“Obedience Is an Act of Love”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

 

On the night when he was betrayed, after he and his disciples had dined, our Lord took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”  From Day One Christ’s Church has understood the new covenant of which our Lord spoke to be a  fulfillment of the prophecy contained in today’s Old Testament reading.  The cup our Lord raised was symbolic of the blood he would shed the next day, the blood by which the eternal covenant between God and humankind was sealed.

The term “new covenant” can be misleading.  The new covenant is actually a radical renewal of the old covenant.  With Jesus the old covenant finally became the universal covenant God had always intended.  When God called Abraham to follow him by faith and faith alone, one of God’s promises was that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  Isaiah spoke similar words to the children of Israel just before God delivered them from their exile in Babylon: “I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations…”  Israel was called and created by God to be an instrument of universal blessing, a light by which all nations and people would be drawn to God.

Scripture and history make it clear that Israel didn’t obey the Lord’s command.  In Christ God accomplished what Israel had failed to do.  In Christ the light of God, shining in and through God’s people, the Church, brought warmth and brightness to a cold and darkened world.  God’s Word became a universal Word, a Word to all people everywhere.  This Word was and is the message proclaimed by the angel at Jesus’ birth: “behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

With this Word has come the possibility of absolute forgiveness.  For those in Christ the promise of God proclaimed by Jeremiah is a reality: “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more."  God’s grace, mercy, peace, love, and salvation have come to us in Jesus Christ.

How do we respond to these wondrous gifts from God?  By being the people he has called and created us to be.  Just people.  Righteous people.  People marked by servanthood and humility.  People who love goodness and hate evil.  People who seek and follow God’s will rather than let themselves be blown to and fro by the fickle winds of this world.  People who love God, and who demonstrate that love by loving one another.  People who obey not just the letter of the Ten Commandments, but the spirit under girding them.  People who take seriously the Beatiudes.  People who pray.  People who study and meditate upon God’s Word.  People who listen to the Holy Spirit and find life instead of following all those competing spirits that lead to death and hell.

We are to be such people.  People who faithfully seek to know the Lord, not as an intellectual exercise, but through an intimate and intense relationship with him.  People who obey God not out of fear, but out of love.  People so thankful for God’s grace that we commit our whole being to becoming who and what he calls us to be.  People who follow Jesus not because we have to, but because we want to.  People who uphold our covenant relationship with God by being faithful to him and him alone.  People whose lives model what it is to be a disciple of Jesus.

Obviously this is a list that can go on and on, a list that we have to be careful not to regulate and legislate into a rigid set of Pharisaic laws.  The law we follow and obey isn’t written on stone tablets or micro-managed by The Book of Order.  It is a law written by God on our hearts.  Something that is a living part of us, a Spirit-inspired force by which we are motivated to obey the Word and will of God.  Not something imposed upon us by some external force, but instead something that lives in us by way of the love of God made known to us in Jesus Christ.

Obedience – real obedience – is always an act of love.  We love the One who first loved us.  Out of that love we do what the Lord requires.  Out of that love we give him the very best of who and what we are.  As we lovingly follow Jesus in the way of the cross we are gladly willing to turn our lives, our fortunes, and our futures over to him to use as he will.  Jesus comes first; everything else is secondary.  Not because it has to be, but because that’s how we want it to be. 

It is my contention that from our faithful discipleship come faithful worship, mission, service, evangelism, and stewardship.  If we are totally committed to following and being in an intense, intimate relationship with Christ, the various facets of our Christian lives will take care of themselves.  If God’s law is truly written on our hearts, and if loving of God is our ultimate priority, then we’ll do or give whatever it takes to be a light shining in the world’s darkness.  If it takes time, we’ll find it.  If it requires knowledge, we’ll learn it.  If it demands a certain skill or expertise, then we’ll develop it.   If it requires changes to be made in our lives and the life of this church, we will make them.  If it costs money, we’ll spend it, and if the church doesn’t have it to spend, we’ll give it.  Not because we have to, but because we want to.  Not because we're afraid of God's judgment, though that is sometimes a factor, but because we’re motivated by God’s love. 

Wade and the worship team don’t do what they do because they have to.  They do it because they want to give God the worship and adoration that overflows in their hearts.  It’s their gift to God and to us.  Folks don’t show up for choir practice on Thursday nights out of a begrudged sense of duty, but because their love of God is reflected in their love of music.  It is out of a deep, deep love of Christ that Jim and Nann spend themselves traveling around our nation doing prayer breakfasts.  It’s not because they’re afraid to say no to God, but because their love of God moves them to say yes.  I didn’t come here because God made me; I’m here because of a desire to love and obey him that will not allow me to be anywhere else.  Sandy doesn’t endure a commuting marriage because somebody told her she had to.  She chooses to endure it because her love of God gives her no other choice.

We’re all here because we have, by grace, been enabled to answer God’s invitation to enter into a covenant with him.  We have given our lives to Jesus not for the purpose of being his fear-driven puppets, but in order to follow him as his Spirit-led disciples and servants.  In doing so we are not slavishly bound by rules and regulations, but because we are motivated by the will and Word of God that has been engraved on our hearts and burned into our souls.  We are a blessing to the world because we lovingly and thankfully acknowledge that we have been blessed.  Amen.