The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Fear Not?

Listen along as we continue our series looking at the hard sayings of Jesus.

Notes//Quotes:

Luke 12:4-7 - Mike

 

It's the age of doubt

And I doubt we'll figure it out

Is it you or is it me?

Age of anxiety

Fight the fever with TV

In the age when nobody sleeps

And the pills do nothing for me

In the age of anxiety

- Arcade Fire

 

“Unfortunately, many of us presume that the world is the ultimate threat and that God's function is to offset it. How different this is from the biblical position that God is far scarier than the world …. When we assume that the world is the ultimate threat, we give it unwarranted power, for in truth, the world's threats are temporary. When we expect God to balance the stress of the world, we reduce him to the world's equal …. As I walk with the Lord, I discover that God poses an ominous threat to my ego, but not to me. He rescues me from my delusions, so he may reveal the truth that sets me free. He casts me down, only to lift me up again. He sits in judgment of my sin, but forgives me nevertheless. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but love from the Lord is its completion."

- William D. Eisenhower

 

Acts 10:39-43

“We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. 43 To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”  

 

“And therein is an extraordinary paradox, for we live more safely than ever before. Though we are safer than almost any other society in history, safety has become the holy grail of our culture. And like the Holy Grail, it is something we can never quite reach. Protected like never before, we are skittish and panicky like never before…. How can this be? Quite simply, our culture has lost God as the proper object of fear. That fear of God was a happy and healthy fear that controlled our other fears, reining in anxiety…In ousting God from our culture, other concerns—from personal health to the health of the planet—have assumed a divine ultimacy in our minds. Good things have become cruel and pitiless idols. And thus we feel helplessly fragile, and society fills with anxieties…The suggestion that loss of the fear of God is the root cause of our culture’s anxiety is a real blow to atheism. For atheism sold the idea that if you liberate people from belief in God, that will liberate them from fear. But throwing off the fear of God has not made our society happier and less fretful. Quite the opposite…So, what does our culture do with all its anxiety? Given its essentially secular self-identity, our culture will not turn to God. The only possible solution, then, must be for us to sort it out ourselves. Thus, Western society has medicalized fear. Fear has become an elusive disease to be medicated. (I do not mean to imply here that use of drugs to curb anxiety is wrong— only that they are a palliative, at times an important one, and not an ultimate solution.) Yet that attempt to eradicate fear as we would eradicate a disease has effectively made comfort (complete absence of fear) a health category—or even a moral category. Where discomfort was once considered quite normal (and quite proper for certain situations), it is now deemed an essentially unhealthy thing.

- Michael Reeves

 

Psalm 8:3&4,

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

 

what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?”

 

Psalm 96:1–4

Oh sing to the LORD a new song;

sing to the LORD, all the earth!

 

Sing to the LORD, bless his name;

tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous works among all the peoples!

 

For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;

he is to be feared above fall gods.

 

John 1:29

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"