CLICK HERE for a worship video for August 10
Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost – August 10, 2025
Genesis 15:1-6, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
You might remember the scene. Charlie Brown goes to see Lucy in her booth, which advertises “psychiatric help” for five cents. He is down and depressed. Maybe she can help. Lucy tries to diagnose what it is that is troubling him. She tries to diagnose his fears. She asks if he is afraid of responsibility, or cats, or staircases, or the ocean, or crossing bridges. Then she asks if he might have…pantophobia. “What’s pantaphobia?” Charlie Brown asks. Lucy responds: “Pantophobia is the fear of everything.” “THAT’S IT!” Charlie Brown responds.
There’s a reason this scene is so iconic. There’s a reason this comic strip and its TV specials resonate so deeply with people. Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, had deep insights into the human condition. He knew that we are fearful, anxious creatures. We fear rejection. We fear what others think. We fear that we don’t or won’t have enough. We fear failure. We fear not being loved. We fear the future. We fear health problems. We fear all the potential things that can go wrong. “That’s it!” we say with Charlie Brown. We recognize our situation in his.
Charles Schultz was a Christian, and it is obvious that he gleaned many of his insights into the human condition from the Bible. Again and again in the Bible we see people becoming afraid, anxious, nervous, uncertain. Again and again, God sees what is wrong. God diagnoses it with a command, the most repeated command in all of scripture. God says, “Do not be afraid.” This is God putting his finger on the problem. This is God diagnosing the situation.
But God doesn’t simply diagnose the problem. God always follows up this command with a promise.
You see, fear isn’t something you can just stop having because you’ve been told to. Fear isn’t something we can just turn off on command. Fear can only be pushed out of our hearts by something else, by something bigger. God knows this, and so God gives us something bigger. God always follows up his command to not be afraid with something bigger than our fears. God follows up his command with his promise.
We see how this works first today in our reading from Genesis. There we heard how Abram was afraid. He was anxious about the future. God had said he would have land and children, and so far he had neither. This fear wasn’t bringing out the best in Abram! He was getting antsy. He was getting pushy. “What are you doing God?” he pleaded. “I continue childless! At this point, it looks like a slave born in my house will be my only heir!”
But God came to him with a word. First came the command, “Do not be afraid, Abram,” and then came the promise: “This man shall not be your heir. Your own issue, your own child, will be your heir. Look toward heaven and count the stars,” God said, “if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.”
God came to Abram with something bigger than his fears. God came to him with a promise. And Abram believed the LORD. Abram trusted this promise. Abram had faith. And through faith, through trusting in God’s promise, his fear was displaced by something bigger. His fear dissipated as hope filled his heart through the promises of God. By this faith, the Bible says, Abram was “made right.”
We see this pattern again in our gospel reading. Jesus was addressing the fears his disciples were experiencing. Jesus first gave them the command, “Do not be afraid, little flock,” and then, in the same breath, he gave them the promise: “For it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
This promise is one of the greatest summaries of the gospel in all of scripture. The disciples don’t need to be afraid because they have a heavenly Father whose good pleasure it is to give them the kingdom! God is not some cold and remote deity; God is their Father who loves them. God does not give reluctantly. God is not grumpy or stingy about it. It is God’s good pleasure! God enjoys giving! This, Jesus says, is God’s love language – to give. And what God gives is what we need the most. God gives us the kingdom. God gives us a relationship with himself. God gives us a kingdom where we are secure and safe and loved and forgiven and healed and restored. We don’t build this kingdom. We don’t earn a place in it. God gives it to us. It is a gift. God gives us a kingdom where we can walk in newness of life as we trust in his promises. God gives us a kingdom where he rules our hearts in love as we live by faith.
This is what faith really is. In our reading from Hebrews we have the best, most specific definition of faith in all of scripture: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Christian faith is not a general optimism, as faith is sometimes understood in our wider culture. Christian faith is not the naïve belief that nothing bad will ever happen. Christian faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Christian faith is trusting in God’s promises to us, even when we are suffering or uncertain. Christian faith is the assurance of God’s grace and mercy, the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness, the assurance that God cares for us. Christian faith is the conviction that all our unfulfilled hopes are fulfilled through our relationship with our heavenly Father, whose good pleasure it is to give us the kingdom. Christian faith is trusting in these promises which are bigger than our fears.
The narrative arc in that Charlie Brown special which begins with an anxious, fearful Charlie Brown seeking psychiatric help from Lucy is resolved at the end when Linus takes the stage. The house lights dim and Linus is alone in the spotlight. The security blanket Linus carries around to cope with fears of his own is notably set aside as he recites from Luke, chapter two, saying: “Fear not, for I am bringing you good news of great joy which is for all the people. For to you is born this night in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.” And so here this biblical pattern unfolds again as Linus recites scripture to Charlie Brown. There is a diagnosis, a command: “Fear not,” and there is a promise, a promise bringing good news and great joy, the promise of a savior.
This same pattern unfolds in your life today. Maybe there’s a big, specific fear you are carrying with you today. Maybe it is a million little worries all piled up in your mind and in your heart. Whatever they are, God knows. God knows our fears. Christ Jesus puts his finger right on them when he says, “Do not be afraid.” He knows the problem!
But our Lord Jesus doesn’t just diagnose the problem. He also gives us a promise in which to place our trust, a promise to put our faith in. Just as he said to the disciples, so too does he say to us: “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This kingdom was given to you in your baptism, when Christ Jesus made you his own, joining you to his saving work. This kingdom is given to us in the Lord’s Supper, where Christ Jesus renews his people in the gifts of his kingdom, giving us his own body and blood to restore us in his grace. The kingdom is given to us through the Word, as we hear these promises which are bigger than our fears.
In a fallen world, fear is normal. It is part of the human condition. There is almost no one in the Bible who wasn’t afraid at some point. But fear does not need to rule our hearts, because God has given us promises. Fear does not need to rule our lives, because God has given us assurances to respond to with faith, with trust. It isn’t that we aren’t supposed to be afraid, it is that we don’t need to be. For it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom – a kingdom where he rules our hearts and keeps our lives in his loving care, today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church