm on my own. I see there's a mountain lion, that's been tracking this bear since his mom died.
Just waiting for this moment. And into that little bear's life comes the storm. Into that little bear's life comes fear. Into that little bear's life, he tries to be like his dad.
Into that little bear's life comes the lesson that although you might not always see him, you might not always feel him, it turns out your father is with you all along. You have nothing to fear, check this out. What you stand and close, we're just singing, is we kind of just affirm it to each other.