PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

We ended last week with the question: can we experience a release from the fear of death? Our answer was yes, we can! Many people, some Christians included, see death as an intruder. Gandhi, the great Indian leader and politician, started his model of the Swaraj movement to help people overcome the fear of death. Politics was only a minor part of his purpose. ‘My aim’, he said, ‘was the abandonment of the fear of death. So long as we let ourselves be influenced by the fear of death, we can never attain freedom.’ So the fear of death is one tool that Lucifer and his cohorts uses to hold people down as slaves instead of people seeing death as a gateway to freedom into a more better life in eternity especially for true Christians, they resorts to fear! When we come to look at the fear of death, it seems to consist of three elements: First, the fear of the physical act of dying. Second, the fear of finality. Third, the fear of judgment. Let’s look first at the fear of the physical act of dying. This is very real to some people. Perhaps they have suffered and know, through bitter experience, how pain lacerates and hurts. Doctors assure us that what some people call ‘the agony of death’ is felt much more by those who are watching than by the one who is passing away. Sir Frederick Treves, an eminent surgeon, said, ‘A last illness may be long, wearisome and painful, but the closing moments of it are, as a rule, free from suffering. There may appear to be a terrible struggle at the end, but of this struggle the subject is unconscious. It is the onlooker who bears the misery of it.’ Add to this natural phenomenon the supporting power of God’s never –failing grace, and it is possible to look even this physical aspect of death quietly in the face and say, ‘My enemy –you are not really the terror that you seem.’

We come now to the phrase which many commentators see as marking the halfway stage of this Psalm: ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.’ The scene these words conjure up in mind is that of the evening time, when the shepherd leads his sheep down the mountainside into the valley, where long flickering shadows lie across the trail. The sheep, because they are so timid and defenseless, are often frightened by this experience. But they follow the shepherd and are comforted. They will not fear evil because he is with them. Millions of Christians have been greatly comforted by this verse as they have passed through the dark valley of death. It underlines the fact that although death may appear to be a dark valley, it is not something to fear, but an experience through which one passes on the path to a more perfect life. The Good Shepherd is well aware of our fear of death and constantly seeks to reassure us that, for the Christian, death is but a dark valley opening into an eternity of endless delight. He has told us: ‘Surely I will be with you alway’ –yes, even in the valley of the shadow of death! What a comfort –what a consolation. Many Christians fail to enjoy life because of a morbid fear of death –it overshadows all they think and do. The message translates our text for today: ‘…. Free all who cover through life, scared to death of death.’ Note the fear in some of the words: ‘cower’, ‘scared to death’. Can there be a release from such fears? Thank God –there can! And there is! This is why we must make sure that we are in Christ all the days of our life without falling by the way side out of temptations!

We spend one last day meditating on the phrase: ‘He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake’. The benefit of following the Lord’s path, of being guided by the Holy Spirit of God rather than our own self-determined ways, is that we shall be led from one good pasture to another without trouble, without failure and without frustrations. A good Shepherd always endeavors to keep his sheep on the move, thus avoiding over-use of the land and enabling them to continually enjoy wholesome, fresh forage. Philip Keller says, in commenting on this point: ‘… whenever the shepherd opens a gate into fresh pasture, the sheep are filled with excitement. As they go through the gate even the staid old ewes will often kick up their heels and leap with delight at the prospect of finding fresh feed. How they enjoy being led on a new ground.’ kicking up our heels means having a lively and enjoyable time, or doing things you enjoy. Do you experience a similar excitement as the Good Shepherd leads you day by day to wholesome, fresh food? Are you someone who wants to continually feed on just one doctrine or truth, and never go over to enjoy the other pathways and pastures which God has for you in His Word? Be assured of this –God wants us to move with Him day by day and discover fresh revelation as He opens up to us new insights and understanding of His precious Word. Every Christian can meet the day with as much joy as a sheep that is being led into fresh new pasture. Spiritually we can kick up our heels and leap with delight at the prospect of finding fresh new food. Expect God to show you some new insight day by day. Faith is expectancy –according to your expectancy be it unto you.

We are seeing that our desire for self-determination has got be curbed, checked, controlled, if possible eradicated or else it will lead us into ruining ways that are not the Way. ‘One of the characteristics of a radiant Christian’, says J. Oswald Smith, ‘is willingness to put his personal life and affairs into the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ–without qualification and without reservation.’ This is a real challenge, a war of decision inside oneself but it is what I believe Lord Jesus is referring to in part when He talks about taking up the cross daily. It means being prepared day by day to put self-interest to death and to say: ‘No longer my will Lord, but Yours be done in my life O God my Lord.’ It is a difficult kind of life to live because you have got to fight with a lot of counter decisions inside of your heart or mind and unless you are an embodiment of the Lord’s Word and a strong decisive Christ believing person with a strong fear of the Lord in your heart otherwise self and an inclination to what the people will say, will miss lead you to enter in the wrong way, the carnal way! When the urge towards self-assertion, self-aggrandizement and self-pleasing or satisfaction gives way to the desire to please and satisfy God, much of the stress and strain goes out of life. Dr William Sadler, a Psychiatrist tells of a lady he once treated who said to him, ‘You know, I am a very sensitive person.’ ‘Yes’, said Dr Sadler, ‘I know you are a very selfish person.’ ‘But I didn’t say “selfish”’, protested the woman. ‘I did’, replied the doctor. She went away angry, but ten days later she came back, and confessed it was true she is selfish. Because she after pondering deeply on the Dr’s alleging selfishness on her she realized that it was her self-centredness that was the basis of her poor mental health. We need to be very careful with ourselves and how we evaluates ourselves so that self will not always miss lead us and one way to be such careful is to be guided by the word of God in all that we do in life! Many of us go to Church on Sundays, hear the word of God but we don’t make it a part of us and we don’t live it in our daily life, too bad; which is why we fall into diverse temptations and troubles! When we pray the prayer…lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil…, one way that our Lord Jesus does this for us is through and by His Word, so if you don’t know His word then how can you follow? The man who was the healthiest Person who ever lived on our planet earth, a Man who radiated health –only to touch Him was to be made whole –followed the way of His Father right to the very end. When confronted by the Cross, His own cross in life He was greatly tempted to follow His own desires, His own selfish desire different from what His Father desired and take the way that seemed best, easy and safe to Him, but He came through the struggle inside of Him to say: having quickly realized Himself, ‘Father …not as I will, but as You Will.’ God’s way is not just a way, or even the best way –it is the Way; the Only Way!

This is one of the reasons why I always talk of being an embodiment of the Word of God because being embodiment of God’s word is the only time you can speak as David did saying…Your law is within my heart; how many of us can proudly say that in reality in life? We are seeing that when we try to follow our own way instead of the way into which the divine Shepherd (our Lord our God) wants to lead us, we often finish up being self–defeated and self –disrupted with confusion and frustrations here and there but still we will not realize that it is because we are following our own way. As one writer puts it: ‘If you won’t live according to God’s way, you can’t even live with yourself.’ A cartoon I once saw shows a doctor taking the pulse of a very sick world. He shakes his head and says: ‘You are in a bad way –you are allergic to yourself.’ You see, if you insist on going your own way, and self-interest and self-concern become the driving force of your being, then you will eventually be driven into conflict with yourself. You will find yourself with all kinds of problems and complexes –you will be allergic to yourself; because you are not following the good Shepherd, the Owner of the universe Who only the orderly created things obeys and be in peace! Learn how to follow Him and you will not only find peace but you will be in peace. A woman once said to me: ‘I’ve insisted upon having my own way all my life, but now I am middle-aged it has caught up with me. I’m empty, incapable of accomplishing anything.’ You can get away with having your own way for a while, but in the end it will catch up with you –that which is whispered in the ear will be shouted from the housetops (Matt. 10:27, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim upon the housetops”). A Christian who has never learned to go God’s way rather than his own way gets nowhere –and everybody can see it. Lord Jesus penetratingly said: ‘For whoever wants to save his life will lose it’ (Luke 9:24, “For whoever would preserve his life and save it will lose and destroy it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he will preserve and save it [from the penalty of eternal death]”). Notice, He did not say, ‘whoever saves his life will lose it’, but ‘whoever wants to save his life will lose it’. He wants to save it, but he loses it –it goes to pieces. Why? Because the law of the universe decrees it. Life will not back the person who refuses to take God’s way, for the person’s way is not the Way. The way is God’s Way!