The Three Elements of Fear Isaiah 43:1-13: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned or scorched, nor will the flame kindle upon you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt [to the Babylonians] for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba [a province of Ethiopia] in exchange [for your release].” (v2-3)
17th March 2024 | | sermon source |
We ended last week with the question: can we experience a release from the fear of death? Our answer was yes, we can! Many people, some Christians included, see death as an intruder. Gandhi, the great Indian leader and politician, started his model of the Swaraj movement to help people overcome the fear of death. Politics was only a minor part of his purpose. ‘My aim’, he said, ‘was the abandonment of the fear of death. So long as we let ourselves be influenced by the fear of death, we can never attain freedom.’ So the fear of death is one tool that Lucifer and his cohorts uses to hold people down as slaves instead of people seeing death as a gateway to freedom into a more better life in eternity especially for true Christians, they resorts to fear!
When we come to look at the fear of death, it seems to consist of three elements: First, the fear of the physical act of dying. Second, the fear of finality. Third, the fear of judgment. Let’s look first at the fear of the physical act of dying. This is very real to some people. Perhaps they have suffered and know, through bitter experience, how pain lacerates and hurts.
Doctors assure us that what some people call ‘the agony of death’ is felt much more by those who are watching than by the one who is passing away. Sir Frederick Treves, an eminent surgeon, said, ‘A last illness may be long, wearisome and painful, but the closing moments of it are, as a rule, free from suffering. There may appear to be a terrible struggle at the end, but of this struggle the subject is unconscious. It is the onlooker who bears the misery of it.’ Add to this natural phenomenon the supporting power of God’s never –failing grace, and it is possible to look even this physical aspect of death quietly in the face and say, ‘My enemy –you are not really the terror that you seem.’