Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

It was on Oct. 30, 1938 at 8 P. M. when about 6 million people across the United States were listening to the radio.

Orson Wells on The Mercury Theatre Of The Air presented the War Of The Worlds.

Dance music was suddenly interrupted with a flash news story.

"A series of gas explosions has just been noted on the planet Mars," said the announcer.

He went on to report that a meteor had landed near Princeton, New Jersey, killing 1500 persons.

In a few minutes the announcer came back to correct the report.

It was not a meteor but a metal cylinder from which poured Martian creatures with death rays to attack the earth.

In spite of the fact that two announcements were made that it was only a fictitious story, many people were so gripped by fear that they did not hear these announcements.

Twenty families on a single block in Newark, New Jersey rushed from their homes to escape what they though was a gas raid.

Their faces were covered with towels and handkerchiefs.

In Mount Vernon, New York an invalid was so frightened by the invasion that he left his wheel chair and drove away in his car.

Thousands were on the phone saying farewell to loved ones.

Psychologists have used this event as a classic case history of the power of fear.

It is also a classic study of how poorly people pay attention.

Those who listened did not get disturbed, but those who did not listen went into a panic stage.

It was all unnecessary if people would have just listened.

It is important to take action when danger is present, and fear is good as a motivation.

We need to fear danger, but it is tragic to fear it when it is not real.

Joyce Landorf in The Fragrance of Beauty says that fear is one of the most destructive forces in the life of a woman, and it robs her of her beauty.

She quotes,

Where worry is a mouse,

A small scampering thing with sharp tiny feet,

That scurries over our souls-

Fear is a roaring lion,

With huge paws, extended claws and teeth

That slash us into strips.

In other words, fear is an emotion to fear.

It is like the Devil himself, and it is a roaring lion going about seeking whom it may devour.

This is not to say with Roosevelt, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

The world is full of things that we need to fear.

There are dangers everywhere just as there was in the day of David when he cried out in Ps. 55:4-5, "My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death assailed.

Fear and trembling have beset me, horror has overwhelmed me."

Unfortunately nobody had yet come up with the comforting statement that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

So poor David had to have fear, and as you read the lives of great people of God all through history you discover they had plenty of fears.

It is folly to say to anyone that there is no need to fear, for fear is real and legitimate in many circumstances.

But it is also true that it is often not necessary and often even folly to fear.

An ancient legend of the Orient tells of a man who met the Cholera and said to the plague, "Where are you going?"

It responded, "I am going to Bagdad to kill 20,000."

Some time later he met the plague again and cried out, "You vagabond!

You killed 90,000."

"No, no," said the Cholera, "I killed 20,000, fear killed all the rest."

Trouble has slain its thousands, but fear has slain its tens of thousands.

Earnest M. Ligon in The Psychology Of Christian Personality says, "...fear is the most disintegrating of all the enemies of personality.

Worry, anxiety, terror, inferiority complexes, pessimism, greed, and the like are all varieties of this one great evil."

He says fear is involved in every complex, and it is the basic cause of all repressions.

Fear can produce the very thing that is feared.

If you fear you will get sick, that can lead to getting sick.

If you fear you will fail the test that fear can make you fail it.

The fear of failure is the biggest cause for failure.

It is an inside partner with the external forces that seek your defeat.

The evil that you fear gets an advantage over you when you are full of fear.

It has won half the battle by capturing your heart and mind.

That is why in sports the opponent does all he can to make you fear losing, for if he can get you full of fear he has a partner inside you that is helping him win.

From the cradle to the grave man is plagued with fear.

Babies are born with two fears.

They have a fear of loud noises and a fear of falling.

Drop a tray of bottles in a hospital nursery and all of the babies will burst into bitter crying.

All other fears, other than these two, are taught.

They are not natural.

A fear of animals is not natural.

It has to be learned.

Tests have shown that a baby will pet a tiger and try to chew a rabbit's ear.

But as a child grows it learns a multitude of fears.

Some are real, but many are false.

There are hardly enough words to list all of the things that people learn to fear.

The list of phobias is very long, and some people are even afraid of being afraid.

Fear can be the greatest hindrance to a fruitful life.

That is why it is strange when Peter says in verse 17 that we are to pass the time of our sojourning here in fear.

This sounds like a contradiction of all I have said.

Fear is one of our greatest enemies and yet we are told to fear.

This apparent contradiction runs all through the Bible.

The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear, and that God does not give us a spirit of fear.

Dozens of times we are told not to fear.

On the other hand, we are told to fear the Lord.

In at least 24 verses we are commanded to fear God, and many verses describe the blessings of fearing God.

We want to look at these two sides of fear in order to better understand the Bible and our emotional life.

First of all lets look at-

I. THE EVILS OF FEAR.

The fear that the Bible disapproves of might better be called anxiety.

When Jesus said that we are to take no thought for the morrow, it is better understood if we say do not be anxious about the future.

To fear the future is foolish said Jesus.

Worry won't help you any more than it will cause you to grow an inch.

The unknown is the great cause for fear, but this is the very fear that we do not need to have, for this is the fear that leads to all kinds of abnormal behavior.

True fear is emotional agitation because of specific danger.

Anxiety is emotional agitation with no recognizable cause.

It is one thing to be afraid if you are standing on the edge of a cliff, but it is another to be anxious about falling off a cliff when you are at home in your living room.

The first has a definite cause, but the second is an emotion that is totally subjective.

The first is real, but the second is imaginary, and it is this last kind of fear that is a curse.

It is this kind of fear that creates a man like the one who hid three hundred thousand dollars in his house and starved to death.

Normal fears of germs cause us to wash our hands before we eat, but it is this abnormal anxiety that causes people to wash a hundred times a day until their hands are so chapped they have to go to a doctor.

It is this kind of fear that fills our hospital beds with neurotic patients.

Christian people are not exempt from such fears.

It is this kind of fear that the Bible rejects, for it is all based on ignorance, lack of faith, an inadequate conception of God.

Luther was one who lived in fear until he discovered the Bible remedy for fear, which is faith.

He was following a procession of the mass one day in the town of Eisleben when suddenly he was overcome by the thought that the wine that was carried was really Jesus Christ, and he later wrote of this experience and said, "A cold sweat covered my body, and I believed myself dying of terror."

This is an example of the false fear of God based on ignorance.

Only when Luther came to know God as his Father through Jesus Christ could he escape his fear that nearly drove him mad.

When ever a Christian does not fully trust in God as his heavenly Father he is in danger of suffering from guilt feelings.

These can be repressed and come out in all sorts of foolish fears.