When Obedience Defies Logic

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Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, August 4th. Do you ever feel like what you’re doing doesn’t really matter? Today’s episode reminds us that no task given by God is ever insignificant.

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When you hear the word obey or obedience, what is your response? Do you feel suddenly this burden of something you’re going to have to do? Or do you rather feel, here’s an opportunity for blessing? You see, most people have the idea that anything that God requires of obedience must be a burden to us. Whereas from God’s perspective, it is a wonderful opportunity to be blessed. So I want to talk to you today, and I want us to open the scripture to Luke chapter 5. I want to talk about this whole idea of the enriching rewards of obedience. Because when you obey God, you will be greatly enriched. You will be rewarded. There’s no such thing. as obeying God and not being blessed. He just doesn’t operate that way. You obey Him, you get blessed. You get rewarded for obedience. Somebody says, well, does that mean that I’m to do things just for the reward? No. We should please Him and obey Him because of who He is. Reverence Him and honor Him as God. But that doesn’t mean that He won’t reward us for our obedience because He does. Obedience always brings blessing. Now, if you listen carefully to this message, I’m going to give you seven basic principles about obedience. They’re simple, they’re easy to understand, and out of a passage of Scripture that oftentimes people just think about, well, you know, that’s just one of those events in Jesus’ life. But what I want you to remember is this. Every single event in Jesus’ life and everything He did has great significance. And what could appear to simply be a fishtail is a fantastic reservoir of great spiritual principles, especially those that relate to obedience. So I want you to look in the fifth chapter of Luke, give you a little background for a moment. Jesus is out preaching and people are being healed and saved and all kinds of wonderful things are happening. And the scripture says in chapter four, verse 37, and the report about him was spreading into every locality in the surrounding district. And then in verse 42 of that fourth chapter, when they came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place and the crowds were searching for him and came to him and tried to keep him from going away from them. But he said to them, listen, I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose. So he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. Now he’s out of the synagogues and he’s down by the sea. Listen, verse one, chapter five. Now, it happened that while the crowd was pressing around him and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. And he saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. And he got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. And he sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. And listen to what happens. Simon answered and said, Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing. But I will do as you say and let down the nets. When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break, so that they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.'” for amazement had seized them and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. Now, you may say, well, what does that have to do with obedience? That’s just another fish story. Oh, it’s a fish story, all right. But I want to tell you something. If you’re wise, you’ll get your pencil and a pen, and you will not fail to write down principles from a simple story of Scripture, but full of wonderful principles. So we’re talking about this whole idea of obedience. So here’s number one principle, and that’s simply this. That is obeying God in small matters. Obeying God in small matters leads to great reward in the future. Obeying God in small matters is like a stepping stone to great rewards. Now, why small matters? Well, I want us to look at this passage, and then I want you to ask yourself a question throughout this message. God, what are you saying to me about my obedience to you? Now, listen. He’s simply saying in this first principle… Be careful about those commands that God gives you that seem to be very insignificant at first. Here’s what’s happening. Jesus is preaching on the shore. And naturally what happens when people are standing around, the people in the back always want to get a little closer. So what happens is they get a little closer to the people in front of them. People in front of them have to move. So they get a little closer. And what happens is… The crowd moves closer and closer until finally Jesus is having to speak over their heads. And so he turns and he sees these two boats and he says to Simon, I’d like to borrow your boat, get in the boat. And if you just push out a little ways and I can speak to the people a little better that way because I’m away from them and they can all hear me. It must have been large crowds. And so that’s his reason for doing so. Now, I want you to think about this. Suppose Peter had said, sorry. It doesn’t fit my schedule. I’m too busy. They’re expecting me back home. Besides that, I need a nap. I’ve been up all night long. And besides that, we didn’t catch anything. And I’m a little disappointed, a little despondent today, so sorry about that. Borrow somebody else’s boat. But he listened to what Jesus said. It was a simple little command. And what it was that he did not even realize was this. This was the first step. to an absolute awesome, awesome life for the rest of his days. And this is the danger of disobedience. The danger of disobedience is that you and I cannot foresee what our Lord has in mind. And sometimes it’s a very insignificant thing that He requires of us that has far-reaching consequences, long-range consequences. But you see, because we can’t see that, we don’t foresee the future, We think, well, it’s not all that important. I’ll just do what I want to do here, and it’ll all work out anyway. You know, Jesus doesn’t say, I suggest. Maybe you would like to. If you’ll think about this, he said, Peter, I’m going to borrow your boat. I want you to push out a little ways because I want to preach so all of these people can hear. Well, Peter made the right decision, but I have to think about what would have been his response had he not. And I think about it so often that people get themselves in trouble, and they say, well, I don’t know what happened. And then when they trace it back a long ways, here’s what happens oftentimes. They’ll say, well, I do remember, on second thought, I do remember that back yonder, I think I was praying one day, and the Lord told me to do thus and so. I didn’t really think it was all that important, so I just sort of ignored that. Listen carefully. The tentacles of your ignoring the will and purpose and commands of God in your life can haunt you for an entire lifetime. That’s why it is so very, very important you obey the living God in every single thing He tells you to do. Every single act is important. God doesn’t tell you to do something that’s not important. So though you think it’s not all that significant, it is very significant with Him. What you have to ask, and I want you to ask yourself today, Are there issues back there in my life that I have never yet dealt with that the Lord has spoken to me about? Has He told me to lay this down or to pick that up? Has He told me, I want you to do this or go there? You know what? God doesn’t leave much up to my discretion. Because, listen, if He’s planned the best for you, then he knows exactly the path that leads to the best. And what you have to ask is this, do I want God’s best or do I want to listen and think about what the Lord says? Or do I want to be obedient in the little things? Listen, the big decisions will never be an issue if you will obey him in the little things. And when I look at Peter’s life, And what he would have missed. Now I want you to remember this. You’re always a loser when you disobey the Lord God. Think about what Peter would have lost. Simply because he decided pushing out the boat for a few yards and letting Jesus stand there and preach for a while wasn’t really all that significant. What he could not see. is the awesome lifestyle and the awesome life and impact and testimony and witness. Here is a man who’s impacted millions and millions of people. You know how it began? One little act of obedience. Every single act is important. The second principle I want you to remember is this. And that is… that obeying the Lord Jesus Christ is always beneficial to others. In other words, when you and I obey Him, we place our trust in Him, when we do the little things or the significant things that He tells us about in life, things that He requires of us, what happens? Not only do we get blessed, other people around us are affected and everybody benefits from it. And you think about what happened to Peter, how did he benefit? Well, that was only the first step in God’s command because then he said to him, he said, now that I finished, let’s go fishing and let down your nets. And you know what happened? They headed out to the deep water, let down the net and the fish came from everywhere it seems, filled up the nets, broke the nets, filled up the boat, filled up two boats. The boats were about to sink. So everybody got blessed. What you and I don’t realize is who misses a blessing when you and I disobey God? And I would say to you as a father, you can’t disobey God, listen, without your children hurting and your wife hurting. And as a wife, you can’t disobey God without your children, your husband hurting. And as a son or daughter, you can’t disobey God without your parents hurting in some fashion. And you see, neither can you obey God. in all of those instances, among your friends, without somebody else being blessed. When you obey the Lord and God blesses you and you’re able to share that, listen, that encourages other people to obey Him. It encourages them to find out what God will do in their life. It encourages their faith, builds them up and strengthens them. Those little acts of obedience turn into major acts of obedience because, you see, burying my boat’s one thing. Taking me back fishing when I’m dead tired and worn out and delaying my plans, that’s something else. But you see, that was only an introduction into commands that the Lord Jesus Christ gave Peter, whereby transformed his life. So principle number two. That is, it always is a blessing to others when you and I obey Him. The third one is this. The third principle is oftentimes God will require of us to do things that appear to be irrational, make no sense. You say, well, if God is a loving Father, why would He ask of us to do something that doesn’t make any sense? Well, it doesn’t make any sense to us, humanly speaking. And certainly this is the reason the Apostle Peter responded the way he did. He said, Master, we worked hard all night, caught nothing. That is, and I don’t know what else he may have said between these words, but this was the essence of it. He probably told him how tired he was and all the rest, and yet he was impressed by who Jesus was, though he didn’t really know him that well at that time. And so when you think about the things that God requires of us, they don’t seem to be rational. For example, when he said to Noah, I want you to build an ark, and this is how long and how wide and how deep, when it had never rained, that was rather ridiculous. When he said to Abraham, I want you to take your only son, the one you love, take him to Mount Moriah, and I want you to take the torch for the sacrifice, and I want you to take a knife, and I want you to stab your son to death as an offering to me. Made absolutely no sense whatsoever. To tell Moses, who was a shepherd, take your stick and go to Pharaoh’s palace and walk in and say to him, who rules the world of his day, say to him, let my people go, some two to two, three million Hebrews, let them go. Well, that’s ridiculous. Why should he listen to a man who was run out of or who escaped from Egypt because he killed an Egyptian soldier? Why should he listen to him? And besides that, the only thing he has in hand is not an army, but a stick. Makes no sense whatsoever. When he said to Joshua, Joshua, this is where we’re going to take Jericho. Arm the men, get the trumpets and all the rest, march around there, don’t say a word, march around it one day, two days, three days, four days, five days, six days, seven days, march around it seven times, and then blow the horns and watch what happens. Why? Somebody could have said, well, man, we’ve been blowing horns a long time. but they weren’t blowing horns in obedience to God. Don’t take God’s commands and say because they’re irrational and it doesn’t seem to make sense, and then what do you do? What you’re doing is you’re disobeying God and you refuse to listen to him because it doesn’t fit your scheme of things. Listen, God is eternal in his being. He knows everything from beginning to end. He knows the consequences of your obedience and mine. He knows the consequences of our disobedience. He’s planned the best for you. It is foolish not to obey the living God. And what he asked of you may not make sense. What he asked of you, listen, when God tells you to do something, don’t go ask everybody else what you ought to do. He is and ought to be sufficient. In other words, why ask someone else? You know how they’re going to respond? I can tell you how they’re going to respond. They’re going to look at their own life, look where they are in life, and think, what would I do? Now, here’s what I think you ought to do. 99% of the time, it’s wrong. Because people make decisions. They help you make decisions based on, first of all, most people, they want your approval. So they’ll say, well, that’s what I think you ought to do, because they think that’s what you want to hear. Or they will say, here’s what you ought to do because this is certainly what I would do. And when somebody tells me, this is what I would do, I want to say, thank you, Jesus, and move right on because I don’t want to know what you would do. You’re not me. And so you can’t make decisions based on human reasoning and rationalization because God’s request all through the Scripture oftentimes is not that at all. So what you have to ask is, Lord, what would you have me to do? Whatever he tells you to do, no matter how small it is, how insignificant it may appear, remember this, he knows the end result. And you see, it’s a matter of simple obedience. And if you and I took some of our very complex problems that we think are complex and said, all right, Lord, what would you have me to do? Oftentimes it will be something that you don’t want to do. Let’s say that someone wrongs you and they wrong you. I mean, it’s their fault up one side and down the other, and you’re on your knees praying. And what does God tell you to do? I remember one time that I had made a loan to one of my friends and I thought a lot of him and I loved him dearly and so we’d been friends a long time and he was a part of the fellowship and I was trying to help him and all of a sudden with no warning he turned against me and refused to pay me back and told me he wasn’t going to pay me back and so I thought, okay, God, what do you want me to do? So for about a week, maybe a week, I may have wrestled with it. And then I was just asking the Lord to show me. Lord, what would you have me to do? It’s like God says, forgive him. Oh, and that’s not what I was expecting. I thought you was going to tell me to go just give it to him. No, no. He says, you have to forgive him. Just forgive him. Did you know he wouldn’t even believe that I would forgive him? He said, now you must have something. I said, no, you don’t owe me a thing. You’re forgiven. He couldn’t even accept it because it was totally right. You know why he couldn’t accept it? Because he wouldn’t have done that for me. And you see, sometimes God requires things that are tough. And what he had is he had all of my money that I was going to buy a piece of property to build me a house. He had it all. So when the Lord said to me, You forgive him and watch what I do. It was a test for me. Did you know in about 18 months, I had a whole lot more than that back. And if you asked me where I got it, I couldn’t even tell you. I just know that God always honors obedience, no matter what it is. All you have to do is trust him. So when I think about what the Lord Jesus asked Peter, Didn’t make any sense. And especially didn’t go out a little further. But I’ll tell you what kind of impression it made on him. When they got through fishing that day, the Bible says, they laid their nets, he walked out of that boat, and he left everything. You know why? He learned that to obey this man, Jesus… was the wisest thing he could possibly do. And Jesus said to him, I’m going to make you fishes of men. You know what? If he’d have said in the very beginning, can’t have my boat, he’d have died a fisherman. He said, you can have my boat and you can have me and you can have all that I am. And he died a martyr. the lord jesus christ and a famous man one has blessed us read first and second peter read his message at pentecost look at his life look at the influence look at the impact you say but i’m not peter you don’t know who you are you have no earthly idea what god can do in your life if you will give him your whole life and make a commitment to be obedient to him in the little things in life

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Thank you for listening to the enriching rewards of obedience. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.