I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on June 27, 2010. The sermon text is Colossians 3:18-4:1.
Reflections of Authority and Submission
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
Tag Archives: Obedience
Reflections of Authority and Submission
Old and New
I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on May 30, 2010. The sermon text is Colossians 3:5-11.
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
I preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on May 23, 2010. The sermon text is Colossians 3:1-4.
Image made by http://www.wordle.net
The Mark of the Feast
So many people today miss the real danger of the message of the mark of the beast in Revelation 13. They get all caught up in wondering if it’s going to be a microchip or a bar-code tattoo that most don’t realize they’ve already been marked.
The beast’s mark, which goes on the forehead and the hand (Revelation 13:16), is not referring to some technological means of physically marking someone. This imagery of marking clearly represents a spiritual reality because those who receive the mark are judged for it by God and receive His wrath (14:9-10). In fact, the great horror of the mark of the beast is that it goes in the same place that God’s mark was supposed to go.
God commanded His people to bind His Law as a sign on their hand and as frontlets between their eyes (Deuteronomy 6:8). The implication is that the Law of God would guide their thoughts (the mark on their forehead) and their actions (the mark on their hand). And when this mark of God’s Law is forfeited in favor of the mark of the beast – the adoption of Satan’s rules and morality – then one has truly abandoned the proper worship of God, which is so wrapped up in obedience to His commands, and has decided to worship the Enemy.
The beast’s mark is offered everywhere today. Instead of godly parents teaching the laws of God diligently to their children and talking about them when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise (Deuteronomy 6:7), many send their children to a state-run public school where the beast has his opportunity to influence them for hours a day. The television pumps metric tons of marking ink straight toward our foreheads and our hands. The internet is the Devil’s own tattoo parlor. Even taking a leisurely stroll through a local mall is to be surrounded by legions of those who already bear the mark and who are looking for a fresh flesh canvas to cover with their way of thinking.
Our culture shows very clearly that its thoughts and its actions are not guided by God’s Law. No, it bears the competing mark – the counterfeit one – and it wants us to wear it too.
But the beast’s mark promises only safety from persecution at the hands of others who bear it. If you take it, you will “fit in”, but that’s as far as the benefits go. Not so with God’s mark. Ultimately, God’s promise of protection is far greater than the beast’s, because His wrath is more to be feared than man’s (Matthew 10:28), but His mark also carries other blessings.
God promises those who are obedient to His commands that He will love them, bless them, and multiply them (Deuteronomy 7:13). He will bless the fruit of their womb and the fruit of their ground: their grain, their wine, and their oil. He promises to bless their herds and their flocks. He will not bring disease on them as punishment, as He did the Egyptians (verse 15). They will be blessed above all peoples (verse 14).
The Psalms contain similarly glorious promises of blessing for those who obey. The man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers will be greatly blessed (Psalm 1). He who delights in God’s Law and meditates on it day and night will be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season (verse 3). The Psalm even says that “in all he does, he prospers”.
Our God is a feast for those who love Him and who obey His commands. “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)
I couldn’t stop thinking about this song this morning as I was meditating on all of this.
Carrot & Stick
This should come as no shock to those who have had some experience wrestling with him, but the Serpent is a sly character. Just look at his tempting of Eve: in one sense, he didn’t really say anything that wasn’t true (they didn’t physically die, they did become like God, knowing good and evil), but in reality, he completely perverted the truth. And it was his questioning of the authority of God to command His creatures that led to the downfall of the human race and the imprisonment of the universe in shackles of death and decay. And this maliciously genius Enemy has been tirelessly working at that same end ever since that day.
One of the areas where his influence can be painfully and powerfully felt involves the promised blessings and curses from God toward obedience and disobedience to His commands. Chapters in the Old Testament like Leviticus 26 or Deuteronomy 28 sound downright barbaric to our modern sensibilities. “I’ll make you eat your babies”!!?? (Leviticus 26:29) I mean, who says that!? These judgments are harsh! A lot of churchgoing “Christians” don’t want to have anything to do with a God like that. It’s better to just not read the Old Testament at all (and there are many denominations that don’t). No, when bad things happen, these folks would much rather chalk it up to “chance” and let God be the one who says, “There, there”, and pats them on the back and makes it all better. He wouldn’t do the kinds of things written in those Old Testament books; He’s all about love and compassion.
And there we see the Dragon at work yet again. He takes some things that are certainly true about God: His goodness, His compassion, His love, grace, and mercy, and then uses these qualities to question God’s authority to judge wickedness. “Did God really say He would destroy you in wrath if you disobeyed? No, that won’t happen! He’s all about love!”
Those of us who know the tricks of the Accuser would expect this kind of ploy. We might even be used to blocking this punch, but the Devil has another fist, and his use of it goes largely unnoticed. Satan doesn’t just attack God’s promised curses for disobedience, he also calls into question God’s promised blessings for obedience.
The first part of Leviticus chapter 26 and the first part of Deuteronomy 28 both deal with the amazing blessings that God will shower on His people if they obey Him. They are just as beautifully wondrous as the curses are shockingly horrific. There God promises rain in season, increased yield of field and orchard, overabundance of food, peace and security, the absence of dangerous animals from their land, absolute military victory, fruitful child bearing, and even the very presence of God Himself in their midst. These are great things, and even the folks who don’t like the Old Testament don’t mind reading passages like this. But the place where the Snake has inserted his lie is in the fact that these are blessings for obedience.
“We don’t believe in a works-based salvation! It’s all of grace!” Such might be the cry of many Christians if you started telling them that they should diligently obey all of God’s commands in order to be blessed. The last thing that Satan wants us to believe is that we will be happier and more content if we seek to obey all of God’s laws, and so here he has used another deception, confusing our unworthiness to receive the gift of salvation with the Bible’s teaching that God expects good works on the part of those who have been saved. It’s true that we can’t work for salvation. We are dead in our trespasses and sins until God makes us alive together with Christ – quite apart from our own working (Ephesians 2:1-10). But once God has saved us by His grace, He absolutely expects diligent and faithful obedience to His commands out of us (James 1:22).
You see, both of these attacks – attacks against the understanding that God pours out wrath on disobedience and against the understanding that God pours out blessings for obedience – seek to lead us away from a careful attention to God’s commands. If something bad happens, it isn’t because you disobeyed, and if something good happens, it isn’t because you were obedient. We need to throw off this deceit of the Enemy and strive to work hard in obedience to receive God’s blessings and avoid His wrath. It is absolutely good and right and biblical to do so.
Fruitful Formula
A lot of church leaders devote themselves to the task of growing their churches in much the same way that modern farmers try to squeeze more productivity out of their fields. It is a pragmatic endeavor. As a farmer, you’d be stupid to buy just plain old seed anymore. Now they have genetically engineered seed that is guaranteed to increase your yield. Why try just regular old evangelism when you can buy a comprehensive evangelism strategy program like FAITH that has some guaranteed results?
We’ve become high-tech in producing fruit, and yet the church is losing ground to the worldlings in America. In fact, it seems like the only place where the church is actually growing faster than the population is in those countries that don’t have the ‘benefit’ of mammoth-sized denominational publishing conglomerates to tell them how to do what God has called them to do. Instead, they have to rely on old-fashioned and low-tech Spirit-giftedness to get the job done. They can’t just hand a pre-packaged Sunday School curriculum to a random church member and have him teach his peers. Instead, they have to train disciples in the Word and then seek out the ones who are apt to teach that can carry on the discipleship to the next generation.
Human beings like to meddle with what we’re given, though. We always think that we can improve things by our meddling, even though we have a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Where I live, all the fields have copyrighted corporate logos at the end of each row proudly declaring the genetically-engineered pedigree of the crop growing there, but many of the farmers complain that the beans or the wheat just don’t grow as high or as healthy as they used to. Local church pastors will also testify that they’ve tried program after pre-packaged program but have just not gotten the kinds of results that were promised.
I wonder how excited farmers would get if you told them that you knew a way for their fields to produce triple the normal amount. In the Old Covenant, the Israelites had just such a formula. They were to allow their land to lie fallow for one year every seven years, and during this time God said that He would provide for them from the fallow land. But every fifty years there would be a two-year period where the land would lie fallow: the Sabbath year plus the Jubilee year. And to provide for His people during this long time of reduced production, God promised that He would “command [His] blessings on [them] in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years” (Leviticus 25:21). That’s a 300% increase in yield! And what is the secret formula? Obedience!
This is what we’ve lost in American Christianity that they apparently still have a passion for in those third-world countries where the church is outgrowing the population: obedience to God’s commands. It’s probably also the reason why the pentecostal denominations see greater growth than the more theologically sound ones: they have a stronger focus on holiness. Doctrine is certainly vitally important, but good doctrine is no excuse for tolerating the presence of sin. The unanimous witness of the Scriptures is that God blesses obedience to His commands.
So here’s the next laboratory experiment for our churches: instead of hiring a marketing firm to advertise our programs as if our churches were just more businesses looking for customers and profits on the American landscape, let’s seek to uproot lust and worldliness and pride and gossip and fits of anger. Let’s turn all of our imagination and ingenuity to the task of studying God’s Word and learning His commands. Then let’s buckle down and do the hard work of cleansing ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1). In other words, let’s take responsibility for what we’re being held responsible for (our obedience) and let God take care of those things that He says are His responsibilities (like giving the growth – 1 Corinthians 3:6).
Precise Obedience
The book of Leviticus can be kind of a tedious read for those who are looking for cute Bible stories. Not only is there a whole lot of blood and gore in the sacrificial laws, but those laws get repeated over and over again. First, the regulations for each type of sacrifice are laid down by God in excruciating detail (Lev. 1-5). Then, the ordination ceremony for Aaron and his sons is given, using many of the exact same types of sacrifices that were just explained (Lev. 6:8-7:38). Now they are explained again. Then comes the actual performing of the ordination, and each one of the commanded rites is once again described as each part is completed in absolutely precise obedience to what has been commanded (Lev. 8-9).
Why is there so much repetition of the same commands over and over again? Is this some kind of ancient and outdated writing style, or is there a real reason for all of this? Why does God use up so much space in His precious Word repeating things in such detail? Why not rather write the command in detail, but then simply summarize the obedience to that command by saying, “and they did it”?
The fact is that God has a very important reason for having all of this repeated over and over. He wants us to know that He expects total, complete, and precise obedience on our part to all of His commands. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than at the intersection of Leviticus chapters 9 and 10.
Leviticus chapter 9 ends the long series of repeated commands as Moses and Aaron walk through all that God has told them to do in the consecration of Aaron and his sons. There is not one movement or ounce of blood that is out of place in this ceremony, and at the conclusion of it, God appears in glory before the people of Israel and a column of fire comes out from before Yahweh and consumes all the burnt offerings and pieces of fat on the altar. This is the kind of thing that every human being longs to experience: nearness to the visible glory of Almighty God.
Then the next chapter immediately begins with two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, doing something that was not commanded. They each grab their censer, put fire and incense in it, and offer unauthorized fire before the Lord “which He had not commanded them” (Leviticus 10:1).
Now, if we pause right there to examine the scene, we will find these two boys doing something that doesn’t seem all that bad to us. They are not – like their father before them – making some kind of idol-calf out of gold. They did not turn and sacrifice a human baby on the altar or anything. No, what they did is something that many of us might have wanted to do. They are in the midst of an awesome display of the majesty of God! Joy, excitement, and adrenaline are all running high here. They just want to offer some additional display of their devotion to this great God. So they get their censers ready…
BOOM!! “And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD” (Leviticus 10:2). If we imagine the good intentions of the boys’ hearts, we are shocked…how could God do this to these young men?
Thus the reason for the tedious repetition of God’s commands. God doesn’t want our creative interpretation of what He has told us to do. He demands our utter and precise obedience. This lesson is stressed over and over in the Bible. King Saul learned this lesson the hard way (1 Samuel 15). Uzzah learned this lesson the hard way (2 Samuel 6). King Uzziah learned this lesson the hard way (2 Chronicles 26).
In each of these and many other cases in the Scriptures, those who are affected don’t like God’s wrath very much when it is directed toward them. But they learn a valuable lesson: we do not worship and serve One who is like man. The One True God of the Bible is the real deal. He is perfect and awesome and holy and absolutely powerful and He expects an absolute on-your-face kind of obedience to all of His commands. When we reinterpret what He has demanded in order to suit us, we are placing our own will above His, and He will not tolerate such insubordination. May we learn to have the kind of heart and spirit that longs to hear and obey God’s commands in absolute precision that we may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him (Colossians 1:9-10).
The Universality of Obedience
The following quote comes from the first part of Overcoming Sin and Temptation, entitled, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, written by John Owen and edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor:
The second principle which to this purpose I shall propose is this: Without sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience, there is no mortification of any one perplexing lust to be obtained…You set yourself with all diligence and earnestness to mortify such a lust or sin; what is the reason of it? It disquiets you, it has taken away your peace, it fills your heart with sorrow and trouble and fear; you have no rest because of it. Yea, but friend, you have neglected prayer or reading; you have been vain and loose in your conversation in other things, that have not been of the same nature with that lust wherewith you are perplexed. These are no less sins and evils than those under which you groan. Jesus Christ bled for them also. Why do you not set yourself against them also? If you hate sin as sin, every evil way, you would be no less watchful against everything that grieves and disquiets the Spirit of God, than against that which grieves and disquiets your own soul. It is evident that you contend against sin merely because of your own trouble by it. Would your conscience be quiet under it, you would let it alone. Did it not disquiet you, it should not be disquieted by you. Now, can you think that God will set in with such hypocritical endeavors – that ever his Spirit will bear witness to the treachery and falsehood of your spirit? Do you think he will ease you of that which perplexes you, that you may be at liberty to that which no less grieves him? No. God says, “Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he is lost.” Let not any man think to do his own work that will not do God’s. God’s work consists in universal obedience; to be freed of the present perplexity is their own only. Hence is that of the apostle: “Cleanse yourselves from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). If we will do anything, we must do all things. So, then, it is not only an intense opposition to this or that peculiar lust, but a universal humble frame and temper of heart, with watchfulness over every evil and for the performance of every duty, that is accepted.
The Limits of Obedience
There’s a certain nightmare that I understand is relatively common among most people today. It’s the one where you are suddenly naked in a public place and you have to run and hide or try to find clothes. I’ve had this dream on a number of occasions and it is positively terrifying. I don’t want to be naked in public. There are laws against that kind of thing. There’s just something about being unclothed that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve hid themselves because they were ashamed at their nakedness.
So when I read something like Isaiah chapter 20, where God commands the prophet to go naked and barefoot, I just don’t know if I would have been able to obey. And the command wasn’t for just an hour or a day. We learn from verse 3 of that chapter that Isaiah’s nakedness lasted for three years! And why, do you ask, did God command this? It was because He was sending a visual message to Egypt and Cush that the king of Assyria was going to lead their people away naked and barefoot into captivity.
Yes, this three years of nakedness was a ‘sermon’ that Isaiah was preaching with his “buttocks uncovered”. He signed up for this, remember? “Who will go for us?”, God asked. “Here am I, send me!”, Isaiah answered. We preachers and ministers have had a similar experience of a call and an answer. It’s exciting to think that we could be a part of God’s Kingdom – a tool in His omnipotent hands. We are ready to do whatever He commands us…as long as it fits with our expectations.
When I try to answer the question of whether I would obey the command to go around stark naked for three years, I think that I would have to hear an absolutely crystal clear divine voice accompanied by some sort of burning bush or something. I would certainly not do it if all I had was some kind of inner urging.
But what if it were written in the Bible that the pastor of Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church in Louisville, Illinois had to go naked for all of 2010? Well, first of all, if the Bible said that, everyone would know about it, and no one in their right mind would ever name a church “Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church” in Louisville, Illinois. And certainly no minister would ever accept the pastorate of such a church if there was any chance that he would still be there in 2010. But, that logic aside, would I obey the command? I don’t know if I can answer that.
The reality is that the Bible is full of direct divine commands to God’s people that we regularly ignore, even though they are of the utmost importance. We are commanded to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ daily, and yet very few Christians (at least in America) ever seem to really deny themselves very much. We are commanded to make disciples of all nations, boldly proclaim the gospel to all people, be loving to our enemies, confess our sins to one another, and a host of other things that we find very difficult to do on a daily basis.
And yet Isaiah obeyed this hard demand of the Lord. Disbedience and laxity has become so easy in our day. May we somehow reclaim the kind of obedient spirit that the old prophets had that would do anything that the Lord asked.
