Be Not Afraid

Dark days for Christians – those who stand for Christ against the godless laws and machinations of their federal, state, and local governments – dark days are rapidly coming to America. Every day we face a Goliath of evil, a Goliath that has changed the landscape of our constitutional and God-given freedom to live, to educate our children and grandchildren, to worship, and to conduct business according to our conscience and as we understand the word of God.

In recent months, Catholic priests have been fired by their bishops for daring to speak out against abortion and sexual perversions. Protestant pastors have been jailed for opening their churches during Covid. Christians in the pews have been fined by their local governments for attending worship services during Covid. Christian organizations and businesses are being successfully sued to force compliance with our increasingly anti-Christ culture. Censorship across social media platforms and in the mainstream media – censorship of religious and politically conservative views increases every DAY, when those views contradict the popular and godless cultural narrative.

Yes, dark days are coming – but there is great reason to hope – not a wishful hope, but a confident expectation kind of Biblical understanding that God is absolutely sovereign in and through it all – regardless how it looks to the eyes of the flesh.

It is the kind of hope that acts as a reminder about whose we are and to whom we belong. It is a reminder that El Shaddai – the Almighty King of creation – who is also our personal Savior and Protector – that this One is the absolute sovereign ruler of time, space, people, angels and demons, powers and nations and governments. The is not a president, king, congressperson, judge, or someone sleeping under a bridge who can take their next breath without God’s explicit permission.

But there are lots of people who resent that truth and whose arrogance is illustrated for all time by the words of the second Psalm:

“Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together

against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.”

The Holy Spirit continues by telling us this King, whom we know as Jesus, will “break them with a rod of iron [and] shall shatter them like earthen-ware.”

 

Listen then to God’s warning in the next part of this psalm: “Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!”

No wonder God tells us through the prophet Isaiah: “I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies and of the son of man who is made like grass, that you have forgotten the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you fear continually all day long because of the fury of the oppressor, as he makes ready to destroy?” Isaiah 51:12-13

Darkening days ought not frighten us. Instead, they ought to impel us to do as much as we can for the Kingdom while it is still day. As St Paul told the Christians at Ephesus – “make the best use of your time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:16)

Corrie ten Boom, once a prisoner of the Nazis in the infamous Ravensbruk concentration camp, and author of The Hiding Place, tells of a conversation she had with her father when she was a child. She told her father that she was afraid of death and was quite sure she did not have the strength to be a martyr. Corrie’s father reminded her of the train ride to Amsterdam.

“"When you take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three weeks before?"

"No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train."

"That is right," her father said, "and so it is with God's strength. Our Father in Heaven knows when you will need the strength . . . He will supply all you need just in time."

Many of you might remember the song lyrics: “Put your hand in the hand of the Man who stills the waters. Put your hand in the hand of the Man who calms the seas.”

I want to tell you, that song gives us the wrong message because it suggests WE have to lift our hand toward His so that He can grasp hold of ours. Nonsense!

Remember when St. Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. You know what happened. Peter turned his eyes to the storm and away from his Savior, and sank like a rock. But the text tells us what happened next: “[Peter] became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him.” (Matthew 14:30-31)

The point? Peter did not put his hand into the Hand of Jesus. He was too busy drowning. It was Jesus who stretched out His hand and grabbed hold of Peter’s.

And don’t think for a moment, ESPECIALLY in these darkening days, that the Lord will let any of His children drown. It is NOT about YOUR strength and strategies about putting your hand in God’s. It’s about Almighty God reaching out to YOU for protection and preservation.

God has empowered us – empowered us – to face Goliath as David boldly faced the giant pagan with a couple of rocks in his bag, while the pagan Goliath was armed with sword, spear, and shield. And David won the battle because his faith and confidence was not in his rocks or his strength -- but in the Sovereign God of all creation.

It was this same David who wrote: “Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear; Though war arise against me, in spite of this I shall be confident.” (Psalm 27:3)

So, the point again? Do not fear the neopagans who worship their many gods called money, sex, power, and their self-deceptive sense of self-sufficiency. Do not fear those who are today in power and whose bones will turn to dust not long after God takes their breath from them. THEY are not in control. Our God is in control. And He scoffs at them.

Does that mean that we cannot be martyred? Of course, it doesn’t mean that. We only have to read today’s news to be confronted with the cold truth of our brothers and sisters in places like Iraq, China, Egypt – even in some places in America losing their lives because of their faithful testimony for Christ.

As St. Paul told us: “All those who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12.) And the Lord Jesus warned in Matthew 10:24-27:

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master . . If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household! “Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.” 

Is it possible that we will be martyred? Listen! This is Biblical Truth 101: We are INVINCIBLE until God Himself says we are not. And never forget the stunning light of this truth: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

Tertullian, one of the Early Church Fathers of the second century, coined that phrase. Listen to what he wrote in his testimony against the then all- powerful Roman Empire:

"We are not a new philosophy but a divine revelation. That’s why you can’t just exterminate us; the more you kill the more we are. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. You praise those who endured pain and death – so long as they aren’t Christians! Your cruelties merely prove our innocence of the crimes you charge against us…

And you frustrate your purpose. Because those who see us die, wonder why we do, for we die like the men you revere, not like slaves or criminals. And when they find out, they join us.”

And if God permits the devil and his children to martyr us – would that persecution separate us from God‘s sovereignty and absolute dominion over everything in life?

Of course not. Listen to Romans 8:31, 35-37 “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, You’re your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

God never has and never will abdicate His sovereignty over all life events, over all circumstances. But – and this is important – while nothing can separate Him from us – there are things that can separate US from Him.

Let me say that again: While nothing can separate HIM from us, there are things in our lives that can – if we are not careful – separate US from Him.

The Lord Jesus commended His disciples: “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials” (Luke 22:28). But I think He also says to you and me today, we who have endured our own multiple sets of trials – some that have left us with scars – Jesus commends us today: “You are those who have stood by Me in YOUR trials.”

Dark days come. Trials come. Hardships come. But I want us to remember this applicable word of the Lord to Peter. You will find it in Luke 22:31-32: “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

I want you to get that. When Satan receives permission from El Shaddai to buffet us – Jesus Himself is praying for us!

I think of those two great hymns of the Church: The first by Horatio Spafford – It is Well with My Soul – “Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control, that Christ hath regarded my helpless estate, and hath shed His own blood for my soul.”

And the second hymn, this one by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress is our God” – the lyrics remind us: “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing, were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God's own choosing. You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he; Lord [of Hosts] is his name, from age to age the same; and he must win the battle.”

Dark days come. But God – oh! But God Himself is praying for us. And He sends His mighty angels to protect and guide us in the same He has done from Genesis through Revelation and throughout Church history.

Some of you may know the hymn: “Standing on the promises that cannot fail, when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail. By the living Word of God I shall prevail, standing on the promises of God.”

Yes, brothers and sisters, keep standing on the promises of God through His infallible, inerrant, and eternal word – which I urge you again as I have urged repeatedly in the past – read and study and meditate on God’s word every day.

Dark days come.  But in Christ we will stand, head high, shoulders back, with God’s word on our tongue. We will STAND wearing the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, our loins encircled with truth, firmly grasping the shield of faith to extinguish all the subtle and not-so-subtle lies of the devil.

Satan is like David’s Goliath. The devil and his children are in reality simply puny punks, cowardly bullies who flee from the child of God whose hand is grasped by the hand of the Man who stills the waters.

My brothers and sisters – by God’s grace and power, you and I will live by that great 24th psalm:

Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in! Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in! Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts. He is the King of glory.”

My brothers and sisters in Christ, “Lift up your hearts to God. Open your hearts to the King knocking at your door, that He may come in. Who is this king of glory? The Almighty, all sovereign, all-encompassing Ruler over kings and presidents, media and financial powers – and yes, even mobs carrying signs in the streets. 

God alone is our light in days that are darkening. And through Him alone we will overpower even Satan himself “By the blood of the cross, and the word of our testimony, and if necessary, we didn’t love even our own lives when faced with death. (see Revelation 12:11)

Lift high the cross on which the Prince of Life died to give eternal life to all who believe in Him. And be not afraid. God will never leave our side. His Truth is still marching on!