One of the most glorious moments in the American Revolution was George Washington’s daring raid on Trenton, N.J., in December of 1776, when he led his men across the swollen Delaware River in freezing weather to launch a surprise attack against the German Hessians.

One of the Americans in the group (John Greenwood) wrote: “‘None but the first officers knew where we were going, or what we were about. This was not unusual, however, as I never heard soldiers say anything, nor ever saw them trouble themselves, as to where they were or where they were led. It was enough for them to know that wherever the officers commanded they must go …’.” (David McCullough, 1776, pp. 277-278)

Washington’s victory at Trenton was one of the most important in the whole war for Independence, NOT because that battle “won the war,” or anything like that, but because at that point, everybody had given up on the Americans and thought the British had won — but this battle showed our own troops, as well as the British, that they could win after all. It changed the whole course of the Revolution. But it’s significant that this key victory was based upon one important ingredient: the OBEDIENCE of the American soldiers, who did not even ask where they were going or what they were doing — they just obeyed. 

Obedience is such an important thing. And that’s true for us as God’s people today. At the very end of John 14, Jesus makes a statement that is easy to overlook, but which is packed with meaning for us. He tells us about the kind of obedience He gave to His Father, and is a model for our obedience to Him as well. Jesus said, “I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.” That’s a very simple statement — but look at how much it teaches us about how we should obey our Heavenly Father:

I. The ACTION of obedience. 

Jesus said: “I DO exactly as the Father has commanded Me.” Notice the action that is involved here. Jesus does not just say, “I LEARN exactly what the Father commanded Me” or I “STUDY” exactly what the Father commanded Me, or I “MEMORIZE exactly what the Father has commanded Me” – but I DO! (poieo – this is just the basic Greek word for “do.”) Obedience is DOING what God commands us to do; it involves action! 

Unfortunately, too many of us today have at least subconsciously substituted other things for the action of obedience. Many of us have substituted “learning” for obedience. We think if we “learn” all kinds of things about God’s word, then that is obeying Him. So many of us take Bible study after Bible study, and “learn” a lot of things. And we take comfort in the fact that we’re in all these Bible studies, and “learning” all these things about God – but the sad fact is, we are not really DOING what we are learning. These studies become for many of us nothing more than an “intellectual game” that has no real impact on our life! Now understand me: I am NOT minimizing Bible study! You members at FBC Angleton know how much I preach on reading your Bible daily! But Bible study is not an end in itself. You are to study in order to DO! 

Jesus said to His disciples: “If you know these things, you are blessed if you DO them”! (John 13:17) He spoke these words in the context of His washing the disciples’ feet; He said that He gave us an example, that we should serve each other. And it was then that He said, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you DO them.”  See, the problem with a lot of us is that if I were to ask everyone this morning, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of God?”, many of us would feel pretty good about ourselves because we knew the right answer was “the one who serves others” — but the fact is we should really feel bad about ourselves because we aren’t actually serving our brothers & sisters in Christ!  Do you see the difference? It’s not just “knowing the answer” that’s important to God; it’s whether you’re DOING it. 

Jesus said: ”If you know these things, you are blessed if you DO them”! Those words ought to be engraved over every Bible study, at the front of every classroom, and on the cover every Christian book. There’s no great benefit to just reading & studying and memorizing, if you don’t DO it! Too many of us think that we’re great Christians because we KNOW a lot of things about God’s word. You could pass a test on it; you’d make an “A” in class — you would be great at Bible Trivia! But when it comes to the “test” of every day living, you fall way short – and we need to realize that’s the only test that really matters to God! It’s not what you “know” that’s important to Him; it is what you DO! 

George MacDonald was a Scottish writer who was a great influence on C.S. Lewis. MacDonald once wrote:

“Simply to do what we ought, is an altogether higher, diviner, more potent, more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshipping temple, or dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony.”

— Its not whether you have memorized the 10 Commandments, but whether you are in fact honoring your father & mother. 

— It’s not whether You can quote the Great Commission, but are you actually making disciples and going on mission? 

— It is not whether you know Mark 1:35, but are You getting up every day and spending time in prayer with the Lord?

— It is not just whether you can recite the Lord’s Prayer, but are you in practice “forgiving your debtors” the way you want to be forgiven?! 

As MacDonald said, are we “simply DOING what we ought”?

I’m glad you came today for Bible study and the sermon – but remember, you need to ask yourself at the end of every sermon and every Sunday school lesson: “What am I going to DO as a result of this?” We aren’t here to just LEARN what God says; we’re here to learn to DO it! Jesus said, “I DO exactly as the Father has commanded Me” — and we should too!

II. The LEVEL of obedience

“I do EXACTLY as the Father has commanded Me.” This is the Greek word “outos” – it means “thus, so”. He is saying, What the Father commanded Me, SO I do.” In other words, Jesus’ commitment was to do just what God told Him. It wasn’t to do “almost” what God told Him, or “somewhat” what God told Him; His commitment was to do exactly what God told Him. He was committed to precision in His obedience of God. He said, “I do EXACTLY as the Father has commanded Me.” It’s so important for us to do the same thing. We can’t just pick and choose which of God’s commands we want to obey, or how fully we will obey them. We are to do exactly as He tells us in His word. 

A sobering example of this in scripture is in II Samuel 6, when King David had the Ark of the Covenant brought back up to Jerusalem, and he had it brought up in an ox cart. At one point, the cart began to tip over, so one of the men stuck out his hand to keep the ark steady, and God struck him dead! People often ask “WHY did God do that?!” That seems so arbitrary. But it wasn’t. The problem was that David did not do exactly what God commanded to be done with His ark. God had specifically commanded for it to be carried NOT on a cart, but by poles, that went through two rings on its side. No man was to touch the Ark of God. David knew this. So God was saying by this action: I am holy God; and you are not free to “pick and choose” which of My commandments you will obey, or how you will obey them! He was saying, You are to do exactly as I command you! 

That was Jesus’ commitment, and that should be our commitment too. We aren’t to do “approximately” what the Father commanded, or “most” of what He commanded. “Partial obedience is disobedience.” How many of us does THAT convict today? We do some little bit of what God told us to do, but not all of it:

— God says, “Bless those who curse you,” so we see our enemy and feel good about ourselves because “I didn’t say anything bad to them.” But God says, that is not what I told you. I didn’t tell you to just not say anything bad to them; I told you to bless them: say something good; actively pray for them. Partial obedience is not enough! 

— Some of us do that with our giving. We put $20 in the offering box and feel good about “giving” something to God. But God didn’t command us to “give Him a little something”; He commanded us to tithe. A “tithe” is a full 10% of what He blessed us with. We should do exactly as the Father commanded in our giving! 

There are SO many ways in which we do this. Many of us are so very, very sloppy in our obedience to God’s word. No wonder we don’t have His blessing in our lives and our churches, when we pick and choose what we obey from His word. We obey “halfway,” we we obey “mostly” – but we don’t do exactly as He commanded, like Jesus did.

Let God search your heart this morning: Is there some area of your life in which God has given you a command, and you have done SOME of it; or you have done something LIKE it — but you haven’t done exactly as He has commanded you? Remember: Partial obedience is disobedience. You need to be able say like Jesus: “I do exactly as the Father has commanded Me.” 

III. The PERSON we give obedience:

“I do exactly as the FATHER has commanded Me.” This tells us WHO we are to give our obedience to. Of course, the One to whom we are to give this exact obedience is GOD! He alone is due our full and total obedience. Jesus did NOT say: “I do exactly as the Sanhedrin commands me;” or “I do as the Jewish tradition commands me;” or “I do as the multitude commands Me”  — He said “as the Father commands Me”! The One to whom Jesus gave that unswerving obedience was God! 

And notice Jesus says “as the Father HAS COMMANDED” — God has already given us His commands — in His WORD! So our obedience is to be to God, as He has commanded in His word. His word is to be our rule of obedience. 

When Martin Luther began the Reformation in the early 1500s, this was one of the issues they dealt with. Many were saying that he should obey the Church, or the pope, or the traditions that had been passed down over the centuries. But Luther said, I am going to follow what GOD said in His word, as opposed to all of these. And when church leaders demanded that he recant his “heresy,” he responded with one of the most famous quotes in church history: 

“Since then your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer … Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason— I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other– my conscience is captive to the Word of God … here I stand, I can do no other.” 

Luther said, I am going to take my stand on the word of God — not the pope, not the church, not tradition, not what “everyone” is telling me to do — but on the word of God alone. And so came one of the great slogans of the Reformation: “Sola Scriptura” – Scripture only! In other words, our authority is word of God, NOT the opinions and traditions of men. It is God, through His word, who deserves our obedience. Luther was saying like Jesus did: “I do exactly as the FATHER has commanded Me.”

This should be our commitment, too. It shouldn’t be: “I do as my friends command me”, or “as my government commands me” – or “as political correctness demands me”. Your obedience is to GOD! Your commitment shouldn’t even to be: “I do as my favorite minister commands me”, or “as the church commands me”; or “as my employer commands me.” When all is said and done, the One to whom you owe Your ultimate and exact obedience is GOD! 

If you are looking for direction today, your answer is NOT to be found in: “what does everyone say” you should do, but What does GOD say, in His word, that you should do? And just like we talked about, what HE says in His word, ACT on it; DO IT; no matter what anyone else says. Now: that also implies that you are going to be looking in His word, and finding what He tells to do. You can’t possibly obey God unless you know what He says by reading and studying His word. You have to know what He’s commanded if you’re going to do it. But make no mistake: the One to whom you owe your total obedience is God! 

IV. The PERSON who is to give obedience:

This may be a very obvious point, but I think it deserves at least a brief mention: the person who is to obey is YOU! Jesus said “I (MYSELF!) do exactly as the Father has commanded ME”! Our obedience should be personal: that is, YOU are to do it! Obedience is NOT just for everyone else; it’s for YOU! YOU are to give full obedience to God. 

It could have been easy for Jesus to say: “Well, I am the Son of God; all this doesn’t really apply to ME; I am just here to tell YOU what YOU ALL are supposed to do!” But He didn’t. He said, “Exactly as the Father has commanded ME!” He made the application personal.  Each of us needs to do the same thing. Obedience is not just for everyone else; it is for YOU!

— this applies to the pastor: I need to do exactly as the Father commands me! I’m not here just to be a mouthpiece, to tell everyone in the church what they’re supposed to do, and ignore these commands myself! If I do that, I am a hypocrite. One of the Puritans said, “The most important thing a pastor can do is to obey the word of God.” Obedience to God’s word is not just for everyone else; it’s for me too! That’s why I sometimes use illustrations of how I have applied God’s word in my own life — I don’t do that  to promote myself; I want you to know that I am personally seeking to obey God’s word for my own self, just like you are! Because His word is for me, just like it is for everyone else.

— And the same thing is true for our Bible teachers. You can’t just sit there and tell all your class members what they are supposed to be doing; YOU YOURSELF are to do what the Father commands you. You should be living what you are teaching. Now I will say this: if we could only teach what we are living out perfectly in our own lives, NONE of us would be teaching at all, including myself! But someone who is teaching God’s word should at least be making a bonafide effort to apply it in their own life and do what it says. And if you aren’t, you have no right to be teaching His word to anybody. God said in Psalm 50:16-17. “What right have you to tell of My statutes … for you hate discipline, and cast My words behind you.” If you are teaching God’s word, you should be making every effort to obey it personally. The person who is to obey is YOU, Bible teacher!

— And parents, this applies to you, too! Too many parents have the attitude towards their kids: “Don’t do as I do, do as I say”. (I have literally heard of parents who said this!) You want your kids to follow the Lord and His word, but YOU don’t do it?  That is not going to fly, and a lot of kids end up rebelling against that kind of hypocritical parenting. Obeying God’s word is not just for your kids, mom & dad; it’s for YOU! If you want your kids to follow the Lord, the best thing you can do is SHOW them, how YOU will “do exactly as the Father has commanded ME!”

— And this applies to all of us who hear God’s word. It is not just for somebody else; it is for you. Too often we’re really good at listening to sermons and thinking, “Yeah, old so-and-so really needs to hear this!” Well, “old so-and-so” MAY really need this, but the single most important person to whom you need to apply the word of God is YOURSELF! Every time you hear the word you should consider: What do I personally need to do about this? How do I need to obey God? YOU need to be able to say like Jesus: “I do exactly as the Father has commanded ME”! 

V. The GOSPEL and Obedience

Jesus perfectly kept every command of God, as we have seen. “Just as” God commanded Him, so Jesus did. Jesus could come to the end of His life and say as He did in John 17: “I have finished the work You gave Me to do”. He was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin”. He perfectly obeyed His Father in everything. He could literally say, “I do exactly as the Father has commanded Me” — in every exacting detail. He did it! 

However, you and I can’t say that, can we? As we have seen, that should be our standard; that should be the goal for which we strive. But the truth is, we WILL fall short of it. Proverbs 20:9 says, “Who can say, ‘I have cleansed my heart; I am pure from my sin’?” The answer is, NONE of us. None of us can say like Jesus that we have done exactly as the Father has commanded us. None of us can save ourselves by our good works, because we owe God perfect obedience, but we fall short of it. And we can’t make up for our shortcomings with more obedience tomorrow – as one of the old Puritans said, the obedience we give God tomorrow is what we owe Him tomorrow; it can’t make up for how we didn’t obey yesterday! So none of us in save ourselves; because we haven’t obeyed perfectly, and we never will. If our salvation depended on our perfect obedience to God, we would all be hopelessly lost. 

This is what the Gospel is all about. II Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The Bible says there, that you, who have NOT obeyed God perfectly, when you trust Jesus as your Savior, God “credits” you with the perfect righteousness and obedience of Jesus. The perfect obedience of Jesus is credited to YOUR account when you trust Him as your Savior!

Several years ago, a woman who lived outside of Montgomery, Alabama, wanted to buy something, but she knew she didn’t have much money in the bank, so she went to check her balance. When she checked, she discovered was that all of the sudden, there was $100,000 in her account! What happened was, the bank had accidentally credited someone else’s huge deposit of $100,000 to her account! She didn’t really have that much money, but THEIR credit showed up on HER account! 

That’s actually a great picture of what happens with us and Jesus — only it’s no accident; God does it on purpose! When you trust in Jesus as your Savior, although you have not obeyed God perfectly, God credits Your account with the perfect obedience of Jesus. So when God looks at you, it is as if You have always obeyed Him perfectly, in every detail, just like Jesus did. So you aren’t not saved by Your own obedience, but by the obedience of Jesus, that He GIVES you when He saves you. The most important question of your life is: is this true for you? Do you know that you will be saved by JESUS’ obedience, or are you still trying to do it on your own? If you’re still trying to be good enough in your obedience to save yourself, you need to give that up today, and ask Jesus to save you. You can’t be saved in any other way. 

So the bottom line is: You don’t obey God in order to attain your salvation — Jesus did that for you. But: the fact that your obedience doesn’t save you, doesn’t minimize the importance of obedience. You should still seek to obey God — not because by it you’ll be saved, but out of gratitude for the salvation He gave you. And the truth is, Your obedience to God is one of the best proofs that you really are saved. If you are really grateful to God for what He’s done for you, you will want to obey Him with all your heart.  SO: not to save yourself, but because He’s saved you, the real Christian will be committed to obey God. He will want say with Jesus: “I (will) do exactly as the Father has commanded Me”! 

INVITATION:

— Christian person, is there some area of your own life that God is speaking to you about your obedience today? 

— Is there some area of your life right now, where you KNOW what the right thing is, but you aren’t doing it?

— Is there something you are only doing part of, but really fully obeying God?

— Are you more concerned with pleasing some other person, or group, rather than God Himself?

— And are you more focused on someone ELSE’S obedience, instead of your own? Ask God: “Lord, help me focus more on my OWN obedience, and less on theirs …”

— And finally, whose obedience are you hoping will save you: yours? Or Jesus’? If you never have before, put your trust in JESUS’ perfect obedience to save you today …