“THE OBEDIENCE THAT MAGNIFIES GOD” Part 2

James 4:17; 1 John 5:2-4

INTRODUCTION The loss had been humiliating to the two time Superbowl champion Green Bay Packers. Touted as a three-touchdown favorite, the Packers could do nothing right that day. Surrounded by a packed stadium and before national television, they went down to a crushing defeat. As you can well imagine, it was rather tense in the locker room the next day when the team showed up for practice. When Coach Vince Lombardi walked in, they didn't quite know what to expect. Calmly Lombardi picked up a football and said, "Today we go back to the basics. This, gentlemen, is a football." The past three weeks has been a time going back to the basics, to consider what the Christian life is all about. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the "football": God has created us and redeemed us with the highest purpose in mind - to enjoy and display the His glory. I put it this way, to magnify His greatness and maximizing your happiness. The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: God wants us feel, think, desire, and act in a way that will make God look as great as He really is. To be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God. When we live that way, God is magnified, our joy is maximized (John 13:17), and our life is abundant! (John 10:10). Jonathan Edwards said, “The godly are designed for unknown and inconceivable happiness.” Obedience is the primary way that we magnify the worth, wealth, and glory of God and maximize our happiness.

REVIEW We have been learning about God’s demand for obedience from His people. First, we saw from James 4:17 that biblical obedience is not merely ceasing from doing the wrong things, but also doing the right things. Then, we saw 7 reasons why obedience is important to God and four non-biblical responses to the demand for obedience. So, God demands obedience but we saw that there are two major problems for us when it comes to obedience. Our disobedience is rooted in the total sinful depravity and corruption of our hearts: We have wrong desires and are powerless to obey. Left to ourselves, we neither desire to do what is right nor do we have the ability to do what is right. Our flesh always goes after what it likes, yet apart from Christ it always likes the wrong things, therefore, it always does the wrong things. That is why for obedience to take place there has to be a change in my likes and desires. The only obedience that pleases God is the obedience that comes from the heart and yet the very problem in regards to obedience is the problem of my heart! So we have a problem; God demands our obedience and if we disobey He holds us responsible. So how do we obey when we cannot obey? How do we do what we ought to when we don’t want to? That is where we saw…

I. WHAT IS THE KIND OF OBEDIENCE THAT GOD DEMANDS AND THAT WE CAN DO-Non burdensome, Easy, and Light obedience The Apostle John says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:2-3). Jesus Christ put it in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Jesus says that there is something about Him that makes his demands upon us “light” and “easy”. When you look at combine what Jesus and John say you discover that in God’s Kingdom there is a kind of obedience that is not burdensome but joyful, easy, and light. Love is not just obeying but a kind of obeying that comes from a certain kind of heart that makes the obedience not burdensome, but easy and light. So in order to obey these commands there has to be something more than my desires, willpower, duty, and decisions. Otherwise God is making a burdensome and impossible demand upon me. Yet this is exactly how some see obedience! Why is commandment keeping burdensome for some? I used a few weeks ago the analogy last week of a monkey with his hand caught in a nut jar. It would be easy for him to slip his hand out of the jars opening except that he has his fist clinched around that nut. If he loves the nut more than he loves freedom from that jar, then getting his hand out of the jar will be very burdensome, even impossible (as Jesus said about the young man who’s fist was clenched around his wealth in Mark 10:27). But what could be easier than dropping a nut? The monkey will drop the nut if he desires freedom more than the nut. Command keeping is burdensome if you desire to hold onto the nut. Jesus said, “He who seeks to save his life will lose it.” Which desire rules your heart? Do you want to hold on to the nut or do you want freedom? Without God’s help, tragically, we always want the nut. If you desire for the fleeting, short term, shallow, soul diminishing, God dishonoring pleasures of sin then command keeping is going to be burdensome, if not impossible. Think about it. It’s hard to be honest if you want to lie. It’s hard to be pure if you want to lust. It’s hard to forgive if you want to nurse a grudge and bitterness. It’s hard to give if you want to selfishly hoard. It’s hard to endure trials if you want an easy life. It is hard to live for the glory of God if you want to live for yourself. It’s hard to live for God’s great purposes if you are self absorbed, small minded, and desire for what is trivial, superficial, and trite. If that is you then your life will be shrinking God’s glory and minimizing your happiness.

Some of you are letting go of the nut of sin because you desire God and the maximum happiness and pleasure found in trusting and obeying Him. The battle is about desiring what God desires and the freedom of faith more than the nut of the fleeting pleasures of sin. As the great Puritan John Owen used to say, “Be killing sin before it kills you.” The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as His glory is hard to cherish, His promises are hard to believe, and the desire for maximum happiness is your pursuit! God is in the business of changing our desires and enabling us to do what will bring to us maximum pleasure and to Him magnifying glory. Let me show you…

II.GOD’S PROVISION FOR OUR OBEDIENCE Oh how much we need to learn from God that He is not like some sadistic heartless coach or trainer who likes to see recruits sweat and strain under impossible conditioning exercises. In fact, He pronounces a curse upon such heartless taskmasters: “Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.” (Luke 11:46) God is not like that. With every command, He gives all of His precious promises and His entire commandment enabling omnipotent power and puts them at the service of His children. “For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.” (Isaiah 64:4) A great illustration of this is in 2 Chronicles 30 when King Hezekiah recovered the Passover for Israel. Israel had forgotten God and Hezekiah broken, grieved, indignant and deeply repentant, sent couriers throughout the land calling the people to repentance and obedience. God had commanded “return to me and I will return to you”. Most of the Jews neither repented nor obeyed the call of Hezekiah. But there were others who humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem as Hezekiah had decreed. What was it that caused them to respond in obedience? “The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the LORD.” (Verse 12)

This is true obedience in action. God had commanded “return to me and I will return to you”. Some obeyed God. Why did they obey? Because “the hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded.”

This is amazing! What God commands, God will also give. True obedience begins in the heart where God graces the heart to give it a “want to” so that when the time for obedience comes to do what you “ought to” do you will “want to” do what you ought to do; therefore, you will do what you ought to do! This is non-burdensome, easy and light true obedience. Throughout the scriptures God has promised that He would work in his people to bring about obedience. Here are some examples of those Old Testament promises: Deuteronomy 30:6, "The LORD your God will circumcise your heart . . . to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Ezekiel 11:19-20, "I will . . . put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them." (Psalm 40:8; Jeremiah 31:31-33; Ezekiel 36:26-27)

The taking away of the stony heart-that is the proud, rebellious, shallow, sin desiring, unbelieving heart is the promise and the gift of an omnipotent, great, mighty God who is joyfully committed to manifesting his greatness in doing us good in order for us to be good and to do good to magnify his glory! Oh how we need to see the majesty and might of this God and to know the splendor of this God overflowing to us with enthusiastic omnipotence. We have these promises from Christ who knows you and says, “apart from me you can do nothing.”(John 15:5) All of these promises were promises of enablement, the life of God operating within your soul. The New Covenant promise is that beneath every act of obedience is the enabling grace of God. No wonder why God said to Moses and Israel in Deuteronomy 30:11, "This commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you." Do you hear this dear Christian! Behind every “ought to” done in obedience, God graces our hearts with a “want to”. Augustine put it this way: "Give me the grace [O Lord] to do as you command, and command me to do what you will! . . . O holy God . . . when your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to obey them." Brothers and sisters, this omnipotent enthusiasm of God to give us what He commands is one of the most liberating discoveries a human can make! “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” (Jeremiah 32:31-33)

Biblical Christianity is impossible and yet possible! It is impossible for those who live on their own desires and strength. But it is possible for those who live on God. Do you know why? Because the Christian life is supernatural or it is nothing! The Bible tells us that God is the decisive factor in making us what we should be desiring and doing what we should do! God's plan for you in order to obey Him is nothing short of a new heart. It’s the only way obedience is desirable, possible, and doable. If you were a car, God would want control of your engine. If you were a computer, God would claim the software and the hard drive. If you were an airplane, he'd take his seat in the cockpit. But you are a person, so God wants to change your heart. Made to be like God-made to be truly good and holy so that we desire to do what is truly good and holy and we do it! Do you see? He gives us command this morning to obey his word and promises us the grace to give us the desire and the ability to obey so that out of the love that God has put in our hearts the commandments are not burdensome. Or to put it another way, the struggle is as easy as dropping a nut. No wonder why the obedience of the believer who obeys God in faith through the power of His grace, brings God such great magnifying glory. When God takes a sinful heart that desires only the fleeting pleasures of sin and transforms that heart and empowers that heart to want the good and then begins doing the good it is a supernatural divine miracle. As a result GOD GETS ALL THE GLORY! “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify the Father in heaven.”(Matt 5:16) “Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 4:11) "Now the God of peace . . . equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." (Hebrews 13:20-21) “To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:11-12) Believing that obedience is a gift from God is essential to our calling to live in obedience to the glory of God. It makes us humble. It turns what we do into acts of faith. In everything that we do we pray and trust in the grace of God for a gift.

 The call to deny ourselves, go into the nations, heal the sick, return good for evil, forgive seventy times seven, to endure one another, to obey His 500 commands, and to keep doing this for God’s glory with joy for fifty or sixty years is not possible to the natural human. It is only possible to do this supernaturally. Brothers and sisters true Christianity is supernatural or it is nothing! To be a Christian and to be the Church we must live on God and His God magnifying, joy maximizing grace! We must pray for the desire in our heart to “want to” do what we “ought to” do and God will do give it to you.  We can pray Psalm 119:36 “Incline my heart to your testimonies…” Psalm 90:14, "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days".  Hebrews 4;16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help (us to want what we ought to want so that we would do what we ought to do) in time of need.” “Let me see your glory…give me the love that the Father has for Jesus” (John 17:24, 26). Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.” Phillips Brooks “Oh God do something disproportionate to who I am!” So…

III. HOW IS GOD MAGNIFIED IN OUR OBEDIENCE? God is magnified in our obedience because God wills to conform all its inhabitants to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29), God is magnified in our obedience because it manifests God's omnipotence is causing us to walk in his statutes and observe all his ordinances (Ezekiel 36:27).God is magnified in our obedience because He has an awesome passion to remove the reproach of his name that comes from our transgression (Isaiah 48:9-11; Ezekiel 36:22-23). God is magnified in our obedience because he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Ephesians 1:4). God is magnified in our obedience because Christ died for the church "that he might sanctify her ... and present the church to himself in glory without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing" (Ephesians 7:25-27; Titus 2:14; Hebrews 10:10). God is magnified in our obedience because it manifests in the prayers of His people leading to the kingdom of obedience because the sum of all prayer is "Hallowed be our name; your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:9-10).

CLOSING THOUGHTS Oh beloved, God wants you to have a life that maximizes your happiness and magnifies His glory. Is that the life you are pursuing? Or are you living for the little, trivial, empty, fleeting things that ultimately diminishes God’s glory and minimize joy. May God put in your heart a “want to” like He did in Augustine, who wrote, “How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure." My heart's desire for you worship is that the worth of God really be magnified, that there be no self-deception, no joyless legalism, no contests of religious will power, but rather free, heartfelt, vital, authentic savoring of the living God and his Son Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. When that life is pursued and God is glorified you will be ever increasing in your joy. “If you know these things, you will be happy if you do them”. (John 13:17). AMEN!