14-05-26 - ‘Let’s Get Serious: Obedience’

In this message from the Midweek Church Service, Reverend Hayley Ace continues the Let’s Get Serious series with a focused teaching on obedience. She explains that believers often gladly receive Jesus as Saviour, Redeemer, Healer, and Miracle Worker, but can struggle to submit to Him as Master, King, and Lord.

Drawing from Acts, Joshua, John, 1 Samuel, and Isaiah, the sermon highlights that obedience is not optional in the Christian life. Hayley reminds listeners that grace is precious, but grace does not remove the call to obey God’s commands. A true disciple must not only say they love Jesus, but demonstrate that love by keeping His commandments.

The message reflects on Joshua 9, where Israel made a covenant with the Gibeonites because they “did not inquire of the Lord.” Hayley uses this as a challenge to believers not to make decisions, enter relationships, pursue work, or walk through life without first seeking God’s will.

The sermon also draws attention to David as a man after God’s own heart, asking whether God could say the same of us: that we are men and women who will do everything He asks. It closes with the reminder from 1 Samuel that obedience is better than sacrifice, and that outward religious activity is empty if it is not joined to a surrendered and obedient heart.

Listeners can watch the full Midweek Church Service live every Thursday at 7pm on Revelation TV.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

So we obey, and that's the thing. And a lot of that I'm gonna bring about today or this evening, very short message is about obedience. Now we are uh from the beginning of time, we were designed by God in his image to obey something and worship something, and then everything went wrong, didn't it, in the garden? Um and I feel like the Lord kind of wants, and the reason we're doing this whole series at the moment, all about let's get serious, is because we don't want to be the pastors that just bring lots of life coaching, you know, how to be more successful, how to, you know, just improve your life here on earth. We actually really want to bring our midweek church service some really serious, more like sustaining, hard, solid food, don't we, my love? And so last week Tim brought a brilliant message about suffering and how we can stand under suffering and how actually we should view suffering. So this week we're doing um about obedience, and we so love, we so love to accept and embrace Jesus as our savior, as our rescuer, as our redeemer, as our victor, our healer, the miracle maker, um, covenant keeper. But so many times we often can struggle with him as master, king, i.e., meaning we have to do what he says he's asked us to do and also follow her his commands. And many times now of life when things go wrong, um, many times, in fact, we were we were I was speaking to somebody recently that has um lost their faith or is wobbly at the moment, and she said, you know, I asked for something, it didn't happen, and you know, I'm angry at God, and so I just I'm not sure really what to do about things now. Because when the going gets tough, and when we have to do things that are difficult, and sometimes obeying God is difficult and it's requires discipline, sometimes this is when actually we're just not built up in the faith enough and we're not strong enough, and then we fall away. And our prayer for all Christians is to be so strong in their faith with God that you stick by him, that you are a man or a woman who God looks down upon and says, This man, this woman has a heart after me. And in fact, our first verse that we have, Acts 11, 23, um, the context of this is when Paul, I think he was um, he just visited Antioch. And Antioch, my love, was that the first place they were called Christians?

SPEAKER_02 3:01

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah, because before that it was called the Way. If you didn't know that, it Christianity didn't just appear with Jesus, it was actually called the Way, and then after the ascension of Jesus, it was um spread by his apostles, and in Antioch it was called Christians. So Paul was really excited because when he went to when he when he went through Antioch, he was really excited and encouraged because the Gentiles were getting to hear the gospel, which I think is so lovely, don't you? That's so wonderful that that Paul was so excited about the Gentiles having the opportunity to hear the message of redemption that Jesus brought with him.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

That's right, and actually you can see their response in j in Acts 15 with the Council of Jerusalem. It says they praised God and celebrated that salvation came to the Gentiles.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I know, isn't it beautiful? And so here, this is the context of what this um passage says. It says, When he arrived and he saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. So it just got me thinking, how do we remain true to the Lord? Because we can have um good intentions, but we actually do need to be intentional about how we can stay true and how we can stay obedient to the Lord. And if you think about it, from the very beginning, God gave all mankind a choice. We can choose good or bad, right or wrong, good or evil, righteousness or sin. And we saw that with Adam and Eve. He gave them a choice because he created us not as robots, not as something that can only choose good, only choose love. He he made us so that we can have a choice, which means that we can choose to disobey. When we uh let me just see what this is. Yeah, I'm gonna come back to that um verse in a moment. Uh, where was my track, my love? Can you remember I was at?

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Well, you can choose disobedience or you can choose obedience, it's that free will, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

It is, it's the free will that God gives us so beautifully. And I think as parents, good good parents that are righteous and good, we give our children boundaries, we give them rules and like a framework to have a good life so that they are safe, that they do have discipline, so that they grow healthy and strong and well. It doesn't mean they get everything that they want, and it's the same with God, who is our good father. He has given us so much, so many wonderful precepts, commands, and ordinances, and he does want us to keep them, and it's not just enough for us to say, you know, I've got grace. Yes, we have got grace, but obedience is so important. Absolutely, and that's what sometimes we miss, don't we? In some movements, we just miss that we need to be obeying what it says in here. So, how do we obey? We need to know what it says. And so, Tim and I are always encouraging our own church that we physically run, Lee Valley Church, to read your Bible every day. And my encouragement, this interjection encouragement, is to say to you, pick up your Bible every day, read this every single day, because the Lord will reveal himself to you. You will see him more and more as you seek him. That is a promise. If you seek him, you will find him. And the entire book, you just see his character, you see his ordinances, and you see his heart towards you. So that is a just a side point to we like to do that, don't we, my love?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So this is our this is our prayer for all of you, and and this is in Acts 13, 22. After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him. I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do. And wow, wouldn't that be amazing if the Lord looks at your heart, looks at my heart, looks at your heart and says, actually, that is a woman, that is a man after my heart. I know that Haley will do everything that I want her to do, that Tim will do everything, that the reliance that he can rely on you so much that actually I know Paul, he will do everything that I want him to do because he's a man after my own heart. And how do we show God? How do we show God that truly in our heart that we are living for him and that we want to obey? It's by obedience, by small steps. And um, did you want to interject, my love? I saw you writing something down, which I love it when you jump in.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

No, I know what I wrote down was what a great thing to have on your your gravestone, a man or a woman after God's own heart.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

I mean, what a testimony. I think that's you can't get better than that, can you? And that we get so busy and so lost and stuck in our own little worlds that we create here on earth, that we're so comfortable in this reality, in our very short, if we are blessed to even get 70 years on earth, it becomes our focus. And we are very careful to obey as much as we can our tax returns, our um speed limits, you know, the things that we should eat and drink and how we should conduct ourselves, sometimes more than what the Lord says, how we should conduct ourselves, what we should be careful of, what we should avoid. And I really feel the need to just say we need to be serious about this. We need to be serious and not just say, you know, I'm saved by grace and that's it. Great, you are saved. First wrong, next one is obedience. You can only be obey what you know is the requirement, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So it just kind of got me on. I was just jumping around, and because we only have um a 10-minute slot here um when we do this sermon, we actually go into more depth on a Sunday in our church every sermon. I wanted to bring out my favourite verse in the Bible, and it says in Joshua 9 14, the Israelites sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the Lord. That's a bit of a funny, weird favourite verse, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 9:42

I was gonna I was just thinking uh your favourite verse?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yeah, and that is my verse, and I have it in our office in a frame. You might not even have noticed it.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

No, I have noticed that, but I have wondered like why? Come on, Brady, tell us why.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Okay, so I'm gonna tell you why. The the pretext to this is that God said to Joshua, I want you to, in this certain area, wipe out all of these evil tribes. Very bad people, in terms of unrighteousness, uncleanliness, and um worshipping Baal and Malek and all sorts of demon gods, basically. And so, because God commanded them to do it and they were doing their commanded works, they were going out and obeying what God said. Now there was a tribe who decided to dress up and trick Joshua and the Israelites into signing a peace treaty so that they would not be wiped out by Joshua and the Israelites. And they basically, if you know the story, the they came through, they're all dressed up in their rags with old bread, moldy bread, and they go up to Joshua and they pretend they're from a faraway place, and so just ask, can we pass through? Will you do a s will you sign a peace treaty? Joshua signs this peace treaty with them, they go on their way, and then they go to attack this particular place, and actually they find out that the people that pretended they were from a a a far far, I think there was the Hittites or something, or the Gibeonites, that's it, the Gibeonites, they realized that actually they had been tricked, and they said, you know, what's going on here? And the Lord said to them, but you didn't inquire of me. The Lord said, Why didn't you wipe them out? I told you to. And they said, But we didn't know. And he said, But you didn't inquire of me. And so when I learnt that um story and that account, I just thought, I don't want to be a person, and I hope for all of us, I don't want to be somebody that does something that is not commanded by God or that I haven't inquired. So many times I see Christians and people blaming God for the bad things that happen in their life. And it's like, did you even inquire? Did you even inquire before you even jumped into it? We can blame them about our relationships, we can blame them about our work and so many different things, and it's just like, did we even include him? That's so good in the first place. So that's what's my favorite. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah, I can't believe we've been married all this time, and I'd never really shared that with you, had I, my love. So I think we all know as parents how frustrating it can be when we have children and we put these parameters around them and we say, you know, don't touch the fire, we want you to go bed at this time because it's good for your health, and just do as you're told, basically. And when they don't, or when they're fearful, and then where when they're worried, it is actually quite frustrating. If you've ever had a 10-year-old who's afraid that there's a monster in the closet and you're telling them there is no monster, open the door, you know, the the sort of typical thing that you would do with a parent-child relationship, it gets annoying after a while when you're just saying, trust me, there's nothing there. And so when we're talking about God's commands, when he says, Do not fear, do not be anxious about anything, we are to obey that. Actually, taking the Bible literally and his commands literally, whilst not getting all caught up in the works of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

What's our next verse? Absolutely. Because we can say, Lord, Lord, I love you. We can sing all of these beautiful songs, but in John 14, 15 it says, If you love me, then keep my commands.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Can I have the next verse as well? Samuel talks in 1 Samuel 15 22, it says this, but Samuel replied, Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of the rams. And in a nutshell, all throughout the um the scriptures, even in Isaiah 1, I was gonna bring Isaiah 1.10. Go and read that. I would I would invite you to read Isaiah 1.10. It's talking about the whole acts of worship, whole acts of sacrificing, of working in the ministry, or doing the activities. If that's all it is and it's not obedience, then it's wasted.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

And so my prayer is that we would be a people who have that on our foreheads, that God can look down at us and say, He is a man, she is a woman after my heart. I can trust her to do what I say.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

That's such a great word, my love. You know, uh, I think I called you babe at one point in that. I'm sorry, everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

That's okay, I am your wife.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

It's because you know, I love it when when you were sharing that about that why that's your favourite verse, you didn't inquire of me. And of course, the key one there is to obey is better than sacrifice. It also says in one time 15 disobedience is a witchcraft, so let's not be witches about it, you know what I mean?