in the Old Testament, first of all, in Isaiah chapter 43.
Isaiah chapter 43, and we're reading there verses 1 to 13.
You'll find this on page 728 in the Bible that's there in front of you.
But now this is what the Lord says.
He who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel,
fear not, for I have redeemed you.
I have summoned you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
And when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.
The flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead,
since you are precious and honored in my sight.
And because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you
and people in exchange for your life.
Do not be afraid, for I am with you.
I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, give them up, and to the south, do not hold them back.
Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.
Lead out those who have eyes but are blind,
who have ears but are deaf.
All the nations gather together and the peoples assemble.
Which of them foretold this and proclaimed to us the former things?
Let them bring in their witness to prove they are right,
so that others may hear and say it is true.
You are my witnesses, declares the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.
Before me no God was formed, nor will there be one after me.
I, even I, am the Lord,
and apart from me there is no Savior.
I have revealed and saved and proclaimed,
I am not some foreign God among you.
You are my witnesses, declares the Lord,
that I am God.
Yes, and from ancient days I am he.
No one can deliver out of my hand.
When I act, who can reverse it?
And then we'll read a short passage in the New Testament
in Matthew's Gospel,
and we're reading there in chapter 14.
Matthew chapter 14 from verse 22,
page 981, chapter 14, verse 22.
Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat
and go on ahead of him to the other side
while he dismissed the crowd.
After he had dismissed them,
he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.
When evening came, he was there alone,
but the boat was already a considerable distance from land
buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
During the fourth watch of the night,
Jesus went out to them,
walking on the lake.
When the disciples saw him walking on the lake,
they were terrified.
It's a ghost, they said,
and cried out in fear.
But Jesus immediately said to them,
Take courage, it is I.
Don't be afraid.
Lord, if it's you, Peter replied,
tell me to come to you on the water.
Come, he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat,
walked on the water,
and came towards Jesus.
But when he saw the wind,
he was afraid,
and beginning to sink,
cried out,
Lord, save me.
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand
and caught him.
You of little faith, he said.
Why did you doubt?
And when they climbed into the boat,
the wind died down.
Then those who were in the boat worshipped him,
saying,
Truly, you are the Son of God.
When they had crossed over,
they landed at Gennesaret.
And when the men of that place recognized Jesus,
they sent word to all the surrounding country.
People brought all their sick to him
and begged him to let the sick
just touch the edge of his cloak,
and all who touched him were healed.
May God bless those readings of his own word to us.
That psalm that we've just been singing from,
but turning to it in the Old Testament,
in the book of Psalms,
you'll find this on page 555.
And particularly words that we'll find in verse 4.
Psalm 23, verse 4.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
And especially the words there,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
One of the most beautiful and powerful lines
in some of the carols we've been singing over past weeks
is the line in O little town of Bethlehem,
the hopes and fears of all the years
are met in thee tonight.
As we stand at the beginning of a new year
and a new decade,
these words resonate with us.
We may have high hopes for the coming year,
but we may also have crushing fears.
There were certainly hopes and fears in Israel
that night that Jesus was born.
Hopes based on promises of a glorious future
with the coming of the Messiah,
but fears that the evil powers of the world,
of Herod and of Rome,
would crush these hopes.
And today it seems so often
that fears outweigh hopes.
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
who was president of the USA,
in his message to Congress in January 1941,
spoke of four essential human freedoms.
Freedom of speech,
freedom of worship,
freedom from want,
and freedom from fear.
All of them seem just as far off now
as they were in 1941,
but particularly freedom from fear.
We're beset with fear in the political world.
What will Brexit do to our economy?
Is there a new war brewing in the Middle East
with renewed tensions between the USA and Iran?
We're beset with fear about the environment.
Greta Thunberg,
the 17-year-old Swedish activist,
has said,
people are suffering,
people are dying,
entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We hear statements like,
we have 10 years to save the planet,
or the earth is burning.
And seeing what is happening in Australia,
it's easy to believe that.
But of course,
there is a certain hysteria around about it.
Now, no doubt,
fear can be a motivating factor
to make necessary change,
but it can also be
an overwhelming and enervating thing.
The prophecies of doom
can too easily become self-fulfilling.
The task can seem too massive,
the obstacles too great,
human attitudes too intractable.
I remember a similar kind of fear
in the 1960s about nuclear destruction,
particularly at the time
of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
The Soviet Union was going to install
nuclear missiles in Cuba,
threatening the USA.
People felt that the world was teetering
on the brink of nuclear catastrophe.
Bob Dylan wrote his famous song,
A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall,
each line of which he said
was the title of a new song,
but he felt he had no time to write them.
Around the same time,
he wrote Masters of War.
You've thrown the worst fear
that can ever be hurled,
fear to bring children into the world.
For threatening my baby,
unborn and unnamed,
you ain't worth the blood
that runs in your veins.
Martin Luther King in 1963 said,
we have genuflected before the god of science,
only to find that it has given us
the atomic bomb,
producing fears and anxieties
that science can never mitigate.
The word that sums up all this today
is the word angst,
a feeling of dread.
It's a Danish word,
and also found,
I believe,
in Norwegian,
Dutch,
and German.
And it came to prominence
first in the writings
of the 19th century
Danish philosopher
and theologian,
Soren Kierkegaard.
He used it
of the terrifying anxiety
in the face
of human freedom of choice.
And it was developed
in various ways
by existentialist philosophers
after him.
Of course,
in addition to fears
about the future
of society and the world,
we also have
more personal fears.
Fears about the consequences
of choices
we have made in the past
or we may make
in the future.
And fears about the impact
of other people's choices
on us.
We have hopes
for the future
for ourselves
and our families,
but these can be blighted
by our fears.
Fears that what we have
said or done
in the past
may come back
to haunt us
or fears
that we will not
be able to cope
with what life
throws at us
in the future.
We may make
New Year's resolutions
to drink less
or eat less
or exercise more
or overcome
some form
of addictive behavior
or turn over
some new leaf
in some way.
But we fear
we may not be able
to overcome temptation.
As Christians,
we may have fears
that we may not
be able to live up
to our Christian profession
or that the troubles
we may face
may undermine
our faith.
We can also have faith
about evil
in the world around us
for ourselves,
our children,
and our grandchildren,
increasing levels
of violence
and sexual crime,
gender confusion,
poverty,
and homelessness,
the general loss
of morality
and integrity
in public life.
Plus,
we may have fears
concerning the church.
There's a spectacular
decline going on
at the present time
in the large denominations.
The decline is such
that it is even
worrying atheists.
Some atheists
are beginning
to call themselves
Christian atheists.
It reminds me
of the story
that's told
about Northern Ireland
where a man said
he was an atheist
and he was immediately asked,
are you a Catholic atheist
or a Protestant atheist?
But the reason
why they're doing this
is because
they see
the effect
of the loss
of Christianity
in our society
on morality.
But there is
such a decline
going on.
And although
the Lord Jesus
promised that
the gates of hell
would not prevail
against the church
that he established
on the rock,
there is no guarantee
that the church
in any particular area
will continue
to survive.
There once was
a thriving church
in the area
that's now called
Turkey,
used to be called
Asia Minor.
The Apostle John
was instructed
by Jesus
to write letters
to the seven churches
there.
And in some
of these letters
he warned
that if they did
not repent,
if they did not
turn around
and set right
the things
that were wrong,
he would come
and remove
the candlestick
or the lamp
that symbolized
the church.
And indeed
in the history
of that area
since then
that happened.
There once was
a thriving church
there,
there's hardly
anything there now.
North Africa
was the same.
St. Augustine,
one of the greatest
theologians of the church
came from North Africa.
It completely
disappeared.
So
there are
real fears
concerning the future
of the church
in our society.
And hanging
over all
there is
the specter
of death.
This has been
brought home
to many of us
in the past few weeks
by several deaths
of friends
and loved ones.
Of course
some people
just try to ignore
the reality of death
or make light of it.
Filmmaker Woody Allen
famously said
it's not that
I'm afraid
to die,
I just don't want
to be there
when it happens.
But of course
underneath that
kind of light
jocular response
there is a real
fear of death.
Sam Cooke
in the well-known song
A Change Is Gonna Come
said
it's been too hard
living
but I'm afraid
to die
I don't know
what's up there
beyond the sky.
Or John Dryden
a 17th century poet
put it like this
death in itself
is nothing
but we fear
to be
we know not what
we know not where.
There's a general
pessimism in the face
of death
resulting
coming from
the kind of atheism
and agnosticism
we've been talking about.
Bertrand Russell
one of the great
atheist philosophers
of the 20th century
said
brief and powerless
is man's life
on him
and all his race
the slow
sure doom
falls
pitiless
and dark.
So in light
of all of that
how can David
have this confidence
in the face
of the fear
of evil?
He said
he will fear
no evil
but first of all
we want to ask
the question
what kind
of confidence
is that
that he's expressing
there?
First thing
I want to say
is this
that it's a
realistic confidence.
Now what do I
mean by that?
Well some people
seem to think
that Christians
have a kind
of blind optimism
in the face
of reality.
It's as if
we just ignore
the harsh realities
of life
pretend that
they're not there.
Of course
that is the kind
of hope
that many people
have.
You know
people say
things are not
quite as bad
as all that
and everything
will turn out
all right
somehow in the end.
That is not
the hope
of the Christian.
The quality
of our hope
is perfectly
illustrated
by David
here.
Even though
I walk
through the
valley
of the
shadow
of death
I will
fear no
evil.
Now we
don't know
exactly when
David wrote
this psalm.
Some of the
psalms we do
know because
there's a
heading that
tells us
but Psalm
23 doesn't
tell us.
But it
seems to me
likely that
he wrote
this about
his experiences
as an outlaw
when he was
being hunted
by King Saul
and he drew
on his
memories of
his early
shepherding
life.
He felt
like the
sheep
passing
through a
deep
dark
valley
being hunted
by lions
and wolves.
He was
facing up
to the
reality
of danger.
And it's
only when we
face up to
the reality
of danger
and the
real basis
of our
fears
that we
can find
real hope.
Of course
we need
to be able
to distinguish
between real
fears and
what we might
call a
general anxious
frame of mind
that's afraid
of everything.
But we
have to
recognize
that we
have real
fears based
on reality.
Fears about
our world,
fears about
our country,
fears about
our church,
and about
our own
personal future.
There are
real enemies
of the grace
and truth
of the gospel,
both human
and satanic.
In the coming
year and decade
we may have
to pass through
the valley
of the shadow
of death.
The long
shadow of death
may fall
on our culture,
our church,
and our own
lives.
As the hymn
that we're
going to sing
at the end
of this service
says,
God may call
us to go
through deep
waters,
our pathway
may lie
through fiery
trials.
It's only
against the
background of
this bleak
reality that
we can have
real hope.
The second
thing I want
to notice
is the
wide-ranging
confidence
that David
expresses here.
I will fear
no evil.
David was
saying that
there was
no evil,
no kind
of evil
that would
destroy his
faith or
undermine his
hope and his
confidence.
For David,
there was the
obvious fear
of King Saul,
who had all
the machinery
of state
at his disposal.
For us,
too,
there are the
fears caused
by the takeover
of all the
machinery of state
and much more
by those who
are either
indifferent to
the word of
God or
actively opposed
to it.
For David,
there was also
a constant fear
of betrayal.
This morning,
James mentioned
Doeg the Edomite
in connection
with one of
the psalms
that we sung
this morning.
He betrayed
David and
particularly the
priests that
had helped him
so that Saul
then had them
all murdered.
David was in
fear of betrayal
by the people
of Keilah
who were about
to hand him
over to Saul.
And later in life,
he was betrayed
by his own son
Absalom,
his counselor
Ahithophel,
and his general
Joab.
We, too,
can have a sense
of betrayal
when we're let
down by family
or by friends
or by fellow
Christians who
compromise
with the spirit
of the age.
David was also
no doubt conscious
of the evil
in his own heart.
David is one
of the characters
in the Bible
that we can
identify with
most.
He was a man
after God's
own heart.
He was one
of the greatest
military leaders
in the history
of the world,
but he was also
frail and fallible
and foolish
at times.
His weakness
where the opposite
sex was concerned
and his indulgence
of his sons
are two things
that stand out.
We may also
have fears
concerning the
temptations
we are prone
to,
that we will
act foolishly
or shamefully.
So the fears
that are being
considered here
are wide-ranging
and comprehensive.
David says
he fears
or will fear
no evil,
no kind
of evil.
How can he
say that?
And how can we
face up to all
the troubles
and challenges
that may confront
us with courage
and say,
I'm not afraid.
I fear
no evil.
David
had a reason
for his confidence.
It was a reasonable
confidence
that he was expressing.
His is a reasonable
faith and hope.
He doesn't just say,
I'll fear no evil.
He doesn't just say,
no matter what happens,
I'm not afraid.
It's not some kind
of boast.
He says,
I will fear no evil
for you are with me.
His confidence
is not a blind optimism.
It's not just saying,
it'll be fine.
Everything will turn out
all right.
Nor is it a faith
in himself
and his own abilities.
David had many gifts
and abilities,
more than most.
But his confidence
was not based there.
Nor was his confidence
based on others.
He knew that others
might let him down
and disappoint him.
No,
his confidence
was based on the Lord,
his shepherd,
who was with him
and would surely
defend and protect him.
Even as David himself,
as a shepherd boy,
had protected his sheep
with his rod
and his staff.
Notice his faith
is not in things
that he knew
about God,
but in God himself
and in God's relationship
with him.
his experience
of God's presence
with him.
I will not be afraid
for you are with me.
This is the only reason
that we can ultimately
have hope
in the face of our fears.
Personal hope.
Hope for the church
and hope for the world
if God is with us.
And if we trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ,
he is our Emmanuel.
How often we were singing
that word over past weeks,
Emmanuel.
It means God with us.
That's the central reality
of our faith.
In Isaiah 43,
in the passage that we read,
verse 1 says,
Fear not,
I have redeemed you.
Verse 5,
Do not be afraid,
for I am with you.
And constantly in the Bible
we are being told,
don't be afraid,
fear not.
And especially by Jesus.
In Mark chapter 14,
verse 27,
Jesus said to the disciples
when they saw him
walking on the water
and were terrified,
thinking it was a ghost,
he said,
Take courage,
it's I,
don't be afraid.
Or in Matthew chapter 10,
verse 31,
he said to his disciples,
Don't be afraid,
you are worth more
than many sparrows.
These are just some
of the examples
from Jesus
and in other parts
of Scripture
where we're told
not to be afraid
because God is with us,
because God values us.
The antidote to our fears
is the identity
of the one
who has promised
to be with us.
The creator
who made us
in his own image.
We are precious to him.
The savior
who redeemed us
by giving his own life
to ransom us
from the curse of the law.
The friend
who has promised
to be with us,
never to leave us
nor forsake us.
This psalm speaks
of some of the consequences
of God being with you,
of being your shepherd.
Verses 1 to 3,
he'll give you satisfaction,
peace of mind,
and refreshment of soul.
Verses 3 and 4,
he'll guide you
in doing what is right,
being beside you
every step of the way.
Verse 4,
he will be with you
to comfort you
in danger
and in trouble
and even in death itself.
Verse 5,
instead of being shamed
and defeated
before your enemies,
he will grant you
honor and glory.
Verse 6,
he'll love you
and be good to you
in all the ups
and downs of life,
and in the end,
he'll take you
to be with him
forever.
So,
as you contemplate
the future,
whatever the future
may hold for you,
we don't know,
but you need fear
no evil
if your faith
is in the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Good Shepherd.
So often,
the Christian faith
is misrepresented.
Some people think
that if you're a Christian,
it's all about fear,
fear of breaking rules,
fear of what other people
will think,
and so on.
Well,
the Christian does
have one fear,
and that is
the fear of God.
This is not abject terror
or enervating dread,
but it's the awe
and reverence
due to a mighty God,
creator of the universe
and judge of all the earth.
If you truly fear God
in that right way,
that drives out
all other fears.
James Douglas,
the Earl of Morton,
said at the funeral
of John Knox
in 1572,
Here lies he
who neither feared
nor flattered
any flesh.
He feared the face
of no man
because he feared God.
There are so many fears today
because there is no fear
of God.
Bob Dylan said,
we live in a political world
in the cities
of lonesome fear.
Or as he put it
in an earlier song,
I pity the poor immigrant
who passionately hates
his life
and likewise fears
his death.
These words still resonate
today in so much
of our lives.
What David is telling us here
is that the fear
and love of God
casts out
all other fears.
In a minute,
we're going to sing
the hymn
How Firm a Foundation,
which expresses
all this
better than I can.
How firm a foundation,
you saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith
in his excellent word.
What more can he say
than to you he has said,
to you who for refuge
to Jesus have fled.
Fear not,
I am with you.
Oh, be not dismayed,
for I am your God
and will still give you aid.
I'll strengthen you,
help you,
and cause you to stand,
upheld by my gracious,
omnipotent hand.
When through the deep waters
I call you to go,
the rivers of sorrow
shall not overflow,
for I will be with you
your trouble to bless
and sanctify to you
your deepest distress.
When through fiery trials
your pathway shall lie,
my grace all-sufficient
shall be your supply.
The flame shall not harm you,
I only design
your dross to consume
and your gold to refine.
The soul that on Jesus
now leans for repose,
I will not,
I will not desert to his foes.
That soul,
though all hell,
should endeavor to shake,
I'll never,
no never,
no never forsake.