Wrong Fear, Right Fear | John 6:16-21

Church family.

If you have your Bibles, would you go ahead and turn with me to John chapter 6?

John 6 · chapter mention

John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

We're gonna read verses 16 through 21.

While you're turning there, I just want to acknowledge this week is Veterans Day week.

And I just want to say thank you to all of you that have served, all of you who have sacrificed.

It's not lost on me that this morning I get to stand and I get to preach the word of God is exactly as it is.

I don't have any fear of reprisal.

I have no fear of government action against me.

That I get to stand and I get to preach.

I'll preach it, I hope, anyway, but I'm especially thankful to be able to preach it in a place where I'm free to preach it.

And so thank you to all of you that have sacrificed so much to make that possible.

John chapter 6, we're gonna read verses 16 through 21.

John 6 · chapter mention

God's word says, When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.

It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.

The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing, and when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, coming near the boat, and they were frightened.

But he said to them, It is I.

Do not be afraid.

Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

Let's pray the Lord together.

Father, thank you that you have brought us together this morning.

Lord, and as we come together this morning, we are thankful for all of those in our nation that have laid down their lives that we might be able to do that.

All those that have carried that carry wounds in their body and on their minds for the defense of freedom.

Lord, I particularly pray for your blessing upon them this week.

But Lord, regardless of what we've faced or what we've done or what we've experienced, we know that because of Christ and because of what Christ has accomplished on our behalf, because he is present with us always and in all things, we can live today without fear, without shame, and without worrying about how everything measures up against us because Christ has done all the measuring already.

I pray, O Lord, that today you would bring freedom to my people.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

In 2017, I started struggling with just debilitating headaches.

And so I began to see a neurologist to see if we could figure out what was going on and to develop some kind of treatment plan that would be able to give some kind of relief.

And as part of the process of getting with a neurologist, she had me go have an MRI of my brain.

Now, she assured me that when she was doing this MRI that she didn't suspect anything, she really wasn't worried about it, but it was just part of the routine.

Part of what she had to do is part of her due diligence to make sure that all of the boxes were checked.

A couple of days after I had the MRI on my brain, I get a call from her office, and the call goes exactly like this Mr.

Hell, we've found something on your scan on your scan.

We need you to come into the doctor into the office to be able to discuss.

Now, of course, they didn't have anything that day.

They had to wait to the next day before I could go into the office.

And I'm telling y'all, in 24 hours, I lived a thousand lifetimes.

You get on WebMD, and nobody ever comes away from WebMD feeling like you have any hope, right?

I'm singing it is well over and over.

I'm having all my friends and all of my elders pray.

Well, the day of the appointment arrives, and I go in, and my assumption is that my life is changed forever.

It will never be the same again.

So I go in, I sit down, and it's no time.

The doctor walks in and she says exactly one sentence to me.

You have a small birthmark on the back of your brain, it'll cause you no issues, you're free to go.

Within 10 minutes, I'm eating a roast beef sandwich at Arby's.

I went in thinking my life was over, right?

You know, it's interesting, isn't it?

We tend to have trouble remembering the good moments in our lives, but we never forget the scariest moments of our lives, do we?

This morning in our text, we are reading about one of the scariest moments in the Apostle John's life.

It was a moment that marked him forever.

And for John, this had a lot to teach him about who Jesus is and about the nature of fear in light of who Jesus is.

I think what we see in John chapter 6 is the story of three different fears.

John 6 · chapter mention

The first fear that we see is what I would call the wrong fear.

The wrong fear.

You'll notice there in verse 19 that it says that they were frightened.

They were frightened.

Now I want you to think about the men who were frightened.

We know that at least four of them are experienced fishermen.

At least four of them were used to going out on a boat like this onto the Sea of Galilee, where squalls would pop up and waves would come and winds would blow.

It would take a lot to scare a group of men like that.

I like to think of what it would be like to have a man like Peter and a man like Matthew on the same boat.

You have Matthew, who's kind of the soft-handed tax collector, and you have Peter, who's this grisly veteran, experienced fisherman.

You can imagine that as soon as there's a little puff of wind, as soon as there's a little rocking of the boat, that Matthew's grabbing and getting nervous, and you can just hear Peter saying, Pipe down, Matthew.

You're just not used to a real man's job, right?

But on this particular occasion, even the fishermen are afraid.

And we know that the fishermen are afraid.

Whoa, I don't know what just happened there.

We know that the fishermen are afraid because of the language that he uses.

John says that it was a strong wind that was blowing.

He says that the water became rough.

He says that it was dark outside.

That John is using the most ominous language that he can possibly use to paint the situation as being as bleak as it can possibly be.

That what we have here is we have a group of fishermen and they believe that their lives are over.

They believe that they are about to die.

That they recognize in this storm as a mortal threat against them that on the horizon there is only bad news for them.

Often in counseling, I'll tell people there's a time in which you plan for the future when it's good and proper and right.

And there's another time in your life when life is hard, when it feels insurmountable, when the winds are blowing, when the boat is rocking, when you when you feel as though you're being overwhelmed.

In moments like that, you don't plan for the future.

In moments like that, you just trust that God's grace is good enough to get you through that moment.

And you trust that when you wake up in the morning, that his grace will be refreshed and his mercy will be new, and he'll get you through that day too.

That fear in these moments has a way of putting us on a horizon in which it only looks like there's bad ahead of us.

That we take the pain of the here and now, the suffering of the here and now, the storms of the here and now, and we project forward so that in the future all we can see is bad, all we can see is suffering, all we can see is complete hopelessness.

Well, I think when he uses this phrase, strong when, that John is intending to take us back to another time in Israel's history when the people of God were between a rock and a hard place.

You'll remember after the Passover event that the Passover comes and Pharaoh relents and he allows the people of God to go out into the wilderness in pursuit of the promised land.

And you'll remember what happens, that Pharaoh hardens his heart again.

And he begins to reassemble his army, and assembling his army, he goes in pursuit of this former slave nation of Israel, and he chases them and he chases them all the way up to the edge of the Red Sea.

And so there are the people of God, millions of them at this point.

And on one side of them is the mightiest military on earth, and on the other side of them is an unassailable sea.

And it feels like hope is lost.

It feels like there's only bad news on the horizon.

It feels like the future is bleak and that there's no chance of it.

That is, until it's the same exact phrase: a strong wind comes.

A strong wind comes, and the waters of the Red Sea stand straight up, and the people of God are able to walk through on dry ground, and the waters close up, enveloping all of the Egyptian army.

You see the wrong fear?

Fear of people, fear of circumstances, fear of failure, fear of suffering.

The wrong fear tempts us to factor God out of the equation, doesn't it?

That life huffs and puffs, and it threatens to blow our house down, and we see all of the huffing and all of the puffing, and we see the windows rattling, and we become convinced that the house will fall.

And so what do we do?

Well, we do what they did.

We begin to row and row and row.

See, it's powerlessness.

Powerlessness in the face of great fear that leads to the deepest despair, isn't it?

It's the fact that I want to be able to do something about what I'm facing.

I want to be able to do something about what I'm experiencing, but I feel powerless.

I'm here in the midst of the Sea of Galilee.

I'm three miles offshore like the disciples, and I'm rowing and I'm rowing and I'm rowing, but I can't get anywhere.

It's powerlessness, like when you have an Egyptian army pressing in on you on one side and the unassailable sea on the other side of you.

And so you you become overcome about the reality of what you're facing, and you try to row and row and row.

That's exactly what we feel and exactly what we do, isn't it?

It's exactly what we feel and exactly what we do.

That we have the sense of shame.

The mistakes that we've made, the bad decisions that we've made, the things that we've done, the people that we've hurt.

And we respond to that by thinking, okay, I'll just do all the good things then.

I'll sign up for all the ministries, I'll write the bigger checks, I'll serve with all the nonprofits, I'll I'll I'll work every night of the week because I want to, I don't want that to be the legacy.

I don't want that to be how I'm remembered.

I want to try to cancel out all of the bad that I've done.

What are we doing?

We're rowing.

And we're rowing.

But it's futile, isn't it?

The shame doesn't go away that way.

We blow up our marriage.

We think, man, I'll read every marriage book you've got.

I'll go in all the marriage counseling, I'll I'll attend all of the marriage conferences, I'll take in, uh, I'll do all of the date nights, I'll do all of the things.

But what are we doing?

We're rowing and we're rowing and we're rowing, but the reality is, is it's all futile.

You lose the person that you love the most.

You have to say bye to that person that always made you feel secure and safe, the person that you admired the deepest and respected the most.

And so, what do you do?

You don't know what to do.

So you just plaster a bigger smile on your face.

You say with even more conviction that you're okay and that you're fine and that life is good.

But no matter how big your smile is, no matter how hard you row, the reality is that internally you feel like you're spinning out of control.

You feel like you're suffocating.

See, the thing about rowing in the eye of a storm is that you don't get any closer to safety and you just end up tired.

You just end up worn out.

The point here is that fear of the storm is the wrong fear.

And the wrong fear will ruin your life.

So if you're struggling with the wrong fear, the only answer that you have is the right fear.

The right fear.

In 2002, just months after 9-11, a man by the name of Clinton Boy Fair puts an impromptu art exhibit on in the subway system of New York City.

He took a bunch of FedEx boxes and he painted them black and with white lettering, he wrote the word fear across them, and then he arranged them just so kind of out of the way of everyone.

Well, in the beginning, passers by didn't even notice them.

They just kept walking.

And then one person stopped and began to look, and then a crowd of people began to look, and then a frenzy ensued, and then before you knew it, the entire subway system of New York City had been shut down, and they'd brought in the bomb squad and the robots to be able to disassemble these boxes.

So the bomb squad brings the robot in, and they're they're coming taking apart as carefully as they can, box by box.

And to their dismay, every single box they open is filled with nothing but air.

That quite literally, the entire city had shut down, trembling with fear of absolutely nothing.

This is a picture.

This is a picture of how all of the things that we worry ourselves sick over, all the things that we're afraid of, all of the things that cause our hands to sweat and our tests, our chests to tighten, all the things that we're afraid.

This is an example of how all of them are looked when we finally are able to bring them into the presence of Jesus.

That when we bring our fears into the presence of Jesus, what we will ultimately realize is that all of our fears have been completely silly.

We have been afraid all of our lives, wasted countless nights' sleep over nothing.

This is what the disciples are realizing.

That here in verse 19, they've been in a panic.

They've talked about the dark night and the strong wind and the rough waters and all the ominous threats that seem to be impending upon them, all the bad news that looks to be on the horizon.

And then they saw Jesus.

They saw Jesus and they were frightened.

Suddenly, suddenly, they saw another fear, a greater fear.

They stopped thinking about the wind that was blowing, they stopped thinking about the rain that was falling, they stopped thinking about the waves that were rocking their boat, all of them transfixed on the edge of the boat, looking at a man standing on 140 feet of water, three feet, three miles off the shore.

Jesus.

Completely overwhelmed by what they're seeing.

See, what we need to understand here is that John is unequivocally stating, by framing Jesus in this light, that Jesus is in fact God.

That this is the language of the Old Testament used to describe Yahweh.

I have it there on your screen.

Job 9, verse 8 says this about God, who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea.

Job 9:8

Earlier I made the connection that I think that it's the Red Sea event that forms much of the context about what's taking place here when Jesus walks on the water.

Well, there's a Psalm, Psalm 77, that is actually a meditation of the people of God on the Red Sea event.

And I want you to listen to the way that it describes God and his actions there in the Red Sea.

It says, When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid.

Indeed, the deep trembled, the clouds poured waters, the skies gave forth thunder, your arrows flashed on every side, the crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind, your lightnings lighted up the world, the earth trembled and shook.

Your way was through the sea, your path was through the great waters, yet your footprints were unseen.

Do you think maybe Jesus was showing us that he's the fulfillment of something?

Do you think maybe that Jesus was trying to draw into our minds the reality?

Do you know what their eyes beheld when they beheld Jesus standing flat footed on 140 feet of water?

They beheld for the first time he who was the one that all the things that they were afraid of, the things their fears feared.

And suddenly they were reset.

Suddenly they were okay.

That here's this picture of God in the Old Testament who scares, causes the sea to tremble, so that the sea stands up straight, and the people are able to walk through on dry ground.

But they couldn't see his footprints.

His footprints were unseen.

But here, here in the incarnation, here in the person of Christ, you could see him.

You could see his footprints in the water standing flat-footed right there to be able to behold him.

See, this is why in the Bible, fear and worship are always connected with each other.

That's odd to us, isn't it?

You know, Proverbs 1 verse 7 tells us that the beginning, all wisdom is the fear of the Lord, right?

Proverbs 1:7

And we don't typically like that language because fear is something that we have a negative association with.

But why is fear associated with worship in the Bible?

Because fear reveals what your heart reveres.

Fear reveals that which your heart is compelled to bow down to.

So you see, it's the wrong fear that's the issue.

The wrong fear incarcerates, the right fear liberates.

The wrong fear terrorizes.

The right fear calibrates.

Let me explain to you this way.

The great reformer, Martin Luther, he says that the fear of the Lord is a filial fear.

Here's what he means by that.

It's the kind of fear that you experience within a family.

It's the kind of fear, it's the way that a young boy reveres his father.

The way a young boy, and I'm talking about a healthy relationship, a healthy reverence.

When I was uh a young guy, I remember my dad one day, we were outside and we were putting a dog fence up.

Now remember, I lived in the country, all right?

So we're in the middle of the woods putting a dog fence up.

And I remember my dad drops the post hole diggers down in and he pulls it up, and when he pulls it up, it's a yellow jacket's nest.

And he's just being swarmed, okay?

And I'm standing right there with my dad, and I can say, and my dad doesn't have a shirt on because he's a real man, right?

And I can just see red blotches popping up all over me, and he starts running, all right?

Well, my dad doesn't run away from the yellow jackets first.

You know where he runs first?

He runs to me.

So here he is being stung, and he runs to me and he scoops me up, and my dad has me in one arm and he's running like I'm a football, right?

Now, I'm at an age in my life at that point where bees were basically nuclear warheads.

You know what I mean?

Like, I couldn't imagine anything worse than being stung by a bee at that point in my life.

And here is a whole hive of bees that are chasing after me, and I'm watching my dad, I'm not being stung, and he's just being drilled, swarms of bees, and I remember being him holding me in his arm and me and running with me and me thinking, this has literally got to be the strongest man on earth.

You know?

Like here he is being stung by bees, and he seems totally unaffected.

He's concerned about me.

That the way a young man would see that is I realize that my man, my dad was not a man that you trifled with.

My man, my dad was not a man that was soft, my dad was not a man that backed away from danger, my dad was a man that faced it down.

It left me in awe.

Caused me to revere him.

Think about another instance.

My my mom, when I was growing up, worked second shift.

And so dad had me and my sister when we were little, that to himself, and he was a volunteer fireman.

Remember, rural town, volunteer fire department, and so they would have these meetings every so often.

And so, whenever my dad had a meeting at the volunteer fire department, he would have to take my sister and me along with him because he had no place else for us to go.

And so I remember on one particular occasion that we're there at the meeting of all the guys, right?

All the country boys at the volunteer fire department, and they're giving my dad a hard time because he's having to drag around his kids everywhere that he goes.

And you know, dad's laughing it off, and we're all, everybody's kind of cutting up and laughing over it.

And there's always that one guy, isn't there?

There's always that one guy that takes the joke a little bit too far.

And I remember that this guy makes a joke not about the fact that my sister and I were with my dad, but about my sister and I.

And my dad jumps up and slides the chair back and gets face to face with him.

And he says, You can say and laugh at me anytime you want to, but you will keep my kids' names out of your mouth.

Do you understand me?

Whoa! Right?

And I remember being proud of my dad, you know?

I'm like, I'm with that guy.

So here's here's the thought.

My my dad is not a man to be trifled with.

My dad is fearsome and strong and tough, and he's for me.

He's got my back.

He takes care of me.

That's the picture of the fear of the Lord.

You see the wrong fear says you better run and hide.

But the right fear.

Says, run here and hide here.

It's not that I'm afraid to be with him, it's that I'm afraid to be without him.

See, when you have the right fear, well, now you have everything that you need to live with no fear.

To live with no fear at all.

Verse 2 is really the climax of the whole text.

And in verse 20, Jesus gives a command to his disciples.

He's standing there flat-footed on 140 feet of water, and he takes the opportunity to teach them something, right?

He gives them a command.

He says, do not be afraid.

Now that's a little bit of a strange command when you think about it, isn't it?

When you think about it, telling someone that's afraid to not be afraid is kind of like telling someone who's hungry to not be hungry.

Just telling them that doesn't mean much, right?

It doesn't help you a whole lot.

Unless.

Unless there's a reason that you have to give them for them not to be afraid.

Unless you have some evidence that contradicts the fears that they're tempted to.

You see, commands need facts that way.

And so here is Jesus, and he issues this command, do not be afraid, but he tethers it to an irrefutable truth.

He says, It is I, I am with you.

Do not be afraid.

In fact, this is a really simple Greek phrase.

It's ego a me.

And ego a me simply means I am.

In other words, more literally translated, he says, I am.

Do not be afraid.

Now, does that bring into your mind anything?

I hope so.

I hope it brings in your mind Exodus chapter 3, verse 14.

Exodus 3:14

That's right before the Red Sea event, isn't it?

That God is calling Moses to go and to confront the Pharaoh, and that he tells him he's gonna deliver his people out of Israel.

And Pharaoh's impulse is our impulse is to be afraid, is to come up with all the reasons why it won't work.

All the reasons why he can't do it, why he's not capable, why it will never, never happen in a million billion years, because in the future is only bad news on the horizon.

And what's the reason that God gives him to bring him comfort?

He says, You tell them I am sent you.

Don't you love how it's in the present tense?

It teaches us the ever-present nature of our God.

It doesn't matter if it was yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

It doesn't matter if it's in church, at home, or at work.

It doesn't matter where you are, what you're facing, when you're facing it, God is ever-present with his people.

I am.

And here's the advancement.

The I am who delivered them through the Red Sea is the same I am who is here standing flat-footed on the Sea of Galilee.

That here is Christ, and Christ is the incarnation of the ever-present God, and Christ will be ever-present with his people, and because Christ is ever-present with his people, he will always be able to deliver his people, and his people have nothing left to be worried about.

His people have nothing left to fear.

Matter of fact, this is a theme throughout the Gospel of John.

Seven different times he's gonna quote Jesus as Jesus saying, Ego amen, I am.

And every single one of those is intended to bring to rest the people of God that they would know that every fear they have in this world is nothing but an empty fear box with nothing on the inside.

Are you worried about having enough and being sustained until the end?

I am the bread of life.

Are you worried about being overcome by the darkness of this world?

I am the light of this world.

Are you worried about being destroyed by wolves?

I am the door of the sheep.

Are you worried about the inevitability of death?

I am the resurrection.

Are you worried about being led astray or falling away?

I am the good shepherd.

Are you worried about not knowing which way to go or how to live?

I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life.

Are you worried that you're going to wither and not bear fruit?

I am the true vine and you are the branches.

Brothers and sisters, the hope that we have, the security that we know, the reason that you and I can live without worry or fear is because Jesus has come, Jesus is God, and Jesus is ever present with you and me.

I don't think I was five foot tall or a hundred pounds until the tenth grade, all right?

That's a hard existence as a junior high boy.

And so everybody would come and they love to do this.

They would like to come and they would like to stand up and measure themselves by me, right?

They would come and they would bow out their chests and stand up real tall because coming and measuring themselves beside me made them feel big.

It made them feel tough, it made them feel strong.

That's the experience that a lot of us have with the shame that we carry, isn't it?

We've made mistakes and we've made decisions and we've hurt people.

And that shame, like a tattoo that can't be wiped off, comes and it measures itself beside us and it makes us feel small and it makes us feel weak and it looks tough and it looks insurmountable.

That's how the stress at work treats you, isn't it?

The stress at work comes and it stretches up tall and it bows out its chest and it threatens to drown you, it threatens to overcome you, it makes you feel like a perpetual failure all the time.

That's how your parenting failures feel, isn't it?

You can't make all the right decisions, you take this misstep, you don't know if you did this right, you don't know if you've got discipline right, if you're too hard, if you're too lenient, you don't know all the things.

And here's all this parenting pressure coming and measuring itself up beside you, making you feel like you just can't measure up.

Do you know what?

In all those years of all those people coming and measuring themselves by me so that they could feel big and they could feel tough, I don't remember a single one of them coming and measuring themselves against me when I was standing with my dad.

You see, when I stood with my dad, the bullies stood down.

Because they knew that he was bigger than them, and he was more fierce than them, and that he had my back.

Do you see the point that John's making here?

As Jesus is the one whom our fears should fear, he is the one who is who the demons plead with.

Oh, please, please, son of God, do not torment us on this day.

Life huffs and puffs.

We're tempted to row and row.

But Jesus, Jesus says it is finished.

And he invites all of us to come and to stand with him.

And if we stand with him, all the bullies of this life, they stand out.

Let me pray for us.