The One Fact That Will Change Everything About Your Fear | Glad Tidings We Bring | Josh Howerton

Hey guys, thanks for checking out this Bible teaching. Every week, release a podcast that corresponds to the sermon. It's like a little bit of a deeper dive where we hit some things that didn't make it into the sermon, some theological concepts. We talk about things that are going on in our culture and how to think about them from a biblical perspective. We call that podcast Live Free, an episode releases every Monday that corresponds to the sermon. If you would like to check out Live Free, just go to the Lake Point YouTube channel and look for the Podcast tab there. We'll see you at Live Free. Now, enjoy this Bible teaching. Come on man, I mean, man, welcome Lake Point family. That's good to see you guys. This is my first time seeing you from this vantage point since Thanksgiving. So I want to say Merry Christmas. If you can do this, if you can turn to the person next to you, tell them Merry Christmas, do that real quick. That's great, man. And then if you can do this, turn to the other person one you were trying to avoid and tell them the greatest thing you can hear after Thanksgiving, tell them you look thinner today. Tell them that. That's awesome. That's great. That's great. Well, hey, I do want to do this. We're in Luke chapter 2 today. And I'm really, really excited about this message. I just tell you my heart's really full. I do want to do this. Before we move forward, I want to honor backwards. Because if you're new to Lake Point, you just know that just real deep belief that we refuse to treat holy things as if they're common. And so when the Lord does something that's unique and set apart, we want to celebrate that because what you celebrate, you cultivate what you feel to celebrate will eventually leave your life. And so, man, last week we had one week to kick off the Christmas series of Christmas at the movies. And man, I just want to celebrate a couple things last week. Number one, it was by far the largest weekend we've ever had at Lake Point. We crammed a little over 33,000 people in person into our campuses last week, which was awesome. That's great. And we are. We get things right by, honestly. That's honestly not the thing that I'm really excited about because we're not called to make crowds. We're called to make disciples. And so the number that really, really gets me excited is last week in one weekend, 692 people indicated a first time decision of all Christ in one weekend. Come on, man. Let's celebrate that, amen. Amen, amen, amen. I just want to say, if you were one of those people, what I want to say is, hey, man, welcome to Team Jesus. This thing's awesome. You just put a miracle in motion. That was the starting line, not the ending line. And so you just keep hanging out. Well, you see what happens. And then last thing I do want to celebrate is, man, I just want to say this over and over. You guys see, because of what I do, you guys see what I do in the church every week. But every week, there are thousands of people who are putting a serving towel over their arm and blessing people without any recognition. And last week, we had, and this happens every weekend, but last weekend, I'm not the hero. These people are heroes. We had over 5,000 people on our serve teams, blessing people and making that possible. Can we honor all of our serve team members, man? Come on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for holding babies and holding doors and all the things. All right, well, here's what we are today. We are in week two of a series that we're just calling Glad tidings we bring. Glad tidings we bring. And here's what this comes from, is when the angels appear at the first Christmas to announce the coming of Jesus, they say four very specific things. And let me just say this, doesn't matter what you're seeing, doesn't matter what you're seeing, doesn't matter what you're watching, doesn't matter what you're reading. These four things are the purpose of Christmas. They announce four things. They say, fear not, good news, great joy, all people. Fear not, good news, great joy, all people. And those are the things. That's what Christmas was about in the incarnation. I'm going to explain that big word here in a second. In the incarnation of the first born son of God coming, fear not, good news, great joy, all people. So today, we're going to talk about fear not. Now, here's what I know. I just know this from praying with people in that lobby and just watching life. Fear is a baseline emotion. Fear may drive more parts of people's lives than any other emotion rivaled maybe only by love. It's fear and love. And what I've learned even as a dad is that, like, a lot of those fears they bubble to the surface, especially around Christmas. I'm going to give an example of this a couple of years ago. Our kids, Santa, came and visited our neighborhood. And we took our kids to see Santa for the first time a few years ago. And this was one of the pictures. Now, you may see this a couple of years ago. You may see this from your life. Man, I don't see any fear when you talk about fear. Well, that's not the whole picture. Let me show you the whole picture. This is the whole picture. Yeah, that's it. And I love, I try to show a picture every year. And you see this is fear. It is. It's his baseline emotion. Let me put this in perspective. We live right now in one of the most anxious times among the most anxious people that may have ever existed. Seven out of 10 kids under the age of 21 in our culture right now report problems with their mental health. The two most prescribed medications in our society right now are antacids and antidepressants. Get out good. Not good man. Now, let me do a quick theology of fear real quick. And then I want to get right into the passage. Here's what you need to know before I say anything else. There's a difference between scared feelings of being scared and what the Bible is going to call fear when it commands us. By the way, when the Bible says this, it does not give it as a suggestion. It doesn't give it as encouragement. It gives disciples of Jesus a command. Fear not. Fear not. Now, but there's a difference between feelings of fear or being scared and fear. A scared of feeling, scared of normal, scared of natural. God wired that into you and scared like that keeps you alive. Scared is what keeps you from jumping off its hall buildings, keeps you from walking out in the middle of a highway, scared is what keeps you from believing the cowboys you're going to make the playoffs. Scared is all the things. That's a joke. That's a joke, man. I've got to get that in. I'm coming back to you, cowboys, fans. Scared is the thing that protects you from things that can harm you, okay? That's fine. But watch this. Fear is different. Fear in the Bible is a spirit. It all tells Timothy. For God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power of love and of a sound mind. Fear is a spirit, okay? Now, check this out. Here's why you need to understand because you need to understand the origin point of your fear. Here's why this is the thing. Well, we know as the Bible says, we have a Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person in the Trinity. He is the second person in the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is an internal presence of God that indwells the people of God to preach inside the heart of the people of God, the Word of God that was offered by the Spirit of God. So what the Holy Spirit does is he brings the presence of the Prince of Peace into the hearts of the people of God. And he functions like a true prophet that prophesies true, wonderful, beautiful things about your future. He speaks the blessing of God over your life on the inside. He's the one on the inside assuring you of the promises of God, assuring you that God knows the plans he has for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope in a future. That's the Holy Spirit. But then, theologically, what we know is we don't just have a Holy Spirit speaking true prophecy. There is an unholy spirit. The Bible calls Satan. He is the God of this world. And the Bible says that his primary weapon is not like an AK-47, an SIR-15, his primary weapon is lies. And so with the Holy Spirit prophesies true blessing into your heart. The unholy spirit, Satan, he prophesies doom, gloom, destruction, steel-killed destroy, and their lies. This is why I stop and think about this. And bro, I'm in this with you. This is why 95% of the things that we lay awake at night, fearing 95% of them never happen. Because they come from the father of lies, speaking lies into you. So in fact, I'm going to give you an acronym at the beginning of the sermon and then I'm going to come back at the end and I'm going to give you a different acronym. What I just said is why many people, they've called fear this. They've said that fear is false events appearing real. And I want you to get that in your head. False events appearing real. Now here's how I know this is the thing. Okay, check this out. So in front of this sermon, I came across a list of the 10 top fears of people in America right now, 10 top fears. You ready for this? Here we go. They are loved ones dying, loved ones becoming seriously ill, mass shootings, not having enough money for retirement, terrorism, government corruption, becoming terminally ill, hate crimes, high medical bills, widespread civil unrest, and then a close number 11 was the late point church parking lot after you left the clock service. Those are the 10 top fears of people in America. Now, do you know what that's evidence of to me? That list is evidence of to me that cable news and online news sort of factories and accounts. That is evidence to me that what they're doing is from the Father of the Lies. They are pumping fear. They just pump fear and division, fear and division, fear and division. You have an IV drip into your brain from your screen to here that is pumping false events appearing real. Fear and division into your brain. Here's the reason I know that they're pumping this because eight years before that survey, the exact same people conducted the exact same survey, and the top three fears eight years prior were speaking in public heights and spiders. People are still speaking in public. There are still heights. There are still spiders. But when you go to your favorite news account online, they're not pumping spider stories because fear drives clicks and listen, you need to understand this. Got me all riled up. But fear drives clicks. When you're watching news, you're clicking through little news stories. Listen, if it's quote unquote free, listen, you're not the customer, you're the product. And what they're doing is they're delivering your brain to other people. And what they know is that fear drives clicks. And so they're pumping fear and division, fear and division, fear and division. But the Prince of Peace comes and he brings love and unity, love and unity, love and unity. That's what he does. So then what we need to understand is, okay, let's get our eyes off that. How does the coming of Jesus separate us from our fears? Now this is Luke chapter two. Let me read it real quick. This is our passage for the day. Then we got to move. It says in there were shepherds. Bookmarked out in your hair. We're coming back to it. Living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. It says at night, bookmarked out in your hair is going to be important in a second. Verse nine, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord showing around them. And they were terrified. Some of your Bible translations will say they were filled with great fear. The Greek is literally megast phobias. But the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people. For today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah. He is the Lord, Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in claws and lying in a manger. And suddenly, a great company, a heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those on whom his favor rests. And all the people said, amen. Okay, let me, let me, let me roll real quick. Number one, three reasons that the coming of Christ separates us from our fears. Number one, we do not fear because God is for us. Okay. Now, I need you to track with me. We're going to do a little, a little, we're going to bubble nerd out for a second of year. Okay. So this fashion says unto you, unto you is born this day in the city of David. And then it says a savior. Okay. Now here's what's interesting. If you go read Matthew chapter one, a Luke chapter two, what you find out is that Mary and Joseph were not permitted by God to name their son Jesus. God was like, ah, I'm the dad. I get to do the naming. And so God commanded that his name in your English translation of the Bible would be Jesus. And that's who we worship in English. We call him Jesus. But actually the English name that we pronounce Jesus is what's called a transliteration of the Greek name, Jesus Greek is the language that the New Testament is written in. And so it's a transliteration of the Greek name, Jesus. Here's a problem. Jesus didn't grow up in a Greek speaking culture. He didn't speak Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic. So when Jesus was walking around, what people call Jesus was not Jesus or Jesus, what they called him was Yeshua. They called him Yeshua. Now here's what's interesting. Aramaic is a derivative language from the Hebrew language that the Old Testament is written in. And the name Yeshua comes from the Hebrew verb Yasha that means to rescue or to save. Jesus name literally means rescuer or I came to save. Now let's go layer deeper. Here's a question. It's not just what he came to do. How did he come to accomplish it? Now Romans 3 says this, this is how Jesus came to save. It says God presented Christ as a sacrifice of, and I want you to say this big word out loud like you're awake and you're excited about it, okay? God presented Christ as a sacrifice of a tone met. Good job man. Y'all beat the Saturday night. That was way better. That's a tone met through the shedding of his blood. Now, I want you to see this word a tone met. Big theological word, a tone met. I'm going to come back to this. Now, whenever I toss a big theological word up on the screen like that, what people typically say is, oh, Josh, you're not supposed to do that. That's kind of the vibe. When I was learning to be a pastor, what people told me is the way to grow a church was like, hey man, you got to dumb everything down. Never preach above a sixth grade level. Don't use big theological words in church because it turns people off and they run away. I completely reject all of that. I'm totally out, okay? Here's why I say this, okay? The reason I say that is the same dude that's going to complain about me using the word a tone met in my sermon after the church service he can walk over to Starbucks in order like a venty Carmo Machiato Unicorn Frappuccino and he knows exactly what he's talking about. So let me just, I say this all the time. Here's my deal. If you can learn the language to order a Starbucks, I can use theological language in church, okay? So that's how we're going to roll. This is a Bible word. It's a word a tone met, okay? Now let's go a laity for. I need to stick with me and Bible nerd out for a second. Here's a question class, pop quiz. Why is it that when angels come, they announce becoming of Jesus not to a king, not to a military leader, not even to a religious leader. Why do they announce it to shepherds? If you didn't know this, shepherds in the New Testament era, shepherds were like the lowest of the low, capital L losers. If somebody like, if somebody literally couldn't do anything else with their life, they were like, stick them over there, make them babysit some sheep. If you dropped out of community college to smoke weed on your mom's couch, you became a shepherd, okay? So these are these guys. They were considered like just rough, rough, blue collar, just gritty. They were just considered liars. These testimonies were literally not admissible in first century Roman courts. These are the guys who drink smoke, cuss, fight you to the drop of a hat, your average Philadelphia Eagles fan, that's the shepherd, okay? Now I had to make it up to the Cowboys fans, what I had to do. Now so that's the question. I'll let me ask another question, point this out. This says that when angels appear, the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks. I told you to look at it by night. Now here's what's really interesting. We know first century shepherds, they were not, you always see your nativity scene is out in the winter. We know that shepherds in the first century, they didn't sleep out in the fields with their flocks at night except during the summer. So the birth of Jesus almost certainly happened during sort of the Israeli Judean area summer, okay? So I asked, I got a little help, again, a little AI image generation for a historically accurate nativity scene. This is what it gave me. It's really helpful. Now I just want to point this out, I don't know why it put a kangaroo in there. It just did. I don't know what to do with that. Take that now. That's the rule of distracting. So and then here's the third data point is these shepherds, they're in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is only, it's about five miles. You go with me, I'll show you. It's only about five miles from Jerusalem. Now watch this, where the day of atonement would happen at the temple once a year. All right. I'm going to let the stage for what I'm about to do in the next two minutes, okay? So here's what I need. I need you to put on your Bible nerd hat for a second and stay with me for two minutes. The payoff is really big. Our question we're trying to answer is, why did God announce the coming of Jesus originally to the shepherds now? Here's what we're going to do. In order for us to understand, if we're going to solve fear, we have to figure out where it came from. So what we need to do in the Bible is go back to the origin point of fear because if we don't know where it broke, we won't know where to fix it. Now here's what you get in the Bible. In the Bible, Adam and Eve are created out of the rest of the ground by God in the image of God to live in a face to face relationship of intimacy with the Father. That's how you were created to live. We were so awesome as mankind that we maintain that sinless perfection. It goes great for about half of one page in the Bible. That's how awesome we were. Then Adam and Eve rebel against God and here's your origin point of fear. As soon as they were rebell against God, Genesis 3.10 gives us the origin point of fear. The first time fear has ever mentioned the Bible, Genesis 3.10, they were naked and ashamed and it says, I was afraid and I hid. Now watch this. Here's where we go. Buckle up real quick. What God immediately does is the origin point of fear is mankind's alienation from God. We have been separated from our source. That's the origin point of all fear. So what God does in Genesis 3 is he sticks, he gets on his coup, he gets on his cougier and he kills an innocent animal. We don't know what the animal was. I have a very strong suspicion what he did is he went and found an innocent spotless lamb and watch this. Mankind sinned but God kills the innocent spotless lamb and then he takes the skins of the spotless lamb and he covers sinful Adam and Eve with the skins of the slain spotless lamb. Is any of this sounding familiar? Now fast forward just a little farther in the Bible a few hundred years. God finds this dude named Abraham. Abraham, Abraham didn't worship God, love God, nothing like that. He just picks Abraham sovereignly because he loves Abraham and he makes what the Bible calls a covenant with Abraham. Eventually Abraham has a son named Isaac and Abraham will call his son Isaac, his first born son, his only son, his beloved son that he loved. Now God comes to Abraham and he tells Abraham, take your son, your only son, watch this, watch, put wood on his back and then Abraham puts wood on the back of his only beloved son and his son carries wood up a hill on his back on Mount Mariah in order for him to be sacrificed for sins is this sounding familiar. And then as Abraham crests the top of the mountain, his son Isaac with the wood on his back at the top of the hill looks at dad and goes, dad, where's the sacrifice? And Abraham goes, rut roe and he goes, son, you're the sacrifice. Now exactly at the moment when Abraham is getting ready to sacrifice his son for sins, here's something a little thicket over here, they look over and once again there's an innocent spotless animal that God has provided, watch this, to be a substitutionary sacrifice so that Isaac will go free but the innocent animal will be sacrificed and its blood will be spilled instead of Isaac is this sounding familiar. Now fast forward just a few years, eventually the descendants of Abraham are in Egypt in slavery to children of Israel there. You've done all the things, you saw Prince of Egypt, all the ten plagues, you saw all the things. The tenth plague God tells the children of Israel that an angel of death is going to come through the entire nation of Egypt and everywhere there is sin, the angel of death is going to visit the sins of the household. Listen, on the first born son that's still alive in the house and everywhere that first born son is, the first born son will die except God gives one exception. He tells the fathers in Israel if you will find, listen, an innocent spotless lamb and I want you to slay the lamb and then he gave very specific instructions, I want you to take a plant called hissep, dip it in the blood of the slain lamb and I want you to put it on the doorpost and the lintel of your home. Now I want you to think about this, well Bible scholars tell us is these ancient Israelite dads who in faith slayed these lambs, they would have dipped this hissep in the blood and watched this, watched my hands. They would have taken the blood and they would have gone up to the top of the door over to this lintel, over to this lintel and what Bible scholars say is that if you were there 2500 years ago that night when the angel of death passed through as you walked through the part of Egypt where the Israelites were, what you would have seen is bloody crosses on every door, thousands of years before Jesus. And anywhere the angel of death saw a bloody cross, slain lamb, it passed over that house and it did not visit the sins of the house on the house, is this making sense. Now fast forward just a little farther, eventually the children of Israel just stick with me bro the payoffs big, eventually the children of Israel they're wandering through the wilderness and God commands them to create what he called a tabernacle, check this out watch, a tabernacle. Inside of the tabernacle there was a place called the Holy of Holies, it was like a room inside of a room inside of a room. Inside the Holy of Holies was the ark of the covenant and this was the place where God had chosen for the manifest presence of God to dwell in its highest density on earth. Now here's the problem, the people of God were separated from the presence of God because God made a command, he commanded, and this can be important, bookmark this in your head, he commanded for a curtain to be woven that was as thick as a man's hand and for that curtain to separate the Holy of Holies from the people of Israel so that the presence of God was separated from the people of God why because of our sin and our alienation from God but God made a provision for there to be one way and only one way for a person of God to enter into the presence of God. Once a year on a day called the day of atonement that happened at the end of modern day September beginning of October, once a year on the day of atonement only one dude the high priest he had to go through these all these rituals and he would take watch this two innocent, spotless animals. He would slay one of them as a sin offering and then he would place his hands on the head of the other one and he would confess not only his sins but all the sins of the people of Israel as if to transfer them onto the head of this innocent animal and then he would send it away into the wilderness and it was God's way of communicating, I'm taking your sins, I'm placing them on the head of this slain animal and then your sin is being removed from you and then and only then this one guy high priest he would literally tire rope around his ankle, lest he walked into the holy of holies with unconfessed sin and God said if you do that you will die. And so they literally tied a rope around his ankle lest that guy died while he was in there and they could pull him out and then one day a year he could pass through the veil and the people of God could intercede in the presence of God. Now then we get to Luke chapter 2, keep going with me, Luke chapter 2 right here, I'm going to skip it and come back to it. Luke chapter 2 we got these shepherds. Now skip forward, when John the Baptist sees Jesus for the first time, do you remember what he says? He looks at Jesus and he cries out, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. He looks at Jesus and he goes, you're the innocent animal, you're the one who's come for us, you're the one on whom the sin will be transferred. But hold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Now skip forward three years after the moment when John the Baptist says this, Jesus is there, he's at the last supper that's a little painting with all the dudes on the same side of the table. He's at the last supper, if you read your Bible very carefully, it's interesting. Every element of a normal last supper or Passover meal is mentioned except one. They mention the spices, they mention the wine, they mention the bread, they mention all the things. There's one thing that was supposed to be on the table that is never mentioned at the table at Jesus last supper, it's the Lamb. There was supposed to be a slain lamb that they had there to eat. Do you know why the slain lamb wasn't on the table? Because the Lamb of God was sitting at the table. He was the one who would take away the sins of the world. Now, let's go a layer deeper. Right after the last supper, Jesus goes to the cross. The Bible tells us that from the sixth hour to the ninth hour when Jesus was on the cross, it says that a darkness began to cover the land. Jesus for the first time, he cries out in pain, Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sub-Aktani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Let me ask this question. Why does Jesus cry out in pain for the first time when the darkness descends on the land? Jesus never cries out in pain when they're whipping him with a cat and an eye, Jesus was a dude, he could take some pain. They didn't, he didn't cry out in pain when they whipped him with a cat of nine tails. He never cries out in pain when they raked the flesh off of his, the back of his ribcage. He is not recorded as crying out in pain when they took a roughshod splinterful crossbeam and stuck it on the exposed nerve endings of the back of his ribcage. He is not recorded as crying out in pain when they pulled his beard out of the flesh of his face. He never cries out in pain. There is one time and one time only when Jesus is recorded as crying out in pain, when darkness descends on the land, he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because Jesus had lived his entire life in a face to face intimacy with a father. And in that moment, the father was turning his back on the son, why, so that he could turn his face towards you. And Jesus had lived in such intimacy with the father that pain didn't bother Jesus, but one second separated from the presence of the father causes him to cry out in pain, Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sabaktane, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now let's go one last layer deeper. The Bible says that Jesus cried out and he gave up his spirit. The Bible says at the ninth hour, that was the first entry, Judaism way of saying 3 p.m. This is super meta, this is amazing. Guess what time of day they were supposed to take an innocent spotless lamb and slay the lamb for the Passover meal on the day of atonement? 3 p.m. But the exact hour when Jesus dies is the exact hour when the lamb was supposed to be slain for the sin of the people now. What the Bible says is the second Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That curtain, I mentioned to you, the separated, the presence of God from the people of God, because of Dudes hand. The Bible says at that very second, the veil that separated the holy of Holies, the presence of God from the people of God, it says it was torn into from top to bottom, not bottom to top, top to bottom, knowing that God did it. Here's why, because the second, the true Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world, the thing that alienated you and me, separated you and me from God had been removed on his head. And now we can be adopted by God and we can walk right into the presence of God because the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world. That's the message of the entire Bible. So then, bro, listen. If you go all the way back to Luke 2 and it's like, why does God announce the coming of Jesus to these shepherds? Well here's why, they were in the summer, they were raising sacrifices, lambs for the people to use the sacrifices at the day of atonement and God is announcing, you're not going to be needing these anymore. I'm going to give you a sacrifice to end all sacrifices. So listen, what you need to know number one, I got to do the others faster, what you need to know number one is that what separates you from God has been removed and now you can have no condemnation only love from the Father because he's adopted you as a child. Is that good news, church family? Come on, man, that's good news. Okay. Let's do the other two faster. Here we go. Number two, we do not fear because not just because God's for us, but because He's with us. Y'all, because God is with us. So it says, and this will be assigned to you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a major and then Matthew 123, it looks at it from a different angle and it says this, the Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him, what is it? They will call him what? They will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Okay, no. This is what theologians call the incarnation of Jesus, big theological word incarnation. It comes from a Latin word, the Latin word is carne, which means flesh. You're like when you go to a Mexican restaurant and you order chili, con carne, you are literally ordering chili with flesh, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. You think about that every time from now on. So what the Bible is saying is that Jesus was God con carne. Jesus was God with flesh. He was simultaneously watched this 100% man and 100% God. If you've ever wondered, I wonder what God's personality is like. Look at Jesus. Look at Jesus. In fact, one of the greatest hymns ever written, top three hymn, we sing it Christmas. What are we saying? Bailed in flesh, the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel. It means God is with us. Now let me just, this is the end of our fears is when you begin to understand. Listen, when we start to understand God is with us, that changes everything man. You start to like genuinely believe like God's with you. So just check, I don't have time for this. We go into this deeper on the podcast. 366 times in the Bible, there is some form of a command to fear not, fear not, fear not, fear not. But here's a question. Why? Why fear not? In Joshua chapter one, Joshua's taken over Israel from Moses and God three times tells Josh be strong and courageous, strong and courageous, strong and courageous. Here's what he doesn't say. The reason for that is because Josh felt we can afraid, we can afraid, we can afraid. But the reason that he tells Joshua not to be afraid, he doesn't say, you know, because you're good enough and you're smart enough and don't go to people like you. You don't say that. He says, fear not, why? For I am with you. When you start to understand it, God's with you, it changes everything man. So I got a, I showed him earlier, I got a six year old son named Hudson. And Hudson's like, he's 100% boy, 100% at the time. Just a few, a few months ago, Hudson on Netflix, he saw this little preview, though just do a little preview without you wanting him to. He saw this little preview of a cartoon zombie thing and a kind of freaked him out. So me and Hudson one night were taking out the little trash cans and his dark outside and Hudson gets nervous and he looks up at me and he goes, Dad, what do we do if there's zombies out here? Right? And I was like, I told him what everybody, I told their son, I said, but everybody knows what to do, two in the chest, one on the face. Everybody knows what to do. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. Now that's not what I told him. Now I told him. We'll get there when he's older. We'll get there when he's older. No, no, here's what I said. Now listen, here's what I didn't say. I didn't say, oh buddy, there's no scary things in the dark. Because hey guys, understand this, we actually live in a world where there actually is real evil. There are real dark things. There's a real enemy. There's a real Satan. There are real dark things. And what I want to do is I don't want to teach my kids, there aren't dark things. I want to raise kids who are a children of courage and conviction full of the light of the father that they get raised up and they actually vanquished dark things. So I don't want to tell them there's no dark things. So here's what I told Hudson. I'm like, hey buddy, so here's a deal. Here's a deal, buddy. Number one, dad's here. I'm going to stay with you the whole time. And I can take any zombie. I'm good, bro. I got any zombie. And then I'm like, and buddy, when we get back to the garage, we can turn on the lights. And as soon as we turn on the lights, the darkness has to flee. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? This is what the Bible says about you. It says that God is with you. And listen, if God is with you, if God is for you, who can be against you, greater is he than he is in the world. And whenever the light comes, the darkness has to flee. He's going to do that in your life. Now some of you, you'll hear that, and that like this part of the sermon, you'll hear that and you're like, you're going through some things and you're like, yeah, but I can't see that God is with me right now. I don't see it. Here's why I need you to understand. It's way easier to see how God was with you when you're looking backwards through the rearview mirror than when you're looking forward through the windshield. You're going to notice this in your life. It's like, man, like, think about you. You're, yeah, that experience, like you're in high school. And it's like the thing you want more than anything else. You're just asking out, girl, after girl, after girl, you get shot down. And you get in that spot in your high school and you're like, God, where are you? You see the same girl 30 years later, you're like, you were with me. That's it, man. That's it. God was with me. It's just easier. It's easier to see through the. I get, if I'm serious, man, if I get, I get very, very emotional. When I look back on my life and I see all the ways that God was with me throughout my life, I remember man, it was like, man, when, when, when Janah, with Janah and I were 22 years old, we got married. Like six, eight months after we get married, Janah gets a biopsy. Biopsy comes back and it's an aggressive melanoma. It's a skin cancer right over one of her lymph nodes. Okay, don't do tanning beds, ladies and gentlemen. And she did that deal. And so there was like two weeks where I'm like thinking about, okay, man, am I going to be like, we're waiting for these results to come back? I'm like, am I going to be like a 22 year old widower? I'm thinking about all the things that are happening. I'm like, God, will you please be with me? Please be with me. Please be with me. And I look back. I couldn't see how he was with me then. And I look back now and God was with us and he protected us and he protected Janah and she just celebrated 20 years cancer free. Come on, man, 20 years. God was with me. I can see how he was with me. I look back at my life and I remember Janah getting married and we were like, we immediately start trying to have kids. Be fruitful and multiply. We were like, we're going to obey, you know. And we're, we're, we're in a man. We start trying to have kids and weeks turning to months, months turning to years and all of a sudden we're like, God, where are you? Are you with us? We go into all the tests and it's like, I've told the story. We get diagnosed with unexplained infertility. That's exactly as helpful as it sounds. You look good and she looks good but you'll have kids. We don't know why and we're like, man, God, where are you? But then you fast forward a few years and I remember this moment where I walked into a little tiny office in Bowling, Green, Kentucky and I'm standing there as like a 25, 28 year old guy and somebody puts a little Gerber baby about the size of a large burrito in my hands. And I'm holding for the first time a first born daughter, Eliana. And then we named her Eliana because her name means God has answered and I look back down and I'm like, God, you were with us. And now I didn't just adopt once we adopted twice, we adopted three times and I know God was with us because man, I got three adopted kids. I wouldn't trade them for any biological kids in the whole world. I got God was with us. I look back, man. I look back. I mean, guys, we're here. It was seven years ago this month that I preached my first ever sermon at Lake Wanchers. But I do not, listen, I was, I'm glad you were clapping. I was just nervous, man. I was not, I walked out and I was like, man, how's this going to go? And then God called us to come here and I remember like, man, God, you got to be with me. And I was like, God, are you going to be with me? And I remember January the next year. I remember walking out that little door right back there. I walked out to walk around and probe people in the lobby. There were two ladies coming out of their life group room and they didn't know I could hear them. And I remember walking out full of insecurity. I think this is going to go bad. And I'm walking out and I hear them right in front of me saying, he's just not Steve. I'm for real. He knows Steve. It's not going to be the same. He's fine, but he's just not as talented. I thought, my God, they're thinking what I'm thinking. That's what I thought, man, and I look back. But here's what I've learned. I'll look back on these seven years as I've seen. God has been with us. And I've seen that man, one man planted, another man watered, but all the time it's God who gives the growth. God is the one who's with us. Man, I look back at COVID and anxiety attacks, all these things. And I look back and I'm like, man, God was with me. And listen, here's what you need to know. Someday I will be on my deathbed and I will be surrounded by family members and they will be praying for God to heal me and he won't. And there will come a moment where I breathe my last and then I will step into heaven and God will be with me forever. God is with us. God is with us. And when you understand that, it eliminates your fears. So then here's where I want to land. Last thing. Last thing is we do not fear because God is for us and with us and because God is over all things. He is over all things. So like, I need you to see this in this passage. Number one, it says unto you as warm as saying the city of David, a savior and it says who is Christ the Lord. It's like, you just need to know, Christ was not Jesus last name. It wasn't Joseph Christ and Mary Christ and their boy Jesus Christ. Christ was a title that means anointed one or Messiah. And then it says that he's Lord and what that means is that there is not one square inch of the universe over which Jesus does not stand and cry. Mine. Mine. Okay. Now, you can see it. I want you to think about this. So in this story, God moves in the heart of Caesar Augustus, the emperor of Rome. He issues a decree for a national census to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem because Joseph is of the house and lineage of David. So I want you to think about this. God moved the heart of the most powerful man alive to orchestrate a political census of the entire known world just so he could get a blue collar construction worker and his pregnant fiance to a one traffic light, Hicktown to fulfill his purposes and plan from before the foundations of the world. He needed to get them to Bethlehem. God was sovereign over everything that was happening and it was in his control. Now here's why I say that because if you're Mary and you're nine months pregnant and you hear a census is happening and you got a hop on a donkey at Nama's pregnant, we didn't do the pregnancy thing. I've heard the first, second, third trimester of the bee's and false prophet and the antichrist. I've heard it's rough. I've heard it's rough. She got on a donkey and go 95 miles to Bethlehem. I'm sure she was like, I don't understand, but God was in control of all of it. You have some things happening in your life. You don't understand that are causing fear and you need to understand that God is in control of all of them. So in preface this sermon, years ago I read a book called The Hiding Place to my kids in our living room. It's about Cory Tenboom and her sister Betsy who during World War II they were hiding Jews in their house because of their Christian convictions and they were protecting them from the Nazis. In that book Cory Tenboom, she tells a story about eventually their family gets arrested. They get put in a concentration camp and then they get moved from one concentration camp to another one and they get put in a new cell in this second concentration camp and when they try to go to sleep they realize they can't sleep because the new cell block 28 is infested with fleas. It's rough, infested with fleas. And that becomes Cory's breaking point. She tells her older sister Betsy like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do it. And her older sister Betsy who ended up dying in the concentration camp, she records her saying, Cory, I know what to do. I read it in my Bible last night. First Thessalonians 5 tells us to rejoice always. Pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances. And so she said, Cory, let's pause right now and give thanks. Let's give thanks for the guards and for the fact that we're in here with all these women and we'll be able to tell them about Jesus. And let's give thanks for these Bets that we're in. And then she said, and Cory, let's give thanks for the fleas. And Cory was like, okay, I got a breaking point. I can give thanks for everything. I can't give thanks to the fleas. And she said, no, Cory, it said to give thanks in all circumstances. Let's give thanks to the fleas. And so they did. Over the next few months Cory and her sister Betsy, they began a Bible study in cell block 28 and it grew and it grew until they were gathering with all these people in cell block 28 to have worship services which were illegal in Nazi concentration camps. And they always wondered, like, man, why are we able to do this? And guards never come in and stop our worship services. And they never found out the answer to that question until they were released from the concentration camp and they asked one of the guards and he told them that the guards wouldn't go in cell block 28 for one reason, the fleas. And listen, the thing that they most wanted God to take away was the thing that God used to lead the entire cell block to Christ. And you're going through some things and you're afraid, you've got to tell you something. God is for you. God is with you. And God is working in all circumstances for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose, all circumstances. So here's what I want to leave you with. I started giving you one acronym, you know, I said fear, false events appearing real. From now on, when you begin to feel fear, I want, here's the acronym, I want you to have in your head, okay? Fear our father, eternal almighty reigns. How about that? Our father, eternal almighty reigns. You're good, man. And I want to do this right now. I want to pray this into your spirits. So it's about your heads and close your eyes all over campuses and Heavenly Father. Father, I trust people who are hurting and afraid to you. Lord, I pray that you would be near. Your word says that you are near to the broken hearted and you save the crushed in spirit. So Father, would you please speak a peace be still over the hearts of your servants? Father, if there's anybody who has not been there in need of the Lordship of Jesus, I pray that today they would trust the Lamb that was slain and they would give their life to you and they would have their sin removed from before you so they can be reunited with you in the name of Christ. And I pray that in his crucified and risen name and all those people said, Amen, amen, amen.