Matthew 10:26-33 – Fear of Man

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you again for joining us uh online as we stream our service of worship uh this morning.

I hope you've been uh singing along uh with us and uh we look forward to to being able to do that uh in person.

Uh hopefully very, very soon.

More information on that at the end of the at the end of the live stream.

And today though, we are finishing our uh our series uh in the Sermon of the Mount, though our text uh comes uh from outside of the Sermon of the Mount, technically, but it fits with some of the themes that we've been uh been looking at.

And so it was good to kind of round off with uh Jesus' teaching on uh on the fear of man and uh and what it means to to fear the Lord because they're closely linked with uh some of the things we've been talking about in terms of uh anxiety and integrity and what we what we value and what it means to be a uh a counterculture uh as a as the Christian community uh for the common good.

Uh so I'm gonna pray and uh then I'm going to uh attempt not to generate any memes uh this week as well, and uh while we pray uh together.

Our father, we need to uh reorientate our uh our hearts every day, really.

We need to reorientate our hearts uh away uh from uh the fear of others, their opinion of us, and what they will do to us, but the fear of you uh who loves us?

Help us to understand rightly what it means to fear you, our God, our heavenly father, and help us to grow in that this morning.

So we pray for the help of your Holy Spirit now, in the name of Jesus, amen.

So, how often then uh do you find your emotions uh governed by the opinion of others, or your actions, or your speech governed by the opinion of others?

How many times, uh, even this week perhaps have you felt yourself uh shrink back from saying something or shrink back from sharing the gospel with someone because uh you're concerned, uh, amongst other things, of what they'll think about you?

Either they'll think that you're a loony or Bible basher or whatever it is, that they'll think badly of you.

Or have you ever been in a relationship where you know that you need something from the other person?

It's not just that you want something, but you need, you crave their approval, their affection, their respect or affirmation.

Maybe actually you've been in a relationship where you've been on the uh on the other end of that sort of uh emotionally intense uh neediness.

These are just some of the manifestations of what the Bible calls the fear of man.

It's something that God uh addresses consistently through the Bible.

Want to encourage you uh that some of the heroes of the faith are those who are given to fear of man.

Abraham was fearful of others and so acted wrongly.

Jacob was fearful of others, Moses was fearful of others.

Proverbs, uh, the book of Proverbs uh says in verse or chapter 29, verse 25, the fear of man is a snare, it's something that captivates and captures us, and we feel it, and it it uh it it captures our movements, it captures our speech, it is a snare.

But that verse goes on and says, But whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

Possibly uh the most famous, uh certainly the most famous New Testament example uh of somebody who uh who was fearful of the opinion of others and fearful of man uh at really just the worst time uh is Peter.

Right?

Because what do we have?

We have uh Jesus on the the night of his arrest, he is uh taken to this uh to this show trial uh where he is questioned, and in a sense, the the camera kind of pans out of that room and focuses on Peter, and Peter's there sitting by the fire, and this young servant girl, so we're talking kind of somewhere between kind of 12 and 14 years old, comes up to Peter and says, Uh, weren't you with the Galilean?

That's Jesus, weren't aren't you one of them?

And he denies it, and she comes back a second time and says, No, I really think I saw you with him, you're one of his followers, and he denies it again.

She comes a third time and he denies again.

Peter had made uh great commitments and promises about never deserting his Lord, about always being there for Jesus and defending him.

And when it came to it, this little girl comes and questions him, and he's so fearful of what they might say, what they might do, that he lies and he deceives.

He is governed by fear of man in that instance.

It's a theme that pops up at various points all the way through the Bible.

It's a major theme that God wants to address in his word.

And why is it a major theme in God's word?

Well, because it's a major theme in us, it's something that we all have to deal with.

I don't want people to think badly of me.

My emotions are often governed by what people think, both for good and ill.

Often governed by what people do, both for good and ill.

It takes a lot for people to build me up, and it takes virtually nothing at all for them to tear me down.

Is anyone else watching this like that?

Or is that just me?

Does anyone else feel at the mercy of other people's opinions?

Maybe you don't, maybe you don't uh think of yourself like that.

But what I'd like to demonstrate uh just for a few moments is that uh the fear of man has a number of forms, and some of them are quite insidious and hard to recognize.

When we talk about the fear of man, what do we mean when we talk about the word fear?

Because this is going to be important when we uh come to think about the the fear of God, which is in the passage that was read.

What do we mean by the word fear of man or fear of God?

Simply, fear in the Bible's mind has the idea of being overwhelmed or controlled by something else.

Overwhelming and controlling.

To fear is to be ruled by something.

So fear of man is to be overwhelmed and controlled, or overwhelmed and ruled, that is, that our actions are uh are governed by other people, our speech is governed by other people.

So, what are some of the ways that this manifests?

Well, the first and most obvious is fearing the opinion of others.

It could be that you need the approval of other people, that you don't want to do anything wrong so that nobody thinks badly of you.

You don't want to say anything wrong because you don't want people to think badly of you.

And so that maybe makes you very careful in your speech, or what it can do is it can drive you into the background.

Maybe you're one of those people who just likes to dissolve in a group because you don't want people to see you, you don't want the attention or the perceived spotlight to fall on you because you don't want to be uh exposed into saying something that might sound foolish, that people might laugh at, that people might think badly of you because of.

And so you just hope that you go through your life mostly so that nobody will see you.

The effect of this fear is that it changes and curtails how you want to speak.

I'm sure if you're the kind of person who dissolves into the background, it is not because you have nothing to say.

I'm sure you have many wonderful, intelligent, insightful, funny and witty things to say.

And yet you are so governed that you shrink back.

It must be sometimes unbearable.

Sometimes what that means is that you only say what people what you think people want to hear.

Maybe you do this with your parents.

You only say to them the things that you think they want to hear and that they will approve of.

Sometimes a person's competitive streak actually has its roots in fear of man.

Sometimes people uh who you're looking at, oh you're so competitive.

It actually comes from a place where they don't want to be seen to be failures.

Maybe they don't even know how to fail.

And it terrifies them.

And so they become uh bullish and brash and competitive, and they they need to win.

Fearing the opinion of others can also lead you to put other people down.

Because if you can push them down, you can push yourself up.

Fear of man is is almost you, you know, usually it's a relative thing.

They are better than me.

But if I can demonstrate in a way that that I'm better than this other person, then I can elevate myself.

It's like you imagine two people in the swimming pool, and uh, and in in order to kind of get your head above the water, you have to push them down under the water, right?

So you put people down because you're actually scared of people looking full square at you.

Another way that fear of man manifests itself is in the drive towards cultivating greater self-esteem.

You might think that that sounds counterintuitive, but no, it's self-esteem, it's liking yourself more.

Is isn't that a good thing?

Well, the problem is that it's often attached to the opinions of others.

People who have low self-esteem are generally encouraged to uh heal or garner greater self-esteem in one of two ways.

Either they are encouraged to feel better about themselves by uh achieving some sort of success.

I guess the uh the most obvious example, or maybe this is just me, uh one of the most obvious examples might be to lose weight and to uh to get a uh a body type, an external uh view of yourself that is more acceptable.

Yes, you like it yourself, you feel better when you get out of the shower and you and you see your body, but that is actually because uh if you achieve that success, your body now accords to the societal norms for what people regard as attractive, and people will applaud you for having achieved that success, and that is ultimately where your esteem comes from, and so you see you're not actually free from the opinions of others, it might not be losing weight, it might be simply doing something that is regarded as courageous or heroic or is applauded by the world around you.

Think of people who live their lives on on Instagram or on TikTok or a social media platform like that.

One of the the drivers there is to do something, uh to uh say something, to maybe even to to come out in a way that garners a lot of congratulation and applause.

Well done, you you're so brave.

What a hero you are, you're an example to other people.

What a good job! Well done for doing that, for saying that, for having that courage.

And you look at your phone and you and you see that uh that that little red notification bubble with double double digit notifications, or you open up Instagram and you see how many hearts, how what the high number is beside the hearts and how many comments there are.

In both of those ways.

In all of these ways, you are being controlled by the opinion of others, you're still given to fear of man.

Because one of the things that we don't do is uh post things that the world will deem as desperately unpopular.

That's why uh Christians are often kind of beguiled into doing uh those uh those acts of service that the world regards as cool because we kind of get a strange new respect uh from those who aren't followers of Jesus.

It's very rare that we do something that the world or say something that the world will regard as desperately uncool or disapprove of and plaster it all over our social media platforms.

Another way that the fear of man presents itself, and this is perhaps the more insidious one, is that fear of man can often present in envy or resentment or in bitterness towards people.

Because remember what the fear of man is.

Fear of man is having your emotional life or your actions governed by other people, by what they do, by what they say, by who they are, and so when we are given to envy, which is an emotion, right?

It is because other people have something that we want, or other people have achieved something that we wanted to achieve, or other people got there first and we have been left behind, other people are in a relationship and I am not.

I'm governed by the actions of other people.

The famous examples of this, probably in the Bible, are that of Cain.

Cain who offers his sacrifice with his brother Abel, and Abel's sacrifice is regarded and accepted, and Cain becomes envious and bitter towards his brother, and that ends with the shedding of blood.

Another example is actually that of the Pharisees.

We are told explicitly through the Gospels, particularly both uh Matthew and Luke, that it is because they feared the crowd, that is, they feared the opinion of the Jewish people in Jerusalem, or they feared that their power was slipping, that they conspired to get rid of Jesus.

I say that because we can be tempted to pet our fear of man, our fear of man, it's it's just something that I have to deal with.

It's just something that you know I'm I'm always going to be struggling with, and um, you know, can't really do much of it.

Like, I'll try growing it, but fear of man sometimes has murderous consequences.

It's not a little thing to be coddled, it's a sin to be dealt with decisively.

In this passage, Jesus encourages us not to fear others, not to shrink back, or in this context explicitly, uh, not to shrink back from speaking about him.

He's sending out the disciples, they're on their first kind of evangelistic task and and mission, and it is in that context that he encourages them not to fear others, but to take courage, to have no fear of them, he says.

And I think here he makes six points uh of varying length.

He makes six points to help us to take courage in the face of our fear of man.

The first point actually comes from uh just a couple of verses up from was read.

So please have Matthew 10 in front of you or uh look it up again in your uh or on your phone.

I'm gonna just point your attention to verses 24.

25 for this at this first point.

24 says of Matthew 10 a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant to be like his master.

If they have called the master of the house beelzebuble, how much more will they malign those of his household?

Here's what Jesus is saying.

He's basically saying, They hate me, so they're going to hate you.

Jesus is the master of the house and they've called him Beelzebuble, that is, the prince of demons.

They've looked at Jesus and said, He's the devil.

And Jesus' point is if they look at me like that and they regard me, the master of the house, like that, how much more are they going to hate you?

How much more are they going to malign and think badly of you?

Now here's you're like, huh, that's great, that's encouraging.

Here's the encouragement.

When you are maligned for Jesus' sake, it assures you that you are part of his family.

Let me say that again.

When you are maligned for Jesus' sake, it assures you in that moment that you really are part of his family.

To be maligned is to show your kinship with Jesus.

This is why the disciples in the book of Acts, say in the end of Acts chapter 4, for example, why the disciples, when they suffered or were beaten by the uh the ruling Jewish council, why they were glad.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

It's one of the most bizarre things to read in the book of Acts, and there are lots of bizarre things in the book of Acts, but one of them is that when they were suffering and persecuted, they went out of the presence of those who were beating them, rejoicing, and they were glad.

Why?

Well, the text tells us they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name.

What does that mean?

Well, it doesn't mean that they were masochists, that they simply liked uh being beaten.

No, it is because when they suffered for the name of Jesus, when they suffered for their master, it assured them that Jesus' words about persecution were true, and so it was also true that they really were part of his family.

They really had been born again into his kingdom.

When you suffer and are maligned for Jesus' sake, take courage.

It is an indicator that you are part of his family.

Second, Jesus says in verse 26 that things will be revealed.

Have a look at it with me.

He says, So have no fear that's this is why I went up actually in my preparation because of the word so the word so uh relates to verses 24 and 25.

You'll be maligned because the master is maligned, and so Jesus says, So have no fear of them, right?

So have no fear of them, because you're like me, you bear my family resemblance.

So have no fear of them, verse 26, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known.

And this is the second point.

Take courage, because in the end you will be vindicated.

Verse 27.

What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whisper, proclaim on the rooftops.

This is an idea of this full disclosure of revealing those hidden things.

Jesus says, Don't shrink back for the cause of truth.

Everyone who speaks about Jesus in this age, even though they are maligned and rejected and persecuted, will in the end be vindicated.

That is declared to be righteous, declared to be right, shown to be right to those who thought badly of you.

It will be revealed to the entire world that you are approved of by Almighty God because of what if because of what Jesus has done.

And so the question that hangs in the air really is whose vindication or approval do you seek?

Whose vindication or approval governs your life?

Governs how you act, how you speak.

Is it that of others?

Other human beings that you fear?

Or is it the God who loved you and gave himself for you?

Take courage, you will be vindicated in the end.

The third point is that the antidote to the fear of man is to grow in fear of God.

It is to fear God.

Look at verse 28.

And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

Rather, fear him that's God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell?

Well, it's I feel full of courage now.

That's that's great.

No, no more, uh, no more being paralyzed by fear after that.

What does Jesus mean here?

Because after all, uh, doesn't the Bible in other parts, doesn't God Himself, doesn't Jesus Himself say things like, do not fear, do not be afraid, have no fear.

What do we mean when we say fear God?

Remember what I said earlier on, what fear is.

Fear is to be overwhelmed and ruled by something else.

To be overwhelmed and ruled.

That's what fear is.

Jesus is saying, be overwhelmed and ruled by God, not the opinion of others.

This is a very different sort of fear.

It is certainly possible to have a fear that comes from a place of terror, to be scared, to be scared of something or someone, to be scared that they will rule over you with fear, such that you run and hide from them.

That is not what Jesus is talking about here.

When Jesus talks about fearing God, or when Proverbs 1 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, he's not talking about terror fear, he's not saying you need to be scared of God.

No, he's talking about reverent fear or awe.

Let me give you an analogy.

This is not a perfect uh illustration, but it is an analogy to what it's like.

Have you ever been starstruck?

Have you ever met somebody that uh is famous, that you greatly admire?

That you just think is wonderful, beautiful, smart, whatever it is, a great actor or uh or a great Christian preacher or thinker.

How did you act around them?

Were you did you play, were you totally cool?

Did you just you were totally chill?

Or were you a bit of a wreck?

You were kind of thinking, well, I hope I say the right thing, and maybe you were shaking.

I I remember um for those of you who don't know the person, this will um this will not make sense, but for some of you that will, I remember meeting John Piper.

Remember my friends and I met John Piper, and uh and rather than than playing it cool, I was blah blah blah blah blah blah like dry mouthed and like heart was heart was racing, and uh and my friend wanted a picture, I wouldn't even dare.

Uh you know talking about being governed by fear, I wouldn't even dare to ask.

So I said that I would take a picture.

And so my friend uh has uh has an extremely blurry picture of him and John Piper because I couldn't hold the camera straight.

I was awestruck.

It's not that I was scared of John Piper, I didn't think that John Piper was going to harm me.

I wasn't living in terror of him, I was awestruck by him.

Do you see to fear God is to be overwhelmed by his majesty, it is to be awestruck by him when you are awestruck by God, it is like it is like comparing a candle, which is your fear of another person with the sun.

The two don't compare, and this is what Jesus is saying.

Jesus is saying, if you are overwhelmed by the blazing holiness, love and awe and majesty that comes from from God, this this blazing center like the sun, all other little flames, all the all other little candles will you'll not even notice them.

You'll not even see their light.

Fearing God is being overwhelmed by his beauty, his majesty, his goodness.

It is being ruled by his good word.

Some of you watching this will be thinking, I don't want to be overwhelmed and ruled by anyone.

Why like why is this a good thing?

But here's the thing.

You will be ruled by someone or something.

You will be overwhelmed by someone or something.

The options aren't overwhelmed and ruled or not.

It's ruled by good rule, that is, reverend awe fear, or rule by terror fear.

Those are our options.

It could be in the praise of others or the need to achieve, or the fear of letting other people down.

All of those things will govern you.

But Jesus says this morning that to fear God is to fear the one who overwhelms us not with anxiety, but with beauty, the one who rules us not with terror, but with love and goodness, kindness, compassion, and gentleness.

Now, what does it mean when Jesus says in this verse, don't fear those who can kill the body, but fear him who can destroy both body and soul?

Well, it is a truth that many Christians on down the centuries and across the world, and even across the world today, have had to be confronted with.

That in the face of threats of murder, they have looked into the eyes of their assassins, and they have known that all they can do is kill their body.

And so they stood with courage for the testimony of Jesus, and by violent men had their eyes closed only to open them moments later on the beautiful Lord Jesus.

If you love the praise of man, you will lose your soul.

But if you love and live for the praise of God, the worst that can happen is that you'll lose your body temporarily.

Growing in the fear of the Lord, well, that could be a sermon series in itself.

Let me give you just a couple of quick ideas that you might reflect on as you think about how I can grow in my reverent awe of God, how can I stare at the sun so that all other lights look dim?

Well, first, reflect daily, both on the majesty and the mercy of God.

It's when we see how great and how holy and how expansive and how perfect God is, said in our long side, his mercy towards the likes of us, his love for us, that we bow the knee in reverend awe.

Reflect daily on the majesty and the mercy of God towards you.

Second, you might seek to cultivate an awareness of the presence of Lord of the Lord.

It's easy not to fear God if you think of him as somebody who doesn't see, who isn't here, who is some absentee landlord, he's gone to a far country.

But read Psalm 139.

Read Psalm 139 this afternoon as step one for cultivating the presence of the Lord.

He is there at all times and in all places.

Will that not change how you act in secret?

That not help you grow in your reverent fear of him.

Third, walk with those who fear the Lord.

Walk with those who demonstrate and display that sort of life and learn from them.

Cultivate friendships with them.

And the fourth thing that I might say is that if you want to grow in your fear of God, ask him.

Ask him for a greater glimpse of who he is, ask him to see more of that blazing holiness so that you might bow in reverent awe.

That is Jesus' third point.

We turn from fear of man by rightly fearing God.

Fourth, the fourth and fifth points are much shorter.

Now, the fourth thing that gives us courage to face the fear of man is the knowledge that God does not desert us and is intimately involved with our lives.

Look at verse 29 and 30.

Are not two spiral soul for a penny, and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father.

But even the hairs on your head are numbered.

What Jesus is saying here is that any suffering or rejection that you undergo, it is not as a consequence of God letting your life slip.

You've not somehow uh wriggled free of his sovereign care of you.

Jesus saying here, God is able to so separate out the hairs on your head and give them both a number.

If he is so intimately involved with your life as to be able to do that, you can trust him, you can trust that he is with you, that he is intimately involved with any path that he might lead you down.

And so you can trust that he is walking with you, like Cameron shared in the socially distant group, that poem of Footprints in the Sand, he's walking with us, even carrying us through those seasons of suffering.

And so Jesus says, take courage.

Take courage, finally, because Jesus says that nothing will happen to you apart from God's gracious will.

In verse 29, he says that two sparrows are sold for a penny, and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father.

He goes on in verse 31 says, Fear not, therefore, because you are of more value than many sparrows.

Take courage, nothing will happen to you apart from his gracious will.

If God is so involved that the sparrows, those tiny birds, that not one of them falls to the ground without his say-so, without his okay, without his care of them and regard for them?

How much more you?

Why?

Because you are of more value than the birds of the air.

God loves you, he loves you more than the sparrows of the air.

You are worth infinite, infinite sparrows.

How much more does his gracious will extend to your life?

God regards you of greater worth, he loves you more.

If he ordains your flight path, he will ordain your steps.

For Jesus, the answer to our fear of man is not greater introspection, or saying, I don't care what other people think.

Because I'm not sure that that's ever true.

Unless somebody is a sociopath or something.

It is not greater introspection, it is growing in the fear of God.

That is to be overwhelmed by who he is, to be ruled and governed, not by what other people say or the power that they exert over you, but to voluntarily and joyfully submit ourselves to his good rule.

His rule is good.

He is kind and gentle.

He offers rest for your soul.

He is not a sky tyrant, he is a warm, loving, generous, perfect king.

Sorry, the consequence of growing in the fear of the Lord, the fear of God, is that we are freed from the debilitating free fear of man.

It frees us also from envy because we don't need the approval of others.

We don't need what other people have.

The gospel, what Jesus has done, liberates us from that which captures us, and it's like an emotional verbal straitjacket, prevents us from saying things, prevents us from doing things.

The gospel sets us free from fear of man.

Why?

Because we fear others, because of what they might do.

To us, because they might harm us, but Jesus in the gospel says, No, your father knows you, he is near to you, and he has rescued you and redeemed your life from the pit, which means that no one can harm you eternally.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you are in the hand of the Lord Jesus in such a way that no one can rescue you from his grasp, no one can harm you in eternity.

You are safe with Jesus.

That is the promise of the gospel.

We also fear others because we think that they will humiliate us and reveal our shame.

But what's the promise of the gospel?

The promise of the gospel is that Jesus has taken your shame, that he's died for the darkest sin in your life, that he has taken it upon himself and plunged it down to the hell that it deserves.

And so your shame is cleansed and taken away.

He has paid the price by his death and resurrection.

And what is in store for us is his vindication.

It is his well done, good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your master, live for that.

The only opinion that will ever matter in your life has already been expressed.

He has already spoken words of approval over your life.

Not because you're any great shakes, not because you've done things that are wonderful, but because the Lord Jesus is wonderful.

And God approves of him, and you have placed your faith and trust in him.

And so those words of approval cover your life.

Those words of vindication cover your life.

Trust Jesus and know that assurance.

Know that that vindication now and the promise of that future vindication then.

And allow that to eclipse all of the wretched things that people say.

We fear others because we think that they will reject and despise us.

But Jesus walked that road for the Christian.

Jesus was the one who was despised and rejected of men, as the prophet Isaiah says in chapter 53.

He was despised so that we could be accepted.

We received the approval of the Father that was due to him, and we receive it by faith.

Brothers and sisters, I don't pretend that I won't shrink back again.

That I won't have my speech and my actions curtailed by the opinion of others.

But I want to make progress in this area, and I want to invite you to make progress with us.

Can we walk together as those who seek to increasingly fear God rather than fearing man?

Far too often, people are big and God is small.

Can we by faith and prayerfully seek to have a big view of God and a small view of the opinion of others?

May we be liberated from our fear of man in ever-increasing measure.

That is my prayer for you.

That is my prayer for me.

Let me pray that now for us.

Heavenly Father, we do pray that you would help us to see your good rule, to see your beauty and your majesty.

And as we regard what you have done for us in the gospel, may it just eclipse, just eclipse the opinion of others, the actions of others.

When we are tempted to shrink back, when we cling to the promises of the gospel, the promise of acceptance, the promise of vindication, the assurance of hope, the assurance of faith, the assurance that you love and regard us.

Help us today.

We pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen, everyone.

Take care of the city.