Vineyard Church of Knox County
Willing Obedience: From Duty to Delight
Sermon Audio from Sunday, June 19, 2005 — We're heading to the finish line of our series on Walking by the Spirit in which we learned that walking each day of our lives in line with God's Spirit begins with knowing God's Spirit intimately. We talked about nurturing intimacy with God in the quiet place - dependence - today obedience. I know this topic is not the most popular of topics to talk about in the Christian life because we usually equate obedience with things unpleasant, like chores, or rules. Furthermore, I believe that the topic of obedience is skipped over in the pulpit because it smacks of legalism. In our attempt to communicate the grace of God, that is, that our behavior has absolutely nothing to do with God's love for us and we are saved not by being good, obedient people, but simply by God's free gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, we rightly have separated works from salvation, but we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Just because we are free from following rules to become righteous and forgiven does not mean that we are exempt from being obedient to the Spirit of God as He leads us each day. In fact this is exactly why Paul taught so adamantly in Galatians that we are free from rule-keeping: so that we focus on following obediently in the footsteps of the Spirit of God. Just a cursory glance through the biblical record reveals the passion with which God calls his children to obedience to His will. Just do a word search for the word "obey" and "obedience" and you will come up with 181 passages in the NIV. God calls His people to obedience in the Old Testament and God calls Christians to obedience in the New Testament and Jesus commissioned us with these words, "Go and make disciples of all nations - teaching them to obey everything I have taught you." I've called this talk "Obedience: From Duty to Delight" because I believe that God wants to communicate to us the delight that comes to Him and to us when we are obedient to His Spirit. He doesn't want our obedience to be driven by a sense of duty, but out of a deep desire to delight in Him.
