Scripture References, Word & Phrase descriptions: the “Logos Reftagger” scripture links are hover pop-up active, meaning the scripture reference will just pop-up if you hover your cursor over it (don’t click on the link, just hover your cursor over it), when finished reading, hover your cursor off the scripture reference link. If the Reftagger pop-up doesn’t show all the verses, left click on the “More” button in the Reftagger pop-up window and it will take you to the online bible. If RefTagger pop-ups don’t work on your computer, that’s OK, try right clicking the link then open in new tab or window; or if that doesn’t work, you can always use your Bible to look up the verses. Word or Phrase definition links may not have a website that opens.
Preparing yourself for the study of God’s Word
Before we begin, only if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ (that is; you have believed [trusted] in Him for His promised gift of eternal life) John 3:16, John 6:47 as a few examples; it is very important to prepare yourself to learn God's Word so the Holy Spirit can teach you as to what your reading or hearing is true or false. To be taught by the Holy Spirit you must be filled with the Holy Spirit which means abiding in Christ. To place yourself in fellowship with God the Holy Spirit [also called abiding in the Christ], take a moment to simply name, cite or acknowledge [confess] your known unconfessed sins privately to God (i.e.; with your thoughts directed only to God the Father). Why? Because you cannot grow spiritually if you’re not abiding in Christ [in fellowship with Him] when you take in bible truth.
1 John 1:9, says: “If we confess [meaning to simply name, cite or acknowledge to God the Father] our sins [known unconfessed sins], He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins [known sins] and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness [all unknown and forgotten sins];” NKJV [New King James Version]; we call this REBOUND; read the full doctrine as to “why” we need to use 1 John 1:9 to grow spiritually. Left click the following link to learn more and fully understand the doctrine of Rebound; which answers the question, why do I need to keep confessing my sins all the time? REBOUND
If you have never personally believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God, the promised Messiah, as your Savior (that is, believed in Him for eternal life), the issue for you is not to name your sins; the issue for you is to simply exercise faith alone in Jesus Christ alone eternal life; when you do, you will instantly receive Eternal Life: John 3:16, 5:24, 6:47, 20:30, 31.
John 6:47 says: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me [Jesus Christ] has everlasting life." NKJV
Notice again what Jesus said in John 6:47: "…he who believes in Me (Jesus Christ) has everlasting life." It doesn't say, "will have"; it says, "has." Therefore, the very moment you believe in Jesus Christ for His promise of everlasting life, you have it (it's really just that simple; nothing more and nothing less), and it can never be taken away from you (John 10:28-29). Furthermore, the gift (Ephesians 2:8c) of everlasting life (also called eternal life in scripture) is available to every human being; there are absolutely no exceptions.
John 3:14-15, 16, 17, 18, says: "14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." NKJV
Let us now bow our hearts and take a moment to prepare for worship and learning God's Word. If there is any known sin in your life, this is the time to just cite it privately to God the Father with your thoughts directed towards Him. With your head bowed and your eyes closed, you have total privacy in your mind and soul:
Study to show yourself approved to God!
Grace Bible Church
Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
The Tree of Life is a weekly teaching summary:
God’s Word is taught Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday
STUDY TITLE:
Weekly Bible Study, April 3, 2023; Fear will torment you and punish you. Part 2.
The next part of our study on fear is found in Exo 14, a passage that shows fear is lack of doctrinal thinking under pressure. It is a general problem in life.
We are designed by God to be rational creatures but fear makes us irrational. But there is actually a command and it tells us that there is only one thing to fear:
Heb 4:1-3, Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, “As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest,” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to really live.
Heb 13:6, so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What shall man do to me?”
This is a quotation of Psa 56:4, In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me?
Let’s get some principles:
1. To face your fears and not be afraid is one of the great tests of spiritual maturity.
2. Fear is also crippling, it shackles those who could do great things and keeps them from even attempting that which they could possibly achieve.
3. Fear chokes and kills dreams and creativity and the most interesting thing about fear is that it is a learned behavior.
4. Fear is something that, if not controlled, continues to develop in your life until you have no capacity to enjoy life and as a believer you become a loser.
Speaking of the ungodly David said in Psa 53:5, “There they were in great fear where no fear had been;”
You see fear is irrational thinking, and in this verse there was no reason to fear! No matter how much wealth you have, success, prosperity, you’ll have all kinds of fears.
Psa 55:1-5, (For the choir director; on stringed instruments. A Maskil of David [a Maskil is a song or poem of instruction].) “Give ear to my prayer, O God; And do not hide Thyself from my supplication. Give heed to me, and answer me; I am restless in my complaint and am surely distracted, Because of the voice of the enemy, Because of the pressure of the wicked; For they bring down trouble upon me, And in anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me, And the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me; And horror has overwhelmed me.”
That is what fear will do! Fear destroys happiness. Where fear is, happiness is not. That’s because there is no way you can have true love or true happiness apart from a healthy mental attitude. Fear destroys the mental attitude. Most of our problems and obstacles would melt away if, instead of shrinking in fear before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them. This is what happen to the children of Israel in when Moses told them to “stand still” and stop being afraid.
Exo 14:10, And as Pharaoh drew near, the sons of Israel looked, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them,
The Hebrew verb for to look is qal imperfect of nasa which means that they kept staring and concentrated on Pharaoh’s army…the oncoming problem. By concentrating on Pharaoh’s army, the problem, they were overwhelmed by fear and they completely forgot the grace of God and the power of God and the marvelous deliverance that they had experienced just a week or so before. They concentrated on the wrong thing! They concentrated on the perceived problem! They not only panicked, but they began to do something which all of us have been guilty of at some time, they began to whine and complain. Whining and complaining Christians are not going to solve their problems!
If you’re complaining, you’re concentrating on the wrong thing! We have all done this at some time in our lives! We concentrate on the circumstances of pressure rather than the principles of doctrine. We concentrate on the disaster rather than on the solution. The point is that you have to know what to concentrate on in times of pressure.
And one of the main distractions in time of pressure is mentioned in verse 10, emotion that is described by the word frightened.
Notice the next part of the verse, Exo 14:10…and they became very frightened; so the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord. The reaction of fear and panic removed any possibility of applying doctrine. They had seen the power of God in their deliverance from Egypt, but they made no application from that doctrine to this disaster.
Why?
Because they failed to concentrate on what they had learned and allowed fear and panic to control the soul. They expressed their fear rather than their faith. And so they screamed in panic to the Lord!
Exo 14:11-14, Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.”
Notice that first they had to be stabilized in their mentality or else some of them would have turned back to the Egyptians begging to be slaves! You will live like a slave unless you learn to become stabilized under pressure!
The Jews faced extermination from the pursuing chariot army of Pharaoh. They were not trained in war. They were in a hopeless situation! So, Moses told the Jews “do not fear”! When you’re in a hopeless situation that’s when you need to think. Here is a hopeless situation. But Moses says the Lord will fight for you while you will keep your mouth shut!
It’s the same thing as David said in 1Sa 17:47, “And that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and He will give you into our hands.”
In the Church-age, it’s the same thing, Rom 8:31, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? You see that’s the whole concept of the faith-rest drill. In grace, the Lord fights our battles.
Now, when you are afraid of any thing, you give that thing power over you. When you’re afraid of a person, you give that person power over you. In fact, what was the first thing Adam did after he sinned? He hid himself, right?
Why?
Gen 3:10, “I heard the sound of Thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
The greater your capacity for fear, the greater your capacity for arrogance and becoming a loser. Fear causes you to become totally preoccupied with yourself. Once in the arrogance complex, all the rest of the mental attitude sins come quickly. The combination of fear and arrogance causes many people to become mentally ill, psychotic and neurotic.
So, remember that fear is an emotional sin. And emotions cannot think! Emotion has no true courage. It has a pseudo courage. Arrogance and emotional domination of the soul produce cowardice. And fear is irrational and irresponsible.
It creates three things: the arrogance skills, the arrogance complex of sins, and the emotional complex of sins.
Remember when we noted Abraham and his cowardice?
Gen 26:7, When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” for he was afraid to say, “my wife,” {thinking,} the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebekah, for she is beautiful.
Fear not only removes Bible doctrine from number one priority in the life, but fear fragments and destroys the function of your spiritual life and moves you into the different stages of reversionism. Fear is also a function of self-absorption. You are absorbed with yourself and your problems. You want the world to center around you. You want everyone to stop what they’re doing and help you. Meanwhile you are filled with fears and very emotional.
Some people think emotion is a criterion for the spiritual life. And to make emotion the criterion for the spiritual life is a wedding between the arrogance skills and the emotional revolt of the soul. Emotion can be normal or evil, good or bad. However, regardless of what it is, emotion is never a tool of cognition. You do not learn by emotion.
God gave us emotion as an enjoyer of what is truth. But emotion is not a criterion for the spiritual life. Emotions were never designed to be problem solving devices. Sinful emotional activity such as fear, worry, anxiety, hatred, anger, revenge, guilt are reactions and totally rejected by the absolutes of Bible doctrine. Emotional reactions, such as emotional revolt of the soul or false spirituality by ecstatics, are a distraction to the execution of the PPOG [Predesigned Plan of God for your life].
Given some testing, the loser believer under emotional revolt of the soul will scream loud and clear, find someone to blame, and fall apart. The fear principle explains the sin unto death, 1Jo 5:16b, “There is a sin face-to-face with death.”
The function of worry and anxiety in living results in the function of fear in dying. There is a sin believers commit while taking the journey through their very own death-shadowed valley: fear, reaction to the fact you are dying, bitterness. But for the mature believer, Psa 23:4, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for Thou art with me;
So, fear is a key that unlocks many doors, starting with the door of arrogance. You cannot be afraid without putting an abnormal emphasis on yourself. To the extent that you become frightened by anything, to that extent you set up a new circuit in your life which is arrogance.
Point 2. The Snowballing Principle of Fear. 
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