Obedient Like Jesus | Becoming a Jesus Church: Week 5

Good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to all of you who are joining us online this rainy morning.

I am so proud of all of you who managed to find your way into the building today.

And for those of you at home, I pray that it's restful and very instructional to your soul.

If you have a Bible or Bible app, open up John chapter 14, verses 15 to 31.

John 14:15–31

John chapter 14, verses 15 to 31.

John 14:15–31

That's going to be my primary teaching passage this morning.

And I'm not going to get there till the very end of today's message.

Okay, the very end is when I'm going to get there.

And I'm not even going to use the whole thing, but I think this is a critical passage as it pertains to becoming a Jesus church that is obedient like Jesus.

And if you're joining us for the first time this morning, we've been in the middle of a teaching series called Becoming a Jesus Church, looking at six different attributes of the person of Christ.

And how are we becoming like Jesus in these areas?

And we're doing that together as a church.

And we really hope that over the next three years, by God's grace and with a lot of prayer and a lot of hard work, that this church will be people who look like, talk like, and act like Jesus more than they did before in these various areas.

Now, many of you have probably been in a relationship with somebody or you're currently married, but when you're in a relationship, especially a romantic relationship, it's really important to use these three words.

I love you.

Those are important words to use.

Okay, they're very important words to use.

And it's more important, though, not just to say that we love somebody, but to show them that we love them.

Because love is really a show and tell experience.

So imagine with me that there's a husband.

He's a nice man, a good man, and he's been married for a long time to the same woman.

And every morning he walks downstairs and he says, Honey, I love you to the moon and back.

And he's done this for years, uh, and years and years and years.

But what else he, something else he has done for years is that as soon as he says, Honey, I love you to the moon and back, he leaves the house, he drives down the street, and he goes to his regular house of prostitution.

Has a wonderful affair with a different woman that's not his bride.

And it just so happens that the one time he did this, he forgot to take the receipt out of his pants pocket.

So when he goes home, his wife is doing the laundry, and there she goes, she finds this receipt, this evidence of her husband's infidelity.

And he says, Honey, you don't get it.

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

And she goes, Okay, all right, well, I forgive you.

And he goes, Yes, you gotta trust me, I love you to the moon and back.

And she goes, All right, okay.

The very next day, he comes down the steps, he goes, Honey, I love you to the moon and back.

As he's leaving the driveway, he goes, You know what?

I'm just gonna go see that girl one last time.

So he goes over there, and sure enough, has an adulterous relationship on his wife, and you know what he forgot to do again?

Remove the receipt from his pants pocket.

So a week later, as his wife is doing the laundry, he finds evidence of his infidelity again, and she goes, Do you not love me?

He goes, Absolutely I love you.

Well, at some point in time, if you are this person who's being betrayed again and again and again, you are going to demand evidence of their love.

Because the words don't actually show you or help you feel or experience that there's love in this relationship when there's that kind of deep infidelity.

She's going to demand fidelity as an act, as a showing of this man's love for her.

That's a pretty hard way to start a sermon, isn't it?

But this is exactly how God talks about his people.

This is how God talks about his people.

In the book of Jeremiah, verse 3, verse 6, or chapter 3, verse 6, this is how God talks about Israel when they go commit spiritual adultery.

Because it's very possible for people to say, God, I love you.

So sing a song, Jesus, I love you, oh how I love you, and yet go commit spiritual adultery the very next day.

Here's Jeremiah 3, 6.

Have you seen what faithful Israel uh what faithless Israel has done?

She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree, and she has committed adultery there.

Let me tell you why God calls this adultery.

Israel was a people that entered into a covenant relationship with God.

That's very important.

It was a covenant relationship.

There was a moment in the book of Exodus, you can read it, where God said, If you will be my people, I will be your God.

And if you obey my commands, here's the blessings that come with obedience.

But if there's disobedience, there is a lack of blessing.

In fact, there's going to be a divorce of that relationship eventually, but you are my people and I am your God.

So anytime Israel stepped out on worshiping God by worshiping a false God of any kind, God calls that spiritual adultery.

See, in the ancient Near East, it was not uncommon.

They were surrounded by various nations who all had various gods.

And there was Baal and there was Asherah, and there's all kinds of other gods, specifically around fertility and uh specifically uh agriculture.

And it was not uncommon for the Jewish people to worship in the temple, and they would go to the temple and they'd worship God on whatever day they went to the temple, and then they would go out to these high places, these hills, actual mountaintops, and they would commit either pagan festival practices or animal sacrifice, and they would worship both gods.

It was just a cultural practice to guarantee that things were blessed inside of your work life, inside of your business life.

But that is not the agreement that God had with the people of Israel.

God said, We're in a covenant relationship.

You cannot go worship these false gods or go after other gods.

I'm a jealous God.

I don't want you to love anybody else.

I want you to love me.

And yet the nation of Israel for many years was quite happy to say, God, you're our number one, but we also like a little extra on the side.

But don't worry, you're our number one, but we just want to have a little bit of what we want to have in our own lives.

Now, what's fascinating about this is easy to think, oh, yeah, God's talking about the nation of Israel, but this theme carries on in the New Testament.

And uh James, the Holy Spirit, through the uh author of James in James 4, says this to people who know the Word of God, but disobey the Word of God.

James 4, verse 4.

James 4:4

You adulterous people, there's that word again.

You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world means enmity with God?

In other words, that there is a way in which you live where you can enjoy the practices of this world, reap the benefits of this world's ways and world's nature, and you can even give in to the temptations of your flesh or the cultural desires of whatever the flesh may be.

And as you pursue those things and the world praises you, it's very possible to come back into this church on Sunday morning and sing songs like, Jesus, I love you.

Oh, how I love you.

Has anybody done that?

If so, you, like me, are a spiritual adulterer.

Every single one of us is going to step into spiritual adultery throughout our relationship with God.

And it comes down to what we're saying yes to.

What are we allowing to rule our lives, govern our thinking?

What are we obeying in our life?

See, God is always connected, love and obedience.

That's a really important connection.

Love and obedience.

If you love me, you will obey my commands.

This is what uh God says in Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 6.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

And these commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

There is a deep connection in God's mind between our love for Him and us obeying the commands that He has laid out for us as an act of our love.

In this covenant relationship, we live a life that is faithful to the teachings of God, to the teachings and revelations of Jesus Christ, as an act of love and worship to our God.

And when we discard those things, or even if we have those things in our life, but we pursue the worldly aspects of this life, we're stepping out on the Lord into spiritual adultery.

It's very possible for every single one of us to go out of these doors today and say, God, I love you so much.

Thanks for everything, and then go obey the different ways that this world tells you to live and tells you to behave.

When something is on your heart all the time, I really enjoy that passage.

Jesus says, you need to put this on your heart, carry it with you everywhere you go.

You know, Amy and I have been married 18 years.

It's been a really wonderful 18 years, hasn't always been an easy 18 years, but God has been faithful throughout that entire time.

As a symbol of our marriage union, I wear this wedding ring on my hand.

Okay, so it's an external symbol of the covenant relationship that I am in I'm in with my wife.

But guess what?

If I take this ring off, if I can, holy cow, it's been a while.

If I take this ring off, am I still inside of a covenant with my wife?

That's right.

And the covenant does not require a symbol because the covenant is etched on my heart.

It's etched in my heart with love.

I've entered into a relationship, I've made a covenant promise, and love is what etches the commandment on my heart so that when temptation arises to step out of this covenant relationship in any way, whether it's pornography or with another woman or emotional or whatever it is, the covenant raises its head in my heart and keeps me actively obedient in my relationship to my wife.

It's a really important thing that covenants don't have just symbols, but they make their way from the symbol into the heart of the individual.

So here's what biblical obedience actually is.

When we talk about biblical obedience, it is not conformity to the code or submission to the law.

Biblical obedience is fidelity to the living God.

That's what it is.

When you're in a covenant relationship and you're walking in obedience to the Lord, you are remaining faithful to your God.

It's an act of devotion and it's a deep act of sacrificial love.

Now, active disobedience to the Lord is far more than asking the question, did I break the rules?

Everybody's gonna break rules.

We all break the rules, we all fall short, that happens.

The deeper question about active disobedience or biblical disobedience is what does my choice reveal about the allegiance of my heart?

Where's my heart really going?

And what sin ultimately shows us, and what disobedience really shows us, is this that sin has disordered our loves by making us obedient to our flesh rather than to God.

That's how sin deeply impacts us.

It reorients the order of love inside of our life.

Now, when God created humanity, you can read this in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, you were created to be in a faithful, loving, committed, obedient with God the Father, where you talked to each other daily, and there was fidelity between the two of you.

But when sin entered the world, the loving order and the relationship in which we love transitioned.

Instead of all of our love being focused towards God, our love now became focused toward ourselves.

The scripture calls that the flesh.

When you are governed by your sin, you are governed by your flesh.

You're governed by the self-centered desire to pursue yourself.

Here's Romans 8, 7 through 8.

It says, the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God.

It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.

Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

Now to be governed by the flesh means that you have no higher authority functioning in your life than yourself.

If you are a person in Christ Jesus, you are not governed by the flesh.

I'm going to explain that in a moment.

But if you are not in Christ Jesus, the scriptures tell us you actually have no possible way of pleasing God because you are a slave to your flesh.

It governs you.

Listen to how Jesus teaches this, John 8.34.

Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

In other words, if you are without Christ, you have no redeeming forgiveness in your life that sets you apart from sin.

You are a slave to your own self and the natures and the fleshes of this world.

You'll pursue ultimately what you want.

And so the flesh will always talk about its own desires, its own comfort, its own control.

But ultimately, the flesh pursues what it wants more than what God wants.

And this is the natural condition of every single person who's born into this world.

You are born into this world governed by the flesh.

You are not born into this world, governed by the Holy Spirit of God.

There has to come a point in time in which a transition happens inside of your heart where you stop self-governing and the Spirit of God starts governing your decisions.

There's a conversion experience.

Now every single slave is eventually going to obey his master.

So if the flesh is your master, you're going to obey the flesh.

However, if Christ is your master, your flesh will submit itself to the Spirit of God, and your relationship with God will be determined by where the Spirit of God leads you into all holiness and obedience.

Now, religion, and this is what religion does, religion tries to tame the flesh with laws, rules, and regulation.

That's what religion does.

It is trying to take this broken thing, and instead of healing it, it tries to contain it.

So do this, don't do that.

Here's the right thing to do, here's the wrong thing to do, here's how we go about practicing our lives.

And here's what that is like.

Some of you are uh farmers and you have orchards.

If you have a sick apple tree, that apple tree is gonna produce sick apples, right?

But here's what religion is like religion is like trying to take those sick apples, and then instead of harvesting the sick apples, I go to giant, I buy a bag of beautiful honey crisp apples, and I get my staple gun, I go back to my orchard, and I start stapling all these beautiful looking apples on this really sick tree.

The tree is not capable of producing good fruit.

All I've done is hang fruit on it so that it looks really good, but the tree itself is still dead and dying.

And so religion tries to make things look right, but it doesn't actually fix the heart of the individual.

We have to have something greater than religion, greater than rule, greater than law that can come in and rechange our hearts.

And that's the beauty of God's word.

God promises us that he will give us a heart capable of loving and obeying him.

Because if we can't just obey it on our own, we have to have something deeply changed inside of us.

You know, God understood how pervasive sin is inside the life of people, even if we don't really.

And that's why God gave the Ten Commandments in the first place.

God knows that nobody can keep the Ten Commandments, nobody can keep those ten, let alone the other hundreds of laws that he permitted to be allowed in the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

But all of those rules give us the insight that we're not capable of adhering to any kind of law set upon us.

So God makes a promise to his people, Deuteronomy 30, verse 6.

Deuteronomy 30:6

It's at the end of Deuteronomy, after he gives this whole law.

He says, The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live.

Now I want to think about this image.

Image of circumcision.

This is a really interesting practice, wouldn't you say?

If you don't know what circumcision is, men have a piece of skin on their member called foreskin, in which medically it can be removed.

Okay, it gets snipped off.

And God said that there is a sign of the covenant.

The sign of the covenant between God and his people is that men would have the foreskin removed from their member as a physical sign of the internal transformation that is happening, as a sign of their dedication over to the Lord.

Well, here's what happens: your flesh, what the Bible calls your flesh, is deeply attached to your heart.

There has to be a circumcision where the sinful flesh is cut off of the heart, just like the flesh is cut off of a man's member.

It is a visceral and physical image of the kind of separation that God has got to do in the life of some individuals.

He's going to cut off the old flesh and he's going to restore with a different heart.

Listen to Ezekiel 36, 26 through 27.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and to keep my laws.

So, in the flesh, if you are in the flesh and God has not circumcised your heart, you cannot please God.

Scripture is very clear on that.

Yet there's only one thing that can cut the flesh off of the heart, and that's the Spirit of God.

While men can perform a physical circumcision, only God can perform a spiritual one.

There's got to be a removal of the old self.

And only the Spirit of God is going to do this.

And he promises that he will.

And that when the Spirit of God removes the old flesh, when you're no longer governed by the old flesh, you have a new heart, you're governed by a new spirit, and the spirit moves you towards obedience.

You have a new master and you have a new heart, you now have a new orientation towards love, and you are willing and able to be obedient to the Lord.

This is the process that God goes through through the Spirit of God.

Now, the law is good for many things.

The law tells us exactly what God wants us to do.

But the law cannot make us love what God wants us to do.

Can't do it.

I know that there's a lot of good laws out there in the Old Testament.

The law says, do not murder.

That's a good law, wouldn't you agree?

We're all alive today because someone chose not to murder us.

And that's a really good law.

Until I want to commit murder.

And when I want to, and when I feel it, it's a whole lot nicer for me to submit to my flesh than to submit to God.

You see, the law tells us what God wants, but it doesn't make us want what God wants.

Law tells us not to steal.

And I appreciate that.

I have cars in my driveway because nobody's given it an inclination to steal my cars.

But you know what?

That's really good law.

Until I want to steal something.

And sometimes I do want to steal something.

Because I want that thing.

I don't possess it.

It's small.

Easy to take.

Why not take it?

Right?

The law tells us exactly what God wants, but it does not make us love what God wants.

And so we have to have a new heart.

We have to have a new spirit.

Something has to be renewed and transformed inside of us to make us love the very things that God loves Himself.

Now we get to John 14, verses 15 through 17.

John 14:15–17

This is what Jesus tells his disciples.

If you love me, keep my commands.

Yes, Lord, one problem.

I do love you, but I really love myself.

All right, I understand that, Jesus says.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever.

What is the Holy Spirit going to help you do?

He's going to help you keep the commands of the Lord.

That is one of his primary functions.

When the Holy Spirit cuts away the flesh and you're now governed by the Spirit, the Spirit of God indwells you.

Here's what Jesus says when he begins his ministry in Mark 1, chapter 15.

There is a way to receive this Holy Spirit, there is a way to get a new heart, and it begins by being obedient to respond to Jesus in this area.

Jesus begins his ministry by saying, The time has come, the kingdom of God has come, repent and believe the good news.

The initial act of obedience, repentance and belief, allows the Holy Spirit to enter your personhood and remove the flesh governance from your heart.

But it begins with repentance and belief.

Without repentance, there is no belief, and without a belief, there is no filling of the Holy Spirit of God, which will change your heart.

Now look how Jesus ends his ministry.

Mark 16, 16.

He begins by saying, Repent and believe.

How does he end?

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

In other words, you are condemned to be governed by your flesh, to be under the rule of this world, unless there's repentance and belief.

And that governance of flesh will damn you to hell.

That is the condemnation of God.

And it's not God condemning you, it's your own flesh trapping you in sin and keeping you damned.

And so when we repent and we believe, we're calling upon the mercy, compassion, and grace of God to fill our souls, remove our old flesh, and empower us to live a life that is deeply obedient to God Almighty as an act of love for his work.

Now the apostles continue the same preaching.

Listen to Acts 2 38.

Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

You see the process?

It's really three simple things repent, believe, be filled.

That's how it works.

Repent, believe, be filled.

And if you repent of your sin, in other words, you look at all All the things you've done through the obedience to your flesh, and you say, God, I recognize this goes against your holiness.

I repent of that behavior.

I'm disgusted by that behavior.

Will you please come into my life and remove the governance of the flesh from my heart?

God is faithful to indwell you, to remove the governance, to give you a new heart, and he restores you and redeems you through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's been the same message that Christians have been teaching and preaching for 2,000 years.

Repent, believe, be filled, and from your filling, be obedient.

So, friends, as we think about who God is, God doesn't just demand a heart of obedience.

It's not like following God is this whole giant list of rules that you can't accomplish.

When God asks you to be obedient as a sign for his love, he doesn't just ask you to be obedient, but he actually gives you a heart where you can be obedient, but that heart only comes to the person of Christ.

And it's yours to have.

When you call on the person of Jesus, it is yours to have.

And it's not just yours to have on the single day of salvation.

It's yours to have every time you're following after Jesus and you're still struggling with the sin of the flesh, you can still cry out and say, God, I am so sorry for this sin in my life, this giant mess that's inside my life.

I'm so sorry, God, I repent of this thing.

Lord Jesus, fill me with your spirit so I can live a holier life.

He's faithful to do it every single time.

So whether you don't believe in Christ and you're putting your salvation in for the first time, or even walking with Christ, and you're convinced that there is a part of your flesh that needs to be removed, you can submit it to the person of Jesus through repentance, belief, and filling.

And filling will allow you then to be obedient and to remove that from your life and to love the Lord God Almighty.

And it's a painful process.

It's a freeing process, but it is a painful process because it costs you, it makes you die to yourself and die to your own desires.

Now, in a moment here, I want to show you the story of a man in our church.

His name is Jeffrey Espensay.

Jeff uh became a follower of Christ a couple years ago.

But you're gonna see in his own life, through his personal testimony, that story.

There was repentance, there was belief, and through belief there's a filling of the Holy Spirit that allows him to be obedient, to be led by the Spirit.

It's a really fun testimony.

It's not a crazy testimony, but it's just a great example of how repentance leads to belief, and belief leads to filling, and filling leads to obedience.

Check this out.

My name is Jeffrey, and this is my testimony.

I needed something more than myself because for 24 or 25 years of my life, I tried to control it all on my own, and I realized I couldn't.

All the decisions I made had led me nowhere.

I've had bad relationships, bad friendships.

I was making continually poor decisions for my life.

I wasn't living.

I I almost hated life.

I tried to numb my existence because I didn't enjoy it at all.

I knew there was no control.

A good buddy of mine invited me to Men's Lions several times, and I kept saying no to him.

I just I wasn't ready for the whole church aspect, the whole religion aspect.

It was a time in my life where I cut off a lot of bad relationships.

I didn't have any, I cut off all my old friends, but I wasn't changed enough to have a bunch of new friends.

I was kind of in a very lonely, lonely time period, and I knew I needed a sense of community, and I knew that going out to Men's Lions could only provide what could be, you know, quality, caring individuals.

There's no hurt in going out one time, and that kind of changed my life since.

What stood out the most to me about Christian men was just their integrity, their willing to serve, their vulnerability, especially at Men's Lions.

I mean, you you see guys talk about some of the worst experience, they're going through some of maybe their worst experiences, but having that faith in their life, knowing there's a plan for them and knowing that it's gonna work out was just the most impactful thing.

Like, and I remember a time when a fellow tribesman from a different tribe was in the hospital.

Him and his wife got hit by a semi, I believe.

And I didn't even know this guy.

But they put his phone number out in the chat, sent him a voicemail of a prayer, you know, just saying that you're praying over him.

And something inside of me said, call that guy.

So I wrote down something just so I didn't stutter or or, you know, buffer some words when I when I did that.

Called him, went to voicemail, told him a prayer, and then after I hung up the phone, I just felt this immense emotion come over me.

I started crying.

I didn't I didn't understand what was going on.

And that was like the hardest evidence I could have ever had.

It was like, okay, now like I was leaning in in a in a in a lot of ways, but that was like the first time where you actually feel it, and you're like, okay, this is it, you know.

The more I leaned in, the more God met me.

God started putting desires in my heart, and and the more, the more I gave, the more I got.

And and I just kept leaning in during that time.

Jesus changed my heart, my my desires.

The desires in my heart to want to give, to teach, to lead, to encourage others.

Just as my glass started to fill and overflow, I didn't know what to do with this extra gift.

If someone feels trapped, I would want them to know that God doesn't need you to be perfect right now.

He'll meet you exactly where you are.

Continue to ask for guidance and and and pray.

The more you lean in, the more He'll He'll He'll meet you.

Sometimes the most powerful faith isn't the faith that's been around the longest.

It's the faith that still doesn't know and chooses to believe anyway.

Amen.

Did you hear this progression?

Did you hear the story?

I was living for myself.

I was empty, I was numb.

I repented of those sins in relationship with others.

I began to believe this-I have a new spirit.

I felt prompted by the Spirit of God.

I now have new desires in my heart.

God changed the desires of my heart.

Did you see the progression of the story?

Did you hear it?

Not only did you hear it, but can you see it in his countenance?

This is the story of every follower of Jesus.

That there is who we were, and there's now who God is making us into.

And it begins with the filling of the Spirit, leading us into spirit-filled obedience.

And here's what Jesus does for us.

Jesus shows us that spirit-filled obedience from the heart, spirit-filled obedience from the heart, is able to do the will of God in spite of human limitations.

Listen to John chapter 14, verse 1.

John 14:1

Jesus tells the disciples, If you love me, you will keep my commands.

That's how Jesus begins.

John 14, 1, if you love me, you will keep my commands.

Then you go to the end, John 14, 31, and here's what Jesus says about himself.

I love the Father, and I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

Perfect obedience, perfect love.

If you love me, you will keep my commands.

By the way, I love my Father, and do I do exactly as the Father has commanded me?

Jesus was perfect in the fact that he was perfectly obedient to everything the will of God had for him.

Jesus teaches it, if you live me, you'll obey my commands, but then he models it for us because if you know the story, John 14 is what we call the farewell discourse.

John 14 is where Jesus is talking to the disciples the night before he goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he then is going to be arrested and taken to the cross.

So the very last teaching, one of the last teachings he gives his disciples, is if you love me, you obey my commands, and I love the Father, and I do exactly what he says, and because I do exactly what he says, I am about to go to the cross in 24 hours.

That is the loving obedience of Jesus Christ on display.

And it doesn't mean that Jesus says that this doesn't like bother him.

Jesus is really struggling with the cost of obedience.

Look at Matthew 26, 39.

He's in the garden.

He's going to be obedient, but he's really struggling with in his human nature the obedience of the cross.

My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will.

That's real pain.

That's real suffering.

He's going to be obedient.

There's not a question in his mind he's going to do exactly what the Father wants, but obedience is going to cost Jesus immensely.

Real physical pain, real anguish, real just frustration and overwhelmedness at the reality that sin requires his death on the cross.

And yet, even though Jesus struggled, he has perfect trust because how does he end that whole scene?

Yet not my will, but your will be done.

That's what loving obedience is.

It's the full picture of loving obedience.

And so sometimes a heart of disobedience, a heart of obedience is not proven by the absence of difficulty.

If you're going to be obedient, it's going to be difficult, but by the Spirit empowered faith and trust to do the will of the Father, no matter how costly it is.

And so if you are walking with Jesus and you're becoming more like him, there will be times in your life when obedience is going to be very difficult, and obedience is going to cost you something significant, and that obedience is going to feel like suffering.

There will come a time when the Spirit of God is going to ask more of you than you're ready to give, ask more of you than your heart's actually been transformed.

And as he's asking more of you, and you keep saying yes to it, your heart will be shaped and transformed.

Friends, forgiveness is going to cost you.

If the Holy Spirit of God says, I'm calling you to forgive somebody, it's going to cost you.

Forgiving people is hard, especially when they hurt you and you want your pound of flesh.

I get it.

Forgiveness is incredibly hard and it's very costly.

Trusting, uh, being truthful with people who have hurt you, or being truthful with people who are deeply in sin, being truthful with others is going to cost you something.

But when the Spirit of God calls you to be truthful and we're obedient to that, we see the fruit of God.

Generosity, if the Spirit of God calls you to be generous, it's going to cost you something.

It's going to be difficult.

There's going to be an anguish involved in the giving over of that thing because obedience is going to cost, and when it costs, it will feel like suffering.

Jesus suffered with mental anguish before the cross.

And I promise you, there'll be times when God asks you to obedient, and you're going to be filled with mental anguish over the obedience.

Five years ago, the Lord spoke to my wife and I, and he said, Come to Lidditz, Pennsylvania.

And we were obedient.

But what you don't know is that that obedience was incredibly costly.

There was so much suffering involved, emotional anguish involved in leaving a church we loved, a location we loved, and a house that we loved.

I mean, we we just loved where we lived.

I can't explain to you.

I wish I could give you my heart so you could know how much Amy and I loved the place we were.

And when God said, go to Liddest, Pennsylvania, and feed my sheep, my first response was no.

That was the first response.

Now it's been five years, and I love all of you, and it's been the greatest blessing ever.

But there was suffering in the decision, and it was costly.

It was financially costly, it was emotionally costly in my marriage.

There was years of us having to work through the difficulty of making the decision to come to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which, if you're not from here, is a weird place.

All right, it's just not easy.

But God honors the suffering.

Listen to Romans 8:17.

Romans 8:17

Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

If indeed we share in his sufferings, in order that we may also share in his glory.

The suffering of Jesus is not just that God might ask you to give your life for him, he might ask you to do that physically.

But more importantly, it's just the idea that obedience carries with it real costly emotional suffering.

But when we share in the suffering, we also share in the glory.

Christ would never tell you that the suffering of the cross wasn't worth it, because the suffering of the cross and his obedience to God the Father allowed you to be in the kingdom of heaven.

We share in the sufferings of Christ, we get a share in his glory.

Church, God calls us to be transformed, not by our own doing, not by strapping on and bootstrapping more opportunities and more rules and more laws and more regulation, not by trying to live the perfect Christian life on our own, but God calls us to, in perfect submission, be filled by the Spirit of God and allow Him to transform our hearts into active obedience.

This is why James, I believe, in James 1, 22 through 21, or 21 through 22, closes or begins his chapter this way.

He says, humbly accept, humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves, but do what it says.

Humbly accept the word planted in you.

Who is the word?

Christ Himself.

You've received the gift of Christ in your life through salvation, which saves you.

Listen to the word.

As the Spirit of God instructs you, as the written word of God instructs you, listen to the word and be in obedience to the living and dwelling Spirit of God.

And in so doing, you will find the richness of being a follower of Jesus.

But do not be deceived into thinking you're being obedient because you have activities in your life.

It's never the activities, it's always the heart.

And as the Christ changes your heart into being more obedient, you'll experience the fullness and the richness of your relationship with Christ.

One of the many ways that God asks us to be obedient.

In fact, the first thing that Jesus tells us is after we repent and we believe, we're to be baptized.

So I've got my baptism shirt on today.

It's my fun little blue shirt.

You can have one of these awesome blue shirts too.

Here's how you get it.

If you are not a follower of Jesus, or you are if you are a follower of Jesus, but you've not yet taken the step of water baptism, that is your next act of obedience.

And I'll tell you why.

Jesus says that you are to believe in me and you are to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

There is a physical act of obedience that we are to go to, go through and publicly identify with the person of Jesus Christ.

If we have a hard time publicly identifying with him through baptism, which all you're doing is getting wet, you're gonna have a really difficult time identifying him with other more costly acts of obedience.

Because this is very small potatoes compared to what Christ is gonna call you out of in the rest of your life.

But it has to begin somewhere.

And so if your heart's been transformed by the gospel and you've not yet taken that step of water baptism, your next step of obedience is to get baptized.

And I have good news for you because today you can sign up on 11.8.

We have a baptism Sunday.

It's your next opportunity to say, I'm gonna follow after Jesus, not just in word, but also in deed.

Because love requires us not just to tell, but also to show.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for the gift of your Holy Spirit that regenerates, rejuvenates, and transforms all of who we are.

And it reorders the order of love inside of our hearts so that we are no longer governed by the flesh, but governed fully by the Spirit of God.

Jesus, thank you for how you are changing me.

Thank you for how you're indwelling me.

Thank you for how you're shaping up my love and my heart for you.

Thank you for how you're going to do that in the lives of the people of Grace Church.

Father, I pray this morning that there's anybody who's actively in disobedience to you today, and the Spirit of God is confessing or convicting them in their sin, that they would repent, Jesus.

They'd call upon you, receive your mercy, compassion, and grace.

They'd repent of their sin.

They'd believe in your power to transform their life.

They'd hand everything over to you.

Your spirit would indwell them, your spirit would change them, and they would experience the richness of being a son or daughter of God.

I ask that in Jesus' name.

Amen.