Fear is a powerful emotion. One that many of us have become all too familiar with over the past couple of years. We know that we need to not give into fear, but how do we do that? In Isaiah chapter 8, God spoke to His people through His prophet to speak to His people about fear. And the message He gave them wasn’t that they should not fear at all, but that they should fear correctly.

In chapter 7 of Isaiah, God tells the people that He is going to send the nation of Assyria to invade the land and overwhelm them. It will be terrible, they will devastated the land. And as a result, the people are scared. For good reason. But in Isaiah 8:11, God speaks into their fear” “This is what the Lord says to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people:” That’s the summary of all that follows. God spoke to Isaiah for the purpose of warning him not to follow the way of the people around him who don’t trust God but do what seems best to them. Isaiah says God was speaking to him, but in the next verses, when Isaiah tells us specifically what God said, the verbs are all in the plural, meaning that God wasn’t talking just to Isaiah, but to everyone who would hear God’s voice and trust Him. And here’s the message God gives to us in verse 12 “Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.”

Don’t fear what everyone around you fears. Don’t get caught up in conspiracy theories. Keep a level head in these things. Oh man, that’s a message we’ve needed the past couple of years, isn’t it? Our world jumps on the bandwagon with slogans and soundbites so quickly. Fear and anger drive our world in so many ways. We’ve been afraid of COVID. We’ve been afraid of the government’s regulations surrounding COVID. We’ve been afraid of vaccines. We’ve been afraid of people who won’t take vaccines. We’ve been afraid and and we’ve been angry at each other. And God says, don’t do that. Don’t be like everyone else around you. Some of us need to spend less time on the internet scrolling through all the bad news, watching commentators rant and theorize. In 2020, a new word was coined to describe when we spend too much time scrolling through the internet to read all the bad news: “doomscrolling.” We need to stop doing that. We need to stop letting the sensationalism, fearmongering, and anger of the world shape us. We all get scared, and there has been lots to be scared about, but don’t let that fear control you. Don’t let that fear cause rifts in your relationships. Don’t let that fear cause you to compromise your obedience to God.

But how do we do that? Verse 13 gives us the solution “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.” You don’t need to fear and dread all the big scary things going on in the world (whether that’s Assyria attacking or a global pandemic). Instead of fearing and dreading those things, you should fear and dread God.

Dread God? Surely that can’t be right, can it? You know, the Bible says lots and lots of times that we should fear God:

Deuteronomy 10:12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God…”

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.”

1 Peter 2:17 “Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God”

And on and on and on. We’re way to quick to say, “That doesn’t mean we should be scared of God.” Are we sure of that? Do you know what Jesus said in Matthew 10:28 when it came to whether we should be afraid of other humans? “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Who can destroy the body and soul in hell? God. Jesus said, in very graphic terms that we should fear God.

In chapter 6, Isaiah tells us about when saw a vision of God and how what he saw completely undid Him. When he saw the royal majesty and overwhelming glory of God and heard the mighty seraphim angels crying out in voices that shook the temple: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” It left him cowering on the floor in tears.

Why is God scary? Isaiah tells us in 8:13 “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy,” God is holy. He’s unlike anyone or anything in all of creation. In chapter 40, Isaiah will describe God as the one who holds the waters of the earth in the hollow of His hand. Have you ever tried drinking out of your hand? You get almost nothing because the hollow of your hand can’t hold much water. God holds all the water from all the oceans and seas and lakes and rivers and puddles in the hollow of His hand. He weighs the mountains on a scale. He named each star in space and calls them by name and keeps them there by His power. He’s eternal, while the most powerful of us is like a plan that withers in the heat and is forgotten. He is also morally perfect with not even a hint of impurity or darkness. And we, like Isaiah are unclean, corrupted, totally undeserving. He is the one we must fear. Not kings and nations and viruses and violence.

Now, you may be thinking, “I don’t know… God is scary and the world is a mess...it sounds like we should be afraid of both. How does God being scary help us with everything else?” Because of what Isaiah says next:

14 He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare. 15 Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured.

Isaiah says to the people of Israel and Judah that many people are going to stumble over God and fall. His holiness will destroy them. They will do as Ahaz did and refuse to trust God and obey Him and they will face the consequences for their sin and rebellion. But that’s true for many, but not for all. Verse 14 starts off by saying that God will be a holy place for His people, a sanctuary for them. A sanctuary is a holy place that provides security and safety. God is that sanctuary. God’s holiness is terrifying for those who are outside His protection, but for those who come to Him for security and protection, His holiness is comfort, it’s safety, it’s everything you need. The paradox of God’s holiness is this: although we should fear God, when we come to Him we find that we are loved with a love that casts out fear. How does that work? Through Jesus. Because Jesus is the Holy God who became a human and took the punishment for our sins, we are welcome in God’s sanctuary. Jesus fell and was broken for us so that we can be forgiven and find sanctuary in Him. So don’t fear the things the world fears. Fear God and find love that casts out fear.

(This blog post is an excerpt of a sermon preached at Forward Baptist church on Sunday December 5, 2021. The full sermon is available at forwardbaptist.com.)