Fear | Series: Delivered | Rick Atchley

each of us carry a divine longing we want to live free fully liberated like we were created to be [Music] but we're bound [Music] and stuck try as we might we can't free ourselves [Music] we need to be [Music] [Applause] delivered welcome to the hills if you're in person at the west fort worth campus the south lake campus the north richmond hills campus or if you're watching online i'm thankful that you're with us and a special shout out to all of you that joined us last weekend as we celebrated the resurrection of jesus by far our largest attendance since the pandemic began and it was so fun to see people i hadn't seen in a year and to be together again so thank you for joining us and i don't usually do this but if you did not hear my easter sermon i hope you would go back and listen because i'm trying to make the point that easter is not a day easter is a way to live every day easter is an invitation to a new reality where we live with a new forgiveness and we live with a new freedom and we live for this new future that when jesus left the grave it secured god's promise that things will not be left the way they currently are because the one who came back from the dead is coming back to restore everything in god's creation that sin has marred we are going to get eden back we're going to live on the new good earth god wanted from the beginning for us to have and i've been doing a lot of research into what eden looked like and i think i know it looks something like this that's right it is master's weekend the second holiest sunday of the year and i may never get to play augusta national in this life but i promise you i will play with jesus in the next life we're going to do 18. he's going to give me strokes because of course he's perfect you see god has not forsaken his announced intention to live in intimate fellowship with us on a good earth he said be fruitful and multi and fill this earth and nothing has happened that has caused god to abandon what he wanted from the beginning and when you go back to what god wanted for us it's interesting he said to the man and the woman you are free to eat from any tree except and we focus on the accept and say there's god trying to bind us no god was saying this whole world is yours to enjoy one of the greatest blessings of the pre-fall world was the abundance of freedom god wanted his sons and daughters to enjoy we said no we're going to turn from god so that we can be free we didn't get free when we turn from god we turned the world into a prison we turned existence into bondage and bondage is normal and the bible is telling this big story of god's plan to do something about that god's plan to get back for us the life he wanted from the beginning because god delights in rescuing his children in fact you couldn't say that throughout the scriptures that salvation's theme is deliverance now the ultimate act of god's deliverance is in the death and the resurrection of jesus paul said in first timothy 2 that jesus gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone but there is a story in the bible that illustrates god's salvation delivering there is a story in the bible that foreshadows what god plans to do in jesus like no other in fact jesus kept referring to this story even the night before he died when he at the passover meal took bread and wine and presented himself as the new and the true lamb of god of course the story i'm talking about is what we call the exodus when israel was led by moses out of egypt the story of a god who delivers and one thing we learned in the story is that god is at work delivering before we even know about it that god said to moses when he called him i've heard the cries i've seen the misery of my people and somebody right now listen to me needs to know this or you're struggling with something you feel enslaved by something and god is not unaware of it and god is not unconcerned about it and god is calling his children still to go on exodus with him to leave where you are and the bondage that you're in to the life god wants for you so what we're going to do the next several weeks is we're just going to look again at that story and see each week that god is calling us into a freedom he always wanted for us but we have to start with this that before you can break free of any other bondage you have to break free from the bondage of fear so if you don't know the story the book of genesis ends god starts his delivery plan by calling abraham and through him he's going to bless the world through his seed abraham has isaac and isaac has jacob and jacob has 12 sons and one of them joseph winds up in egypt becomes very powerful and the whole family moves to egypt and the book of genesis ends with all the sons of jacob called the israelites living in egypt and they're prospering and they're enjoying the favor of the egyptian people but the book of exodus starts in chapter one with these words beginning in verse 6. now joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died but the israelites were exceedingly fruitful they multiplied greatly increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them and then a new king to whom joseph meant nothing came to power in egypt look he said to his people the israelites have become far too numerous for us come we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and if war breaks out we'll join our enemies fight against us and leave the country so they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor and they built pitham and ramses at store cities for pharaoh but the more they were oppressed the more they multiplied and spread so the egyptians came to dread the israelites and worked them ruthlessly they made their lives bitter with harsh labor and brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields and all their harsh labor the egyptians worked them ruthlessly the king of egypt said to the hebrew midwives whose names were shipped when you are helping the hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool if you see that the baby is a boy kill him but if it is a girl let her live the midwives however feared god and did not do what the king of egypt had told them to do they let the boys live and then the king of egypt summoned the midwives and asked them why have you done this why have you let the boys live the midwives answered pharaoh hebrew women are not like egyptian women they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive so god was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became more even more numerous and because the midwives feared god he gave them families of their own and then pharaoh gave this order to all his people every hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the nile but let every girl live now back to the garden we were created to live on this good earth in freedom and in intimate fellowship with god and when we turned our back on god the very first negative human emotion that appeared was fear and as our text makes clear it's not just that sin produces fear but fear produces sin let me put it like this the fallout of fear is bondage that fear incarcerates in fact before you can break free of almost anything that is enslaving you you have to identify what is the fear that drove you into that bondage in the first place let me illustrate why are we workaholics why do we become materialists and you can tell that man you need to spend more time with your family but you got to understand what is driving the bondage of workaholism is the fear that he won't have enough or that he won't appear like he's good enough why are we such people pleasers because we are afraid of being rejected so we'll do or say anything if people will like us and why do people get caught and trapped in abusive and unhealthy relationships because they are so afraid of being alone and we struggle with addictions because we fear facing the struggles of life without help you will always forfeit freedom if you can't forsake fear now here's the thing fear doesn't just put us in bondage but fear is usually the reason we try to put other people in bondage notice what the text said so the israelites came to dread the egyptians came to dread the israelites and worked them ruthlessly fear of what if causes you to want to control other people whether you're a helicopter parrot or the most malevolent dictator on the earth and it's amazing what you will allow to happen to other people if you can leverage the power of fear and so pharaoh used one of satan's oldest ploys you exploit the insecurity of one group to justify bigotry and oppression of another group no i said a mouthful there i just explained what's been wrong with this world for millennia in our own lifetime why did the holocaust happen or the genocide in rwanda or the persecution of christians in nigeria or even the racial injustice we've struggled with since our country founded it is what people will tolerate and do to other people if you can just get them to be afraid and so pharaoh leverages fear this nation of israelites had done nothing but bless egypt since they came but he made the egyptians afraid of them and the first thing he said is we'll just wear them out so that they can't have more babies and so overnight this nation of farmers and shepherds becomes a nation of slaves and he assigns them to hard labor but the more they work the more they have babies and so he says well if i can't wear them out i'm going to wipe them out so he calls into hebrew with my ship and put now i'm sure by this point there were many midwives to take care of all the israelites and so they were probably the two heads of the midwives union and pharaoh called them in and said here's what i want you to do you sit on that stool and when that baby comes out of the birth canal if it's a boy you put your hand over its mouth and you suffocate it and let's make it look like it was still mourn and let's decimate the capacity of the hebrews to reproduce but the midwives would not obey and so finally pharaoh just abandons all pretense and just commands the open blatant murder of hebrew baby boys evidently this was not a popular edict and it didn't last very long but the fear behind it continued and it raises the question how do you survive in a culture where fear is the dominant narrative where every day the papers and the headlines and the posts are this is who you should be afraid of how do you survive in a world like that well that leads to the second big idea that wrestling with fear means choosing a side and by the way god chooses sides the scripture is clear psalm 103 the lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed throughout the scripture when one person or people are marginalized and victimized unfairly god always takes their side but the oppressed have to choose sides too and so what do you do when you live in a culture where you're being oppressed the great temptation is to accommodate how can i modify my beliefs and my behaviors so that i will not incur the displeasure of the oppressor and that's what israel did you see the great challenge of god was not getting israel out of egypt it was to get egypt out of israel later the prophet ezekiel will talk about this and he quotes god in chapter 20 and god says i took a solemn oath that day that i would bring them out of egypt and then i said to them each of you get rid of the vile images you're so obsessed with do not defile yourself with the idols of egypt for i am the lord your god how did israel respond to oppression they compromised their worship they began to worship the gods of egypt they thought that's the path to freedom no you don't find freedom by trying to keep god and pharaoh happy the path to exodus is for those that are willing to completely and solely find their identity in the kingdom of god thomas merton was in india in the middle part of the last century talking with people there and he met a hindu man very respected in the community and asked him frankly why have christians had such small impact in this nation even though we've sent missionaries for years and the answer stunned him you christians are not holy enough and he went on to say the hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals although those things are good and useful in themselves and perhaps very badly needed in india they want to know if we have any saints to send them what's a saint a saint is someone who is set apart what the world needs is a people so set apart to god that there is no confusion about what side they've chosen now the fact is that can be upsetting to oppressors but the safe path is not always the right path martin luther king said cowardice asked the question is it safe an expedience asked the question is it political and vanity ask is it popular but conscience asks the question is it right there comes a time when one must take a position that's neither safe nor political nor popular but he must make it because his conscience tells him that it's right now that is what makes the boldness of these hebrew midwives so inspiring when all of egypt and even much of israel is bending to pharaoh's will these two women courageously refuse to bow let me say again behind almost all the bondage that we struggle with from workaholism to pornography from alcoholism to people-pleasing behind all of it there's a fear and you cannot be delivered until you conquer the fear that's driving the bad behavior so here's the most important thing i'm going to say that freedom from fear requires a better fear you notice two times in the text it says clearly shift and puah feared god and their fear of god delivered them from the bondage of being afraid of pharaoh because here's the thing your real god is whoever or whatever you fear it's not what jewelry you wear or what your refrigerator magnet says your real god is whoever or whatever you fear because whoever or whatever you fear is shaping your life so can your fear deliver you the psalmist said that god grants the desires of those who fear him he hears their cries for help and rescues them who does god deliver he delivers those who fear god what does it mean to fear god it means to be overwhelmed by his awesomeness it means to be convinced of his faithfulness it means to be certain of his goodness or it simply means to live so aware of god that you are not intimidated by anything else it's joshua and caleb in numbers 14 when the ten spies say we cannot go and take that land it is full of giants and they will oppress us and joshua and caleb say we can take that land because we are full of god so why should we be afraid it's david in first samuel 17 when saul and even his brothers say we can't take on that giant he's too huge and david says he is an uncircumcised philistine who's to find the armies of the living god give me some armor to fear god is to be so aware of god and so sure of god that you can't be intimidated by anything else and the foundation of all deliverance is the fear of the lord let me step on your toes if you don't fear god then jesus is just your life coach trying to help you reach your personal goals anything you're putting before god is going to set you up for a life of fear every other kingdom you put your hope in is temporary it could be gone tomorrow and so you're going to be afraid today and i will tell you in all my years of ministry i have never like this last year realized how many people who named jesus live in fear because they have put their hope in their money or in their health or in their politics and all these kingdoms and all these pharaohs are temporary and when the fear of god is absent the fear of all the pharaohs will be present and bondage will be constant some of you have been looking for fear in all the wrong places and it's time to get a better fear years ago i read about a man named ray blankenship he got the life-saving medal from the coast guard because he rescued a little girl and here's the rest of the story he lived in andover ohio that had a lot of flooding lately so he's just at the breakfast table in his kitchen looking at the front yard they had a big ditch in the front by the road and the water was just rushing from all of the rain they've been getting to his shock here comes a little girl she has fallen in that water she's too weak to get out of it and he knows a few blocks down the road there is a culvert and if she goes down that culvert she's drowning ray gets up races through his yard jumps into the water manages to grab her just feet before the culvert he manages to grab a rock hold on and pull himself and her out and literally save her life now here's the rest of the story ray blankenship cannot swim he is afraid of the water so what caused him that day to do something so stunningly courageous he had a bigger and better fear and it is stunning when you fear god how courageously you can face the things that are trying to put you in bondage and this explains something it explains why jesus was the bravest and most courageous person who ever lived read the gospels from start to finish can you find a single time when jesus is anxious intimidated petrified afraid he wasn't afraid of religious rulers he wasn't afraid of political power he wasn't even afraid of the demonic world you know why let the prophet tell you in one of the biggest and best messianic prophecies in the old testament isaiah chapter 11 a shoot will come from the stump of jesse from his roots a branch will bear fruit the spirit of the lord will rest on him the spirit of wisdom and of understanding the spirit of counsel and of might the spirit of the knowledge and fear of the lord and he will delight in the fear of the lord jesus took daily joy in the awesomeness and the sovereignty of god and it was why you and i can face and erase all fear the psalmist says again when i'm afraid i put my trust in you in god whose word i praise in god i trust and am not afraid what can mere mortals do to me so for the next several weeks we're just going to study the story of the exodus and each week we're going to realize that god is a specialist at delivery at bringing people out of where they are to where they need and want to be and as we read the story i want you to remember exodus is not the story of a battle between pharaoh and moses it is a story of the battle between pharaoh and moses god and it asks the question which king will israel choose to fear and here's the thing if you want deliverance in your life you're going to have to answer the same question just remember this god's team is going to win the king that ordered the murder of hebrew boy set in motion the events that would lead to the deaths of egypt's sons the king that ordered the drowning of babies would later witness the drowning of his entire army and here's the interesting thing we don't even know his name and thousands of years later we know the names of two women that stood right before him and said we're not afraid god remembers those that fear him and he delivers them like daniel i got this story from some of our missionaries we support i can't tell you their names or where they are they work in a difficult place a dangerous place and in daniel's village there's a tree a big tree had been dying for many years and then suddenly overnight it just kind of seemed to come back to life and a local witch doctor claimed credit and he drew a circle around that tree and said this is holy ground and everyone agreed that whether by good power or evil power they should be afraid of that tree and nobody crossed that circle one day daniel's walking with some friends through town and he sees the tree and says i'm going to climb that tree and i said daniel don't you dare step across that circle he said i'm going to climb that tree and he did and the whole village gathered looking up at daniel expecting any moment he gonna fall down dead but he didn't so this rather ordinary and unexceptional young man walked to the crowd and said all the trees belong to jesus he drives a circle around all of them and if you know jesus you don't have to be afraid of any tree i'm talking to somebody right now and it's time for you to exodus it's time for you to stop living where you're living doing what you're doing and being bound to what you've been bound to but the first step of exodus is to fear god first again the psalmist said i prayed to the lord and he answered me he freed me from all my fears so let me ask you what fear are you tired of fearing why don't you just lay it before the lord right now bow your head with me i want you to do some business with god and just just put that fear before the lord and say god this fear is keeping me from the life you want me to have and i'm tired of being afraid uh so god in jesus powerful name would you bless these people bless the ones who've had the courage to get honest and real and put before you something that is keeping them from their full confidence in you and your goodness i ask you god to pour out a blessing on every authentic and honest heart right now that wants to stop living in fear may your holy spirit give them peace and joy even in this moment and may we live god unintimidated lives because we have learned to fear well like jesus may we delight in the fear of the lord in his name we pray amen amen

Channel: The Hills Church

Views: 1,658

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Keywords: God, 2021, rick_atchley, Jesus, exodus, Israelities, delivers, captivity, freedom, joy

Id: YbKkCeutmLw

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021