Fear Not For I Am With You

FEAR NOT FOR I AM WITH YOU

Mount Hope UMC

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Philippians 4:6-17 Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁶ Do not be anxious or worried about anything, but in everything [every circumstance and situation] by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, continue to make your [specific] requests known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God [that peace which reassures the heart, that peace] which transcends all understanding, [that peace which] stands guard over your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus [is yours].

⁸ Finally, ^[a]believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart]. ⁹ The things which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things [in daily life], and the God [who is the source] of peace and well-being will be with you.

God’s Provisions

¹⁰ I rejoiced greatly in the Lord, that now at last you have renewed your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned about me before, but you had no opportunity to show it. ¹¹ Not that I speak from [any personal] need, for I have learned to be content [and self-sufficient through Christ, satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or uneasy] regardless of my circumstances. ¹² I know how to get along and live humbly [in difficult times], and I also know how to enjoy abundance and live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret [of facing life], whether well-fed or going hungry, whether having an abundance of being in need. ¹³ I can do all things [which He has called me to do] through Him who strengthens and empowers me [to fulfill His purpose—I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency; I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses me with inner strength and confident peace.] ¹⁴ Nevertheless, it was right of you to share [with me] in my difficulties.

¹⁵ And you Philippians know that in the early days of preaching the gospel, after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of ^[b]giving and receiving except you alone; ¹⁶ for even in Thessalonica you sent a gift more than once for my needs. ¹⁷ Not that I seek the gift itself, but I do seek the profit which increases to your [heavenly] account [the blessing which is accumulating for you].

                 

                  It is said that the phrase “fear not” is in the Bible 365 times.  That’s one verse for every day of the year.  Yet, we say we are Christians; we say we believe in Jesus Christ; we say we love God; we say we stand on His Word.  Yet every day we live in fear of one thing or another.  When we’re not fearing about something for ourselves, we take on fear for others.

Right now, we are in a season where there is mass hysteria about the pandemic caused by COVID-19 – the coronavirus.  We are quarantined in our homes, unable to go anywhere, unable to work.  God put us all on a time out.  And we don’t know how to deal with it so, we are afraid.  And to some extent I get it.  You’re worried about your job, your bills, your health, your ability to move about freely; you’re worried about you family – especially if you have children who are no longer in school; when will schools reopen; when will the stores reopen; when will more food, water and toilet paper be in the stores.  I get it.  Some of you are worried what will happen with your income if the quarantine lasts longer than a week or two.  Some are worried about the project or work you left on the job.  Fear of the unknown – what’s next.  And if you listen to the news all day like I do, and the constant breaking news updates about those who have been tested and confirmed to have contracted the disease and the rising death totals in this country and worldwide, you then fear that you or someone you love will be next on the list.

But God told us 365 times that we are not to fear, not to doubt and not to have anxiety.   Jesus told his disciples in John 16:33 as he was preparing them for his departure, “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace.  In the world you have tribulation and distress and suffering, but be courageous [be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy]; I have overcome the world.” [My conquest is accomplished, My victory abiding.]”  or The Message, “Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and abandoning me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me.  I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace.  In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties.  But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.

Just like the disciples, at the first sign of trial or a test, we run in the opposite direction of Jesus.  We forget that he is always with us and will never leave us.  We run for the hills in fear that whatever terrible catastrophe comes about will come knocking on our door.  And even in the midst of our own catastrophes, we doubt that Jesus is our very present help in times of trouble because we are guilty of sinning and falling short of God’s glory and we think God is punishing us.  We lose faith.  We abandon faith as we try to fix or avoid the trouble that comes knocking on our door.

God told Joshua when he was chosen to lead the Israelites after Moses death, “Don’t get off track, either left or right, so as to make sure you get to where you’re going.  And don’t for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind.  Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. Haven’t I commanded you?  Strength!  Courage!  Don’t be timid; don’t get discouraged.  God, your God, is with you every step you take.”

We have to keep our eyes focused on the prize which is in Christ Jesus.  This world is not our home.  Don’t become too comfortable here.  We have a home over yonder – our eternal home – and we need to keep our eyes fixed on getting there. 

Recently I shared this message in a Facebook post – Don’t be distracted by the distractions.  What do I mean?  Everyone is focused, and in many instances, frantic, in the distractions that we have been recently trying to grapple with.  Before the coronavirus, it was the impeachment hearings; before the impeachment hearings it was the hearings leading up to the impeachment hearings; in the midst of that it was the state of our United Methodist denomination and the upcoming General Conference and the implications of a possible split in the denomination; in the midst of that it was the deep divisiveness in our legislative branch of government; before that it was the influence of a foreign governments in our democratic process.  STOP!  Step back and use some wisdom.

                  These are all distractions meant to stir up our emotions into a frenzy of fear.  Remember what I told you?  F.E.A.R. is False Evidence Appearing Real.  Here is what fear does to us who give in to it.  Fear creates doubt; doubt creates distrust; distrust creates division.  Once we are in the mindset of division we are open to the attack of the enemy whose job is to kill our hopes, steal our joy and destroy our faith.  Fear is not of God and God is not the author of confusion.

                  Yes, we face many trials and tribulations in life.  Yet we are given the assurance in the Word of God that “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”  1 Corinthians 10:13.

                  During this season of uncertainty, when anxiety and fear of the unknown is high, lean on the promise in Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV) – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

                  Jesus has given us power and authority as overcomers.  As Paul’s message to the Philippians states, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”  Let Christ be your Strength, your Rock and your Redeemer.   You are more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. 

                  Isaiah 43:1 says, “Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine.”  1 John 4:18 tells us that “Perfect love casts out fear.”  In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, President Roosevelt said, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

                  Fear paralyzes us and prevents us from moving forward.  It is a spiritual attack of the enemy to keep us bound so that we will not fulfill our God given purpose and he can go about killing, stealing and destroying.  When we lose faith and trust in the God, we tell the enemy that God’s promises are null and void; they have no meaning.  Then he has a foothold and a field day with us and our actions. 

                 

                  God gave Isaiah 41:10 (NKJV) and us the confident assurance to “Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you,
Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

            So as I close this morning, here are 5 points to take with you today.

            1.  Don’t get caught up in the distractions meant to take you off your course of your mission in life.  Whenever you are distracted from your goals and your mission, it’s because the enemy sees your value, your worth and he wants to take your eye off the prize.  Not because he cares about defeating you, but because He wants to defeat God.  There is always something else going on in the background; some amazing blessing, that the enemy doesn’t want you to see or benefit from, so stay WOKE folks!

            2.  Be confident in the promises that we can do ALL things through Christ which strengthens us because we are all traveling on this road together and, as we know, there is strength in numbers.  But if one link of the chain is compromised and broken, the entire chain fails.  It’s like with the coronavirus – you may not have it, but you may be a carrier and if you have contact with someone who has a compromised immune system, you have infected them.  So, the safety measures are to keep you and others safe and vice versa – someone could be asymptomatic - a carrier - and you have an encounter with them and you become infected.

            3.  Remember that NO weapon formed against us will ever prosper and we are not to be alarmed, afraid or dismayed.  The enemy – whether it is coronavirus of something else – only has as much power as you allow it to have.  Remember, these light afflictions are just for a moment.  This too shall pass.

            4.  God will never leave us nor forsake His children.  You are the inheritance of the Lord.  This world cannot harm you.  The enemy has been defeated and we have victory in Jesus Christ because of his sacrifice on Calvary.  We have been bought with a price.

            5.  Don’t give the apocalyptic theorists the attention they seek because no one knows the day nor the hour, but let wisdom build your house and keep your lamp oils trimmed and burning bright.  Don’t let your light go out because you will need to be the light for someone else.  Be safe, not sorry.

Born Again to Live Life More Abundantly

BORN AGAIN TO LIVE LIFE MORE ABUNDANTLY

Mount Hope UMC

Sunday, March 8, 2020

John 3:1-7 New Living Translation (NLT)

3 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. ² After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”

³ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,^[a] you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

⁵ Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.^[b] 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.^[c] 7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You^[d] must be born again.’

John 3:1-7 New Living Translation (NLT)

3 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. ² After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”

³ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,^[a] you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

⁵ Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.^[b] 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.^[c] 7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You^[d] must be born again.’

John 3:1-7 New Living Translation (NLT)

3 There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. ² After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”

³ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,^[a] you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

⁵ Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.^[b] 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.^[c] 7 So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You^[d] must be born again.’

                  Poor Nicodemus.  All in the mustard and couldn’t catch up.  Wanting to be a part of the new truth and bound by the tradition and the law he had grown up.  “We’ve always done it that way” mentality of thinking that’s how God is and that’s what God requires for his people to get into heaven.  Believing that if you just don’t eat forbidden foods, don’t charge interest on loans, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t go after your neighbors belonging, including his wives, don’t do this and don’t do that.  Stuck in the past.  Stuck in laws so strict they never were able to obey them and were always doing what they thought was right in their own eyes.  Always asking forgiveness, always asking for another king, another savior and here was God in the flesh, the Savior of the world right before him and Jesus was confusing him with this speech about being born again.

                  As a Pharisee, Nicodemus believed in the strict observance of the written Law of Moses and the oral traditions of the Jewish people.  This was the unwritten Torah.  The Pharisees emerged as a party of laymen and scribes in contradistinction to the Sadducees who were a party of the high priesthood that had traditionally provided the sole leadership of the Jewish people.  The basic difference between the two was in their attitude toward the Torah and the problem of finding in it answers to questions and bases for decisions about the contemporary legal and religious matters arising under circumstances far different from those of the time of Moses.  The Sadducees refused to accept anything that was not based directly on the Torah – the written law.  The Pharisees, however, believed that the law God gave to Moses as twofold, consisting of both the written law and the Oral law, which was the teachings of the prophets ad the oral traditions of the Jewish people.

                 

                  Now, if we haven’t learned anything, we’ve learned that laws, whether written or oral, can be interpreted anyway that seems right in the eye of those administering the law, right?  Afterall, don’t we do the same thing when we use one verse of the Bible to support or convict a position in an argument?  Maybe not you at Mount Hope, but you know folk who do this.

                  According to today’s Scripture, Nicodemus was an old man when he encountered Jesus.  He was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin.  We will hear more about Nicodemus as we draw nearer to the crucifixion.  This is our first encounter with him and, if you were paying close attention to the text, he is seeking Jesus under the cover of darkness.   I suggest the text mentions this because of his position both as a Pharisee and as a member of the Sanhedrin – both of which were seeking to find a reason to kill Jesus because he represented a threat to their rule and control over the Jewish population.

                  But Jesus’ works and teachings were too tempting to ignore.  Nicodemus had to find a way to know more about this young man who knew Scripture so well and whose miracles had preceded him.  His curiosity got the better of him and throwing caution to the wind, he waited until dark to find Jesus.  He greets him as a revered teacher and calls him “Rabbi” and acknowledges that he knows Jesus could only have come from God because of his knowledge and the signs he had performed and Jesus responds by telling him that no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.  This statement totally throws Nicodemus off because all his life he has been ingrained with the letter and not the intent of the Law of Moses.  He doesn’t understand that while he knows what the Torah says and he knows what the oral tradition of his people are, he is clueless about the intent God meant in the law.

                  See tradition is something that God did not command.  There are two definitions of tradition:

                  1.  The transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way such that every shade of color is fixed by tradition and governed by religious laws.

                  2.  In theology it is a doctrine believed to have divine authority though nothing in the scriptures support it.

                  We live more by tradition of the law than we do the actual written law.  Why?  Because we have believed the interpretation of the law that the priests, pastors, bishops, rabbi’s and those who supposedly have anointing, training and knowledge have told us.  I’m telling you right now I am willing to bet there are people in here right now who would rather depend more about what my interpretation and exhortation of the Word is than read it for themselves and ask God to open the Word up to them.

                  But Nicodemus wanted to be born again.  How?  He was old and he couldn’t go back into the womb.  He knew the Law and could recite it, probably word for word, book by book.  See, church, the Word was in his mouth, but it wasn’t written on his heart.  Being born again is not so much about what the word says as it is about how the word changes your heart so that you are doers of the word, not just hearers only.  It’s about how the word rocks your world and turns it upside down so that you become the living embodiment of the word.

                  That’s what Jesus was.  He was the walking Word.  I have said that you might be the only Bible some people read.  What does your text look like?  How does your life read?  Does your walk imitate your talk?  When you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and got baptized into new life, did you take on new life or did you return to your old life?

                  See, being born again is about more than accepted Jesus and going down in the water to be purified.  When you get up from that water you should be allowing the Holy Spirit to totally transform you from the old to the new so that God can use you for His glory. 

You should be so full of the Holy Spirit that if a been stung you, it would fly away singing, “there’s power in the blood.”                You should be so full of the Holy Spirit that it flows out of you to everybody who crosses your path.  You should be so full of the Holy Spirit that your light blinds unbelievers and backsliders.  You should be so full of the Holy Spirit that people recognize the glow and want to know how to get it for themselves.

Being born again means that the old you has passed away and you have the glow of the newness of life.  The things you used to do, you don’t do anymore.  Sometimes the people you used to know, you don’t see anymore.  The places you used to go, you don’t go anymore.  The things you thought you needed in your old life have no place in your new life.  Being born again means that you are a new creature and you have received a clean heart and been renewed with a right spirit.  Being born again means that you have allowed the spirit to enter into your temple and control your life – your thoughts, your body and your soul.  That’s why we ask God to decrease me so that you can increase in me.  Being born again means that you have intentionally increased your faith in Jesus and everything you have been taught as a Christian becomes real because you have developed a direct and personal relationship with God.

The song says: “Moved from my old house and I moved from my old friends and I moved from my old way of life.  Thank God I moved out to a brand new life.  He changed my old way with words.  He changed my old narrow mind.  He changed my heart and gave me a new start.  Thank God I moved out to a brand new life.  Can’t you see I’m a new man; don’t you know I’ve got a new name and one day I’ll live in a brand new land.  Thank God I’ve moved out to a brand new life.  I’ve got a new walk and I’ve got a new talk and I’ve got a new look and I’ve got a new name and I’ve got a new heart and I’ve got a new mind and a new start is coming my way choir.  Thank God I moved out to a brand new life.”

I promise you, church, that when you start to allow your born again spirit to take control, there ain’t nothing and nobody, and I do mean nothing and nobody that will be able to stand against you because you’ll have a new walk and a new talk.  No weapon formed against you shall ever prosper and you will be able to do all things through Christ which strengthens you because the steps of a good man or woman are ordered by the Lord.  You will not stumble or fall, so, rejoice for the steps of the righteous are ordered of God.  In the time of trouble, God will uphold you; God will preserve you; God will sustain you.  In the time of trouble God will life you up, so rejoice for your born again steps will be ordered of God.