NOV 6 2016

Sea Change Church · Adam Stadtmiller · November 6, 2016
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, church. Good to see you. Paul is following in the footsteps of Jesus. Paul is an archetype, a prototype that will mirror the life of the Messiah. If you look at the classic biblical heroes, whether it be Moses, whether it be David, Peter, or Paul himself, there will be places where the life of Jesus intersects with the life of that biblical, some people wouldn't like to use the word hero, but I'll use it for the sake of explanation, with that biblical hero.

Here, Paul is moving towards Jerusalem. Remember in the life of Peter that Jesus said unto Peter that you will be bound and they will lead you where you do not want to go. Now, we know that Jesus, in obedience, went to the cross, but it is not a place that he wanted to go. I think this is very interesting and very important as modern day Christ followers, that you don't always have to agree with or want the things that God has called you to do or to understand or to follow or to believe.

And so oftentimes, like Jesus himself, was obedient to something he did not want to do. And we have the same, I'd say, examples or challenges in our lives when we disagree with God, but something in our heart says God is calling you to do that thing. Can you think of something in your life right now where God is perhaps calling you to do something that goes against your wants?

And so we see Paul here moving towards Jerusalem, much like Jesus did. Jesus did a road to Jerusalem. Paul did a road to Jerusalem. Jesus was bound and put in prison. Paul is being bound, as the prophet Agabus had told him, prophesied a chapter or two ago, that would happen to him. And so just like Christ, he is before the Romans. He is before the Sanhedrin.

And he has this argument, although with Paul's life, it stretches out a little bit longer. And Paul uses his confinement and God uses the difficult circumstances of Paul's life to actually change the entire, I would say, the Roman world. He is with influential guards. He is with generals. He is one of the people that is being in confines. And they put the best of the best of the military to protect him.

And so Paul uses all of these things that are happening in his life to share the gospel. And as we'll see in a couple weeks or a few weeks, that Paul finds out that he has an opportunity to stand before Caesar himself by leveraging his Roman citizenship. Today we're going to look at this life of Paul. We're not going to get under the microscope in this passage, but kind of a macro look, kind of a 30,000 foot view of obedience.

And I think obedience is a really key word in our lives. And as Christ followers, we must learn to obey. And we must learn to obey when we don't always agree, perhaps, with what we're obeying, as long as we know it's the spirit within us telling us. That is why obedience leads to spiritual ears. The more you obey, the more you follow God, as we'll see later in the text, the more in tune you are going to be when he speaks to you.

Little acts of obedience lead to opening your spiritual ears, to opening your spiritual eyes, to softening your spiritual heart. How many of you have seen this passage, this picture before? That came from the late 1980s from an artist who was named Shepard Fairley. And Shepard Fairley wanted to create something to cause conversation. He said he doesn't mean it to have any meaning other than to make you think.

And I would say it caused a lot of, not controversy, but it caused a lot of conversation. The reason is, is because what does it make you think when you see that? What immediately comes to your spirit? What immediately comes to your mind? I know that when I see that, I think, no, I'm not going to. I don't know if anybody else does that. I'm not obeying anything.

I mean, I don't know if that is the nature, but I believe that is the nature of our flesh. God has given us all free will. And free will allows us to seat ourselves in the place of God. Let me say that again. God has given us all free will. But God is very self-confident. He's not afraid to give you free will. But that free will allows you to place yourself in his place.

And as we see today in society, mankind wants to make the choices of God. And a lot of the political struggle you see happening in the nation today and around the world, the only politics are not just happening in America. There's politics all over the world, by the way, as we know. Often is a struggle between who will be God. Will we allow God to be on the throne and have an ultimate authority in our life?

Or will mankind be God? And this has gone back from the beginning. This is not a new conversation we're having. Go to the book of Genesis. If you want to be the original temptation, you want to be like whom? God. The problem is, is if you want to be God, you forfeit your position as experiencing yourself as a child of God. And so we, excuse the term, bastardize ourself from the fathership of God.

By saying, you know what? I don't want a father to be my God. I want to be God. And so we remove ourselves from that sonship. And so Paul, in the macro view, is a man who was committed to obedience. But we have to be careful to think that obedience is easy. Obedience for Jesus was not easy. Obedience caused Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to sweat tear, excuse me, to sweat drops of blood.

He did not want to obey the Father, but he did. Does that make sense? He wanted, he asked for another way out. It wasn't easy for Paul. And don't, let's not trivialize how difficult it is for you and for I to be obedient. Let's take, we can take that off the screen now because it's creeping me out. I can see it looking at me. We had it on there before the service.

I said, can we take that off? Because if newcomers come and they see that, they're going to be, I knew church was like that. Obey. To obey is better than sacrifice. Let's look at the context today. And the blessing, this is one of the keys, the blessing of obedience. God only gives you a command because it benefits you. Okay? Not trying to keep your fun, doesn't want you to get your party on.

That isn't what God's all about. He gives us laws because they protect us and they bless you. Obedience leads to blessing. Here's the context. Paul has concluded his missionary journeys to Asia Minor and gone to Jerusalem where the Holy Spirit has warned him that he will be arrested and put in chains as seen in verse 33. And this was prophesied in Acts 21.10.

Paul knew that it was coming. Paul, Pastor Jim, mentioned that people in the Spirit had told Paul not to go. Because this had happened. Because by the Spirit, had been led by the Spirit to tell him not to go. I'm not sure it was not to go, but at least to warn him that these things were coming. Paul was being led by the Spirit and was being told to go.

The question is, is the Spirit contradicting the Spirit? The answer is no. Because what happens is God is encouraging believers to follow his command. God was wanting Paul to be warned, but he was also wanting Paul to have the choice of obedience. And so both are correct. The thing is, is that each person, whether it be Agabus, who prophesied to Paul what would happen, or Paul himself choosing to go to Jerusalem, both were to stand before God and say, were you obedient to what God told them each to do?

Agabus was obedient to share a word. And if you ever had a word to share with somebody, where you feel like the Lord has told you to share something, one of the things I have learned, if I'm really eager to share the word, I need to wait on that word. Sometimes we just, you get a, you know, my old pastor said, if you ever send, press email send, or on your Facebook you press send, and you get this immediate rush of euphoria.

Yeah! He says, you better question if that was the right thing to send. Agabus had a word, and every word was prayed over. And just because you get something in the moment, it should be prayed over and massaged and cared about before you share it with a person. And then there's the obedience of Paul. Paul who is willing to give all for the sake of Christ.

That's a good question. How much are you willing to give for Christ? 80% of your life? 40? 30? You know, is 90 enough? Are you 110? Are you 100% and 110-er? You know, the people that give a little bit more? How much are you willing to give to Christ? Or are those little secret areas? I don't think there's a person alive that doesn't have their little secret golem's ring from the Lord of the Rings.

You know, my precious. That little thing, that attitude, or whatever it is. I'm going to say, Paul, as you'll see in your notes, pursues obedience at all costs. Let's read Acts 20, 22-24. And now, compelled by the Spirit, Paul says, I think I'm going to... No, he didn't say that. It says, I am going to Jerusalem. He made a commitment to obedience. The Bible says, Let your yes be yes, and your no be no.

A lot of times, when it comes to making a decision that is difficult, we want to leave a little bit of margin for ourselves, or a back door, an escape door. One of the things I've told people I've discipled for a regular basis is, Close the escape door. Just close the escape door, and make it your yes be yes. I will commit to this. It says that, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.

That's a powerful statement. Are we willing to follow Christ, when we're not sure what will happen to us? Or do we... Does faith have to pencil out? May I say that again? Does your faith have to pencil out, before you'll be faithful and obedient? Or are you willing, not to just, you know, jump off blind cliffs. We use our mind. We use wisdom. We're led.

But are you willing to say, I feel that God is saying this to me. I'm willing to do it, whether it pencils out or not. Verse 23, I only know that in every city, the Holy Spirit warns me, that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life, I love this, I consider my life worth nothing to me. My only aim is to finish the race, complete the task, the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the good news of the God's grace.

We spoke about last week, that Paul doesn't have a problem with self-confidence. He doesn't have a problem with his self-esteem. By saying his life means nothing to him, he's not like Beck, as I said last week, singing the song, I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? He is saying rather, that the life where I'm in charge, where I get to be God, where I get to pursue all my pleasures, means nothing to me.

I'm willing to give it all up to pursue a life that means more to me, a life in Christ. And so that's Paul. And so Paul now is going into the belly of the beast, and you'll see in the, maybe you've seen the Dirty Dozen, and I got this, I don't know if you guys remember the Dirty Dozen with, what's the guy's name, who's the guy that starred in that? Who is it?

Lee Marvin. Look, if you millennials don't know Lee Marvin, that guy is hard as nails. You need to see a couple of Lee Marvin movies, right on. I mean, him and Steve McQueen, that was cut from a different generation, okay? Dirty Dozen is a movie about these soldiers, this group, this Dirty Dozen, that go in to Nazi Germany behind the lines to this party at night, and I think they have to, I want to share it with you.

I won't kill it for you, but they have to go in behind, and they're risking it all for the greater good. I mean, this is what, Paul, you can get him out from behind me too, because I'm afraid he's going to shoot me there. Belly of the beast is this, to be in the middle of a very bad situation or in a dangerous place. You can be in the belly of the beast if you go to Central Command or the enemy headquarters.

I want to say, I don't know if God has ever called you into the belly of the beast, but over and over again, as we see biblical characters be obedient to Christ, whether it be Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you know, or different biblical characters, when God calls them there, the nice thing about when God calls you to the belly of the beast is he's there with you.

Wherever God calls you to go, he's not going to call you to go alone. He's going to be there. I do believe as Christ followers, we're moving into a season where it's very possible we could be closer to the belly of the beast. I think it's the most exciting time to be a Christian ever. I think there's so many opportunities to reach out to people and to care for people.

I really believe that the most powerful force on earth is Christ in the church. I mean, I really believe that. I believe it's more powerful than any political organization. I believe it's more powerful than anything that Christ in followers. And so regularly, you're going to hear me sharing with you about the four corners here, the corner of your heart, which we have to take ownership.

Christ has to take ownership of the corner of your heart. You've got to give him a stake of obedience there. I'll follow him to death. I mean, and if you're a new believer, you're not going to get the Bible soft-sealed to you here. Jesus calls us to obedience and to death. Now, it might take a circuitous route to get there, and it's taken me 25 years of following Christ, and I'm not there yet, but following Christ is amazing.

And so those different corners, but living on that corner and changing the corner in which you live. This is where Paul was, even if that corner was a prison cell. Let me say that again. The third corner that we talk about here, the one is the corner of your heart, the next is the corner that, this corner that this church is on, and then third is the corner in which you dwell.

The place is, Paul dwelt in a prison cell, and he brought the light of Christ to a prison cell in the belly of the beast, to the point where, as he's writing to the Philippian church, he says to them, hey, I want to write to you and greet all of you that are in Caesar's household. The gospel had made its way into the Caesar's household, people that were serving Caesar himself were dedicated believers of Christ.

I think that's always been God's plan. God didn't need the Caesar to be Christian, but he was fulfilling his message through sending believers through all parts of the corners. And I want to say, there's a Christian on every corner where God calls them to be. And there's a Christian on your corner, and it's you, and it's a Christ follower. And will we follow Christ on that corner, bringing light?

Here's the main course for today. The obedience of Paul and what it means to us. Not just you, I always preach to us because I'm just a congregant here who happens to lead this church with an elder board and team. Paul was willing to lose everything for the sake of the cross, and he humbled himself through obedience to Christ leading, that obedience is an act of humility.

I'm not God. I don't want to be God. I'll tell you what, I do not want to be God. And the less you want to be God, the easier life is going to be because it's really difficult to be God, like really, really hard. And when we begin to trust him, he begins to say, okay, I'm going to honor you. I had someone write me an email last night saying I've begun to pray and put God on the throne again, and life has gotten easier.

The things I'm praying for, I've prayed for 40 days, are starting to happen. It was just phenomenal what happens when you put God on the throne of your life. Phenomenal. Watch what happens when you say I want to be obedient to your calling. Here's our main thing. I want to say obedience, obey is not a word we like. It's not a word that's used often. You won't hear it in political discourse often because we roil against it.

Everything within our flesh after the fall of mankind, everything within our flesh says disobey. This is one thing Jesus did not have in his flesh. Jesus was not born of man, so Jesus did not have the sin that was carried in the blood. We talked last week through Leviticus that sin is carried somehow, the scripture says, in our blood. That's why it was important that Jesus was born of a virgin and not of man because the sin of mankind that was carried through the blood was not in his blood.

And so he did not have a proclivity or a nature to sin. Jesus had a divine nature, but it was not like, oh, I got to sin. In the book of Romans, it says whenever there's a command, that it is the command that causes, that wakes up the desire to sin. So it is the command that causes us sin because we are built to want to break whatever command there is.

If God's command for marriage was in order to be married, you had to be married to seven people and they had to be of different genders, seven people, and that's it. You have to be married to seven. Mankind would say, no, I just want to be married to one person. No, no, I just want to have, whatever the command is, whatever he decided, we're going to break it.

And he can decide those commands on his own. Do we get that? That God makes a command and those commands are meant to benefit us. But we are built after the fall because sin runs in our blood until we are under Christ or in our flesh to want to break a command. And so obey is not a word you're going to hear. But I want to say obey is something we need to become comfortable with when it comes to following the Holy Spirit's voice and the voice of the word of God in the scriptures.

Let's keep moving on. Christ's example was obedience. If you want to follow and be like Christ, you want to obey. Jesus, it says here in Philippians 2.8, says he was found in appearance as man. He humbled himself. Once again, when you obey, you're humbling yourself. You're saying, I'm not God and I don't know everything. Go figure. He humbled himself.

God himself. He doesn't need to humble himself. There's no reason to. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to what? To death. Even death on a cross. You see, death could not hold the author of life. The only way that Jesus could die is if he became obedient to it and allowed himself to die. Death has no power over life. That as soon as death came in, he had to submit unto it because the author of life cannot be held.

And then after three days, he began to shake. The ground began to rumble and he burst forth. That is the message. It is a message of life. And as Christ followers, whatever we can do to promote life is what we are called, I believe, to do. In all places, in all situations, that life is crucial to what we believe as Christ followers because he is the author of life.

But he had to become obedient to death. Look at God. God himself became obedient and he showed us how to do it. I want to say, how good are we at becoming obedient to the author of life? I mean, what's God telling you to do? Oftentimes, people say to me, I can't hear from God. I can't hear from God. Well, if I were to ask you, can you tell me five things that you are pretty sure you know in your heart you shouldn't be doing right now?

Oh, yeah. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Okay, well, have you changed that? No. Well, let's just start in the negative. Let's just, I want to say, if you just start trying to hear God out of obedience, I think that's the platform. By not doing what you know he's told you not to do. Like, you know. Like, don't do this anymore. But what do we do? We rationalize or whatever it is.

I really believe that the platform for hearing the positive words of God, meaning go do this, go do that, because oftentimes he's not going to send you until he can trust you. I'm just going to say that. Opportunities will be missed because of disobedience. He wants to send people that he can, that he has equipped and that are obedient to him. Not that he doesn't love you, not that his blood wasn't shed for you, not that you aren't his beloved, but oftentimes if we start listening to that no, whether it be, whether it be in lying, whether it be, you know, whatever that thing is in your life, we start listening to that.

I want to say it's going to open up your ears to the next levels of God's hearing and God's calling upon your life. Him being found. Let's look at Ephesians 2, 1 and 2. This is from the Message Bible. This is a, an interpretation by Eugene Peterson when he talks about us now and the struggle we have. And I love the plain and common language we have here. Look at this.

It's out of Ephesians 2, 1 and 2. Ephesians is a great book. It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in the old and stagnant life of sin. You let the world which doesn't know the first thing about living tell you how to live. Pow! You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it. All of us doing what we felt like doing.

And when we felt like doing it, all of us are in the same boat. Look, that's a really powerful way to talk about that. I mean, we're just, I just want to read that one thing again because that's what really stuck out to me. You let the world which doesn't know the first thing about living. This world is geared for death. It is geared for, just look at it.

The whole thing leads to death. Doesn't know the first thing about living tell you how to live. And we just often buy it hook, line, and sinker. I want to say, are we living for life, for death? Now here's a question. As we come in for a land and we are circling the tower, they've given me clearance to land from the tower. How good are you at obedience?

Let me just read this again. How good are you at obedience and at not getting what you want when you want it? Are you skilled at rationalization, procrastination, and counterfeiting light out of your darkness? I spent a lot of time writing that and I want to read it again because I think I'm writing it for myself. I don't just like think about the congregation and then like make a sermon.

Like, okay, I think about them and I'll make the sermon based on you. I think about me. And then I write it and I wonder if anybody in the congregation relates to this, okay? So let's just say, I'm writing this to me. How good are you at obedience and at not getting what you want when you want it? Are you skilled at rationalization, procrastination, and counterfeiting light out of your darkness?

Rationalizing sin highlights your sacrifices while downplaying your disobedience. Well, I do this. I do that. I did a little of that. I'm pretty good here. You know, what more could you ask? Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. A waste of time. It says, rationalizing sin highlights your sacrifices. You're just going to tell yourself how great it is. You just keep talking to yourself.

Give yourself a good little pep talk. Your sacrifices while downplaying disobedience. Let's again say that obedience is for a blessing. God wants you to obey. I'm not here saying, obey, obey. You must obey. You know, there's churches, the whole church is set on apex leadership with an Episcopal style. And I don't mean Episcopal church. Episcopal meaning style from top-down leadership.

With an Episcopal style. So once again, I'm not bashing the Episcopals. A top-down style that says that you will be children and I will tell you how to act. Entire churches, because there's a lot of believers who want to be parented. They don't want to make a decision for themselves. I want to have a congregation that knows how to follow the voice of the Holy Spirit to be adults on their own and have adult, mature spiritual lives.

We don't run in that kind of hierarchy here. So when I, when I'm highlighting obedience in this scripture, I really want to highlight the blessing that's going to come to you. When you begin to obey, you're going to begin to hear God's voice. You're going to be able to shed the guilt, the false guilt that comes with disobedience. You're going to begin to see blessing.

You're going to open up channels just like you open up the tap on the water out in front of your house. You're going to begin to open up blessing and all of a sudden it'll become like a dam. It'll overflow. Obedience causes an overflowing of your life. To live in a life like John 10 says, to live life and to live life more what? Abundantly. And the word there is super abundance.

We live on the scraps of disobedience because God's grace is still on us and we get this grace that is on us and we just live according to the natural grace that is upon us but don't step in to the full Ephesians 1 and chapter 2 supernatural blessing that is available. Living life in Christ even if you're disobedient is still going to be okay. It's just like when the Israelites lived on the other side of the promised land and they had God's presence they had manna they didn't have any enemies and they thought that they were living in God's presence and they were willing to think that a wilderness was as good as a promised land.

It's not true. Obedience will move you into your promised land. It'll move you into blessings like you've never seen. It'll move you into super abundance. It'll move you into hearing the voice of God experiencing the power and the presence of God and now we're coming in and we're done rationalizing and 1 Samuel 15 22 you'll see it on the screen behind me says something that Samuel says after Saul goes and sacrifices before the people you're a king kings are not allowed to sacrifice God made the rule for a reason only the priests were allowed but Saul saw that the people were starting to grumble and he had to do something big and promote himself so he thought I'll go do the sacrifice even though God said don't do the sacrifice and then he does the sacrifice and the moment he does it because Samuel hadn't shown up Samuel shows up and he says what is this sound I hear in my ears this bleeding of the sheep and the cows and he says God has rejected you God has rejected you I want to be I'm very aware that at any point if God through disobedience God can say you know I'm just I love you but I'm done using you in this capacity as a pastor I think about that all the time because of your disobedience I'm just going to find someone else to do it I still love you I'm going to give you a life but you're just not going to get to do that anymore I want to say being a pastor of a church like this is a huge privilege and an honor and I really I've just seen it before I believe in my heart that we can disobey ourselves out of the things God wants us to do he'll still give you a great life he'll give you on a different route he'll get you because he knows the end result is going to get you where it's supposed to be you will be perfected in heaven but I believe we can miss out today and I don't want to miss out you know what the kingdom was ripped away from Saul ripped away because of disobedience because of all this people pleasing and so here's the verse out of 1 Samuel it says but Samuel replied does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as much as in obeying the Lord to obey is better than sacrifice to heed is better than the fat of rams heed heed heed it's a key word when was the last time you heard the word heed unless you were watching some medieval you know sitcom I don't think they have medieval sitcoms now that I think about it Monty Python I guess look at your notes the end of the notes Chris get ready we're warming you up come up for a second heed means this we have faith in the word of God and it's instruction over shifting cultural values heeding means that you believe in the word of God the truth of the word of God more than shifting cultural values that will go back and forth and somebody said to me the other day well you know things have changed shouldn't we update the Bible I think we should update the Bible I said they've been trying to do that for a long time sister but it's not you know no was kind of the answer we heed it 2 Timothy 3.16 says all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching rebuking correcting and training in righteousness God doesn't ask you to agree he asks you to obey and there's a lot of things in the scripture I don't agree with but I obey them because I can't find the scripture that tells me the opposite God I don't like this I think that this should be allowed that should be allowed this is a really key in regard to following Christ you cannot have you don't have to agree with everything that you that you obey we have this idea that like well I don't agree with that and if I can't agree with that you know I just I guess I can't follow you know like there has to be agreement it's not true God understands that we're going to have disagreement that's what obedience is all about it's easy to obey when it's easy obedience comes in the crosshairs when it's difficult finally we learn to hear and obey the voice of the spirit in our hearts James 4 17 says if anyone then knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it it is sin for them I want to say there's a different standard of sin for each of us I know for me drinking alcohol is a sin because I've been I've been sober 29 years I just know that it's a sin for me but for others it's not what is God calling you individually to do and the final verse is this but encourage one another it's out of Hebrews 3 13 but encourage each other daily as long it is called today there's the key about now so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness here's what that scripture says today's the day today's the day to make a commitment to obedience while it's still called today because one point Jesus will come back and it won't be called today anymore it'll be done I want to say that it causes us to be absurd spiritually when we don't listen and obey the voice of God because we tend to lose sight of what God has called us to do hearing the voice of God comes through obedience and knowing the voice of God amen amen