We'll read briefly from Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, verses 5-9. have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, Every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. If someone were to ask you tonight, what is it that most stands out for you In the life of Jesus Christ, as we find it set before us in the Gospels, what do you think your answer might be? I'm sure there isn't one perfect answer, but what what answer would you give? What is it about Jesus life that most compels you, impresses you, strikes you, challenges you? Perhaps you're thinking, well, Ian, I think it would be his kindness, the way he dealt so generously and tenderly with bruised and broken reeds. How he mercifully dealt with that woman caught in the act of adultery, perhaps his kindness, maybe his patience. How forbearing the Lord was with his disciples, those men he had handpicked, but who were so slow on the uptake who were so thrown and so ready to misunderstand him, how patiently he bore with them. Or perhaps it was his power, the way he would calm the raging sea, cast out demons from men's lives that had been torn asunder by them. Perhaps it was his unflinching resolve to die the just for the unjust, to lay aside his own natural inclinations, to embrace what his father had committed to him to do. Now, all of that would be true and we could make a good case, couldn't we, for each of these or perhaps even all of them together. But when you look at the whole landscape of our Savior's life as we find it unfolded for us in the Gospels, we find there is one mark above all else that dominated the landscape of His life. And that mark was His obedience to His Father. In Philippians chapter 2, Paul tells us that he was obedient unto death. He tells the Romans in Romans 5.19 that by one man's act of obedience, the many were made righteous. He surveys the whole course of Jesus' life and he compacts it into that brief statement, by one man's act of obedience. and from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. You remember in John 6, he said, I've come from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And I think it's striking that in the first servant song in Isaiah chapter 42, the Lord says of this Messiah, this savior, this serpent crusher, whom he would give for the life of the world, the Heavenly Father says, behold, my servant. He comes into this world as the servant of the Lord. He comes to fulfill in his life by obedience unto death the great commission entrusted to him in the covenant of redemption in times eternal. And it's important to understand that for this reason. Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to undo the tragedy of Adam's sin. And what was the tragedy of Adam's sin? What was the heart of that sin that brought death not only to Adam, but to Adam's progeny throughout the ages of history. What was it that so defaced the image of God in Adam and all who have come from Adam? Well, surely the heart of Adam's sin was his disobedience. He willfully and deliberately disobeyed the revealed will of God. And in the gospel then, what our Lord Jesus Christ comes to do is not only to undo the tragedy of Adam's disobedience, but to replace his disobedience with a new obedience. Not simply an obedience that Adam would have had before his fall, but a new obedience, an obedience patterned after the obedience of that better than Adam, that last Adam and second man, Jesus Christ. And this is what the new birth comes to do. It comes to plant the seed of a new life within us. And what is that new seed that is planted within us. It is the seed of the very life of God as we find that life manifested in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And at the heart of the person and work of Jesus Christ was this disposition of obedience. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ has come to recreate in your life and in mine. He has come to make us not simply what Adam once was, but to make us like himself, the obedient servant's son. That's to be the hallmark, the pristine hallmark of our believing lives. We are to reflect in our believing lives the holy obedience of the Son of God. But you will have discovered, as I certainly have discovered, that from the very moment God plants within us the seed of a new life, that new life of dispositional, loving obedience to God. We find from that very moment there is a battle, there is a contest within our very lives. Because while in Jesus Christ the reigning power of sin has been broken, And while sin's guilt and condemnation has been forever dealt with, sin's presence yet remains to trouble us. And our lives become a virtual battlefield. If anyone tells you the Christian life is easy, run away from them. Run away from them. It is a warfare. It is a battle. Think of our Lord Jesus Christ as he found himself in the garden of Gethsemane, confronted with the unfolding magnitude of what awaited him on Calvary's cross. The unimaginable was becoming imaginable for the Lord Jesus Christ. And what was it he prayed in his agony? Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. As the unimaginable anguish begins to engulf his human soul, the prospect seems so utterly, utterly forbidding to the Lord Jesus that he prays in his holy, pristine humanity. And if he didn't pray this, he couldn't have been our Savior. Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. And there was no landing ground in him as there is in us for sin and Satan. But what a trial the Lord Jesus Christ encountered. And so it is with ourselves, we find that this new life, the seed of God, this new life of dispositional, loving, Obedience to the God of our salvation becomes a battleground. And towards the end of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul, as he comes to conclude this marvelous unfolding exposition of the gospel, he says, finally, finally, I need to tell you this. Your warfare is not with flesh and blood. But with principalities and powers. There are spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places, orchestrating your demise. Satan is seeking to overwhelm you and turn you aside from the life of dispositional obedience. And in a myriad of ways, the evil one comes and seeks, as he sought with the Lord Jesus Christ, to turn us aside. Think of what it must have meant for the Lord Jesus Christ in his holy, sinless humanity to be confronted by a creature that he made and who comes to turn him aside from the life of obedience that he had pledged himself to in the covenant of redemption and eternity. And Satan never let up for one moment. In fact, in Luke 22, our Lord speaks of the whole course of his life as the time of my temptations or testings. He found himself in the crucible of affliction. He found that dispositional obedience to the father, which was natively his, was being contested at every turn in his life. And you and I need to understand that. While the Christian life is a gospel shaped life, it will be a life that will experience inevitably trial and trouble and testing. We will find ourselves in conflict with the world, the flesh and the devil. That progress and obedience will not inevitably happen. Because Satan will contest every single centimeter of progress in your life. And what we see in our Lord Jesus Christ is that the gospel shaped life is an obedient life. And what the Holy Spirit first produced in the holy humanity of Christ, He comes to reproduce, to replicate in your humanity and my humanity. Now, He'll do it idiosyncratically. He doesn't come to make us clones. One of the vast eternal differences between Islam and Christianity is that in Islam everyone becomes a clone. There is no cultural variation. There is no temperamental differentiation because the God of Islam, the false God of Islam is a monad. He's not a triunity of diversity in unity. But in the gospel, God comes not to make us clones of one another, but to perfect us in the individuality of our humanity to the likeness of his son. And that likeness was characterized from womb to tomb by holy heart, dispositional obedience. And what I simply want to do in the time remaining this evening is to just notice with you six aspects or notes that will surely be found in every gospel shaped, obedience shaped life. These are the notes that are to delineate the character of our obedience unto God. First of all, you will understand that obedience belongs to the essential fabric of your believing life. If you're a Christian believer here tonight, obedience is not an optional extra. It is a divine command. Remember our Lord's great words to his disciples, As he took his leave of them, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the people groups, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. The baptized and for the New Testament, an unbaptized Christian is an oxymoron. There was no such thing as an unbaptized Christian. Or you might say, well, what about the thief on the cross? Well, the exception proves the rule. But the delineating feature of the believing life according to our Lord Jesus Christ is to be obedient, is to be obedient to everything that he has commanded us. And that would have resonated remarkably in the ancient world, because in the world of our Lord Jesus Christ, Caesar was absolute monarch. He ruled with Unbridled power. Three little words dominated the ancient world. Caesar, Ipsy, Dixit. Caesar has spoken. But along came another infinitely greater than Caesar. Who said, Jesus, Ipsy, Dixit. Jesus has spoken. And in that commission that our Lord Jesus Christ gave to his disciples, he was impressing on them and on the church that they would be the foundation members of. He was impressing on them and impressing on us that what is to characterize our lives is to be all round obedient men and women, boys and girls. that people can see in our lives that we live under the totalitarian gracious Lordship of Jesus Christ. And I need to tell you tonight, if Jesus Christ is not your totalitarian gracious Lord, he is not your Savior. You cannot dismember Jesus Christ. The Reformers had a lovely little phrase that really originates with Calvin, I think. He speaks of the gospel as a duplex gratia, a double grace. Meaning that in Jesus Christ you have him for justification and sanctification synchronously. At the same time, you don't graduate from justification to sanctification. You receive Jesus Christ in his justifying and sanctifying righteousness. Not confusing the two, but neither separating them. And the great point that the reformers were making is That when we are united to Jesus Christ, we're united to a whole Christ, not simply to a Christ who justifies us before God, but one who lived out a life of obedience to God in our place and for our sake, whose obedience is imputed to us. And that obedience is to be then lived out in our lives. We live under. the totalitarian gracious lordship of Jesus Christ. That's why one of the first man, you will have discovered that whether you like me came to faith somewhat dramatically or whether like my wife, you've never known a day you didn't trust Christ. You will have discovered that some point in your life, this new thought that you never had before. Oh, how I love your law. Oh, God. You discover where did that come from? Where did that dispositional longing come from? It came from the one who in perfection obeyed the law of God, to whom we have been united. You see, the gospel shaped life is an obedient life. Not first because God commands that. Though he does. But because the seed of the life of the obedient son of God, Jesus Christ and dwelling on us by his spirit desires that. Secondly, you will understand that obedience is one vital expression of the presence of Jesus Christ in your life. Now, I touched on that briefly, but I want to really develop it just a little. When the gospel comes to us savingly, whoever we are, whatever our background, whatever our abilities, gifts, temperaments, social standing, whatever it may be, when the gospel comes to us, it comes to us in the same way. It comes to us by planting within us a new life. A life that originated in another world, that came into this world and now has gone back to that other world. And it is a new life of heart obedience to God. There was, I suppose it must be a hundred or so years ago now, there was a movement that began really in the northwest of England, the Keswick movement, as it was called. And it had this defining note. That Jesus Christ can be your savior. And then at some later point, he can be your Lord. It was a movement that dismembered Jesus Christ. It was a movement that sought to divide what the gospel holds together, because it is a whole Christ that we receive in the new birth. It is not simply a justifying Jesus, it is a sanctifying Jesus who comes to indwell us. And this is something we desperately in these confused times need to reaffirm. and not simply take for granted in faithful congregations like this. I've lived long enough to see once robustly faithful reform congregations drift inexorably from where they once were. And we need constantly to remind ourselves and remind our people that in Jesus Christ, We receive a whole Christ. And if our lives are not being lived under the word of God, under its lordship. Then what credibility do we have to our Christian profession? Actually, according to the Bible, we don't have any credibility. Didn't Jesus say, by their fruit you will know them. If you love me, keep my commandments. So let me simply encourage you tonight, brothers and sisters, as I seek to encourage my own heart. Never, never, never, never to dismember Jesus Christ. Never to separate his justifying righteousness from his sanctifying righteousness. distinguishing them absolutely. Sanctifying righteousness plays no part in our justification before God. But where sanctifying righteousness is absent, there is no justifying righteousness. Because it is a whole Jesus Christ that we receive. And this is why We need regularly to be reminded that the gospel comes to unite us to Jesus Christ and not simply to receive as benefits. I think it was Philip Melanchthon, Luther's successor and closest friend. who wrote about the danger of separating the benefits of Christ from Christ himself. And Calvin picks it up in Book Three of the Institutes in that magnificent opening paragraph of Book Three, Chapter One. That's why we need to preach Jesus Christ. We don't preach justification. I don't think we should ever preach justification, not even justification by faith alone. We're not justified by faith alone. I was thinking, why did these men invite this Scotsman here? You're justified by Jesus Christ, whom you receive by faith alone. And that's not playing with words. That's not playing with words. We talk too much about grace and not about the God of grace. There's no such thing, actually, as grace. Grace isn't a substance. It isn't a blessing that God scoops out of a heavenly treasury and dollops upon you for service of rendered. That's Romanism. Grace is God giving us himself in Jesus Christ, mercifully and lovingly. That's what grace is. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich. Obedience belongs to our union with Jesus Christ because he is the one obedient man. He was obedient unto death. And in uniting us to him, the Holy Spirit has come to take that perfect template of obedience and to overlay it idiosyncratically in our lives. And so, People will look at us and whatever else they might see, please God, they will see this. They live under the word of God. You know, when I was a young Christian, this is going back goodness almost 50 years, it was quite common to hear people say on a Sunday, how did you get on under the word today? Often today is, what did you make of the sermon? Now, maybe people mean the same thing, but, you know, change of language can actually indicate something deeper and profounder. We're to be men and women, young men and young women, boys and girls who live manifestly under, as Jesus Christ did, living under the Word of God. He is the prototypical obedient man. Then thirdly, you will understand that your obedience is to be all round and never selective. Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. All round obedience. We don't have the luxury of picking and choosing. were to be men and women noted for embracing obedience, whatever the cost. Now, brothers and sisters, that's easy for me to say tonight. I'm not in North Korea. I'm not in Afghanistan. I'm not living in the dark heartlands of Islam. I've known little in the way of suffering compared to multitudes in my life. But what is true for my brothers and sisters in North Korea is no less true for me that our obedience is to be all round. Even though it may prove and increasingly in the Western world, it is increasingly proving to be costly. I just read of a Christian woman who was dismissed from her position in the medical world in England because she wouldn't use transgender pronouns. This is part of the world in which we live and perhaps increasingly we are discovering what our brothers and sisters in many lands have known for centuries, that there is a cost, there is a real cost. You live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It may not always be so. You may find very soon that you're no longer the land of the free, that you're not free to express your Christian convictions. Well, you might be free to express them, but it will cost you to do so. And we'll discover, perhaps, and this isn't fanciful, That the choice that men like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and Daniel faced two and a half millennia ago are choices that we'll be facing today. You'll either bow down or you'll suffer the consequences. And, you know, you read their reply. It's just magnificent. O King. O King. Our God is able to deliver us and it's just great. And even if he doesn't, even if he doesn't, you can do your worst. You can do your worst. They put truth before consequences. The same with Daniel. The decree was passed. You could only pray in one particular way. What does Daniel do? It's as if he deliberately just says, well, we'll see. goes up, opens his window and prays as he's always done. Obedience is to be all round and never selective. Maybe you're struggling with obedience tonight in some area of your life. Why do you think Christians struggle with obedience? That might seem a strange question, but I'm thinking particularly of the Apostle Peter. He says to Jesus, though they all deny you, you can count on me. I was reading it this morning, reading through Mark's gospel. Though they all deny you, you can count on me. Even if I have to die with you, you can depend on me. Little servant girl says, you're one of Jesus' disciples, not me, not me. No, no, not me. Three times and ultimately with curses, he denies the Lord of glory. When Jesus comes after the resurrection to restore Peter, Isn't it striking he doesn't say to Peter, do you promise from now on to be bold and courageous? Because it was a collapse of courage, wasn't it? But Jesus doesn't say that. He says three times, do you love me? You see, the collapse of courage was simply the manifestation of a deeper problem. He didn't love Christ as much as he thought he did. Maybe you're very different from me, but I know in my own life that my struggles with obedience are all the more acute when my heart is distant from the Savior and the nearer my heart is to him, the more the prospect of all round obedience is desirable. and even delightful. And it's when we are distanced from him, when our love for him is lacking and begins to cool, that we begin to dally in our obedience. But our obedience is to be all round and never selective. Fourthly, and just very briefly, you will understand that your obedience is never to be delayed. And by the end of Luke 9, isn't it? Lord, I will follow you. But first, let me go and bury my father. You know, Jesus reply was shocking. Let the dead bury their dead. You think that's pretty heartless. Could you not have said, well, I understand your familial care and compassion. Jesus saw behind the man's words. He really was saying, Lord, soon, but not now. Soon, but not yet. Like Augustine, Lord, Lord, keep me from sexual immorality, but not yet. That's what he wrote in the Confessions, but not yet. Brothers and sisters, delayed obedience is no obedience. I don't know what's going on in your life tonight, you don't know what's going on in my life, but. When God calls us to live before him obediently, and that means our lives will be shaped and styled by his revealed word. He expects us to embrace that revealed word immediately. Maybe that's a word for you tonight. Maybe it's a word for me. Delayed obedience is no obedience. I would say that to my children. I don't think bringing up children is rocket science. I don't. I don't mean it's easy, but I don't think it's rocket science. And one of the things I would say to my children from their earliest moments, when they were in the womb, I would speak to them. Now, whoever we're going to call you, you'll need to know that when your dad says, do it, you do it. Not when it suits you. And our children grow up then in an atmosphere where their father in a creaturely, if fallen way, is reflecting the will of the heavenly Father, the perfect Father. There's nothing more egregious, I think, than children growing up thinking that delayed obedience is OK. That when their dad or their mum says, do this, They can prevaricate or they can say, well, do I have to? Maybe you're different from me. I would never let my children say that. Of course you have to. I've just told you. And for that, there'll be a punishment. You need to know that when your daddy says it, he means it. And when father says do it, he means do it. Number five, you'll understand that obedience is never to be qualified by providence. What do I mean by that? Well, you young men, you meet a girl and she's a looker. You think, my, and your hormones begin to bounce. And you think, and she's from a good family. And she comes to church. Morning and evening. Oh, my. This is good. This is good. She's good fun to be with. And then you think, ah, I'm not sure she has a heart that wants in all her ways to honor the Savior. But everything else seems good. and you come into contact regularly, you turn up at something and she's there, the signs are good. You allow providences to qualify obedience. Quite a lot of years ago, I was sitting in my study and one of our church members, very fine fellow, came to see me unexpectedly. He was an interesting fellow, very interesting. And he had a checkered life. He said, oh, Ian, I need to speak to you. I said, oh, come in, come in, sit down. He said, I can see it all now. I said, well, that's good. Tell me more. He said, well, I was out driving with my wife and we took a wrong turn. And I could picture in my mind the turn that he took and we're driving up this narrow country road and the road was getting narrower and narrower and suddenly we came to a dead end. And I thought, oh my. So I had to reverse the car and I was reversing the car down this farm track and I went into a ditch and suddenly I saw it all. God was saying to me, I'd taken a wrong turn in my life. My life was going to be a dead end. I needed to retrace my steps and avoid various pitfalls. And I'm listening to him and I'm thinking, dear. So he paused for breath and I said, brother, the Lord was teaching you one thing. Oh, he said, what was that? You're a bad driver. I said, do you think so, countenance? countenance, you're a bad driver. He was qualifying obedience by providence. He was allowing his life to be shaped by the way he interpreted providence. But John Flavel, the English Puritan, some of you would know this. He said providence is like the Hebrew alphabet. It's best read backwards. We're called to be obedient and where obedience appears to be crossed by providence. We keep the commandment and leave God to work out the providence. And the final thing, our time's really gone. You will understand that your obedience is always to be evangelical and never legal. We see that, of course, most graphically in what's called the parable of the prodigal son. It really isn't the parable of the prodigal son. I don't even think it's the parable of the two sons. I think it's actually the parable of the father. But that's another thing. But you remember how the elder brother hears the news of a younger brother has come back and the father has overflowed with joy and arranges a party and people are dancing. The elder brother says, what's going on? And the servant says, oh, your brother has returned and your father is throwing a party. And the older brother is absolutely incensed with anger. And his father comes and he says, what's wrong? And he says to his father, all these years I have slaved for you. That's literally how it should be translated. I've slaved for you. He was a son in the house, but he had the disposition of a slave. He looked on God as a taskmaster. There were duties to be performed. There were acts to be done. He was dutious. His obedience was not the overflow of love. It was squeezed out of him by legal constraints. And actually the younger son's not actually much different. Because remember when he rehearses his speech, He says, I'll go back to my father and I'll say, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. He didn't understand the gospel either. Jesus is speaking about the Pharisees whose obedience was legal, not evangelical. That's why I mentioned at the last address that in the first three chapters of Ephesians, there's only one imperative verb. And in the next three chapters, there's about 42 or so. Because the gospel comes to make obedience sweet. It comes to say, see how great God is. See how kind he is. See how generous he is, how gracious he is. Who would not want to obey such a God as that? And that's why In worship, our great need, Lord's day by Lord's day, is to come into his presence. I don't know what you do here, so I can say this without any sense of knowing what's happening. Our great need is to come and to sing praises that exalt God and to hear prayers that take us into the inner chamber of the Most High. One of the things I ache for in Scotland when I go to churches is to have an opening prayer that isn't full of thanksgiving and intercession. I long for prayers that are full of adoration. I don't mean there shouldn't be thanksgiving or intercessions, of course, there's a place for all that. I come weary, often worn, sometimes sad. I just want someone to say, behold your God. And that's where obedience comes. It flows out of a disposition that has tasted that the Lord is good. And you think, oh, how I love your Lord. And if you were to parse that sentence, I'll close with this. If you were to parse that sentence, how would you parse it? How would you parse it grammatically? How would you parse it theologically? Now, from the age of 11, I could parse that whole sentence. And I think for many years, theologically, I would have parsed it like this. Oh, how I love your law, your revealed will, your truth, That's not how I'd parse it today. I'd parse it like this. Oh, how I love your law. People say the 119th Psalm is all about the law of God. Well, I suppose in one sense it is. But actually, it's more about the God of the law. than the law of God. And again, that's not playing with words. That's trying to understand the grammar of the gospel. So we're to live obediently because we've been united to the one who lived the one perfectly obedient life. But maybe you're thinking, well, Ian, My failures are so many, I can barely lift my head. Well, you're in good company because the gospel says to all of us, though your sins are as scarlet, they can be as white as snow. Though red like crimson, they can be as wool. Though your failures be many, though your disobediences be vast, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. Dispositional heart obedience. belongs to the fabric of the gospel-shaped life. Amen.