Obey It

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 There was a young pastor who was preaching in view of a call. Now what that means is he had this huge interview process. He passed all the tests, and now is the final. He’s not the lead pastor yet. He has to go and preach. Now, typically, it’s really funny to me, all they do is say you have to preach one sermon and then everybody votes.

Talk about like a weird relationship preaching a sermon. If you liked it, you’ll say, yay. If you don’t like it, you’ll say nay. Well, this search committee said, let’s not do that. Let’s give you three Sundays just in case you mess up one. Or just in case not everybody’s in town. Let’s give you three consecutive Sundays to preach a sermon and we hope everybody loves you.

Then we’ll vote and if it’s majority vote, you are now our lead pastor. So this man agreed. And so the first Sunday the pastor came up said, everybody open your Bibles to to Matthew, and he gave this brilliant sermon on forgiveness and reconciliation. Everybody was moved by it. Then they all had lunch after, and the young pastor spent a lot of time that week meeting families, learning about the history of the church, that sort of thing.

The second Sunday came, everybody was excited, man, that last one was good. Let’s see what he does today. So he gets up, he says, everybody open your Bibles to the book of Matthew. And he goes on to preach the very same sermon on forgiveness and reconciliation. The head of the search committee was a little bit worried, a little bit nervous, but then he said, you know what?

Maybe he forgot, maybe H how, who knows? His nerves got to him. Let’s give him one more shot. So the rest of that week, he spent meeting people, getting to know them, learning their history, talking to people in groups, all that sort of thing. The third Sunday came, this is the Sunday. The whole family came up to introduce, Hey, this might be the lead pastor.

We will see. He says, he comes up and what does he do? Open your Bibles to the book of Matthew. And he goes on to preach the very same sermon yet again on forgiveness and reconciliation. This man did it with confidence, with passion. It was good, but it was three times. And so he, as a Baptist, had everybody come forward in the altar call.

If God is calling you to respond, come forward. So the head of the search committee thought, I have to do this. So during the altar call, came forward, leaned in, whispered to the young pastor’s ear and said, brother, we love you. We wanted you, but we didn’t know. You only knew how to preach one sermon. Maybe you’re not the guy.

And the young pastor leaned in, whispered into his ear and said, the moment you apply this message, I’ll preach the next one. It’s supposed to be a little funny, but, uh, thanks Dave. Uh, think about it right. So I want you to open your Bibles to Psalm chapter one. We’re gonna talk about Haga, how to eat this book.

That joke flew right over your head too. I did that last week, guys. I’m acting like you didn’t do it. I’m having a rough day. Memorial weekend. Blame it on that. All right, so we will not be in there. We’ll be in Matthew chapter seven. I’m feeling great about myself, John Calvin. He had once this phrase, he said, all right, knowledge of God is born out of obedience.

If you wanna know what the Bible says, you first have to do it. And this is why we’re constantly teaching Jesus’ framework of discipleship, which we think that word has been robbed a lot. So this is why we say often the word apprenticeship or to be a student, because it’s very common to think the Christian life is just mental ascent.

But to follow a rabbi meant you had to be with him 24 7. You had to become like him, adopt his mannerisms, his approach in life, and also you had to do what your rabbi would do. Whatever he did, you did the very same thing. And so like Psalm one, Jesus is gonna show us two different ways in Matthew seven, he’s gonna show us what happens when you follow me as a rabbi versus what happens when you don’t.

Now again, to remember Psalm one, we won’t preach that again today, although I was tempted. The righteous are like a tree that was firmly rooted in the streams of water, right? And when you do that, he bears fruit in season. It’s strong in any season. But then the wicked he goes on to say are like the chaff being blown by the wind.

If you don’t follow the word of God, if you are following, the council of the ungodly life will take you to and fro. So Jesus, he is obviously saturated in the scriptures, takes that same kind of imagery in Psalm one and reintroduces it in a new way in Matthew chapter seven. We’re almost there. Let me give you a little more context, because what this is, is the very end of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

Or what Pastor Caleb calls the sermon on the mound for some reason it’s amazing. Listen to the podcast. You’ll know that inside joke. Now, the sermon on the mound is the most important teaching of Jesus. Jesus was like, okay, here’s like the Christian. This is the sermon. And a lot of people, like if you ask what is your beliefs?

You know, like what is your doctrine? Some denominations just say the sermon of the mouth. That’s what we believe, like that, that has everything in it. And so Matthew five through seven is a wonderful text that you can spend your whole life studying. Let me give you the general flow so you understand the conclusion.

The beginning of chapter five is the intro, and he begins with the be attitudes and really what those be attitudes are. They’re not instructions for the steadfast, but they’re invitations to the outcasts. He’s starting by saying, man, you’ll be shocked who is allowed in the kingdom, the poor in spirit.

Those that you look down on, the humble, they’re the ones in the kingdom. And then shifts to what we actually talked about. Uh, sorry, one more thing. His thesis in verse 14 was, now here’s who’s invited. Now hear me. Those in my kingdom are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Then he shifts to what we talked about in week one of our sermon series 17 through 19.

What does he say? I’ve not come to abolish the law, but I have come to fulfill them. He’s saying, no, I’m, I’m actually bringing the Old Testament to its fruition to what it was already designed. What he does next is he has 14 teachings and it follows a, uh, triadic structure. What that means is just three points.

Like any good Baptist pastor would do, there’s three points, okay? He does this 14 times. Now in it, he’s always saying, look, you’ve heard the law is this, but when I come and give you a new heart, not only will you follow the law, but your motivation behind it will be to love God and love others. Your whole heart will change.

You’ll actually be able to follow the law because Christ has redeemed you and renewed you. So these 14 teachers, uh, 14 teachings, have these three parts. He starts out with a traditional teaching. So he says, like you have heard it said, that’s 0.1 of his message. Point two in each of those teachings is, but I say to you, this is now Jesus’ teaching a fuller understanding of it, and then he ends though, which I love with an application.

So he goes and says something really practical, like, therefore, go pray in secret. Go into a closet and pray. Or it says things like given secret. Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing or drop all that you have and go and reconcile with the person who needs reconciliation. 15 of the 92 verses and the sermon on the mouth is all about doing something that’s one sixth of the message.

That’s pretty fascinating. So you’d think Jesus is saying, look in the kingdom, it’s about obeying, it’s about doing. Now, there’s a lot of probably baggage as you hear that we’re gonna work through that. But after he concludes the 14 teachings, he now what we would call lands the plane by saying a warning.

Okay? You can either go to the wide gate, which leads to destruction or the narrow gate that leads to life and life and abundance. You can be like a bad tree who produces bad fruit, or you can be like a good tree who produces good fruit. Or in the, what we’re looking at today, you can be like a foolish man who builds this house on the sand, or you can be a wise man who builds this house on the rock, foolish and wise, by the way, are not just, um, mental words.

They’re moral. So it’s mental and moral. So you’re smart, actually intelligent and wise in what you do. So look, look at verse 24. Therefore, this is how Jesus, again, the music’s playing the sermon’s over. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them, that acts as . Or others would say to do them or to practice them.

Whoever hears these words and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it did not collapse because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t poer O on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

Same thing happens, right? The rain fell, the rivers rose. The winds blew and pounded that house, and it did collapse. It collapsed with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching. Because he was teaching them like one who had authority and not like their scribes.

I love how it says they were astonished. Honestly, if you read the Sermon on the Mount and you’re not left just awestruck, you didn’t read it the right way. Read it again. Taste it. it. Now, how does Jesus end his sermon? Not with a sappy story, right? Not with an inspiring poem. Instead, he ends it with a warning about two different ways.

Now notice a few observations about this illustration. This will be on the screen. Number one, both heard the words of Jesus, right? So both of them heard. Only one of them would act. So just by being in the room today, hearing the gospel doesn’t mean you’re safe. Number two, both houses are hit with a storm.

One of the worst teachings of Christianity is to say, come to Christ and your life will get better. A lot of the Bible says, come to Christ and your life will get harder. Yeah. Rights, suffering, persecution will begin to multiply. Actually. Now here’s what’s fascinating about this though. The storms, it, a lot of people actually think it, it represents one of two things.

I would probably say both. And uh, one could be a storm. It’s just storms of life. We kind of understand that. Just heartache, sorrow, illness, disease, that sort of thing. That’s the most common interpretation. That’s the one I lean to the most. But you also, I have to recognize throughout church history, a lot of times in storms, as you read in the Bible, not, didn’t just mention just the fall of creation, just bad things happening, but also sometimes God’s judgment, right?

Sometimes God brings a storm cuz like you deserve it, right? And so the beauty is that we say with the cross of Christ is that storm that would be coming our way doesn’t hurt us. In fact, cuz Jesus takes the storm in our place, right? But notice they’re both hit with the storm. So coming to Jesus doesn’t mean there’s no storms.

Lastly, notice both houses look the same at a distance. This is especially true because when you look at his previous example of a tree, what’s I didn’t notice until this week when I was haa thet was both trees produce fruit, so from the outside it would like, wait, which one’s good and bad? Which one is following the way of Jesus and which one isn’t?

The problem was one was good fruit and one was bad fruit. You didn’t really know what it was made of until you really got close. Same with these houses. There’s no I, there’s no implication that the houses themselves look different. It’s just the foundations were different, which is a huge warning for us, right?

You can come and it looks like you’re engaging in the way of Jesus, but if it’s totally devoid of any obedience and actually following Jesus, you can look like you’re okay, but a storm will come and your whole life can unravel. My parents would always talk about what, how we were raised. They were pretty strict.

And so a lot of their family members or friends weren’t as strict as our family was, and I always hated that. But my mom would always say, time will tell. I know you don’t like it right now, but just wait. Time will tell. It is better that you’re getting disciplined now so that life will be better later.

And I always hated that. But now, and she loves to point it out at family gatherings, right? Like, Hey, they all made fun of us for making you go to church every week for doing all these things, but look at your life versus theirs. There’s something about that when you actually follow. And again, it has to have the right heart and motivations and all of that.

Sure. But there’s something about doing the word that really brings structure and stability in your life. Now, this emphasis of obedience is all throughout scripture. I think the main thrust of it is here in Matthew seven, but turn with me to James chapter one. So if you’re in the book of Matthew, go right even further.

It’s towards the end of your Bible. I’m gonna give you time to get there. We’ve been trying to encourage you to bring an actual copy of God’s Word, and so, um, I’ve been making sure I don’t cheat every week. I don’t have it bookmarked. I’m, I’m going there with you. We’re gonna read James one 19 through 25.

James the, uh, the half-brother of Jesus also takes this theme of obedience and gives it in another light. And I think it’s really helpful for us, especially as we want to become serious students of the scriptures. Verse 19, hope you’re there. My dear brothers and sisters understand this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger for human.

Anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. This is the scriptures, verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only. Deceiving yourselves.

Doesn’t this sound like Jesus’s illustration in Matthew seven? Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror for he looks at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. I actually did this yesterday. I was just thinking about it.

I you ever do that where you like wear your hat all day and then your hair is just a mess and you’re like, it’s fine. I’m home. I don’t need to wear my hat anymore. It’s bad. Well then me and Jordan lately we have like this, uh, really bad addiction to the Cherry Limeades. Anybody else at Sonic? Those things are incredible.

And I realized, I pulled up to Sonic, totally forgot, went to the window and she gave me a weird look. And then I went, oh my gosh, I now know why she’s looking at me. Anyways, I don’t know. So it’s me applying the, actually not applying the Bible at all, but verse 25, but the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it and is not a forgetful hear, but a doer who works.

This person will be blessed in what he does. Again, look at this word doers. It’s poer in the noun form. Same word Jesus used in Matthew seven. A doer looks in the mirror, sees the issue, fixes it, takes immediate action and moves on. Here’s the main idea in the book of James in chapter one, you unlock the scriptures.

When you walk the scriptures. Is the Bible confusing to you? There could be a million reasons. One of them might be you’re not doing the thing that you do know. Is it confining? Does it feel like, ah, this isn’t good truth, I’m not gonna follow it. Maybe it’s because you haven’t actually tried to put it into practice yet.

Once you do, there’s a lot of joy what he says. The person will be blessed on the other side and the one who does poe. Oh, so the reality is a lot of us are depressed and deceived because it stems from our disobedience. We just refuse to follow God’s word Now. Here’s the question that is obvious, the elephant in the room.

Why is obedience to the Bible so hard for us? Right? Like, I, I think it’s easy to convince us this is the word of God. We should probably do it, and yet we all have something where it’s like, I, I still don’t want to follow. I’m gonna give you, I think there again, there’s a million reasons why it’s so hard.

Let me give you three. Number one, it takes humility to obey, right? You gotta be really, you gotta humble yourself. You have to recognize I’m not always the smartest. I don’t have this right. A lot of times it means I have to say sorry and humble myself to somebody, serve someone that I don’t like, right? It takes a lot of humility to obey.

I’ve always wondered in James specifically, why 19 and 20 were with the rest of that paragraph, right? Doesn’t that look a little out of place? Read it again. It says, my dear brothers and sisters understand this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger for human anger doesn’t accomplish God’s righteousness, right?

Then it goes on and just talks about being a doer of the word, and I never quite understood. Why he goes from there to the next and it just seems a bit out of a place. But I studying this text, it shows, James knows this lesson. Hear me? How we treat other people is a great indicator, how you treat the word right?

So if you’re quick to anger and to blow up, what does that mean? When you get criticized, when you don’t get your way, you say, enough’s enough. No, I’m gonna get my way. He is saying, if you have that energy, you bring that same energy to the Bible and you are going to have a destructive life. So one way to know this is crazy.

According to the Bible, am I someone when fits of rage and blows up? That probably means I have a heart issue where I’m not humble enough to receive even the word of the scripture. So a humble person, a gentle person, is one who’s truly formed by the scriptures, and that’s really, really hard. There’s grace.

And just because you had a fit of rage yesterday doesn’t mean you could be changed today. It does, right? You can receive that grace, but it’s a good sign that maybe there’s a lot of stuff to work on. But number two, and this is really fascinating, our culture’s information to action ratio is way off. Now, this information to action ratio is a phrase used in amusing ourselves to death by Neil Postman.

Anybody heard of that book? And if you raise your hand, you’re a nerd. Thank you. All right. So, um, amusing ourselves to Death was written a long time ago. Uh, however, it’s pretty amazing how, uh, prophetic it was about how we’re dealing with today. He has this idea where we have severed the relationship between information and action.

Look at this quote. It says, information is disconnected from usefulness. We are glued with information, drowning infor in information and have no control over it. Don’t know what to do with it. For him it says, it all started with the telegraph, right? Getting Morris co getting messages of stuff happening so far away.

There’s no way you can get there at least in time. So lemme give you an example. He says, like a lot of us, we’ve misunderstood how to act on information because of this new technology. So it used to be back in the day, Hey, this is Queen Creek, so I’m gonna give this illustration. Joe’s horse got out, right?

So everybody heard, oh no, Joe’s horse got out again. What do you do? You could put on your boots and you go run around. You find the horse and you know where Joe lives and you put it back in his stall and you say, Hey Joe, this is how you close a gate. Right? That’s how you do it. See you tomorrow when we do this again.

All right? That was life. You heard something, you did something, you heard something, you did something. Right. Discipleship back in the day was you haven’t understood it until you’ve done it. Now just take a test, just say the right things, memorize everything. And now you understand. See, there is a huge disconnect.

Just this week, I have a friend missionary in Uruguay, and he told me that they’re experiencing a hundred year drought. They literally don’t have water. What did I do? I was just like, oh no, I stressed about it for 10 minutes, and then I moved on. He’s like, 20, don’t worry, man. Right? And so they, you know, or like you hear about what’s happening in Ukraine or you hear about what’s happening with politics and we are just, so, we think just hearing it, learning about it means we did something.

We didn’t do anything. And we take that same energy to the scriptures, right? There’s a severance between information and to action. For example, if someone, I rarely get this and it’s fine, I forgive you, but if someone came forward and said, Trey, your sermon moved me today. What am I gonna think they meant?

Not, oh, I moved because of your sermon. What did I think? Oh, you just like had had good feelings. I don’t know. You got inspired. That moved me. Even the language we use today shows to be moved has nothing to do with action. It’s just like a really good feeling. And so as a result we are deceived. And so this is a huge reason why our Foreign by Jesus series, right?

If you’re new here, we’re doing like a two to three year journey at like the nine most essential actions of Jesus. So we talked about Sabbath, now we’re talking about saturating yourself with scripture. It’s tied to action. Why action is dec essential for discipleship. We don’t want your house to blow down and so we don’t want you just to come and be moved.

We want you to go and move. But there’s one more reason why obedience to the Bible is really hard for us. And I’m gonna, I’m not gonna lie, it’s really hard for me cuz I constantly believe this lie. Look. Number three, we are afraid of earning our salvation.

Just a few weeks ago, we tried to talk about this from a different angle, right? We said keeping God’s commands doesn’t earn me God’s love, but it turns me to God’s love. Right? Huge concept, but it’s still really hard for us to get, and I think one of Satan’s brilliant deceptions is to convince us that obedience is to be like a Pharisee.

That obedience is to be self-righteous. It’s to be like every other religion. No, we don’t obey. It’s all about grace. But when you learn about grace, grace is the jet fuel to obedience. If you really have grace, you’ll actually obey, but the grace has to come first. It’s a long thing. Now, I’m so excited to do this today, but I’m going to give you the largest quote I’ve ever given, but it’s by the best person outside of Jesus.

Oh, this could get ugly, but one of my favorite people, Dallas Willard. Okay, so forgive me. It’s not a trace sermon without a Dallas Willer quote. Here we are. I just heard somebody say That’s true. That’s amazing. Okay, so. Thank you, Jackie. All right, so if hear this quote, listen to this context. This is in divine conspiracy.

Go by it. Okay. If people in our Christian fellowship today were to announce that they had decided to keep God’s law, we would probably be skeptical and alarmed. We probably would take them aside for counseling and possibly alert other responsible people in the group to keep an eye on them. We would be sure nothing good could come of it.

We know that one is not saved by keeping the law and can think of no other reason why one should try to do it. This leaves us caught in a strange inversion of the work of the Judaizing teachers who dogged the footsteps of Paul in the New Testament days as they, the Judaizers wanted to add obedience to ritual law, to faith in Christ.

We want to subtract moral law from faith in Christ. This is such a key line. This is what we’re trying to do. How to combine faith with obedience is surely the essential task of the church as it enters the 21st century. Do you see? That’s what we’ve been trying to do this whole time. How do we add faith with obedience?

With Sabbath? The whole thing was faith and obedience. Scriptures, faith and obedience. So the question is, how do we combine faith with obedience without earning our salvation? This is the main point for today. Write this down. The cross of Jesus is the source of the good life, and the commands of Jesus are the coarse of the good life.

What does that mean? Honestly, the Sermon on the Mount isn’t possible if that sermon wasn’t pointing towards the cross. Just like the whole rest of the Old Testament and everything written before the cross, everything was pointing towards it. And then once the cross happened, everything was pointing back to it.

What do I mean? In the law, it’s all about doing all sorts of things, and you and I have tried and we fail, and it’s because outside of God’s forgiveness, outside of a new heart, outside of regeneration, God making us new again. We can’t fulfill any of the law. Even if we did the right thing, we did it for the wrong reason, but the cross gives us life at the cross, I give Christ my sin and he gives me his righteousness.

I at the cross, what the cross did is, is it paid for our penalty. So now the sin, the storm that we deserve, Jesus took in our place. He took the penalty and the burden, and as a result, I now receive the favor and the blessings and newness of life. Do you see that? So this whole conversation is pointless if we don’t first point to the fact that the cross is the source in him.

We are forgiven in him. We are made in the family of God. We cannot earn our way into the family. We have received adoption through Christ Jesus, but now the cross is the source. But now his commands are the course. Now that I have been regenerated, I now look at the laws different. Not as a way to get into the family, but just as, Hey, this is what our family does.

You see the difference? This is just what we do. His commands are for our good. Another way to look at it, the cross is like the root of the tree. What gives us life? And the fruit of the tree is the course of life, the his commands. So the root always empowers the fruit. It’s never the fruit that empowers the root, right?

So it’s the cross that empowers his commands. That’s not his commands that empower the cross. Okay? Let me show you how this applies to the words. Jesus, we have enough time. Matthew five, go back. We were in Matthew seven. I’m gonna give you an example cuz it’s like, okay, great, but how do I actually obey the Bible while still being filled with grace and truth and all that stuff?

Trey, I don’t understand what you mean. Great. Chapter five verse 21. This is his first example of doing the work. He says, verse 21. You have heard it said to our ancestors, do not murder. And whoever murders will be subject to judgment. So that’s 0.1, right? Point two is, but I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother or sister will be subject to the court. Whoever says you fool will be subject to hellfire. So now here is the application. Okay? If you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar first, go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift, reach a settlement quickly with your adversary while you’re on the way with him to court.

Or your adversary will hand you over to the judge and the judge will to the officer, and you’ll be thrown into prison. Surely I tell you, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny. What does this mean? Okay, first of all, I can receive this command to reconcile because of the cross.

I know that I’ve been reconciled. Right. So we can’t give something we haven’t received ourself. Okay? So if I’m supposed to forgive someone, how can I do that? Oh, I remember, I’ve already been forgiven. How? How can I reconcile? Oh, I have been reconciled, right? So therefore, because of the cross, we’re set free from anger.

Why would I insult someone and want to take from them when I am already loved and given everything I need in Christ? So when we look to obedience, here’s, I’m trying not to get too confusing here. When we look to obedience, we have to first go, what does the cross mean for this application? What does the cross mean for reconciliation?

First of all, before I even begin to think about how I can reconcile, I first Emory, I remember and I remember the grace that I have been reconciled. So that’s step one. But then because of the cross, you then go, okay, now I actually need to reconcile. It’s so common for us to read. I’ve preached on this before, 21 through 26.

It’s very common in our culture to go. Man, brother. That was a great sermon about reconciliation and my takeaway was I thought of the people who have things against me. Aren’t I great? I remembered all the people who hate me. Now. I don’t wanna do anything else yet, cuz that’s asking a lot, but praise God, you reminded me, I’m forgiven.

Right? That’s very typical for us. Jesus is saying, you keep that consistently. If that’s how you treat the Bible, life’s gonna hit you and it’s gonna hit you hard. I’m praying for the day where it’s maybe somebody gets up in the middle of my sermon goes, I gotta go. I gotta go reconcile this thing, right?

This, the Bible says, leave your gifted. It’s saying, leave church. I’m gonna laugh if someone leaves right now. Right? Leave church and go fix that thing. Figure out how to reconcile, right? This is discipleship. This is what we’re called to do. Just learning about just hearing reconciliation is not the same as doing it.

And we’re going through this growing pains as a church. It’s common for many of us. When we went through our Sabbath series, I, I was so encouraged somebody were saying, yeah, I’m not at rest. I’m exhausted. And our whole line, right? We we’re trying to become a people at rest so we can become a people of love.

And yet, and and I say this as, I saw this in you, but I saw it in me when I first learned about Sabbath. I was like, yes, I need to be a person of rest. Oh wow. The Sabbath is a wonderful invitation. Two months goes by, I haven’t practiced Sabbath and I’m praying, God, please give me rest. I’m exhausted. And God is like, I will give it to you, but you have to practice it.

Right? I had a mentor, he told me one time, he said, Trey, I’m, I’m done praying that you receive rest. I’m, you need to practice rest. You need to practice Sabbath. Are you guys with me? Thi this is the Christian life. It’s full of action. To end Dallas Willard. He said, the Christian life, the good life is putting his words into action and finding them to be true.

We’ve house, we’ve somehow twisted the Christian life into thinking the Christian life is hearing his words and waiting for them to become true, and then we’ll do them. All right? Knowledge of God is born out of obedience, and so may we as a church be committed to the way of truth in a world of lies, I think the way we do that is we hear the word and then we do it to end.

Let’s end how Jesus ends his sermon. Your house is your life. The question is what kind of house are you building?

The question is not will you build a house? You are, the question is what are you building your house on?

When your source is the cross and your course is his commands, storms will come and will pound against your life. But Jesus says, trust me, it will not collapse. So I just wanna leave this as an invitation. Will you obey the word we say all the time? Remember that phrase, sin isn’t bad because it’s forbidden.

It’s forbidden because it’s bad. And the same token obedience isn’t good because it’s commanded. It’s commanded because it’s good. And so I just wanna invite you just to close your eyes, bow your head, and posture of prayer and ask, God, just a simple question, what is my next step of obedience?

Seek to listen to him. Even in this moment, God, what is my next step of obedience?

Maybe it’s believing in Jesus for the first time.

Maybe it’s baptism. Maybe it’s literally to reconcile with a brother or sister or a family member. Maybe it’s to the word right, or to give with sacrifice. I don’t know what it is,

but the word of God has so much power, but we unlock that power when we walk it.

Let’s pray.