Fear and Hope

What are you afraid of?  Fear is rampant in our society today.  We are barraged by images and ideas that stir up a sense of lostness, hopelessness, and fear.  We grab onto those things that we think will fix our fear.  We put our hope in things that promise an answer to, or at least some sense of relief from, our fears.  Where we put our hope reveals our fears and what we fear will determine where we will seek to find our hope.

We are starting a new sermon series called "Fear and Hope."  The concept of having hope in God is all over Scripture.  This seems obvious because we are told that God loves us, protects us, saves us, and shows us grace and mercy.  These are all reasons for great hope.  It would seem, then, that a Christian understanding of hope in God would drive out all fear.  Yet there is another equally strong teaching in Scripture which instructs us to fear the Lord.  It seems that in Scripture our fear of the Lord and our hope in the Lord are actually related.  When we allow lesser things to consume our fears we will allow lesser things to satisfy our hope.  But if we truly understand and live with an ultimate fear of the Lord then we can also live with an ultimate hope in the Lord. 

This sermon is simply called "Fear and Hope" and looks at these themes in Psalm 34 as we begin to dig into these important concepts in the Word of God.