WILL I OBEY GOD WHEN
THINGS DON’T MAKE SENSE?
5 Questions that
Determine Your Destiny – Part 2
12-09-12
Sermon
Obedience is: ________________
+ ________________ + __________________
“If you love me, you will obey what I command.” John 14:15 (NIV)
Joseph: 5 secrets to living a
life of obedience
1. Do______________________________________________________
“Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and
did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her
quietly. But after he had considered
this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of
David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.’ When Joseph woke up, he did
what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.” Matthew 1:19-21, 24
(NIV)
“I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.” Psalm 119:60 (NIV)
“This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.”
1
John 5:3 (NIV)
2. You_______________________________________________________
“But he had no union with her until she gave
birth to a son. And he gave him the name
Jesus.” Matthew 1:25 (NIV)
“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not
crushed and broken. We are perplexed because
we don’t know why things happen as they do, but we don’t give up and quit.”
2 Corinthians 4:8 (TLB)
3. You’ve_________________________________________________________
“When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take
the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.
Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child
to kill him.’ So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and
left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.” Matthew 2:13-15a (NIV)
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.” 2 Cor. 1:3 (NIV)
“So even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned
obedience from the things he suffered.” Hebrews 5:8 (NLT)
4. You__________________________________________________________
“After Herod died, an angel of the Lord
appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and
his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the
child’s life are dead.’” Matthew 2:19-20 (NIV)
“Even when I am afraid, I keep on trusting you.” Psalm 56:3 (CEV)
5. You__________________________________________________________
“But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning
in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to
the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.” Matthew 2:21-23
(NIV)
“So then, anyone who hears these words of mine
and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.” Matthew 7:24 (TEV)
“Give me insight so I can do what you tell me – my
whole life one long, obedient response.”
Psalm 119:34 (MSG)
“He was humble and walked the path of obedience
all the way to death — his death on the cross.”
Philippians 2:8 (TEV)
“Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he
has commanded us to love one another.” 2 John 1:6 (NLT)
WILL I OBEY GOD WHEN
THINGS DON’T MAKE SENSE?
5 Questions that
Determine Your Destiny – Part 2
12-09-12
Sermon
It’s good to be here
together. We’re in a series looking at
the people of the first Christmas and how their destinies were changed because
of their answers to some significant questions of life. And how our destinies thousands of years
later are still being changed because of the way they answered these questions.
We looked last week
at Mary. This week we look at Joseph’s
questions. And he had questions.
Just put yourself
in his shoes for a minute. Here I am: I’m
Joseph. I’ve just learned that the girl
I’m engaged to is pregnant. And it
doesn’t make sense. Everything that I
know about her, everything that I’ve experienced with Mary, it doesn’t make
sense that she would be pregnant. And
not only that, she’s telling me some crazy story about meeting with an angel
and a virgin birth… none of it makes sense.
So what do you do
when nothing makes sense?
Or don’t put
yourself in Joseph’s shoes, put yourself in your shoes, because you are in your
shoes. Last week you found out some
health news and it still doesn’t make sense.
You can’t come to grips with it in your own life or somebody in your family. Or last week you found out that a bunch of
people are going to be laid off this next year at your work and one of them
might be you or a friend of yours, and it doesn’t make sense. Things are starting to turn around but here you
are in the middle of this. Or something
happened with somebody in a relationship this last week and you’ve been trying,
you’ve been working on it but it keeps falling apart more and more. As hard as you try, the worse it seems to get. And it just doesn’t make sense.
What do you do when
life doesn’t make sense? That’s the question
in Joseph’s life. Life’s second-biggest question
is this: Will I trust God when life doesn’t
make sense? Will I obey God when life doesn’t
make sense? It’s one of the questions
that determines your destiny in life.
I know for a lot of
people obedience is the idea of unwilling compliance. I don’t know where we got that. Maybe from our parents growing up. They told us to do things. If we didn’t do them we’d be in trouble; so
we did them. And that’s obedience. That is not the picture of obedience in our
relationship with God.
Other people think of obedience as
some kind of fearful submission. That’s
not the picture either. What is this
attitude, this relationship of obedience to a father who loves us? How does it really work?
Would you write down in your outline three words? Here’s what it really is. It’s love
plus trust plus action. That’s different from our picture but that is
God’s picture, the picture that you see again and again in the lives of people
of faith. Love plus trust plus action. Real obedience begins with love.
Here’s what Jesus
said about it; “If you love me, you will
obey what I command.” So it all
starts in this relationship with love. It
starts with love.
Out of that love
comes a trust. Trust means I believe
what God says. God knows things I don’t
know. He understands things I don’t
understand. When I don’t understand it,
God does. So that’s why when life doesn’t
make sense to me, I want to do what he says.
Not because he might get me, but because he knows things I don’t know
and loves me in ways I don’t even understand yet.
It’s this relationship
of love plus trust; and then action. Then
you act based on that belief.
Here’s the
important thing: It takes all three. If
you have action without love it’s just rote religion. It’s empty, it’s meaningless. But if you love without action, it’s just as
empty, it’s just as meaningless.
So here is Joseph. He’s in the middle of this situation he does
not understand. It doesn’t make sense to
him. And he begins to get some messages
from God. “Here’s what you should do… Then you should do this…Then you should do
this…” The great thing that marks
his life is he obeyed God. Out of his
love relationship with God he did what God said to do. Even though he didn’t always understand it, he
decided to obey God.
So we’re going to
look together today at some meetings that Joseph had with some angels. In those meetings he got five different directions. He said yes
to every one of them. In every yes of Joseph, you and I can learn
something about what this genuine life of loving obedience is really all about.
The first thing he
shows us, the first thing I learn from him, if I’m going to obey God, if I’m going
to follow God is…
1. Do it now!
Do it now! Why wait?
Do it now. Joseph, when he heard
from God, he acted. The Bible says this,
Matthew 1:19-21, 24 “Because Joseph
her husband [Mary’s husband] was a righteous man and did not want to expose her
to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of
the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be
afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from
the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to
a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people
from their sins.’ When Joseph woke up, [watch
what happened!] he did what the angel
of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”
There is this refreshing immediacy to
Joseph’s relationship with God. God said
it, he did it! That is a sign; that is a
mark of people who live lives of destiny, who live great lives of faith.
It’s the kind of life the Bible talks about
in Psalm 119:60, “I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.” You do it quickly. If you’re going to do it, you may as well do
it now. Because the longer you wait the
more difficult it is. No doubt about it.
Let me show you, maybe you’ve had this
experience. You say something to
somebody in your office and you know you shouldn’t have said. It was an ugly remark. And God prompts you in the back of your mind. Not an audible voice but just a prompting
later in the day, “You really should apologize to them.” And you think, “Lord, you’re right. I’ll apologize to them.” You’re walking by their cubicle or their office
later in the day and you think, “Tomorrow.
That’s when I’m going to do it. I’m
going to apologize to them tomorrow.”
Let me ask you, if you wait a day does it get
easier or more difficult to apologize? It’s
more difficult. The longer you wait the
more difficult it becomes. There’s just
no doubt about it.
But Joseph had this immediacy in it, so that
he kept on trusting.
1 John 5:3 says this, “This is love for
God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” Many of us, we look at that and we think, “I
agree with most of that. But not
burdensome? God’s commands are
burdensome to me sometimes.” God doesn’t
mean for it to be burdensome. He means for
them to be refreshing and life giving. So
what makes them burdensome in our lives?
What makes them burdensome is we do them
because of guilt or fear. Or delaying doing
it. The longer you wait the more
difficult it gets. Just like in the
office, the longer I wait the more difficult it gets. God says it but we wait to do it and that’s
where the burden comes in so many times.
Here’s what we’re missing out on. When God says it and you eventually do it,
the most refreshing and awesome sense of freedom and joy bursts into your life. You think, “Why did I wait?” We wait because we’re afraid or we wait
because we’re depending on our strength and not God’s strength or we wait
because of some other people’s opinion. There’s
a lot of reasons we wait. But once we
finally get to it we think, “Why did I wait?
There’s so much freedom in doing what God says.”
Joseph’s example is do it now! That’s where you start.
The second thing I can learn about this
obedient life of faith from the life of Joseph is…
2. You keep on trusting.
You do it now and then you keep on trusting. You obey immediately and then you obey
consistently. I’ve noticed some people are
really good at the immediate. They jump
right into things. But they’re not very
good at keeping on keeping on. Other
people they’re very good at being very faithful and keeping on keeping on, but
they have a hard time jumping into things.
Joseph was good at both. And I want to be good at both. That’s one of the qualities that makes for a
refreshing life of faith. Look at what
Joseph did in obeying consistently and keeping on trusting. The Bible says in Matthew 1:25 “But he had
no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” He obeyed consistently.
That’s amazing to me. That is amazing keeping-on trusting. When you look at Joseph there were a lot of things
he did not understand. He didn’t
understand the whole reason for the virgin birth. You and I now understand that Jesus is God in
human flesh. He didn’t understand that. He just knew God said no honeymoon, no sex;
and he said yes. Then the next day he
said yes. Then the next day he said yes. It’s an amazing example to me of the kind of
faith that changes things.
Joseph kept on trusting even though life was
not working out as he planned. This was
not the wedding night that he planned. This
was not the early marriage that he planned.
But he kept on trusting.
One of the big questions of life is, what
are you and I going to do when life is not working out as we planned?
I’ve always loved what the apostle Paul wrote
about this, one of the great heroes of faith.
Paul said about this in 2 Corinthians 4:8, “We are pressed on every
side by troubles, but not crushed and broken.
We are perplexed because we don’t know why things happen as they do, but
we don’t give up and quit.” Circle
two three-word phrases. Circle “don’t
know why” and circle “don’t give up.” Many,
many times in life we’re holding on to both at the same time.
Here’s Paul, one of the greatest men of
faith who ever lived, and he said, “I don’t know why things always happen as
they do.” I’ll join him – I don’t
know why many times.
I don’t know why many things happen in life
as they do. None of us do. We’re not God. There are things we don’t know. But I do know this: There is a God who loves
us. I do know this: God has a plan for
our lives that stretches all the way into eternity. It’s bigger and better and greater than any
circumstance in this life that looks like it’s trying to take life away from
you. I do know I can trust him. I have chosen. I have chosen that even when I don’t know
why, I’m going to keep on trusting.
When you don’t know why in life, you’ve got
a couple of choices. You can either say
to God, “God, you owe me an explanation.” Or you can say to God, “God, thank you for
the gifts you have given me.” You can look at what God owes you or you can look at what God has given you. You’ve got that choice. A lot of people go down the
God-you-owe-me-an-explanation. He couldn’t
give it to you if he tried. It’s bigger,
it’s greater, than you and I could comprehend.
He might be able to explain it to us someday in heaven if we need it
there. But it’s more than I can handle
here. If you go down that road oftentimes
you end up a very bitter person.
I don’t want to go down that road. Because I’ve found that, even when I don’t
know why, I know God is a God that I can trust.
I’ve seen him so many times be faithful in difficult circumstances. I’ve seen him so many times when I didn’t
understand it. He keeps showing up and
he keeps showing up. He can be trusted. In relationship with him you recognize even
when I don’t know why, I’m going to choose to not give up. I’m trusting God even when I don’t understand
it.
That’s what Joseph did. That’s the way you live a life of destiny. That’s the way you live the kind of life that
makes a difference in this world. Joseph: he did it now and he kept on trusting.
Then he made a
third choice. He hears a third time from
an angel. He heard marry Mary, and keep
her a virgin till the birth of the baby.
Now the baby is born and he hears again a third time. In this third thing that he hears, the
message really to us and to him was…
3. You’ve got to let it go.
There are some
things you have to let go of if you’re going to live out this life of faith. Look at what happened after the baby was born. The Bible says in Matthew 2:13-15, “When they [the three wise men] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape
to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you,
for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’ So he got up, took the child and his mother
during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.”
They left everything that they knew. They sacrificed everything that they knew. They let it all go.
At the deepest
level, they sacrificed their comfort. They’d
been sacrificing it all along. They
sacrificed the comfort of an engagement that was supposed to work out like they’d
thought it would work out. They
sacrificed the comfort of pregnancy and how that was supposed to work out. They sacrificed the comfort of how the baby
was supposed to be born in this world.
Now here it is again. God saying to them, “You’ve got to get out of Israel, the comfortable place where you’ve always
lived, and go someplace you don’t know about.
You’ve got to face an unknown culture, foods that you may not know
about, and a lot of things you may not be expecting. Move to Egypt.” And Joseph did it. He let go of all those comforts in his life,
all those things he was hanging on to, and he held on to God’s word to him.
The truth of the matter
is, if I’m going to follow God’s plan for my life, if I’m going to live this
life of obedience, it is often uncomfortable to follow God’s plan. Why? Because
when I stay comfortable, I don’t grow. When
I stay comfortable, I stay where I am. God’s
plan is to make me uncomfortable sometimes so I can grow, so I can change. It’s often uncomfortable to follow God’s plan. It’s often uncomfortable to live out a life
of destiny.
Following God’s plan
is often uncomfortable at first. It is
uncomfortable to break a bad habit. Because
you’ve gotten comfortable with it. It’s
uncomfortable to face a fear. Who wants
to face a fear? It’s uncomfortable to go
somewhere unknown to you. It’s uncomfortable
to forgive someone who’s hurt you. But
growth and change are on the other side of that discomfort. Growth and change are not always comfortable
but they’re always good.
The Bible says
about who God is, “Praise be to the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of
all comfort.” Don’t miss out on the
comfort that God can give because you’re trying to hold on to some little thing
that you think can still give you comfort.
Especially, let me invite you during this season of the year not to miss
out. The Christmas season, to me, is one
of the most joyous seasons of the year. But
I also realize that for many of us it’s a tough season of the year. For many people you tend to go back to old
comforts. You go back to old habits, old
patterns, old relationships. Many people
have more arguments during December than any other time. People fall off the wagon in December; people
struggle with relationships and finances in December. You go back to all the old stuff. And they don’t make you any more comfortable
than they’ve made you for years.
I want to invite you
this year, have a different December. Instead
of relying on some old thing that doesn’t make you comfortable anymore, turn to
the God of all comfort in a fresh new way.
When you’re tempted to go to that old pattern, that old thing, that old
relationship, turn to God and say, “God,
you are the God of all comfort. Will you
give me comfort in this situation?” He
will. He’ll show up in your life. It can be a different December for you as he
shows up in your life. You let it go.
And as you’re
letting it go, remember how important this is to God to give you his comfort. Jesus Christ gave his life for you. He suffered for you so that he can give you
comfort. The Bible says, “So even though Jesus was God’s Son, he
learned obedience from the things he suffered.”
That’s how much God wants to show up in my life and your life.
So you look at Joseph. How do I live out a genuine kind of obedience? You do it now. When God says it, you do it. You keep on trusting even when it’s difficult. You let it go. Then you do a fourth thing…
4.
You take a risk.
You take a risk. You obey courageously. Look at what happened with Joseph. “After Herod
died, [the king who wanted to kill Jesus] an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said,
‘Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those
who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.’” And Joseph does it.
Think about how
scary this was for Joseph. He’s taking
his family back into danger if that word is wrong. But he totally trusts it and he takes a risk
and he moves back into Israel. He obeyed
courageously. Because he trusted, he took
God at his word and he obeyed. He did
what Psalm 56:3 talks about, “Even when I
am afraid, I keep on trusting you.”
Circle the word
“when” in that verse. It doesn’t say if I am afraid. It says when
I’m afraid. Because the truth is, in this
world we’re going to face some fears. Some
of us handle them well. Some of us handle
them horribly. But we’re going to face some
fears.
There’s two choices
you’ve got. You let the fear control your
life or you trust God in spite of the fear.
You can’t choose to have a no fear life in this world, because it’s a real
world with real potential fears. So what
are you going to do about it? That’s the
question. Joseph chose, because he trusted
God, he chose to take a risk.
It could be the big
risk of moving to a new place, taking on a new job, or taking on a new
ministry. Or forgiving somebody you’ve
never forgiven.
It could be a little risk. A little risk of going across the street and
inviting somebody to our Christmas Eve service.
Or the little risk of picking up the phone and calling somebody that
needs a call when God prompts you to do that.
Or the little risk of deciding to change a habit in your life. Do something different in your faith. When was the last time you did anything different
and you took a risk?
When you begin to take
those kinds of risks in life it opens up a brand new kind of life, a brand new
kind of joy. It’s the example of Joseph. You take a risk.
Then there’s a
fifth thing that you and I can learn from the life of Joseph.
5.
You use your brain.
You want to live a
life of faith? A lot of people think
living a life of faith means you disengage your brain, you put it in neutral,
and God just sort of directs you. You
don’t even know where you’re going.
That’s not it at
all. Living a life of faith instead is
engaging your brain with God, listening to him, connecting with him and then
hearing his direction in life. Look at
what Joseph did. I love this example. The Bible says in Matthew 2:21-23, “But when he heard that Archelaus was
reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to
the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.” This lets us in on how Joseph heard from God
in the situation. He engages his mind. He says “God,
Archelaus is now the king there. I’m not
so sure this is a good idea. What are
you thinking about this?” And God
says, “Glad you’re thinking that, Joseph. Glad you’re going down that road. That’s not really where you want to go, is it? Where do you want to live?” “I’m thinking
Nazareth, where we came from.” “That’s a
great idea.”
He engages his
brain, engages his mind and they work this through together, and Joseph ends up
in Nazareth, which is exactly where, from Old Testament times, Jesus was prophesied
to have grown up. He engaged his brain
with God and he ended up doing exactly what God had intended all along.
So it’s not a
matter of disengaging, going into neutral.
It’s a matter of engaging. If you want to live the excitement and freedom
of this life of obedience, you have to hear from God and respond to what you
hear.
If you look at
Joseph’s life you may have been thinking something all the way through: he
keeps meeting with an angel and an angel says “this” and he does it and the
angel says “this” and he does it. What
about you? What about me? Have you ever met an angel? Have you had a regular conversation with
angels? Most of us don’t. So how do you and I get these directions, get
this guidance in our lives?
You may or may not
hear from an angel, but there is still this gift that God has given us of his Word. We have hundreds of pages from God’s Word. God says, You’re
facing this, here’s what you should do. You’re
struggling with this, here’s the direction you should take. You don’t know what to do in this
circumstance, here’s how I can comfort your heart. Again and again and again he gives us his
guidance through his Word.
Jesus talked about
this. Jesus said in Matthew 7:24 “So then, anyone who hears these words of
mine and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.” You want a life that lasts? You want to build a legacy? You build it on God’s guidance and his Word.
The Bible isn’t a book
of instructions. It is God’s love letter
to you. So you read it in a relationship. You read it as a conversation. You just sit down with God and say, “God, I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why I’m facing this. I don’t understand why I’m going through this. I don’t understand this situation of life. But I do know you understand it. And I do know you see things I don’t see. I do know you have my best interest at heart
and the best interest of everyone around me.
I do know you have a plan for my life that extends to eternity. So God, in conversation with you, would you show
me what to do? Would you show me how to
feel in this situation? Would you show
me how to act in this situation?” That’s
how you read his Word.
When you read it
that way, there’s a prayer that you should pray that’s in the Bible. The prayer is in Psalm 119:34. Pray a prayer like this, “Give me insight so I can do what you tell me – my whole life one long, obedient response.” God, engage my brain to understand what you’re
telling me to do so I can live this joyous life of obedience that you’ve given
me to live. That’s what I want.
Joseph is our
example of this. This life of obedience,
this different kind of life that’s not unwilling compliance, that’s not fearful
submission. But really is joyous living. He’s our example, but he’s not our greatest
example. The greatest example to us of
this life of obedience is Jesus Christ. The
Bible says this in Philippians 2:8, “He
was humble and [Jesus] walked the
path of obedience all the way to death – his death on the cross.” He
shows us the way. So now, when you and I
look at the cross, we don’t see just the instrument of Roman torture that it
was meant to be. We see love. We see God.
We see obedience. We see a new
way to live the life that God’s given us to live, and a new power to live it.
So, walking out of
here, what am I going to do about this? What
do you need to do? If you’re still thinking
about what’s my next step in this, it’s pretty clear what our next step of obedience
is always to be when I’m unsure. When
I’m not sure about life, when I don’t understand what’s going it on, what do I
do? What choice do I make? Here’s the choice. 2 John 1:6 says, “Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to
love one another.” It begins with love,
God’s love for us, and obedience ends with love, our love for one another. When you’re not sure what to do, find someone
to love. Find someone to serve. This next week think about how can I do that.
Who is there this
next week that some small kindness, some little thing you could do for them? What name, what face comes to your mind right
now? You think, “Oh no, Lord. Not them. I don’t want to do it for them.” But God brought their name, their face to
mind for a reason. Somebody at your
office. Somebody in your family. Somebody you run across when you’re out at
the stores. Who can you do some small act
of kindness for this next week? When you
decide to do that, that is obedience.
Prayer:
Father, you know us. You
know it’s difficult for us sometimes to obey.
We have our fears. We have our
own ways of doing things. We get tired. We have all kinds of excuses. But Lord, we want this refreshing life that’s
modeled by Joseph. We want to live out
the destiny that you have for us; and we know that we cannot live out our
destiny unless we obey you. So God, help
us. Strengthen us. Strengthen us to do it now. Give us the strength to keep on trusting even
when we don’t understand. Lord, help us
to let it go, that comfort that we’ve been holding on to for so long. Lord, give us the faith to take a risk, even
now, the risk to serve someone. Lord,
help us to use our brain, and to engage it with you and your Word, and to see
where you’re leading and guiding us. And
in all of it, God, we pray that we do it because we know you love us. We know how deeply you care about us. You have a plan and a purpose for our lives
that’s above none other. Because you know
us like no other person knows us. And
God you have nothing but good in mind for us in all eternity. So we turn to you, we trust you and we ask you,
strengthen us to obey you. We ask it in
Jesus’ name. Amen.
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