Faith Rest Drill; 3 Jo 3; Isaiah 41:10
The first step in the
faith-rest drill is to mix faith with a promise. The second step is to think
through the doctrinal rationales that are embedded in that promise. We come to a
certain conclusion, and the conclusion isn’t simply a statement of that
proposition. We come to the conclusion that God is in control. But sometimes,
two seconds later we are back in control, trying to control, worrying, having
anxiety. What happened? That conclusion was just a fleeting academic perception
but it didn’t undergird the thinking of our soul. So we have to go back and
think through that rationale again. Sometimes we go through days like that.
What is really happening during that time is that God is teaching us to
consistently trust Him and to make that conclusion a reality in our own
thinking so that we can relax and trust Him.
What we are doing as we look
at these promises is to break them down and look at the structure. In Isaiah
40-66 the focus is on what is happening at the end of the Babylonian captivity
and how God is going to deliver and rescue the Jews at that time. So Isaiah is
addressing people who are in this captivity, who are in essence prisoners, and
at this time they are looking on the horizon of history and seeing this
military build-up of the Medes and the Persians. They are seeing this vast
military threat, their security is threatened, and they have no idea what is
going to happen. So it can be seen that this is a time of anxiety and fear of
what might happen historically, and at the end of the fortieth chapter Isaiah
says that those who wait on the Lord will exchange their strength, and the
context is talking about those in the midst of this turmoil who wait on the
Lord. God is the God of history; Jesus Christ controls history; there is a plan
and a purpose. Therefore they can relax and have confidence in the future.
In this same context just 10
verses later we have another promise, one that is frequently cited, and one that
is a good one for those who are prone to any kind of fear or anxiety. Isaiah 41:10 KJV “Fear thou not;
for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee;
yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my
righteousness.”
Some basic
observations of the text. First of
all it is in poetry. Most of prophecy is written in poetry. In Hebrew poetry
the Jews rhymed ideas rather than words. Sometimes there is synonymous
parallelism where there are two lines that say the same thing with slightly
different words. That is what we have in the first two lines of Isaiah 41:10.
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee,” and then there is a synonym for fear, “be
not dismayed; for I am thy God.” So the second line repeats with slightly
different verbiage the first line, and the combination
of the two lines give a more fully developed picture of what the writer is
saying. There are other kinds of parallelism but here we see in these first two
stanzas the idea and the mandate no to be afraid. This is a mandate, a command;
we are not to be afraid. Fear and worry are volitional decisions; we are
responsible for that. As soon as there is an imperatival mood in either Greek
or Hebrew, that is addressing our responsibility.
So we have two commands. The
first is not to fear and the word “fear” in the Hebrew is yare, and this word must always be understood in the context. It
has two senses. One is to show awe or respect, the second is the sense of
anxiety or being afraid, fearful. The second word that is rhymed with that is
the Hebrew word shata,
it is translated “dismayed” in the KJV and is a synonym for yare. There is another word that has shown up in some MSS called shaah and it has
the idea of looking around at something, how you regard something or look at
something. The NASB translates this “Do not anxiously look about you,”
but the KJV’s translation is a superior one, it should be in the
sense of being dismayed. The English meaning of “dismayed” has the idea of
being filled with apprehension or alarm, it goes beyond the simple concept of
fear. It could also take it to the next level which brings in the idea of being
filled with depression or discouragement, or becoming agitated. Webster’s
Dictionary: “Dismay means to be deprived of courage, resolution and initiative
through the pressure of a sudden fear or anxiety or great perplexity. It
implies that one is disconcerted and at a loss as to how to deal with
something.” This is what happens with fear. We are faced with some circumstance
that is completely outside of our control and we don’t know how that
circumstance is going to affect us directly, or how it is going to affect
someone we love directly. And rather than relax and put it in the control of
God who can control and is in control of all circumstances what we do is think
that we can sit back and through a lot of emotion, worry and agitation that
somehow we can effect circumstances that we have
absolutely no control over. That is why fear and worry and anxiety go
hand-in-hand with arrogance. They destroy courage, initiative and objectivity
of thought.
Each of these two
prohibitions is followed by an explanatory causal clause. The word “for”
represents a Hebrew independent preposition ki and it indicates the cause for
which something is stated. So it tells us why. This is the rationale. We mix
our faith with a promise: Don’t be afraid, don’t be dismayed.” Why? It is not
just because God said so. That is true but there is a rationale there, and as
we grapple with that rationale that undergirds it we
understand the foundation and how that then changes the way we think about the
circumstance around us. This is indicated by the clause after the “for.” The
rationale for not fearing is that God is with us. The rationale for not being
dismayed is that He is our God. The one who is speaking here is Yahweh. In chapter forty it is Isaiah
speaking to the people and reminding them of who God is; in chapter forty-one,
starting in verse 1, it is Yahweh,
the covenant faithful God of Israel who is addressing the Jews. So this is
referring back to who and what He is. The whole idea of not fearing, of not
being anxious, of not caving in to mental attitude sins related to fear and
worry, is an understanding of the essence of God—who He is and what he is doing
in human history. So even though this is a promise that He has given to Israel
in the midst a specific historical situation there are universal principles
here that can be taken and applied by any believer at any time. This applies to both Isaiah 40:31 and 41:10.
We are given a further
development in the last part of the verse. In the last three lines each clause
is prefaced by the particle in the Hebrew which is intensive and it take one
thought and piles something else on top of it, then piles something else on top
of that. You are increasing in your momentum: God will strengthen us, yes He is
going to help us, and even more, He is going to uphold us with His righteous
right hand.” First of all we have the prohibition of the first two stanzas which
tells us what not to do. That is the active side of the principle. As we do
that and we relax in His provision then God tells us what he is going to do.
He strengthens us, he helps us, and he is the one who is going to uphold us
with His righteousness. It goes back to His integrity; it is His character once
again. So the rationale that undergirds this whole
promise is the rationale of God’s character. This is why we have to understand
the essence box.
But it is not just a matter
of skipping that first step. Some people say, “Well why do I have to memorise a
promise? I understand the essence box so I’ll just skip right to that.” But it
is the promises that give us the revealed Word of God and the specific promise
itself, and God has promised that His Word will not return to Him empty or void
without accomplishing His purpose. There is something important about
understanding His Word. This is why Jesus specifically quoted Scripture. He
didn’t just allude to abstract principles when Satan was tempting Him. If we
memorise several promises all related to the same problem then as we pull them
together it gives a greater sense of what God is doing and how to handle the
situation.
So we have to answer the
question: What is fear? First of all fear is an emotion that is caused by the
anticipation or awareness of danger. It is almost a physically oriented and
originated thing, it comes out of the sin nature. In
some sense we feel that we are personally threatened or our children are
personally threatened, or somebody we care about is threatened. Fear can be
related to any and every area of life—our job, career, family, relationships,
future hopes and dreams, finances, etc. But what is the root cause of fear? Fear
itself is a mental attitude sin that is at the very core of all of the
emotional sins in the sin nature. The sin nature produces a host of emotional
sins but at the very core of all of that is fear, the first mental attitude sin
that is mentioned in Scripture. It Genesis chapter three we are told about how
Adam and Isha
fall into sin when they eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. Right after they eat we are told that God came walking in the garden,
and when they heard the sound of God they hid. Because they were naked they
were vulnerable both physically and spiritually. When they heard God they
recognised a spiritual exposure that they were never aware of before. Te fallen
man is completely exposed and vulnerable before a righteous God who will hold
him accountable for his disobedience. As a result of that they ran and hid, and
when God confronted them and asked why they were hiding their response was, “We
were afraid.”
There were two things
manifested in the fall. The first is arrogance. They are absorbed with themselves, they decided they know more about what is going
to happen when they eat the fruit than God does. And the second thing that
comes right on the tail of arrogance, and is always linked with arrogance, is
fear. These become the twin orientations of the sin nature and the soul
dominated by the sin nature. Why are we afraid? Because we live in a world that
we can’t control anymore, and it is out of control and in chaos because of sin.
The consequence of fear is
that there is almost an automatic reflex attempt to resolve it. When the man
and the woman heard the sound of God in the garden, what did they do? They ran and
hid because they were afraid and they tried to cover up their exposed nakedness
by making clothes of fig leaves. This is what happens. Man at his very core is
afraid, he is existentially fearful because he is now a creature that has been
cut loose from his creator and he is incapable of making life work at all. He
is completely threatened at the very core of his existence so the mind
immediately begins to develop all kinds of rationalisations and attempts to
avoid feeling the impact of being this creature that is cut loose from any
protection from God. Only Christianity gives a solution to fear, that
recognises what it is, what its source is, where we can replace fear with
courage.
The solution to fear: 1
John 4:17 NASB “By this, love is perfected [matured] with [among] us,
so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment;
because as He is, so also are we in this world.
The basic orientation of
the believer’s soul is arrogance which is accompanied by emotional sin. As the
believer is self-dependent and self-absorbed he is going to be arrogant and he
will always be fearful, but when he becomes God-dependent and focused on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and as he grows in maturity and understands and implements
the love of God in his own life, what happens is that fear is eradicated because
the orientation is no longer towards self-dependence but God dependence. And as
the believer grows and matures that mature love replaces the fear and anxiety. As
he grows and matures he understands grace, the dynamics of the judgment seat of
Christ, and there is no fear or anxiety because he knows that God is in
control. So the ultimate resolution to that core existential fear that we have
as unbelievers is through, first of all regeneration, and secondly through
advance in the spiritual life.
Fear
1. Fear is an emotional sin that lies at the centre of a
web of other sins. It is not just fear; fear always comes joined with a number
of other mental attitude sins such as anxiety, worry, dread, agitation. Often
these accompanying sins develop into anger. Then if a situation continues long enough it leads
to discouragement and discouragement breeds depression. That starts to have a
physiological impact on a person and so a spiritual problem has developed into
a physical problem.
2. Fear is often stated in
Scripture as a representative emotional sin. It talks about fear but it is
talking actually about the entire web of interrelated mental attitude sins. Fear
always destroys the spiritual life of the believer, and if he is afraid,
worried, anxious, agitated, terrified, resentful, etc., he is out of fellowship
and not trusting God.
3. Fear and the function of
spiritual life are mutually exclusive. Sometimes from one second to the next
the believer is in fellowship, out of fellowship, in fellowship, out of
fellowship. A whole day goes by like that and he thinks he is not getting
anywhere. But he is. Where would he be if he hadn’t been confessing the sin
those 500 times that day? He is training himself; it is a drill.
4. Fear results when we lose
focus on our personal eternal destiny and God’s plan for our life. Fear results
when we lose sight of the fact that God has a plan and purpose for our life and
He is working that out.
5. Fear in the soul represents
emotional arrogance and is a distraction to the spiritual life.
6. Fear focuses on the
problem, on the adversity, and it completely falls apart. Faith looks at the
solution of God’s provision. Five illustrations: a) Abraham’s faith that God
would provide a promised seed; b) Moses at the Red Sea when he is hemmed in by
the Egyptian army pressing his rear and the Red Sea in front; c) David
exercised faith-rest in contrast to the fear of Saul and the entire Jewish army
when he went up against Goliath; d) In Daniel are two great examples. First, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego who trusted God and refused to bow down—this is the active sense of the faith-rest drill; the passive
side was their trust in God. Then Daniel at the lion’s den He refused to stop
praying, overtly and publicly. He rested in God and God sent an angel to close
the mouths of the lions.
7. Through the faith-rest drill every believer emphasises
the solution rather than the problem. When we go through the rationale what that
is doing is taking the focus from off the problem and on to the character of
God, and that then gives the correct perspective on the problem.
The mechanics
of fear
1. The more things you
surrender to fear, the more things you fear. Fear increases in your life.
2. The extent to which you
surrender to fear the greater your capacity to fear. As you discipline yourself
in the reverse you shut down that capacity to worry and for fear.
3. The greater your capacity
for fear the more you increase the power of fear and anxiety in your life.
4. The more you increase the
power of fear in your life the greater your failure to execute the spiritual
life for the church age believer.
Some
parallel promises that we should pay attention to:
Psalm
55:22 NASB “Cast your burden
upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the
righteous to be shaken [ultimately destroyed].”
1 Peter 5:7 NASB
“casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”