Trust and Obey

Our lives are built on thousands of conditional statements. If I wake up when my alarm goes off, then I will make it to work on time. If I make it to work on time, then I will keep my job. If I keep my job, then I will continue to live the lifestyle I’ve grown accustom to. And we could keep going. Our relationships are also built on conditional statements. If I faithfully love my husband then our marriage will have a better chance at making it. If I pour out into someone’s life, then they will pour into my life. Now, these conditional statements are not fool proof. We are not guaranteed that it will always work out because we live in a broken world, and we aren’t in control of every outcome. But in general, this is how life works.

1. The only place that we will ever truly find unconditional love is from God.

He is able to continually pour out His agape love on people who will continually break their promises to Him. He loves us before we have any idea about who He is. His love is never ending and outright astounding. It breaks every rule in the book. His love is extravagant and unconditional.

Unconditional is hard for us to comprehend and it is hard for us to trust. This is because all other relationships we have ever experienced have been conditional. Even though God’s love for us is unconditional, we find many conditional statements in the Bible in regards to His blessing.

God made a conditional promise with Moses on Mount Sinai before he gave him the 10 commandments. In Exodus 19:5, God says, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”

For Israel to remain God’s treasured possession, He required that they obey Him fully. Then Moses reiterates this conditional statement in Deuteronomy right before the Israelites are to enter the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 7:12, “If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors.”

These conditional statements shouldn’t come as a surprise to us. As any good parent, God our Father promises us His unconditional love, but He puts conditions on his blessings. He doesn’t do this out of spite or arrogance. He does it because He knows what is best for His children and if they remain in the confines of His covenant, He will be more than happy to bless them with every good thing.

Today, as we continue to study the Upper Room Discourse, we will see Jesus speak words that will echo these ancient words we just looked at in the Old Testament.

Last week, Pastor Frank took us through the first half of the Vine and Branches subsection. As we read through it we discovered that remaining in Christ will produce a life of faith and faithfulness. Today, we are going to pick up the passage in John 15:9-17, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.”

Did you hear the words from the Old Testament that we just read through? In verse 10 Jesus says, “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love.” In this conditional statement we see that our obedience is directly tied to the love we have been given through Jesus Christ.

Jesus left us with a multitude of commands while He was on earth. Commands like:

Pray for and love your enemies, repent, take up your cross, follow Him, rejoice, keep your word, go the second mile, do not lust, judge not, seek God’s Kingdom, fear not, go and make disciples, Love God and love others. And instead of just telling His followers to obey all of these commands, He perfectly modeled it for them. And the reason He was able to model it for them is because He remained in His Father’s love. Jesus trusted His Father’s love so much that He was willing to be obedient to all God commanded Him to do.

2. Trusting Jesus’ love for us spurs us on to obedience.

Some people trust easily, others may have a difficult time in the trust department. Some of us are naturally more skeptical of people and their agendas, or we’ve been burned so many times that we’ve lost all hope in humanity. There may be no rhyme or reason behind our trust issues or there may be deep wounds that have caused them. Whatever the case may be, trusting in the love of Christ determines our potential obedience.

For instance, let’s take the story of the prodigal son found in Luke 15. 11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.

This father had two sons, they were raised in the same household. They were loved equally, yet the younger son decided that he was going to take his share and go out on his own and squander his inheritance. After hitting rock bottom, the son decided to return home. He planned to beg his father to let him return as a servant where at least he would be given food to eat and a place to sleep. If we evaluate his thought process, he clearly did not trust in his father’s love for him. He thought that his father’s love was conditional. “ But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” Luke 15:20

If he would have trusted his father’s love in the first place, he would have remained in his father’s care and he would not have had such a colorful testimony in the end. The father never blessed his son’s wild living, but the second he returned he was met with love and compassion. I am sure that returning to that kind of love made the son more apt to be obedient to his father from that point forward.

Sometimes it takes time for us to fully trust God’s love for us. But...

3. Sometimes our obedience comes from desperation.

Those moments when we’ve come to the end of ourselves and there is nowhere else to turn but Jesus. There are many different stories in the Gospels where we find people running to Jesus in desperation but we are going to look at one found in Mark 5:22-24, “Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.”

This synagogue leader had run out of options for his daughter and she was dying. He must have heard of Jesus and how He had healed others, so Jairus went to Jesus and he fell at His feet, begging Him to heal his daughter. Jesus was a pretty controversial character in His day and most pious Jewish leaders would have been apt to dismiss Him, but Jairus didn’t have another option. He put his full trust in this man who claimed to be the Son of God. And Jairus’ daughter, even though she had died, was raised to life by Jesus because, out of desperation, her father put his trust in Jesus.

Desperation leads us to trust just about anything and anyone.

There are numerous stories of Jewish families entrusting their children to strangers who promised to take care of them. One mother wrote a note to these strangers that said, “Imagine for yourself the parting between us. Although you are unknown to me, I imagine you as a man and a woman who will, as a father and mother, care for my only child. She has been taken from me by circumstance. May you, with the best will and wisdom, look after her.” This young girl grew up being transported through an underground system of safe houses throughout the Holocaust, only to find out that nobody from her family survived. She didn’t have anyone left, they all died in the concentration camps. But out of desperation her parents trusted strangers enough to take care of their beloved daughter.

Trusting in desperate circumstances isn’t bad, but I’m not sure it always leads to the deep abiding trust Jesus is asking us to have. The trust which will lead us to a place of obedience. We may begin our journey with Christ because He came to our rescue, but what causes us to stay?

There is a different kind of trust that leads to obedience. It is a trust that is gained over time. It increases with each passing year. It’s the abiding trust in a love that is unconditional.

4. We only remain in a relationship if we have built a foundation of trust.

Most parents would agree that they want their children to be obedient. Not because they want to raise robots, but they understand that obedience can oftentimes mean the difference between life and death. For example, when a young child is learning to cross a busy intersection the parent often wants the child to hold their hand so they remain safe in a dangerous situation.

The natural progression of trust in any relationship takes a continuous, steady, stable, and an unceasing revelation of love. When parents have proved their love for their children over and over, then their children will learn to trust them and obedience will hopefully become more natural. When emergency situations arise, their children will be able to obey quickly and without question.

Or when situations arise and parents have to say no in order to protect their children, even though the child might be disappointed, they can trust in the love of their parent. They can trust that their parent is looking out for them and has their best interest in mind.

The same is true in marriage. Carsten has proved his love over and over and over to me in the last 14 years of our marriage. He tells me I am beautiful. He has said it from the beginning, but because of deep seated insecurities it has taken me 14 years to actually believe him. Because he has remained faithful in every way and his love has been continuous and steady I am now able to rest in that love. It’s so incredibly freeing! I am beyond blessed by him and our marriage.

Our trust is built over time. And the more we trust the love of Jesus, the more willing and eager we will be to obey.

The love that Jesus offers us is defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

This love is supernatural. And trusting the love of God is sometimes hard because we don’t have very many earthly examples that show this kind of love.

There were many situations in the Gospels when Jesus did things the disciples didn’t understand. Sometimes He would clarify right away and tell the disciples what they needed to know. Other times, they had to trust their Rabbi. Trust His love for them and ultimately trust that He knew best.

Jesus was about to demonstrate the depth of His love for all of humanity on the cross. He knew what was coming. He endured the pain and agony out of obedience to His Father’s will. He abided so deeply in the love of God that obedience wasn’t an option. Just as He said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

5. Being obedient to Christ’s command to love each other will be costly, but it will also be blessed.

We will be rejected and hurt. We will be poured out until we have nothing left to give. People will doubt our love and our intentions. But if we are trusting in the love of Christ and we remain obedient, He will bless us greatly. We will be given the greatest privilege of being a friend of Jesus. Someone He entrusts His plans and purposes to. People He entrusts His Kingdom to.

Then we will be truly blessed in every way. The biblical meaning of the word blessed (makarios) is this, “one is pronounced blessed when God is present and involved in his life. The hand of God is at work directing all his affairs fora divine purpose, and thus, in a sense, such a person lives before the face of God.”

Lets take a minute and reflect. Where are you this morning? Have you put your faith in the love of God that has been given to us through Jesus Christ? Do you truly believe that He loves you unconditionally? If you struggle with this then would you simply pray with me that God would reveal His love for you in this place this morning. Others here may have trust issues and you’ve doubted God’s love for you. Would you pray with me this morning that God would forgive your doubt and build your trust in Him. Or there may be people here this morning that struggle with obedience. You have lived your life the way you’ve wanted to live it, even if you know it is not in accordance with Jesus’ commands. If you’re ready, would you pray with me this morning that God would forgive you for being disobedient and realign your heart to His ways. We will constantly be growing in the area of obedience until the love of Christ is fully revealed to us when we see Him face to face. Until then I pray that we will bask in His love for us and trust His love enough to be obedient in all He has called us to do. May our lives be blessed beyond measure for His glory alone!