Turning to the New Testament again, to give an example from it, remember bold Peter and the words which he spoke so enthusiastically to his Lord, “I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee.” Yet see him a little later, warming himself in the high priest’s palace, and first one of the maid-servants, and then others that stood by said to him, “Surely thou art one of them;” and “he began to curse and to swear,” to prove that he was no disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, Peter, where is thy courage now? Truly, “the fear of man bringeth a snare,” even to the best of men. God save us from it, and make us so brave that we shall never fear any man so as to do a wrong action!
Again, the fear of man brings a snare in this respect, it keeps many persons from conversion. Perhaps there are some such persons now present; let me see if I can pick them out. You scarcely dare to go to the place where the gospel is preached in a way in which God blesses it, because if you were to go there and it were known, it would be a subject of jest in your family, and would provoke remarks that you would not like. There are many who dare not go to the house where God pours out the blessing; they are such cowards that they dare not come to listen to those who preach Christ’s gospel with power; and others who do come and hear it are afraid to receive the truth to which they have listened again and again. The thought in such a person’s mind is, “What would father and mother say if I were converted? Oh, what a time I should have of it! What would my fellow-workmen say? I should have to run the gauntlet of the whole lot if they once knew that I had become a Christian.” Another says, “I don’t know how I should endure the persecution I should receive; my life would become intolerable if I were to become a child of God.” So they never come to Jesus because the fear of man, which bringeth a snare, keeps them still as the hopeless slaves of sin. But, young man, do you mean to be damned just to please somebody else? Do you mean to fling away your immortal soul in order to escape the laughter of fools? Remember that they may laugh you into hell, but they cannot laugh you out again. Let not the fear of man be the ruin of your soul. If for the sake of pleasing men you choose to forfeit some small trifle, it does not much matter; but when it comes to the forfeiting of Christ, the forfeiting of your soul, and the forfeiting of heaven, I appeal to your own conscience to say if it is worth while to be eternally ruined for the sake of pleasing men whoever they may be. Is it not better that even father, and mother, and brother, and sister, and every friend you have in the world should be against you, and that God should be yours, than that you should have all these as your friends and yet remain at enmity against the Most High?
I have no doubt that this same fear of man keeps a large number of persons who are converted from making a public avowal of their faith, and so it bringeth a snare to them. Nicodemus “at the first came to Jesus by night,” and Joseph of Arimathaea was “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews.” I hope you will not try to shelter behind those two good men, for remember that as soon as Christ was put to death, when his cause was at the very worst, they came out boldly and proved their love of him; and we do not read that they ever crept back like snails into their shells. Having owned Christ as their Lord and Master, I have no doubt that they continued to follow him whatever the consequences may have been. So far as you are concerned, just now is the time to own Christ; now especially, because scepticism and superstition, the two monstrous evils which threaten to devour true religion, are so rampant; and it needs some moral courage to declare yourself upon the side of the simple gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now is the hour for a Christian to play the man for Christ his Lord and Master; yet there are many who are keeping in the background because “the fear of man bringeth a snare” upon them. Where are you, dear friend? I cannot come round to all those pews; otherwise I should stop here and there before some of you whom I know, and before others whom I suspect—and whom I joyfully suspect—of loving my Master. I think you do by the way you look when his name is extolled in your hearing; yet you have not said so in the way he wishes. I charge you by the love which you bear to him, keep not back. Think that you see him now before your eyes, and that you hear him say to you as he hangs upon the cross, “I bore all this for thee, and yet art thou ashamed of me? If thou lovest me, own me in the midst of this wicked and perverse generation. Take up your cross and follow me, whatever suffering or reproach it may involve.”
The fear of man has brought a snare to some of the greatest believers who have ever lived; and any child of God, whenever he fears the face of man, loses some of the dignity which appertains to that relationship. What a grand man Abraham was! Whenever I read his life I look up to him with astonishment and wish I had such faith as would make me resemble him in that respect. He marches across the page of history with such quiet stately dignity that kings and princes are dwarfed beside his great figure. How nobly did he say to the king of Sodom, “I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, lest thou shouldest say I have made Abram rich;” but oh, how small did he look when he said to Abimelech concerning his wife, “She is my sister.” She was his sister in a sense; there was some truth in what he said, but she was more than his sister so he was uttering a falsehood, for which he was rightly rebuked by the heathen prince.
You have in David another instance of how the fear of man can bring the mighty down. How brave he is as he goes out to slay Goliath, and how grandly he behaves when twice he spares the life of his sleeping enemy! Yet see him there at Gath when the servants of Achish frightened him so that he “feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.” The fear of man had brought down Israel’s future monarch to drivel like a madman.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
