Last week, Pastor Jim focused in part, at least, on Christ's obedience on our behalf. Today, I want you to consider our personal obedience. Jim and I did not plan this. We didn't get together and work this out. This is God's providence entirely in bringing these two things close together. Everybody knows that Christians are supposed to obey God. Almost everybody. There are some who consider themselves Christians who say, in effect, Hooray! Now we're dead to the law! I'm thinking of Romans 7, verse 4. A couplet that's gone and put to that, described them, Dead to the law, blessed condition, we can sin as we please and still have remission. They believe that our free forgiveness in Christ exempts us from any need to obey God's law. We'll look at the problem with this later. But I want to focus first on the fact that people generally expect Christians to be good people, to obey the teaching of the Scriptures. Even most non-Christians think this, though they may disagree with the Scriptures. They expect us to follow them if we are indeed Christians. But the reasons people have for obedience are not nearly so clear. And people's expectations about obedience are even more confusing. Jesus picks up this issue in his parable we read about the Pharisee who expected God's blessing because of his obedience. Look at the good things I do, God. It was his prayer. And Jesus said he didn't receive that blessing. Yet most who think of themselves as Christians will say obedience as their reason for hope. Their hope. Christians are expected to be obedient. And yet we're told that no one is righteous. We read that long chain from Romans 3 verse 10 on of verses saying we're not. We're expected to be obedient. And yet the thief on the cross was welcomed into paradise without any chance for obedience. So how does all this fit together? I hope we will learn today something about Christian obedience. Why people should obey and some of the motives for whatever obedience we do offer. We'll learn how obedience can be, should be a blessing, not a drag. And we're talking about the doctrine. Remember that doctrine is not just something you hold in your head. It's something you're supposed to put into practice in your life to live it out. That's how we grow in Christ. Before getting into this I want to define two terms for you. Terms I picked up largely from my reading in Thomas Boston years back. Legal obedience is obedience of some law because of compulsion or reward. To avoid a penalty to gain a paycheck of some sort. Gospel obedience is obedience which springs from your love of God. It doesn't look forward to the reward because in the gospel you've already received that reward as you walk with Christ. And this is the true obedience of faith as we shall see. So Christian faith and obedience to God's law. We'll talk first about reasons people have for obedience. We'll talk about the failure of legal obedience. And we'll talk about the blessing of gospel obedience. First reasons for obedience. And here you see the great divide between legal and gospel obedience. Legal obedience is obedience given because you are looking for a blessing of some sort. You want to receive it by your obedience. It may be compulsion. It's the obedience of a slave at root. The obedience of somebody who says I don't want to be beaten for disobedience. Perhaps for some it's fear of the scorn of those around us. Somebody may be inclined to homosexuality but won't practice it because even in our enlightened society many may find it repulsive. People don't want to be scorned for their actions. Or for others it may be fear of the harmful effects of their deeds. A few years ago particularly when AIDS became a big deal there was a movement to say restrain people's sexuality for fear of AIDS. For others there are legal consequences that they fear. How many people would gladly pick up and walk away with things that don't belong to them at all if they knew they could get away with it. There was no comeback on that. My brother apprenticed in a pulp mill as a pipe fitter. They provided the tools people needed to do the work there. And he told us that many of the main working in that mill had complete sets of very expensive tools they had paid one cent for. Just taking them home and picked up a new one and they supplied each other when they came back to work. Or maybe fear of God's judgment. That's less today than in former generations perhaps. So there's still many who obey because they're afraid disobedience will send them to hell. There are many who obey some of God's plans commands rather because disobedience would bring pains for fear. Closely related but looking in the other direction in a bit is obedience in desire of a reward. As typical of many who think of themselves as Christians or followers of any other God for that matter. They keep the law to be acceptable to their God. And of course if you're doing that you put as little effort into it as you think you can get away with. Most of us at least were lazy about these things. We hope that will be sufficient to get to heaven or wherever the equivalent is for others. Other rewards than just getting to heaven though stimulate obedience. Children when I was young you better watch out. You better not shout. You better not cry. I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town. Be good so you get a presence at Christmas. Hockey players who are polite and careful about the rules because they hope to get the Lady Bing trophy in the NHL. You know to get something. Here we have a common trap for evangelical Christians. We realize I hope you realize your works do not save you but there are many who expect somehow that you get extra rewards in heaven on the basis of your good deeds and so they obey for rewards. Of this self esteem is a very special kind of reward. The one you give yourself comes in many forms. One person finds certain sins ugly. It's not the kind of thing I like to do. You know it's an equivalent of having to shovel out the barn. I don't want to lure myself to that dirty smelly work. Another likes to think himself is better than those around because of his obedience. He wants to see seen to be good so he you know he may have no objection to a particular sinful action but if it's visible he doesn't want to blot on his reputation. It's a nice feeling to believe that you're admired by others. Self esteem. Emphasis on self. It's about feeling good about yourself and that may push you to do what God tells you to do. All of these focus on getting a blessing for yourself and all of them fall into the path that Pharisee that Jesus spoke to us about in our gospel reading obedience to gain a reward. Legal obedience. Gospel obedience on the other hand is obedience as a response to the reward we have already received. A response to the blessing God gives us. It may be because of a sense of duty and at that point it comes very close to the legal obedience. You obey God because you follow him and therefore obey out of duty but it's hard to be sure that the Pharisee would have said he was obeying out of duty. So we need to look closely at our motives when that comes to us. The Pharisees did their duty in order to gain and keep God's favor. The hidden root was legalism but the proper root of duty is commitment to God. You resist temptation to evil simply because you owe better to God. You want to do better for him. As his follower you follow in his footsteps. Do that even when part of you wants to stray even though it seems to cost you. But if you say I miss something I like now but by doing this I'll get something better then you've already drifted into the legal obedience side. Reward not duty is your motive. The sense of duty is a kind of iffy one. It can go both ways. Gospel obedience in principle rises out of your desire to honor God. You're honoring him. You're wanting to glorify him. This is the proper expression of duty. It's specifically not to saying here's how I measure up to say what a God we have. You live with a positive desire to see God's name honored and to do what encourages that. Gospel obedience is an expression of gratitude. Here you're coming to the heart of the gospel. Christ gives us life and joy and peace. As a Christian you don't serve God to gain a reward because you already have that reward because of Christ's obedience. That's part of what Pastor Jim focused on last Sunday. Jesus obeyed the law for us. The gratitude for what you've received caused you to respond with gospel obedience. The great motivation for obeying God is love. Love for Christ. Obey him because you are his child. I hope you all are. Love him as a gracious father. Your response is to do what he desires you because love makes you want to please him. Think of, give you two options. Somebody hires you to take some visiting dignitaries or some sort of visiting people out for dinner or to cook a meal for them, something of that nature. Or the other side, you take out your girlfriend to dinner or you cook a meal for your boyfriend. Which of the two do you approach most enthusiastically? You don't get enthusiastic about doing a job, taking somebody out for dinner or making a meal for them. You get enthusiastic about the person you care about and doing it right for them. Isn't that right? In the same way we put more zeal into serving God because you love him than into serving him to get a reward. This love which drives you to serve him. This is the arrow which pierces the heart of the antinomian failure I mentioned in the beginning. They say, we're covered so we don't need to worry about keeping the law. But Jesus says, if you love me, what? Keep my commandments. If you love me, keep my commandments. Or it can be translated, you will keep my commandments. The language goes either way at that point. But if you love me, keep my commandments. Every time we break God's law, we're expressing a flaw in our love for Christ. Paul directly challenges that antinomian outlook in the beginning of Romans 6. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? You've got all this grace, does that mean we go on sinning? Certainly not. Old King James translation paraphrase that says, God forbid. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? In Christ we've died with him to sin, we now live with him. He goes on in that chapter, in the following chapters, to address our union with Christ. That means we participate in his death. And so our guilt is covered by his sacrifice. And union with Christ means we're raised with him to new life, to godly, obedient life, to life like his. When you become Christ's child, when you become his friend, your nature is changed by him, your spirit. His spirit works in you to change you at your roots. And you then find that sin becomes something that more and more is unnatural to you as you grow closer to Christ, and grow in that Christian life. You grow away from sin. It's a denial of your real self. We struggle still, and we will all through this life because we have not yet completely put our whole old nature to death. The new nature has not completely filled us, but our new hearts take us in the path of obedience if we love Christ. Two paths, legal obedience, gospel obedience. And the path of legal obedience is a path of failure. Legal obedience, you can't achieve perfection. God says we should be perfect, Matthew 5.48. Therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Don't be fairly good, but be perfect. Those who serve out of fear of punishment or hope of reward, never try for the goal of perfection. They serve where they think it will be seen and gain them benefit. And after all, to ask perfection of us would be wholly unreasonable. We all know we don't care about perfect. Any God worth his salt would be satisfied with reasonable obedience, shouldn't he? I'm sure you've seen that attitude. I certainly have. God can't punish you with hell for breaking small rules. That wouldn't be just. Of course, small rules by definition are the rules you choose to break. Isn't that the case? They don't try for perfection, far less do they achieve perfection. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And that's the conclusion of that long list of things from the Old Testament, spelling out how badly we failed to follow God. Since only perfection satisfies God, their obedience is never enough. It never satisfies God. It does not measure up to his law. Worse, it misses the heart of his law because the first command, what is it? You shall love the Lord your God with five percent of your heart. No, with all your heart, all your strength, all your mind. The great command is to love God with all your heart. And if you focus on works, your works on what you'll get out of them, you're not putting God first, you're putting yourself first. And in the very act, you're breaking the most central part of God's law. And you can't expect that to satisfy God. Legal obedience never does satisfy God. Legal obedience can earn no reward. You know, if you owe perfect obedience and don't even get close to that, it's hard to go and claim any pay. Think what we owe God. James tells us every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and it comes down from the father of life. Everything, it starts with the fact that you live, you have life because God gives it to you. You owe God for every single thing you have, however big, however small. The only things you could use to pay God are already his. And you can't very well use his things to pay him. Apart from that, everything you do to him is flawed, as we've already seen. Think in terms of our human perspective, a man contracts with you to do some roofing, and he is late getting on to the job, delayed. He makes a terrible mess while he's working on it, makes no effort to clean it up. The shingles are uncrooked, and some of the roof is not covered when he's done, and he, how would you respond if he then came and demanded his full payment? I don't know about you, but I'd say, no way, guy. Do it right first. I think you would too. But that's your hope from God. If you expect to earn a reward by your good deeds, Isaiah says all our righteousness are like filthy rags. All the things we think are great and good and wonderful are like dirty, filthy rags, the things we throw out in Isaiah 64, verse 6. Who's going to pay for filthy rags? Legal obedience is offensive pride against God. How offensive is it to think that the Almighty Lord, the giver of every good gift, could ever owe you anything? Where do you get that? And especially how offensive to think that he owes you things when you refused to bow to him, refused to serve him. Friends, if you have never turned to Christ before this, tremble at the prospect of standing before God in all your sin and all your guilt and all your failure, turn to him now if you would. Turn away from any thought of legal obedience, seek the grace of his gospel and learn to obey because of that. Gospel obedience is a blessing. It depends on Christ's perfection, not ours. Gospel obedience does not come with thought of reward. Indeed, it recognizes that the service we offer is deficient. When you serve by gospel obedience, you come pleading forgiveness for your failures. That's why every Sunday, when we gather together, we pray together, repenting, seeking forgiveness for our sins. Your obedience is acceptable to God because your sin is forgiven. He overlooks the failures in it. He overlooks all your failures and accepts your obedience as if it were Christ's. It's the response of a person who's renewed by the Spirit of God, a person who's put their trust in Christ, who's received Christ as Lord and Savior, who received Christ as your representative before God, so that when you stand before God, Jesus stands not at your right hand to speak for you, but in front of you to represent you. So when you stand before the throne of God for judgment, you will not offer your own deeds for reward. Rather, Christ will stand there and offer his deeds for your reward, all the good things he did. He's perfect keeping of every part of God's law for your reward. In the history of theology, it's called the great exchange. Christ gives you his perfection, his reward, and he takes to himself your guilt, your penalty, and so clears you. And when your deeds, your filthy rags are put forward, it will appear that every stain in them is being washed away in the blood of Christ. There's not a spot left. They're sparkling clean. Every rip and every tear and worn spot is being covered with new material given to you by Christ. And so you stand before God not dressed in filthy rags, but in a clean, seamless garment as your deeds. You are clothed with Christ's perfection. You shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect, we read. That's exactly your state as you gain Christ's obedience. The gospel obedience, the obedience of those who love Christ because they love Christ, is welcomed by God. How could it not be welcomed? Your deeds are covered by Christ. He has done perfectly for you all you've tried imperfectly to do for him. And as God looks at you, he sees the perfection of Christ and receives his children that. You think how we look at the way people approach us. A neighbor's child undertakes to clean out your garage. He only does half the job. He does it poorly. He does serious damage. He spends half the time he's supposedly working, lacking about with other kids. And then he says, I put in four hours and deserve $15 per hour. Cough up. Are you as enthusiastic as I would be? Don't think so. But your own child tries to help you by cleaning out your basement, the basement storeroom. Doesn't do a very good job. And drops and breaks some value item and comes and says, Mom, I'm sorry, I wanted to do something nice for you, but I think I just made things worse. Which of those two would be most likely to please you? Isn't it obvious? You look to your child. Because he's your child, you welcome what he tried to do for you. He was trying to help you, not just to get a reward. He's made no demands on you. He comes, in fact, saying he hurt things, but it didn't help. And you welcome him and love him and hug him and kiss him and thank him, don't you? For all these kinds of reasons, God finds gospel obedience of his children pleasing. Because we're his children. Not because we do it right, but because we're his children and he loves us. He rejects the similar deeds of legalists who think they're great and expect him to pay them. Gospel obedience is rewarded not for what we do, but on the basis of what Christ did. He didn't just win you an entry ticket to get you through the pearly gates, and then it's up to you to do enough good deeds that you don't have to sleep in the streets there. You know, somehow earn the rest of the way. Your heavenly rewards as well as your salvation comes because Christ earned them for you. It comes as a paycheck to Christ. And so, think of the old spiritual sung by the slaves in the U.S. South years back. I got a robe. You got a robe. All of God's children got a robe. When I get to heaven, I'm going to put on my robe and walk all over God's heaven. These are people who had nothing, probably didn't have much in the way of good clothing even, many of them. But they had that hope in Christ. Not just to get to heaven, but to have freedom in heaven, to enjoy it, to have all the blessings. I got a robe. I've got shoes. I've got, you know, even down the list of things, blessings that they didn't experience in this life, but they looked forward to. When you understand that your reward comes because of what Christ has done, all of it, it leaves you great freedom. Not freedom to ignore God, but freedom to do whatever you can and love for Him. You don't have to struggle to pay a debt. You're free to do the best you can for God. And you know it's acceptable because of Christ. Every failure is covered by Christ when you serve in love for Him. And that gives you joy and obedience, even though your obedience is flawed. Do you enjoy doing things that come naturally to you? I know I do, but when Christ gives you new life, serving God becomes more and more natural to you. Those are things we choose to do if we're able to, if possible. In Romans, starting in the past, we read, Paul stresses the fact that when we turn to Christ, he gives us a new nature, a holy nature, a nature to which sin is unnatural. And as that new nature grows in you, then you will find peace and joy and joy in doing the things of Christ. They become natural to you, the things you like to do, the things you do more and more well. You will be more and more pleasant to follow in Jesus' footsteps. Gospel obedience, obedience instead of love, obedience which flows from your new nature is joyful and pleasant. Brothers and sisters, friends, all of this challenges you to look at your relationship with God. Are you trying to become pleasing to God by your good deeds? If so, you're walking in trouble because you can never pay the price which would be acceptable to God for your sin, for your failure. God will not accept you on the basis of the tattered good deeds you can offer him. If you're in that state, look seriously at yourself. If you're in that state, turn to Jesus, turn to him now. He's the only one who can rescue you. Put your trust in him to make you acceptable to God, except from him the gift of life. Depend on him for all good things. And then, in Christ, give yourself over to Gospel obedience. If you love him, you can't keep on living as a horror to him. You have been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You've been made for good works by God, and the good works he's prepared for you to do. So, as God's child, walk in good works. Grow in your new nature. It's not something that comes instantly fully, it's something we grow in. But grow to be habitually obedient to God. Those who love God and obey for that reason, and those who serve the Gospel should build habits of obedience. Obedience shouldn't be something you keep on struggling forever to do, it should be something that becomes natural to do, more and more. And you can never serve God as you should, as you'd really like to, until you've put in the effort to make your obedience habitual, repeating it until you just do it by nature. True Christian obedience is rooted in that love for God. It's practiced until it's so natural it's hard to disobey. If you love God, if you love God, you will find more and more reason to obey him. Not to earn something from him, but because of the high honor you have for him. Because you see that this is right, and as you draw close to God you begin to hate evil, because he is so wonderful that you want to please him. Not to earn some reward, but just so you can do what makes him happy. I remember my grade two teacher, Ms. Frith. I've been told she was known as the best teacher in our small city. I know that all the children loved her. When she came, walked home from school, and her house was right beside mine, so I was following that path often. When she walked home from school, there would always be a crowd of children around her, talking to her, walking with her. I just wanted to be with her. You can imagine we did everything we could think of to please her. That's gospel obedience. You serve God because you love him. Because you love him, you want to please him. It's serious obedience. It should become habitual obedience, and it will grow in you as you walk in harmony with Jesus Christ. Let's pray.