When Obedience Hurts

Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors. (25) My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word! (26) When I told of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes! (27) Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works. (28) My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word! (29) Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law! (30) I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set your rules before me. (31) I cling to your testimonies, O LORD; let me not be put to shame!  --Psalms 119:24-31 (ESV)

I love Psalms 119.  As I grow in the Lord, the parts where the psalmist speaks about his love for God's Word is becoming my testimony as well.  But there are times when obedience hurts.  I mean really hurts.  Like telling the truth when you know it will cause loss of some kind.  Or taking a stand when you know it will be misunderstood.  Or speaking a word in a sermon that will not go over well.  Or denying yourself something you really want but God says no.  Or having to deal in uncomfortable realities when everyone around you seems to be going in the other direction...and glad about it!

I believe that there will be many moments in the life of true believers where doing the right thing hurts.  Paul said he suffered the loss of all things, but it was ok because he was trying to gain something far greater....

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. (8) Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (9) and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- (10) that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, (11) that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (12) Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. (13) Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, (14) I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (15) Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. (Php 3:7-15 ESV)

Since the Lord told me that "Jesus is Enough" from the Scriptures a few years ago, I've gone back to this verse again and again....

Now Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. (2) Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the LORD. (3) The next day, when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, "The LORD does not call your name Pashhur, but Terror On Every Side. (4) For thus says the LORD: Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. They shall fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon. He shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall strike them down with the sword. (5) Moreover, I will give all the wealth of the city, all its gains, all its prized belongings, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them and seize them and carry them to Babylon. (6) And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house, shall go into captivity. To Babylon you shall go, and there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely." (7) O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me. (8) For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, "Violence and destruction!" For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. (9) If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name," there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. (Jer 20:1-9 ESV)

Have you ever felt like this?  Beaten and bruised for trying to do something right?  Wanting to quit, but unable because the Word was like "fire shut up in your bones?"

Sometimes, obedience hurts.  My encouragement to my readers is this: no matter what the cost, pay that price.  Love Christ enough to lovingly obey His Holy Word.  It will hurt sometimes.  It will cost you.  They'll be days where the cost seems too high.  Press on in there anyway.  Give your life for Christ.  He alone is worth it.....

Why the Sufficiency of Scripture is So Important

Here is a message I preached a few weeks ago from Mark 7:1-13.  There is a lot there I still need to learn!  Here is a bit of it....

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•  Satan is no dummy.  Right from the beginning, He knew that the way to hurt God and get mankind into a mess is to continually tempt us to disobey God's commandments...His Word.  And in the process of this battle, two mistakes are made by man:

  1. The first is to not care "what thus says the Lord" and do our own thing in lust and carnality.
  2. The second is just as bad: to begin to create rules, rituals, methods, and life and ministry constructs not according to the Word, but according to the dictate and desires of man's sinful heart.  And that is what makes the sort of hypocrisy in the text so bad: the traditions Jesus described flowed from man's sinful heart.

•  The first error is the sin of the culture; the second error, if we aren't careful, is the sin of the church.
•  And in both errors, the sin is that Scripture isn't Sufficient. Both represent rebellion against Christ.

  1. The first says, "Obeying Scripture won't make me happy or fulfilled or successful."
  2. The second says, "Obeying Scripture won't make me holy or anointed enough or sanctified enough."

•  In both cases, man veers off into his own ideas.  Let me say that again.  In both cases, man drifts off into his own ideas...one into carnality and the other into legalism or pragmatism.
•  The second error is particularly dangerous for the church. Why? The problem is two-fold:

  1. The development of a rule-based hypocrisy that goes beyond Scripture (common in holiness traditions).
  2. The development of a no-rules-based hypocrisy that works to eliminate the controls of Scripture.

•  Bp. Hall said, "It is a dangerous thing, in the service of God, to decline from his institutions; we have to do with a God, who is wise to prescribe his own worship - just to require what he has prescribed - and powerful to avenge what he has not prescribed."
•  So what we must strive for is to NEVER minimize God's Word, but NOT to go beyond It either.  And to be honest, as a pastor, just reading this text makes me begin to think of anything we are doing in a "Corban" manner that actually mitigates against what God said.
•  In other words, could it be dangerous to say "we are doing this for God" when God's Word forbids it, either by direct command, principle, or pattern?
 

Here is a challenge for each CRCC household: Have you set up anything in your life that deceptively makes you think you are obeying God, but in actuality causes the Word of God to be set aside?
 

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