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Sunday, March 6, 2005
Rev. Dr. Harold E Kidd
FEAR: THE
ENEMY OF FAITH
"But Samuel said, 'How
can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me.'"
1 Samuel 16:2
In order to help us better
understand the theme of the message for this morning 'Fear: The Enemy of
Faith', there is a wonderful and familiar story found in 1 Samuel 16, where God
calls upon the prophet Samuel to go and anoint David as the new King of Israel.
Israel, you will recall, as the rising confederacy in Canaan was in constant
battle for land. In ch 8 the people cried out for a King, that they might be
like the other nations. God gave them their request, and sent Samuel to anoint
Saul as king. Saul had proven himself to be a mighty man in battle; he was
taller than most men and good looking.
What the people did not
recognize was that deep down on the inside Saul suffered from a deep inferiority
complex, which would surface when David's popularity began to rise following
his defeat of the giant Goliath.
In 1 Samuel 15 God commands
Saul to utterly destroy one of their Canaanite enemies, the Amalekites. God's
word to Saul through the prophet Samuel was, "Go, attack the Amalekites
and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to
death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and
donkeys.
Most of us struggle with
texts such as this one found in the bible. How could a loving God give such a
command we ask? Well, God has his
reasons, which often times remain a mystery to us. What we do know is that the
Amalekites were warmongers, who lived by attacking other nations and taking
them into captivity. We also know that they were idol worshippers, whose
practices would corrupt Israel in her worship of the one true God.
God, in his fore-knowledge,
could see that unless the Amalekites were utterly destroyed, they would
continue to attack Israel unmercifully. Saul attacked and defeated the
Amalekites, but he disobeyed God's command, in that Saul spared the king of the
Amalekites and kept the best of all their livestock. When the prophet Samuel
heard the bleating of the sheep he asked, "What is this sound of cattle
that I hear?” Saul then sought to lie to Samuel about the results of this
battle. He had disobeyed God's command, then he lied to God's prophet. And this
is the first of numerous places in the Bible with the theme "to obey God
is better than sacrifice."
God's pronouncement upon
Saul was,"Because you have rejected
the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king." And so in ch. 16,
where our text is found, God calls Samuel to go anoint David as the new king
over Israel. The Lord said to Samuel, "How long will you mourn for Saul,
since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be
on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, I have chosen one of his
sons to be king."
And here's our verse: "But Samuel said, ‘How can I go? Saul will
hear about it and kill me.’" Samuel was grieving over Saul’s fall. But
God said, Samuel you've got to go anoint a new king. Samuel has been given an
assignment by the Lord, but he is afraid to carry it out because he fears that
if Saul ever gets word that he is on his way to anoint another king, Saul will
kill him. Fear is the enemy of our Faith.
Now we might think that if
God has called Samuel to go anoint a new king, Samuel would also have the faith
to know that God will protect him in what could be a very dangerous assignment.
But Samuel cannot immediately receive God's command to go and anoint David,
because this fear of Saul has got him immobilized. One cannot walk in faith if
fear has got a hold on us.
Samuel's response to go do
what God has called him to do is slow in the affirmative, yes Lord, because he fears for his life. For the moment fear won’t
allow him to walk by faith in the trust the God will protect him, as he makes
his way to Jesse's home seeking the young man who would be the next king. For
the moment fear has him held captive, hostage if you will, that will not allow
him begin the journey to Bethlehem to anoint David as the new king.
In our own day, I wonder how
many are held back from following where God is trying to lead us, guide us,
direct us, because we are afraid of something or another.
In some communities we are
afraid to come out of our own houses and walk our own city streets at night
and, in some cases, during the day. Fear of what lurks out there in that
community has some immobilized in their own homes. When the Bible says,
"The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof", this also means
our street, our home, our community.
We have to overcome our
fears if we ever hope to move ahead in this life. Fear of failure. Fear of
being criticized. Fear of leaving one's comfort zones. Fear of being exposed to
a new teaching which challenges us to rethink the way we've always thought. And
do you know there are those who don't want to learn anything new because they
are afraid of receiving any information that will challenge them to think in
new ways? (Whistle) Fear is an enemy of faith. One cannot truly walk in faith
if you are yet being held hostage by some kind of a fear.
Samuel said, "How can I
go? Saul will hear about it and kill me."
Have you ever been where
Samuel was? How can I go on living, they said it was malignant. How are we
going to get these children through school, we don't have the money. How am I
going to pass this exam, it's too difficult for me? How is our church going to
continue, when we're losing more members than we're gaining? Fear is the enemy
of faith.
Fear, for whatever time
period it held him, had Samuel immobilized from walking by faith. Samuel had
become a hostage to his own fears.
If we look deep enough there
is always something to get frightened about. We can never fully prepare
ourselves for tragic unforeseen accidents and events. Just this past Tuesday a
senior citizen was tragically run down by an 18-wheeler at the intersection of
Locust and Manchester Blvd. We have to live with polluted water having
carcinogenic chemicals, airplanes being hijacked and flown into skyscraper
buildings one morning on Sept. 11, unannounced and unthinkable. Then there is
cancer, or stroke, or diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis randomly selecting its
victims. The fear of growing old. The fear of being inadequate. The fear of not
having sufficient medical coverage to get the kind of care we need when we need
it.
There are those who suffer from
depression, still others from anxiety attacks so debilitating that fear keeps
them from even getting out of the bed on some mornings. And by the same token
there are those who are so afraid of failing until they will never move beyond
their comfort zones. Never try anything new. Never give themselves to any
effort that stretches them in new ways. Samuel was not by himself in being
immobilized by fear.
Looking at this theme from
another perspective, legitimate fear is understandable. Some fears are healthy
for us to have, because they move us to take some positive action. The word of
God says that "The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. "
When there is a lump in our chest or ache in our side that just will not go
away no matter what we do, some degree of fear is healthy. Because it becomes
an alarm that causes us to go see a doctor.
When we don't come home until the wee hours of the morning without
giving a call, telling those at home where we are and who we are with, that all
is well. Some degree of fear is
legitimate for those who are waiting for us at home to appear in safety, still
clothed in our right mind and with all our limbs functional.
So from one perspective
there are some fears which are legitimate and healthy because they will motivate
us to take positive action.
But we cannot give our
hearts over to fear and waste precious opportunities that God has for us to
experience in life worrying about this thing or that thing because fear has got
a hold on us. In the midst of wars and terrorism, a drug pandemic, and global
concerns about our environment and health issues, God's work of salvation is
still going forward. And if we allow fear to hold captive to our hopes, our
dreams, our determination to work for a better world, we'll miss out on what
God wants to do in us and through us. Amen.
As troubled as this world
is, we cannot live as though we have no heavenly Father, Who watches over us.
We cannot afford to miss the blessing of walking where God is trying to lead us
because we are immobilized by fear. Even in the church people tend to fight and
resist that which they do not understand. When God is in the process of doing a
new thing, some will resist because God is moving us in ways we cannot predict
the outcome, but He knows the way that we take.
Well, I wonder what was it
that got Samuel moving on the road the Lord had called him to walk, to anoint
David as king. The text does not say. It does not give us a time frame of how
long Samuel waited before he obeyed the word of the Lord. It could have been a
few hours, it could have been a few days, or it could have even been several
weeks. Samuel wrestled with his fear of being killed if he followed the command
of the Lord.
I believe that Samuel
remembered his past, and the reality that the Lord had brought him thus far
along the way strengthened his faith.
Samuel was a child born to a
mother's prayer, Hannah that praying mother. You remember the story. Because
she could bear no children, Hannah promised to give this child back to the Lord
if the Lord would give her a son. As a small child Samuel was taken to the
temple at Shiloh and ministered before the Lord under the watchful eye of the
priest Eli. He was a child born to the
ministry of God. And when God got ready to use Samuel, calling him into the
ministry, he spoke to Samuel at night, "Samuel, Samuel, Samuel.” And each
time Samuel would get up thinking he had been called by Eli. But Eli recognized
God was calling Samuel to be his prophet.
And so he said to Samuel,
"Go and lie down, and if he calls to you, say, "Speak Lord, for thy
servant heareth.”
And I just believe that as
Samuel remembered Who had called him, that as he remembered the faithfulness of
God to him down through the many years of his life, that as he remembered the
Lord had led him too far to leave him now, it helped him overcome his fear and
walk in faith and obedience to perform the act of anointing David as the new
king.
When we look at what the
Lord has already done, the fact is that He's brought us too far to leave us
now.
Well, the Lord has brought
you too far to leave you now. The Lord has brought his holy church too far to
leave us now. The Lord has brought too much goodness to our lives to leave us
now. The Lord has deposited too many blessings in our lives to leave us now.
For God does not waste his blessings. In the giving of his son Jesus, the God
has invested too much of himself in this world to leave it now. For God was in
Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and to us has He given the ministry
of reconciliation. He's brought us too far! He's brought us too far! He's
brought us too far to leave us now.
Yes, remembering what he's
already done has a way of putting flight to fear, and encouraging our faith.
"King of my life I crown thee now - Thine shall
the gory be;
Lest I forget Thy thorn crowned brow, Lead me to
Calvary,
Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest I forget Thine agony,
Lest I forget Thy love for me, Lead me to Calvary."