Give God Your Fears

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing Alright today? Sure I wait for you to answer, and many of you do I know, because you’ve told me so. [chuckle] We don’t have two-way communication here, but well, as the song says, “Though sundered far, by faith we meet around one common mercy seat.” We belong to our blessed Lord, many of us, and those of you who don’t yet belong to Him, I urge you this very day to commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ so that you can become a member of the family of God and know that your destination is Heaven and that your sins are forgiven and that Christ lives in your heart by faith. Great to belong to the Lord, isn’t it? Oh, yes, it is.

Well this is your good friend, Dr. Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. We are commenting, just a brief comment on the chapters in Mark. We finished our verse-by-verse discussion of it, and now we’re just commenting on these chapters before we leave this precious book and go onto some other portion of the word of God.

Chapter five of Mark deals with the various kinds of fear that people have in connection with their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s the fear of the changes Christ will make in the life, and there’s the fear of disclosure. “What if people find out about me?” And then there’s the fear of ultimate failure that would break your heart if you failed. That’s the outline of that chapter. Here’s the man who is the ‘maniac,’ they called him. He was inhabited by not one but many evil spirits, and his outcry as he saw the Lord Jesus was, “Don’t torment me. Don’t torment me.” Why? Why was he so afraid? Did the Lord Jesus ever torment anybody? No. But there is that innate fear among the demons and the lost people of this world, that if you have any dealings with a holy God you’re going to lose out, you’re going to be tormented, you’re going to be unpleasantly treated, and you are going to lose what you have.

I was present at a commencement, a college commencement, in Gaochang, where the different students had a word to say, and this one young man gave such a fine speech. And afterwards I spoke with him, and he spoke English quite well, for which I was grateful. And I said, “You know, you ought to be a preacher.” “Well,” he said, “perhaps someday I shall. But, you know,” he said, “I’m not a Christian.” “Oh,” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Well, I’m afraid that I couldn’t leave Buddhism. I’m afraid.” See the change. Well, I told him, “You lay aside your fear momentarily and just talk to the Lord Jesus and ask Him to come into your life, and He’ll settle the question of Buddhism for you.” Well, that seemed to be a new concept for him somehow. It’s quite simple, really, isn’t it? But it seemed to be a new concept for him, and he said, “I shall do this.” And I trust that he will. Fine young man, brilliant, and the leader of his graduating class, but not a Christian because he’s afraid of the changes that might come in his life.

Now, the simple fact is, dear friend, that you don’t have to fear the changes God will make. They said of our blessed Lord, “He hath done all things well.” Abraham prayed in his prayer, “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?” See, our basic assumption is that Almighty God always does things right, whatever He does is right. And Solomon said, “I know that thou canst do everything and nothing can be withholden from thee. Whatever the Lord doeth, it shall be forever,” another passage says. So, your basic assumption as you face any relationship with your Lord is He’ll always do the right thing. He’ll always do the right thing. “God, having prepared some better thing for them,” it says. Anything God does is not only good but better for you and turns out to have been the best. “It shall be for our good always if we observe to do according to all that He has commanded us,” said Moses.

Now, therein lies a great truth that will help to steer your own decisions as you go down through the road of life. Oftentimes you have that built-in feeling that is common to all of us fallen sons and daughters of Adam. Adam and Eve had it. He was afraid that God was going to keep him out of something he might otherwise enjoy, and Satan worked on that. And now, after the entrance of sin into the human race, Adam said, “I was afraid and hid myself.” To be afraid of God is part of the awful price of sin that the human race pays. But you don’t have to stay that way, dear friend. You can come boldly, the Scripture says, “Let us come boldly to the throne of grace.” Why? Because it’s not a throne of judgement any longer, it’s a throne of grace. Our blessed Lord Jesus Christ has paid the price for our sins. He suffered for us. “Christ also hath once suffered for us, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” And so it’s a throne of grace where God welcomes you and forgives you and brings you into the heavenly family. And now then, John says, “We are sons of God, and if sons it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Paul says that, “We are children of God, and if sons then heirs, joint heirs with Jesus, our blessed Lord.”

And you don’t have to be afraid of God. You don’t have to shrink back and say, “Well, that’s not for me.” Yes, it is for you, blessed wonderful fellowship with your blessed Lord. And don’t be afraid of the changes that Christ may bring in your life. “What if I become a Christian?” someone is saying. “What will it do to my marriage? What will it do to my job? What will it do to my relationship with the rest of the family? What will it do to my relationship in the community?” Don’t worry. God doesn’t do anything except good, and everything that happens will be for the good and for the glory of God. Let us come boldly to the throne of grace. You don’t have to be afraid of God, nor indeed of what He will do in your life. Remember that scripture that I quoted a moment ago, “They said of our Lord, He hath done all things well.” And so Fanny Crosby sang, “For I know whate’er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well. All the way my Savior leads me, what have I to ask beside?”

There you have it, my dear friend. You don’t have to be afraid of those changes. Then there was fear of disclosure. The lady who had been ill for so many years and nobody could help her. 12 years she’d been ill and she’d suffered many things and many physicians, spent all she had, nothing better, rather worse. Mark is very frank about it. Luke is a little more kind and has what we call professional courtesy. It said that she could not be helped by anybody [chuckle] That’s the doctor talking. But Mark, he said, “No, it wasn’t any better, she’s rather worse.” Anyhow, she said, “If I could only touch even the hem of His garment, I know I’ll be well.” Well, she did. She forced her way through that crowd, and that wasn’t an easy task, ill and weak as she was. But come on through the crowd and finally getting close enough, close enough, she touched the hem of His garment, and straightway, it’s said, she felt in her body that she was healed. Well, Jesus knew what happened. He looked around and and He said, “Who touched me?” [chuckle] The disciples said, “You gotta be kidding, Lord. Everybody’s touching you, everybody’s shoving and pushing.” “No,” He said, “Somebody touched me with the touch of faith.”

Well, the woman, fearing and trembling… See? There you have the fear of disclosure. What if people find out? She came and fell down before Him and told Him all the truth. The key word there is ‘all,’ told Him all the truth. And He said unto her, “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee well. Go in peace and be well from your plague.” Fear of disclosure, it’s a false fear, because the Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t want to expose you. He wants to reassure you. If that lady had gone away without ever facing our Savior, there would always have been that note of uncertainty, and there would always have been the fear of, “What if people find out what I did?” He doesn’t want to expose you, He wants to reassure you. Can you get hold of that truth, beloved? Can you get hold of that wonderful truth that God is not in the business of embarrassing you, but of reassuring you so that you can face life unafraid. There’s such a difference, isn’t there?

Now, how do you start this? Well, I suppose everybody listening has something that you wish you could change in the history of your life. Isn’t that true? How do you face all of this? You go to your blessed Lord and you level with Him. It said it told Him all the truth. The first step in being reassured in your faith and in your relationship with the Lord is to level with Him and tell Him all the truth. Now, there are some things in your life that are nobody’s business but yours and God’s. I don’t believe in Christian exhibitionism, so to speak, and in dragging everything out before a public gaze. I do believe in Christian honesty before God. I believe that you should tell God exactly what the score is, tell Him exactly who and what you are and what you did, what happened, how you feel, and all of it. Because John says, “If we confess… ” Now, that word confess in 1 John 1:9 is the Greek word that means ‘agree with,’ ‘say the same thing,’ homologeo, a compound word meaning to say the same thing. All you’re doing, actually, is agreeing with God because He already knows what the score is about you. And he said, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Say, dear friend, what you and I have to do first of all is to level with our Lord and tell Him all about us. And when you do that, He does cleanse, He does forgive, and He makes it possible for you to face life unafraid. “Go in peace,” He said, “Go in peace.” He makes it possible for you to face life unafraid because you know that you and your Lord have set things straight.

Dear Father God, today grant to us, instead of being afraid of Thee, to come boldly to Thee pleading the grace and the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His name, I pray. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!