Isaiah 41:10 Fear you not; for I am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God: I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you… I. WHAT IT IS FOR A PERSON NOT TO FEAR, nor be dismayed. Fear is a very distracting, disturbing, confounding passion; it is a kind of besetting passion that makes men lose themselves, especially if it be in the extremity of fear; it ariseth from an apprehension of some unavoidable, insupportable evil growing upon a person, and occasioned either by some symptoms of that evil, or by some messenger or other relating it, or by some foresight of it in the eye. Now, as evil appears greater or lesser, and more or less tolerable, so the passion of fear is more or less in persons. II. WHAT THE PEOPLE OF GOD SHOULD NOT FEAR. There is a threefold fear; a natural, a religious, and a turbulent fear. A natural fear is nothing else but such an affection as is in men by nature, that they cannot be freed from; such a fear was in Christ Himself, without sin. A religious fear is nothing but an awful reverence, whereby people keep a fit distance between the glorious majesty of God and the meanness of a creature. A turbulent fear is a fear of disquietness. Now all disquieting fear is that which the Lord endeavours to take off from His people. 1. The people of God need not be afraid of their sins. I do not say they must not be afraid to sin (Romans 8:1). 2. Neither ought we to fear the sins of others. They cannot do God's people any hurt. 3. They that have God for their God must not be afraid of men. III. WHAT THE FRUIT OF FEAR IS; or what prejudice or disadvantage fear and dismayedness bring along with them. 1. Fearfulness of spirit casts many slanders upon God. Upon His power, His faithfulness, His care and providence, the freeness of His grace, the efficacy of the sufferings of Christ. 2. As it respects God's service. (1) It is the cut-throat of believing. (2) It is prejudicial to all religious duties: it is a damper to prayer.It makes all duties merely selfish. Fear puts a man beside his wits, that while he is in such a .passion, he is to seek for common ways of safety; so that, whereas men think that fear will help them to avoid danger, commonly, in amazement, you shall have people stand still, not able to stir to save themselves. Besides, this fear is such a torment, that commonly those evils so much feared, prove not so hurtful nor evil to a person as the present fears; and, besides this, it many times doth not only daunt the spirit of a man in himself, but proves very dangerous to others. IV. GOD'S MOTIVES, by which He attempts to prevail over the spirits of His people, not to be afraid or dismayed, come what can or may. God is our God. 1. What is it for God to be our God? While you have all things else but this, you have the rays of the sun; while you have this, you have the sun itself in its brightness and lustre. "I am thy God," is as much as to say, Thou hast a propriety in Me. God's all-sufficiency reaches beyond all wants. 2. What a person hath in this. There are three particulars whereby specially you may observe what great treasure people have in having God. (1) In regard of the quality of the treasure. (2) In regard of the virtue of it. The quintessence of all virtues is in Him. (3) In regard of the sovereignty, universality, and variety of help in it. 3. How it is so well with those that are the Lord's. God, in giving Himself unto persons, gives Himself to be communicated unto them at sundry seasons, and in divers kinds and measures, and yet so that He will be the judge of the fitness of the time. 4. How He becomes their God, and upon what terms. The gift of Him is as cheap as it is rich. He never looks the creature should bring anything that he might procure it. 5. How He will be found of them. The way of finding out God efficiently to be our God, is the Spirit of the Lord. God makes Himself known passively to be the God of His people, by the word of His grace, and faith laying hold upon it revealed, and more subordinately in prayer, fasting, receiving of the Lord's supper, and such ordinances, so far as they are mixed with faith. (T. Crisp, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. |
    |