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  WHY OBEY GOD DOES IT REALLY MATTER
  by Shane Idleman
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of obedience to God's
Word amidst challenges and societal pressures. It discusses the
struggles faced by believers, the need for unity despite differences,
and the significance of standing firm in faith. The speaker addresses
various societal issues, highlighting the unchanging nature of God's
moral standards and the importance of humility and compassion in dealing
with struggles and differences.

Topics: "Obedience to God's Word", "Unity in Faith"
Scripture References: Proverbs 3:5, James 1:22, Galatians 5:1, 1 Peter 5:5, Psalm 119:105, Romans 12:2, Hebrews 13:8, Ephesians 4:2, 1 Corinthians 10:13

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of obedience to God's Word amidst
challenges and societal pressures. It discusses the struggles faced by
believers, the need for unity despite differences, and the significance
of standing firm in faith. The speaker addresses various societal
issues, highlighting the unchanging nature of God's moral standards and
the importance of humility and compassion in dealing with struggles and
differences.

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CONTENT
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Hope is yours to take. Peace is found in grace. During COVID, I'd say
now about the last year and a half, even up to recent, estimating 150
people have moved out of California that went here.

Some people didn't come back after COVID and, you know, the church. But
then instead of shrinking, it grew and grew and grew. And so what we're
finding, though, is God is bringing hungry people, hungry for his word,
hungry for the truth.

And that's why it's encouraging for us. And we talked to Pastor Abraham.
This is one of the most faithful, easiest in one regard churches to lead
because people are hungry for God.

But then it becomes very difficult because the enemy is also working.
With that said, I will confirm the rumors that I was in jail last week.
Steve, you're like shocked, aren't you? What has happened? Well, it's
Facebook jail.

I was on Facebook jail. I don't know if we should clap about that. I
don't know if it's a good thing.

They said you are in noncompliance to our, whatever they call it, fact
checkers and just all this stuff. And then YouTube removed a video, and
we're going to have to suspend your channel if you don't knock it off.
And so this is the world we live in.

Difficulties. But the irony is we took that YouTube video and put it on
Rumble, the one they removed. And now there's 8,000 views within a few
days.

So God is getting that out there. And maybe I should clarify, because I
know it's important with the whole vaccine debate. And our church dance
has been obvious from the get-go, is that we believe in allowing people
their freedom to do what they want on either side.

And as you know, I have just with a health background, I have my
concerns. I've vocalized them, but ultimately we can't let it divide us.
They're trying to out there, but we believe in people are allowed their
freedom and we have to just, whether we disagree or not.

And I'm thinking COVID is bringing out the best and worst of us because
we're called to be at unity with one another, but how do you really
develop that if you're never tested? I mean, it's real easy to be
united. If everyone believes like you believe, how do you develop
perseverance and long suffering if you're not challenged by those
things? And so I just had a, just this morning, a text from a mentor of
mine, best friend as a pastor, really has done a lot for our ministry.
And he differs with me on this.

He actually just recently got the vaccine so he could go minister at the
hospital and different things, but he really appreciated the article
that is in today's paper. If you, if you saw the article that went out
online, I'll try to hand it out this week, trying to show how we can
unite the church while still having strong beliefs. I think this is a
big issue and I think it's okay to have strong beliefs, but when you
start forcing and mandating and scorning and, and making people feel
shameful, it's just really, and false numbers, false narratives is
really gets tiring.

What I love about the Bible. And as we go through this, you'll be
hearing me say this more and more. The Bible is not only confirmed.

I believe once you have the Holy spirit and the Holy spirit bears
witness of God's word in Christ, I'll have a father and it bears witness
that we have the spirit of God. But in addition to that, there are many
scientific discoveries that confirm the word of God, many prophetic
things that confirm the word of God, many historical things and
archeological discoveries that confirm the word of God. For example, the
Euphrates river is still there.

Well, what about these, the other three rivers? Well, I believe as we
get into that later, when God brought the flood in the, it really says
in the great deeps were broken up. And I think that's a little bit more
than a tidal wave here or there. I think all hell broke loose and you
could see the continents were one body of land and they kind of broke
away.

You see the mountains breaking up different types of mountains, whether
it's a block mountain or a fractured mountain or volcanic. And you see
this huge thing taking place and it's going to be very interesting as we
go forward in the weeks ahead, you take the Bible, you've got the
Euphrates river, you've got the coins, you've got the city of David,
you've got the, the discoveries of the walls of Jericho or Jerusalem and
all of it's there. But you get, for example, to the book of Mormon and
nothing is there, no cities, no tools.

They didn't find anything zero. Absolutely nothing is there yet. They
put that above the word of God.

And so we can have a lot of confidence in the word of God. And I know
people do say, you know, Shane, why do you pick on Mormonism or Jehovah
witness or Roman Catholicism? And my thought is I don't pick at all,
pick on them like judgmental. I'm showing you the difference.

This is what they believe. And if you believe something that differs
from the Bible that should cause alarm to go off and say, okay, well
listen, for example, Joseph Smith is right or Jesus Christ is right. You
can't have both either the decrees and the papacy, the decrees of Rome
and the papacy and the Pope are correct or you, the Bible's correct.

You can't, you can't have is purgatory in the Bible. No. Is praying to
Mary in the Bible? No.

Is going to a priest and confessing your sin? No. And I can just go on
immaculate conception. So the immaculate deception, not conception.

She wasn't immaculately conceived. There's not the perpetual virginity
of Mary. She was always a virgin.

So you have all these things that are just against the word of God. So
I'm a coward if I don't say anything, actually, would it be easier to
say nothing? Oh, if I was Joel Steen and I didn't, I didn't upset
anybody except true spirit filled Christians are left thirsting for
more, but you don't upset the world. You don't upset the media.

Oprah will have you on the view. You think the view would have me on
man. It was actually funny.

If you go and you put in on YouTube, Shane, I used to go on there a lot.
I went to New York with me and Morgan went to New York, but they would
have me go to Santa Monica every three months. And I got a private email
that said, Hey, we're going to get rid of my program.

And they're not, you know, you're you're a little too much for, for what
they're wanting to do. And so that stopped that right away, because when
you're being vocal and bold, as long as it's not arrogant and in your
face, but it's, it's that John the Baptist voice crying in the
wilderness. Not everyone likes that.

What we've seen before is any, any type of church on fire for God, you
will upset carnal people and Pharisees that both those groups do not
like being challenged with the word of God, obedience and the filling of
the Holy spirit go hand in hand. There's not a quenching. There's not a
grieving.

There's a, there's a on fire for God. And I know we get caught in sin.
I'm not talking about that, but besetting sin and not obeying God.

When he says do something, we don't do something. There are
ramifications. Have you heard of Solomon? King Solomon? It's
interesting.

The Bible said, and God said that Solomon, you will not fail to have
someone sit on the throne from here on out. Your throne will keep going.
If, if you do this, if you obey my commandments, if you follow hard
after me and keep my statutes, see conditional.

What happened? He married 700 women. Why haven't brought up the 300
concubines? Oh boy. And so they, they, they drew his heart away from the
Lord.

And he wrote at the end of his life, all his vanity. And he walked away
from God. Jesus said, if you hear my sayings and do them, you're like a
man who built his house upon the rock.

If my people who are called by my name sometimes obey me, it's
conditional. The thou shalt nots and the thou shalt still apply when it
comes to moral application. And that's where we're going.

And I know there's a great struggle within from disobedience and
obedience. JC Ryle and his great book on holiness. If you want to be
convicted by it, he said the true marks, the two true marks that someone
is a Christian is great inner peace, but a great inner struggle because
you have both those things at war within you.

And the thou shall nots keep us on the right path. One of the, I guess
it's a condition of this type of church. And it's just something you
have to deal with is we see so many people will come in.

Oh, I love Westside Christian Fellowship. And I'm so convicted and
they're at the altar and they're growing and they're, they're just, Oh,
I just, I can't get enough of God. And then you don't see them for a
while and you see them or talk to them.

And now they're upset. They're mad at the church. And it's usually the
same things you're well, you guys are just too extreme, too judgmental.

But what's happened is they've drifted from obedience to disobedience
and who wants to go somewhere where you're being convicted. That's why
the world doesn't come to church. That's why many Christians don't come
to church is because there's a conviction.

And so we see that a lot and you have to find that balance,
encouragement, conviction, love them, but be bold. And finding that
balance is very difficult and challenging. And these, the thou shalt not
always play a role.

God's commandments are guardrails through the canyons of life. God's
commandments are guardrails through those canyons. It's interesting
here.

He said, do not eat of it. End of story. You'll die.

I'm not going to explain it. And remember this with God, you're not
always going to understand the wise. Can anyone relate? Why, why is this
happening? Well, you can ask that now about what's going on in our
nation.

Why is this happening? What's going on? Why did I get this? Why am I
being treated like, why, why, why, Lord, you want me to do that? But
why, if we're not careful, we can become bitter. And so I found that
just obedience, the sweet smelling aroma of obedience, the resting in
God's sovereignty. I don't know why, but I'm supposed to love difficult
people.

I don't know why, but I'm not supposed to get the last word in, be quick
to listen, slow to speak. I don't know why. Some of you might say, but I
need to love my significant other, even when they're not loving me.

So you had to change that from personal narrative to corporately. And we
have to trust and obey. What's that old hymn? Trust and obey, trust and
obey, and stop asking the why's.

Sometimes we need to tell our kids that. Do you have kids that ask why
all the time? Just because I said, I know I'm not going to sit and
explain things, but we do that with God sometimes. In the Old Testament,
they look forward.

So they would have faith looking forward and trusting in God, not
trusting in the law, trusting in God. We look back at the cross. They
look forward to it.

And that's where Abraham's bosom comes into play, that there was a
resting place for those waiting for Jesus Christ to come. And that's why
I believe he set the captives free. When he conquered hell, death, and
the grave and the resurrection, that's when the Old Testament saints
were also set free.

They died believing and waiting. Now we look back and we believe and put
our faith in Jesus Christ. So we all looked at the same cross, the same
Savior.

But in the Old Testament, you were under the law. The New Testament says
if you obey the law but break it in one point, you've broken it all. Who
can follow this? In other words, who can measure up to God's standard?
Nobody.

We all fall short. And the word of the law here, it imprisons you before
it releases you. It confines you before it unlocks.

And so when people say, I'm not under the law, meaning they're not under
the obligation to follow the law, but it doesn't mean that when God
says, thou shalt not, that they're not obligated anymore to obey. It's
two completely different things. But we do have to be careful because in
Galatians 3, it warns us not to add anything to this.

So if you talk to people and they say, yeah, you know, Jesus, you know,
but, because Paul talks about in Galatians, he says, oh foolish
Galatians, who has bewitched you? Who has tricked you? Are you now going
to finish your journey in the flesh, what began in the spirit? In other
words, you became a Christian, you exercised faith, you believed in
Jesus, but now you're going to the law. Here's my final Passover, God
says. God says you will no longer need the blood of bulls and goats and
rams, and once a year a high priest goes in and intercedes once in
finality.

That's why Jesus said to Telestai, it is finished on the cross, it's
been paid, the sin debt has been paid, so we don't have to keep
something. Anytime we say Jesus plus, we're minimizing the complete
finished work on the cross. Now if people use that to continue in sin,
that's something else.

We can say with authority that those things that were set in stone at
creation, do not change. They cannot change because these are moral
parameters, and morality on how you are to live cannot change. And when
God creates man and woman, male and female, when a person is born a male
or born a female, you can tell how far we have fallen and how depraved
we are by how they're saying that they can change their biological
makeup, and that you actually get in trouble for calling them the wrong
pronoun.

Sometimes I think I'm in the twilight zone. It's so clear, it is so
clear. We can have compassion because it's a real struggle, and people
struggle with it in this church.

I've prayed for people, we've talked with people, we've discipled them,
but a lot of it also is being fed by the media, being fed by artists.
You know, Lil Nas X is pregnant in YouTube, and he dresses now like a
female. You're sending the wrong message to the kids, and so we've
created some of this environment.

Some of it, and you encourage people, okay, if you struggle with that,
someone else struggles with same-sex attraction, someone else can't put
the bottle down, someone else has to get off of Xanax, someone else
can't kick their caffeine, nicotine, into porn habit. See, there's
struggles with it all, so you encourage people in that area that the
struggles are real, but they're different, and they're unique, but it
doesn't mean they're allowable. It doesn't mean that God's Word has now
changed.

Sin is sin. So what I tell people who struggle with that is find out
first what they're feeding on, where they're getting their information,
where did this start, their parents, are you in God's Word? Do you see
the value of you being created in the image of God? God created you like
this. Just because it's a struggle doesn't mean it's right.

Let's pray. Let's see if God's Word can set you free in seeking Jesus
with all your heart, with all your strength. But see, here's where we
make a mistake too in the church.

We think that sometimes God just fixes all that. Did you know sometimes
He lets a person struggle? I mean, how many people pray, they're like,
God, take this addiction away, and they're crying, they're begging.
Guess what? They have to fight it again tomorrow.

They have to fight it again ten years later. If they open that door up
again, for example, those who, let's say, have struggled with alcohol,
and they give it up for a few years, and they open that door again,
what's wrong with me? Or addiction for something else. See, we don't
realize that we're all struggling with something.

And Jesus sometimes sets a person free. I don't ever want to go back to,
I've been set free, this is amazing. I prayed for, actually baptized one
of the girls who came out of a heavy addiction.

We prayed with her mom a year, we didn't know if she was gonna make it.
And now she looks like a new person. None of that even is a matter
anymore.

None of that is even a struggle anymore. Yet we have other people,
Shane, I can't seem to kick this. What is going on? Why doesn't He
deliver me from this? And I think we hurt people when we tell them,
well, Jesus should have delivered you from that.

I don't know. But 20 years ago, me and my wife just started, or 19 years
ago, probably, just started attending Calvary Chapel Church. And one of
the guys in leadership, we're at a men's study, and we're talking about
something, and I was in construction at this time.

I mean, I'm a Christian, but man, an ice cold beer sure looks good like
it used to. Brother, you shouldn't have those desires anymore. Are you
saved? I mean, you shouldn't have that.

I'm just, I don't know what to tell you. I go in yard house, and they
bring a yard to somebody that looks really good. The pole's there, my
friend.

I don't know what to tell you. But see, he's, well, you should never
have that desire again. God shouldn't set you free, because He set him
free.

You see the difference? And so on this whole transgender, LGBTQ, the
Christian should have the most sympathy and compassion and love.
Understand, that's their struggle. It's not mine.

I have something else I'm struggling with. And those who say, not me.
You're struggling with pride.

So, and need we say how deadly pride is? I see these prideful people
putting down others, and I weep for these people, because man, they're
in a bad spot. God says, I hate pride. And really, a strong prideful
attitude in a Christian is almost a sign that maybe they might not be a
Christian.

Because a reflection of the Holy Spirit in you is humility. It doesn't
mean you're not prideful. Anybody struggle with it? Hello? Everybody
better raise their hand.

Creation, morality does not change. How God creates us does not change.
God creates them Adam and Eve, male and female, and the two shall become
one.

That's my creative order. No law will change it. No Supreme Court will
change it.

No President or Senate will change it. They will not change God's mind.
Now, where we're going is, this part of my sermon could be illegal.

Why is there so much outcry for sexual sin and validating it? Laws do
not change God's mind. What is legal is not always lawful. Deal with it
this morning, and get back on track in the center of God's will, and
you'll feel like David.

Oh, oh, that the joy of my salvation will return. Blessed are the bones
ye have broken. Blessed is my heart that is on fire for you, God.

I have drifted, that's why I love that song, prone to wander. Lord, I
feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart and seal it.

Seal it in thy courts above. God, don't let me walk away. Praying the
prodigal son home, and as a believer, make that decision.

I will follow God come hell or high water. Not perfectly, but I will
live the rest of my days, and I will finish strong in this area of
obedience. Make that commitment this morning.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/tvwrTdcLFxo.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/shane-idleman/why-obey-god-does-it-really-matter-tvwrTd/
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