"DO NOT BE AFRAID"

The most frequent of all God's commands is "DO NO BE AFRAID". It is given over 300 times in the bible.

After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward." (Genesis 15:1)

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there." (Genesis 21:17)

That night the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you." (Genesis . 26:24)

"I am God, the God of your father," he said. "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there." (Genesis 46:3)

The LORD said to Moses, "Do not be afraid of him, for I have handed him over to you, with his whole army and his land." (Numbers 21:34)

The angel of the LORD said to Elijah, "Go down with him; do not be afraid of him." (2 Kings 1:15)

He said: "Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the LORD says to you: Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God's.'" (2 Chronicles. 20:15)

Be careful, keep calm and don't be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah. (Isaiah 7:4)

"Do not be afraid, 0 worm Jacob, 0 little Israel, for I myself will help you," declares the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 41:14)

Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one. (Isaiah 44:8)

Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. (Isaiah 54:4)

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28)

But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." (Matthew 14:27)

Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." (Matthew 28:10)

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of God's commandments to "be not afraid". Part of my problem when I hear God speak this to me is that I treat His command as if He is like some of the glib, well meaning people I have known. How many times have people casually said to you "its all going to be okay, don't worry." It virtually never helps alleviate my fears. Other people often time tell us not to be afraid because they really don't want have to hear about our fears. Or they just say it as a polite response to our troubles. Maybe they don't know what to say, so they say this. Maybe our troubles seem so trite and trivial to them, that this is their way of trying to help us to minimize the fear or worry that we feel.

But when God say "do not be afraid", I think He is both close to my troubles and fears as well as He cares about all of my troubles and fears. I think that He really cares about my fears by the very fact that He so repeatedly commands me not to fear. He knows that our fears and anxieties are real to us.

No, the words "do not be afraid" are the words of our creator, our savior, our king, and our sovereign, loving, merciful, all knowing, all present God. These are the words of one who can match what He says with what He is going to do about what He says. He loves us, is powerful, has authority and therefore, his words are effective in helping us when we are fearful or anxious.

DO NOT BE AFRAID' says something about God to us. It is not saying that God is just an exalted king who 300 times gives an edict to not be afraid (even though He could). It is telling us...

1.How lovely God really is. He knows the concerns of us and commands things that are always in our best interest. That is why we could call the command "do not be afraid" a sweet command.

2.How happy God is to alleviate our fears
Jesus says, "Fear not, little flock, for it is you Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32) No king talks about being pleased to give anything to his subjects. First, God is acting here in freedom. He is not under constraint to do what he doesn't really want to do. At this very point, when he gives his flock the kingdom, he is acting out his deepest delight. This is what the word means: God's joy, his desire, his want and wish and hope and pleasure and gladness and delight is to give the kingdom to his flock. "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure—not his duty, not his necessity, not his obligation, but his pleasure—to give you the kingdom." That is the kind of God he is. It gives him pleasure and delight to give to you.

Jesus does not say, "It is your employer's good pleasure to give you your salary." He does not say, "It is your slave master's good pleasure to give you your lodging." He does not even say, "It is your King's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." He chooses every word in this sentence to help us get rid of the fear that God is ill-disposed to us—that he is begrudging in his generosity, or constrained in his kindness. So he calls God "your Father"

The list of implications of what it means to have God as our Father could go on and on and all of them would serve to overcome the fear that God is begrudging in his kindness to us. Just the opposite is the case. He is our Father, and if we who are evil know how to give good things to our children, how much more will our Father in heaven give the kingdom to those who ask him

Then, consider the word "give." "It is your Father's good pleasure to GIVE you the kingdom." Jesus does not say, sell you the kingdom. He does not say, trade you the kingdom. He does not say work in order to get the kingdom. He says it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

He gives the kingdom! It cannot be bought or bartered for or earned in any way. There is only one way to have it, and it is the easiest way of all—the gospel way—the way of Luke 18:17, "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."
God is not stingy. He is not a scrooge. He is not miserly or tight-fisted. . He is liberal and generous and ungrudging and bountiful. It is his good pleasure to GIVE us the kingdom.

Jesus knows that the flock of God struggles with fear. He knows that one of those fears is that God is the kind of God who is basically angry and delights most of all to judge sinners and only does good out of a sense of constraint and duty, not delight. Therefore the Lord is at pains to free us from this fear by telling us the truth about God. He has chosen every word for our comfort and joy and peace.[;

Sound too good to be true? Please understand that when God speaks in ways that are completely contrary to our expectations, then we have encountered something genuine. No one could invent a god who, in response to rebellion, is so generous that he gives his entire kingdom. Since this is too good to be true, it must be true. This, indeed, must be the living God.

All this inverts our normal way of thinking. I tend to judge God's words often times by my own feelings and sensory observations. If I feel alone and abandoned, I believe I am alone and abandoned. If I feel a sense of impending doom, the worst will in fact happen. If I am told that God reigns, but everything seems to be in chaos, I twist God's revelation about himself to fit my understanding of the data. Scripture, however, reveals the things I can't see with the naked eye, and I have God's self-revelation in the scripture as a higher authority than my feelings.

Now this is key, WHEN MY FEELINGS CONTRADICT OR CONFLICT WITH GOD'S COMMUNICATION, THAN I MUST SIDE WITH GOD'S INTERPRETATION PERIOD!

Any other interpretation, feeling, or decision, puts me above God.

The issue isn't so much whether or not we are afraid and worry. Scripture assumes that we will be afraid and anxious at times. What is important is where we turn, or to whom we turn when we are afraid. So what do I do when I am afraid? The emphasis in Scripture is, "When I am afraid, I will trust in you" (Psalm 56:3). The God who calls you to trust in him when you are afraid will spend a great deal of time showing you that you can trust him. He doesn't ask you to live with your eyes shut. Faith is not blind. The Hebrews—who first received Scripture—were very big on eyewitnesses, accurate testimony and evidence. Faith was about knowing God in an intimate, personal way and trusting him because he is trustworthy. Faith sees more, not less.

In my life I am being taken to places I can't yet see. I am asked to live by faith. But God's communication allows me to see. My life might look all scary, stressful, dark, chaotic, ominous, and suspect, but when my eyes see God, the God who says "do not be afraid", I will see that there s much more to see beyond what I see. In truth and reality, there is a beautiful, loving, powerful, purposeful, generous beyond measure, living God who wants you to talk more to him than think about fear and worry.
Battling my fear with promises of God,
Pastor Bill