Fell upon this...

So I fell upon this as I was searching through email. I wrote this two and some years ago; made me realize how faithful God has been... 

February 18, 2009

Luke 12:32-33

32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.

Introduction:

We're all human beings, and we all face fears – whether it involves something as dramatic as graduating and entering the workforce/graduate school or simply not knowing whether or not we will pass the next exam. Either way, anxiety and fear is a human thing, but it shouldn't be a Christian thing. Too often God's children fail to see the father heart of God, who is pleased to give you the kingdom and cares for you and me.

I. What is fear?

So what is fear? Maybe if you're like me, I am horrible at catching, so I've always had a fear of a ball (let's say a football) being thrown at my face. Or maybe it's walking into a class and then there was a pop quiz, and suddenly there's that rush of fear. Or maybe it's a fear of being alone, abandoned, not accepted. Basically, fear is afraid of getting what you don't want (a bad quiz grade, pain) OR afraid of losing what you want (approval, money). 

Whenever we fear, we usually are asking, "What do I want?" "What am I afraid to lose?" or "What am I afraid of getting?" For instance, when I was younger, I had this thing where I didn't want to be around my parents when they spoke in Vietnamese in public. I really. really did not like it – if they had talked to me in Vietnamese, I answered in English. Or if they were speaking in Vietnamese loudly, I would pretend I didn't know them. Even worse, I would get really annoyed with my parents; I remember times telling my parents to stop talking in Vietnamese. So what was I afraid of? Losing approval. I didn't want to be associated with my Vietnamese-speaking parents, perhaps because I didn't want other people to think that I am strange, weird, Asian. Who knows… but it was approval that I desired that dictated my fears. So, again, fear is afraid of getting what you don't want or afraid of losing what you want. Let's face it, we're afraid of lot of things.

II. How to overcome fear?

32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.


So we know that fear is a human thing, but not a Christian thing, But how can we overcome fear? This short passage in Luke demonstrates how to overcome our fears.


Contextually, Jesus was going to die soon, and He was telling his disciples not to be afraid of being a witness to Christ, because God will provide the wisdom. He told them not to store riches in the "barn" (v. 24), but to understand that God will provide all that they need.
So then Jesus goes, v. 32 Do not be afraid. It is difficult to overcome our fears, but the Bible commands us not to be afraid. This is such an enabling statement; Jesus is telling us directly that there IS A WAY to overcome our fears.


Jesus then continues on to say in Luke 12:33, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys." Here, Jesus tells us to change our mindset. The point here is not to say that having or getting things is bad, it's just that we should not be living for earthly things. Why do we earn money? So we can give it to others. Our motivation for having things should be then to give them away to those in need, ultimately to expand God's kingdom. Also, Jesus tells us that our treasure in heaven will never run out—meaning that we have access to His resources, His strength, His love. These resources will never wear out, will not fail, and safe from being stolen. C.S. Lewis said, "He who has God and everything has no more than he who has God alone." These are resources that empower us to overcome our fears.


Also, God reveals himself as Shepherd, Father and King in v. 32. He refers to us, disciples as "little flocks." We are the sheep, who are seeking and are in need of direction. There are some of us who are at are at a point where we are just confused, not really knowing what we're suppose to do with our lives, not sure where we'll be in the next 2, 5, 10 years. We're afraid of the not-knowing, the uncertainty of where we'll end up. Here, Jesus is calling us HIS sheep, meaning Jesus is our Shepherd. We can overcome our fear by remember that Jesus is our shepherd, meaning He will take care, love, guide His people.


Then, God calls himself, "Father." Like the Shepherd, the Father also means that God will take care us because he really WANTS to….not because it his job or because he has to, but because by his unconditional love, he wants to be in our lives, to care and nurture us. We, then, are His children of our heavenly father. As children of God, we can bring all our fears to God – we can complain to God. Usually the first thing we do when we become afraid is we all of a sudden have to talk immediately to our best friend, our boyfriend, our girlfriend, our parents, our sister/brother, our advisor, our pastor. But who better to bring our fears to than to Jesus. Jesus knows EXACTLY what we are feeling, what we're going through, and He understands. And because He is our Father, he will listen.


Lastly, God promises us, "the kingdom." This establishes that God is our King and we are citizens of His kingdom. King means that God is sovereign, ruler of all. He holds the power in His hands. Often, we want to be King, we want to be rulers of our lives. Like Adam in Genesis, he ate the fruit and disobeyed God because he wanted to be independent, he wanted to do things on his own rather than for God, who should be the King of his heart. As sinners, we are just like Adam. We want independence from God, we want our lives to be in our hands. But unfortunately, when things just don't roll the way we want it to, we begin to fear, become afraid of losing more, become afraid of losing of what we have.  So, as God as our King, we can depend on God, who is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, to rule our lives.


III. Conclusion
So, fear is something that we will have to fight to overcome. But knowing that God is our Shepherd, Father and King, we can overcome these fears. We can trust that He will guide us, care for us, reign in us, because it was He that took our sins and took it to the cross. Only by the death and resurrection of Jesus, we truly are able to overcome this fear, because by His love, we can now be called His sheep, child and citizen.