SERIES: Psalms, Cries of the Heart
The Cry of Fear
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: It’s a delight to be back worshiping with you this morning for the first time since June 15. I want to thank you for praying for me during my travels, and particularly during the past three weeks when I was in Venezuela. I sensed your prayers many times, and I credit those prayers for the fact that we experienced no mishaps and no illnesses to speak of. I also want to thank the staff we have here at First Free for their great work in my absence for what a number of you have reported as great messages in my absence.
Over a month ago now I attended the National Conference of the Evangelical Free Church in Palm Springs, CA. We had a good conference with some excellent preaching and encouraging reports from the various ministries of the EFCA. Bill Hamel was elected President of the denomination to take the place of Dr. Paul Cedar. Bill has been a pastor, a superintendent, and for the past seven years Executive Vice President of the Home Office in Minneapolis. \I continue to be very grateful for the spiritual umbrella the Evangelical Free Church of America provides for me and for our church. We don’t talk much about our denomination here at the church, but I think it’s important for us to realize that we do belong to a great family of believers that is now virtually worldwide.
One part of that worldwide family is the Evangelical Free Church of Venezuela, called ADIEL. The First Free Church missionaries went to Venezuela in the 1920’s, and there are now over 90 Evangelico Libre churches either chartered or in process in the country. During the 19 years since I last spoke at one of their conferences, most of the ministries which our mission started—camping, publishing, bookstore, seminary, etc.—have been handed over to the national church. The missionaries are now involved only in church planting and theological education.
It was my privilege to speak twice a day to these missionaries during their week-long conference at a Baptist camp near Valencia. Bill and Nancy Craig, Lee and Nancy Hall, and Paula Owens went along to conduct a Vacation Bible School for the missionary children while their parents were involved in meetings all day. Many of you have worked in VBS or Passport, and you know how tiring it can be to work with children for 3 hours straight. Well, these dear folks had children aged 2 to 15 for eight hours a day, and then sometimes in the evening as well. They did a phenomenal job, and our missionaries were extremely grateful for their ministry.
Leroy Peters, who serves with New Tribes Mission, was the last member of our team, and while the rest of us were at the conference, Leroy was visiting some of the national churches, doing evangelism, and scouting out some potential sites for future partnerships. On the 16th of July the rest of the team returned to the States, but Leroy and I set out in the other direction, traveling five hours by plane to the most remote outpost of the work of New Tribes Mission among the Yanomami Indians—just 15 minutes by air from the border of Brazil. The last three hours of our trip were by a single-engine Cessna 185 over dense jungle and high mountains. We landed at a place called Coyoateli, which consisted of a grass airstrip, two missionary houses, a couple of outbuildings, and an Indian village back in the jungle with a population of 93. It seemed that most of the 93 Indians were there to greet the airplane, as its periodic arrival seems to them the most exciting thing that happens in this remote part of the world.
The senior missionary at Coyoateli is Marg Jank, a Canadian woman about 60 years old, whose husband died in Venezuela 13 years ago. She has been working among these Indians for 37 years. The other missionary family there right now is her son Bobby Jank and his wife Sandy, both of whom are second-generation missionaries who grew up among the Yanomami. The only other people we could communicate with that week were a Jewish medical student from Toronto, who was there doing malaria studies, and a merchant marine radio operator, who was donating his time to set up a system for the various mission stations so they can send E-mail by ham radio. A total of four Americans and three Canadians in a vast sea of jungle.
I came away from this experience with a tremendous appreciation for pioneer missionaries. What most of us know of missions—inner city, Mexico, Tatarstan, India—is tough, tough work. Trying to communicate the Gospel anywhere cross-culturally calls for competence, dedication, and a commitment that relatively few are willing or able to give. But those who devote their entire lives to go to a small tribe, whose language is unwritten and whose lives are completely uncivilized, are a special breed. I don’t know how they do it, except to say that God has called them to it, and they seem to be willing to pay any price. I hope we were an encouragement to Marg, Bobby, Sandy, and the other pioneer missionaries we met in Puerto Ayachucho and Tama Tama, but there is no way we could have impacted their lives as much as they did ours.
I want to share some of our fascinating experiences within the context of our Scripture text for today—Psalm 27. Paul and Gene began an eight-week series on Cries of the Heart from the Psalms, and we continue today with “The Cry of Fear.” Let’s read this great Psalm of David.
The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.
One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD.
Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. Teach me your way, O LORD; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.
I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.
The phone rings at 2:30 in the morning. Your father has been quite ill lately and all you can think of is that something bad must have happened and the hospital is calling. Icy fingers grip your insides and your mind freezes.
You’re driving home from a meeting late at night and your car stalls on Highway 40. Your husband forgot to return the cell phone to you after he used it. A car stops behind you with its bright lights on, and you panic.
You find yourself in a roomful of people, and the only person you know is busily engaged in a conversation with someone else. Everyone seems to be enjoying himself, but you are lost in a sea of faces. You wish you could just disappear, but you can’t.
Fear has many faces, and they are all ugly! The force of fear can be so great in our lives that it can paralyze us, cause major mental disorders, or even lead to suicide. David the Psalmist had no training in psychology, but he had a lot of experience with fear. And he had a lot of faith in the Lord! If I had a choice between a profound book on fear by a renowned psychotherapist (even a Christian one) and the simple poems of David offering his antidote to fear, David would win hands down. It’s not that the modern scientific community has nothing important to offer in the analysis of the intricacies of the human psyche and the treatment of its imbalances, but without the principles of God’s Word, those analyses and treatments are at best incomplete.
There are four paragraphs in this Psalm, and I believe the author is communicating to us four key truths—that when the Lord is recognized as Lord, fear is unfounded, His house is a cherished place, spiritual growth is pursued, and blessing awaits us.
When the Lord is Lord, fear is unfounded. (1-3)
The two questions that open the Psalm are, of course, rhetorical, calling for a negative answer. “Whom shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid?” No one, because the Lord is my light and my salvation, the Lord is the stronghold of my life.
Notice that David advances his argument by showing that this is true no matter whether it is evil men who threaten him, or enemies who actually attack him, or an army that besieges him, or a full-blown war that breaks out against him. None of these circumstances are sufficient to cause him to cower in fear once he recognizes that the Lord is Lord of his life.
Though we do not know the specific circumstances that generated this Psalm, many scholars surmise that it was the attempted coup within his own family, generated by his son Absalom. David had gone into hiding and was in desperate straits. He had set up a government-in-exile across the Jordan and had organized those troops loyal to him to meet the expected onslaught. Absalom, in the meantime, had gathered all the outstanding young men to his cause, had publicly disgraced his father, and was preparing a great army to finish David off. Humiliated, outgunned, and heavily outnumbered by his enemies, David knew fear. But he also knew how to handle it.
The antidote is knowing God. When He is seen to be Who He is—light, salvation, and a stronghold—confidence takes the place of fear as the believer’s fundamental emotion. Let’s consider these three descriptions of God briefly.
He is my light. Isn’t it interesting how fear is almost always heightened by darkness? A knock on the door at night generates very different emotions than one during the daytime. But God is constantly associated with light. Paul says that God “lives in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16). John says that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Job speaks of heaven as the “abode of light” (38:19) and Psalm 104 tells us that God “wraps himself in light as with a garment” (v. 2). When David calls God his light, it suggests safety, illumination, purity, life, and hope. God is the light that can dispel the fear of darkness.
He is my salvation. The Hebrew term for salvation means “deliverance,” and no doubt David is referring primarily to deliverance from his immediate military enemies. But God is also the one who delivers his people from whatever enemy they might face, including the archenemy of fear.
He is the stronghold of my life. “Stronghold” here refers to a place of safety, a spiritual refuge from the pains and struggles of life. Psalm 18:10 says, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.”
John Stott summarizes David’s words well when he says, “The Lord is my light, to guide me; my salvation, to deliver me; and the stronghold of my life, in whom I take refuge.” [i]
Fear is a large part of the everyday lives of the Yanomami people, and as long as anyone can remember they have tried to cope with their fears by harnessing the spirit world. A week ago Friday, Leroy and I and the medical student decided to visit a village about three hours away from the mission station. We took three Indian men with us, who agreed to carry our packs and clear the jungle path with their machetes. After an extremely strenuous trek over mountains, rivers, mud, vines, and jungle so dense that the sun almost never broke through, we arrived exhausted at a little shabano that was home to about 50 Indians.
A shabano is a round structure made of logs, perhaps 100 feet in diameter, with a slanted thatched roof that extends about ten feet in from the outside walls, the center being open to the sky. It reminded me of a miniature Busch Stadium. Each family had a ten to fifteen-foot section along the outer wall where they would hang their hammocks, build a fire, weave baskets, make bows and arrows, and swat mosquitos. The only privacy is the privacy of darkness at night. There was a section of the wall near the opening where no one currently lived, so we hung our hammocks and mosquito nets there, ate some rice and sardines we had brought along, and visited a nearby stream to bathe. It got dark about 7:30, so we got into our hammocks. I wasn’t sleepy, but there was nothing else to do. The Indians chattered loudly with one another, laughing from time to time (I suspected at the funny gringos and their weird ways).
After a while the voices were fewer, and then it was quiet, except for the sounds of the jungle, which can be really eerie. Suddenly about ten o’clock the air was pierced with the chants of the witch doctor, whose hammock was about six feet from Leroy’s and about 15 from mine. In a mournful, singsong voice he began to repeat the same words over and over, over and over, hour after hour. We learned later that he sometimes does this all night, but perhaps it was our praying that shut him down about one o’clock in the morning. Not that I was any sleepier after he stopped than before! In fact, I didn’t sleep a wink all night! But I’d rather talk about the witch doctor’s fears than my own.
When we got back to the mission station the next day, I asked Marg Jank if the witch doctor was chanting to keep the evil spirits away, perhaps worried that these visitors had brought some strange spirits with them. She said she doubted it. She thought it more likely that he was calling the spirits to come and consult with him. That wasn’t particularly comforting, but I was reminded that “greater is He that is in you (i.e., the Holy Spirit) than He that is in the world (i.e., the spirit of Satan).” (1 John 4:4)
You see, the Yanomami feel helpless without the spirits. They call on them to find food, to heal sickness, and to take vengeance on their enemies. And they do have enemies! Since last October six people had been murdered in this area. It started with one man who died of malaria. The Indians in his village assumed that someone in another village had put a curse on the man and that’s what killed him. So, they went to the other village and shot and killed a man with an arrow. The other village, of course, had to take revenge, so they went to the first village with a group of warriors. Yanomami generally only kill other warriors, but since the men were all out hunting, they shot arrows into four women and a baby. Two of the women and the baby died. This, of course, generated the necessity for further retaliation by the other village. Fortunately, they tend to leave outsiders alone.
Fear is at the root of all this murder and mayhem—fear of the spirits, fear of enemies, fear of disease, fear of bad yucca (a staple of their diet, but the wrong kind can be fatal—kind of like with mushrooms), even fear of the jungle. Is there any hope for these whose lives are so steeped in spiritism that they cannot grasp that some deaths are due to natural causes and not attributable to curses? Yes, there is hope. In the village near the mission station there are about 15 believers, and a few others in process of becoming believers. To hear them sing and pray and testify in the two services held while we were there was a powerful experience. They expressed their confidence in God and their gratitude that He sent His Son Jesus to release them from bondage to sin and to bad spirits. And the effect on this village has been significant. None of the killings I mentioned a few moments ago had occurred in the village at the mission station.
When the Lord is recognized as Lord, He brings light even to the jungle; He brings deliverance even to the primitive mind steeped in spiritism; He offers a refuge and a place of safety even to gringos trying to sleep next to a witch doctor. I don’t know what kind of fear you are facing today. I’m sure it’s different from that faced by David or that faced by the Yanomami. But I firmly believe that the solution is the same—to recognize who God is and acknowledge His Lordship over our lives. When the Lord is Lord, fear is unfounded.
When the Lord is Lord, His house is a cherished place. (4-6)
In verse 4 David declares, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” The 23rd Psalm closes with a familiar statement, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” There David is clearly speaking of heaven. But it seems obvious that here in the 27th Psalm the “house of the Lord” is an earthly house—a house of worship.
This obsessive longing for the house of the Lord may sound strange to our ears, but we must remember that worship was much more localized for the ancient believer than it is for us. The temple in Jerusalem was in a very real sense the dwelling place of God. That is where He met with His people; that is where the blood was placed on the Ark of the Covenant; that is where atonement was offered and received. Attendance was required and excuses were not accepted.
But when the Samaritan woman in John 4 asked Jesus whether it was the Jews or the Samaritans who worshiped in the right place, He corrected her theology by saying, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem…. A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” This is an advancement beyond David’s time or his understanding. Once Jesus came and by His death tore the curtain separating sinful man from a holy God, worship would never again be focused just on one place, as it was in Jerusalem.
But I fear that in recognizing that God can (and should) be worshiped at the kitchen sink or at the office desk, or even perhaps, perhaps, on the golf course, we have lost something of the power David experienced. James Boice writes perceptively,
“There is something to be experienced of God in church that it is not quite so easy to experience elsewhere. Otherwise, why have churches? If it is only instruction we need, we can get that as well by an audio tape or a book. If it is only fellowship, we can find that equally well, perhaps better, in a small home gathering. There is something to be said for the sheer physical singing of the hymns…, the actual looking to the pulpit and … the Bible as it is expounded, the tasting of the sacrament, and the very atmosphere of the place set apart for the worship of God that is spiritually beneficial.[ii]
I think he’s right, and I am encouraged when I hear an increasing number of you say that Sunday has become the high point of your week. It should be, and if it’s not, it may be time to take a spiritual inventory to find out why it’s not.
Keep in mind that it is not the structure of the Lord’s house itself that charmed David but rather the beauty of the Lord of the house. Solomon’s temple was one of the most magnificent buildings of all time, and I’m sure it nearly took one’s breath away as it portrayed and drew attention to the majesty of God. But keep in mind that David is writing this many years before the Solomonic temple was built. He worshiped in a tabernacle, basically a tent. But that didn’t keep him from seeing the beauty of the Lord.
Last Sunday we gathered for worship in a one-room mud hut with a metal roof. There were no lights, no air conditioning, no sound system. When it rained (and it was rainy season when we were there) one couldn’t hear a thing, which wasn’t all bad because Yanomami music is really strange. They have no instruments, and they never sing in unison. They just all “do their own thing.” I’ll never forget a solo one Yanomami man asked if he could sing. I learned later that the tune was a familiar song we sing, but I didn’t recognize it. The shocking thing is that he stopped right in the middle, cleared his throat like some old geezer would do, spit on the floor, and then went right on with his song. Dick, when’s the last time that happened during the special music here at First Free?
The furniture in the Yanomami “church” was all home-made from the trees of the jungle. The song booklets had large holes from being eaten by termites. Many of the men sat there in loin cloths. Babies nursed during the preaching. And one guy fell asleep (some things are found in everyculture!). But friends, God was present, and at least some of these dear people were clearly there to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.
When the Lord is Lord, fear is unfounded.
When the Lord is Lord, His house is a cherished place.
When the Lord is Lord, spiritual growth is pursued. (7-12)
In verses 7-12 the Psalmist changes his tone a bit. Whereas he spoke with absolute confidence in the early verses of the Psalm, he is a bit more timid here. The earlier affirmations now become prayers. The mood changes from assurance to earnest entreaty:
“Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, LORD, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. Though my father and mother, the Lord will receive me.”
I think David is merely being honest with us here. Faith is not always firm and unshakeable. Confidence has a tendency to waver. The issue is, what do we do when we find ourselves doubting and discover that fear is raising its ugly head again? David seeks reassurance of his relationship with God. Acceptance is what he longs for. And acceptance is God’s specialty.
When we arrived at Coyoateli and first entered Marg Jank’s house, we found a young Indian boy lying in a hammock in her main room. He looked to be about 12, but Teddy (the name the missionaries gave him) was actually about 18. We soon learned that the day before we arrived, he had been out hunting and had shot himself in the foot. He had been shooting at a monkey in a tree above him, and he unwisely shot straight up. Almost unbelievably, the six-foot arrow came straight down and lodged about two and a half inches into his foot. This arrow was not poisoned, fortunately, but it did have a barb, so he couldn’t pull it out. Instead, he broke off the shaft and walked an hour to the mission station, where he knew Marg would have some medicine. Mark, the first-year medical student who was visiting, cut it out, stitched it up, and ordered him to spend a week in this hammock in Marg’s house.
While Teddy was not a very good hunter, he was one of the most committed Christians in the village. On the last night we were there he told Marg he wanted to talk to Leroy and me, so for about 45 minutes she translated as he poured his heart out to us. He told us that he was the only believer in his family. His father, who was the village chief, and his mother mocked his faith and refused to listen to him when he spoke of God. Since I was already working on this Psalm, I shared some of these verses with him, and he found comfort and confidence in them.
Friends, in this world we all experience more than enough rejection. Parents reject children; children reject parents. Husbands reject wives, and wives, husbands. We are rejected by close friends, by potential employers, by people we are in love with, and sometimes even by fellow-believers in the church. Most of us experience rejection from someone almost every day. But Goddoes not reject us.
The Psalmist pursues spiritual growth not only by seeking reassurance of his relationship with God, but also through meditating on God’s Word. Look at verse 11 again: “Teach me your way, O Lord.” You see, the guidance we all need and desire is not found in a witch doctor’s chants or mantras or crystals or horoscopes. It’s not found on the editorial page of the Post Dispatch or on CNN or on the Best Seller list. It’s not even found on Rush Limbaugh’s EIB Network. It’s found in the Word of God. “Teach me your way.”
Over the last 37 years Marg Jank has helped reduce the Yanomami language to writing, has taught some of the Indians to read, and has helped translate the New Testament into their language. There is no doubt in their minds that a book so important that someone would sacrifice 37 years of her life to see that they could read it must be a mighty important book. And hearing them eagerly read it (haltingly and not always with full understanding) served as a powerful rebuke to me as I consider the fact that we have multiple Bibles in our homes, can read it as easily as the newspaper, have scores of reference books available to help us understand it better, and can even listen to it on tape in our cars, but yet it often goes untouched between Sundays.
Obedience is the third issue David addresses in his pursuit of spiritual growth. In verse 11 he continues, “Lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.” When David speaks of a straight path, he is speaking of a righteous path, a path of integrity. His enemies may be telling lies about him, but he knows that the solution is not to respond in kind. If we refuse to defend ourselves, God has promised to defend us.
The Yanomami are slowly learning that. While we were at Coyoateli, an Indian woman came from another village to visit a relative. One of the unbelieving men in our village decided he needed a second wife. The problem was that she had a husband in her own village and her mother-in-law was with her. The man grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her to his little area of the shabano. The mother-in-law grabbed her other arm. Pretty soon relatives of the woman were all pulling on one side and relatives of the man were all pulling on the other. Though I didn’t see it, Marg said they nearly pulled her apart. Well, the man won, and when we left, she was still with him.
The reason for telling this story is that the missionaries told us that in many villages such an action would have been an automatic cause for war between the two villages. But there are enough believers in these two villages now that revenge is no longer automatic. They were still seeking a peaceful resolution when we left.
When the Lord is Lord, blessing awaits us. (13-14)
David started out with confidence, then went to earnest entreaty, and now he comes back to confidence in verse 13: “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” He is not speaking here about the afterlife. He is speaking about “the land of the living”—the here and now. He is aware that life will never become a perfectly smooth path, but he also knows that in between the rugged mountains are some lush valleys, that besides a multitude of enemies, the Lord can and does provide a multitude of loyal friends, that following sickness are periods of refreshing good health, that rebellious children often come back to the Lord, and that following financial reversal, there will be relief.
I have thought a lot about this verse and its potential application to the Yanomami Indians. What confidence can they have that they will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? In eternity, yes, sure; the believers among them will enjoy the same heaven we do. But here and now what do they have to look forward to? Their average lifespan is less than 40 years. Malaria killed four people in the area where we were just last week, and this isn’t even malaria season. They have absolutely none of the things civilization considers essential—electricity, transportation, communication, plumbing, shelter, health care, a steady food supply, tools, clothes, etc.
But there is the catch—I said, “the things civilization considers essential.” All those things can as easily become curses as blessings. And there are blessings a Yanomami can enjoy that you and I will rarely, if ever, experience. Last Sunday night I went on an alligator hunt with Bobby Jank and Mark, the medical student. (Leroy had had his fill of jungle experiences by then). We got in a canoe, put a little 4-horse motor on it, and headed up this tributary of the Orinocco River. The moon was full and brighter than any moon I had ever seen. I could actually read by it. Stars were visible that I never even knew existed.
The banks of the river were lined with jungle, occasionally a palm tree towering above the rest of the trees, outlined incredibly by the moon. I knew there were a thousand eyes peering at us (hopefully all belonging to the animal kingdom), as we wound our way upriver, through rapids and under trees that sometimes created a canopy over the entire river. I was seeing a part of God’s creation that very few human beings “of the lighter hue,” as Raleigh Washington likes to speak of us white folk, have ever seen, and it was beautiful beyond description. But this is an everyday experience to the Yanomami!
From the small plane we took back to civilization I saw waterfalls that were breathtaking in size, mountains that rose 9,000 feet almost directly out of the flat jungle, butterflies that are the most gorgeous iridescent blue you could imagine, parrots flying in the wild, trees that grow on their own stilts—and countless other things that most of us will never see except in books. But the Yanomami see them every day.
The goodness of the Lord cannot be narrowly defined by our culture or by our experience. It can only be defined by the creative hand of God. And ultimately the goodness of the Lord is seen in His grace that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom God has given us (Rom. 5:5). And that Holy Spirit is given to believing Yanomami, just as He is to believing Gringos.
There is a subtle warning at the end of our Psalm, however. It says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” The things the Psalmist is praying for, and the things we consider to be evidence of the goodness of the Lord, do not always come to us at once. God’s timing is not ours, and therefore what we pray for, and need, is sometimes delayed. What then? Do we lose our confidence in the Lord? Do we despair? Do we quit? No. If we’re wise, we wait, patiently.
Conclusion: Let me ask you a question this morning: Is the Lord your light and your salvation? Is he the stronghold of your life? Just because you’re here today doesn’t make it so. Just because you have an interest in religion or even a certain admiration and respect for the church doesn’t make it so. He is only your light, your salvation, and your refuge if you have acknowledged your sin and turned to Him for forgiveness through the sacrifice of Christ. Jesus died to pay for sin—not His own, but yours. And He has promised to give you eternal life if you put your faith in Him—eternal life that starts now, here in the land of the living.
DATE: July 27, 1997
Tags:
Yanomami Indians
Fear
Light
Salvation
Lord’s house
[i] John R. W. Stott, Favorite Psalms, 36.
[ii] James Montgomery Boice, Psalms, Volume 1, 241.