The Sovereignty of God - Part 3: God Desires Heart Obedience (John 18:10-11) taught 07/20/08
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Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave’s name was Malchus. 11 So Jesus said to Peter, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”
Jesus, having just willfully offered Himself, now finds Peter ignoring Jesus’ response. How often have the disciples heard Jesus teach but not really listened? Over and over Jesus predicted His death. And here He is, about to embark on the greatest act in all of history and Peter tries to stop it!
I find it interesting that Peter cuts off the “ear” of one of the mob. I don’t know if the irony or the metaphor is intentional, but it is certainly telling. The ear, through which we hear and comprehend, has been removed. Ironically, Peter did not “hear” Jesus and thus acted out of emotion and spontaneity.
In God’s sovereignty, He asks us to listen to Him. If God is sovereign, He is worth hearing and obeying.
The Psalmist cries out in chapter 81:8-16…
8 “Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you;
O Israel, if you would listen to Me!
9 “Let there be no strange god among you;
Nor shall you worship any foreign god.
10 “I, the LORD, am your God,
Who brought you up from the land of Egypt;
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
11 “But My people did not listen to My voice,
And Israel did not obey Me.
12 “So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart,
To walk in their own devices.
13 “Oh that My people would listen to Me,
That Israel would walk in My ways!
14 “I would quickly subdue their enemies
And turn My hand against their adversaries.
15 “Those who hate the LORD would pretend obedience to Him,
And their time of punishment would be forever.
16 “But I would feed you with the finest of the wheat,
And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
At the transfiguration in Mark 9:7, God Himself proclaims, “Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!’”
Unfortunately, we are no different now than people were thousands of years ago. Isaiah writes in 53:1-6,
1 Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He waspierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.
Last week we talked about Proverbs 3:5-6 – we tend, all of us, to “lean on our own understanding”. We support ourselves with our own thinking, with what seems right and logical to us. Too often, this is not what our sovereign God desires for us. Peter was no different. He too reacted and did what seemed right to him and in the process, he missed what God wanted him to do.
This is really a passage about obedience. But it is not a passage about blind and impetuous obedience. It is a passage where God calls us back to heart obedience. There are 3 kinds of obedience I want to discuss.
3 Kinds of Obedience
*Obedience with a rebellious heart
Those of us who are parents can see this kind of obedience. It’s when we ask our kids to go do something and they make that face! They go and do it kicking and screaming. They’ve “obeyed” but their heart hasn’t been in the right place. We find ourselves saying, “I jus wish they’d do it on their own without me having to always nag them!”
We too “obey” God like this at times. We do what we have to not always because we want to. We do it because God is telling us but inside we’re kicking and screaming. We go along but our hearts really aren’t there.
*Obedience with a clueless heart
Sometimes people obey God accidentally. There are a lot of people doing some of the right things in this world not because they’ve been studying a Bible but because they’ve just decided it’s the right thing. There are a lot of people who help the poor, refrain from murder and lust, stay in their marriages, etc. They may not be Christians, but they are doing a lot of the right things.
Some of us spend little if any time in our Bibles but still at times do the right things. We are unaware of what God’s desires are so we guess. As a result, many Christians make up laws they think God would like. Churches do this and become legalistic. They make up rules about things like music, dress, Bible version,
In contrast to the two commands of Christ, the Pharisees had developed a system of 613 laws, 365 negative commands and 248 positive laws…By the time Christ came it had produced a heartless, cold, and arrogant brand of righteousness. As such, it contained at least ten tragic flaws. (1) New laws continually need to be invented for new situations. (2) Accountability to God is replaced by accountability to men. (3) It reduces a person’s ability to personally discern. (4) It creates a judgmental spirit. (5) The Pharisees confused personal preferences with divine law. (6) It produces inconsistencies. (7) It created a false standard of righteousness. (8) It became a burden to the Jews. (9) It was strictly external. (10) It was rejected by Christ.
Fan The Flame, J. Stowell, Moody, 1986, p. 52.
Here’s a funny story to drive home the point…
Two men crashed in their private plane on a South Pacific Island.
Both survived.
One of the men brushed himself off and then proceeded to run all over the island to see if they had any chance of survival. When he returned, he rushed up to the other man and screamed, “This island is uninhabited, there is no food, there is no water. We are going to die!”
The other man leaned back against the fuselage of the wrecked plane, folded his arms and responded, “No we’re not. I make over $250,000 a week.”
The first man grabbed his friend and shook him. “Listen, we are on an uninhabited island. There is no food, no water. We are going to die!”
The other man, unruffled, again responded. “No, I make over $250,000 a week.”
Mystified, the first man, taken aback with such an answer again repeated, “For the last time, I’m telling you ….. we …..ARE…… doomed. ….There…. is ….. NO…. one …. else on this island. ……. There …… is…. NO ….. food. There is NO water. We are, . . . . I repeat, . . . . . we are going to die a . . .. slow . . . . death.”
Still unfazed, the first man looked the other in the eyes and said, ”
Do not make me say this again. I make over $250,000 per week… I am a Baptist …….and I tithe. MY PASTOR WILL FIND US!”
We make up all kinds of rules that don’t exist in the Bible when we have no accountability!
*Obedience with a broken heart
The Old Testament ends with the book of Malachi. At the end of chapter 4 before the OT era ends and we have a period of silence for a few hundred years, Malachi predicts the coming of John the Baptist in the spirit of Elijah. He says,
5“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. 6“He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”
God desires that people’s “hearts” would turn. That they would have a change on the inside that included restoration, and a heart bent toward God. This is really prodigal son obedience. It is where someone sees his or her wrong, listens to God, and turns back to Him with a broken heart. It is a complete and absolute trust that God is sovereign and when He is sovereign, I can joyfully and unreservedly follow Him.
We can’t be like the Pharisees in John 5:39-40
39“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.”
So where do we go from here? Paul discusses this in I Corinthians 2:1-5. It all starts with heart determination. What will be my center? It has to be Jesus. It has to be getting to know Him. When I spend time win the Bible getting to know Jesus then I can more authentically follow Him.
