Fear Not, I Am With You

Excited to open up the portion of scripture that I want to open up today. I was, I was in so much pain for about five days. I didn't hardly sleep.

And as I lay, I got the thought of getting into my Bible, opening up the, it was almost impossible, but the Ruby had put on the wall there, Lamentations 3, Isaiah 41, and, and Psalm 34. So as I laid there on the sofa and I kept looking at those and, you know, what was the Monterey conference coming after all that was over with? I thought, you know, God really spoke to me through us, through all three of those verses, but especially Isaiah 41, 10. And so why don't you open your Bibles there, Isaiah 41, 10.

And I brought some form of this down in Mexico. So you folks that were down there with me in Mexico, you just have to bear with me in here. It won't be identical, but, but somewhat of some of the same thoughts.

Um, when I was mentioning to some of the folks here, they were saying, well, Hey, could you, could you bring that message here as well? And by all means, and I think it's brethren, it's one of the most glorious promises that we have. There are obviously places in where we have glorious promises given to us. Isaiah 41, 10.

Many of you know these words and you've, you've recited these words and maybe you have them on your wall. Just like we have them on our wall. Isaiah 41, 10.

Fear not for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you.

I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Brethren, I think I got a form of meningitis one time when I was down in Nicaragua and my brain swelled.

James may remember that he came over, he prayed for me. I was in bad shape for about six weeks. Just my brain swelled.

But this, this was probably equal to it in pain. And, and, uh, as I laid there, I kept reading these verses over and over and over and over. And brethren, it was like, as I'm trying to tell you what it's like, I would just say to all of you, you all know that you desire the kind of Christianity that's real and where God is real to you.

You never, you don't want this all in theory. My sins are forgiven in theory. We want to have this kind of thing.

And brethren, it's special. It is, it is special. When God comes to us, when God speaks to us, when God draws near to us, it is special and is very personal and something very personal happened there.

And I know it's the kind of thing that we all desire. It's almost like the, you know, these verses, unless you have, um, some kind of personal resonation in your own soul, you, you probably can't feel right at this moment. What I was feeling is I was laying there, but it's like, I, I was crying out to the Lord for grace because obviously I wanted the pain to stop.

I was just asking him after you go like four or five days without sleep and with such intense pain, it just got, that's why I ended up going to the emergency room. It's like, you can kind of take the pain in the beginning, but after so many days without sleep, it just wearing, but I was crying out to the Lord, crying out to the Lord, crying out the Lord for grace. And he gave such a peace.

Yes, there was still the pain and everything, but such a peace and such a contentment that brethren, I looked back at it after I got through it. I looked back at it and I kind of marveled like I never in all my asking for God to take away the pain, even though he didn't, I never found one shadow of wanting to murmur or anything. It was like the grace he gave me was just to be very content.

I didn't, I mean, not a negative thought came through my mind. And brethren, all I can think of coming out of it is, is this is what we want in suffering. This is what we want in pain.

This is, we want to find brethren. I think about being on your deathbed. Don't you want to find God real at that hour? Brethren, when we're in a place of really, of real need to find that God comes.

And I have found that throughout my Christian life. I can think of some times when I just felt at the furthest extremity of difficulty and cried out. And brethren, if there's anything that is, if there's anything that's distressing to the Christian is when you get there and there's silence.

Where Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Where you just can't seem to find him. But brethren, to find him, to find our God is real, to find that he's there. His comfort is real.

His promises are real. But I want to personalize this for every single one of us, because I recognize something. This verse, fear not for I am with you.

Be not dismayed. I am your God. I will strengthen you.

I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I will do these things to, and you see the pronoun there, you, I will strengthen you.

I will help you. Brethren, that these promises are glorious. If, if what? They're glorious.

If, fill in the blank. If or they have, they're for me. Brethren, is this for everybody? Are these promises for everybody? Brethren, they're not for everybody in this room, let alone in this world.

And so, you know what you find oftentimes? You find that religious people take promises that they probably have no right to. You find that lost people very likely do that. They apply promises to themselves that, I mean, brethren, if Isaiah 41 is to be personally glorious, it's got to be for me, not for someone else.

Now it may be for someone else. It may be for you as well. But brethren, it being true for you isn't going to be glorious in my soul.

We want these things to be real to us. We want to hear that God is speaking to us. It's, it's got to be not just some theory.

It's got to come home. I need to, brethren, there's a place to feel. People don't like feelings.

They don't like emotions a lot of times, especially in the more academic Calvinism. But brethren, we want to feel. We want to experience.

We want to have some sensation. Craig was talking about wanting tokens. Brethren, that is a biblical concept.

We want tokens. We want God to be real in our life. I need to feel it spoken to me.

It blesses me and encourages me only if I have a persuasion that it's for me. And I mean, one of the things as I was laying there on the sofa is it was almost like I could hear God speaking it to me. It was so real to me.

Everybody's waving. Is it, I guess it's hot outside. So let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would help us to open up these words. May they be a blessing to your people in these next few minutes. I pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Now, here's the thing. Let's just start with this.

Is it for me? It's Old Testament. Now look with, look at the context here. Look at Isaiah 41.8. Who is it spoken to? Clearly, it is spoken to the you, you, but you.

And then when you get to 10, fear not, I am with you. I will strengthen you. I will help you.

I will uphold you. Well, verse eight gives us the context. Who's the you? Who is it there? It's Israel.

My servant, Jacob. And so the thing, do I have a part in this? Can I make a claim to this? I'm a Gentile. Is God talking to me? When he says I'm with you, does God mean me or does he mean somebody else? He's obviously speaking to somebody.

Somebody is a partaker of this promise. But the question is, do I have a place in this? Brethren, you need to recognize this. I have no more right to take a promise of God not intended for me than another man has a right to take another man's wife or his money.

I mean, you have no, brethren, we have no right to things if they're not meant for us. We have no right to something that God doesn't mean for us. Do ethnic Jews, ethnic Jews, and not just ethnic Jews, faithful ethnic Jews.

Does a faithful Jew have a greater privilege or a greater share in the Abrahamic covenant than me, a believing Gentile? I know you can think, you're all thinking about answers here. But brethren, premillennial dispensationalism is, you go to Lebanon, pretty much every evangelical church over there, that's their position. Dan's probably an exception.

That is very prominent in this country. It's very prominent in the John MacArthur circles. And you know what one of the tenets of their Bible interpretation, one of their hermeneutics, is this literal approach.

And when this promise is said to specifically be for Israel, you know, I didn't talk to anybody over there and ask them their opinion on this, but this approach to scripture will basically say that there are promises that are meant for the faithful Israelite that simply are not meant for us. And they insist the promises made to Israel are not for the church. They have two distinct peoples of God.

And that kind of thinking can fall in. We read something in the Old Testament. I mean, does it register with you? Do you ask, when you read the promises of the new covenant, and it's specifically dealing with promises that are given to Israel, promises that are given to Jacob, do you ever wrestle with that? How do I have a part in that? Especially when you've got this whole movement in our country and all around us with people that have this thinking that we really aren't equal.

The promises made to Israel are for Israel. They're not for the church. The Father really doesn't treat us exactly the same.

There's a little bit of difference here. So brethren, what I don't want for us is to surrender a single promise that's meant for us. Not a single one.

The Lord has bought promises for us with His blood, and we don't want to give up any of them. And so what I want you to do is see something. Since this promise comes out of Isaiah's prophecy, I want you to see something about how Isaiah is handled, not just by the biblical authors themselves, but how it's handled even by the Lord Jesus Himself.

And so look with me at Revelation chapter 3. Brethren, we don't want to surrender a single privilege of the covenant that God made with us. Not a single promise. Don't let anybody take your promises away with some faulty hermeneutic.

Don't let people tell you, don't listen. If anybody ever says that promise is for Israel, it is not for the church, you should jump up and down. You should get angry.

You should say you're trying to steal something that belongs to me. And I'm going to show you right here, Revelation 3.9. And it's almost like, why are you going here? Isn't this kind of offhanded? I mean, we're talking about this promise in Isaiah 41.10. Why are you taking us to Revelation? Check this out. Revelation chapter 3, verse 9. We have the church at Philadelphia.

Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan. Now you want to stop right here. The synagogue he's talking about is a synagogue of Jews.

All he's talking about is unsaved Jews meeting in their synagogue. But because they're unsaved, it's the devil's deal. That's what he's talking about.

He's not talking about Satan worship or any stuff like this. These are Jews who would have told you they are God's people. Who would have told you that they are the people of the heritage of the Old Testament Scriptures.

I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews. You see this? They say they're Jews. Why would they say that? Well, because they are physically the offspring of Abraham.

They are, but they're not. Why aren't they? Because it's a spiritual. A Jew isn't one outwardly.

A Jew is one inwardly. It's a matter of the heart. Circumcision is a matter of inward reality, not of external reality.

Jewishness, true Jewishness, is being expressed by the Lord here. And see, they claim to be Jews. They claim to be God's synagogue.

But they're actually, brethren, if you've got the right lenses, if you put the right glasses on, if you can see things, brethren, the whole world is like that. It claims to be one thing. But if we can see through the lens of this book, which is truth, then we see things the way they really are.

And you know, the way the world really is, is not the way the world projects itself to be. The way it really is. A Jew isn't a Jew.

A synagogue isn't a synagogue. A synagogue of God apparently is a synagogue of Satan. A Jew is not really a Jew.

He's something else. I mean, that's the kind of thing that you have going on here. Now watch this.

Brethren, this is Jesus Christ speaking to a little Gentile church. Behold, I will make them, who's the them? Well, those that are professing to be Jews that are not, the physical Jew. I will make these merely physical Jews come and bow down before your feet.

Isn't that an amazing expression? It's like, what? It staggers us. Wait, Jesus, our triune God is the only one to whom somebody ought to be bowing down before. Jesus actually says, these fake Jews are going to come bow at whose feet? Gentiles, former idolaters that have been saved by the grace of Christ.

They're going to come and bow down before their feet and they will learn that I have loved you. Okay. Now maybe you're asking, what does this have to do with Isaiah 41? That would be a good question.

Just this. Turn to Isaiah now. I want you to turn to Isaiah 49.

I want to show you something, brethren, that is absolutely precious to us as children of God. As a Gentile, like those little church that was striving for its existence in Smyrna or another little church with little power in Philadelphia. Notice Isaiah 49.22. Thus says the Lord God, behold, I'll lift up my hand to the nations and raise my signal to the peoples and they shall bring your sons.

Now, who is your here? Brethren, this is the city of the Lord. This is the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. And I'm going to show you that because that exact verbiage is used here in Isaiah.

I'm going to show it to you in a second. But what God is saying is that I am going to bring your sons out of all the nations. It's like Craig was talking about from Psalm 117.

And your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers and their queens, your nursing mothers. Now watch this.

With their faces to the ground, they shall bow down to you and lick the dust of your feet. Then you'll know that I am the Lord. Those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.

I'll tell you this. A physical Jew, memorizing like a good Jew would, memorizing the prophet Isaiah, would have taken one look at this and said, this is Gentiles bowing down to us Jews. Some way they would have seen it.

And follow Isaiah 60 verse 10. Isaiah 60 and verse 10. Foreigners shall build up your walls and their kings shall minister to you.

For in my wrath I struck you, but in my favor I've had mercy on you. Your gates shall be open continually day and night. They'll not be shut that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations.

Again, it's the same kind of idea. It's bringing in the people of the nations with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish.

Those nations shall be utterly laid waste. Now again, you can see how the Jew would have read this. The nations are going to be laid waste.

We're God's people. The glory of Lebanon shall come to you. The Cyprus, the plain, the pine to beautify the place of my sanctuary.

I will make the place of my feet glorious. And watch this verse 14. The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet.

They shall call you the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy one of Israel. Brethren, do you see the reality here? What Jesus is doing with Isaiah's prophecies is he's flipped them right on their head. The very thing that the Jew would have looked at and said, well, we're the ones being bowed down to.

You go over to Revelation and who's bowing to who? Brethren, do you see? He is saying to the true Jew, and they can come from Gentile stock, I'm going to let the world know that I have laid my love on you. And so when you come to a promise like this, you don't want to just say, well, okay, that's somehow a Jewish promise. We need to recognize that Jesus himself flips these things right on their head.

And he says, somebody that's a true Jew, they're one inwardly, and they're the ones that are going to receive this. Brethren, do you have people bow down to us? So what am I trying to do here? This is addressed to the offspring of Abraham, my friend. That's what it says in 41.8, you Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I've chosen the offspring of Abraham.

Well, what does Galatians tell us? That if we're Christ, then we're what? We're the offspring of Abraham. Brethren, the mystery of Christ, according to Paul, to the Ephesian letter, is not made known to the sons of men and other generations, is now made known to his apostles and prophets through the spirit. What is that mystery? Do you know what it is? It's that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of these promises that have been given to us.

Brethren, members of the same body, we're partakers of the promise through Christ, through the gospel. Brethren, you know what it says there? So then you are no longer strangers and aliens. Now, look, my whole point up to this time is basically to show you, you can go into Isaiah and you can find chapter 41 and you can say, that promise is mine just as much as it belongs to any faithful Jew.

Do you recognize when that faithful Jew is going through his Old Testament scriptures and seeing the promises, you can come up behind him, you can look over his shoulder and everywhere he says, that promise is mine. You can reach over and say, it's mine too. They're all yours.

Brethren, you need to be convinced of this. All the promises of God find their yes, and in Him they find their amen. All these promises, they've been sealed.

If you are Christ, you belong in this realm of the offspring of Abraham to whom this is being written. And brethren, there will come a day when to our absolute amazement, because we know who we are. We know the things we've done.

We know the stock we come from. Can you imagine? Here are these Israelites, these people that are of the same lineage, these people that had so much favor and so much light, and here they come. And who are we? And they're going to bow down and their mouths will be down in the dust.

And why? Because Jesus is going to show to people, it seems like especially to people who are making claims on God and claims on religion and claims on Christ that weren't real. And it's like Jesus is going to take great joy in saying, behold, my real people, the people of my love. But to have people fall on their face, brethren, this promise, it's mine.

It's mine. I've been grafted into the same tree, the same family, the same country. Brethren, it just ought to hit you.

It is glorious. It is absolutely glorious. It is absolutely a huge privilege to be a Christian.

Brethren, we may go through trials. We may go through difficulties. And obviously through many tribulations, we're going to inherit the kingdom.

This life can be hard. And Jesus never said it was going to be easy. He said this is a difficult way.

It's a constricted way. It's a narrow way. He said it's going to be hard.

But brethren, don't ever let self-pity crowd in or just, oh, woe is me. Brethren, we are the most privileged people in all the universe. To know and feel that God personally speaks to me in Isaiah 41.

Brethren, what does that say? He is a father to us. He is a friend to us. He speaks this way.

Brethren, you may be forsaken by others. You may be poor and despised. You may come from rotten stock, from all sorts of hellish background.

Yet there's one who promises to strengthen and uphold and help. He never forgets his son. He never forgets that we're dependent on him.

He never forgets his daughters. He never forgets that I need his constant care. Brethren, what can be compared to this? The Christian ought, just brethren, we ought to prize our privileges and realize how privileged we are to have the promise of Isaiah 41.

Brethren, do you do recognize that when you were lost, you were a child of wrath? Your family members, even your children that are lost are children of wrath. Your family members, the people up and down your streets, the people in this city. Do you know for most people in this world, God says, you should fear.

I am not your God. I am not with you. I am not in any way under covenant to help you, to strengthen you.

That's the reality. What can be compared to this? He never forgets us. Brethren, the truth is that God says to so many people in this world, I am not your God.

You ought to be dismayed. I won't help you. Brethren, you know what that is? That's hell.

That's a horrible place. Now look at this, two commands. Now we're to the text.

We really want to look at the text here. Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

Now I want to look just at that part right now because there's two commands given to us. And the beauty is this. Have you ever found the Lord doesn't tell us to do things? Lord, why? Because I said so.

Parents will do that. But you never notice how God is very much in the business of explaining himself to us. Oh, there are sometimes you get certain commands without a whole lot of explanation, maybe in the immediate context.

But typically there's somewhere in the scriptures where we are having things explained. God says, come, let us reason together. He's a reasoning God.

And he gives us reasons. God's commands don't hang in the air without some basis on reality. God commands us to do two things.

And you see it. Fear not. That's the first thing.

Be not dismayed. And then he gives us good reason. And brethren, you've got to lock into the reasons.

That's where the power, that's where the authority, that's where the persuasion comes from understanding and believing these reasons. Brethren, if you lock in, if you really cling, if this resonates with you, it'll make you bold as a lion to face this world. Why? God is with me.

God is my God. He's promised. He's going to be a help to me.

I can go off. I can face this week. I can face the rest of my life.

I can face the things that are going to come. I can face the unknowns. Why? Because he's with me.

Because he gives me say, brethren, this will put fire in your bones. This will put some emphasis and dogmatism in your step. I can go forward.

He's going to be with me. And brethren, you know what? You know, the thing about our God is he promises in scripture that if I'm not going the right way, he's going to correct me and he's going to bring me into the right way. Brethren, we have that kind of God.

We can trust him. He doesn't leave us as just some kind of orphan to wander around out there without any... Brethren, we have a God that's with us. And I hope that resonates with you.

Five reasons to embrace these two commandments. Not to fear. Not to be dismayed.

You have five reasons here. I hope it's not rocket science. I'm with you.

I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you.

I will uphold you. There's five. You all see them.

And brethren, there's only one way that this is going to be meaningful to me. It's if that you is me. And what does faith do? Faith personalizes it.

Faith hears. Faith takes the fact that, hey, this is written to people like we're at Philadelphia. The promises in Isaiah really are written to those who cling to Christ in faith, even if they come from Gentile stock.

But you've got to personalize this. This is how they really truly become precious to the life of the Christian. I've got to hear the voice of God speak to me.

And I think one of the reasons I'm even preaching on this right now is because I laid on that sofa for five days. I could hear God's voice speaking through it. Not just that he was going to uphold me through the time of passing a kidney stone.

But it's like, even as I'm turning 60 years old and right out to the end of my life, I'm going to be with you. I'm going to uphold you. I'm going to strengthen you.

It was like the promises were just coming home to my life today and in that suffering and right through the end of life. It's just God is with me. God is with me.

God will strengthen me. I mean, it's like you put emphasis. Brethren, experiential Christianity.

Experience. Brethren, there's got to be a persuasion. We've got to be able to look at this and say, wow, I hear his voice in it.

I mean, he is promising me. This isn't just doctrine. This isn't just theoretical, knowing certain facts.

Brethren, when God calls me to the hill of difficulty and tells me to fear not, these are the truths that are like a steel rod rammed down my spine to give me confidence. These truths cry, take courage. When God calls me, brethren, you know what? You go out and evangelize.

Evangelizing can be pretty scary. Public speaking can be pretty scary for some people. Oh, I know you hear reports about some people that are doing it on a regular basis.

And I think the more you do it, the more comfortable you become with it. But brethren, one of the things about taking the gospel out, especially when people frown at you and people want to fight with you and people sneer at you and people want to separate from you and it may be in your family or whatever you're called to evangelize, you're called to, or maybe confront people about their sin. Brethren, these things, these things can be pretty unsettling.

You stand for the truth in your workplace. Some unjust business practice is being carried out there. Or brethren, we launch out on some new endeavor and there's so many unknowns in the future, or you face surgery, or you face cancer, you face loss of some sort, or you face financial difficulties.

The Lord says, I am your God. Brethren, it's amazing how this is so real and how it's can bring such peace, soul. When we hear these things, it's phobias.

Everybody's got fears and anxieties of everything. The only way you and I can be having confidence, the weight on these and find that they hold us up. If you put your weight on it, and then it's like you're the upheld strength.

Don't you feel that it is greater than the strength that we have? And God loves to put us in those kinds of fear not. Do we not need that? Because the truth is the Bible says it a lot. Why? Because we're given, we're disposed to fear.

There are things that cause us to be unsettled. There are things that bring anxieties. Our Bible say it over and over and over again.

Why so much? Brethren, ever since the fall of mankind, it's just even good men are disposed. And you know what it is? We look at our circumstances. Oh no, that's where it comes.

Brethren, have you ever found this? There are Christians who just, it's not even their circumstances. They just invent trouble in their own mind. It's not even real.

It's not even there. They're just inventing the thing. Brethren, take courage.

That's the kind of thing that we have here. Take courage. Brethren, what happens when we take our eyes off the Lord? Let the believer get his eyes off God and get them on himself.

And what happens? You start looking at your circumstances. You start looking at your strength. You start looking at your skill.

You start looking at the things that, just the difficulties of your circumstances. And then what? There's ground for fear. But you know what you find is it seems like the Lord actually delights to put us in situations where fear is the natural response.

And of course, we're talking about Christians who aren't natural. Fearing not is the supernatural response. God loves to put us in situations where we're facing Goliath.

And you can be confident like David. Not full of fear, not full of anxiety. I got this thing coming at me.

Brethren, we all have that. Why? Because through many tribulations, it's going to be the route to heaven for us. And so there are Goliaths coming down the road at us.

But he says, don't fear. And you know the reasons why. Don't fall to that.

Faith looks past it all and hears the divine voice and the depths of the soul saying, I am your God. I am with you. I'm here to strengthen, help, and uphold my righteous right hand will do it.

You remember Bunyan? He had this Mr. Feeble mind. He also had this Mr. Ready to halt. And to the best of my memory on those, they were both considered to be genuine Christians, but they were always ready to halt.

There's people in the church like that. They have to be encouraged all the time. And brethren, it's just some imagine there's whole circles.

I don't think it's extremely prominent here, but there are whole circles that just seem like this idea that doubt is in fear are somehow the norm. Like that's acceptable. Like that's just almost like that's healthy Christianity where it'd be presumption to believe with that absolute confidence that these promises are mine.

But brethren, I'll tell you this. If Christ is your only hope, these are exactly the kind of promises that he bought with his blood. These are ours.

There's no presumption in a child believing what a father has promised to us. Am I worthy to have these promises? Well, no, of course not. I'm not worthy of that.

Despite my unworthiness, it's only right that I accept the plain promise of God when he faithfully tells me something like that. That's not pride. It's humility to bow and accept this reality.

When the Lord tells me, brethren, this ought to make us courageous as lions. Isn't there something in the Proverbs somewhere that talks like that? Brethren, we ought to not fear because even death, when it's the health of things have been taken out, be present with the Lord. There's nothing out there in this world.

If God says don't fear them, all they can do, the worst they can do is take your life. Brethren, our fears are misplaced so oftentimes. Faith just looks past all of this.

Humility, we bow. You know, this idea, well, we don't want to be too presumptuous. That's just a pretended humility.

It's actually pride and unbelief when we don't take God at his word. Unwavering faith in these promises is the truest meekness before God. Now, hear it.

Fear not for I am with you. Brethren, I can't speak for each one of you. You have to attest to this.

There is something about loneliness that we fear. The idea to find ourselves by ourselves, to find ourselves forsaken, even if it's by people, to find ourselves abandoned or rejected. Brethren, in a certain respect, now hear me carefully on this.

In a certain respect, you and I, more or less, must each walk and serve and live our life alone. You say, what do you mean? I don't mean alone in that God isn't with us. That is the courage that we need to draw.

When I say alone, what I mean is this. Suffering is lonely. And any of you in this church that have been suffering, it can be a lonely place.

Charles later did a message called The Loneliness of Christ. You know what his point was? That Jesus had no one who could enter into what He was going through. Singleness can be lonely.

Pain can be lonely. Singleness can be lonely. Being in a bad marriage can be lonely.

And you all know what I mean. We're all made of the same stuff. Leadership is lonely.

Tears can be lonely. Brethren, I often think of lost people. Ruby and I will watch something.

And it's a lost person who gets in a difficult situation. And my immediate response inside is to want to cry out to the Lord for help. Abba.

And then I think, oh, they're lost. I see it in life. I see it around me.

People who are lonely when there's any sort of need, they have no God to rest on. They have no God to call to. Or brethren, worse yet, is fake religion.

When you have somebody in the church that's playing at religion, but they don't really know the help. They don't have God to call upon. And brethren, what we have here is fear not.

He doesn't leave you when you've had a bad day. He doesn't leave you when you've had a bad year. He doesn't leave you when you've spoken an unkind word.

He doesn't leave you when the devil tells you that he has. He doesn't leave you when the way forward is unclear. Brethren, he says, I'll be with you.

And sometimes he takes us into dark places, just like Christian. Valley of the Shadow of Death is a dark place. And you hear these voices and the devil's whispering in your ear.

And the devil tells you he has forsaken you. And the devil tells you it's only going to be horrible. I remember one time, I think we were in the midst of, it may have been in the season of planting corpus, but I can remember it was like I had a voice in my head that was just saying, what you are going through right now and hellish things where I was under some bombardment.

And it's like this voice was saying, the whole rest of your life is going to be like this. It's going to be, but it was like, so be it. Christ is worthwhile.

And the confidence, we'd hear banging on our house. It was demonic stuff when we first came here to the east side. But it's like when that would happen, such a peace would overcome just knowing God is with me.

God is the protector. It says, be not dismayed for I am your God. And brethren, he is God.

He's the mighty God. He's the God of gods, the only true God. But for him to say, I am your God, the Lord, your God has chosen.

This is out of Deuteronomy 7, chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. You need to recognize this. When God says, look, don't fear.

You don't be dismayed. I am your God. He is saying, I have made you a treasured possession of mine.

You are dear to me. I am going to watch over you. You don't have to fear here.

And when I say God is my God, think about what you're saying. He's my God. There was a time when he wasn't my God, but he's my God.

Brethren, that is all good things just rolled up in one package. He is my God. I have it.

He is my exceedingly great reward. He's mine. He's David in Psalm 18 says my God, my strength, my rock, my shield, my stronghold, my fortress, my deliverer.

And you look at the word dismayed in the new American standard, because they kind of get down to what the word actually means. It says, do not fear. I'm with you.

Do not anxiously look about you. That word dismayed actually has the idea of looking. Don't look with some anxiety around you.

The meaning is basically this, to look around as someone does who's in a state of alarm or a state of distress, or they see danger. The sense is that, you know what, no matter what danger you see, you can remain calm. You can be collected, no anxiety, dread, no uneasiness about the enemies.

Why? Because he's with me. Brethren, he, he can subdue your enemy in a second and anything they do, he is allowed. They're all on his chain.

They all go only as far as he allows. He's absolutely in control. Oh, sometimes it's like we find Newton.

Yes. I asked the Lord that I might grow. And you know what? He's going to let something loose on us.

That wasn't the way we wanted it to happen, but he's in control of all these things. Then the next text, I will strengthen you. Another fear that every good man and woman is confronted with arises from the sense of our own personal weakness.

Brethren, you can't be a true Christian and haven't had the situation where you've been confronted by something that you just recognize. The Lord is telling me to do this. The Lord is calling me to put to death sin, to put together the deeds of the body.

He's calling me to do warfare. He's telling me to kill lust. He's telling me to kill covetousness.

He's telling me to kill all this bitterness and unforgiveness. He's telling me to do all sorts of things. He calls me to a task to evangelize the world.

He calls us to wrestle. We'd wrestle not against flesh and blood. He's calling us to wrestle against fallen angels.

I mean, we look at this kind of stuff. Brethren, if any of you aren't confronted by your own weakness, you don't know reality. You're blind to it all.

Brethren, God's given me a task to accomplish, but I'm so weak. Brethren, I'm supposed to head on the 3rd of June to the Netherlands. Arijan Pan, the guy has me preaching 15 times in 16 days.

I have no idea. I already feel exhausted just thinking about it. Of course, coming back from Lebanon right now might add to that, but it's like if I'm ever confronted by this, but brethren, David Wilkerson said that the church in the Netherlands is like a sleeping giant, and if it could just be awakened, the damage it could do to the kingdom of darkness.

And I just feel like, wow, if there's anything that possibly God might open the door for me, even play a little part in trying to awaken this thing, but I just feel I'm not sufficient. Parents, you've been there. God's given me these children.

I mean, the more I try to raise them, the more I pray for them, it seems like the harder their hearts get. I'm trying to homeschool them. It seems like it's just a backwards deal.

I don't feel the strength. I don't feel the strength to fight the battles that we must fight, accomplish the deeds that God calls us to do. But here's the thing, brethren, no matter how little we are, and we are little, it's just like Israel going into the promised land, being confronted by the giants.

It's like we're grasshoppers. We're just these little bugs, and it's real. That's all the more that we are.

But folks, little is much when God is in it. And the thing is, no matter what he calls us to, he's promised that he's going to strengthen us. Who can tell what might be done? Our strength is never equal to what God calls us to do.

Never. And then there's this, I will help you. And brethren, so often, you know what the problem is? We look for help in others.

Help is something we want, but we often look for it in the wrong place. We look for, brethren, so often we look for help in numbers. David numbered Israel.

We look for it in money. Some trust in chariots. Asa trusted the doctors.

Brethren, you can find throughout the Scripture where good men trusted the wrong thing. I will help you. He can flex the universe to bend however is necessary for our sakes.

He's with us. He can do that. He can help.

His help is real. I will help you. I will.

Yes, he can use a million means to help you, but he says, I will help you. Whether he uses one of those means or he oversteps them all, he's going to be a help to us. And brethren, you need to have confidence in that.

We need help. We need help in time of need. And he controls it all.

He's master of all. And he gives us promise. Finally, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And I just think about that. His righteous right hand, the right hand, the hand of power, and it's righteous. And when you think about the things you've done, what he ought to do with that righteous right hand and his righteousness, he would have been so just just to dash us.

Why can he uphold us with a righteous right hand? Because all righteousness has been fulfilled. Because there's nothing outstanding on our record. If we trusted Christ, nothing at all.

I will uphold you. Brethren, that's good news for people who are prone to fall. Brethren, do you ever feel that? If he abandoned me for a second, I am going down.

I know I failed. So many times, times the enemy comes in with such violence. Have you ever felt it? Have you ever felt the battle with sin? Is it something to draw you to tears? We fear we might fall.

Lord, hold me fast. Don't let the enemy get an advantage over me. Don't let me slip.

What does he say? Don't fret. I will uphold you. My righteous right hand, brethren, that is the same hand that holds the stars.

It holds the moon. It holds the sun. And he holds us.

We are very protected people. Sometimes we don't feel like it. Why? Because we get so wrapped up in what our eyes see.

But our faith, brethren, our faith needs to lock in right here. Lord, please do as you've promised. Hold me till the end.

Don't let me go. Keep firm grasp of me. Brethren, I just want to encourage you.

Take these promises. Look, I know this. When I was laying on my back, one thing about laying on your back in pain is I wasn't allowed to simply have my daily devotions going through Isaiah and read Isaiah 41.10 in passing.

Laying on my back in that pain and basically having that one text, I read it over and over and over and over. And I'm not going to say that it was glorious the first time or the second time. It was as I laid there and I contemplated those words and I chewed on them.

Brethren, there is no substitute for meditation. One of the greatest ways you will meditate on the Word of God is to memorize it. Brethren, I want to send you out.

Take these promises by the hand of faith. Go out and live on them. Let them sink in that he's promising.

I am your God. I am with you. I will strengthen.

I will help. I will uphold. Brethren, that is the promise to you.

If you trust, be in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I didn't see much of what Stuart did, but I pulled up something at one point when I was Lebanon. All he saw was he was talking like this string that went over to the shore.

And I don't know what the whole deal he was developing. But brethren, I can remember that Charles would talk about a bridge and basically your faith can be ever so wavering. But if you've got a good solid bridge out there, it's going to hold you up.

Your faith to walk out there, though it be so trembling and brethren, you can have trembling, you can have this, this faith like a mustard seed, but you grab hold of these things. God, you have said you're going to confront things where you need these promises, my brothers and sisters, every one of us. Father, I pray you'd help us to really believe you when you say this.

I ask it in Christ's name. Amen. You are dismissed.