Obeying God – Pt. 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning,

We’ve been looking all this week at God’s good plan for our lives, and the way into that good plan is by obeying God, because the instructions God gives us in the Bible are just descriptions of how to love Him.

And when we love Him, it puts us into His beautiful plan for us, His plan that involves blessing and so much freedom from the things that are damaging to our lives. You remember that in the Garden of Eden, Satan’s temptation was for Adam and Eve to think that God’s commands came from bad motives, that God wanted to restrict them.

And that actually they would become like God if they disobeyed God, that the real blessing was in disobeying God and living however they wanted to live. But doing so always leads to tragedy, and it sure did for them. Obeying God leads to blessing.

Well, you need to understand that because we have inherited this broken sinful nature from Adam and Eve, all of their descendants have, and we are no exception because we are broken inside in this way that makes us selfish and pursuing just the gratification of our own desires and pleasures and materialism and getting more and more stuff.

Because this drives us in life, and these things are destructive to us and the people in our lives, our families, the people around us.

God wants us to obey Him, but here’s what you need to recognize. Everybody serves something or somebody. There is nobody in this world that is free. Hm, everybody obeys, so choose your master carefully.

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Listen to what the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 6 starting in verse 19.

He says, I’m using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to before you were Christians, offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness. Now remember you thought you were doing that because you were free and expressing your own desires however you wanted. But Paul says, recognize it. You are slaves to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness. So now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness, leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin. You were free from the control of righteousness. Yes. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death. You didn’t receive any benefit.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

Then Paul says, let’s compare your two masters that you can follow, right? There’s your sinful nature that drags you into this self-destructive lifestyle. And there’s God who wants to bless you so richly.

Let’s consider these two possible masters, he says. Verse 23, he says, the wages of sin is death. OK. Pay attention to those three words. Sin is your master, right? Sin pays wages. Wages are what you get for what you do, and the wages you get for following that master of your sin-nature and living that sinful life is death. It’s destruction to your own life.

Look then on the other side, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So here’s your new master, Christ Jesus our Lord, right? He doesn’t pay wages, he gives you a gift, right? He gives you a gift.

The gift, unlike the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Well, I know which master I want to serve. I want to obey God and experience the blessings, the goodness, the fullness of life that comes from obeying Him. I don’t want to follow my sin nature any more. Yes, this very brief benefits of pleasure.

But it leads to the destruction of my inner life, of my relationships, and even of my future. Who are you going to obey today?

I’m John North.

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