Please turn in your copy of God's Word to Psalm 94. O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs, O God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth, rise up, O judge of the earth, render punishment to the proud. Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph? They utter speech and speak insolent things. All the workers of iniquity boast in themselves. They break in pieces your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless, yet they say the Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand. Understand you senseless among the people and you fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he not see? He who instructs the nation, shall he not correct? He who teaches knowledge, the Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile. Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law, that you may give him rest from the days of adversity until the pit is dug for the wicked. For the Lord will not cast off his people, nor will he forsake his inheritance, but judgment will return to righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it. Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? Unless the Lord had been my help, my soul would have settled in silence. If I say my foot slips, your mercy, O Lord, will hold me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, your comforts delight my soul. Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with you? They gather together against the life of the righteous and condemn innocent blood, but the Lord has been my defense and my God, the rock of my refuge. He has brought on them their own iniquity and shall cut them off in their own wickedness. The Lord our God shall cut them off. May God incline our heart to perform his statutes forever. Our gracious Father in heaven. Please speak to us this morning. Give to us an understanding heart. Open our eyes that we may behold the beauty of your word, the comfort of your word, the truth of your word. And sanctify, I ask, my sinful lips, that they may proclaim the treasures and riches of your grace. In Jesus' name, amen. or we're changing our normal study in Luke and in Proverbs this morning to look at this psalm. And some of you may wonder if this message was written with your personal situation in view. And the answer is yes and no. It's yes, because as the Westminster Confession, larger catechism teaches pastors, every message should be written with the collective you in view, with you, God's people, and your situation and my situation in view. It's known because the topic of our text has been much on my mind lately for a number of reasons. And this week, the end of this week, I think it was Friday, I received an email with a link to a letter to Christian pastors in the United States. This letter was by a widely-traveled debater and public speaker and writer. And it was discussing the influence of Marxism in our culture. And in this letter, the writer said, quote, something sat uneasily with me after a recent Q&A on this topic. Later that night, as I lay awake in bed, these words came like a lightning bolt to me, be not afraid. And in that moment, it occurred to me that at the bottom of every question I received that night was fear, fear for their future, fear for their families, fear for their livelihood, being a target of the cancel culture, fear. You see, the radical left feeds off fear the way fire feeds off oxygen. Without fear, they have nothing," unquote. Fear is a pervasive element in our culture. And I'm surprised how often fear arises in my own thinking. But judging from how pervasive the admonitions in scripture are against fear, I quickly realized this is not something that's unique to our culture, to us, to you and I. Each of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were each assured and admonished by the Lord not to fear at various points in their lives. God assured the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel over 30 times God exhorted those prophets not to fear, not to be afraid of what was happening, what the Lord would do. Those prophets had very hard and dangerous callings. They had to speak unpleasant truths to powerful people. They had to go where they were hated and not liked. They went to prison. They went to lion's dens for being faithful to their calling, to speak the truth. And so it's over 30 times that God exhorts them or exhorts his people through them not to fear, not to be afraid. The apostles were assured many times by Jesus in their years of training, do not be afraid, do not fear, even Paul. was assured by God, admonished by God, knew not fear. Paul, that bold and mighty voice. And God came to him and said, Paul, do not fear. See, fear of man is Satan's tool. This writer was exactly right. Marxism and all of the variations of it is nothing new. It wasn't new with Marx. It's an ideology. It's the ideology of Satan. It's dead set against Christianity at every point and even its fundamental points. Even where does motion, where does energy, where does movement come from? Marxism says it comes from this friction between good and evil, or the oppressed and the oppressors, or the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The Bible says all life comes from God. And because of our sin, there is conflict. Fear of man is Satan's tool today and has been from Goliath trying to intimidate Israel with his taunts. Or Rabshakeh, the Rabshakeh of King Sennacherib, trying to intimidate the Israelites under King Hezekiah with his blasphemous language, speaking to them to dishearten them. So much so that the official standing on the wall said, speak to us in Aramaic, not Hebrew, because we don't want to dishearten the people. And Rabshakeh said, well, you idiots, that's the point. That's why I'm saying these things, to strike fear into your people. Artaxerxes trying to intimidate Daniel and the princes, Daniel's friends. Nebuchadnezzar trying to intimidate Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. pilot trying to intimidate Jesus to compliance saying don't you know that I have power of Life and death over you don't you know that Jesus and what was Jesus answer? You don't have any power Unless I give it to you You see this this is the question who are we going to fear? Are we going to fear God, or are we going to fear man? Are we going to fear Jehovah, who laid the foundation of the earth, who stretched out the heavens, who forms the spirit of man within him? Or are we going to fear man? See, fear arises, the source of fear. Fear arises when we believe, either consciously or unconsciously, a set of lies. Fear arises when we believe a set of lies. One, that I am alone. Two, that no one hears my cries for help. Three, that no one knows what I am experiencing. Four, that no one cares, even if they did know. Five, that no one can help even if they cared. And six, therefore it's up to me and I'm at the end of my resources, of my ability. I'm up against something too powerful. See, if you look at each of the circumstances, if you look at what Goliath did to the Israelites, That's what they believed, that they were all alone out there against this mighty giant who was far bigger than any of them put together. That no one could hear them when they cried for help, that no one knew what they were experiencing, that no one really cared about them and their plight before Goliath, and that no one, no one could really help them. There was nobody in the whole army that they knew that could stand against this man. And so each morning that he came out, they froze in fear, listening to his taunts. The antidote to fear is truth and love. The antidote to fear is truth and love. And that's what we want to look at this morning in this psalm because this psalm has this wonderfully wonderful statement that in the multitude of my anxieties within me, in verse 19, in the multitude of my anxieties within me, your comforts, your consolations delight my soul. With all these fears and all these anxieties within me, your comforts, oh Lord, delight my soul. And what are these comforts that delighted, delight our soul? In the midst of our fears. Well, they're in this psalm, if we look through it. He comforts us with his word. His word is truth. Remember the two antidotes to fear are truth and love. Believing the lies is the source of fear. The antidote is the truth. It's truth and love. And so right here in the first verse is the first consolation that can delight our soul in the midst of our fears. God is a God of vengeance. He will not allow evil people to go unpunished. It belongs to him. It is his office. It belongs to him to take vengeance, to be the final administrator of vengeance on those who do evil. Oh, Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs. It is his. It's his. What a comfort that is. There is no evil doer that will not go unpunished. All of those evil doers that we read about in 1 Corinthians, that Paul said, such were some of you, but now you've been cleansed. The punishment for their evil doing was born by Christ. But for all those who have not been cleansed and who are not in Christ, they will bear God's vengeance. God is a God of vengeance. There is no, no evildoer, any evildoer in your life at this moment. God will be. Those evils will be punished. Every one of them fully punished. Because of that, we don't have to worry about doing it. It belongs to God. Oh, God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth. That's the first consolation. And that's what we need to remember when we're faced with fear. Of evil doers. Second, God is the God of authority. He's the judge of all the earth. Rise up, O judge of all the earth. He has the authority to judge all of the wicked. He has the power, the strength to do it. It's an office that belongs to him, and he has all that he needs to carry out that office. States legislatures love to impose on local governments and federal legislatures love to impose on the states all sorts of mandates that they then leave up to the states to figure out how to do. And sometimes those mandates can't be done or very difficult to be done. But God is, that's not true of God. It belongs to Him to do vengeance, and He has the power. He is the judge of all the earth. So those two have to form the foundation of the truth that we believe, the foundation of the comforts that delight our soul. But here then, this psalm also speaks to the lies. The second lie, that no one hears our cry for help. Psalm directly confronts that head on. Just smashes lie number two. God is the one who hears. And it even mocks the idea that God can't hear. How silly. How silly to think that the God who gave us ears to hear can't himself hear. That the God who gave us eyes to see can't himself see. Understand, it says, you senseless and you fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, shall he not hear? Now that's pretty strong language for those who think that no one hears my cry for help. The psalmist says, understand you fool, you senseless person. He who formed the ear shall he not hear? He who formed the eye shall he not see? Now he's speaking here to the wicked who say God doesn't see what we're doing. God doesn't see what we're doing. And the psalmist says, no, you are fools for thinking that. But if we accept their lie, then we're equally foolish. God does see. Hagar, you remember, thought that she was all alone. Sarah, her mistress was, in Genesis 16, Sarah, her mistress had treated her harshly after Sarah had given Hagar to Abraham to be a concubine, a wife, and she conceived Ishmael. Then Sarah hated her, because Sarah couldn't conceive. And Sarah complained to Abraham about her. And Abraham said to Sarah, well, she's yours, do whatever you want with her. So Sarah treated her harshly and she ran away. She thought that nobody saw and nobody understood the harsh treatment she was receiving. But God saw. And God said, you have conceived a son and I'm going to make a great nation out of him and you shall call his name Ishmael. because the Lord has heard your affliction. Ishmael means God will hear. God wanted Hagar to remember that God is a God who hears and that God did see her affliction and God did see the harsh treatment that she was afraid of. And then she was by a well. And she named that well, Be'er, which just means well, Be'er, which means the well of the living one seeing me. The air. The well of the living one seeing me. And she called on the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees, she said. Genesis 16, 13. Here I also have seen him who sees me. And therefore the well was called Be'er Lehi Roy. When she was expelled from Abraham's house a little later in her despair, she sat down by a shrub and she put Ishmael and another shrub a little distance away where she couldn't hear his cries. But God heard the cry of that boy. And the angel of God called out to Hagar from heaven, and he said to her, what ails you, Hagar? Fear not. For God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. What ails you, Hagar? You think no one hears? You forgot that I am the one who hears and sees. Fear not. Do not be afraid. I have heard. I have heard. The fourth lie is that no one knows what we are experiencing. No one knows our situation. Verse 10 says, He who instructs the nation shall he not correct? He who teaches man knowledge? The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile. The Lord knows our situation. He knows all of what we're thinking. He knows what we are experiencing. You know, no one else knows what we've been through and that's something that's one of the, you know, first things we need to remember when speaking with somebody who's suffered a great trauma. We don't know. None of us can know what they have experienced or been through. But we might understand or we might, I should say, appreciate that they've been in a difficult situation, but we don't know. We can't know what they've been through. We can't know what their pain is. But God does. He knows what we're thinking. He knows our thoughts. He knows what we are experiencing and have experienced. He knows exactly everything that we know. He knows exactly what we have been through. Fifth, God cares about us. God cares about you. For the Lord will not cast off his people, verse 14, nor will he forsake his inheritance. God cares about you. He's not going to give up on you. He won't forget you and consider you a hopeless case. That'll never amount to much. No. See, these are the lies of the evil one that no one cares about us, about our situation. No one cares about me. This song says just the opposite. The Lord will not cast off his people, he will not forsake his inheritance. You are his inheritance, his chosen people, the ones for whom he died. And he will have those for whom he died, he will have his inheritance, he will have the bride that he's purchased. He won't cast you off. He does care about you cast, the psalmist says, cast your cares upon him because he cares for you. See, God doesn't care. He's alive, the evil one. God will cast us off. He's just saying He doesn't care. He's going to leave us, abandon us to our own devices, abandon us to suffer whatever our weakness enables. 6, not only does God care, but God will help us. Verses 16 and 17. Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? That's what fear says. Who's going to rise up against me? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? Who? unless the Lord had been my help. God will stand up for you against the workers of iniquity. When you are at the end of your ability, then God will help you. The strength of God helps us all the time, but it's in our weakness that the strength of God, the power of God, is made perfect. And so Paul says, I'm going to rather than glory in my weakness that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For when I am weak, then I am strong. God will help us. And there's a really, really beautiful image of this in Isaiah 41. It's just a really precious image. Isaiah 41, Isaiah is speaking to Israel, assuring them of God's help. And he says, fear not, I am with you. Don't be dismayed. I'm your God and I will strengthen you. Yes, I'll help you. I'll hold you by my righteous right hand. But then down in verse 13, it says that God, our heavenly father, is going to take us by our hand and say, don't be afraid, I'll help you. Now, how many times have your earthly fathers done that with your children or maybe your grandchildren? They're afraid. They're in trouble. And you reach out and you take them by your hand. And you say, don't be afraid. I'll help you. I know my father did that for me. And when you're a little boy or a little girl and your father reaches out and takes your hand and says, don't be afraid, I'll help you. And we believe them. And that's a great comfort. And that's the very picture that God gives to us of how he looks on us. For I, the Lord, will hold your right hand, saying to you, fear not, I will help you. I will help you. Fear not, you worm, Jacob, you men of Israel. I will help you, says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. It's not up to us. We're not alone. God does care, and God will help us. He'll even take us by our hand to give us the assurance of his presence, of his touch. But more than that, the seventh consolation of God, the comfort of God that delights our soul and the multitude of anxieties within us is that He is a rock of refuge. He's powerful. He's powerful. He can't be moved. There is no power on earth that can move him. He's like this rock, the rock of Gibraltar. When ships crash into it, it's the ships that go down, not the rock. You can throw all the spears of Assyria at a great rock, they just bounce off. A rock like that is a symbol of great strength. God is our rock, the rock of our refuge. He's our defense. He's a powerful God in verse 22. When the wicked gathered together and condemned the innocent, the Lord then, the psalmist says, the Lord is his defense, the rock of his refuge. And so the antidote to fear then, firstly, is the truth. The truth. The truth of the Word of God. The consolations that delight our soul. But the second part of the antidote is love. See, we cannot get rid of fear by simply trying to get rid of fear and saying, why shouldn't I be afraid? We have to believe the truth. We have to tell our mind what is true. But secondly, what's also necessary in combating fear is love, the love of God. First of all, God loves us. The love of God holds us when our foot is slipping. And I love the, in verse 18, I love the ESV translation of that verse. When I thought my foot slips, your steadfast love, oh Lord, held me up. When I'm thinking, I'm sinking. When we're afraid of some impending thing, whether it's real or imagined, the psalmist here says, your steadfast love, O Lord, holds me up. It's the love of God that holds us up. And it's because God first loved us that we can love. And that's the other piece, love, the exercise of love. John tells us that perfect love casts out fear. Love is the antidote to fear like light is the antidote to darkness. The light casts out the fear. The darkness doesn't cast out the light. When you have light, it casts out the darkness. When you have love, it casts out the fear. Now, why is that? Well, fear is self-protecting. It's focused on ourselves and the danger that we're in, real or perceived. Fear looks inward to us, to protect ourselves. Love is self-giving. Fear focuses on what I'm going to lose. Fear focuses on what's going to happen to me, whether all my money is going to go away, my income is going to go away, my home is going to go away, my family is going to go away. Love focuses on what we can give to others, because love is giving. See, fear moves us away from the problem. We want to run away from the things that we're afraid of. Love moves us to the problem. Fear isolates us. Love reaches outside of us. Fear causes us to hesitate, to freeze. What happens when you're startled and you're afraid? We have a tendency to freeze. Love moves, moves ahead. Fear can be cast out. Love casts out fear. And because God has first loved us, we can love him. You see, our primary goal, the Bible says, is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourself. Love, our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourself. You see, when we are in fear, we are only thinking about protecting ourselves. When we are loving others, we are thinking of others and are willing to sacrifice for them. We're willing to give, we're willing to give up the very things that we were afraid of losing. You're afraid of your life. versus somebody who is loving, who sacrifices his life or risks his life seeking to save others, who jumps into the icy pond to save somebody. He's giving up or risking the very thing the other person is afraid of losing. Think of all the first responders at 9-11 that went into the building everybody else was fleeing from. You see, in that sense, love is just the opposite of fear. In loving, we are willingly losing ourselves, willingly giving. In fear, we are worrying about losing ourselves and dreading it and feeling powerless to stop it. Fear focuses on what we can lose. Love focuses on what we can give. Fear paralyzes, love energizes. Fear brings paralysis, right? You have the, when somebody is afraid, when you say somebody is shocked and afraid, we talk about the deer in the headlights. What does that mean? They're frozen, they can't move. In fear, paralyzed in fear, love brings energy to act. Love changes the focus from self and self-protection to loving and serving God. And so that's why love casts out fear. You see, it's in obedience to Jesus, to the great commandment, the greatest commandment, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, that we find release and deliverance from fear. You see, emotions are a byproduct of how we evaluate our circumstances. They're a byproduct of how we evaluate our situation. Just like the Israelites, when they faced Goliath, their perspective was that they were all alone and they were in danger because there was no one who could help them. There was no one powerful enough to defeat Goliath. They couldn't see anybody. that could do that. And so their evaluation of the situation, because they believed all those lies, that I'm alone, that no one cares, that no one can help me, that no one hears, and therefore it's I'm alone, it's up to me, because that's what they believed and that's how they evaluated their situation. They froze in fear. Then comes David, the exact same situation. The facts are no different for David than they are for the rest of Israel. But it's a different interpretation. Yes, there's a dangerous man there, but God is bigger. He's the rock. He's the mighty God. He's the judge of all the earth. He's more powerful than this big man standing over there. He's a rock of refuge that Goliath cannot budge. And therefore, there's a different action. Instead of being frozen in fear, he fights and he kills the giant, just like he killed the lion and the bear. And of course, that leads into an entirely different emotion, that of praise and gratitude to God. See, David's love for God and his love for his fellow man produced righteous actions and emotions, and it cast out fear. David may have had some thoughts of fear. We don't know. The Bible doesn't say. Sometimes we read that he was overwhelmed, but then he strengthened himself in the Lord. The rest of the army missed the victory. because of their paralyzing worry and fear. And so you see, quite literally then, love casts out fear. And that's an important part because you can't get rid of fear simply by saying, I shouldn't be afraid. Because the more you try to do that, you just produce a never-ending cycle of fear and tension. The more we try to push away fear, the more fearful we become of it. Rather it takes this acting in love. Acting in love. If our primary goal is to get rid of fear, it's only going to produce more fear when we realize that we can't get rid of the fear that's over us. The more we try, the more fearful we become. There was a high dive in college, 33-foot tower that everybody had to jump off of, and somebody, some had a fear of doing it. I should say probably everyone had some fear the first time of doing it. But some people overcame it. Most people overcame it. Some people were paralyzed by it. And so they would get up there, 33 feet up in the air, and they couldn't move. They couldn't step off of it. You didn't have to dive. You just had to walk off it. Now, what do you think? If somebody had come up and said, come on, you think that would help them? No. They're going to lurch back. They're going to tense back and resist all the more. You can't get rid of fear by just saying, I've got to get rid of fear. There has to be this response of love. There has to be, if you will, a reason why down there that they should jump. What if the situation down there changes? And there's a reason now they need to be down there more than just they want to graduate. That seems kind of far and distant. See, that's going to draw them off. Our primary goal has to be to love and to serve God. We need to fear Him, fear the Lord. To fear Him who can destroy both body and soul and never fear man who can only kill our body but cannot destroy our soul, cannot harm us. His body is temporary. God will raise it up and give us another one. fear God who will and can destroy both the body and the soul. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for the comfort of your Word. We thank you, Lord, that your Word applies to every situation in which we ever find ourselves. We thank you for the comforts of your Word that delight our soul in the midst of our anxieties and fears. Father, we confess that there have been times that we have feared and we pray that we might remember the many, many, many, many, many exhortations and admonishments that you have given to all of your people, from the patriarchs to the apostles to the prophets to us today. Do not fear. I will hold your hand. I am with you. Oh Lord, may these be the truth that we remember. And may you give us the grace and the strength to act in love, to be self-giving instead of self-centered. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.