From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part 39 of a series. Read part 38.

Jehovah repeatedly allayed the fears of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that He would not keep His promise of the Messiah through them.

And the angel said unto them: "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2: 10-11)

As we continue our studies of the Scriptural libretto of Handel's Messiah, we come now to the opening words of the greatest announcement in all of history: "Fear not..."

This is not the first time that God or angels had appeared to men with these words. In fact, the words "Fear not" are a recurring utterance in the line of Messianic promises, from Genesis all the way up to this climactic moment.

God's "Fear Not" to Abraham

Nearly 1900 years before the angelic announcement to the shepherds - after Abraham returned from the slaughter of the kings, his rescue of his nephew Lot, and his encounter with Melchizedek -

the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.... And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness. (Genesis 15:1,5-6)

What was it that Abram (meaning "exalted father"), soon to be renamed Abraham (meaning "father of a multitude") by Jehovah, feared? He feared that God's promise that he would have a son in his old age, and would be the father of a great nation from who would come the promised Redeemer, was an empty one. And so God appeared to reassure Abram and to confirm His word with a covenant.

The Holy Spirit through the writer to the Hebrews tells us the significance of this covenant:

For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you." And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 6:13-20)

God's word to Abraham was, "Fear not" - because it is impossible for Me to lie. I shall without fail send the Messiah whom I have promised. Abraham's response was to believe God. This, the Holy Spirit tells us in Romans, is the essence of justification by faith in Christ alone:

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." (Romans 12:2-3)

When members of the church at Galatia wanted to abandon the Gospel of faith and return to a false gospel of works, what did the Spirit say to them through Paul?

Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? - just as Abraham "believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed." So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. (Galatians 3:5-9)

God's "Fear Not" to Isaac

After Abraham's son Isaac inherited his father's possessions, God appeared to him in Beersheba,

and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: Fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for My servant Abraham's sake. And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there... (Genesis 26:23-25)

What was Isaac's fear? We read in the verses preceding this great statement that Isaac had feared that the men of Gerar would kill him, cutting off the Messianic line, and take his wife Rebekah. Therefore he lied to them and told them that she was his sister. This likewise was, at its essence, a fear that God would not keep His promise to Abraham - a promise God had confirmed to him with the strong declaration, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Genesis 21:12).

Isaac at this point in time did not exhibit the same faith his father Abraham had received concerning Isaac himself:

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called," concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. (Hebrews 11:17-20)

Once again, the Holy Spirit in the New Testament tells us the prophetic significance of all this:

For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, "In Isaac your seed shall be called." That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: "At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son." (Romans 9:6-9)

In other words, the promised Seed was, as we have seen, those who are in Jesus the Messiah - who is, as to His humanity, the descendant of Isaac. As we have already seen in Galatians,

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, "And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your Seed," who is Christ. (Galatians 3:16)

And as the Apostle Paul continues in Romans, he relates the promise directly to Isaac and Rebekah and their chosen son Jacob:

And not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." (Romans 9:10-13)

God's "Fear Not" to Jacob

When Jacob had found out that his son Joseph was still alive and was the ruler in Egypt, and that the way for the Messianic line to be preserved appeared to be by way of moving all his family and possessions to Egypt,

God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again... (Genesis 46:1-4)

This is exactly what God had promised to Abraham when He first promised that the Messianic line would come through him, and that God would thus make of Abraham a great nation:

Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates - the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." (Genesis 15:13-20)

The "Fear Nots" Continue

Jehovah constantly identifies Himself in the Old Testament as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" - the patriarchs to whom He gave and continually reaffirmed His great Messianic promise with the repeated words, "Fear not..." But God's Messianic "fear not" declarations do not end with the three great patriarchs. He sends messengers to speak the Messianic "fear not" to Daniel, to the father of John the Baptist, to Mary, and finally to Joseph - even as the incarnate God-man is being formed by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of His virgin mother.

Next: God's Further Messianic "Fear Not" Promises

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