The lie in the greatest fear of life - Chambers, Oswald

1917, Zeitoun

For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:2526

The greatest fear in life is not personal fear for myself, but fear that after all god will be worsted. We do not state it in that way until we come to one of the rare, lucid moments in our experience. The phrase he must reign indicates our greatest fear, viz. , the fear that in the end Jesus Christ will not come out triumphant, that evil and wrong will triumph. We reveal our fear by intense assertions that of course he will win through. That is the curious way we are built; we speak as intensely of a position about which we are fearful as we do of a position we are sure of. Whenever this particular fear assails us, we assert most definitely oh, yes, there is no doubt that he will get through, while our real fear is that he will not. We are familiar with it along other lines in reading a book we turn to the end to see whether the hero gets through. Fears are facts; there is a danger of saying that because a thing is wrong, therefore it does not exist; fear is a genuine thing, there is no courage without fear. The courageous man is the one who overcomes his fear. There are things in personal experience and in national life that make us hold our breath; then in faith we look on to the end.

1. The fearful hour

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, will ye also go away? ( john 6:67)

John describes the disappointment Jesus Christ was to men. The crowd on the outside gathered to him because he did wonderful things and they would have made him king ( john 6:15), but he disappointed them. The Jews therefore murmured concerning him, because he said, i am the bread which came down out of heaven ( john 6:41 rv). Then there was the smaller crowd on the inside who came because they were religious and had the intellect of the time, and they listened, until he said things that offended them many therefore of his disciples, when they heard this, said, this is a hard saying; who can hear it? ( john 6:60 rv). Then there was the little crowd of disciples, and of these we readup on this many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him ( john 6:66); and our lord forecast the fearful hour of his being left by everybody left by the crowd, by the pharisees, and by the disciples, and he turns to the handful left and says, will ye also go away? And peter replies, in effect, we have gone too far. The hearts of these disciples must have feared, not for their own sakes, but after all, are we mistaken in this man? We have left our homes and our fishing, we have been thrilled by him, he has done wonderful things, but will he win through after all? The question comes to us personally: will ye also go away? And we say, i believe Jesus Christ will get through, but at the same time the forces are so awful and so intense that we wonder.

At the heart of the fear there is a lie, and the lie comes in because we estimate Jesus Christ in the way we would estimate any other man, viz. , by success. It is significant that Jesus Christ told his disciples not to estimate themselves by success (see Luke 10:1920). According to the ordinary standards of men our lord himself is as a corn of wheat falling into the ground and becoming futile. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit ( john 12:24). Look at the history of every vigorous movement born spontaneously of the holy ghost, there comes a time when its true spiritual power dies, and it dies in correspondence to the success of the organisation. Every denomination or missionary enterprise departs from its true spiritual power when it becomes a successful organisation, because the advocates of the denomination or of the missionary enterprise after a while have to see first of all to the establishment and success of their organisation, while the thing which made them what they are has gone like a corn of wheat into the ground and died.

One of the greatest snares of modern evangelism is this apotheosis of commercial- ism manifested in the soul-saving craze. I do not mean god does not save souls, but i do believe the watch- word a passion for souls is a snare. The watchword of the saint is a passion for Christ. The estimate of success has come imperceptibly into christian enterprise and we say we must go in for winning souls; but we cannot win souls if we cut ourselves off from the source, and the source is belief in Jesus Christ ( john 7:37). Immediately we look to the outflow, i. E. , the results, we are in danger of becoming specialists of certain aspects of truth, of banking on certain things, either terror or emotionalism or sensational presenta- tionsanything rather than remaining confident that he must reign. If we stand true to Jesus Christ in the midst of the fearful hour we shall come to see that there is a lie at the heart of the fear which shook us. We are not called to be successful in accordance with ordinary standards, but in accordance with a corn of

Wheat falling into the ground and dying, becoming in that way what it never could be if it were to abide alone. After the corn is garnered into the granary it has to go through processes before it is ready for eating. It is the broken-bread aspect which produces the faithfulness that god looks upon as success; not the fact of the harvest, but that the harvest is being turned into nutritious bread.

2. The forlorn hope

And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow. (Luke 22:45)

The disciples had given up everything for Jesus; they had followed him for three years; now he talks to them in a significant way about buying swords (Luke 22:36), and peter and the other disciples imagine that this is the time when he will break through and introduce his kingdom; and instead of watching and praying, they make up their minds where the struggle is to be. But what happened was the worst they had feared; instead of Jesus Christ showing any fight, he gives himself up, and the whole thing ends in humiliating insignificance. Peter never dreamt he was going to see Jesus christ give himself up meekly to the power of the world, and he was brokenhearted and followed him afar off. To call peter a coward for following Jesus afar off is an indication of how we talk without thinking. Peter and all the disciples were brokenhearted, everything they had hoped for with regard to Jesus Christ had deliberately failed we trusted in him and were perfectly certain he would win through, and now their worst fears were realised and they all forsook him and fled. Many a christian since the day of peter has suffered complete heartbreak, not because he fears anything personally, but because it looks as if his lord is being worsted; the lie at the heart of the fear is almost succeeding. The presentation of the spiritual aspect of things is that it is a forlorn hope always, and designedly so, in this order of things. We are apt to forget that we must go far enough back to find the basis on which things erect themselves. For instance, if civilised life is right and the best we can know, Christianity is a profound mistake; but if you turn back to the bible you find that its diagnosis of civilisation is not that it is the best we know, it is on an entirely wrong basis. Civilised life is based on the reason at the heart of things; Jesus Christs teaching is based on the tragedy at the heart of things, and consequently the position of true spiritual life is that of the forlorn hope. It is of the nature of the earth on which we tread the meek shall inherit the earth, not the world, because the world, according to the bible, is the system of civilised things that men place on gods earth. In the meantime gods earth is like the earth we are on now; we can do what we like with it, shovel rubbish on it, mine it and turn it into trenches; we can score it, and make it the foundation for the erections of human pride; but Jesus Christ says. The meek . . . Shall inherit the earth. There is a time coming when the earth itself shall be the very garment of god, when the systems of the world and those that represent them shall call on the mountains and the rocks to hide them, but at that time the earth wont shelter them.

3. The faith that triumphs

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. ( john 20:29)

Thomas was not an intellectual doubter, he was a temperamental doubter; there was not a more loyal disciple than Thomas, he was a loyal, gloomy- hearted man. He had seen Jesus killed; he saw them drive the nails through his hands and his feet, and he says, except i shall see . . . , i will not, i dare not, believe. This is a man with a passionate desire to believe something over which he dare not allow himself to be deceived. Seeing is never believing: we interpret what we see in the light of what we believe. Faith is confidence in god before you see god emerging, therefore the nature of faith is that it must be tried.

To say oh, yes, i believe god will triumph may be so much credence smeared over with religious phraseology; but when you are up against things it is quite another matter to say, i believe god will win through. The trial of our faith gives us a good banking account in the heavenly places, and when the next trial comes our wealth there will tide us over. If we have confidence in god beyond the actual earthly horizons, we shall see the lie at the heart of the fear and our faith will win through in every detail.