Lift Us from Fear to Joy 1975

I want to read a passage today that won't really be the text, so it's not like a sermon based on this passage, but it's rather a jumping-off point that would be helpful. And I'm going to start reading in the 31st verse of Acts chapter 4. When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul. And no one said that any of the things that he possessed was his own. But they had everything in common.

And with great power, the apostles gave testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet.

And distribution was made to each as any had need. And when we seriously read in the book of Acts almost any passage you want to select, we have to see, we can't possibly miss, that the amazing courage of these people, and the liberty with which they shared the things they had, and the power that flowed out of their lives, and the love that they had for each other, are a picture of what ought to be going on among us. If they stood at the beginning, the alpha season of the church time, and we at the omega, the end of the church time, why shouldn't we have among us at least as much life as they had? You know, how would it be reasonable that the life of the church starts out with a bang and ends up with a fizzle? And I'm sure that there's not one of us here that's at all satisfied with these mediocre, often flat-out dishonest efforts we make, to duplicate the life of the apostolic church.

Here we have a fellowship where they seem to have a lot of power, or they claim to have it, and really when you go into their midst you can't miss it. There's something there, there's power. And yet there's absolutely not one shred of evidence that those people have experienced liberty from bondage to things that was obviously present among those apostolic believers.

So often when you see an assembly of believers that seems to have power, you know, you also see everywhere you look the marks of human greed. But it's not called greed, of course, it's called God's prosperity. And over here we have a fellowship of people that have learned to share with each other the things they have, but there's no boldness in their witness.

And over here's a fellowship of people who seem to really be radically committed to Jesus Christ, and yet their heart is nailed, there's no love among them. You know, and we begin to wonder, as we look at ourselves, and as we look at the body everywhere in all directions, why is something always missing? Why is there always something sympathetic about our attempts to be like our brothers and sisters in the book of Acts? Now, when we take a really honest and detailed, serious look at the life these people lived, if we go through the book of Acts really carefully and prayerfully and study what they did, we discover that behind the amazing things they accomplished and this fantastic love that they had for each other and for the lost sheep out there in the world, they didn't just love themselves. Behind all this was a change that took place in their hearts, which has not taken place in ours.

And I say that until this change takes place in our hearts, we constrain ourselves until our bodies and minds snap. We'll never live the life they lived. And the change that I'm talking about is the fact that their hearts were no longer ruled by fear.

Those people didn't fear anything except the holiness of God. They weren't afraid of death. They weren't afraid of prison.

They weren't afraid of work. They weren't afraid of poverty. They weren't afraid of crime.

They weren't afraid of influential people. They weren't afraid of men's opinions. And at those times, rare times really, when they slipped back into fear, they immediately admitted that there was something wrong.

They didn't shrug their shoulders as we do and say, well, that's the way it is. That's the way it is to be a human being. See, and in place of that fear, which once also gripped their hearts, was a fantastic joy.

They came away from being beaten almost to death, and they're rejoicing because they're accounted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus. You know, they get lashed, 39 strikes, then they're put in the stock so they can't even touch their wounds or scratch the prison bugs off their skin. And what are they doing? They're singing hymns, they thought, to God's glory and praise.

Everybody in the fellowship or who comes into the fellowship with a need. And they don't spend five years wrestling with their little conscience, you know, while he starves to death. They go out and sell that field and take care of the need.

And they keep selling the field and selling the house and selling this and selling that until there's nothing left to sell, and they're still rejoicing. Now, we can talk about salvation and sanctification and the baptism of the Holy Spirit all we like. If there are areas in our lives that are ruled by fear instead of by the joy of the Lord, this means that those areas of our lives have not come under the power of the cross of Jesus Christ, nor are those areas of our lives ruled by the Holy Spirit.

And if we're at all honest, we have to admit that that's exactly what's going on in us, that there are such areas. We on the surface look rather confident, but all you have to do is give us a scratch almost anywhere at all, and you come up with fear of what people think, fear of tomorrow, fear of change, fear of getting sick, fear of being rejected. I always get a slap in the face, you know, that expression came in Sunday school class, and it could have been every one of us in the Sunday school class saying that this morning.

You know, every time I go out to somebody, I get rejected. But what we do is order our lives in such a way that we don't have to look at those fears. We're very clever to organize ourselves so that we avoid all situations that threaten us.

We stay away from people who make us feel uncomfortable. We insulate ourselves with things and money We never expose ourselves to danger. And we shun those places where we know that we're going to be hated.

So what we all of us are doing, you know, we're avoiding all situations that threaten us, all situations that cause us to be afraid, you know, and so we end up being nice, sanitary, pleasant, sterile little Christians who are scared of their own shadow. And then we want to tell ourselves that we're like our brothers and sisters in the book of Acts. And we know it's a lie.

Now, our Lord's ministry, the whole thing can be summed up in two words. Fear not. Fear not, Zechariah.

Your wife is going to conceive and bear a son. Fear not, Mary. You've found favor with God.

You're going to conceive in your womb and bear a son and call his name Jesus, Yeshua, God saves. Fear not. For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.

Fear not, Peter. Henceforth you shall be catching men. Fear not.

Only believe and your little girl will be made well. Fear not. You are of more value than many sparrows.

I am your little flock to give you the kingdom. And when Jesus comes walking to them on the water, don't be afraid, it is I. The women come to the empty tomb, the angel says, don't be afraid. You're looking for Jesus? He's risen as he said he would.

And then when they finally come up to Jesus himself, he says exactly the same thing, don't be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, I'll see them there. Now, every time Jesus says, or an angel speaks for him, however this is, every time Jesus speaks those words, fear not, speaking to our guilt-torn human hearts, saying to us, you don't have to be afraid anymore.

I am with you. Things are going to be different now. I'm your security.

Though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, there is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God. And I am that river, says Jesus. And you don't have to be afraid.

If the cross of Jesus Christ means anything at all, it means that through His death, Jesus took that guilt in our hearts that has made us endless slaves of fear down into the grave with Him and set us free from that. And if the guilt is gone, the fear is gone. After He offers Himself up to the Father as the sacrifice for our sin, Jesus says to the whole host of heaven, here I am, and the children God has given me, and the children God has given Him, who are they but those who have been delivered from fear? Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of their nature, that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.

See, and if you're still under the curse of fear, don't lie to yourself. Admit that. Lord, get me out of this valley of fear and lift me up into your glory and into your light.

And then start taking some counsel from the word of God. First of all, stop trying to run away from fear by going into some other blind alley. The last half of the book of Matthew is a list of things Jesus tells us to avoid, and every single one of these things is for us all too often one of those blind alleys that we dash into to get away from our fears.

For instance, the first thing He mentions is anger. And how often, you know, we try to escape fear by cloaking our hearts in anger. I'm not scared, I'm man! And from time immemorial that's what they've been doing to get men ready for war.

You know, get the fear and turn it around into anger. Get into the war dance, you know, and work it up into wrath. And this is the seed of racism.

You know, we're really, what we really are is scared, but we turn that around, we're angry, we hate, we're mad! And we do this every time our feelings get hurt, you know, and underneath our hurt is fear. And we turn that around, we get angry. And where does this lead us? The anger keeps pushing us right on to destruction, right on to hell.

Another blind alley is lust. And again, very, very often we try to escape fear by running down the blind alley of lust. Witness human behavior during any crisis or any war.

Look at yourself. And how often, instead of facing the fact that I'm afraid, you know, we start going down through fantasy lane. And where does this lead but to destruction? So Jesus says, if your right eye offends you, pull it out, throw it away.

If your right hand offends you, cut it off. Better to enter into life with one hand. Another blind alley is deceit, which we cover with all kinds of big words and oaths.

You know, when we get mad, we talk big. You know, and we, then we embellish our language with oaths, like Peter when he denies his Lord. We talk loud and strong and we brag and we boast, but underneath is the same fear.

And that fear continues to destroy us. And we, all too often when we start talking like that and backing everything up with, so help me, we get ourselves into ten times more trouble. And the next blind alley that Jesus mentions is revenge.

You know, how often we take our fear, you know, and we try to warp that now into days spent figuring out ways that I can get back at my enemy. And so I get back at my enemy, so I can destroy my enemy. Does that deliver me from my fear? No.

I go right on being afraid. So when Jesus tells us, fear not, he's not driving us into some of these other blind alleys, but he's saying, bring your fear to my cross. Admit it, confess it, and see it nailed up there in my body and destroy it.

And if you wake up tomorrow morning with that same fear nagging at your soul, bring it right back to the place where all sin-based fear must die. Bring it to the cross. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

That's a command. Don't be anxious, he says. And he doesn't say these things to us so that we can go right on being scared, but rather if we really listen to him and obey him, he brings us to the place where even on this side of the grave in this life, when all hell is breaking loose around us, our hearts are no longer troubled, or afraid, or anxious.

Now there's another thing we need to do, and we can do it. Not only, see, do we need to come up out of the kingdom of fear, but we need to go on into the kingdom of joy. See, and if we come up out of the kingdom of fear, but we don't progress into the kingdom of joy, every time we're gonna slip right back into the kingdom of fear.

And many of us have been, you know, just at the borderland all the time of the kingdom of joy, but we never go in. You know, we're trying to stay out of fear, but we're not gonna press on into the kingdom of joy. And, you know, look at Paul.

Look at the epistles of Paul. Read the book of Acts. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

That's a command. Let your forbearance be made known to all men. The Lord is at hand, not only in time, but in space.

He's here. Be anxious for nothing. So you notice in the book of Luke, those words, fear not, fear not, fear not, are repeated again and again.

But in the second volume of Luke, which is the book of Acts, they hardly appear at all, because the saints of God who begin in Luke and move on into Acts are transferred now from the kingdom of fear into the kingdom of joy. They come up in tremendous joy, not just joy when they're in fellowship and then fear when they're out on their jobs. Not just joy when they're in church and fear in their home life or financial life, but joy which lifts them right up into the doing of God's works of love.

Now the same spirit that took hold of those saints and lifted them into that kind of life is in our midst. And he's not going to do any less for us. When a woman is in travail, she has sorrow because her hour has come.

But when she is delivered of a child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a man, a woman, a child, a person is born into the world. You now therefore have sorrow. He says to the disciples on the other side of the cross, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and your joy no one will take from you.

And that's exactly what happened. Not only at the resurrection, but even more so on Pentecost and from there on through. When the natural eye was no longer able to see Jesus, he saw them.

And in the spirit they saw him in a new way. And he poured out on them just that joy which lifted them into a completely new kingdom and held them and kept them. These words I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

I've spoken these words in the world that my joy may be fulfilled in them. So the spirit of God has been given and is here right now. And his purpose, see, is to lift us out of that kingdom of fear and bring us up into the kingdom of joy and teach us to stay in that kingdom and bring others in the kingdom.

Even when on all sides, men's hearts are feeling that for fear and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth. That's the purpose of the coming of the spirit. And the spirit is here.

May God help us to follow the spirit out of where we are, up into his joy in our worship, in our serving of each other, in our seeking of the lost, in our reading of the word, in our prayer life, in our daily work. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God. Jesus is that river and he's doing just that.

He's making us glad. If we only listened to him. May God help us to do that.

Let's pray. Lord God, our Heavenly Father, we just thank you for the fact that you've done the whole thing and we thank you for the vision of a people who are just inspired no longer by fear but by joy. And that's what we're asking for, not only ourselves, Lord God, but for our brothers and sisters in the body across the earth.

And we pray that the taste of joy may come to us even this hour and give to those who have been languishing and to those who have been discouraged and to those who have been burning up with anger and all kinds of regret and all kinds of other things. A taste of what they can have now. And grant, Lord God, that this day and the days that follow, by the power of your Holy Spirit, our lives may be clothed in your joy and that your joy, Lord God, may indeed be our strength.

We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.