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Sep 29, 2019

Fear is Not a Christian Habit of Mind

Fear is Not a Christian Habit of Mind

Passage: Isaiah 42:18-43:7

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Isaiah: The Story Beneath the Story

Maybe our cultural moment isn’t unique, but how many indicators point to a culture-wide sense of overwhelm? Why are we so polarized, so lonely, so addicted? And, given all that, why do we still persist? Why live? Israel has known overwhelm in its exile that came as a result of both inward neglect and outward attack. What does God’s encouraging words to them have for us, who, while far removed from that day, share a common experience of overwhelm?

Order of Worship

Call To Worship: Psalm 13
New Testament Reading: Romans 8:31-39
Sermon Title: “Fear is not a Christian Habit of Mind”
Central Text: Isaiah 42:18 - 43:7
Response: Affirmation of Faith: Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1
Benediction: Romans 8:37-39
Post-Service Text: Isaiah 43:1b

  09.29.2019 Sermon Notes

Readings & Scripture

Pre-Service Text: Psalm 51:6
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Call To Worship: Psalm 13
LEADER: How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

PEOPLE: How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

LEADER: Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

ALL: But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

 New Testament Reading: Romans 8:31-39
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Central Text: Isaiah 42:18 - 43:7
Hear, you deaf,
and look, you blind, that you may see!
19 Who is blind but my servant,
or deaf as my messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as my dedicated one,
or blind as the servant of the LORD?
20 He sees many things, but does not observe them;
his ears are open, but he does not hear.
21 The LORD was pleased, for his righteousness’ sake,
to magnify his law and make it glorious.
22 But this is a people plundered and looted;
they are all of them trapped in holes
and hidden in prisons;
they have become plunder with none to rescue,
spoil with none to say, “Restore!”
23 Who among you will give ear to this,
will attend and listen for the time to come?
24 Who gave up Jacob to the looter,
and Israel to the plunderers?
Was it not the LORD, against whom we have sinned,
in whose ways they would not walk,
and whose law they would not obey?
25 So he poured on him the heat of his anger
and the might of battle;
it set him on fire all around, but he did not understand;
it burned him up, but he did not take it to heart.

Is. 43:1 But now thus says the LORD,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
4 Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life.
5 Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
6 I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”

Response: Affirmation of Faith: Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1
Question 1: What is your only comfort in life and death?
Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

Benediction: Romans 8:37-39
ALL: 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Post-Service Text: Isaiah 43:1b
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Related Scripture

  • Exodus 10:7
  • Ruth 4:3-10
  • Psalm 51:3-6
  • Proverbs 21:18
  • Jeremiah 30:10
  • Mark 10:45
  • John 10:1-6, 14-18
  • Romans 8:31-39
  • 2 Corinthians 5:21, 6:18
  • Colossians 1:15-18

Discussion Questions & Applications

  1. Name five reasons--or as many as you like--for why people feel an unshakable sense of overwhelm. If you feel courageous enough to share, what are some of your reasons?
  2. What has befallen Israel by this point in Isaiah? For what reasons? (See the videos from The Bible Project below for hints! Or back up a bit to near the end of chapter 42.)
    What is the substance of the Lord’s encouragement to Israel? What are the promises made?
  3. What is the basis for Israel’s encouragement? Why would believing what God believes about this fallen people He’s still chosen to deliver and forgive be a reason for your own encouragement?
  4. How is Jesus--who He is and what He did--an even greater fulfillment of what is promised to a wayward Israel here in this passage?
  5. It is not a given in this life but a gift to be told “you are precious in my eyes...and I love you.” How would your day change--your outlook and priorities even--if you believed the Lord was saying that to you? What would you no longer fear?

Quotes

  • You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. - Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
  • Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.- Marilynne Robinson
  • What you allow to occupy your mind will sooner or later determine your feelings, your speech and your actions. Thoughts … have a real impact on how you feel and behave….In some ways, anxiety is a learned habit that, through repeated flesh-forming activities (e.g. engaging in “what if?” thinking about the future and exaggerating what might happen if the “what if?” actually happens), forms grooves in the brain, heart muscle, and nervous system that trigger uncontrollable anxiety.- J.P. Moreland
  • You see, but do not observe. - Sherlock Holmes
  • Our being is a result of gratuitous love by God, and we honor that gift by participating fully in it, even when participating in being feels unbearable. . . . Ultimately, the only reason to keep living is if you live unto God. If His Word is true, then we were divinely created to glorify Him and enjoy Him always. And our creation was a fundamentally good act — good and prodigal. - O. Alan Noble
  • You can’t cease being useful to God because you were never useful to begin with. That’s simply not why He created you and why He continues to sustain your being in the world. It was gratuitous, prodigal. He made us just because He loves us and for His own good pleasure. Every other reason to live demands that you remain useful, and one day your use will run out. But not so with God. To God, your existence in His universe is an act of creation, and it remains good as creation even in its fallen state.- O. Alan Noble
  • The task before us is to hold each other up, to remind one another of the truth that is truer than our deepest misery, to attend to the gift God has given us, to accept that it is good even when we do not feel that goodness at all. - O. Alan Noble
  • This cycle of judging and being judged is a black hole in which time disappears, in which I and the people I encounter are all frozen in our profiles. It is where I nourish my insecurities over the millions of past versions of me that float around like old yearbook photos and where I still judge people I don’t know for reasons I can’t even remember… After countless adventures through the black hole, my propensity to share, perform, and entertain has melded with a desire far more cynical: to be liked, quantifiably, for an idealized version of myself, at a rate not possible even ten years ago. I think I am a writer and an actor and an artist. But I haven’t believed the purity of my own intentions ever since I became my own salesperson, too. “Who would I be without Instagram?”  - Tavi Gevenson
  • The Lord has not redeemed you so that you might enjoy pleasures and luxuries. . .but so that you should be prepared for enduring all kinds of evils. - John Calvin

Sermons/resources

Media

Music

“Nothing to Fear” Porter’s Gate