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“Obedience”
Hi everyone. Let me share a story about my childhood.
I was a mischievous little dude when I was younger, and I used to climb everything I could.
There was just something about getting above the ground, and I loved it. So when I became a pole-vaulter in high school this wasn’t a surprise.
But, when I was about 2ish I for some reason thought it would be fun to play in the downstairs sink.
So I climbed up a few boxes… and reached the sink.
Now the faucet in this sink was one of those kinds of faucets that sprays water everywhere at an ungodly speed.
And I probably thought this was the coolest thing ever… so I turned it on… full blast.
And like all kids, who are unconcerned about the effects of their actions… I let it be.
The problem was, my mom was upstairs… for a while… a really long while.
So long that the water filled the sink and started to pour over the counter and on the floor.
Now, I don’t have a clue where my brothers were… I have four of them, and they are all older than me. So you would have assumed they could have stopped what I began.
But, they were probably at a friend’s house, or maybe they thought this a natural occurrence… who knows?
Either way, when my mom finally made it down stairs, there was about two inches of standing water everywhere in the basement.
And the basement in my house isn’t small.
She scooped me up, splashed through the water to turned off the faucet and called my dad who was at work.
The conversation went something like, ‘Hi, Craig? … you need to come home.’
‘Uh, what’s wrong Anita?’
‘There’s water in the basement.’
‘Well, just get some towels and mop it up.’
‘No, you need to come home now… it’s everywhere and we don’t have enough towels.’
Soon, my mom told him what went down and he finally left work to come home and clean up.
I became the reason for the re-carpeting. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized what a mess I had made; I always had thought growing up that it was just because they didn’t like the color. Woops.
Anyways, tonight I’m going to be speaking to you about Obedience.
So, I decided to go easy on myself and talk to you about obedience in the beginning of Acts 1
So lets read it: Read Acts 1:8-11 (Before I go any further I should tell you that Acts is the second half of Luke… Luke, Part 2, or like Luke’s p.s. at the end of a letter) – Continue…
Now, I said I would be going easy on myself because really what I want to talk to you about tonight is the idea of ‘following Jesus’
And if I am to talk to you about obedience in regards to ‘following Jesus’, basically what I am going to do is something like talking about literature in regards to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare wrote a lot of different things. Plays, Poetry, what have you. But all of them are forms of literature.
Following Jesus involves a lot of different things. But all of them are forms of obedience.
Jesus commands. We obey. That’s all there is to the Christian life. There’s nothing else to it.
Faith, love, prayer, service. Whatever. They’re all forms of obedience.
SO, ‘obedience’ is just a synonym for ‘following Jesus’
But anyone who tries to follow Jesus knows that we don’t always do what he tells us to do. We also reject him.
We don’t always love him. We also hate him at times.
We’re his friends, for sure. But we have also been his enemy at times.
Basically what I’m trying to get at is that, every moment of the Christian life is lived in either obedience or disobedience. There is no middle option.
To say it like a neurotic, but brilliant, and who I think is a most important writer—a guy named Søren Kierkegaard: ‘Our lives are governed by an inexorable (unpreventable) either-or – Either obedience or disobedience.’ These are the only options.
What he is saying is that there are no neutral zones in the Christian life. No empty spaces in our lives where Jesus’ command to obey doesn’t reach us.
Jesus’ command covers every little part of our lives.
Now when I say this, it probably makes you feel a little claustrophobic.
Maybe you hear it and are like me in saying, ‘Dang Jesus. Why don’t you relax a little? Chill out for a second. Come on, give me some space.’
Maybe Jesus makes you feel a bit like you do about tests.
No matter how much you like the subject matter, there’s always a part you, maybe a big part, that is happy to be done.
I can only speak for myself, but I admit that sometimes I just wish that Jesus would leave me alone.
I feel like the demands that he places on me are more than I can bear.
And for sure, they are more than I initially signed up for.
I grew up in a Christian home, with a lovely family. I was the youngest of 4 boys and I have the scars to prove it. Probably the most of them are internal.
But I actually became a Christian at summer camp when I was just entering middle school.
Think about this for a second. I became a Christian at camp… And this camp was like a resort for me. I played Ultimate Frisbee everyday. I could gorge myself with amazing food three times a day. And I could hang out with people who I thought were way cooler than me.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And the ideas that I did have about the Christian life were mostly wrong.
I became a Christian because I thought it was the best way to be happy, get what I wanted, or avoid pain and suffering.
At camp, they told me that if I had faith in Jesus, then he would give me life.
And that turned out to be true.
But what they didn’t tell me was that being a Christian didn’t make me impervious to the problems of the world.
The year after I became a Christian my mom almost died in a bicycle accident. A few years later was she diagnosed with breast cancer.
And then when I was a senior she almost died again. She went in for a hysterectomy and they nicked her rectum, which if that mistake wasn’t caught, she would’ve died within a week.
School before college wasn’t easy for me… to say the least.
I learned that that the life Jesus gives often feels like a living death.
And it feels like that because that’s exactly what it is!
Life with Jesus is a constant dying to oneself in obedience to him.
Let me say that again… Life with Jesus is a constant dying to oneself in obedience to him.
And it’s impossibly demanding!
It asks for things that you don’t have. And it claims more than you want to give.
And I’m not just speaking rhetorically.
Listen to how Jesus himself describes what it’s like to follow him.
In Luke, the same author of the previous passage we read. 14:26-27…
Now, Jesus isn’t saying necessarily that you are supposed to hate you parents, siblings, or children.
But in comparison to loving Jesus, it will seem as if you hate your family.
When many, if not most of us, hear this we’re inclined to think that it’s just a bit too much. I mean it’s overboard!
And we especially feel this way when we get tired of grinding out the Christian life.
We’re tempted to just… Give Up.
I thought about this so many times.
… Because the Christian life is really hard.
And we don’t see much progress.
We feel like we’re just banging our heads against a door.
And we’re tempted to think it would be easier to stop trying.
If you have ever felt that way, you need to hear what I’m about to say. Because it is God’s word for you.
You are not alone.
You are not the only one who has these kinds of thoughts.
And, it’s not just that other Christians feel like you do. They do, for sure.
But what I want you to hear tonight is that Jesus Christ himself knows how you feel.
He knows how hard it is to obey.
He knows because his whole life was one of total obedience to his Father.
Think about that. Our Lord – the one who commands us to obey – was himself a servant.
He knows what it’s like to struggle to respond obediently to the command of God.
He wrestled so much with obedience that he actually sweated blood before he took on the cross.
Now Jesus obeyed perfectly throughout his whole life, but we don’t.
I struggle with obedience all the time.
I could keep in better touch with my friends.
I could be less critical of myself.
I could be less lazy.
And when hard times come along in my life I could be less apathetic, more hopeful, and more loving.
But when things get really nasty in your life – you need to know this.
No matter how tired, empty, or disobedient you feel. You need to know that Jesus will not leave you or forsake you.
He will always be with you. No matter what.
But here’s the thing…
Jesus Christ is the Lord. And he can only be with you in one way.
As your Lord.
He can only share himself with you in one way – by becoming your God.
If you think about what I am saying for a second, you’ll realize that what I’m saying is just strange.
I’m saying that when we’re exhausted, Jesus gives us peace by freeing us and putting us to work.
It’s kind of like procrastination… something I’m horrible at.
In college I would wait to the last minute, staying up all night to finish a paper and I would find myself running, literally running, to class to get there on time, paper flapping in hand as I ran through campus.
It was a horrible habit of mine and I always exhausted myself trying to make up time that I had thrown away on things I thought more important.
It took all of college to realize that when I actually did the daily work of preparation and such that I wouldn’t be so anxious… in fact it felt good.
Strange.
Now when we’re anxious, Jesus calms us down by giving us something to do.
May it be faith, love, prayer, service. Or whatever.
I’m saying that Jesus showers us with Love by showering us with commands.
Because it’s as we obey him that we are joined to him and enjoy him.
It is as we submit to him that we are united to him and share in his life.
But the problem is that instead of seeing this as freedom, we often see it as slavery.
And like all slaves do, we dream of escape.
And so we do. We escape.
We begin to live as we please. To live as our own Lord.
But it doesn’t work.
We think, at times, that living as we please is a wide-open landscape. But, it turns out to be a dingy little prison.
It doesn’t make us happy. We develop an uncontrollable desire for more, and it makes us miserable.
But, for some reason we keep trying it out anyway.
Now, please, don’t let this sound pious or churchy. To most people, what I’m about to say is just insane.
Because if our culture is sure about one thing, it’s that freedom is having the means to live as you please.
But the Gospel tells us that living like Paris Hilton or Donald Trump isn’t freedom. It is imprisonment in the dungeon of our own little appetites.
From the standpoint of the Gospel, the good life isn’t freedom to cultivate and satisfy your every desire.
It is permission to stop obsessing about yourself.
That’s why Jesus’ statement in Acts 1:8 is so crucial.
Listen:
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
“You will be my witnesses.” That’s a command. And it’s a command that contains the secret of the Christian Life.
By calling us to be His witnesses, Jesus is freeing us from a narrow obsession with our own little stories.
By calling us to point to him, he’s rescuing us from ourselves.
This is crucial to see.
When Jesus commands us to be his witnesses, he’s commanding us to tell his story. Not our personal stories.
And, he is definitely not calling us to point out what’s wrong with everyone else’s story, or even our own.
I mean come on; he’s calling us to be witnesses, not prosecuting attorneys or judges.
He is calling us to point away from ourselves to him.
Let me say that again… He is calling us to point away from ourselves to him.
And, that is something that anyone can do.
You don’t have to be an expert to do it. You don’t have to know the answers to all the questions that people might ask you about him.
And, you certainly don’t have to have your life under control.
Anyone can point to Jesus.
And that doesn’t mean that you go around with a billboard tied to your neck.
As monk by the name of Francis of Assisi once said, ‘preach the gospel always, and when necessary… use words’.
Which can come out in many ways. In Faith, Love, Prayer, Service.
And, We are called to love because Jesus loved us.
By loving others, we show gratitude for God’s love for us.
And anyone can respond with gratitude to the grace that he has shown us.
Jesus doesn’t want you to be a super-Christian.
He doesn’t want you to be an expert.
He just wants you to be you—The ordinary person that you are.
Someone who has experienced his grace and forgiveness and who now just wants to share it with others.
So, as you try to live as his obedient witnesses, remember that he has promised to strengthen you with the Holy Spirit.
And know, that even if you don’t obey Jesus at times… There is nothing that will exhaust the grace of God… Lets Pray:
