Bill Johnson - Breaking the Fear of Man and Embracing the Fear of God
Because this world has a right to see who Jesus is: He’s alive; He’s resurrected; He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. It’s the believers who have chosen not to live contaminated by the fear of men that embrace fully the fear of God and live in that fear. The fear of God doesn’t drive us from Him; it endears us to Him. This morning, I accidentally changed my GPS voice to male. Now it just says, «It’s around here somewhere. Keep driving.» I think I may need professional help. A chef, a butler, and a maid should be enough! Yeah, adulthood is saying, «But after this week, things will slow down a bit.» Over and over until you die. Oh, this one’s so dumb, but I love it: if you suck at playing the trumpet, that’s probably why. Oh yeah, so no, this—I didn’t know this! This is a revelation to me. A husband asked, «Where in the Bible does it say it’s a man’s job to do the dishes?» The wife responds, «2 Kings 21:13 says, 'And I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.'»
Who knew? Oh, this is a revelation, all right. One more: a young businesswoman, flushed with success, was opening a new branch office. A friend decided to send a floral arrangement for the grand opening. When he arrived at the opening, he was appalled to find that his wreath bore the inscription, «Rest in peace.» Angrily, he complained to the florist. After apologizing, the florist said, «Now look at it this way: somewhere, a man was buried under a wreath today that said, 'Good luck in your new location! '» Good luck in your new location! Yeah, all right, we’ll just leave that right where it is. I hope it worked out well for him; that’s all I can say. I hope it worked out well.
Open your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 14. There’s a storyline here that I want to follow. Actually, we’re going to go through the entire chapter; we won’t read every verse, but we’ll take the entire story. There are three stories back-to-back that are all interrelated that I think are important for us to take a look at today. Here’s the context I want. In fact, let me read a passage out of Galatians, and then I’ll talk to you for a minute before we get started. Galatians 5 has the passage on the fruit of the Spirit, so let me read that to you. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law. Let me read it again: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law.
What I wanted to start with is just to draw your attention to the fact that it says the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruits of the Spirit. They are not individual fruits. It’s not love and kindness and peace and patience as separate things; they are all actually different flavors of the same influence, different expressions of the same influence of the Holy Spirit. It’s a fruit. It would be like I had a marvelous peach last night—thank you, Jesus, for peaches—and to give the taste profile of that particular fruit, it has so many different aspects to the taste profile. That’s what the fruit of the Spirit is; it’s manifested in so many unique and different ways. When the Holy Spirit has influence in somebody’s life, it manifests in specific measurable ways. The life of the believer is 100 percent about our relationship with the Holy Spirit and Him bringing about the resurrected Christ illustrated in and through how we do life: how we think, our ambitions, dreams—all those things immersed in this measure, if you will, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Last week, I talked to you about thankfulness, and my goodness, I don’t remember the last time I got to do two Sundays in a row, so this is a sign and a wonder for me, but I’m very, very happy for this moment. So I made this sit here all day long; I just kind of soak it in. But I talked to you last week about the military power of thankfulness. Thanksgiving, specifically giving thanks, has such a profound and unique influence on our lives personally, our internal world, and on the circumstances around us. It actually is a disarming element that takes tools of the enemy out of his hand and places them into the submission of the Lord. It’s a profound influence a thankful heart has, and it’s a military move. It would be the same as if we were in combat somewhere and we were making strategic maneuvers. Thankfulness, the specific act of Thanksgiving, is a military move.
What I wanted to do from that, however, is to try to bring in a little bit more of the rest of the story. Character is a military strength. There are many things we experience in life that we experience only because we did foolish things, and thankfully, Jesus rescues us. He rescues us, but He rescued us because of our choices. It was an unnecessary rescue. It was unnecessary in the sense that if I hadn’t feared, if I hadn’t compromised, if I hadn’t lived under the fear of man, whatever it might have been, I wouldn’t have needed Him to rescue me. I’m not punished for it; He just looks for better for me.
I like to illustrate the profound effect of character by taking a look at the old cities of the Old Testament. You have these massive cities with walls; some of them were so high and so thick that they could actually run chariots on top of the wall. I mean, they were just massive. So, if you can imagine living in such a city, you’ve got this vast city, commerce—everything’s going on on the inside—you’re protected by these walls, and you could have an army on the outside throwing cannonballs at your wall and never even know you’re under attack because of the safety that those walls provide. Well, those walls are character. That’s what character does. Character actually insulates us—not from everything. If you’re under a spiritual conflict, it doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. I’m just saying there is a depth and a strength to character that insulates and protects us from so many of the spiritual environments to which we become vulnerable. So many people live under this constant awareness of spiritual warfare that they are only in because of fear; they are only in that conflict because they’ve not taken care of an issue.
If you have a massive wall and there’s a break in the wall, where’s the enemy going to attack? He’s going to come through that place of weakness, always. He’s always going to try to come through where there’s no gate. He’s going to try to come through where there’s a breach in the wall. The issue of character is what protects us and keeps us safe from a large percentage of the kinds of conflicts that the enemy would like to bring on people. Why does he work so hard to get us to fear? Because fear removes us from the place of safety into a place of vulnerability. Fear actually puts us in a position where it’s almost like we’re saying we can handle this one on our own because fear is not submission to the Lord; fear is not yielding to the Holy Spirit’s work in and through us. It’s actually us removing ourselves—not from salvation, not that it’s just removing ourselves from the constant influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to help us be victorious in yet another situation.
So what I want to do is look at a very different story about Herod. Herod ends up killing John the Baptist. John the Baptist rebuked him for having somebody else’s wife, and Herod didn’t like that, so he ended up dead. Forerunners lose their heads! We have a sign-up sheet out front for anyone who wants to get on it; we have a new ministry starting today called the Forerunner Ministry. All right, Matthew Chapter 14. We’re going to start with verse 3. Verse 4: John had said to him, «It’s not lawful for you to have her.» Although he wanted to put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet. When Herod’s birthday was celebrated, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod. Therefore, he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. So, she, having been prompted by her mother, said, «Give me John the Baptist’s head here on a platter.» The king was sorry; nevertheless, because of the oaths and because of those who sat with him, he commanded it to be given to her.
This is kind of a weird story. The Bible is filled with weird stories. This isn’t the weirdest, but it’s in there. Herod, the guy who is the most powerful man on the planet at this time, is making decisions because of the fear of men. No one is outside the reach of the fear of man. You see it with the Pharisees; they would not answer. Jesus would ask them a question, and they refused to answer because they were afraid of the crowd. Saul, King Saul, actually started as a humble leader, but he fell into trouble because he didn’t want to make a decision when the people were thinking something else. He would blame the people. «The people preserved the sheep; the people did this; the people did that.» There was this constant wrestling in his own heart because of insecurity.
Insecurity is a wrong security. Exposed insecurity is a gift when you see it because it’s exposing your wrong security; it’s because of insecurity that we begin to draw from the opinions of people around us. And here’s the deal: the devil doesn’t come to us with a red rubber suit, a pitchfork, and horns; he comes as an angel of light. In other words, he comes at our point of greatest weakness to appeal to us to think like he does. Fear of man masquerades as wisdom. Fear of man is, «I need to be humble; I need to submit myself to counsel; make sure I receive input.» The problem is the fear of man will always lead you in the opposite direction to what the Holy Spirit is saying to do.
The answer is not to become callous towards people. That indifference or that callousness is the opposite of love. It is not at all what God has called us into. There is a discernment with the fear of God you don’t get with the fear of men. The fear of man distorts and perverts our perception of situations, of people, of circumstances. The fear of man actually distorts how we see and reason about a given situation. Now, if you’re the daughter who just did this dance, and the most powerful man on the planet said you can have anything you want, who in their right mind is going to choose the head of another person as the great prize? So there’s the fear of men, and then there’s the fear of women. Amen, amen! Most of the people that scare me the most on this planet are women! Oh! But Heidi is in that list; it just goes from there—just Tracy, all of them! Honestly, what would possess a young lady, when she could choose any number of things to set her up for the rest of her life, to choose the head of a prophet on a platter? It’s called the fear of man.
Fear of man distorts values. I personally think the three number one killers of our faith, in a sense, are our lifestyle of breakthrough, bitterness, resentment, disappointment, and not knowing how to handle them, and the fear of man. Those three things undermine the lifestyle of a faith-filled believer in ways you can’t believe. It’s the Trojan Horse we embrace; wisdom so we allow the enemy into our camp, if you will, into our counsel, and we start thinking in ways that are contrary to what radical obedience looks like.
Well, that went over well. We’ll just keep going here. Verse 13 says, «When Jesus heard it"—what did He hear? He heard that John had been beheaded in prison. I should read that verse 10. So he sent and had John beheaded in prison. The head was brought to her on a platter, to the girl. The disciples took the body, verse 12, and buried it. Verse 13 says, «When Jesus heard it, He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself.» Okay, stop right there for a minute. We’ll go through the rest of the story here, but we know in Scripture it says that Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. So every emotional challenge, every kind of circumstance that would rattle us were circumstances that He faced without sin. He didn’t sin in intention, ambition, and dream; He didn’t sin in attitude; He didn’t sin in behavior, and there wasn’t even a hint of compromise, but He still experienced the emotional challenges. He wept at Lazarus’s gravesite. There’s a human element there that is important for us to recognize.
Now we’ve got one—He knows that there is a man He just praised three chapters earlier, Matthew 11. He talked about John as being the greatest man among all the prophets. The greatest of all the Old Testament prophets is John. No one was of the quality and stature of John. Jesus had a value, an affinity, of respect for this man, and now this man just died because of Him. Now I don’t want to pretend to know what’s going on in Jesus' heart or mind; all I know is that this happened, and He knew He had to go pray. What do you do when you’ve got your loss, your disappointment, your unanswerable crash? What do you have when you’ve got somebody who just suffered because of a decision you’ve made? Jesus is facing this, and He immediately goes to pray. Some people will turn to alcohol or drugs; other people will gather a bunch of friends and have them encourage them, which is a positive thing, but there’s only one place to really get fixed, and that’s up on the mountain.
There’s a slot on the mountain that’s reserved for you and it’s something you climb when you’re emotionally fatigued; you’ve been hit hard by a set of situations and circumstances. The whole picture of climbing a mountain to meet with God—it’s not that we get there by our works; it just reminds me it costs me. Every time it costs me. I have to get over myself to climb the mountain. I have to get over myself and the circumstances to meet alone with God. For me, those times are not quick prayers; they’re not token prayers; it’s not a token exercise so that I feel better about myself. I have to meet with the only One who can heal the fragile, broken place of my heart, and it takes time.
If I do that today—let’s say I have a crisis today and I meet alone with the Lord this afternoon, I climb that mountain, so to speak. I do everything I know to do, but there’s still brokenness there. Then I go back tomorrow. The point is there’s only one solution. Our greatest challenge at times is that in this culture we have so many options, and Jesus is in the list. But in situations like this, He should be the only one on the list. Meeting with the Father in these moments is the only place to actually get things reset. It’s like a dislocated bone that gets put back into place, and that’s what positions us to move on into the next phase, which we’ll see in a minute.
Loss and disappointment—those kinds of situations—all of us face; those are the moments you feel least like emptying your heart before the Lord, and they are the moments that have the greatest effect. It goes on to say when Jesus did this, the multitude saw Him and actually followed Him. He was moved with compassion, it says in verse 14, and He healed their sick.
Now here’s an interesting part of the story. Jesus has just got the news that John is dead. Remember, He only does what He sees the Father do; He has set His heart to go meet with the Father. So this is what He’s going to do. On the way, He has a God-sent distraction. God the Father is not double-minded. Here’s what He does. It’s important for us to recognize when God sends something to do that doesn’t feel convenient. I’m trying to say this properly, but who knows? By the fourth service, you may just care less what I say! There’s something about having this direction from the Father, and then there’s a distraction.
Here’s another one: Jesus came knowing He was not to minister to the Gentiles, not to minister to the Samaritans. He told His own disciples, «Don’t do that. We’ve got to hear the Jews first.» Then, all right, so He’s at a well, and there’s a Samaritan woman there whom He profoundly touches. Why? He sees a faith in her that He knows can only come from the Father. So He knows this is what the Father is doing. She goes back to town and gets the entire town to show up. Jesus goes there and spends two or three days in a city He told His disciples not to go to. What was it? It was a God-given distraction.
Are you so stuck on the regiment that you miss the divine moment? Some of us are intensely committed to the protocol, not realizing the Lord will examine you to see: Can you recognize the divine moments that come unexpectedly and always inconveniently and almost always look like a contradiction? It’s all about presence! You can’t memorize enough principles and rules and formulas to get it right; it just doesn’t work that way. It’s always about presence.
So Jesus is going towards the Father; He’s moved with compassion—where does that come from? The Father! So what He knows, this is a divine moment. He heals their sick, multiplies the food—just a good day! Five thousand men, besides women and children, are fed, and then He goes back.
Verse 22 says He made His disciples get into a boat to go before Him to the other side. He sent the multitudes away. There is a time when the priority of encountering God is greater than all ministry demands and opportunities, and it’s just wisdom to know that. I’ve been trying to learn that one for 50 years, and I feel like I’m still in kindergarten. It’s just not that easy. It’s not a pass or fail; it’s just what measure of glory can you live under? That’s the test constantly: what measure can we live under?
Verse 23: When He had sent the multitude away, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray. So there He is—Jesus is on the mountain, and He sees the disciples in a storm. First of all, He’s on a mountain; can’t see them in the natural. Secondly, it’s at night. Thirdly, they’re in a life-threatening storm. So the only way He can see is through a gift of the Spirit. But He sees them and comes walking by them on water. One of them sees and cries out, «It’s a ghost!» Jesus responded to them saying, «Be of good cheer; it is I! Do not be afraid.»
Anyone notice whenever Jesus says that, it’s because you have a really good reason in your mind to be afraid? Peter answered and said, «Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water.» Now let’s just think through this for a minute: Something’s out there; we don’t know what it is or who it is. Secondly, we just learned it can talk. Whatever it is can talk! That’s not the point at which I say, «If you want me to come, just tell me to come and I’ll come to you on the water.» Because we already know it can talk!
Jesus has one word: «Come!» What Peter reveals—and the disciples actually reveal in John chapter 6—is that whenever Jesus spoke, they came alive inside. There was something different; it wasn’t the tone of voice; it wasn’t the familiarity of the voice; it was the fact that when He spoke, words became spirit and that Spirit empowered what He commanded. Everything for us comes down to learning to recognize presence, recognize voice. Because sometimes He comes walking on the water and it’s quite scary, but it’s a divine moment; it’s not a deception.
Now, sometimes He comes completely different. At the Mount of Transfiguration, it says He appeared as other; it wasn’t recognizable, but the voice is the same. Then He says come.
Peter walks. This is the easiest sermon in the world to preach because everything is so graphically illustrated: Peter, as long as he looks at Jesus, walks on water. When he looks at the waves and the wind, he starts sinking. He cries out, and Jesus saves him. It was an unnecessary rescue. Peter’s fear created the need for that rescue. When he saw the wind and he saw the waves, he was afraid. We tend to write books about the waves and the wind, write songs about them, and preach sermons about it instead of realizing it’s competing for our attention with the One who keeps us afloat.
Anything that competes for your attention competes for your affection. Anything that looks to get our attention is ultimately trying to get my affection—heartfelt commitment to this theme, this thought, this idea, this way of life. It’s always a battle for worship.
So, Jesus rescues Peter. Is anyone else glad He still rescues? It’s just good to recognize sometimes I got rescued because I got afraid, creating a mess and needing Him to show up again. The good thing to know is it’s not necessary; fear is not a requirement. In fact, the fear of God is really the only antidote for the fear of man.
Fear of God and fear of man can’t coexist. Don’t treat fear of man as a friend that you can just talk away gently; it’s an enemy because it wars for my soul. It wars for my affection; it wars for my attention.
It says here in verse 34 that when they crossed over, they came to a land in the land of Gennesaret, and when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region and brought to Him all who were sick and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. As many as touched it were made perfectly well.
Here’s the deal: loss and disappointment. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s what drove Jesus to the mountain to pray. So He’s got this moment of decision; He goes to the only place that can heal whatever issue of thought or heart He’s going through. He goes to that place to meet with the Father. When He comes down, He walks on water, and anyone who touches His clothing gets well. He’s in a moment. He meets with the Father, He walks on water, and anyone touches His clothing gets healed.
It’s always unto something. See, our greatest breakthroughs, our greatest expressions of the gospel, our greatest expressions of us stepping fully into what God has called us to be and do, come on the other side of a mountaintop encounter with God after a loss and a disappointment. It’s using loss well, using disappointment well, using betrayal well. Whatever it is that you’ve experienced or I’ve experienced, using it to get me alone is important.
I’m not opposed to counseling; please understand me. But sometimes, we want to hear something that soothes us from another human being instead of actually getting soothed, instead of actually getting healed in that time with the Father—in a place of yielding, surrender, worship. For me, it’s not a busy time of me doing a lot of talking. I’ll worship a bit, I’ll talk to Him; I’ll bear my soul. I will do things. You know I’ve told you before: God, it feels to me like You lied, and I know it’s impossible; You’re incapable of lying. But that’s where I need You to heal me.
I need to feel that reality; I need to have that sense restored to my own soul. I take those moments. Other than that, there’s not a lot of conversation; for me, it’s a lot of adoration, affection, surrender. But you stay there till you’re well. It’s not a five-minute prayer meeting; it’s an unending encounter with the only One who sees the details of what’s going on inside me. I don’t see it; I know pain, but I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what the answers are.
I can quote all the verses I know, but it’s not necessarily going to fix anything. What I need is I’ve got a seat reserved for me on the mountain that has my name on it. The only place I can go to get this thing restored and healed, put back into place to see the walking on the water, and everyone healed from His garment—those kinds of things, that’s on the other side of the mountain. The fear of man keeps you from the mountain.
The fear of man sends you into the crowd where you can be affirmed instead of appealed to. Now let me just say, as a side note, I am so thrilled for the encouragement, the affirmation, the prophetic, the friends we experience around here all the time. I don’t ever want that dialed down; I only want it dialed up. But I know in my heart of hearts that often times for me, I will receive all the encouragement I can get. I know the crowning touch of my restoration is alone time with the Father. That’s the only thing.
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, you also must do. This passage stood out to me this morning; it’s kind of an odd place to end a message like this in some ways, but maybe not.
I like it because the verse starts: You’re the elect of God—put on! Clothe yourself. It’s intentionally—when I got up this morning, I know it’ll shock you, but I put all these clothes on myself. I did! I actually took this shirt off the hanger, the everything! I’m in the socks—everything! It was intentional. I actually—you may like it; you may not like it, but it was intentional on my part. I put on, you know, what I wore today. I wore what I wanted to wear. That’s what I wore today.
I wore what I wanted to wear; it was intentional. I made the decision, and this passage says, «Because you’re the elect of God, you have a closet other people don’t have.» You can die of starvation with a million dollars in the bank if you don’t make withdrawals; your death is your fault! This says, «You’re the elect of God.» Self-doubt comes from forgetting who called us. Self-doubt only happens in the heart that has lost sight of the One who’s walking on the water, not the waves.
The elect of God—put on! Clothe yourself is the actual word. Dress up with kindness; dress up with mercy; dress up with peace. Clothe yourself with these things before you leave the house. Clothe yourself with these things. Why? Because this world has a right to see who Jesus is. He’s alive; He’s resurrected; He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. It’s the believers who have chosen not to live contaminated by the fear of men that embrace fully the fear of God and live in that fear. The fear of God doesn’t drive us from Him; it endears us to Him.
All right, I want you to stand. Hmm…thinking back to the outpouring of the Spirit that started here some 27 years ago, people would have these just bizarre encounters with God. You know, we would watch as people would tremble. I remember my wife—goodness! We were back in Toronto, and we were on the mothership and the meeting was over; there’s hardly anyone left in the room. Benny and I were walking out the back, and there was this guy—one of their staff guys—that locked eyes with my wife! She about tore my arm off! I mean, she had this electric, cutting encounter with the Lord Jesus that absolutely changed her. She was spectacular before; she was spectacular after!
I’m serious, I walked to the meeting that night with a lamb; I walked back to the hotel room with a lion! Something happened—she has the fear of man shaken off of her! Opinions of others are shaken off, and I tell you, from that point on, people think I really don’t care what other people think; that’s true! But my wife was worse! She was worse; she would make me look like a coward! You know, but what happened? It was an accountability. She had a mountaintop experience in the back of her room when somebody prayed for her.
I’m not saying it has to be an encounter like that where you shake for two hours. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying you’ve got to meet with Him! Because He’s the only One who knows how to uproot that thing, and He’s the only One who knows where the root system goes and how to not only uproot it but heal the very place it occupied. Yes!
All right, just put your hands in front of you; I want to pray for you. Thank you! You’re the only service that got that one; I just remembered—I’ve seen this happen! All right, so Father, we come to you first of all just acknowledging that we love You. We trust You; we will fear no one else; we will bend our knee before no other name but the name Jesus. We will not bow before any other god, power, or entity, but I do ask right now that in Your mercy You rescue us once again. Help us to step into a new level of life, of anointing, a breakthrough where the fear of man is silenced. Help us not fall for that trick again and again, but to stand firmly in the delight and the joy of the fear of God. I do pray for that in Jesus' name.