Doing or Done

Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Obedience

A husband and wife were discussing the possibility of taking a trip to the Holy Land:

Husband: Wouldn’t it be fantastic to go to the Holy Land and stand and shout the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai?

Wife: It would be better if we stayed home and kept them.

Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and take them to heart that, by the patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. … through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

John 15:9–11 ESV

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Jesus says these words to give us joy, but at first glance, they sound like a burden that brings anything but joy! Isn’t Jesus setting us up for failure? After all, He says that “if you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.”

There are some passages of Scripture that are like Hallmark Cards. They give you “warm fuzzy” moments, and everyone loves to quote them....

This is not one of them!

This is a text with which we must wrestle like Jacob wrestled with the Angel, or with which we would seek to bargain like Abraham did, seeking perhaps to protect his nephew, Lot at Sodom. It isn’t designed to make my task as a Confessional Evangelical pastor easy. I’m supposed to take God’s Word and present it to you in a way that comforts you concerning the depths of God’s love for you, and the richness of His mercy. Instead, I must present to you a burden that I cannot lift were I to put my entire body under its weight.

Worse, this is a text that “hides the hook.” The Lord leads with words of love: “As the father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love.” To that, we say, “Amen - yes Lord!” Now let us stop right there, close service and go home, feeling warm and cheerful like the glow of a cup of hot chocolate in a snowstorm.

Then comes the hook: If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I kept My Father’s Commandments and abide in His love.

Now what? What a beautiful present set just out of reach, Jesus! Now, I don’t know that any of us will say that, because Jesus is perfect and therefore, He can’t be wrong, but He ought to KNOW that we cannot do that! It was our INABILITY to “keep the Commandments” that put Him on the cross in the first place! When I read those words, I want to say, like Bro Mike does, “stop playin!”

So I look further, look for something that gets me off the hook. I look for Jesus to say, “Don’t worry guys, I was just kidding!” Instead, He piles on with “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” “You do know, Lord Jesus”, I want to whisper, “just how you showed your love for us, right?”

Romans 5:6–8 ESV

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That is the standard of love. But some of us need more concrete instructions:

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 ESV

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Any of you there yet? Are you still nodding and smiling, or have you hit your stumbling stone? Oh, I know hat you are generally patient, when you’ve gotten plenty of rest. You don’t toot your own horn. No problems with road rage or check-out rage at the grocery store. You aren’t entertained by other people’s drama are you?

Jesus told a story about two men who went to the temple to pray:

Luke 18:10–13 ESV

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

I would say to you that both of these men were telling the truth about themselves. The Pharisee was and so was the tax collector. One of them, of course, looked pretty good as he took his self-inventory, and the other, pretty bad. Jesus said that one of them went home justified.

1 John 5:1–5 ESV

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 2097 The Grace of God

When the learned, and wealthy John Selden was dying he said to Archbishop Usher, “I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, and my study is filled with books and manuscripts (he had 8000 volumes in his library) on various subjects. But at present I cannot recollect any passage out of all my books and papers whereon I can rest my soul, save this from the sacred Scriptures:

“’The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and wordly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purity unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ ” (Titus 2:14).

The works of the Law, by itself, will kill you. That is what it naturally does to the flesh - kills it.

Matthew 21:42 ESV

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “ ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Matthew 21:44 ESV

And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

Acts 4:11–12 ESV

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Romans 6:3–4 ESV

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

When the learned, and wealthy John Selden was dying he said to Archbishop Usher, “I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, and my study is filled with books and manuscripts (he had 8000 volumes in his library) on various subjects. But at present I cannot recollect any passage out of all my books and papers whereon I can rest my soul, save this from the sacred Scriptures:

(ESV)

“’The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and wordly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purity unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ ” (Titus 2:14).

“’The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and wordly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purity unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ ” ().

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times (Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996), 529.

The rest that Seldon found was not in the first part of the passage, that talks about how we should live, but in the second part, where Jesus does the work of making us capable of doing the first part through His work of redemption and sanctification. It is that work that energized his works, that work that empowered him to do good works. And that work, as you rest in it, that will give you rest. When you struggle, His struggle will strengthen you, when you stumble, His arms that bore the weight of the cross will carry you. When you stand, you will stand upon Him, the rock of your salvation.