Sermon Cloud

The Idol of Man. Text: John 12:42-43. What is the Fear of Man? Context. They loved the glory that comes from people more than the glory that came from God. (the opinion of, approval of, respect of…) This is called the Fear of Man: concern about what others think of us; Desire for human approval or fear of rejection; Desire to be respected, esteemed, admired, loved, included, invited in with an accompanying fear of being overlooked, mistreated, neglected, ignored, disrespected, excluded or victimized. These are legitimate desires and fears. They keep us from sinful and destructive behavior. When the desires go unmet or the fears are actualized there is pain, wounded-ness and sorrow. When desires are met and fears are escaped there is happiness and sense of pleasure and safety. The problem is when these natural and legitimate desires become inordinate or excessive and controlling. We become consumed about what people think about us, having an excessive fixation on people’s opinions (even if we don’t know them). We feel we need the approval of someone or anyone and we fear their rejection. We begin to define ourselves by how others are responding to us or how we perceive their perception of us.

How does an inordinate fear of man express itself? Questions adapted from Welch.
*Do you need something from others? Expect a lot from people? * Do you crave compliments? *Are you ever afraid you might be exposed as an imposter? Is everyday Halloween for you and you are terrified that there might be an unmasking? *Are you overly concerned with how you look, what you weigh, or how you are dressed? *Do you think about your self-worth or self-esteem a lot, needing people to fill you up? *Do you often feel unappreciated? * Do you make excuses for your mistakes, justify bad behavior or shift blame because you can’t handle the thought of failing before people? *Do you show favoritism? *Are you over committed? Illus: CS Lewis and the Inner Ring page 147-48; Illus: being invited to Western Europe. *Do you get easily embarrassed? Do you get nervous in groups or when you have to stand before them? Illus: Drama class first day assignment – compensating under the gaze of others. *Do you compare yourself to others and feel good when you win or feel envy when you lose? You are defining yourself by another.

This fear of man leads to bondage. We end up enslaved to other’s opinions of us or fear what they can do to us. Our idols own us; this idol has the power to own us like no other; can tell us how to think, what to feel, how to act, what to wear, and when to laugh, and who to be.

Why do we struggle with the fear of man? What is at the root of the fear of man? Simply put: we are wrong and desperately want to be right. We are glory-hungry. Fall- had glory but lost it – from glory to guilt and shame – naked, fully exposed before one another and God. They sensed their own failure and that deep in their core they had fallen short of all that God intended them to be, fell from glory. This fall created tremendous inadequacy and insecurity before God and before one another. So, they tried make themselves right and restore their glory before God and one another by covering themselves up with fig leaves and making excuses for their failures. We are their descendents. Deep down we know something is wrong with us and deep down we want to be right. There is a deep sense of inadequacy and insecurities so we look to the most tangible fig leaves we can to compensate and bolster our sagging sense of self and restore our glory: accomplishments, beauty, wealthy, and people. We use them to make us feel right, to justify us, to satisfy our glory hunger. We need their approval and fear their rejection. We are trusting in others, using them to heal us, validate us, to save us, to restore our glory. But they can’t? Illus: Burma – broken Buddha. Asking broken people to fix us; fallen people to lift us up; glory deficient people to restore our glory. Yet, we keep hoping for them to save us and we are slaves.

How can we be liberated from the fear of man? *There is a glory, honor, approval and acceptance that is greater than what we can find from others. Shock of John 12:42-43. These people are looking to other inadequate people to save them,.. when they could have glory, approval, acceptance from the Ultimate Person in Christ. This is the good news in Christ – Christ had glory, laid it aside and has come, the only right and acceptable Person and died for the wrong and unacceptable so that in him we can have forgiveness and be declared right, accepted, approved – fully known and fully loved by God and one day have glory unfading. And ultimately, this is what we are longing for and are made for. This is the glory we are hungry for. * There is a deeper answer that stems from this one. John 12:23-28. Jesus is going to cross and at the cross will glorify the Father. Jesus is our savior and our model – look how free he was from the fear of man. He will be rejected by people, betrayed by his friend, denied by another, abandoned by all, but will bring the Father glory. This was Jesus’ ultimate desire, and therefore, lived free of the fear of man. The point: We need to be delivered from our obsession to be loved and honored and be consumed with a greater desire – for God to be loved and honored. The ruling desire of our hearts must be to love the Father like Jesus loved the Father; to be less pre-occupied with ourselves and more preoccupied with God. This is key to your joy and freedom. He does not satisfy us by giving us great thoughts about ourselves, but by giving us great affections for Him. This is why you get more joy from standing before Niagara Falls than you do from standing before a mirror. Joy does not come from more attention but more awe. * When that happens – when we are liberated from the incessant need to be accepted by people because we have been accepted by the Ultimate person and we are now governed by a ruling desire to love and honor the Father, instead of being loved and honored, we are able to focus on loving people instead of using people. John 12:24. We cannot love people we need – we can only use them. IF we want to be free from the fear of man we must love them as Jesus loves them and be willing to lay our lives down for their good instead of asking them to be our good.

Conclusion: As we conclude the series, God is calling us to be a counter-cultural community that does that bow to the idols of our age but finds in Jesus Christ life: identity, meaning, happiness, security – trusting and treasuring all that God is for us in Christ above all things.