CAIN AND ABEL—STUBBORNESS AND OBEDIENCE

	Well, hello everyone, and welcome again to The Journey.  It’s so good to see you.  If I haven’t had a chance to meet you, my name is Nelson and I just wanted to say hello to you.  Welcome to those of you joining by video in Jersey City, as well.  I wanted to begin today with taking you back to your childhood.  I would like to do a little childhood game, if you are interested in playing this game with me.  It’s a game called Simon Says.  Do you remember this game?  And you kind of know how it works, so I thought we would kind of do that in large, today in the auditorium.  Maybe those of you in Jersey City, you join Pastor Joseph, and make sure that everything stays in control over there.  But, you know how this game works.  How many of you played Simon Says before?  Let’s see you hands.  Well, you are all out.  Simon didn’t say raise your hands.  No, I’m just kidding.  I’m going to give you grace, so we can all do it again.  So now let’s really start.  If you want to play the game with me, let’s stand up, and, those of you who just stood up, you are out.  So Simon Says, if you want to play the game, please stand up.  Okay, we have a lot of folks playing here.  Simon Says raise your right hand.  Simon Says raise your left hand.  Put your hand on your nose.  Those of you who did it, you are out.  Okay.  Simon didn’t say that. Simon Says put your left hand on your ear.  Simon Says raise your left foot.  That’s hard to do.  Alright, give yourselves a  hand for playing Simon Says.  Those of you who clapped, you are out, because Simon didn’t say it.  Alright, you can have a seat.  Those of you are still standing, you won.  Because Simon didn’t say have a seat.  Give yourselves a big hand.  Seriously, sit down.  Game over.  Simon Says clap for everybody who played.  So thanks for playing.  That’s a childhood game, right?  And Simon Says, Mother May I, Red Light, Green Light, Follow the Leader, they all have a similar kind of vein to them.  The thing is, if you are obedient, and you listen, you are going to win.  If you are disobedient, you lose.  That’s a pretty good lesson for life to try to teach when you are young.  The problem is, when we get older, we begin to react against being obedient.  We love to push the system.  We love to go against the system.  We start thinking it’s about having our own way.  And this stubbornness streak really takes over.  So we are in this series on Cain and Abel, and we have been looking at these two famous brothers from Scripture, and today, we are going to look at Cain as an act of stubbornness, or a person of stubbornness, and we are going to look at Abel as a person of obedience.  So go ahead and find your message notes and I want to go to Genesis 4, where the story is found, and I want us to look at just a few of the verses about Cain and Abel, particularly, verses 2-9.  So grab your message notes, you might want t grab your pen, as well, because as we read passage, I want to invite you to circle a few things, and I want to make some note as we go.  As you are turning to that, let me just remind you that salvation is based on faith, not obedience.  And so salvation is all about having the faith decision to follow Jesus Christ.  But the path to living out your salvation in a successful way is in obedience.  So it’s faith that brings salvation; it’s obedience that allows you to live out your salvation.  I think that’s important to understand as we get started.  As we look at this passage, I want you to see what goes on in Cain’s life as he is disobedient toward God.  Well, follow along and be willing to circle a few things, and hold the place as we dive into this.  Genesis 4:2, “When they grew up,” remember Cain and Abel were the first children of the first couple, Adam and Eve, so now they are growing up, “When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd.”  You might circle the work shepherd.  Abel made his living by taking care of the flocks, by taking care of animals, “while Cain was a farmer.”  He worked out in the fields.  He raised the crops.  And some time passes, and it says, “At harvest time, Cain brought to the Lord a gift,”  would you circle the words—a gift.  “Of his farm produce.  Abel brought several choice lambs from the best of his flock.”  Maybe circle the two words—the best.  “The Lord accepted Abel and his offering but He did not accept Cain and his offering.  This made Cain very angry and dejected.”  Hold your finger there.  Now, you say—what is going on here?  Why did God accept Abel’s offering, but did not accept Cain’s offering?  Well, the issue here is the sacrificial system is beginning to take form.  And if you study the Old Testament, you know the sacrificial system of bringing the first fruits of your harvest, or the best of your flock to God is beginning to form.  And that sacrificial system lasts throughout the hole Old Testament.  And it ultimately leads to the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.  The ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  Because in order for us to maintain our relationship with God, we have to continually sacrifice to God.  At least we did, until the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  And Pastor Kerrick, last week, spent a whole message talking about this, and he did a great job.  If you missed it, you can pick it up at the back, or  you can listen to it on Journeyipod.com.  But Abel brings the best of his flock to God.  He doesn’t just bring any old gift, he brings the best.  And God accepts that.  But Cain, he just brings a gift.  He just brings some of his produce.  Now, he should have brought the first fruits.  He should have brought the first harvest, and God is all about bringing the first harvest.  So, if you want to study more on that, you can, as we go along.  I want  you to see that God says to him, your sacrifice was not good enough.  But now, notice what God does.  God gives Cain a second chance.  Even though God says to Cain—your offering is not enough and Cain gets angry at God, God says look—I can help you make this right.  I can give you a second chance.  And that’s where we left off.  “So why are you so angry, the Lord asked him?  Why do you look so dejected?  You will be accepted if”, circle the word “if”, here’s the process for redemption.  Here’s how he can get back on track from the mistake that he made.  “If you respond in the right way.  If you will now bring to me the best of your crops, the first fruit of your crops.  But if”, another “if”, “you refuse to respond correctly, watch out.  Sin is waiting to attack and destroy you and you must subdue it.”  At this point, Cain had a choice.  Cain messed up.  He had brought the wrong sacrifice to God , but God told him how to fix it, but he remained stubborn.  He refused to obey what God wanted him to do.  That anger that he had projected toward God, he now projects toward his brother.  And look at the consequences of his stubbornness.  “Now, Cain said to his brother Abel, let’s go out to the field and while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel, and killed him.”  Premeditated murder.  Now he projects this anger that he has toward God on other people.  “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’  ‘I don’t know’, he replied, ‘am I my brother’s keeper?’”  We’ll pick up the story next week from there.  But today, I want you to see how Cain represents this life of stubbornness and Abel represents the life of obedience.  And Cain in his stubbornness refuses to obey God and it leads to destruction.  Stubbornness is a very powerful emotion.  Just think about the word—stubbornness, for example.  It’s an ugly word to be stubborn.  The Bible word for stubborn is a combination of two words—the word “hard” and the word “heart”. And stubbornness implies a hardheartedness, someone who is callus.  Someone who says “no”.  Someone who shakes a fist at God and says—I will not do what You want me to do.  In our day, they would put their hand up and say “no” to God and they go their own way.  And throughout the Scriptures, sometimes people were referred to as stubborn, not just Cain, but when the people of Israel were refusing to be obedient toward Moses as Moses tried to lead them to the Promise Land, it starts in Exodus 32, and continues and Moses stands before them and says, “You people are a stiff necked people.”  And he uses a farming analogy because when an ox would not turn to go this way or that way according to the will of the master, it was said that the oxen was stiff necked because it would not turn to either the right or the left.  It was stubborn.  Later on in Isaiah 48, the prophet says that people of his day had iron necks.  That is, they were totally unwilling to bend to what God wanted to do in that particular day.  And even in this day, if you think about it, we actually will talk about someone who is stubborn as if they were an animal.  Do you know this thing?  See if you can finish this—that person is stubborn as a—mule, exactly right.  Let’s think about that.  Have you ever seen a mule?  A mule is not a very pretty animal.  As a matter of fact, I think we have  a picture of a mule.  Here’s what a mule looks like.  Not a very pretty animal.  He’s stubborn as a mule.  Stubbornness, it’s a very dangerous emotion.  It’s a very powerful emotion, but ultimately, it will bring about your destruction.  So look at obedience.  In your notes, I tried to give you a simple definition of obedience.  Obedience is this—saying “yes” to whatever God asks.  Saying yes to whatever God asks.  Just as I presented the word obedience, it’s almost as if I can feel it.  It’s as if there is a reaction among people toward the word obedience.  It’s not always a positive reaction.  I mean people react positively toward love and joy and peace, and all those things that we talk about a lot of times.  But to talk about obedience actually sends a shudder down our spines.  Because everything in the American culture has taught us to rebel against authority.  And yet obedience implies that we are submitting to God’s authority.  That we would go against our nature, that we would go against our nature to do our own ways, to be our own person, to pull us up by our own bootstraps, and we would willfully submit to God’s authority in our lives.  But that’s the call.  That’s the path that leads to life.  You see, if you really want to experience the life that God has for you, if you really want to find your purpose and experience significance and live at a higher level than you are living now, it’s found in obedience.  And so the choice is yours—do I live a life of stubbornness or do I live a life of obedience?  Look in your notes, I put those two words—think for just a moment.  What are some synonyms for stubbornness?  Maybe just jot down a few thoughts.  And please don’t put anybody’s name underneath these.  Then what are some synonyms of obedience?  What are those two words?  Really dive into it.  As you do that, let me give you a few that I wrote down, up here on the screen.  When I think of stubbornness, I think of someone who is unmoving.  And the Bible, that’s where this whole stiff necked idea comes from.  When you think of obedience, it’s someone who is teachable, open to new ideas.  They are willing to do what someone teaches them is best.  And when I think of stubbornness, insecurity comes to mind.  Sometimes we think the stubborn person is secure in their beliefs, and they won’t change.  But it’s just the opposite.  Oftentimes, they are very insecure and they are afraid to change.  Whereas, the obedient person is secure.  The Bible says that stubbornness causes the emotion of anger.  We see it in Cain, and we see it in other people throughout the Scriptures, but obedience is a life of contentment, because it’s know that you are doing what is right.  It’s knowing that you are following the best path for your life.  Stubbornness is also about my will, whereas, obedience is about God’s will.  Stubbornness, according to Scripture, is sinful, whereas obedience is the life that God blesses.  So which one of these is going to define your life?  Which one of these would you most like to define your life?  I mean, are you stubborn as a mule?  Or are you an obedient follower of Jesus Christ?  Just for a second, project forward in your life and think about 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, and you are at the end of your life, or at the end of your career, and you look back, which of these words do you want to define your legacy?  
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	The choice is up to you.  Do you want to live a life of stubbornness and say it’s about my will and shake your fist at God and ultimately take that down the path to destruction, or do you want to live a life of obedience and say—God, what do you want me to do?  I want to follow you.  I want your best path.  I want a life of fulfillment and purpose and contentment.  I really believe that’s what you want.  I really believe that you want this life of obedience, because that’s why you are here.  You wouldn’t have come to church today if you were not serious about pursuing God and about doing right in your life.  So let’s talk about how you can do that.  How can you live this life of obedience?  So turn over in your notes and to summarize what the Bible says in regard to this, I listed six actions of an obedient life.  Six actions that kind of take you down the process of obedience, and I want you to know to put these together, there was a lot of Biblical research that went into it.  I did a lot of research personally.  We have a team in our church called the Message Research Team, that also feeds me a lot of research that goes into every message we do.  I wish I had time to share all of it, because there is really some exciting stuff, but I just don’t have the time to share.  If you would like to get the full Bible study on obedience, the big package on research, I would be glad to email that to you.  And it’s a multiple page document with word studies and articles and benefits of obedience, Scripture listings, and all that, and so if you would like to have that.  So if you would like to have that, just write “research” on the back of your Connection Card and I’ll email that to you on Wednesday of this week.  So to summarize all that research, let me give you these six actions.  Here they are.
	1.	Always answer “yes, Lord”.  The first action of an obedient life, always answer “yes, Lord”.  Two very powerful words.  “Yes, Lord”.  And if you want to do something that is going to change your life in a radical way, learn to say these words.  “Yes, Lord”.  As a matter of fact, let’s practice that right now.  With great enthusiasm, I’m going to go one, two, three, and then we all go, very enthusiastically, “Yes, Lord”.  Okay?  Let’s practice it.  One, two, three, “Yes, Lord”.  That was pretty good, but let’s try it against.  One, two, three, “Yes, Lord”.  Now, we’ve got the hang of it.  One more time.  Even more better.   One, two, three, “Yes, Lord”.  Those are powerful words.  To say, yes, Lord, some of you say—why do we say, “Yes, Lord”? What’s the question?  Well, here’s the thing—it doesn’t matter.  Because obedience is saying “Yes, Lord” before you even know what God asks you to do.  You see, if you want to say something that is really powerful, if you want to say learn to say something that is going to radically change your life, it’s saying “Yes, Lord” before you even know what God is asking you to do.  You say, why?  Because it’s an attitude shift.  Instead of living your life going away from God, and backing up from God, “Yes, Lord” obedience is about living your life toward God.  It’s about leaning in toward God.  It’s about saying—God, I’m going to follow You before I even know my options.  Because you see, what we like to do in our minds is, we say—God, tell me what You want me to do, I’ll lay it out.  These are the reasons I should do it, and these are the reasons I shouldn’t do it.  And then I’ll decide.  But that’s not obedience.  Obedience is saying “Yes, Lord”.  The path to living a life of significance and getting involved in what God wants you to do, is starting with this attitude of saying—God, I’m with You.  God, I’m going to follow You.  I’m going to stay close to You.  You see some of you have been afraid to say this because you see, that if you say “Yes, Lord”, God’s going to put you on a path you aren’t going to like.  And God’s going to ask you to do something that you don’t want to do.  God’s going to ask you to change something that you don’t want to change.  He’s going to ask you to move faster than you want to move.  Or maybe he’s going to ask you to go slower than you want to go.  And some of us think that obedience to God, is as if God comes up behind you and He puts us in a hammer lock and twists our arm and out of that pain and out of that suffering, we finally say—uncle, I’ll do it, God, if You want me to.  But that’s not what real obedience is.  You see, let me give you the secret behind “Yes, Lord” obedience.  When you are obedient, you are living the life that God designed you to live.  It’s not a life of where you are being forced into somebody else’s mold.  It’s not a life where you are having to become something that you weren’t created to be.  You are following the perfect plan that God has for you.  And there is  a sense of fulfillment, of contentment in following this plan.  You see, the obedient life is the life that leads to greater connection with God.  It’s the life that leads to a more effective prayer life and a greater understanding of Scripture.  A greater understanding of yourself.  A greater understanding of God’s Spirit.  It is the path to closeness with God and it’s the way to glorify God and become more like His Son, Jesus Christ.  It’s all found in this obedient life.  And it starts with saying, “Yes, Lord”.  Sometimes we have to be reminded of it.  The people of God, back in Isaiah’s time, they had to be reminded.  So look at what God says through the Prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 1:19.  He says, “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.”  Obviously, that’s imagery of saying that you will get the best life has to offer.  You see, obedience is the pathway that God has for you.  It’s how you get the best from life.  And I want you to write this little equation down in your notes.  Yes=God’s best.  Yes=God’s best.  But obviously, the opposite of that is No=God’s worst.  You know, some of the most miserable people I know, are the people who constantly shake their fist and say no to God.  But some of the most fulfilled, happy, significant people I know are those who say yes to God.  God, it’s yes.  Yes, Lord.  Now what’s the question?  That takes us to number two.
	2.	The second action of an obedient life is to ask, daily, to do God’s will.  Ask, daily, to do God’s will.  Now, some of you may look at this and you think—you know, Nelson, those two seem out of order to me.  Shouldn’t number two be number one and shouldn’t I ask for God’s will and then I say yes.  You see, again, I want you to see the power of an obedient life.  The obedient life says yes and then asks—what do you want me to do?  And so once you determine in your heart that the answer is yes—you say, God, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.  And praying daily for God’s will to be done.  It’s a significant practice in the life of a follower of God.  It’s so significant, Jesus put it at the beginning of the Lord’s prayer.  Do you remember when the disciples came to Jesus and they said—Lord, teach us to pray?  And He said—I will.  And He used this model prayer.  You and I call it the Lord’s Prayer.  And the first request, the first personal request in the Lord’s Prayer is for God’s will to be done.  As a matter of fact, maybe today, we could just pray the Lord’s Prayer together.  I won’t ask you to do it from memory because maybe you can’t always remember it if you are under pressure.  Or maybe you learned it in a different translation than the one we are going to look out.  So we are going to put it up on the screen.  So let’s just kind of turn our hearts toward God, right now.  And let’s pray this Lord’s Prayer.  It’s found in Matthew 6:6-13.  You will recognize it.  Here we go.  You ready?  
	Our Father, Who in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.  Your Kingdom come, Your will be done in earth as it is in Heaven.  Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.  For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever.  Amen.
	Now, some people think that the first request in the Lord’s Prayer is give us this day our daily bread.  But it’s not.  The first request, I put it in your notes, is back in verse 10, when we pray, “Your Kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  What are you praying?  You are praying for God’s will to be done in your life.  You want God’s will to be done on earth?  Let it start with God’s will being done in you.  When you came in today, you got this postcard about God on Film.  Jersey City, you guys got it, too.  And we are very excited about this series.  It’s taking off in two weeks.  The subtitle is “Discover the Meaning Behind the Biggest Movies of the Year.”  And you know, most of the big movies that come out, anytime of the year, they have spiritual themes in them.  Because there is something about those themes that connect with us and that’s actually what makes them a blockbuster.  It’s pretty true, the biggest movies of the year have the biggest spiritual themes in them.  So we are going to extract some of those.  As I was planning this  year about what we needed to talk about as a church, one of the ideas that has been in my mind for a while now, is I would like to teach a lesson or a message called “How to Live Every Day as if it’s Your Last.”  I thought that would be a really powerful thing to teach about.  So I was praying—God, if there was only a movie that had that theme in it, and then I saw the previews to Die Hard IV.  And my heart leapt, because isn’t this the theme of every Die Hard movie?  I mean, it’s like the last possible day.  The apocalypse is around the corner and here he is—Bruce Willis to save the day.  And this year’s move is called—Live Free or Die Hard.  And so we are teaching a message around that, called “How to Live Every Day as if it’s Your Last”.  I have been away some the last couple of weeks working on these messages and I want to give you the preview of one of the things I want to teach in this God on Film series.  Because one of the principles of living every day as if it’s your last is to make sure you are doing God’s will.  I mean, if this was your last day, you want to do God’s will, that particular day.  And most of us think about God’s will as if it’s something we want to do for the next 30-40 years.  But let me change your perspective.  God’s will isn’t something you need to do for the next 30-40 years.  It’s something you do just for today.  Just for today.  Because life comes at us in bite size chunks called 24 hour periods and if you want to do something very radical.  You say—God I want to do Your will for the rest of my life, that’s true.  But I’m going to start, God, with doing Your will just for today.  Just for the next 18 hours, or 24 if you sin in your sleep.  Just for the next 24 hours, God, I want to do Your will.  And if you will pray this from the Lord’s Prayer, it will put you on the path to obedience.  Yes is the answer—God show me what You want me to do.  And then number three:
	3.	Act on what I know what is right.  Take action on what God says to do.  Act on what I know is right.  Now, we are really getting into what most of us think is obedience.  Obedience is about action.  Obedience is not just acknowledging God and saying yes.  It’s not just asking for God’s will to be revealed.  Obedience is ultimately about action, but I want you to see the progression about how this works.  We go beyond just knowing God’s will to doing God’s will.  Now, let me speak just a moment as your pastor.  I’ve noticed that one of the biggest challenges in our church is the challenge of taking of what we know in our heads and doing it with our hands.  You see, I’ve noticed a big issue that we have, we know a lot more than what we are actually doing.  When I think about our church, I realize that our big issue is not more knowledge, our big issue is more application.  That we have to learn to live out our faith.  Because if we are honest, wouldn’t you say with me that we know more than we are really doing.  I mean, I know a lot more about the Bible than I’m really doing.  I know about God than what I am living out.  I mean, the rub for me is knowing/doing gap.  This difference between what I know and what I actually do.  So obedience, the practice of obedience is about taking what you know and doing every single day.  And letting God work through you to do it.  Look, you can’t do this on your own.  You have to have God’s help.  You have to have the Spirit’s help  We are going to look at how the Spirit works in you, in just a moment, to do this.  So, let me ask you this—just off the top of your head, don’t answer out loud, please, what is it that you know that you are not doing right now?  I bet all across this room, all in Jersey City, God brought something to mind.  You think—I know I need to do that.  But I’m not doing it.  But let me say this another way.  What do you know you need to stop doing, but you are continuing to do?  I’ll bet all across the room right now, and all across Jersey City, God just spoke to you.  And He just told you something.  Why not take action on that today?  Why not be obedient just to that one thing, today?  Jesus asked a very powerful question that just twists my heart in all kinds of directions when I read it.  “He says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things which I say?”  Well, I’m teaching a class at Journey University in a couple of weeks.  You can come to it if you like.  It’s called “Theology of Salvation”.  And you know, we are offering Journey University now every semester and it’s seminary type classes where we spend three hours diving into these chunks of theology and one of the things that I want to teach in this class is that there are two words that you need to understand.  One is the word “salvation” and the other is “sanctification”.  And the mini-course on this is that salvation comes in an instant.  Salvation is about a faith relationship with God by following Jesus Christ.  Instantaneous.  Now, most of us get that, although we’ve got a lot of crazy beliefs around it, that we are going to try to clarify in this class, but sanctification is the process of living out our salvation and sanctification is a life-time process.  It’s a discipline.  It’s the obedient life that we are taking about.  And you know, when you think about your salvation, God’s Spirit comes and takes up residence in your life.  At the moment of salvation, God gives you His Spirit. But then the package in which the Spirit is contained has to be sanctified over the course of the rest of your life.  So every day it’s about bringing your emotions, your mind, and your thoughts and your will into submission with God.  Saying—God, I’m going to live for You.  Sometimes we like to say in the church that it’s about giving Jesus Lordship in every area of our lives.  And if you want to know more about that, you can come to the class that I’m doing at Journey University.  So this week at The Journey, we will give you an opportunity to sign up and you can sign up on line.  So let me offer a resource for you.  I would like to give you a resource called “Lordship Living”.  Something that I put together in preparation for this Journey University and I will email that to you if you just write “Lordship” on the back of your Connection Card.  And it’s just a way for you to examine yourself and to say—God, if I brought every area of my life under Lordship.  You know, somebody said you haven’t really learned the Commandments until you have obeyed it.  But the church today suffers from Christians who know volumes more than they practice.  And I’m in that as well.  I’m trying to do, every day, what God wants me to do.  So that’s part of this action of obedience.  And then related to that is:
	4.	Adjust quickly when I get off course.  I feel I know what is right, but even sometimes in acting on what I know is right, I tend to get off track.  But I adjust quickly when I get off course.  And this is an issue of grace.  This is why God doesn’t expect us to be perfect.  But He does expect us to adjust quickly and to get back on track.  This is why when Cain brought that bad offering to God, God said—let Me give you a second chance and see if you can make it right.  But in Cain’s case, he refused. He was stubborn and that led to his destruction.  But you, when you decide to follow God and you decide to be obedient to God, you may do well for a while, but then you get off track and the question is not—will you get off track, the question is—how quickly will you get back on track.  Now, it’s a universal theme here in the metro area that all of us have gotten on the subway and we have been going down toward our destination and we miss our stop.  We have all had that happen, right?  Anybody have that happen in the last week?  It happens almost every Sunday because who can figure out the Sunday schedule for the train?  So, you decide to get on the train, and you see your stop pass by at like 50 mph.  And you have this choice—do I stay on the train and end up in Coney Island, and get mugged or something like that, I don’t know.  Just kidding for those of you who live in Coney Island.  I’ve stopped picking on Staten Island, because they are mad at me.  So now I can’t walk through the streets of Staten Island, so I pick on Coney Island.  But you know, you don’t just stay on the subway and just keep going to Coney Island and get off and say—well, I’ll just walk back.  No, no.  As soon as you realize that you missed it, you get off at the next stop, you go up, and you circle back around, and get back on the train and you go back to where you wanted to be.  What if you lived your life like that?  You know, what if whenever God spoke to you, and said—you’ve gotten off track.  You immediately turned around and got back on track.  The Bible word for that is repentance.  Let me give you a Psalm to pray that will help you in this area.  As a matter of fact, it’s one of your Next Step, to pray this Psalm every day over the next week.  It’s Psalm 143:10.  Let’s read it out loud together.  It’s in your notes.  Here we go.  “Teach me to do You will for You are my God.  May Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”  If you will pray that prayer for the next week, that will make a big difference, and you can let me know that you are going to do that by marking the Next Step.  But in your notes, circle the word “Spirit”.  You know, I mentioned just briefly, that at salvation the Spirit of God takes up residence in your life.  And the Spirit is a very powerful presence in your life and one of the ways that the Spirit will help you stay on track in this area of obedience, is through what I call promptings.  Promptings of the Spirit.  Now, a prompting of the Spirit usually happens when you are facing a crossroads.  You have an opportunity to choose on something, or you have an opportunity to keep your integrity in tact.  And at that moment, you say—Lord, teach me to do Your will.  May Your Spirit guide me and keep me on level ground.  And you will hear this whispering of the Spirit.  That’s right.  Stay strong.  Or maybe it’s in an area of a temptation.  You are about to go down a path of a temptation, perhaps a sexual temptation, and it’s an extramarital affair, or a premarital opportunity for sex and you are about to walk into that person’s place, maybe their bedroom, into their home and the Spirit says—keep your purity.  Just turn back.  That’s a prompting of the Spirit.  You see, if we develop listening ears, we will find that God’s spirit will constantly prompt us to stay on course.  Because obedience is not about my willpower, it’s about God’s will being done in my life by the power of His Spirit.  And this is a powerful force.  I think for some of you, you are going to face those crossroads this week, and if you are attune to it, you are going to hear the Spirit prompt you and say—stay on track.  Do what’s right.  You know, if you would let me share that joy with you, I would love to hear your story.  Confidentially, if you face that crossroads and you experience the prompting of the Spirit, would you send me an email and just let me know, and I will celebrate that with you.  We will just kind of hold each other accountable to learn to listen to the promptings of the Spirit.  Because I can’t tell you how many times in my life I was about to make a bad decision and the Spirit just said—don’t go that way.  Go this way.  And you get back on track as quickly as you can.  So make those adjustments.  So God’s Spirit will speak to you to keep you on the path of obedience.  But there is also another way God speaks to us, to keep us on the track of obedience, and that’s number five.
	5.	Allow others to speak into my life.  God uses the Spirit to guide you, and God will use other people to guide you.  Now the Scripture and the Spirit and more trustworthy than other people, but other people can be a great benefit to you.  I mean, other people, I found, generally don’t whisper to you when you get off track.  They tend to shout to you when you get off track.  Are you crazy?  What are you thinking?  Get back on track.  And you know, we need other people in our lives.  This is why God has given us the church.  Because we are on this journey together.  I mean, every person here, every person listening, we want to live this life of obedience, and we can help each other do better.  And that’s what growth groups are about.  These summer growth groups of 10-15 people, getting together to study the Bible and pray, to be an encouragement to each other.  There is something about just coming together with other people that helps us stay on track.  One of the most famous verses in the Bible talks about that.  Proverbs 27:17.  It says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  Who do you have in your life that is going to sharpen you, that is going to hold you accountable, to call you to a higher level?  Maybe this summer get involved in a growth group, and say—I want to put myself in a position where other people can sharpen me.  And by the way—iron sharpening iron, that’s pretty heavy stuff if you think about it.  Iron on iron?  Sometimes it may hurt.  Sometimes sparks may fly, but hey you get sharpened in the process.  So you need other people.  Allow others to speak into your life.  And then that takes us over to our final action of obedience.
	6.	Which is the ultimate goal of live, which is the aspiration to know God more.  Aspire to know God more.  If you make it your desire and you make it your number one priority in life to know God more, than all of these actions of obedience that we have been talking about, are going to come together in that pursuit.  Really, that is the pursuit of life.  The pursuit to know God.  To pursuit to become like God’s Son, Jesus Christ.  And then this is an equation that just works.  The more I know God, the more obedient I will be.  If you want to be more obedient, get to know God more.  If you want more obedience in your life?  Make an aspiration to know God a greater priority.  You see grow in my relationship with God, I grow in my obedience to God.  You say—well, how do I do this?  Look at I John 5:3.  It says, “And this is love to obey His commands.”  Okay.  “And His commands are not burdens.”  You say—well, how can that be because to me when I still think of obedience, I shudder inside and I want to go my own way.  But I want you to see that God’s commands are not burdensome because this is the life you were created to live.  I mean, yes=God’s best.  I mean, do you want to end up like Cain?  Look, do you know anybody who names their child Cain?  I don’t know anybody who does that.  I mean that’s right up there with Judas on the “don’t name your child” name list.  Alright?  This is not a model worth following.  You know, it’s a life of obedience.  It’s a life of knowing God.  It’s a life of significance.  And to do that, I put three action steps in your notes.  (1)  Be a student of God’s Word, that’s what we are doing today.  That’s what we do in growth groups.  (2) Be a servant of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.  (3) And be sensitive to God’s Spirit, the promptings of His Spirit.  Look, Abel is just the start of this process of what an obedient life is about.  But it leads directly to Jesus Christ who is our ultimate model.  I mean, our ultimate model for obedience is Jesus Christ.  And for those of us who have made the decision to follow Jesus, then we take up this passion to know God, to adjust quickly when we get off track, to ask for God’s will to be done each day.  To follow the promptings of God’s Spirit.  To begin each day with “Yes, Lord”.  You know, Jesus, if anybody had a right to be disobedient, it was Jesus Christ.  Fully God, fully man.  He could have gone His own way.  But yet He submitted Himself.  He humbled Himself and He became obedient.  As a matter of fact, your memory verse, Philippians 2:8 talks about that.  Jesus, as our model of obedience, you will get a card with verse on it as you leave, but let’s read this verse out loud together.  Here we go.  “Jesus humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Some might say—you know, that cross, that was a defeat.  But I want you to understand, it wasn’t.  The cross the best thing that could have happened.  The cross is what brought salvation.  The cross is what restored the broken relationship between humans and between God.  Between me and God who loves me.  And the cross, ultimately, brought about the resurrection, which opens the door to the life that God has for each of us.  So thank God that God’s Son was obedient.  What are you going to choose?  God’s way, obedience, or are you going to continue to live a life of stubbornness.  God puts the choice in your hands.  It’s up to you.  But the obedient life is the path to the life that God blesses.  I hope that’s what you will choose.  Let’s pray together and ask God to help us choose that path.
	Let’s bow our heads and pray.  I’m just going to pray a simple prayer, it’s my prayer, and if this matches up with you are feeling, maybe you could say “me, too Lord”.
	God, forgive me for that streak of stubbornness that I have in my life.  God, forgive me when I try to go my own way and think my own thoughts and to follow my own authority.  In my better moments, in my more mature moments, I know that the life of following you is the best life.  So, God, I pray that You will use other people to help me stay on track, that Your Spirit will speak loudly into my life and guide me.  That every day that You would show Your will to me and You would give me the strength to say “yes Lord”.  God, teach me to do Your will for You are my God.  May Your good Spirit me on level ground.  I pray this just as sincerely as I know how.  
	If you are here today and you have never taken that first step of obedience to follow Jesus Christ, maybe right now you will and say—
	Dear Jesus, I realize that following You is the best path.  So forgive me of my sins.  Give me the direction for the rest of my life.  Help me to follow You as closely as I can from this day forward.  I want to live for You.  In Jesus’ name, we all pray.  Amen.

This sermon transcript is a free resource provided by Nelson Searcy and Church Leader Insights.  For other resources visit www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com.
	
Nelson Searcy is the founding and Lead Pastor of The Journey Church in New York City. The Journey is an innovative, multi-cultural, multi-site church in Manhattan and Jersey City.  The Journey is one of the fastest growing churches in the United States and was recognized by Outreach Magazine in 2006 as one of the Top 25 Innovated Churches in America.  The church is recognized for its creativity, media and relevant approach to life changing teaching. Nelson is also the founder of www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com - a website devoted to resourcing pastors and church leaders.