The Village Church
Walking Without Fear - Audio
If you have your bowels open them to Psalm 23. You can look at verses 4-5-6 this morning, here's the word of our God. Even though I walk through the valley of shadow or death, I would feel no evil for you all with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You are nought my hair with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. All the days of my life, and I said well in the house of the Lord forever, please pray with you. Father, as we come to your Word, we come bearing those words in mind that we just saw. We are the needy, we are the broken. We are in need of you, in need of restoration, in need of answers, in need of encouragement, in need of rebuking some of us. We all need you, we all are needy, and so am I. As I pray every week, I pray that the Spirit Lord will speak through me, that He will take your word and apply it to all of our hearts, to all of our lives, to all of our circumstances, that your light shines there wherever we are. And so Father, Lord, call yourself for doing this time and crashing my prayer, amen. In His first inaugural speech to the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke openly to the American people about the Great Depression and its impact on our nation. As we all know, the Great Depression left our nation broken. It was dark days for the majority of America. It didn't matter if you were rich or poor, black or white, you all, everyone suffered. The nation was struggling. The nation's morale was down, hope was fading, and so in this speech, He sought to encourage the American people. He sought to communicate hope. He tried to communicate restoration to a broken nation. And if you're familiar with that speech, if you know anything about history, you know that this is one of the greatest speeches in the history of our country. You know that one of the famous lines from that quote, from that speech is this. He says, "This great nation will endure and has endured. We will revive, we will prosper." First of all, let me assure it my firm belief in this one thing, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Why is that? You see fear is like a virus once it gets whole of you, it clouds your judgment. It can take over your life, it can consume you, your thoughts, your emotions, your action. It can so consume you that your whole perspective on life begins to change. It's a paralyzing place to be if you've ever been trapped by fear, consumed by it. I've been there, been there the past two weeks. What about you? You see fear, as one Christian says, is an inescapable feature of this life. You can't escape it, it's going to be there. I don't like that. I wish that was not the case, but it's a reality. You see last week, we looked at the first three verses of Psalm 23. You would have thought, by me preaching that, I wouldn't have dealt with fear last this week. I would have been, I'm good now, I'm free of that now, you know, I did. Even though I preached at Lord's, my shepherd, I prayed upon this passage and I was meditating on it. I still fell in the fear last week about something that was outside my control. You know, Psalm 23 is a summer confidence and it's filled with so many word pictures as we saw last week. You know, you can actually visualize what David is saying here, the Lord is my shepherd and who's shepherding me through life, for covering me through life. He makes us lie down in green pastures, leading us to still waters of rest, restoring our broken soul and guiding us in paths of righteousness. You can visualize that, that our shepherd is at work. But this morning we want to look at another picture that David paints for us. It's a picture of a sheep who can walk in filllessness in life because of his shepherd. That I don't have to live in fear. Not because of anything that's in me, but it's because of who my shepherd is. And that's what we're going to look at with these three verses here. David said, "Even though I walk through the valley of shadow death, I shall feel no evil." Confident statement. And we can't, I don't know if I can honestly say that and truly believe it, every day. Even though I walk through the valley of shadow death, I would feel no evil. That's confidence, that's boldness, the valley of shadow death. What is it? As David telling us, he is experiencing life in the valley of deep darkness, hardship, betrayal, some suffering he was going through, and he walked through it. He didn't lay down in the valley. He didn't run away from the valley. He didn't deny the valley. He didn't try to hide in the valley. Instead, he engaged it, and he walked through it without fear, without fear. Wow, walking through hardship and suffering without any fear of evil, is that possible? Is David really been truthful here? Can that be a reality for us to walk through the hardships of life without fear? I think so. I think it can be. It is possible. Last year, God blessed our church, richly, he gave us many green pastures to feast upon. It was an awesome year of morning service, an awesome year of worship and outreach through this church, through this ministry that we have here. God blessed, and you know, for the past two weeks, I have been walking around as if God has cursed me. In my blessing, that's what I've been doing. Forgetting all that he has done inspired me, all that he did before I even got here. And I'm living in fear as if I'm alone. Everything's going to fall apart because I don't have it all together. I don't have all the answers. That's not a good place to be. And as I said, by Tuesday, I already forgot what I told you guys on Sunday. I already forgot it. You know why? Fear of man. That's what I've been doing with the past two weeks. Fear of man's rejection, fear of man's disapproval, fear of failure, even fear of success, fear of preaching bad sermons, fear of not having all the answers, fear that people are going to actually figure out that I am a weak man. And so I try to do all I can do to pretend like I'm somebody strong. I'm capable, but I have all the answers, and I don't. That's what I've been doing, not wanting to be weak. Even Carl Richard asked him for prep for me, and I told him I didn't want to call him because I didn't want him to think I was weak. What kind of, where is that? What is that? Me wanting other people's approval, wanting them to be my Jesus, which can't happen. One author says, "You are fear those who are the gatekeepers of the fulfillment of your needs." Think about that. You are fear anybody that you consider a gatekeeper or what you think you need, what they think they can take away from. You see, I have, that's what I've been doing. I've given the control of my life to other people, and they don't even know it. It's the thing. Giving them authority over who I am, and they don't even know they have it, but I've given it to them. This is the valley that I've been in, and it's not a good place to be. When it comes to your fears, whatever it may be, what is yours? Whether it's fear of man, fear of death, fear of being unloved, alone, fear of suffering, great loss, fear of not ever coming out of a difficult situation, no, what do you do? What do you do with those fears? Remember, David says he won't do this valley of death, and we must do the same. Don't run away from your fears. Don't hide from your fears. Don't deny your fears. Don't lay down in the bed with your fears and self-pity. Listen to them. Listen to your fears. They speak it. They are speaking. They are speaking. And according to Edward Welch, when these fears speak, they say things like this, life is dangerous. You're not safe. You got to take care of yourself? Take care of yourself. Life is dangerous. Watch out. They don't have your best interest in mind. Protect yourself, Alex. I'm needy. I'm broken. Do you have to embrace and engage your fears on that level, on that level? What is it telling you about yourself? Listen to what they're saying or truly saying to you so you can walk through that. And when you walk through that, when you walk through that, this is what you'll see. When you walk through your fears, this is what you'll see. You will see that fears link with danger. This is what one Christian office says. Data links with danger. Danger links with God and being vulnerable, being out of control and needy. Need then links to other experiences. When we need money, we are saying that money is especially valuable to us. And anything especially valuable to us is something we love. Your fear has to do with what you love. That's what he's saying. What does your fears tell you about the things that you love? It says much about it. I fear a man because I love man's approval. That's why I fear a man. I want people to like me. That's why I fear them. I love the praise. I want them to praise me. I want them to accept me. And when I don't think they're going to give it to me, I fear a man. What does your fear tell you about the things that you love? The things that you value in your life engage on that level, engage on that level. If you listen to them and walk through them, they'll show you. Just like God has shown me this week. And I know coming face to face with your fears, it's a hard thing to do, especially if it's great fears. It's not always easy to come face to face with that stuff, but at times, they feel like no a tsunami at times, fears do, flirting your life. You're going to drown in them so you don't want to engage in them. But David still said I feared no evil in the valley. How is that possible? To live a life not enslaved by fear. See the reason why David was fearless in the valley is because of what he says here, your rod and your staff, they comfort me in the valley. Your rod, O Lord, your staff, O Lord, comfort me in the valley. In the flood of my fears, I'm not alone. My shepherd is even there. You see the reason why David displayed so much confidence here, so much boldness here is because of his shepherd. You can't lose sight of that. It's because of who God is, that I can be who I am. Because of his great love, I can love because of he's a good shepherd. I can live without fear because I'm not alone in my valleys. I'm not alone, even on the mountaintops of life. My shepherd is still there. You can never lose sight of that, because once you do, you're going to be where I am at the past two weeks. Uncertainty, fear, not sleeping, worrying, not resting, when you lose sight, when you take your eyes off the shelf. This is the backbone of why David is so confident, why he can see what he says in verses 4. You see, he never looked at his life experiences apart from licking that his shepherd. That's what we have to learn to do. You can't look at your fears in whatever situations you're going through apart from licking at your God. You can't. You have to let God's words shine bright in your valleys. You have to, even on the mountaintops too, because that's what keeps you humble when life is good. Let his words shine bright then, let his word give you answers there. The tendency is for us to run when life gets hard. We got to learn not to run, we got to learn to rest. Let the gospel shine there, whatever we're going through, whatever we're going through. He trusted the Lord with his life, and you know what trust is? The same Christian author says, it's personal allegiance. That's what trust is. David's allegiance and commitment to his God didn't change because his circumstances change. Then change when your life got hard, and instead it increased. That's what it should do. You should claim more, trust more, believe more, rest more when you're in the valley. Psalm 27 says, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Whom shall I be afraid, although an army of camps against me, my heart shall not fear. The war arrives against me, yet I will be confident. Another bold statement by David. Why? Because his Lord is his salvation and his stronghold. That is why. The same is for you. The stronghold of your life is the Lord. Not you, not your money, not your circumstances, not your education. It's the Lord. Always going to be that. He would give you strength when everything around you, it camps against you to harm you. He would give you the fearlessness that you need to stand up and be confident. Because you don't fight the battle alone, the Lord fights for you. I love superhero movies, and my favorite, one of my favorite super heroes is Superman. As many of you know, how many of you know the source of Superman's power? Why can he do the things that he does? What makes him Superman? Do you know, our yellow son makes it the source of his power. Out of himself, the yellow son is the source of his power, and the source of our power is outside of ourself. Our yellow son is this, and if you've never read it, you mean ever going to be powerful. You're not ever going to be powerful. This, the gospel, Jesus, our relationship with Christ, that's our source, that's our yellow son. If you don't have it, then you need to get it, you need to grow in it, you need to meditate on it. You need to start seeing this as your lifeline. Not just something you do for Bible study or Sunday school, but this is your lifeline, my lifeline. I know I say this every Sunday because every week we forget it, so I'm going to remind you every week, spend time in God's Word to know God. Just to do Sunday school lessons, a Bible study lesson, your relationship with Christ, you should number one priority, because if you're healthy there, that's going to filter down to every other area of your life. That's the gospel. It begins there for me as well, for all of us. That is our yellow son, and we got to let the gospel shine bright in our circumstances. We have to. His rod and his staff conferences, I said plenty of last week about the wonder ways in which that happens, it's through God's Word and his spirit. God's spirit lives in you, and you realize that, don't you? The spirit of God lives in you. Whenever you say no to sins in your life, if it costs a God's spirit, whenever you do anything for the sake of the gospel, because of God's spirit in you, working in you, molding you. And so take encouragement to know that he who began a good work and you would carry that on to the completion to their Christ. You got to know that, that God is before you, moving, working, even when you can't see it on your behalf, changing and molding you into the image of Christ. And yet there's another way in which God comforts us, and this way, I think is sometimes we can elect this way more than others, and it's through one another, the body. He comforts us through the body, and that's one of the ways in which we don't really light that one. Because it's easy to say, I just want to pray and read, but it's hard to let other people end to your fears, and to your weaknesses, and to your pain, because why? We want people to think we have it all together. We don't want people to see that what the Bible says about us is true, that we're sinners and broken. We want to pretend I'm not broken, but I'm okay. I'm here to help other people. I don't need help. Yes, you do. Even by making that statement, you need help, because you're living in denial. So you do need help. That we have to be engaged one another, bear one of the burdens in this church. Let people end. You see, when most of you know the story of Jacob and Esau, how Jacob stole the birthright from Esau. And so for years, no, Jacob had to deal with that, or what he did to his brother. You know, Esau wanted to kill him, and so, generate years and years later, they eventually came face to face, and all the whole journey, the whole journey, Jacob was living in fear. Now, don't forget, all that God had done for Jacob to get him to where he is, but this one thing that he did to his brother, he held on to that. He was living in fear, but he didn't know if Esau was going to kill him. And so, he was making that journey, a long journey in fear. Now, when they came face to face, what happened? What happened? Esau forgave Jacob, and what did Jacob say to Esau? Seeing your face is like sending a face of God. That's what we have to be doing right now, Jesus, to one another, through our pain, our hardships, and our brokenness. And you have to let other people in. And so, that means, when you come to church, take off the mask, stop pretending that everything is okay. Take it off. I want us to be a place where it's uncomfortable to be comfortable, where it's uncomfortable to wear your mask. I'll be honest about my stuff, I'm honest, I have men in my life that I share my junk with. And I try to be as honest as I can be for an appropriate, because I'm not Superman. I'm a sinner. And if you place me on a pedestal, you're in sin, don't do that to me. You set me up the fall. I'm broken and needy, too, and just like you. And we have to let other people into them, and it goes, you have to be willing to jump into the dirtiness, you have to be willing to let people enter your life. That's what we have to do. Come alongside one another in love. And if someone came to me and said, "Man, Alex, you've got to mess up church, man." There's a lot of messy people that church, and I said, "You know what, you're right, and I'm messy." If you come here, you're going to know that you're messy, too, because we're not a country club. We're a place of messy people in need of Jesus, and Jesus can use people like that. Because you know why you won't come here thanking your God sent, you'll come here with brokenness, and you can minister to other people who are broken when you know you're broken. If you don't know your brokenness, then you're not going to be able to minister to people well. That's a hard way. But I'm glad I learned it. God had to break me in order for me to be the better medicine people. So you're not alone. That's what I want us to get at this point in the valley. Other people are there with you. God comforts us through His Word and Spirit, and comforts us through other people. And finally, you need to know that the valley of deep darkness don't last forever. That's the good news, too, that He does bring you out, verse 5 and 6, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You are nought my hair with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." What does David mean by this? He's saying that he has peace in the valley. Now, that doesn't mean that life is hard, you can have peace even the heart through hardship that you realize, and that comes from the fact that you're trusting in the Lord, and if you're not trusting and you're not going to have peace, it's all goodness. And so whatever you're going through, whatever situations you're going to have even this year, you can have peace through those, because they're going to come. You realize that. They're going to come. The hardships are going to come. Fears are going to come. It's just part of life, but the consistent thing we have to always go back to, that God never changes, ever changes, like our circumstances. He can remain the same to you, and you've got to cling to that for all day long, always remembering and preaching that to yourself. Your present fears and future fears will never separate you from your God, never. I don't care what you are feeling. He's there, and that's why you've got to bring other people in to remind you of that, because sometimes I don't see it. Mark had to remind me of that the other week, the other day, and he had to remind me, "God is at work in your life, in this church," but it does get hardy said, and that's why we need one another, and she does an old spiritual call, "How does it feel?" Since you come out of the wilderness, the song says, "I feel like shouting when I came out of the wilderness, I felt like clapping when I came out of the wilderness, and I told everybody when I came out of the wilderness," and this is what you would do, when God brings you through. You want to shout, you want to clap, and you want to testify to God's power, because he brought you out, but once again, he saw you through. And once you come out of the valley, once God delivers you from your fears, what else happens to you, your faith is strong, your more confident and more content, yes. And you can say, "Surely, surely, surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life," and I said, "Well, in the household forever." When I was in high school, football was my God. It was one thing I did, and I did it well. It was one thing that helped me not to focus on my life problems, my broken home. Football was when it get me out of where I was, it was going to take me to places I was never going to get otherwise, and so I lived and breathed football. It was it, it was it. And every high school football player's dream is to play college football. That was my dream. That's everything I did, all the football camps, all the summer workouts, was for that purpose. That was my dream. My senior year, recruited from the Citadel, came to my high school and told me, "Alex, we're going to offer you." If you make the SAT school, we're going to offer you the full scholarship. I took that test, I don't know how many times, but I could not make it. I mean, I took it over and over and over, and I could not make that score, and I didn't get my scholarship. It ain't hurt, because my dream was not going to come true. And so I applied to other colleges, I applied to this one college just because I had like a bunch of friends going, so I could just go to the bell office space. I'm not going to walk on either of mine, my dream is over. But what happened when I got to that office is where I met the rules. He took one dream away to give me a better one, because I probably would be a different person at the city there. And so when I look back over my life, I'm glad he took that away, because when I tell you my life changed, because he taught me to develop the thing, so that's what I'm saying. Your dreams for your life might not be the best thing for your life. God's playing him, and you got to know he's ahead of you, he's ahead of you, bringing you to where he wants you to be. Amen? That was great. Father God, thank you that you are ahead of us, that you are always ahead of us. We can't out thank you, and we can't outdo you, but you're God, and you're watching over us, sustaining us, moving us, and guiding us, and we can always trust in that, that our shepherd will shepherd us through the values of life, when they come, and they're going to come. And while I thank you for Christ, thank you for the gospel, I thank you for reconciling us to yourself. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. - Bye. - Bye, bye.