The Fear of People

4^th Advent                                                                               12/23/18—Highland—Meute

“The Fear of People”

Ezra 3: 1-7; Luke 8: 40-56

Pearl: “Do not fear. Only believe”…in the God who loves you.

Function: To continue building on the theme of “the hopes and fears of all the years” so that worshippers will trust the God who loves us so as not to fear other people but to embrace them.

From the time of the Pharaoh who interacted with Moses to the present time in which the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh was attacked, people have feared Jews.

1. It really is uncanny how it seems to go all the way back to ancient times?
   1. In Deuteronomy 11 is recorded God’s instructions to the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land. It is written, “If you will diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you…No one will be able to stand against you; the Lord your God will put the fear and dread of you on all the land on which you set foot, as he promised you” (Dt. 11: 22-23, 25).
2. At the same time, the Israelites also dreaded the neighboring nations. We read the passage from Ezra from the time that they were rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem.
   1. Because they “…were in dread of the neighboring peoples” (Ezra 3:3), they set up altars on the foundations of the temple and offered continual sacrifices to the Lord so that God would protect them from their enemies.
3. But when our Lord came into the world in the family of Joseph and Mary, and grew up into manhood, he abolished the dread of those who were different. He showed that God’s intent was to include all of the peoples into God’s family.
4. No longer should we fear anyone. We should not hesitate to get to know and to interact with all people regardless of their race, religion, lack of religion, life condition, and so on.
   1. Primarily because of the fact that this is what Jesus revealed through his own life and eluded to before he ascended to heaven that the gospel should go out in to all of the world.
   2. Last week Nancy and I enjoyed a Caribbean cruise on a gigantic ship, the “Allure of the Seas.” We were on board this ship among 8,800 people in total: 2, 500 crew members and 6, 300 passengers. The passengers and the crew were from all over the world.
      1. Our table server introduced himself the first night and when I told him I lived south of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania he said, “No kidding, I’m from South Philly!” When I responded enthusiastically I looked at him and then at his name tag which read “Philippines.” We had a good laugh!
      2. There was something about being on that ship with all of those people and feeling a common bond due to the fact of being together on a ship that, while big, was tiny in comparison to the sea.

• We were a very diverse collection of people but at the same time we were all on the same ship with the same desires of arriving at our destinations and eventually back to where we started out so that we could return home.

1. The entire human family lives on this “earth ship” which is on a destiny to a new earth and a new heaven. If only we can all realize this simple fact?!

Do not fear others. Only believe; only trust the God who loves you to be with you as you accept and interact with others who are different from you.

Among the many fears that we harbor, the fear of other people only adds to our loneliness and leaves us shipwrecked and isolated.

1. The child born to Mary, Jesus, who grew up to show us how to live did not fear people but related to everyone from dreaded lepers and the unclean (like this woman who suffered for 12 long years with a bleeding condition) to the very most powerful in the highest places in religion and government.
   1. There are so many recorded stories of Jesus relating with those who were considered off limits in his day: women, children, lepers, prostitutes, Samaritans, the unclean, and so on. They were off limits for various reasons. He charged right on through typical human barriers and interacted with “the other.”
   2. This is because he revealed to us that God’s way is so much larger and so much lovelier than what you and I imagine.
      1. Brennan Manning wrote a piece entitled “Shipwrecked at the Stable.” In it he used metaphors from the sea.
         1. He wrote, “Let go of your paltry desires and expand your expectations…Don’t order ‘just a piece of toast’ when eggs Benedict are on the menu. [This was literally possible on board ship. The food choices boggled the mind. Do you eat the same thing each day or do you sample some other choices?] Don’t come with a thimble when God has nothing less to give you than the ocean of himself. [We traveled on a mighty big ocean. I stood on the balcony of our state room and thought about how most of the earth is covered with ocean, and we are rarely if ever out there on that vast ocean]. Don’t be contented with a ‘nice’ Christmas when Jesus says, ‘It has pleased my Father to give you the Kingdom.’”
         2. So much new life awaits us when we trust the Lord who loves us, to engage with the other, casting all fears aside.
            1. Start a conversation with that Muslim woman wearing the hijab.
            2. Enjoy the company of that African-American co-worker.
            3. Befriend that single mother or father raising their sons and daughters.
            4. So you happen to know someone with an opioid addiction; don’t avoid them, but reach out to them.
            5. He calls himself an “atheist.” Should you part company and separate yourself from him?
               1. Don’t settle for always being with the same people in your same daily paths in your same communities. Reach out to someone different from you and quite literally experience more of the ocean of God. Because God loves immeasurably each and every person that you encounter and God is with each and every one of them.

Believe in the God who loves you and trust his presence with you as you engage with others without fear. Fear not! Only believe in the God who loves you.

Our favorite day last week was in Roatan, Honduras. It is a gorgeous island off the coast of the Honduran mainland.

1. We booked our own boat excursion so that we could go snorkeling in some of the world’s clearest turquoise water.
   1. We snorkeled at three locations. One was at a shipwreck.
      1. By the way, yes kids, we saw two sharks that swam very near us!
   2. Our guides told us the story of this tanker that struck the reef and became stranded at this spot during a storm. It was trying to reach the main channel not far from where it struck land and remains lodged there to this day.
2. The Lord Jesus revealed a channel in life—his Way—through which he guides us to go.
   1. It is a channel of fearlessness.
   2. It is a channel of trusting him to be with us as we connect with other human souls without fear.
3. Imagine all that you can learn from someone else who is very different from you, yet truly has so much in common with you! After all, we are all floating on the same earth-ship!

Do not fear. Only believe in the God who loves you and who also extravagantly loves everyone you meet.

In 1980, the day before Christmas, Richard Ballenger’s mother in Anderson, South Carolina, was busy wrapping packages and asked her young son to shine her shoes.

1. Soon, with the proud smile that only a seven-year-old can muster, he presented her the shoes for inspection. His mother was so pleased, she gave him a quarter.
2. On Christmas morning as she put on the shoes to go to church, she noticed a lump in one shoe. She took it off and found a quarter wrapped in paper. Written on the paper in a child’s scrawl were the words, ‘I done it for love.’
3. Our fears of others, which we naturally have, hang us up and get us stuck as shipwrecks on a reef.
   1. Dislodge yourself from being stuck in fear and move out into the wide open and vast channel of God’s trustworthiness to bless your efforts to connect with others that you might naturally avoid for one reason or another.
   2. “Do it for love.”
   3. God stripped off his mantle of glory and absolute holiness and became a fragile human being subject to all of the vulnerability that we know.
      1. God took on all of the fears and foibles that we know.
      2. God exposed himself to all of the perils of life that we live with.

• God became a human being and so also got stuck and shipwrecked on occasion as we do.

He done’ it for love!