Lebanon has been on the news ever since the explosion in Beirut on Tuesday. But the country has been on my mind since I spent part of summer 2016 in Lebanon, teaching English to Syrian refugees who lived in a camp just a few miles from the Syrian border. I worked with a church that had started an English school for the refugees and wanted to expand.
There’s a significant Christian population in Lebanon, but the members of this church did sometimes fear for their lives. For various reasons, the locals didn’t like the church reaching out to Syrians, and they sometimes made threats or even threw stones.
The Syrians were intimidated as well. On our first day of class, one of our locations only had one third of the students show up because their Lebanese neighbors had threatened them.
Still others — Syrian refugees especially — feared what their families would do if they converted to Christianity. For example, when the director of the camps converted, he was beaten by his family.
The church was under a very real and very tangible threat. But they didn’t let that fear overcome them. They continued to worship together, and they continued to reach out to Syrian refugees. They trusted in God and remained faithful.
In Isaiah 7, we see a very different response.
The Threat Of War
Isaiah prophesied to the nation of Judah, and in chapter 7, the country was terrified. The people just heard that Syria had joined forces with the northern tribes of Israel to wage war with them. This was no small threat. Judah expected to be conquered if it didn’t get help.
Verse two gives us a picture of their fear. “When the house of David was told, ‘Syria is in league with Ephraim,’ the heart of Ahaz [the king] and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind” (Isaiah 7:2).
I live in Manhattan, and if there were a foreign power surrounding the island — with ships on the Hudson River and the East River, planes circling overhead, and troops ready to deploy — my heart would be shaking, too!
But in the very next verse, God tells Isaiah to go to king Ahaz and tell him, “Do not fear.”
Why? For one, God had already promised king David, Ahaz’s ancestor, that his royal line would continue forever if his sons walk with God (1 Kings 8:25). If Ahaz devoted himself to God, he could trust that God would not allow Judah to be conquered.
And second, the Lord says explicitly to Ahaz, the attack “shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass” (Isaiah 7:7).
Ahaz’s Fear
But despite these promises, Ahaz still refused to trust in God and instead trusted in a foreign power, the king of Assyria. Ahaz took the silver and gold from his house and from the house of the Lord and sent them to the king of Assyria and begged for his help.
He said, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are attacking me” (2 Kings 16:7).
Instead of putting himself at the mercy of God, he put himself at the mercy of Assyria.
Isaiah’s Fear
How different from how the present-day church in Lebanon responded! When they were threatened by their neighbors for reaching out to Syrian refugees, they could have just stopped. And it would have been easy to rationalize, too. “Well, we’re putting people’s lives in danger here, and we’re hurting our ability to witness to our Lebanese neighbors, so we should just stop.”
They could have feared their neighbors rather than trusting in God. But they didn’t. They even decided to expand their ministry to Syrians.
The past four months have been a very scary time. For The New York Times, David Brooks wrote a column called, “America Is Facing 5 Epic Crises All at Once,” in which he named COVID-19, a newfound awareness of and desire to end racism, an economic recession, and more.
When we’re afraid, our fearful reactions aren’t always obvious or clear-cut. In March, it seemed perfectly reasonable to buy as much toilet paper as we could find. We can rationalize our fear and go along with what others are doing. But in hindsight, we can see how at times we’ve let fear overcome us and refused to trust in God.
Judah feared Israel and Syria, but Isaiah feared God.
The Lord told him, “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:12-13, emphasis mine).
The solution to fearing worldly power is to fear God more. To fear God means to revere him, to stand in awe of who he is. There’s a lot for us to fear right now. Let me encourage you to overcome that fear by fearing God more.
More than you revere the power of a virus, revere the power of God. More than you worry about your financial security, revere the one who feeds the birds and clothes the grass of the fields (Matthew 6:25-33). More than you fear the rejection of your friends or family, revere God’s acceptance of you in Christ.
What To Do When You’re Afraid
1 Peter 3:15 quotes this part of Isaiah. “But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:14-15).
When we fear God more than man, we display our hope. When Syrians from the church I served in Lebanon converted to Christianity despite the threats from their family, people noticed. When we live without fear, people ask why, and that gives us an opportunity to share with them the hope we have in Christ.
We don’t always look to God when we’re afraid. We fear our boss, our partner, or our friends more than we fear God. And because of that, we deserve the “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish,” and the “thick darkness” Isaiah prophesies about (Isaiah 8:21-22).
But if we have faith in Christ, he shines his light upon us (Isaiah 9:1-2). And having experienced his light, we respond with humble trust and shine our hope in a world of darkness (cf. Isaiah 60:1).
The next time you feel fear welling up inside, pause and remind yourself of the power and faithfulness of God. “Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:13).