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  BEING OBEDIENT TO THE WORD OF GOD
  by Randy Khran
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of surrendering all
aspects of our lives to Jesus, feeding the spirit over the flesh, and
walking in faith and obedience to God. It discusses the need to have a
genuine relationship with Christ, not just surface-level belief, and the
significance of embracing the sufferings of Christ. The message
highlights the power of God's grace, the necessity of being led by the
Spirit, and the call to surrender our will to Jesus completely for His
glory and purposes.

Topics: "Surrender to Christ", "Walking in Faith"
Scripture References: Romans 6:6, Galatians 5:16, Hebrews 11:1, Philippians 3:10, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:14, James 2:26, Colossians 3:1, 1 Corinthians 1:18, Philippians 3:8

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of surrendering all aspects of our
lives to Jesus, feeding the spirit over the flesh, and walking in faith
and obedience to God. It discusses the need to have a genuine
relationship with Christ, not just surface-level belief, and the
significance of embracing the sufferings of Christ. The message
highlights the power of God's grace, the necessity of being led by the
Spirit, and the call to surrender our will to Jesus completely for His
glory and purposes.

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CONTENT
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Let's pray. Lord, thankful for today. This is a day that you've made.

We rejoice and we're glad in it. Lord, just pray for your anointing,
that you would speak to us, we would hear your word, that we could
receive it with meekness, that it would be implanted in us, we would
hear something that would convict us, would encourage us, would cause us
to press on in Jesus' name. Today being what the world would celebrate
as Father's Day, we have one Father, even God, but it's not enough that
we just acknowledge God as our Father, but that we're obedient to the
Word of God.

I think of the time when Jesus was speaking to the Jews who believed on
his name, and then he said to them, Jews that believed on his name, come
to me to be free. Did you know that we as the people of God, who believe
in the name of Jesus, or the name of Yahweh, or Jehovah, that we would
come to him to be free. It's not enough to confess Jesus with our mouth,
we have to have a measure of faith that goes deeper than surface
believism.

It has to be a righteousness which comes by faith that leads to action.
And when we struggle, and when we're tempted, we must overcome by the
power of his grace. And if we have anything less of a Jesus that becomes
a little J, not a capital J, then we come into a form of godliness, and
we deny the power of God.

The power of God that leads to salvation has been revealed to us. It's
in his grace. And that grace comes through faith.

It's not of ourselves, it's a gift from God, lest any one of us should
boast. But these Jews who believed in Jesus had something of a surface
believism. They had a mouth confession.

Jesus could understand that they were Jews. They had Abraham as their
father. They loved religion, but they had yet to encounter the
relationship with a Christ that is risen.

They didn't understand the risen Christ, because Jesus was not yet
glorified. And Jesus began to speak to them that they needed to be free.
And there's many of us today who lack freedom.

Some of us say, well, I have freedom, you know, to live my best life
now, because I'm a Christian, and all my sins are forgiven, and my name
is written in the book, and I'm forever a child, and I'm eternally
secure. So I have freedom. I have freedom to do whatever I want.

I have freedom to go here. I have freedom to go there. I have freedom to
make my own decisions.

I have freedom to go to church. I have freedom not to go to church. I
have freedom to read the Word of God.

I have freedom to abstain from reading the Word of God, because nothing
I can ever do can change the fact that God loves me, and I'm a child of
God. But you know, I have nine children, and I've had to make the hard
choice of asking one of my children to repent or to leave. That was the
hardest choice I ever had to make, because I know that nothing can
undefile us, can defile us, when we're in the presence of God.

No unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God, and when you're a
father like our Heavenly Father, we have to come under His authority,
and His authority is laid out for us in the parameters of His Word. And
if we're not willing to come to Him to be free, then we have only one
other choice to leave. Jesus said to the disciples, He said to those who
were following Him after He had fed them with the loaves and the fishes,
you know our Father is a good Father.

He's a very good Father. He's good to the evil and even the unthankful
alike. But when He invited them to come and partake of the communion, to
eat of His flesh and to drink of His blood, they said, who is this kind
of man who says eat of my flesh and drink of my blood? And they didn't
understand His speech.

They didn't understand His words. His words were hard sayings. They were
difficult.

And Jesus said even to those Jews who believed on Him, why don't you
understand my speech? Why are you not hearing the things that I'm
saying? And there was one reason why they couldn't partake of the
communion. And they couldn't understand when Jesus said, come to me to
be free. And they clung to their religion and said, we have Abraham as
our Father.

We've never been in bondage to anyone. And the reason why they couldn't
understand is because His Word had no place in them. You can confess
Christ.

You can have perfect attendance in church and Sunday school. You can
have a complete 100% up to date on your tithes and on your offerings.
You can do all the right things and dot every iron cross, every key in
this Christ.

Because His Word has no place in you. Having a form of godliness but
denying the power of the realm. The power.

What kind of power? To feed on Christ. To become bone of His bones and
flesh of His flesh. Are you willing to become like Christ in that regard
that as He is, so are we in this world? Are you willing to surrender all
your hopes, dreams and plans, all your rights that you have in this life
and exchange them for a crown? To count all things as rubbish and as
dung for the excellence of the knowledge of knowing Him? Somehow we have
this kind of understanding and thinking that we can come any which way.

We can come any which way. But there's only one way we can come. Jesus
said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no one can come to the
Father but by me.

And if we seek to come in another way, we'll be found as thieves and as
robbers. Jesus says, I am the door to the sheepfold. All who came before
me, all these other people who were saying I'm the Christ or who were
professing that they were someone great, they were thieves and robbers.

But we have to come through the door. That door is Jesus with a capital
J coming through the Word of God. There's no other way to the Father
except through the Word.

Jesus is the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. We beheld His glory,
the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Why don't you understand my speech? Because my Word has no place in it.

Do you have room in your heart for the Word of God? Not just to read it
mentally and to have room in your head for the Word of God, but do you
have room in your heart for the Word of God? Has the Word become flesh
and indwelt you? Have you gone through the Word in a year or maybe the
last five years? But has the Word gone through you and become a part of
your DNA? Has it become part of who you are, your character, your
nature, your values, your convictions? When you read the Word of God,
you come to an understanding of the way in which you should go. Jesus
said I am the way. It shapes the way you become.

It shapes the values you hold to. And when you come into situations,
whether it be with outsiders, whether it be people in a fellowship, or
whether it be your own natural family, you are confronted with the
convictions of your conscience and your convictions of the way Jesus has
given you a guidance by which you should live. Many times we say well
you know we should use wisdom.

Wisdom in the world's eyes is total confusion to God. Worldly wisdom is
earthly, it is soulish and sensual, and it comes from the devil himself.
It's demonic.

That's worldly wisdom. With all the psychology, sociology, and all this
kind of nonsense that the scholars of this age would seek to promote in
dealing with people with their problems and trying to mask sins with
medications and antidotes and serums and lies, we have an antidote when
we are bitten by the snake, by the serpent in the wilderness. Just as
Moses lifted up the serpent on a bronze pole in the wilderness, it says
so the Son of Man must be lifted up.

The message of the cross, this is foolishness to them who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. And as Moses
lifted up the serpent and said if you're bit by these snakes as you're
traveling through the wilderness, look unto him and be saved. And it
says that he who knew no sin became sin for us.

He became the cursed of God. And so that whoever has received of this
curse can look to Jesus and find salvation, because he took our curse
upon himself on the tree, that we might become the righteousness of God
in Jesus Christ through faith in him. So what has Jesus done for you?
Well he's given me a good life, he's given me a $22 an hour, he's given
me a place, a roof on my head and some food to eat.

Well these are good things. These are natural things. These are the
things the world is happy if they have them.

But he says you, O man of God, seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness. And all these things, he knows you need them. But we
often seek the natural things in accordance with finding whether he's a
good father or not a good father.

But you know what, he gives these things to the unbelievers and to the
ungodly and to the ones who are sinning to the uttermost. He's kind to
them also. He gives them their wages.

He provides them roofs on their head. He gives them food to eat. But
they don't know him as a loving father.

They don't know him as Lord. But to us who are being saved, it is the
power of God to know him. The power of that resurrection, the indwelling
Jesus.

Does Christ dwell in your heart through faith? Have you received of him?
As many as received him, to them he gives the right to become the
children of God. Are you a child of God? Do you know him? The power of
his resurrection. How about this? Have you entered into the fellowship
of his sufferings? Not only the power of his resurrection, but also the
fellowship of his sufferings.

We say we've become a blessing now because he became a curse for us. But
have you made a determination in your heart not only to eat of the
loaves and to the of the leeks and of the onions and to enjoy the good
things in this life, but have you now also embraced the cross? Have you
also despised the shame and said I'm following after Jesus now? Have you
also been rejected by men but chosen by God and precious? Have you made
a decision to surrender your life completely and wholly to him? For
better or for worse? As the Covenant suggests, for richer or for poorer?
In sickness and in health? Are you in it till the death? The scripture
says he who endures to the end shall be saved. Many of us like the
doctrine once saved, always saved.

But the scripture says he who endures to the end shall be saved. So
brother, sister, make your call and your election sure. Don't neglect so
great a salvation.

Embrace the sufferings of Christ. For if we suffer with him, we shall
also reign with him. And if we endure, there's not much of endurance
spoken of today, because there's not much of people who really embrace
the message of grace.

Grace to the extent that it teaches us how to say no to ungodliness and
worldly passions. And teaches us how to live holy and righteous and
godly in this present age. From Titus in chapter 2 and verse 11.

Have you entered into this kind of grace? I remember when I used to go
to church. I had no resurrection life in me. But mere religious
attendance.

Outward form. Outward show. And many like me were put into leadership.

I used to teach Sunday school. You could become an usher or a deacon.
Perhaps even be the pastor in some churches.

For today even homosexuals and abominable, disobedient, disqualified can
lead in pretty much all over half the denominations now. It's craziness
what's going on. But we have a standard.

Not made up in our own heads, but written in red letters. By the words
of Paul. You say well that's not red letters.

Yes it is. Because all scripture is given by inspiration of God. And it
is good for for doctrine, for studying, for reproof and correction.

And Paul under the unction of the Holy Spirit. In Romans he spoke that
no homosexual, nor drunkard, nor sexually immoral, nor fornicator, nor
liar, nor thieves, or whoremongers shall have any inheritance in the
kingdom of God in Christ. It also speaks that such were some of us.

But we were washed. How were we washed? Well we all partook of a
baptism. We're washed in water.

But first and foremost we're washed in the blood. Covered in the blood
of Jesus. And this is how we can have a good relationship with a good
father.

Because of what Jesus did for you. If Jesus didn't do for you what he
did on the cross, then there'd be no reconciliation back to God. We
would no longer or not even ever be able to experience him as this
loving father.

This good, good father that we know him to be today. You know God is all
about covenant. We in our culture don't understand covenant.

Because when the going gets tough, we bail. If things aren't working
out, we cut and run. Whenever stuff gets difficult, we don't need to
deal with that.

We don't need to take this. You know what? That's not the way of
suffering. It says when you go and you work for a boss that is unruly,
he talks down to you, and you bear it, and you take it patiently, it
says it's commendable to God.

That's commendable. And if you come under the authorities that God puts
in your life and you suffer for being a Christian by doing the right
thing, it's commendable to God. But many today they have no concept of
suffering.

Suffering is not part of the vocabulary. We do everything in our life to
try to avoid this kind of suffering. We want to sit on the right hand of
Jesus and on the left.

We want to do great things for God, but we're not prepared to drink of
the cup. What cup? He asked the brothers, James and John, they said, the
mother came said, we want, I want my sons a special place beside you in
the kingdom. One on the right, one on the left.

He says, that's not for me to give. But he said, are you prepared to
drink of the cup? What's the cup? It's the cup of suffering, my friend.
When Jesus went into that garden of Gethsemane, the real battle, you
want to know where it was fought? In Gethsemane.

That's where he had to decide to surrender his will completely to the
will of his father, to go through with God. That's where when he asked
his brothers to pray with him and he said, please watch and pray with me
lest you enter into temptation. And they fell asleep because they had
not yet understood the way of the cross.

When Peter once confronted the Lord, the Lord tried to share his secret
with him. It says he shares his secrets with those who fear him. He
said, Peter, I want you to understand something.

Who do men say that I am? He said, you're the Christ, the son of the
living God. He said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,
Peter, but my father in heaven. And he says, I am going to go to the
cross and I'm going to suffer many things at the hands of sinners.

You know, and he talked about these things and Peter said, Lord, you
will never go to the cross so long as I'm around. I'll see to it that
you're protected. I'll make sure that doesn't happen on my watch.

And the Lord rebuked Peter. And he said to Peter, Satan, get behind me.
You're an offense to me.

You are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. Men do
not have an understanding of the sufferings of Christ and the glories
that will follow. Peter, in that point in time, without the Holy Spirit,
did not understand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would
follow.

It was necessary for the Christ to die and not only to die, but to be
raised again. And it is necessary for you to be buried with him in
baptism unto death. So also that you might be raised in the likeness of
his resurrection.

It is necessary. Unless you've experienced both the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, you're still dead in your sins. You're
still a religious man.

You've not entered into the knowing of him. You know about him. Perhaps
he's with you.

Perhaps he's been guiding you along your journey. But his longing is to
be in you, both to have and to will for his good pleasure and for his
glory. Will you surrender all to Jesus? Will you lay it all at his feet?
Will you say unto the Lord, have thine own way? Mold me and shape me
after thy will.

And I'm not gonna make it happen while I'm waiting, yielded and still.
Get thee behind me, Satan. You're an offense to me.

You know what he was speaking to? He was speaking to the flesh that
Peter was speaking from. Because the Satan works through the flesh. He
speaks through the flesh.

The mind of the flesh is hostile to the things of the Spirit. When
someone speaks from the flesh, you're speaking from Satan himself.
Because Satan doesn't ever speak from the Holy Spirit.

He only speaks from the flesh. The natural man. The human wisdom.

Save your life, man. You'll live your best life now. We're gonna set up
our earthly kingdom now.

We don't have to die. We don't have to suffer. It's not knowing the ways
of God.

But the wisdom of God. It's foolishness to them that are perishing. But
to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

There was a time when I had someone confront me and exhort me about a
decision that I took. Saying my decision was foolish and I would come in
years from now to regret my decision. And I based the decision on
conviction.

Not only of conscience, but of the Word of God. And I said to this
family member, I said, I'll submit to your counsel if you can answer me
one question. It came from the Holy Spirit.

I said, you're my senior in years. If you can answer me this one
question, I'll submit to your wisdom. I said, what is the beginning of
wisdom? Answer me this one question, I will submit to your wisdom.

Because you're my senior in years. They could not answer me correctly. I
said, the wisdom that comes from God is first pure.

And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When we have to
come right down to it, the plumb line between first pure, then
peaceable, and gentle, willing to yield. The plumb line is the fear of
the Lord.

If it doesn't pass the purity test when it comes to the conviction and
the Word of God, then it is not wisdom. It's man's wisdom, which is
earthly, sensual, and demonic. But the wisdom which is from above, which
comes from God, passes the purity test.

Then it is peaceable and gentle, willing to yield. If it's not a purity
issue, then you can give your back. You can submit yourself.

You can accept wrong. But when it comes to the purity and the conviction
of the Word of God, you need to stand with Jesus and be counted. To
suffer with Christ for his name's sake.

If you compromise your convictions, then you will stand for nothing. You
will fold like a cheap tent when persecution comes. But if you stand
with Christ and you hold to his Word and you love his Word like you love
the Lord, because the two are inseparable, you cannot love Jesus apart
from the Word of God.

You cannot love God apart from loving Jesus. Then you will be counted
worthy to suffer for his name, to receive the reward of his suffering.
May the Lord give you understanding in these things.

I say, seek the Lord while he may be found, and call on him while he's
there. You know, when Jesus said to those Jews who believed on his name,
come to come to me to be free, we have areas in our life, some of us,
who are not yielded. We're holding to our own will.

We're holding to our pride. We're holding to our integrity. Some of us,
some of us are still holding on to sins.

We're not letting go. We've not surrendered all to Jesus. We find
ourselves fighting in the flesh and ultimately fighting against God.

Come to Jesus. All to Jesus I surrender. All to him I freely give.

All your hopes, all your dreams, and all your plans. Hold them like this
and ask Jesus if he wants them, take them and make them for his glory
and for his purposes. Otherwise, at the end of the day, when we stand
before him, we'll stand as paupers, bankrupt, spiritually bankrupt, with
nothing to offer him.

When we come with all of our wood and our hay and our stubble, when he
puts the fire to it, you'll be ashes. But if you continue to walk by
faith and you persevere and persist in the faith, then your faith will
become refined as gold is refined in the fire. Gold, silver, precious
stones, these are the things that will have eternal value in the kingdom
of God, your faith.

That which is done for Christ by faith, a righteousness which comes by
faith. Brothers, you say, well what are you talking so much about faith?
Because it says faith without works is dead. Your faith will translate
into the works that come from Christ, not works that come from patting
yourself on the back, not getting the cart before the horse and doing
religious duties to somehow please God by your activities, but a works
that results from sitting at the feet of Jesus.

You know there's a word that says, six days a man shall work and the
seventh day he should rest. There is a rest for the people of God and
when you enter the seventh day rest, you cease from your works and your
labors and you enter into the works of God. These Jews who ate the bread
and were filled said, what must we do that we might work the works of
God? And Jesus said, believe on him whom he has sent.

If you want to work the works of God, you need to have saving faith in
Christ. And when you have saving faith in Christ, then Jesus becomes
your feast. He becomes your flesh that you feed on, the bread that you
eat, in that man doesn't live by the natural things alone but by every
word of God.

That's where your life comes from. Life that comes drawn from the blood
of Emmanuel's veins, you drink of that life. You find your life in him.

He becomes your source. He becomes the reason why you eat and drink and
move and have your being in Jesus. And all the other things that we get
to enjoy in this life are byproducts of a surrendered life to the Lord.

That's where our righteousness and our peace and our joy come from in
the Holy Spirit. If you've not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
I would encourage you to ask a good father even on Father's Day today. A
good father, if you ask him for the Holy Spirit for bread to feed on
him, he's not going to give you a stone.

If you ask him for a fish, he will give you a scorpion or a snake. And
even we fathers who have done our best carnally and naturally being
evil, he says, give good gifts to our own natural children. How much
more will our Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit and good things to
those who ask of him? We don't have because we've not asked.

Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be
open.

You know, if you need something, you want something, you have a desire,
a real burning passion for something, after service we'll get in our
pickup or in our car and we'll head down someplace and we'll go buy it
because we just know that we need to have it. If you are that urgent and
that desperate to receive the Holy Spirit, you could have it. But the
problem is the flesh in us is way more stronger than the faith in us
that desires the things of the Spirit.

And that's the reason is because of what we feed. Being Father's Day, my
father taught me this parable and he said there's a black dog and a
black and a white dog, speaking basically of the flesh and of the
Spirit. I was often referred to as the black sheep.

You heard the term. And he said if the black dog or the flesh and the
white dog from the Spirit, if they fight, who will win? Which one will
win? And the answer is the one that you feed. The one you feed.

If you feed the flesh, the flesh will always win in your life. You'll
always be defeated in your life because you've not been crucified with
Christ. You've not reckoned yourself dead to sin and alive to God.

You may have had a baptism but you're not walking in the true baptism.
Denying self, self-denial, the sufferings of Christ. But if you walk in
the Spirit and you feed the Spirit, then you will make no provision for
the flesh, this black ugliness that rises up from time to time that we
need to reckon dead.

You'll make no provision to give an inch to Him to obey Him and His
lusts. It says if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the flesh,
we will live. And it says as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these
are the sons of God.

And the sons of God do not let the flesh control them in their mortal
body. They surrender their will to the Lord Jesus. And you need to have
your own Gethsemane experience with Christ.

To come to that knowledge of being crucified with Christ. Picking up
your cross, denying yourself and saying, Lord you give me all things
richly to enjoy but I'll not be brought under the power of anything.
I'll not become the tail in this life.

I want to be associated with the head which is Christ. Not many weeks
ago we were going up to the creek, up to the camp, and I saw this dog
chasing his tail. He was just going.

Going hard, chasing his tail. And I just thought, you know what? That's
just a picture of a man chasing after the flesh. He's going after it.

He can see it. He's going hard after and he's exhausting himself. At the
end of that thing, that dog collapsed on the ground, just panting away.

But as I was passing by, he got up again. I saw him going right after
that same tail. You know how foolish it is.

We keep doing the same things over and over and over again, thinking
it's going to bring us joy. It only brings temporary joy and happiness
and we have an appetite called the flesh that never has enough. It's
like the grave.

But if we can lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of for us,
to enter into the fullness, then we can have all the riches that God
promised us. And all the blessings and all the promises which are in
Christ. Yes and Amen for you.

If only you can see them through the eyes of faith. And you can count
them, those things which are not as though they are something. But we so
easily are breaker trips to see those things in the natural as being the
things that are.

And those things which we cannot see with our naked eyes is nothing. But
everything that we can now see in this natural was created from nothing.
All those atoms and molecules when the Father told Jesus to proclaim
that word by the Spirit and those atoms came together and became
everything that we see today, including you and me.

And so it is important that we come to this kind of mature faith. Whom
having not seen, says about the Lord we love. Whom having not seen, not
any of us has laid our eyes on the Father.

We love Him and we obey Him and we've left everything to follow Him.
We've left family, we've left jobs, we've left people, we've left
friends to follow Christ whom we've not seen but we love. That is faith
my friends.

Faith is the evidence or the assurance of things hoped for of those
things that are unseen. And by it you can obtain a good testimony if you
persist in faithful obedience to Christ. May the Lord help you to walk
the faith walk.

You're not alone in it. You have a good good father. He's left you the
comforter in the Holy Spirit.

He's with you and some of you he's in you and he has a longing and a
thirst that you would go further with him. We have but we ask for more.
Come Lord Jesus take us farther.

Lead us and guide us in the way that leads to life in Jesus name.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/FQuyNKgqz7w.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/randy-khran/being-obedient-to-the-word-of-god/
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