Tuesday, August 4, 2009

To deliver us from fear



We never find Adam afraid of God, nor of any manifestation of Deity while he was in Paradise an obedient creature, but no sooner had he touched the fatal fruit than he found that he was naked, and hid himself. When he heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, Adam was afraid and hid himself from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

Sin makes miserable cowards of us all. See the man who once could hold delightful converse with his Maker, now dreading to hear his Maker’s voice and skulking in the grove like a felon, who knows his guilt, and is afraid to meet the officers of justice. Beloved, in order to remove this dread nightmare of slavish fear from the breast of humanity, where its horrible influence represses all the noblest aspirations of the soul, our Lord Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

From a sermon entitled "God Incarnate, The End Of Fear," delivered December 23, 1866. Image by Satoru Kikuchi under Creative Commons License.

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