I think it would be worth your
while this morning if you would find a Bible and open it to the
book of Isaiah, chapter 41. I'm going to be speaking to you
in a few moments on the subject, fear not, fear not. Now, there's not anyone listening
to this program who does not deal with the emotion of fear. Fear is something that every
one of us knows something about, even a little baby, one of the
first expressions that you see on his face is the fear of falling,
or the fear of loud noises. And even the oldest person listening
to me knows something about fear, and I'm going to speak about
fear. Our Lord says in Isaiah 41.10, fear not, fear thou not,
for I am with thee. As I say, I think it will be
very profitable for you If you'll find the scriptures, because
if there's nothing in the sermon itself to meet your need, if
there's nothing in the sermon itself to help you, there's plenty
in the text. There's plenty in the Word of
God. And I do pray that the Holy Spirit will spread for us today
a good feast. And many of you will feast on
it and be blessed by it. And in all of it, God shall be
glorified and His eternal purpose shall be accomplished. Isaiah
41, verse 10. Isaiah writes, and he says, 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. What a promise! Fear thou not,
I am with thee. Now, upon reading this scripture,
the first question that comes to my mind is this, to whom are
these gracious words spoken? That's important. To whom are
these gracious words spoken? And to whom are these promises
addressed? We must not be caught reading
somebody else's mail. We must not be caught claiming
somebody else's promises, promises which are not ours. And so we've
got to find out to whom God is speaking when he says, Fear thou
not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy
God. I will strengthen thee. I will
help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with
the right hand of my righteousness. Now, the preceding verses and
the verses that follow our text will tell us to whom the Lord
speaks. Now, if you will look back at
verse 8. And he identifies these people to whom he's speaking,
to whom these promises are addressed. He says in verse 8, Thou whom
I have chosen. These promises are addressed
to those whom the Lord has chosen. So then if we find anything here
for us, if I find anything here for me, it'll be not on the ground
of my merit or my deserving, but on the ground of God's sovereign
grace to me. I have chosen thee. Look at verse
9. I have chosen thee. Christ said
to his disciples one day, he said, you didn't choose me. I
chose you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth
fruit. We love him. Yes, we do. We can say with Peter,
Lord, you know all things. You know I love thee. But we
love him because he first loved us. So these promises, first
of all, according to verse 8, are addressed to those whom the
Lord hath chosen. He said, I have chosen thee.
And then verse 9 tells us that the people to whom these promises
are addressed are those whom God has called. Those whom God
has called. He said in verse 9, I have called
thee. And Paul, writing about this
call, says whom the Lord foreknew, or whom he foreordained. He predestinated
to be conformed to the image of his Son, and whom he predestinated,
he called. And we're not talking here about
the general call, which all men hear. Amos talked about the call
of judgment, the call of providence, the call of the law, the call
of tribulation, even the call of the law, and even the call
of the gospel. This is a sweet, effectual call
of God's Spirit that gets results. He says, I've called. It pleased
God, Paul said, who separated me from my mother's womb and
called me by his grace. Believers are referred to in
the New Testament as the called of God, the called of Christ
Jesus, those whom God had called, and those whom the Spirit had
called. So we know this. These promises are addressed
to those whom God had chosen. Secondly, those whom God had
called. Look at verse 9 again. And then he identifies these
people to whom he's speaking as my servants. Thou art my servant. The promises are to those who
are servants of God. One of the Apostle Paul's favorite,
favorite terms was this. I'm a bond slave or a servant
of Jesus Christ. That's what he called himself.
That was one of his favorite names for himself. He didn't
talk about I'm a great religious leader. and I'm a great missionary,
and I'm a great evangelist, and I'm a great apostle. He says, I am the servant of
Jesus Christ. And nearly every letter he wrote
of the 13 or 14 he wrote, he said, Paul, the servant of Jesus
Christ. And that word servant is bond
slave. And you know where it comes from? It comes from the
book of Exodus chapter 21. A Hebrew slave, if a Hebrew was
taken into slavery, He could only serve so many years. It
was six years, I believe. And on the seventh year, the
master had to let him go free. His time was served and he had
to be free. Now, Moses wrote in Exodus 21,
if this particular slave loves his master and loves his master's
home and does not want to go free, he can say to his master,
the only freedom I want is to serve you. I desire to remain. Your slur servant and your slave
so he says the masters to take him down to the priest and down
to the temple or down to the tabernacle and bore his ear with
an all and From that moment on he's a bond slave. You know what
a bond slave is. It's a willing slave It's not
a man who's a servant against his will. It's a willing loving
Bond slave and that's what Paul called himself He said I'm the
bond slave the willing loving servant of the Lord Jesus Christ
And that's the person to whom this promise is made and given. Those whom God had chosen, those
whom God had called by His Spirit, and those who know that they're
servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, fourthly, if you look
at verse 14. Now, I want you to see this,
if you will, look at it. He says, he calls us something
else that's not very flattering, but not very complimentary. He
says, fear not, Worm, Jacob. That's what he says. He says
we're chosen, we're called, we're servants. But now, a lot of folks
will get offended by this word, but he says, he addresses us
as worms. Some folks don't mind the other
terms, the chosen of God and the elect and the elite and the
called of God and even the servants of God, but a worm? Isaac Watts
put it this way, Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my sovereign
die, would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? At the cross, at the cross where
I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away.
It was there by faith I received my sight, and now I'm happy,
but I'm still called a worm. And I'll tell you, when you see
his fullness, you'll see your emptiness. You don't see your
real emptiness till you see God's fullness. And when you see God's
holiness, you'll see your sinfulness. When you see God's glory, you'll
see your unworthiness, and you'll take the term, thy worm, Jacob. God uses that quite often, thy
worm, Jacob. And the Hebrew meaning of that
word is not very nice. You know what the Hebrew, look
it up in your concordance, it's maggot. That's what it says,
thy worm, Jacob. And that's the folks to whom
he's speaking here, his chosen, his called, his servants, and
unworthy sinners, whom God hath loved, and whom God hath cleansed
in the blood of his Son, and whom God hath lifted by his sovereign
power, and whom God hath made new and regenerated by his Holy
Spirit, to whom God hath granted repentance toward God in faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and put our sins away by the sacrifice
of his dear Son. Yes, it's a blessed old gospel.
But men to whom much is forgiven, they'll love much. And they know
what it is to be a worm. Paul said, I'm not one whip behind
the chief apostle, but I'm nothing. Nothing. God chooses the nothings
to bring to naught the things that are. And God chooses the
weak to bring to naught the things that are strong. And God uses
the base and the despised to bring to naught the things that
are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. I tell you,
if God's been pleased to whittle you down, and like Saul of Tarsus
on the road to Damascus to unhorse you and put your face in the
dust, the dust of repentance and the dust of grief over sin
and bring you to look up and see the light of life which is
the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in Him, you'll call yourself
a worm. And then he says in verse 9,
he says, I've chosen you and I will not cast you away. Those
people to whom this promise is written, fear not for I am with
thee, Be not dismayed, I am thy God, or those whom he hath chosen,
those whom he hath called, those who are his servants, those who
are worms and know it, and those who continue faithful to the
end. I will not cast you away. These
promises are made to those who continue in the faith, not those
who claim faith or profess faith or brag about faith, but those
who will not depart from the faith and whom God will not let
depart. These are very real promises.
And I want to give them to you again and look at them carefully.
Open your Bible again now to Isaiah 41, verse 10. These promises
deal with a very natural problem. A problem, as I said at the beginning
of the program, that everybody knows something about fear. Fear. It comes in different flavors.
It comes in different ways. Some have a fear of flying and
a fear of death and a fear of sickness and a fear of surgery
The fear of not having enough to eat, the fear of not being
able to pay your bill, and the fear of darkness, and the fear
of old age. There's all kinds of fears. You
see, man didn't know fear until he fell. Fear was never known
by Adam until he fell. And now fear is known by every
son of Adam, even from little children to those of old age. Everybody knows something about
fear. And so you can acquaint with this message this morning.
Fear, fear. Fear came into the heart when
sin came into the heart. There were three things that
Adam didn't know anything about until he fell. First of all,
he didn't know shame. He didn't know shame. He said
the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed.
But after he sinned against God, he said, I was naked. He was
ashamed. He tried to cover himself with
fig leaves. He tried to hide. And then he
knew, he didn't know anything about shame before he fell, and
then he didn't know anything about guilt before he fell. He
had nothing to feel guilty about. But after his sin against God,
he ran and hid. He said, I hid myself. I hid
myself. I was naked and I hid myself.
Well, why did you do that, Adam? I was afraid. Adam didn't know
anything about fear until he fell. And no son of Adam knew
anything about fear if it, wouldn't have known anything about fear
if it hadn't been for sin. But fear continues even in the heart
of a believer. Now, wait a minute. Listen. Some
of God's choicest servants have known what it is to be afraid.
David, he feared Saul and fled from his face. David feared Achish,
the wicked king, and made out like he was mad, insane. Elijah, who fought with the 400
prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and won a great victory by God's
power and grace, was afraid of Jezebel. Peter, the great preacher
of Pentecost, turned the calendar back just a few hours, and you'll
find him sitting around a fire, trembling, afraid of the testimony
of a little girl. And she said, well, this man's
one of the apostles. He said, I don't know the man. I don't
know Jesus Christ. That's fear. And fear continues
in the hearts of believers because sin continues in us. Let's face it. Let's tell the
truth. If we could attain to perfect faith and perfect love,
we'd have no fear. The believer who, and that's
not possible. I know it's not possible. There's
no perfect faith on this earth. There's no perfect love, but
perfect love would cast out all fear. Perfect faith would cast
out all fear. You wouldn't be afraid if you
had the stronger your faith, the less your fear. And the less
your faith, the greater your fear. We wouldn't be afraid of
tomorrow or next year. We wouldn't be afraid of war.
We wouldn't be afraid of death. We wouldn't be afraid of sickness
if we believe God. All things are possible to them
that believe. And the reason that fear continues, even in
the hearts of believers, is because sin continues. We have such little
faith and such a poor excuse for love and so little confidence
in our God. And that's the reason perfect
love would cast out fear. Once we're stripped of this house
of clay, We'll fear no more. Wherein did you fear, he said,
O ye of little faith? The disciples said, Lord, don't
you care if we drown? The boat was being tossed about
on the water, and they came back and woke the master and said,
don't you care if we drown? Oh, ye of little faith. Strong
faith would have never awakened him. Strong faith would have
never feared him. But the reason we have fear,
every believer, is because we have sinned. That's right. And then fear has plenty of food
on which to live. Every time I look within and
see my imperfections, it increases my fear. Every time I look without
it, poverty, I don't want to be poverty stricken, do you?
I don't want our nation plunged into a depression, do you? Not
another one like the one we came through in the 20s and 30s. I
knew something about that. I lived then. I don't want to... I look at sickness and old age.
How many of you want to grow old and feeble and infirm? Well,
you fear it? Fear looks at death, fear looks
at judgment, fear looks at eternity, fear looks at others who've fallen
away. And oh, how it troubles our souls. The best of men are
men at best. And the strongest man without
divine help is a weak man. So fear is something everybody
knows a little bit about. A little bit about. Well, what
does our Lord say? What does He command us? He says
to those whom He hath chosen, to those whom He hath called,
to those who are truly His servants, to those who know that they're
worms lifted from the dunghill and made to be princes to sit
on the throne, joint heirs with Jesus Christ, to those who are
kept by His power and kept by His grace through faith, those
He will not let go, those He will not cast away, He says,
don't be afraid. Fear thou not. Our Lord doesn't
say, fear not so much. He says, fear not. He doesn't
say, fear not so often. He says, fear not. And David
picked up this strain when he said, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death. And that's not just talking about
the day before you die. That's talking about this whole
life. This whole earth is a shadow
of death. But you know what I learned one
time? Shadows can't hurt you. The shadow of a gun never killed
anybody. The shadow of a knife never shed blood. The shadow
of a rope never hanged a man. That's right. Yea, though I walk
through the valley of shadows of death, I'll fear no evil,
because thou art with me. We're not to fear Satan. We're
not to fear men. We fear not what men can do.
We're not to fear condemnation. We're not to fear the law. We're
not to fear death. We're not to fear judgment. And
here are the reasons why we're not to fear any of these things,
and I want you to really take hold of this now. This is the
key to this whole Scripture. Fear thou not, I am with thee. Be not dismayed, I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, I will
help thee, I will not cast thee out. Five times you have the
word thou, t-h-o-u, or some form of it, thee or thy. Five times,
count them there in Isaiah 41, 10. Five times you have the word
thou or some form of it. And each time that our God uses
that personal pronoun thou or thee or thy, he uses the personal
pronoun I. I, speaking of himself. Every
time you are mentioned, you who are called and chosen and servants
of God, every time you are mentioned, God is mentioned. You're never
alone. Never alone. Where there's you,
there's God. Where there's your weakness,
there's His strength. Where there's your sin, there's
His holiness. Where there's your failure, there's
His grace. So that's the reason I'm not
to fear. That's the reason I'm not to fear. Because where I
am, He is. Watch these five times. Now,
first of all, He says, fear thou not. I am with thee. Most fear is caused by being
alone. That's right. Most fear is caused
by being alone. And the reason we're not to fear
is we're never alone. What's the song we used to sing?
No, never alone. He promised never to leave me,
never to leave me alone. I've seen the lightning flash,
flashing. I've heard the thunder roar. I've seen sin's breakers
dashing, trying to conquer my soul. He says, I'll never leave
you, I'll never forsake you, lo, I'm with you always, even
to the end of the earth. So He says, fear not, I am with
thee. Where are you this morning? Christ
is there. What are you facing? You don't
face it alone. Christ is there. Where you are,
He is. And where your weakness is mentioned,
His strength is mentioned. Where you're seeing, His grace.
Fear thou not, I am with thee. How many times have you dads
and mothers said that to a little child? Maybe you're walking through
a dark field, or down a dark street, or thunder's outside,
and lightning's flashing, the rain's falling, the storm is
covering the house, and the little child begins to cry, and you
say, don't be afraid, now daddy's here. And that ought to make
everything alright, and most of the time it does. And that's
what our Lord's saying, fear thou not, I'm with thee, And
then what's the next line? Be not dismayed. Don't be depressed. Do not despair. I'm your God. You don't have to be afraid of
poverty. David said, I'm old, I've been young, but I've never
seen God see begging bread. Why do you take thought for what
you eat, drink and wear when God feeds the sparrow and clothes
the lily and Solomon in all his glory was never clothed like
one of those lilies and no sparrow has ever gone without food? If
God so clothed the grass which today is, tomorrow is cast into
the oven, shall He not much more clothe you? Don't be depressed. Don't be despairing. Don't be
dismayed. I'm your God. Do you fear trials
and temptations and tribulations? He says, don't be afraid. I'm
your God. I'm your God. We're not resting
in human strength. We're resting in divine mercy.
I'm your God. Now notice the next thing. He
said, I'll strengthen thee. Thee, the weak one, I'm your
strength. I have to preach. I'm called
to preach. Necessity is upon me. I must
preach the gospel. Well, what poor preaching it
is. I realize that. But God said,
I'll strengthen you. My grace is sufficient for thee.
I'll anoint your words. I'll make the message a blessing.
It doesn't depend on you. If it did, we'd all fail. And
then I'll tell you this, I must bury my dear loved ones and you
must bury yours. And you say, I don't know whether
I can bury it. You can't. But by His grace you
can. He says, my grace is sufficient.
I'll strengthen you. I'll strengthen you. I've got
to go to the cemetery and bury my loved one. I don't know whether
I can take it, preacher. No, you can. I promise you, you
can't. Not by yourself, but He said, I'll strengthen you. You
who are weak, I'll strengthen you. You must face serious illness
or surgery. You say, I'll falter. He said,
I'll strengthen you. I must face old age. I'm weak.
I'm tired. I can't bear to be feeble. I'll
strengthen you. I must die. How will I fare in
that day of death? Will I have dying grace? I'll
strengthen you. You see that promise? Those blessed,
chosen, called servants of the living God, those sinners lifted
by His grace, I will strengthen thee. What's the next line? I'll
help thee. I'll help thee. David doesn't
face the giant alone. Well, the giant would dash him
to pieces in his own power. He says, I'll help you. God says,
I'll help you. Moses does not go to Egypt alone. What folly, what foolishness
to think that one man could face Pharaoh's might. God says, I'll
help you. Joshua does not go to Jericho
alone. God says I'll help you One day
there was a preacher who had his library downstairs and he
wanted to move it upstairs And he had a three-year-old son and
the little boy kept aggravating his father. I want to carry some
books I want to carry some books and finally the father Gave in
to him and said all right get a book and take it up So he picked
up the biggest heaviest volume there and he started up the stairs
and he stumbled and fell and he started again He stumbled
and fell the book was just too heavy And finally, he just sat
down and cried. And his daddy walked over to
him. He was sitting there with that great big book on his knees,
sitting on the bottom stair, bottom tread. And the dad went
up and just put his arms under, boy, book and all, and picked
him up and carried him and the burden upstairs. And they laughed
all the way up. That's what our Lord does. He
carries me and the burden. God's not my co-pilot. He's the
pilot. He's not in business with me. He is the master and the Lord.
He says, I'll help you. I'll help you. And then last
of all, I want you to listen to this. And he says, I will
uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Now, I know
few believers who do not occasionally, now I say occasionally, entertain
the fear of departing from the faith. I know a few believers
who do not occasionally, there's no perfect faith, I know that,
that at least entertain thoughts, they may never say it, but they
entertain thoughts of denying the Lord, of someday falling
away. I tell you this, if one sheep
of Christ could fall away, I'd fall a thousand times a day.
A songwriter put it this way, our Lord with such a heart as
mine, unless you hold me fast, I feel I must, I shall decline
and perish at the last. But he says, I'll uphold thee. Thee, the weak one, I'll uphold
thee. We're kept by the power of God,
not apart from faith, not in spite of faith, not without faith,
but through faith. But the keeping is not done by
us. It's done by God. I will uphold
thee. I will uphold thee. But now wait
a minute. With the right hand of my Righteousness. That's Christ. That's Christ. Because Christ
is on God's right hand. Where is Jesus Christ? Well,
He's not on the cross. That work is complete. He's not
in the tomb as the scapegoat. He's risen the justifier. He's
not on Mount Olivet. He's at the right hand of the
Majesty on high. He's seated enthroned and He
makes intercession for us. And He is our righteousness,
and God is saying, I will uphold thee by the right hand of my
righteousness in Christ. Oh, so near to God, nearer I
cannot be, for in the person of His Son, I'm as near as He.
I'll uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.