This morning, Psalms chapter 56. Psalm 56. This will be our first message on the subject of overcoming fear. It's really interesting how things work out. I've been contemplating doing this for some time. And I noticed, Kristen, this week you had something about fear on one of your blogs. And I was listening to David Jeremiah this week for a little while on the radio, just for a few minutes, and he was talking about it. And so it was just encouraging. Evidently, it's a subject of importance. And it is a subject of importance. It is woven all throughout the Word of God. And anyhow, we can't in one message say all that we need to say about the subject of fear. Lord willing, we'll probably be many weeks on this subject regarding just fears in general, or the fear of man, or the proper kind of fear we are to have, the fear of the Lord. know that whatever I say today, there's gonna be a lot more to come. You say, well, what about this? What about that? Hopefully we will get to that eventually as we work our way through several passages. But let's start this morning with Psalm 56 and verse one through 11 will be our reading this morning to get some of our first thoughts on this subject of fear. Psalm 56 and verse one, David says, be merciful unto me, O God, for man would swallow me up He, fighting daily, oppresses Me. My enemies would daily swallow Me up, for they be many that fight against Me. O Thou Most High, what time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee. In God I will praise His Word, in God I have put my trust. I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. Every day they rest my words, all their thoughts are against me for evil. They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps when they wait for my soul. Shall they escape by iniquity? In thine anger cast down the people of God. Thou tells my wonderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle, are they not in thy book? When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back. This I know, for God is for me. In God will I praise His word. In the Lord will I praise His word. In God have I put my trust. I will not be afraid. what man can do unto me." Overcoming fear. Father in heaven, help us again as we approach You in this prayer, Lord. I pray for Your help as we deal with this subject of fear. And Father, I pray that You would just lead and guide me in my studies, help me in a presentation. May Your people be encouraged, may we be challenged, Lord, to make sure that we bring all of our fears unto You. Help us to be established in the fear of the Lord, and Lord, help us not to fear man or anything else. My Father, we pray for Your help in this series, that it would be one that would be used of You greatly to encourage us, to strengthen us, to empower us. In Jesus' name we pray, and Amen. As I began to work on this series of messages about fear, I'll be quite honest with you, I was a bit overwhelmed with how many verses, how many passages, how it's all throughout the Word of God. I do like to go verse by verse and go through books and such, but for this series, we're going to have to break away from that. It's just everywhere. And so we will do certain portions and just jump around in the Word of the Lord and refer to many passages. So we may not have you turn to all of them for the sake of time. But there is the issue of the fear of the Lord that we will eventually get to. And immediately talking about fear, you might think, well, what about the fear of the Lord? If we're not fear, but we are to fear the Lord. And so we'll get to that later. And in all reality, the fear of the Lord is really the main key to overcoming all other fears. And we'll look at that later in time, Lord willing. But before we get to that, I think it would benefit us to learn some other things about fear in our life. It is good for us to be able to identify fear. It's good for us to know when we are afraid. We don't do ourselves any good by pretending that we're not fearful, by putting on a false sense of courage. Well, I'm not afraid of anything, that kind of thing. We don't do ourselves any good by acting like that. We need to see some of the dangers of fear so that we will take the subject seriously and deal with it. Because actually, fear is a very strong and important subject in the Word of the Lord. Fear, you see, causes a lot of other problems in our life. I believe as we work our way through these messages and I believe through the teaching of the Word and through the Holy Spirit, you'll probably come to see that fear may be the root cause of a lot of problems that you have. I'm not saying it's the cause of all problems, but fear is a root cause of a lot of problems. Many spiritual issues have fear for their root. We'll see things like this even today, just by referencing a few passages, fear promotes discouragement, fear promotes distress, fear promotes weakness and hatred. Fear promotes faithlessness and so many other things that hopefully we'll look at over weeks to come. We will see that fear is a symptom of not being close to God, and so overcoming fear is when we draw nigh to the Lord and live daily in the reality of His presence. Our fears cannot stand alongside of Christ, for His presence dispels them, the fears of this earth. It is beneficial to be able to identify when we are struggling with fear so that we can respond appropriately to it. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to begin by just looking at this psalm. We had so many passages to consider to begin with. I want to look at this psalm because David really does give us a very simplistic answer. to overcoming fear. And so we don't want to forget that throughout this message, and I don't want it to seem too cliché, because it is what we are to do. It is to trust in the Lord, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But first of all, I want to talk about this in this passage in Psalm 56. I want to talk about the temptation to be afraid. The temptation to be afraid. You know, chapter 56 and verse 53, David says this, what time I am afraid. You know, David acknowledged in this psalm that there were times that he would become afraid. I don't stand up here and talking about fear in such a way that says, you know, you are wrong if you're ever afraid. I don't believe that to be so. You know, David knew that others wanted what they wanted to do to him. They wanted to destroy him. And he knew he had a lot of enemies. He states that there were many that fight against him. I mean, who of us would not then begin to struggle with fear? The fear of what they might do to you. The fear of what they might do to your family. The fear of what they'll do to those around you who love you or care for you or to your country. The fear of what may happen to him. When you read the accounts of how Saul pursued David, you can certainly understand why David at times would be afraid. Now notice, as I said, what David does not say. Because there's a lot said in what he doesn't say. David does not say he was never afraid. He doesn't say that. He didn't say, Lord, I am never afraid. He didn't say that. He says, what time I am afraid. There's going to be times that we are afraid. Now listen, fear can lead us to sin. Fear can develop into sin. And the things that would cause us to fear can lead us into multiple sins, as we'll see in the future. But becoming afraid for a limited time, I do not believe, is necessarily sinful. We see that David responds to fear with faith. Temptation is not a sin. Yielding to temptation is. We cannot yield or give way to our fears. He says, what time I am afraid, I will trust in you. You see, David knows what to do when he becomes afraid. David's response to fear is that right now, while I'm afraid, I'm going to trust in the Lord. In God I have put my trust. That's what David says in his response to fear in verse 4. In God I will praise His Word. In God I have put my trust. Then he says, I will not fear. David goes from what time I am afraid to I'm going to trust in the Lord and praise Him and His Word. And then he says, I will not fear. I believe we can overcome our fears. And I believe it is through going to the Word of God, and praising the Lord in His Word, and being in the Word, and being in God's presence, and basking in His presence, and trusting the Lord, we can, I believe, overcome our fears. That doesn't mean that once you get over a certain fear, boy, it just disappears from your life forever. No, you will continually, with those fears, be taking them to the Lord. They will come at you at different moments. And again, you'll be reminded, I must trust in the Lord. There will always be something in your life that wants you to be afraid. We can either let those fears germinate, we can let them stay in our hearts, we can let them keep on circulating in our mind, making up all kinds of things, imaginations. We can let them develop and grow and produce even more spiritual problems. Or we can allow fear to be an alarm. to remind us to praise the Lord and His Word, to remind us now we must trust the Lord. We must learn to run to God with our fears. See, we need to learn to respond to fear in the right way. God does not condemn us for simply making us afraid, but He does condemn us from remaining in fear, being ruled by fear, operating by fear, making decisions by fear, and being in rebellion against Him because of fear. But we must respond to fear the right way, or it will. greatly affect us, and God will condemn those things that fear promotes in our life. So we must learn then to have an immediate response to fear, and address that fear very simply. Draw nigh to Christ, because if you do not, your fears will lead you away from Christ. You can either let fears be a signal to run to Jesus. If you do not respond that way, I assure you, your fears will take you away from Christ. So fear can be actually a very useful tool. Fear can be a very useful tool to help protect us and even guide us in the right way whenever we respond the right way. Just on a very practical level, I mean, fear has protected me many times. Doesn't fear protect us in certain ways? Think about that. I'm afraid of falling out of a tree stand. I really am. I don't want to fall and break every bone in my body. So it has led me to hunt in certain kind of stands, to take certain protections, to encounter certain measures. Fear may keep you from leaping over a steep crevice, because fear says, you know what? You might fall down in that thing. And what may happen? See, fear does have a certain place in our life. And it can be used in a certain way. Fear should keep you from playing with fire, right? The fear of being burned. Fear, one time, caused me to jump about three feet into the... I didn't know I could jump that high. I was about 20 years old. I was shaped a little different then. Jumped about three feet in the air whenever I've seen a rattlesnake stand right there in front of me with his tail going... I mean, I was afraid. It made me do things I didn't know I could do. I did not know I could jump that high or scream that loud. You know, fear can actually be a good motivator into do good things. And we'll get into some of that later, but I'm just saying all fear isn't bad. All fear isn't bad. Fear of the Lord is not bad. A fear of danger is not necessarily bad, but it's what we do with that fear. But to live underneath the spirit of fear is very dangerous spiritually. So fear can be useful. in many ways physically to benefit us and even spiritually to benefit us. Henry Ward Beecher said this, he said, God planted fear in the soul as truly as He planted hope and courage. It is kind of a bell or gong which rings the mind in the quick life and avoidance on the approach of danger. It is a soul signal for rallying. I like that. But as said, if we remain underneath a spirit of fear, that's something different. We will drift away from the Lord. And listen folks, Satan wants us to live in fear. But if we learn to immediately respond to fear by going to Jesus and going to the Word of God and taking that to the Lord, I believe we can overcome our fear. As said, we hear it quite often, faith over fear. And that is the true key to overcoming the things that we should not be afraid of. It is faith in the Lord. Now, I think it's also beneficial to bring this in, and we'll get more and stress this more later, but it's beneficial right now to currently note in this passage how David addresses the Lord when he is telling the Lord about the fear of his enemies. David addresses the Lord with this, after he says what he is afraid of, he immediately says, after his enemies he's afraid of, he says immediately, he says, O thou most high. When David become afraid, he took that fear to the most high God that was bigger than his fears. Listen, our fears will get smaller the more that we call upon our God that is bigger. And that's what we have to do. We have to live in the reality of how great our God is, how wonderful He is, how powerful He is in order to overcome our fears. Now, I did not say that all things that are making us fearful will disappear, but their power to make us fearful can definitely become much weaker and disappear. You may have something in your life that is constantly there, constantly trying to tell you, you need to live in fear. Trusting the Lord may not remove that thing from your life. It may not be God's will necessarily to remove that thing from your life at this time. But trusting Him can remove the fear that it seeks to bring into your heart and your life and to rule over you. The Lord may not remove the disease. That's telling you to live in a state of fear. But He can remove the fear. And He can remove the disease. But He may not choose to remove that. We understand that. But I assure you, I believe with all of my heart from the Lord's Word, that He can remove the fear that that thing promotes in your life. That doesn't mean that once it's gone today, it won't rise up tomorrow. And you have to do it again. You have to get up the next morning and say, Lord, I'm afraid today of this same thing. Lord, help me to not live in fear. Lord, I'm afraid of this person today. I'm afraid of this situation today. Lord, I bring it to You and lay it at Your feet. You have to continually do that. But the Lord can give you victory over those fears. I want you to turn to the next passage I want to consider in Deuteronomy chapter 20. Deuteronomy 20. I want to read verses 1-8. This is one of the reasons why I think I need to address this subject of fear for us as Christians, because I think that fear is one of the greatest hindrances to engaging in spiritual warfare. Fear is one of the greatest hindrances of hindering us from engaging in spiritual warfare. Deuteronomy 20 and verses 1-8, When thou goest out to battle against your enemies, and see horses, and chariots, and people more than thou, be not afraid of them. For the Lord thy God is with you, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be when you are come nigh unto the battle, that the priests shall approach and speak unto the people, And she'll say unto them, Hear, O Israel, you approach this day into battle against your enemies, let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be you terrified because of them. For the Lord your God is He that goes with you." Oftentimes, the combat, the fear, and the people of the Lord, that's what God would do. We'll get all that later. But He assures His people, I'm with you. I'm with you. He did it there in verse 1, For the Lord thy God is with you. He does it there in verse 4, For the Lord your God is He that goes with you. It's living in a reality of the presence of the Lord and being assured that He's there. He said, "...to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is there that has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go, and return to his house." lest he die in a battle, and another man dedicate it. And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not eaten of it? Let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in a battle, and another man eat of it. And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in a battle, and another man take her. And the officer shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart." In verses 1-3 we see that the Lord knew that His people, when they seen the greatness of the people that they were going against, that they would be tempted to be afraid. When they seen their weapons of war, when they seen their horses and their chariots more than what they had, they would be tempted to be afraid. And the Lord very simply says, be not afraid of them. You know what, there's something very practical on that, too, in relationship to world powers, isn't there? I mean, we're a fairly good-sized country, and maybe we aren't as tempted as much to be fearful in this way, but you know what, if you think about other countries, you think about what wars of weapons that they may have, and what greatness they may have, and how many people they have, and how many nukes they may have, and how crazy they might be, I mean, they're very tempted to be afraid. But the Lord assures His people, it doesn't matter if they have more horses, more chariots, more weapons of war than you, I want you to not live in fear, be not afraid of them. Do not tremble, neither be terrified because of them. On a very spiritual level, I'm sure that as a Christian in your workplace, you're probably outnumbered, most of you are. Very few of us have the privilege of being able to live in a total Christian environment where most of our co-workers are Christians, and very few of us have that kind of luxury for that. And so most of you live or work in environments that most of the people around you maybe are lost, and you are a minority. Do not be afraid. Fear not. There's something for you in that. But the Lord gives some instructions regarding those men here that could be excused from battle. In verses 5 through 7, we see that if you had a new house, a new vineyard, or a new wife, you could be excused from battle. Now, I do not believe that this was any sort of reproach upon these men. In other words, the Lord's saying any kind of reproach against them, I actually think it's the mercy of the Lord here that we see. It's like, a man just got married, or he's got a new house, or just planted a vineyard. It's like, he should have a chance to enjoy those things before he goes and fights. That's kind of what it comes across as. But there may even be more than that, too, Also, it could be that when a man had these things, had a new wife, a new vineyard, had a new home, that's going to be pretty distracting, isn't it, when you're out on battle? Pretty distracting. These men, excused from battle, would not necessarily be afraid because of the battle itself, but they might have a certain fear about them of what they leave behind. I just started building my house, I just got a new house, I just got married. And so these things may serve, they're not afraid of battle, but they're afraid of engaging in battle in a sense maybe because of what they leave behind. Now that possibly could be part of what's going on here, I'm not for sure. But the Word says, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. So nonetheless, even if the fear of losing these things in battle was not the reason, It seems obvious that these things could be a distraction from his mind while he's in battle. A soldier needs to be focused on the battle. He can't be thinking so much about back home, can he? You know, Paul said in 2 Timothy 2 verse 4, he says, "...No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who enlisted him as a soldier." You know, one of Satan's tragedies in spiritual warfare is to have us too overly wrapped up in this world. And you know what happens when we do get too overly wrapped up in this world? We base a lot of decisions sometimes that we shouldn't, based upon the fear of losing the things of this world. And so we've got to be careful about that. Because that is definitely one of Satan's strategies. But in verse 8, though, we see that the officers were excused if they were fearful or fainthearted from the battle. In other words, that they actually had fear because of the battle itself. And so men may have been fearful because of what may happen if they left things behind. That may be a possibility here, but there were definitely some men that were fearful of the battle itself. Now, I think we can easily understand why that it would be dangerous to have a soldier next to you at that kind of battle, that kind of warfare, next to you who was fearful. I don't think any of us have experienced the kind of battle that would be what was represented here, hand-to-hand combat and in the trenches and all of these things. Maybe there have been. But imagining myself in such a situation, I know I wouldn't want to be next to someone who was full of fear. Here's some reasons why a soldier next to you full of fear would be not very beneficial. One, a soldier that's consumed with the fear of dying will likely be self-consumed with his own self-preservation, and he will not be focused on his fellow soldier. In other words, if he's so concerned about saving his own skin and saving his own life, let me tell you what, he won't be looking out for his fellow soldiers as much. And this is what the spirit of fear will do. Listen. The spirit of fear will make us very selfish-minded. People become afraid of certain things and all of a sudden they become very me-focused. Afraid of losing this. Afraid of not having this later. And we become very me-focused and we want to hold on to it or get as much of it as we can. Fear makes us selfish. It keeps us from giving to others who are in need today. Because we fear we may not have it tomorrow. There's a good quote here by Sherry Alkin with the Biblical Counseling Coalition, and she said this, she said, Fear is selfish because it's about protecting myself, my feelings, my stuff, rather than asking how I could heartily show love to God and others. Love reaches out to give and to meet the needs of another. But fear focuses on what I might lose, making me move away from the problem. Love causes me to work towards solutions even when I don't really feel like doing that. Fear makes my world grow smaller and smaller as I seclude, hesitate, and self-protect. Love is so powerful it can cast out my fear when I allow God's love to flow in me and through me." I thought that was very, very well said. So ask yourself some questions this morning. I can't answer for yourself, but can you think of any ways in which the spirit of fear has maybe caused you to be selfish in your life? Maybe it has kept you from serving the Lord and serving others in your life. Is there an area in your life where you know that you have been selfish? Is it possibly linked to fear? Now think it through a little bit. I can't address every little fear we have, but you probably know what some of your fears are. Sometimes we need to see this, that the reason that we're sometimes selfish and ungiving is there's a certain amount of fear. We're afraid to do this. And so therefore, we're just selfish. Maybe we're afraid of what we might lose in the process of that giving, of whatever kind of giving it may be. But as I read that quote of hers, I'd already thought about this passage. With that quote from Sherry Alkin there, it'd be a suitable time to at least address for a moment 1 John 4, 18. Now she said this in her quote, she said, Love is so powerful it can cast out my fear. That sounds like a Bible verse, doesn't it? Real close, right? 1 John 4, 18. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear. You know one of the best ways to get to where you don't fear your enemy? Is to love your enemy. is to love your enemy. Because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. So fear makes us selfish. But love does just the opposite. What does love do? Love makes us selfless. So the remedy to overcome fear is love. The remedy to overcome selfishness as a root of fear is love. If we as a church are going to do spiritual battle with the enemies of Christ and His Word, then we must have the spirit of fear cast out by seeking to love Christ and others. Many things keep us from ministry, but one thing that will certainly keep us from ministry is fear. Afraid of failure. Afraid of what people will think. Afraid of what people will say. Afraid of losing my job if I speak up for what's right. Fear can keep us from doing what we know to do is right. But love says, you know what? I love the Lord too much. I love His Word too much. I love people too much. I must speak up. I must reach out and risk my being rejected and having those feelings of rejection. Love can help you overcome the fear of rejection. Or you love them so much you need to tell them about Jesus. When you love people so much you want to tell them about Jesus, you're less fearful of rejection. The fear of rejection has really been the main thing that I've always had to deal with that's kept me from talking to people sometimes. I like to be liked. Who doesn't? I mean, well, there's a lot of people who don't like to be liked, I think. Sometimes people like to stir up hatred. I've seen enough of that. But most of us like to be liked. Loving Christ and loving others is a remedy to fear. When we are not looking out for one another, and we're only looking out for our own interests, our own feelings and such, then we will not be effective in spiritual warfare or ministry. Now let's move on here to the next thought of a soldier. You don't want a soldier to be fearful because he will be distracted from the fight. He's not going to be focused on the battle. Just like others might be distracted from what they left back home, he's going to be distracted from his own feelings of fearfulness. The fearful soldier will only be thinking about self-preservation and not so much about how to win the battle. He just wants to live. He just wants to get through this thing alive. Let me tell you what, folks, none of us are getting through this life alive at the end. Unless Jesus Christ comes back while we're living. We're all going to be dead. That's pretty simple, isn't it? I mean, one day it's going to happen. And we live so much in fear of that. But listen, if the Lord does not come back, we're all going to have to face that. And do we really want to be held in a bondage of fear our whole life, of dying, or what may happen? A selfish soldier is only thinking about living in the moment. I just want to live today and get through today's battle. He's not thinking about winning the war. He's not thinking about the cause for which he's called upon at that moment to fight for. His self-preservation is his cause, and not the good of others or for the nation in which he fights. I think that we as Christians in America have become quite comfortable with our own lives. So long as we are not directly threatened, so long as my home is okay, so long as my family is okay, and so long as I have a job, so long as I am prosperous, so long as other people's sin do not directly affect me, then we do not care to speak up. None of our business. That has killed us in America. We must be careful that we are not like the soldier who is called to battle and he says, I'm going to stay in the trenches, hunkered down as long as I can, let the battle rage all around me, and I will not fight until I have to fight in order to keep myself alive. You know, the very reason that soldiers go abroad to fight is so they don't have to fight at home. That's why. One of the reasons that so many homes are being destroyed by sin today in Christian homes is because we've become too complacent about the sin that's out there around us. We have tolerated it in our culture. So much. And we say, well, so long as it doesn't affect me, so long as our sin doesn't affect me, we've become too complacent about the sin around us. As long as it doesn't affect me or my home, we've kept that mentality too long, and guess what? It's come to our homes. And now, Christians, are experiencing the same things that everybody else is experiencing, the same types of sins in their homes. I fear we've waited too long in America to speak up and to stand up for righteousness, but I know that's a fear that will keep me from speaking up and standing up for righteousness. It's time for us to engage the world and the evil of it. It's time for us to speak up against sin that is around us. Not in a self-righteous way. And I think that sometimes we think, well, who are we? We're just sinners too. Listen, we know that. But we still must stand against sin. It is time for men to boldly step out of the trenches and comfort of their home and engage the world around them by declaring what is sinful and telling people about the solution, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Third reason you don't want a soldier fearful is because fear is contagious. Fear is contagious, and that's exactly what he addresses here in Deuteronomy 20 when he says, lest his heart cause his brethren's heart to faint as well as his heart. You see, fear is contagious, and for sake of time, I don't have time to get into what I wanted to this morning. But sending the fearful soldier home, listen, was not just to protect himself. Oh, well, you're afraid, don't fight, why don't you go on home. We don't want anything to happen to you. No, that wasn't, that's not the mindset here. The mindset is, you need to get out of here because you're going to make other soldiers afraid. Folks, our fear is contagious, and I think we've seen it before, haven't we? We kind of all get talking about something, you know, that's devastating, and all of a sudden, oh, we're afraid, we're scared of this, scared of that. And you know what? When we start doing that, it becomes contagious. And you see, fear will cause you to do things you shouldn't do. Just like love will help you to do things you couldn't do before, fear will cause you to do things that normally you wouldn't do. Because fear can control you, fear can guide you, fear can lead you. Of course, all in their own direction, their own kind of fear. If a soldier is fearful, he will not fight, he will not look out for his fellow soldiers. And if you have many soldiers like that, then that fear spreads. And what happens? Then the soldiers will become thinking about themselves, about their own self-preservation. Which means disunity. It means individualism. All of which is a danger to our spiritual walk and spiritual success as a church of Jesus Christ. Satan wants us to fear and he wants us to spread that fear. It seems that we may often be guilty of sharing more things with others that would promote fear than that which would encourage others to love and to fight the good fight of faith. and think about information we pass along. We live in such an age where you can pass along information so easily. And there's good things and bad things about that. There have been some good things about that recently that I've seen, but I've seen bad things about that as well. The information we pass along, does it really promote fear? And if it does, if it is something that's worthy in a sense that it is something to be alarmed about, are we counteracting that with, but you know what, here's what we can do about it, here's how we need to respond to it in a spiritual way. You see, the fearful soldier was a danger to others because he may cause their heart also to be fearful. And they become weak, faint-hearted. That's what that word faint-hearted means. It means you're going to make the heart of others weak. I don't want to be that man, do you? I don't want to be the man who has an influence that weakens the heart and the resolve of other men or women. I want to have faith and courage and I want to inspire people to love and to serve and to be bold and courageous. The Lord has not given us, right, the spirit of fear, but of what? But of power. That's the opposite of faintness, of weakness. Love empowers us to do the work of the Lord and to engage the enemy. Fear strips us of power. Fear makes us weak. Listen, Satan knows that. Folks, I think if we're all honest, we can see how that fear has been used in our culture today to weaken people's minds. Fear has been used to control people. I don't want to live like that. I'll refer to this, but I don't have time to look at it. We'll look at it next week, Lord willing. But very quickly, one of the best examples of how fear can spread and affect a lot of other people, how it's contagious, is the example of the ten spies that brought back an evil report from the Promised Land. And Lord willing, like I said, we'll look at that next week. But we find that because of their evil report, and I like what it says, because of the evil news, Reports, speaks of news, because of the evil news they brought back. You know what? It discouraged the heart of the people. You look at that, and they were saying, oh, we can't do it. It denied the possibility. You look at that this week. Read it in Numbers 13, 25. Read that. They were looking at themselves. They were comparing themselves to their enemy rather than comparing their enemy to God. They were exaggerating the problems. Fear made them go the opposite direction. Fear made them hate the people that didn't want to be afraid. I mean, that's how bad fear was. It said, when Caleb and Joshua stood up and said, let's not be afraid, God is with us, they said, let's kill those guys. And they're trying to encourage us. So don't stone the preacher this morning, all right? Now, we'll look at that in more detail next week, Lord willing. But very quickly, with just what we said this morning, surely you understand that it's no wonder that fear is promoted all around us and in us. It will hinder us from engaging in spiritual battle, and our fear will discourage others from doing so as well. But just summarize this this morning in regards to overcoming fear. Overcome fear by, one, letting it be a signal for you to call upon the Most High God. Two, overcome fear by desiring to be a better soldier in the Lord's army. Have a desire to want to fight, to be a good soldier of the Lord and ask God to help you. Three, overcome fear by being on guard against selfishness that may be a sign of the root cause of fear. Overcome fear by focusing on loving Christ and others to overcome your fear. Overcome fear by focusing on the things of Christ and not being distracted by the world. Overcome fear by looking at the great possibilities rather than the problems. Overcome fear by considering the size of your God. And overcome fear by not looking to self for victory. And overcome fear by being companions with those who encourage you and not discourage you. in the faith. Folks, fear is being promoted all around us in our world, but let us promote the spirit of love because love casts out fear. We need to encourage one another in the faith to go into the world and to do the Lord's work because faith will hinder us from ministry. Did I say faith will hinder us from ministry? I think I did. Fear will hinder us from ministry. Go out into the trenches, men. Be willing to step out into the battle and fight for your women, and fight for your children, and fight for the cause of Jesus Christ with the armor of God, with the sword of the Spirit, and take the word of the living God. And know that you do not have any armor on your back. You must go forward. Men, we need to rise up and be men in this spiritual warfare that we have before us. Because I assure you that if we stay in our homes and do nothing in regard to the spiritual fight that's out there, it will eventually come into the home. So there's a fighting within that we must do in our own homes, but folks, we fight out there as well to keep the enemy at bay. The mindset of it's all everyone else's business, there's none of mine. If it's their sin, it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect me. Let me tell you what, that's part of the problem. That's why it's gotten so bad at half. One of the reasons. One of the reasons. Father, help us, I pray, that You would help us, Lord, not to be overcome by a spirit of fear. Lord, help us to know that we do have the solutions from Your Word. Help us to trust You. Help us to call upon You. Help us to desire to be good, faithful Christian soldiers. Help us, Lord, to not live in a spirit of fear, but take that fear to You. Help us not to spread fear among one another, but to spread faith and to spread love, to encourage one another. Lord, help us, I pray, because there are so many things in this world that we hear that wants us to just live in fear. Father, help us to rise above it in the power and strength of Your Word, knowing that You, our God, are bigger than anything in this life. that You've got all of this in Your hands. We are in Your hands. Help us not to be afraid of the opinions of men. Help us not to be afraid of people saying bad things about us. Help us to stand for what's right in this day of degradation and sin. And help us, Father, to be a voice of righteousness, of godliness, and of holiness. Help the men of our church to rise up, to lead their families, to love their families. Encourage. and to stand for what is right. Help us, we pray. In Jesus' name, and amen. Let's all stand, please, as we sing.