Through My Obedience

Welcome

Good morning TLC.  Wow, look at this place.  How do you like the new space so far?  I think we can all agree we are very blessed to be able to be in a space like this so early in our journey as a church.  I want to start our time together by simply thanking God for all He’s done.  Will you join me?

God…thank you.  Thank you for everything you have done throughout the life of The Local Church.  Thank you for Toran and Joran and the leadership they have provided.  Thank you for Central Wesleyan and the trust they have in us as a community, not to mention the financial help they have provided in securing this space.  Thank you for this space.  It is more than we deserve.  Please guide and bless our use of it.  Help us to fully utilize it for your glory.  Help this to be a place where the lost and hurting can experience your love, forgiveness, and grace.  I pray that you bless not only what I am about to say today, but what every speaker says from this stage in the future.  Use the words prepared by each speaker to help us grow closer to you.  We thank you, we love you, and it is in the powerful name of your son Jesus Christ we pray…Amen.

For those of you that do not know me, I am Ryan Hanson.  I have the privilege of serving as the Strategic Formation Pastor here at TLC.  It is my honor to facilitate the Local Groups…launching next month.  If you are interested in leading a group there is still time to sign up.  If you are interesting in joining a group, stay tuned in the coming weeks for more information.

I want to start today’s message with a question.

What do you want so badly that you would be willing to poop your pants to get it?

This question comes from an experience I had a few years ago at church.  Kentwood Community Church partners with World Vision to raise money for clean water in Africa by running ½ and full Marathons.  My wife had done two ½ Marathons and I was getting pressure to sign up since I was around the group so much, but I always said no.  I had a bad knee from years of playing hockey.  Feeling the pressure to join, I decided to do some research and see what was involved in long distance running.  This was the first images that came up in my Google search on marathons.

Show picture of marathon guy

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I thought it must be a fluke until I saw this picture.

Show picture of signs encouraging people not to poop themselves

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I was already on the fence about running, and these pictures did not ease my thoughts at all.  What it did was make me ask another, better question.

Why would anyone choose to do anything where pooping yourself was a real possibility?

We all do lots of things that we are passionate about.  We may not be willing to go to the lengths of these marathon runners, but we all have things that we will work hard to accomplish.  What do you want to accomplish?  Why do you work as hard as you do to accomplish whatever that is?

Today we’re going to take a look at someone in the Bible who was set on accomplishing something as well.  I think by taking a look at a part of Paul’s story we can learn a lot about how we should set our priorities and where God wants us to put our highest levels of effort.  If you have a Bible, tablet, cell phone, or other device please turn with me to Acts 21.  If you are in need of a Bible the ushers will be happy to get you a copy.

As Toran has communicated so well throughout this series, Acts is a book written by Luke, a physician and traveling companion of Paul.  Luke spends half the book of Acts documenting Paul’s three missionary journeys.  In the section we are looking at today, we find Paul at the very last leg of his third missionary journey.

Show map of Paul’s third missionary journey

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In Acts 21, Paul is traveling back to Jerusalem after reconnecting with the elders of the Ephesus church in Miletus.  Please join me as I start reading in Acts 21:7.

Acts 21:7–16 NIV

We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’ ” When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us and brought us to the home of Mnason, where we were to stay. He was a man from Cyprus and one of the early disciples.

When I read a passage of the Bible, typically one or two verses stand out to me.  When this happens my habit is to read those verses in a few other translations to get a better understanding of what exactly they mean.  I really like how the Message translates verses 12-13.

Acts 21:12–13 MSG

When we heard that, we and everyone there that day begged Paul not to be stubborn and persist in going to Jerusalem. But Paul wouldn’t budge: “Why all this hysteria? Why do you insist on making a scene and making it even harder for me? You’re looking at this backward. The issue in Jerusalem is not what they do to me, whether arrest or murder, but what the Master Jesus does through my obedience. Can’t you see that?”

For Paul…

Obeying Jesus call on our lives is worth any amount of personal suffering.

When I think of obedience in the Bible my mind immediately goes to passages such as Luke 11:28:

Luke 11:28 NRSV

But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”

I want to be blessed by my obedience, but the passage in Acts clearly shows another view of obedience.  After Paul obediently went to Jerusalem, blessed is not the word I would use to describe what happened next.  Let’s continue with Verse 27:

Acts 21:27–33 NIV

When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help us! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.” (They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple.) The whole city was aroused, and the people came running from all directions. Seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut. While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. The commander came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done.

Paul obediently did exactly what God was leading him to do and ended up falsely accused of breaking temple law, beaten, and arrested.  Things do not get any better for Paul.  He remains under arrest until his eventual execution by Rome.  Paul spent a total of 5 to 6 years in prison.  We can easily think that prison is an end to Paul’s story, but God used Paul’s time in prison in many ways.  Not only did Paul “proclaim the kingdom of God and teach everyone he could about Jesus” (Acts 28:30).  Being under arrest, Paul had a captive audience to preach to his Roman captors.  While in prison Paul also wrote between 4 and 7 books of the New Testament (Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus).  Paul’s work in planting churches, and evangelism within Rome can easily be credited for planting the seeds that eventually evangelized the whole of Rome.  Paul’s arrest not only changed history, but gave us a large section of the New Testament that we may not have had otherwise.

Paul obeyed without knowing any of these things would happen.  Without seeing these benefits, I would be hard pressed to voluntarily endure a false accusation, beatings, arrest, imprisonment, and eventual execution.  Luckily for us Paul gives us exactly why he believes that obedience to Jesus’s call was all worth it in a letter he wrote to the church in Corinth.  Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9.

1 Corinthians 9:24–27 NIV

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

Unlike the runner we started today’s teaching talking about, who only ran to win a race or accomplish personal record time, Paul worked, suffered, and died for a prize in heaven.  Paul had an eternal perspective that we can all learn from.

What goals have you set for yourself?  Do you want to accomplish an athletic feat like our marathon runners?  Do you want to get promoted at your job; make a little more money, or have more authority?  Do you want to be respected by your peers, viewed as smarter than everyone else?

Are your goals focused on yourself or is your goal to obey God’s calling in your life no matter where it leads you. I agree with Paul…

Obeying Jesus call on our lives is worth any amount of personal suffering.

So what did I do?  Did I sign up for the ½ or full marathon? No, I decided that if I was going to do a long distance race I was going to do something that I realistically shouldn’t be able to do and “in faith” believe that God would bless it and use it for good.  I signed up for a ½ Iron Man; 1.25 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and then 13.1 mile run (1/2 marathon).  I signed up while working 50-60 hours per week, going to seminary full time, and made a commitment to myself not to reduce my family time in the process.  I trained ½ and hour 2x on weekdays and 2 hours every Saturday.  The recommended plan was 1.5 hour every weekday, and 4 hours every Saturday.  I trained to finish, not to win.  But I ran the race to bring clean water to kids in Africa so they can live healthy lives, go to school, and have a better future.  There was lots of suffering.  I entered a practice race in the spring, came in last, and could not walk after it was over.  One month before the real race I crashed my bike injuring my shoulder and had to take 2 weeks off from swimming, 2 weeks before the race nearly blew out my knee and could not run at all for the rest of my training.  All that was terrible while it was happening. Last weekend I swam, biked, and jogged/walked the race, finished, and felt pretty good when I was done.  God got me through this race.

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More important, as a result of this suffering 62 kids will have clean water for life.  This is a picture from I took from a child sponsorship facility (Kiberakids.org) in the Kibera slum in Nairobi Kenya, the largest slum in all of Kenya (some estimate up to 1,000,000 people). I think the suffering I endured was worth what God did with my obedience and I will do it again next year.

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I believe that we are at a time when we will all be called to a new level of obedience.  Being part of a brand new church, being in a brand new building, there will be loads of things that need to be done.  We will need more volunteers than we did at Calvin.  The kid’s ministry has more rooms and more options to help teach each of our kids about Jesus more effectively…but that takes people.  We’re launching a middle and high school ministry that will require people to sacrificially give of their time outside of the normal Sunday morning.  We’re launching a small groups ministry.  We need leaders because our desire is for everyone to be in a group.  Maybe for you, obedience is volunteering right here within the church.

Beyond volunteering within the church walls, our vision is to be #forthecity.  Obedience may be openly talking about your faith with friends and co-workers and inviting them to church.  Obedience could be coming to the River Clean Up event and giving the city a glimpse of Jesus’ heart to serve.  Obedience could be volunteering with Ken-O-Sha.  Obedience could be helping a non-profit or other organization within the city that you are passionate for.

No matter what area God is calling to toward, think about what this church would be like if we all agreed right now to say “yes”, to obey His call.  It will not always be easy, there will be suffering, but I believe that God will use our obedience for His glory and we will be blessed if not now, when we get to Heaven.

I want to close with a quote,

“The world’s goal of preserving one’s own physical life at all costs is not the highest goal for a Christian: obedience to God and faithfulness to him in every circumstance is far more important” -Wayne Grudem,

My final question to you is: do you agree, and if so, what are you going to do about it?

Toran talked earlier in the series about the 10 second rule by Clare De Graaf.  It states, “Just do the next thing you're reasonably certain Jesus wants you to do (and do it within the next ten seconds before you change your mind!)”

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I challenge you, within the next 10 second before we move into a time of worship, pull out your phones and e-mail one of these people. If you feel the Spirit prompting you to get involved, obey.  Understand that there may be some suffering, nothing is perfect, but God promises a reward in heaven for the sacrificial service you provide now.  So pull out those phones, and send an e-mail asking for information.  Get engaged, obey, and help advance the kingdom.

Once you are done e-mailing, please stand as we continue with worship.