Northside Church - Sydney
Winner? | Blues?
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Morning folks. Look, I wonder if this has happened to you in recent weeks, but are you finding it increasingly difficult to get out of bed? I mean, is there a dent in the radio clock next to your bed sort of around the snooze button as you pound it into your bedside table each and every morning? I mean, is it taking you about five or ten minutes to button up a shirt or a blouse? And then fifteen minutes later you realise that you've done it in the wrong buttonhole? Are you taking a sip of your tea or your coffee and spitting it out across the table because you realise you've forgotten to put the sugar in it? Ladies are the stilettos giving way to slippers and boys, the boots giving way to ugs. If that's the case, you could be suffering from sad, seasonal, effective disorder. Now let me ask you this question again. Has this happened to you in recent weeks? Are you losing the desire to go out to connect group? Is it getting harder and harder and harder to pick yourself up at eight thirty in the morning when the steering wheel is icy cold and head to church? Is your bible reading and your prayer life lost that buzz and fervour that it had back in January? Then you could be suffering from sad, spiritual, effective disorder or I like to simply put it the winter blues, right? Are you feeling a bit like that this morning, particularly on a cold morning like this this morning? You know, I find it really funny. I don't know about you but isn't funny how a spiritual life can often parallel the prevailing winter season. The temperatures are getting colder, the nights are darker and it's just getting harder and harder. And so the question is how do we remain resilient and steadfast and passionate and energetic during these winter months? How do we come out a winner over the winter blues? I think you do whatever your person in the UK does when they're over there. You, they get themselves under a big light. That's the only way that they sort of recharge the batteries and get over this seasonal effective disorder. I want to say this morning that the way we can get over spiritual effective disorder is you've got to get under the light. And what does that look like? Well, that's the theme of the passage this morning. Obedience. Now, before we flinch, verse three says, we know that we've come to know him if we obey his commands. I want to share some thoughts that this morning I shared with the night time guys all the way back in January. And I figured this is probably the best time to be talking through this. What we see in the passage this morning is that we should apply the principles of obedience. We should know why we are obedient and we should go try to be obedient. So first of all, you've got to apply your obedience. Apply your obedience. Look for the area. There are any cruners out there. You cruners would sort of know this line, final verse of this song. Pop quiz for you this morning. For what is a man? What has he got? If not himself, then he has not. To say the things he truly feels are not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows and I did it my way. Oh, it's Frank Sinatra, of course. You know, he's these beautiful songs my way. But Sinatra's famous song embodies lyrically and musically the whole mindset of the world when it comes to obedience, right? On my own. Don't tell me what to do. The record shows I took the blows and I did it my way. You see, because here's what obedience is. Obedience is being willing to have someone or something traverse or cut across your will. That's what obedience is. It's the same thing as discipline. It's like this in the morning you know, the alarm goes off. You hear that terrible buzz and you wake up and it feels absolutely right, doesn't it? That you should stay in bed. It feels absolutely right. You want to. You feel like it. You will want you to. But if you're under a program of discipline, you traverse your will. You cut across your will and you say, no, I will rise. I will throw the covers off. I will move forward. I will pick up the gym shorts and the tights. What are you doing? Why would you do that? Why would you get up? Look, here's what you're doing. As much as it feels right and as much as you want to just stay in bed, you know that there are things that are just not good for you. You know that if you allow these greater things, though, to cross your will, and if you do it for long enough, you come to realise that freedom is not the absence of restrictions in your life, but the presence of the right restrictions in your life. It's a whole paradox of freedom in that sense. Look, I'm free to eat as much ice cream as I want, but particularly in these winter months if I go churning down a few buckets of ice cream, then I'm going to pay for it in summer time when I want to put the board shorts on. You see, we believe in this principle so much, guys, that some people even pay someone to cross their will. They're called personal trainers, right? What does a personal trainer do? Their job is when you feel like it, you don't want to, and you just want to quit, they traverse your will. One more rep. Couple of more pounds. Another rep. Come on. You see, come on, guys, we've seen the biggest loser on television, right? If you don't have a personal trainer, that's the show you watch. If you don't have a personal trainer to feel like you've got a personal trainer. When we watch the biggest loser, we witness people apply this principle of obedience to their physical life, and we see the freedom that it brings and the results and the tears and the emotion of it all. It's a beautiful thing at the end of the show when they've lost 100 seconds. See, here's the thing. If we can see that the principles physically work in life, then why don't we apply these principles of obedience to our spiritual life? So, as one guy says, Dallas Willard, a healthy desire is to desire not to desire what you currently desire. You with me? That is, to allow someone or something to cut across your will, verse 6. Those that claim to live in Him must walk as Jesus walked. You think Shannon and Michelle from the biggest loser can do a good job at transforming people's lives, then the God of the universe, the ultimate personal trainer, the ultimate one is offering you this coaching for free this morning. He's willing to do that for free. If you'll just be obedient, obedience is allowing God to traverse your will. And so, therefore, are you willing to apply these principles of physical obedience to your moral and your spiritual life? Are you willing to come under some other person to challenge you and to oppose what you currently feeling in order to be shaped into all you want to be? That's what it's about. Are you willing to apply the principles of obedience? But, look, you can't apply them if you don't know why you are obedient. You see, obedience is a tough thing. It means, it's a means to the relationship with God. It's not the ends in itself. Look at verses four and five of this passage we see in here. It says, "The man or the person who says, 'I know him,' but does not do what he commands is a liar. And the truth is not in them. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in them. This is how we know that we are in Him." Now, that should come with a little yellow triangle that says, "Warning, you know, the big exclamation mark in your Bible when you read that because there is a dangerous way to read this verse. You can read it like this. This is the dangerous way to read the verse. If I obey, then I'm loved by God." Right? That's somehow that the obedience leads to the love, but the gospel is always the other way around that the love leads to the obedience. You see, I guess we need the rest of the Bible to interpret where we're at this morning. Pop quiz for us this morning. Which comes first? The ten commandments or the Exodus in the Old Testament? I know. We're getting the brains churning this morning. If you've seen Prince of Egypt, it's the Exodus. That cartoon there, it's the Exodus. Look at Exodus 19, verse four. "You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession." That's God speaking to his people once he saved them. Right? So here's the clue. It's crucial you see the correct order. God saves so that they might obey him in order to move into a deeper relationship with him. The obedience is a means to an expression of their relationship because they were saved. Look at verse five of this passage, New Testament. But if anyone obeys his word, love, the love for God is truly made complete in them. What does that mean? A Christian and I were up in Aaron Affair a couple of months back at the Gourmet Pizza Kitchen and we lost it. We were laughing heads off because there was a whole table full of mums that had all gotten together. And we're at the shopping center. We could hear over here their conversation and they were yapping away. And one of these mums was bragging about a new $200 nappy bag. They're going to $200 nappy bag. You see what those nappies look like when you put them into that bag? If it was cost me $200, there's no way I'd want to put that sort of stuff in there. But lo and behold, she was thrilled about her nappy bag because she just had a little kid and apparently the husband's supposed to get her a present for all the effort that she's gone to to have the child. And the girl said, "Oh, wow. I so wanted that bag. Oh, yeah. You are so lucky. You must be thrilled." And she said, "No, I'm not. I'm not." I said, "Why is that?" I had to tell him to get it for me. I had to tell him. Now, it was great that I was there with my wife because I was learning something very, very important principle here. And look, can you relate to a presence like that, ladies? A presence like that. You know, guys, here's the tip. It's actually got nothing to do with the present. It's got nothing to do whether it was a $20 or a $200 nappy bag. Instead, it was all about the fact that you knew her needs and you knew her wishes and you knew her dreams and you just knew it without her having to ask you, right? There's the tip. There's the tip. Sounds marriage course, chapter 2. You know, it's so well that you can surprise her with what she wants without her having to prompt you. And so when we read verse 4 here, those who say, "I know him but do not do what he commands or lies. The truth is not in them." It's not saying, "Get out of list. Plan it down. Write it down. And I have to do what God commands." What it's saying is he wants you to do what he wants you to do without him having to prompt you. He wants you to understand his needs and his desires and his wants without him having to poke you in the side. Look, isn't that how? That's how human relationships work. Why would it be any different with God himself? And see, we know at a human level and at a spiritual level, too, the deep relationship is when you simply desire what the other person desires. When you simply want what the other person wants. And the only way that happens most of the time is when you consciously and carefully try to find out what the other person needs and wants and likes, you are obedient to the other person. And they traverse your will and they cut across your will and the relationship is more beautiful and wonderful and joyous. Guys, we've got to read this the right way. God's love is made complete not because we've ticked off the correct actions, but when our actions are motivated by love in the context of a relationship. And we simply want what he wants. And here's the other thing, actions are poor disguises of motivation. In fact, you can have actions that are totally different from the motivation deep down inside. Why? You know, what is your motivation for obedience? Why do you go to church? Why do you pray? Why do you read the Bible? Is it because there's going to be one or two different approaches and the difference between the two are two totally different religions? One says obey and maybe you'll be saved. The other says, you have been saved by faith in Jesus now going obey. And guys, not only do we have to apply these principles, but more crucially, we've got to know why. And I'll put it here. Is why you are seeking to obey God because you have to or because you want to? That's the difference of two totally different religions. The difference with one will either crush you and turn you into someone bitter and broken or the other one's going to liberate you turning you into a person of joy and peace. So guys, not only will you apply obedience, but will you know why you're obedient? It's all about the nappy bag, right? Finally, you've got to try your obedience. You've got to try your obedience. When I was a kid, just to go around to my mate's place, Mitchell Cooper, where kids at Beacon Hill Primary School and I always go around to play cricket with Mitch and cricket games with Mitch were always the same. You see, I would have a bit of a go and then if I'd scored more runs than him and then I bold him out and he wasn't winning the game, he would just pick up the stumps and the bat and he would put it underneath his arm and he'd just walk off. I'd say, what are you doing, Mitch? Let's keep playing. It's like, no, it's my cricket set. I'll do what I want to. He just goes inside, runs off to mum, has some fairy bread for afternoon tea. Guys, agreements, agreement is not obedience. You see, Mitch only complied to the game to the extent that I wanted what he wanted and he wanted to win and I didn't want him to win and so he packed up the cricket set and he walked inside for some fairy bread. Guys, listen to the way that the Bible here talks about obedience, obeys command, walkers Jesus walk, obeys word, obeys word. You can treat the Bible the same way that Mitch treats his cricket set. You know, when it comes to the word of God, you know, I hear interesting approaches from people. I don't want to know about the Old Testament. I don't want to know anything from Paul. Maybe the Psalms I can handle that, you know, look, which way is it? How can we ever be obedient unless we come up against something that we don't initially agree with and yet choose to do what it says anyway? So if you come to the Bible and treat it like this and say, I agree with this, but I don't like this and I agree with this, but I don't like this, we're just being Mitch with the cricket set. And so most of the major issues that I see thus far in the Bible is not so much interpretation issues, but just, I don't know, a sense of a desire where we don't want to take the personal investigation application and hard work in our lives when we come up against something that we don't agree with. And so in summary, either your understanding is shaped by the Bible or the Bible is shaped by your understanding. Either you stand underneath the Bible or you stand upon the Bible. Well, look, how else do I put it? Where else can you give God the same power in your life as you'll give your personal trainer? When the personal trainer says do it and it initially feels wrong and you don't understand why you're doing it, why do I have to do this? You obey them. You say, okay, I'll do it because there's a greater purpose here. They're shaping me into something greater. When the Bible says do it and it doesn't feel right, will you? Will you do the same sort of thing? When verse 6 says walk as Jesus walked and I thought, what does that look like? It means when Jesus, walk as Jesus walked, it meant to obey God even when it didn't make sense. At the very beginning of his ministry, the guy gets baptized and what does the Holy Spirit do? It doesn't lead him off into Jerusalem into some wonderful big theological debate, some big crowd reception for him. The Spirit leads him into the desert. That makes no human sense whatsoever that he goes wandering around in the wilderness straight after his baptism. This was game time. But he walks around there for 40 days. How does that make any sense? And yet Jesus was obedient. He was obedient to the spirit there and when he, and it was there we know in his temptations, Matthew chapter 4, that he experienced some of his best ministry training. Now you know who else felt like Jesus in that situation? The karate kid. The karate kid, if you haven't seen the movie, is about a little kid who wants to be a great expert in karate. He's only about 12 years old and so he goes along to the grandmaster, Mr Miyagi. He says, Mr Miyagi, can we do karate? And he says, no, first, we paint house, paint on, paint off, paint on, paint off, come back tomorrow. We do karate then. So the kid comes back, Mr Miyagi, no, can we do some karate now? Can I learn karate now? And he says, no, first, we wash car, wax on, wax off, wax on, wax off. You come back tomorrow, we learn karate. The kid comes back the next day, oh, Mr Miyagi, can we learn karate now? He says, no, first, we sweep the floor. Sweep forward, sweep back. Sweep forward, sweep back. And so just as this little kid is at his which end and he's just about to quit, Mr Miyagi goes and pulls a move on him and like a reflex out of nowhere, the karate kid suddenly does this move that he doesn't realize that the grandmaster has been weaving into his reflexes all along through the mundane. The principle is this guy is that like the karate kid, unless we're willing to obey God in areas that make no sense at all, we'll never discover the wondrous plans of the grandmaster. You see, Mr Miyagi knew what he was doing. He was building in the reflex of obedience and of the skills and the overflows of this incredible skill. So it just flowed from the karate kid when he needed it most. And so when the Bible says, do it and it feels wrong, what is happening? God, the ultimate Mr Miyagi is building into your life the reflex of obedience. Like Jesus walked in the desert, he was like the karate kid, man can not live on bread alone. Don't put the Lord God to your test. Worship the Lord, your God only, and serve him only. See, that's what he was doing. Wax on, wax off, Jesus had the reflex of obedience. And so for us, the product of obedience is that we become the sort of people where the character and deeds of Jesus just naturally flow out from who we are. That is to walk as Jesus walked, it's not a requirement, it's a reflex. We become the sort of people where it just happens. Look, guys, are you holding a doctrine of the word of God that if God were Mr Miyagi, you would have quit by now. It's too hard. It doesn't make any sense, Lord. It can't say that we could picture him out. Some people can't rely on their own perspective to get fit, right? That's why they hire personal trainers. It's why they place their trust in a trainer to cut across their will. And so, guys, this week, God calls us not only to apply our obedience and to know why we're obedient, but to go and try our obedience. To go and try it, agreements, not obedience, like Mitch and his cricket set, you'll just keep pulling up the stumps. Are you willing to let God's will cut across your life with his word this week? Could you be suffering from sad, spiritual, effective disorder? If you are, then you've got to get under the line. And to do that, what does that look like? It means to allow someone, God, or something, his word, to cut across your will this week. Do you have a personal trainer? Do you have a spiritual personal trainer? Would you like a spiritual personal trainer? You know, when you take Jesus into your life as that personal trainer, you will find a grandmaster that even though it makes absolutely no sense this week, you can be short and confident that through each of these different exercises and these cold, winter months of prayer and reading the word and doing community with people, he's simply training you to naturally become all that he has created you to be. Would you like that? You can have that through faith in Jesus Christ this morning. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, Maybe it's time to give your personal trainer a call. Let's pray.