DAILY DEVOTIONAL – January 13, 2021
“Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”
Prayer: God, our Almighty Father, we are left speechless by Your power and in awe of Your love. We confess Lord, that Your holiness terrifies the sinner in us, but Your amazing grace and love given and displayed in the nail-pierced hands of Your Son, our Lord, bring us to our knees in hope, thankfulness, and worship of You. By Your grace and power, keep us in the fear of the Lord which, as Proverbs 14 says, is the fountain of life. Amen.
Scripture: Matthew 10:26-33
26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
Devotional – “Fearfully & Wonderfully Made”
The American author Mark Twain said, “The difference between truth and fiction, is that fiction has to make sense. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”
Last week I stumbled upon an old news article from 1982 that brought Mark Twains words about truth being stranger than fiction to my mind. The news article entitled “Man Hides Eight Years in Floor” was originally published by the United Press International. In my researching this story I found numerous other news agencies reported on it. Here is a summary of this true story.
Norman Green of Wigan, England vanished for eight years after local police came to his home investigating the tragic sexual assault and eventual death of Norman’s 86 year old neighbor. Frightened by the fact the police questioned him, 34 year old Norman decided the best course of action would be to dig a six foot by two foot hole in the floor boards of his living room under the couch, and hide. For reasons never explained in any of the articles I read, Norman’s wife Pauline aided her husband in his strange behavior. When the police came back to ask some more questions, she said that Norman had left her unexpectedly. She cleared the house of any and every trace of Norman’s existence, never told their six children where their father had gone, but she did bring him food and water whenever the kids were gone. For eight years, while friends and family came over, while Christmases past and life went on above ground ‘as normal’, Norman stayed hidden in his six foot by two foot self-imposed prison. When Norman finally came out of hiding, his now very long hair had turned white and his teeth had fallen out. Worse yet, he missed seeing and spending time with his children growing up, though he could hear everything while in his hole.
It was a neighbor that one day noticed a suspicious man in the house on one of the few night Norman ventured out of his hole. In interviews Norman admitted, “It was terrible lying there listening to them talking and playing, but unable to let them know I was there.” When the police came to the house in response to the neighbors phone call and realized that the man standing before them was Norman Green, they arrested him and took him in for questioning. There is no record of exactly why the police were questioning Norman to begin with, or what they asked him eight years later. Whatever the questions were, Norman’s answers wouldn’t make this story any less strange. As it turns out, the police released Norman without pressing any charges of any kind. Norman was never an actual suspect in their investigation. Their questioning of Norman as a neighbor in the first place was only a matter of procedure in their investigation.
Like me, I am sure you have lots of questions, right? If Norman knew he was innocent, why didn’t he just answer the police’s questions rather than behave as if he was guilty or knew something he didn’t? Perhaps a more pressing question is why Norman’s wife Pauline participated in Norman’s madness! Even without all the details, I think it is a safe assumption that fear was a large motivator of both Norman and Pauline’s actions.
Fear is a strangely powerful emotion. A healthy fear of the right things can keep us safe, help us make right decisions, and lead us in a life that is upright and righteous even if our thoughts and desires aren’t. All of us are sinful and wicked by nature. All of us have thoughts that are evil, and in our sinfulness we are all capable of evil. Sometimes, even if it is only the fear of consequences and punishments, a healthy fear can spare us further pain and suffering. Unhealthy fear on the other hand can deprive us of good things, unhealthy fear can cause us to think and believe things that are not consistent with truth or reality, and an unhealthy fear only promises to cause further and unnecessary suffering and deprive us of the joys God intends for us to experience. Norman Green is a case in point.
God created us with a conscience and with an innate understanding of what is right and wrong, good and bad. If He had not done so, Adam would have never understood God’s warning when He said in Genesis 2, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Not only did Adam understand that enough to teach the same to his wife Eve, but Eve also being made equally in the image of God clearly understood God’s command well enough to repeat it nearly verbatim when tempted by the Devil. Sadly, however, Adam and Eve succumbed to the fear that the devil put in their minds. The Devil said (Genesis 3), “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” With his temptation of Adam and Eve, the devil created in the minds of Adam and Eve a fear of what they did not know.
Adam and Eve lived in perfection; perfectly loved, perfectly cared for, perfectly happy. But fear makes us do strange things. The devil’s temptation made them think, “What if this isn’t as good as it gets? What if he is right and we can be like God and make paradise even more enjoyable? What does he know that we don’t?” If there was ever a banner slogan for fear, it would be “what if?” Isn’t that always the hypothetical drama that we let play in our head when we are afraid?
As I said earlier, unhealthy fear only promises to create unnecessary suffering and deprive us of the joys God intended and intends for us, as He did for Adam and Eve. A healthy fear, however, can lead us out of darkness, out of suffering, and into life. What is a healthy fear that leads to life? Jesus tells us in our text for today in Matthew 10, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Though it is only natural to want to avoid suffering and hardship in this life, our only hope of getting through those times are to have our fear rightly placed in the God of Life, the Judge of all souls, the One Everlasting God of love and grace who gave us life and who holds our lives in His hands. Jesus continues and says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” And was not our Lord sold for pennies also? Jesus said, “And not one of them (sparrows) will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Neither did our Lord fall to the ground apart from the Father. In the unsearchable miseries of His fearful night praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and His agony suffering on the cross you and I deserve, our Lord Jesus cried out from the cross as it was foretold long ago in Psalm 22,
“My heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
I can count all my bones.”
The greatest fear that any human could possibly imagine is standing before a holy God and being held accountable for your own life. As Christ suffered the pain of our sins, the pain that allowed Him to number His bones, our innumerable sins were being cleansed in His blood. In His resurrection on the third day, Christ declared the wrath of God against sin to be satisfied for all who confess their sin in fear of God’s righteous judgement and put their whole faith in the sufficient work of Christ on the cross.
Our Lord Jesus feared being faithless before God more than He ever feared any suffering in this temporary life. Christ was never afraid of God, because Christ was without sin. You and I are not without sin, but the Good News is, we no longer have to be afraid of God either. Through faith in Christ who loved and feared God perfectly in our place, we can, as Luther says in his explanation of the first commandment, “fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”
Fear the Lord your God, and as God’s Word commands us in 1 Peter 5, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
Thanks for spending time today with me in the fear and love of God, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
