Isaiah 41:14 | Fear not

Isaiah 41:14 "Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel."

Fear is what this verse is aiming to stamp out. Fear is not just tormenting but sinful. God has commanded hundreds of times to "fear not." It is anti-faith. It's faith in a lie, and thus a tremendous distrust in the all-true God. We know without faith it is impossible to please God, and a life that is lived in fear can never please God. Think of Abram, afraid of what may happen to him and Sarai, so he lied. Think of Peter, afraid that he would be tortured, so he denied. Think now to those faithless decisions you have made for fear of missing out, being ostracized, or lacking your needs. Fear must be dealt with, and our verse aims to do so with three realities to remember when we are tempted to fear.

Fear Not Because of His Power

Now it may seem that God is ridiculing Jacob when He calls him a worm, but what's in focus here is God's ability and Jacob's inability to exhaust it. In the light of God's omnipotence, Jacob is nothing more than a worm, and so are all men. The greatest sin you could imagine would not scratch the surface of the grace that is made available through Christ. Imagine the ocean and you attempting to drain it with a thimble, and yet greater is His love and grace than the ocean, and smaller still is our ability to empty it than a thimble. We are so small and incapable of troubling God with such things as requests for help. So fear not—your request can never be too big, your needs too large, your sins so great that His grace is not greater still. There is a storehouse of grace and help that a billion eternities could never diminish, so fear not that you will trouble Him with the largest of needs.

Fear Not Because of His Promises

Fear is vanquished when we simply take God at His word: "I will help thee." Do you realize that the world you walk on was spoken into existence? Along with the grain you eat, the meat you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, the timbers that framed the house you live in, the men and women you enjoy fellowship with—all that we know was a product of the word of God. Look how certain, how sure His word is. We are literally living in it and of it at this hour. So why don't we live on and feast on His words when He says, "I will help thee"? Has he not helped you in days gone by? Has He not sustained you to this very hour? And yet He promises still to continue! We have all the evidence in the world to support this claim, and it is nothing more than sinful foolishness to believe that He will not continue to help His people as He always has done.

Fear Not Because of His Person

He ends this verse by reminding us who it is that is making the promise: "the LORD, thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." We need never fear because the power and promises of God and every blessing that flows from Him is rooted in the fact that He is good. That in Him is no shadow of turning. We are not promised help from a man who can renege, or one who is unable to meet our needs, but the promise is made by "the LORD," that is, Jehovah, the I AM, the all-sufficient God. Then He reminds them of His relationship to them: "thy redeemer!" This omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God redeemed me! He related Himself to us! He came and took on flesh, lived our life, died our death, and conquered all the troubles of sin, temptation, every issue we ever had, and redeemed us from the curse. Surely he has helped us! This is no stranger promising help, but our Groom, our Father, our Redeemer! Surely He will do it! Lastly, He points to His holiness, "the Holy One of Israel." It's not that He hasn't lied as of yet, but that He is incapable of lying. He is incapable of the slightest shadow of greed, self-absorption, carelessness, or all the things that jade humanity. He is the exclusive Holy One. That's who has said to us this morning, "Fear not-I will help thee."