Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

The Golden Gate Bridge in California got way behind schedule when it was being built.

There were so many casualties, and the men were afraid of falling off.

A huge safety net was placed beneath the area of operations, but for a time this made no difference.

Then a man fell off into the net.

When he came up smiling the men knew they were safe, and from that moment the project leaped ahead.

When fear rules men are cowards.

When faith reigns men are courageous.

Carlyle said that the ultimate question every man has to face and answer for himself is this: "Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?"

This was the decision Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, had to make in the crisis he faced when his daughter was dying, and even pronounced dead.

He was caught in a bind, for the facts seem to support fear, and yet Jesus in verse 36 said, "Be not afraid, only believe."

Jesus was saying that faith is the only soil in which the seed of hope will grow.

If you forsake faith, the plant will wither, and you will be a victim of fear.

Don't do it Jesus said.

Don't give in to fear even when all the evidence supports it, for faith is not limited by the evidence.

Faith not only can change the future, it can altar the past.

Faith not only rises above the knowledge of man, it sometimes must choose to go even contrary to knowledge.

The unknown can stimulate either fear or faith, courage or cowardice.

By the authority of Jesus the Christian is to choose faith, even in the face of negative evidence.

Faith, mighty faith, promise sees,

And looks to God alone;

Laughs at impossibilities

And cries, it shall be done!

But sometimes it doesn't get done.

Sometimes the impossibilities laugh back.

The fearful forces of evil win the battle.

The storm does sink the ship.

The sick child does die.

The maniac is not cured and the disease is not healed.

There is much evidence to support those who chose the way of fear rather than faith.

If Jesus meant to teach by His series of miracles in Mark 4 and 5, in which He conquered danger, demons, disease, and death, that the Christian need never worry about these, since he would be miraculously spared from them all, then we have great reason to be disappointed.

The fact is that Christians do suffer from all of these afflictions, and none yet have escaped death.

The purpose of Jesus in all of these miracles is to convey to us that we need not fear any evil when it strikes, and succeeds in doing its worst, for as Lord of all He is superior to all the forces that produce fear.

The demons had succeeded in making the man a slave.

The sickness of the woman in verses 25-34 had succeeded in making her life miserable for 12 years.

Death had succeeded in taking the life of this 12 year old child.

Jesus does not pretend that all of these evils are just fictions.

They are real, but He makes it clear that they are only temporal.

Therefore, fear ought not to be our motivation in life, but faith ought to be, for faith leads to the ultimate, and is assured of eternal victory over all fearful foes.

All of this show of miraculous power, however, would not have been necessary if fear was not a powerful foe, so let's consider for a while-

I. THE POWER OF FEAR.

In January of 1966 a federal court jury decided that fear, and fear alone, is an injury sufficient to cause death.

This was in connection with the death of 47 year old Ralph Thompson.

He was a third mate on a vessel driven into the center of Valdez, Alaska by the title wave in 1964.

He suffered no visible injury, but fear caused such a psychic injury that he died.

It is a fact that fear can kill you.

You can be scared to death.

It can also make living extremely miserable.

Lloyd C. Douglas said, "If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost."

Poor King Herod did not want to kill John the Baptist at the request of a dancing girl, but fear of ridicule drove him to an evil shocking to his own mind.

Fear of being mocked and laughed at, or rejected, leads millions of people into doing acts of folly or evil they despise.

They are victims of the power of fear.

They are landlords to a ghost.

Most of the foolish things teenagers do, they do out of fear of being laughed at or rejected by their peers.

Modern psychiatry has demonstrated that fear has been able to draft a large army of slaves by its power.

It can produce every illness from the common cold to crippling arthritis.

Masses of people are nervous, depressed, irritable, sleepless, and just generally tired all because they are victims of fear.

Fear is a power to be reckoned with.

It challenges faith by performing wonders.

It can take a normal healthy person, and like magic turn them into an invalid.

We think faith is marvelous when it turns the invalid into a normal healthy person.

Why not give fear credit for its power to do the negative and opposite wonder?

F. D. Roosevelt knew what he was talking about when he said in 1933, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

It was not original with him, however, for men have known this all along.

Thoreau wrote, "Nothing is so much to be feared as fear."

The Duke of Wellington said, "The only thing I am afraid of is fear."

Montaigne said, "The thing of which I have most fear is fear."

It is the power that keeps the world in turmoil continuously.

Centuries ago Epictetus said, "It is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of hardship and death."

Once a person is captured by fear there does not have to be any real danger to make him a slave.

The person obsessed with fear soon finds all of life a threat.

Wordsworth wrote,

My apprehensions came in crowds;

I dread the rustling of the grass;

The very shadows of the clouds

Have power to shake me as they pass;

I question things and do not find

One that will answer to my mind,

And all the world appears unkind.

This is the kind of fear that evil forces delight in.

Natural fear is a benefit to people, and is a God given instinct for self-protection and preservation, but this neurotic fear makes us slaves rather than free men.

The natural fear of snakes while walking through the jungle is able to keep a man cautious and alive.

The neurotic fear of snakes keeps a man dead to life while he lives.

Dictators make good use of this power of neurotic fear.

Hitler said he could achieve everything with systematic terror.

Otto Dibelius, bishop of the Evangelical Church of Berlin/ Brandenburg, suffered under the tyranny of Nazism and Communism, and he wrote, "Every totalitarian state proclaims night and day: "Enemies all around!

If we don't employ our ultimate strength in our defense, we shall be lost the day after tomorrow."

The state must use this fear, for in their cowardice people will do everything the state demands.

They will make every sacrifice, intensify their labors-everything for the deity of the state whose power they regard as their only protection."

Fear is the means by which the majority of the world are made slaves and puppets by a powerful minority.

None can doubt the great power of fear in our world.

Even the so called free people of the world are slaves of a thousand and one fears.

The evidence is strong that fear is sovereign in our day just as it was in the day of Christ, but Jesus says, "Be not afraid, only believe."

Jesus recognizes the power of fear, but He recognizes faith to be more powerful, and urges us to forsake fear and fly to faith.

Now let us consider-

II.

THE POWER OF FAITH.

Many of the great men of history were cowards until God persuaded them to chose faith over fear.

Moses wanted to be counted out in the great plan of God to deliver the Jews from the Egyptians.

He said he was not eloquent and just could not do it.