aith obeys, even when tempted to run the other way. Our best example of obedience is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene when He prayed: "Not my will but Yours be done." Suffering, pain, and hurt may follow, but nothing is as sweet, or as fruitful in the end, as obedience.

Faith Obeys - Full Version

by Eric Elder

Good morning! I want to talk to you today about my all-time favorite Super Hero, if you don’t mind me calling Him that. His name is Jesus.

I want to talk about Jesus not only because today is Palm Sunday, which is the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem and the people praised Him and spread palm branches on the road in front of Him, but also because Jesus is the best example of our topic today, which is this: “Faith Obeys.”

I can’t think of anyone who epitomizes obedience more than Jesus on the night before He died when He prayed: “...not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

I guess it’s not really fair to compare Jesus to other Super Heroes like Superman or Spider-Man, because Jesus was the Son of God. He had access to powers they could never have imagined. But at the same time, Jesus was also fully human, more real, and more like us, than Superman or Spider-Man ever were.

Just because Jesus was the Son of God, it doesn’t mean that He didn’t agonize over the decisions He made, just like the rest of us do. Luke says that Jesus was in such anguish over His decision that night, that “His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22.44b).

The Bible says that Jesus was real flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14), that He was born as a baby (Luke 2:7), was scolded by his parents (Luke 2:48), and grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52). He experienced love (John 11:5), anger (Mark 3:5), joy (Hebrews 12:2), betrayal (Luke 22:48), temptation (Hebrews 4:15) and pain (Matthew 27:46). He bled (John 19:34), He cried (John 11:35), He suffered (Hebrews 13:12) and He died (Mark 15:39).

The more that I can envision Jesus as a real human being, the more I can envision that I can really do what He did, as He said I could do when He said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing” (John 14:12).

I’d like to show you a scene today from the movie, The Passion. It’s a scene that shows Jesus and Mary in a light that I’ve never really considered before, but in a way that shows them as real flesh and blood people.

[Mary] Jesus. Jesus. Are you hungry?
[Jesus] Yes, I am.
[Mary] This is certainly a tall table. Who is it for?
[Jesus] A rich man.
[Mary] Does he like to eat standing up?
[Jesus] (laughing) No, he prefers to eat like...so. (He pretends to sit at the table.) Tall table. Tall chairs! Well, I haven’t made them yet.
(Mary tries to sit at the table, too, but almost falls. Jesus laughs and catches her.)
[Mary] This will never catch on!
(They head to the house)
[Mary] Oh, no you don’t! Take off that dirty apron before you come in. And wash your hands.
(She pours water into His hands. He washes them, then splashes water in her face, and finally pulls her close and to give her a kiss on the cheek).

Although the Bible doesn’t give us many details about what it was like for Jesus as He grew up, it does say in Luke 2:52 that “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). That’s something that God wants all of us to do. To grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men--to keep growing in our faith, no matter how young or old we might be.

I’d like you to look with me at another story in the book of Acts this week about how Peter and John chose to obey God rather than men, even when threatened with death. I’d like you to open your Bibles to Acts chapter 4, and follow along as Lana reads to you from verses 1 through 22.

This story takes place just after Peter and John had miraculously healed a man who had been crippled for over forty years. Although the people were amazed, the religious leaders were afraid and began to threaten Peter and John. Here’s what happened, starting in Acts chapter 4, verse 1.

1 The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. 3 They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. 4 But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.

5 The next day the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. 6 Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest's family. 7 They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: "By what power or what name did you do this?"

8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: "Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11 He is

‘the stone you builders rejected,

which has become the capstone.’

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say. 15 So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. 16 "What are we going to do with these men?" they asked. "Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. 17 But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name."

18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. 20 For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

21 After further threats they let them go. They could not decide how to punish them, because all the people were praising God for what had happened. 22 For the man who was miraculously healed was over forty years old.

When threatened by the religious leaders, Peter and John had to make a choice. They had to choose to obey God or to obey men. What could they do? The religious leaders were thinking of killing them if they didn’t obey. And these weren’t idle threats. The leaders had already shown their resolve to follow through on their threats by putting Jesus to death, and Peter and John were next.

On the other hand, Peter and John had seen Jesus do miracle after miracle. They’d seen Him rise from the dead. They’d just seen the power of Christ flow through them to heal a crippled man. So when the religious leaders challenged them to stop speaking, it was hardly a choice at all. How could they stop speaking and teaching in the name of Jesus? How could they stop preaching and praying for people to be healed? So they responded with the only response that made sense to them: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

That’s where I want my faith to be, and that’s where God wants your faith to be. God wants your faith to be in a place where you don’t have to argue or get defensive about what you’re doing, but simply let other people’s threats roll off your back like water off a duck. Where you simply smile and say, “I sorry, but I just can’t help speaking about what I’ve seen and heard!”

There will always be detractors. There will always be people who won’t be convinced even if they see a miracle right in front of them.

You may have heard about the man who thought he was dead and went into a psychiatrist’s office for help. The psychiatrist asked the man if dead men bleed. The man said, “No.” He knew that once your heart stops beating and the blood stops flowing, you no longer bleed, even when cut. So the psychiatrist took out a needle and pricked the man’s finger so that it began to bleed.

The psychiatrist then asked the man, “So what do you think now?”

The man responded, “I guess dead men do bleed.”

Some people, even when confronted with the most amazing evidence, will still respond with stubborn unbelief.

Lana and I were speaking last week at a woman’s group in LaSalle about our trip to Africa. A woman came up afterwards to encourage us to keep praying for people’s healing, because she herself had been instantly and miraculously healed of MS at age 37 when someone prayed for her in Jesus’ name. She didn’t know that I preached last week about healing, but we felt like God had sent her to us as confirmation to keep speaking and teaching what we know is true.

She told us she had been battling MS for five years. She was so weak she was down to 82 pounds, and so paralyzed on one side she couldn’t open a door by herself.

Her friends told her about a healing meeting going on in Chicago. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to be involved with anything like that. But her friends were persistent and took her on blankets and pillows into the meeting hall and when the man speaking prayed for her, she felt a wonderful warmth go through her body. The cold numbness left her. She began to spread her fingers on her right hand, something she hadn’t been able to do for over a year. She stood to her feet and her right leg was as strong as her left. She went home and the next day she got out her lawn mower and mowed her entire lawn by herself. She’s been completely healed of all symptoms ever since. Her doctor in Mendota said there was no other possible explanation for it except that she was healed when someone prayed for her in Jesus’ name. This August she’ll be ninety years old!

She told me she had written a booklet about it back in 1956, so I went to her house and got a copy of it from here. Even though she didn’t want to go to that meeting that night, but after she was healed, she couldn’t stop talking about what she had seen and heard! She began getting calls from the hospital to come and pray for the sick at 3 in the morning, when the doctors had done all they could do. No one can deny this woman was healed. But, like the stubborn religious leaders in Jesus’ day, they might still deny that it was the power of God that brought the healing.

The truth is that she's an ordinary woman right here in LaSalle County who was touched in an extraordinary way when she put her faith in Jesus Christ. Peter and John were ordinary men, too, as the religious leaders could see. The only difference they noted was that Peter and John “had been with Jesus.” And that difference made all the difference in the world.

Franklin Graham is one of my favorite contemporary heroes. He’s the son of Billy Graham and the founder of Samaritan’s Purse. In his book, Rebel With A Cause, Franklin tells the story of an idea he had during the Gulf War to send New Testaments in Arabic to our troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. The troops could learn Arabic while talking with their Saudi friends about the New Testament. While what Franklin was doing was perfectly legal, the officer in charge of the troops told Franklin to stop sending the New Testaments for fear of offending their Saudi hosts. The officer said he was sorry, but that he had his orders.

Franklin responded by saying that he understood the dilemma, but that he was under orders, too--from the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords--to preach the gospel to all creation. Those New Testaments made it into the hands of many people who otherwise would never have heard the that Jesus died for their sins. People may try to tell you what to do, but when it contradicts what God has already told you to do, you have to choose whom you’ll obey.

Jesus Himself said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” (John 14:15).

When we obey Christ, we’re not only demonstrating our trust in Him, but we’re also demonstrating our love for Him, just like Christ demonstrated His love for us when He obeyed His Father’s commands.

There’s another story in the Bible that’s a great example of obedience--and the consequences of disobedience. I’ll summarize it here, but it’s worth looking up when you go home. You can find it in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 15. In this story, God says that the time had come for the wickedness of the Amalekites to be punished. So God said to Saul, the king of Israel:

“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” (1 Samuel 15:3).

So Saul attacked the Amalekites, but he didn’t totally destroy them as God said. He spared the king of the Amalekites, along with the best of the sheep and cattle. God knew this and sent Samuel the prophet to confront Saul. When Samuel saw him, Saul said:

“The LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD’s instructions.”

But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”

Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the LORD your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”

Samuel then told Saul what God told him, that because Saul had rejected the Word of the Lord, the Lord was rejecting Saul as king over Israel. Samuel said:

“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices

as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD ?

To obey is better than sacrifice,

and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22).

Sometimes we can avoid doing what God has called us to do by getting busy and doing something else. It may be a “good work,” but it’s not “God’s work,” and we know it. But we don’t know how to get off the treadmill. We’re afraid of what will happen if we do what God has called us to do. We’re afraid of what other people might say, or we’re afraid what might happen to us.

But God doesn’t want you to just do “good works.” He wants you to do “His works” and doing them completely. When God calls you to do something, you don’t want Samuel showing up and saying, “What then is this bleating of sheep that I hear?” God wants you to obey him, fully. “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”

I know it’s hard to obey God’s will, especially when we have so much of our own self-will still alive within us.

I know it’s hard to stop a relationship that God calls you to stop, even if you know it’s destroying you. But if God calls you to stop it, stop it. I know it’s hard to stay in a marriage when God tells you to stay in it, but when God tells you to stay in it, stay in it. If God’s calling you to leave a job, leave, but if He’s calling you to stay, stay. If God’s calling you to stop a bad habit that’s killing you, stop it; or if He’s calling you to start a good habit that will save you, start it!

God will give you the strength to do what He wants you to do. He’s a loving Father who cares for His children. He wants to see you succeed.

I shared last week about my own calling into ministry when I prayed for a woman who was dying of cancer. That same day, God called me to quit my job at Texaco and to go into full-time ministry. But when I left the women’s house that night and the lumps of cancer were still on her body, I was torn about what to do about my job.

If I had seen those lumps of cancer fly off her body, I would have quit my job in an instant and gone into full-time ministry. But God reminded me that then I’d be walking by sight instead of by faith, and He wanted me to walk by faith.

The next day came and went and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t quit. Here I had been praying that I would be quick to obey God, that I would do whatever He wanted me to do, like “that,” with a snap of the fingers. But this just seemed too big. It was too hard. I couldn’t do it.

The next morning, as I was praying and reading the Bible, I came across the story of Jeremiah, where God told Jeremiah about the blessings for obedience, and the consequences for disobedience. At the end of the passage, God said, “But if you do not obey me...then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses” (Jeremiah 17:27).

It sounded harsh, but God used it to gently reminded me of a time several years earlier when I wanted to take a three month leave of absence from my job. I just wanted to spend some time reading the Bible, playing the piano and praying. We didn’t have any kids at the time, and I knew that once we started having a family, it might not be as easy for me to take some time off. So I asked my boss and surprisingly he said, “Yes.”

I felt God wanted me to start my leave on a particular Friday, but since it was a holiday weekend, I knew that if I waited till the next Tuesday to start my time off, I’d get paid about $1,000 more.

Logically, I thought I should wait. But spiritually, I felt God wanted me to start my leave on that Friday. So I left on Friday, and decided to come up to Illinois to see my Mom and Dad. When I got there, I found out that my Mom was in much worse health than I thought. Because I left when God told me to leave, it turned out that I got to be with my Mom for the last three days of her life. Had I waited, had I not listened to God, I would have had a thousand bucks. But how could that ever compare to spending three precious days with my Mom before she went to heaven.

God reminded me of that story that morning when I was trying to decide if I should quit my job entirely or not.

I knew what I had to do. I went into work that day and turned in my badge. When you’re in the computer department, they don’t let you give two weeks notice. Because of all the access you have to their data, they escort you out of the building as soon as you tell them you’re leaving. I walked out of the building that day and I’ve never looked back.

People might think I’m crazy; they might call me a fanatic. I just call it obedience. God has proven to me time after time that He is faithful, that if I’m willing to press into Him, to seek His will, to even agonize in prayer to find out what His will is, then He’ll honor my steps of obedience.

God wants you to obey, even when it’s hard, even when the consequences are serious.

A French writer back in the 17th century named Madame Guyon wrote about this kind of complete surrender to God’s will. She called it abandonment, and she wrote, “Abandonment is practiced by continually losing your will in the will of God; by plunging your will into the depths of His will, there to be lost forever.” (Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, p. 35.)

That may sound totally scary, but I’ve found it to be totally freeing. Plunging your will into the depths of God’s will, there to be lost forever.

Jesus showed us the ultimate example of how to do this on the night He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemene. Jesus asked three times for God to take this cup from Him, if there was any other way to accomplish God’s will. But in the end, Jesus chose to obey, regardless of the cost to Him personally. I’d like to show you how that agonizing night of prayer was portrayed in the movie, The Passion.

(Jesus in the garden)
[JESUS] Hear me, Father. Rise up, defend me. Save me from the traps they set for me.
[SATAN] Do you really believe...that one can bear...the full burden of sin?
[JESUS] Shelter me, O Lord. I trust in You. In You I take refuge.
[SATAN] No man can carry this burden...I tell you. It is far too heavy. Saving their souls is too costly. No one. Ever. No. Never.
[JESUS] Father, You can do all things. If it is possible, let this chalice pass from me...But let Your will be done...not mine.

Jesus’ anguish that night was so real and so agonizing, that Luke tells us, “An angel from heaven appeared to [Jesus] and strengthened Him” (Luke 22:43-44). Can you imagine Jesus being in so much anguish that God would have to send an angel to give Him strength? But God gave Him the strength He needed, and in the movie version of that scene, Jesus stood up from that prayer and stomped on the head of a snake, showing the ultimate victory He won over Satan in that time of prayer.

God gave Jesus the strength to do what needed to do, just like God gave Peter and John the strength to do what they needed to do. Just like God gave me, and Franklin Graham, and Madame Guyon and countless others, the strength to do what He wanted us to do. And just like He will give you the strength to do what He wants you to do, if you’ll put your faith in Christ.

Faith obeys, regardless of the cost. God wants you to obey him, not because He doesn’t care about you, but because He cares about you so much. He wants what’s best for you and He wants the best for those around you. In all things, God really does work for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose (from Romans 8:28).

As we come to our time of decision, if you’d like to make a decision to follow Christ with your whole heart, or to put your faith in Him for the very first time, or to be baptized or to join our church, we invite you to come forward as we sing our invitation song.

First, let’s pray.

Father, thank You for giving us so many examples of what faith looks like when lived out in real life. Lord, give us the strength to do what You’re calling us to do, and to obey when you call us to obey. Strengthen those who have stepped out in faith this week and this month and this year to do what You’ve called them to do, whether they’re here in Illinois, or in Jerusalem, or in Africa, or in the Dominican Republic. Lord, I pray You would continue to speak to us and guide us into Your perfect will. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.