Good morning, we are continuing our series “A Church That Pleases God,” and I want to begin by reminding you of where we left off last week. We talked about awe, the awe of God, and said it is the foundation of everything else. Awe is the beginning of wisdom because it opens our eyes to the greatness of God. Awe draws us close to him, humbles our hearts before him, and prepares us to trust him in every area of our lives. As we came to the Lord’s table together, we invited the Holy Spirit to restore that sense of wonder and reverence that the noise and busyness of life can so easily crowd out.

This week, we are taking the next step because awe was never meant to be the end of the journey. Awe is the beginning, and obedience is the response. You can’t stand in awe of a holy God and remain unchanged. Awe always moves us toward surrender, trust, and the life that says, “Lord, whatever you ask of me, the answer is yes.”

Today, we're going to see that a church that pleases God is one that walks in obedience. I want to anchor everything we talk about this morning in one verse spoken by Jesus himself on the night before he went to the cross. He gathered his disciples in the upper room, knowing everything that lay ahead, and he said something so simple and so profound that it has been reshaping the lives of believers ever since.

In John chapter 14, verse 15, Jesus said:

"If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15).

That is our anchor this morning. Not fear, not obligation, not the pressure to perform, but love! Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey.”

Now, before we go any further, I want to say something important, because the word "obedience" carries baggage for many people. For some of us, obedience sounds burdensome. It sounds like restrictions. It sounds like a long list of things you cannot do, coming from a God who is more interested in your compliance than your joy.

If that is the image in your mind right now, I invite you to set it down today, because it is neither the God of Scripture nor the obedience Jesus described. Obedience is not a heavy word. It is not a negative word. It is not a word that steals joy or diminishes life. Obedience is a word that brings life, opens doors, and prepares you for everything God has prepared for you. Obedience is the pathway to blessings, the expression of love, and the fruit of a genuine, Spirit-born faith.

James says it so simply and directly that it cuts through all the complicated religious language and gets right to the point. He writes:

"Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" (James 1:22).

In other words, listening, knowing, and even agreeing are not enough. You can sit in church week after week, fill notebooks with sermon notes, quote Scripture on a dozen topics, and still be no different from before if everything you have learned has never moved from your head to your heart, influencing your hands, your feet, and the choices you make every day.

James calls it self-deception, and he is right. The gap between what we know and how we live is one of the most dangerous places a believer can inhabit. That gap creates the illusion of spiritual maturity without the evidence of it. But a church that pleases God is one that obeys God, not just on Sunday morning but in the ordinary moments of every day.

The first thing I want you to see today is that obedience flows from love. That single truth has the power to completely reframe the way you think about living the Christian life.

Jesus said those words in John 14:15 on the night before he went to the cross. What I want you to know is what he did not say. He did not say, "If you fear me, obey me." He did not say, "If you want to impress me, obey me." He did not say, "If you are trying to earn my approval, stay out of trouble, or check the right boxes, obey me."

He said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”

Love is the foundation. Love is the motivation. Love is what transforms our obedience from a duty into a delight.

Think for a moment about the most loving relationship in your life, someone whose happiness matters to you, someone you would go out of your way to make happy. Now consider how you treat that person. You don't sit around trying to figure out the least you can do for them before it becomes too inconvenient. When you truly love someone, you want to do things that bring them joy. You want to be someone they can count on. You want your life to be a blessing to them, not a disappointment. That is exactly what Jesus describes, and John, who heard those words with his own ears and spent decades reflecting on them, confirms it when he writes:

"This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3).

That is not the language of a slave or a prisoner. That is the language of a son or a daughter who has discovered that the father’s ways are good, that his boundaries protect you rather than punish you, and that a life lived according to his will is the freest, fullest, most satisfying life a person can live.

We must understand that God’s commands are not chains but blessings and wisdom from heaven. They are the operating instructions written by the one who created us and who knows exactly how we were made to thrive.

This is also why legalism always fails in the long run. Legalism tries to produce obedience through external pressure, rules, requirements, and the constant threat of consequences. External pressure can change behavior for a season, but it cannot change the heart. The moment that pressure is removed, the behavior falls apart. And so, what God seeks is something much deeper and more lasting. He wants people whose obedience comes from the inside out, from a heart so full of love and gratitude for what he has done that saying yes to his will feels more natural than saying no.

Obedience is not about earning God’s love; it is about responding to a love that was freely given before we ever deserved it. The Bible says,

"We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

The second thing I want you to see is that obedience is the fruit of faith, and you cannot separate these two things because they were never meant to be. Faith and obedience are not competing ideas; they are two sides of the same coin, and real faith always produces action.

Last week, we anchored this series in Hebrews 11:6, which tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. This week, we are building on that because faith that remains in the realm of belief without ever moving into action is not the kind of faith the Bible describes. James returns to this with urgency that leaves us without excuse. He writes:

"Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17).

A dead faith is a sobering phrase, but James is not trying to discourage us. He is trying to wake us up and help us understand that genuine, living, Spirit-breathed faith always expresses itself in obedient action.

Nowhere in all of Scripture is that truth more powerfully illustrated than in the life of Abraham. The apostle Paul holds him up in Romans as the father of faith for every believer who has come after him, and the reason is not simply that Abraham believed. It is that Abraham’s faith, Abraham’s belief, moved his feet. God told him,

"Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you" (Genesis 12:1).

God didn’t give him a map. He didn’t give him a timeline. He didn’t give him a detailed explanation of what lay ahead. He simply said, “Go.” He gave him a direction, not a destination, and Abraham went anyway.

That is faith expressing itself in obedience. Paul captures it with a phrase that belongs in every believer's vocabulary.

"The obedience that comes from faith" (Romans 1:5).

Not the obedience that earns faith. Not the obedience that produces faith. But the obedience that flows out of faith is its natural and inevitable fruit. When you genuinely believe that God is who he says he is and that he will do what he says he will do, the next step is not an argument or a debate. The next step is movement.

For example, Noah built an ark even though there was no rain in the forecast. Moses stood before Pharaoh with nothing but a staff and a message from God. The early church turned the Roman Empire upside down, not because they had political influence or institutional power, but because they had been filled with the Holy Spirit and were willing to go wherever he sent them. Each of them was living out what Paul meant by the obedience that comes from faith.

Here is what I want you to take away from this point. There is a word from God somewhere in your life right now. Maybe it came through the Scriptures, maybe through prayer, maybe through the counsel of a trusted brother or sister in Christ, or maybe through a prompting of the Holy Spirit that you have been aware of for weeks or months but have not yet acted on. The question faith is asking you is not whether you can see the whole picture. The question faith is asking is whether you trust the one who is speaking. Because the step of obedience is the one that proves the answer.

The third thing I want you to see is that obedience positions us for God’s blessing. In fact, God said so in terms that could not be more straightforward.

"If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 28:1-2).

In other words, that is not merely passive reception. All of these blessings will come upon you and accompany you. They overtake you and chase you down when you obey the Lord your God. That is a picture of a life lived in alignment with the will and ways of God.

Now, I want to be careful here because this passage has been misused and abused in ways that have harmed the people of God. You see, obedience is not a formula that obligates God to give you whatever you want, and a life of faithfulness is not a guarantee against hardship, suffering, or seasons of waiting. And yet, the prosperity gospel has taken passages like this one and reduced them to a transaction, but that is not what the Scripture teaches.

What Deuteronomy points to is something simpler and more profound: that there is a divine alignment when we order our lives according to God’s ways. In other words, when you live in the will of God, you are positioned to receive what God has prepared for you. When you step outside his will through persistent disobedience, you step outside the covering and the favor that comes with walking in his ways.

Obedience opens the door to peace, the kind that holds you steady when circumstances are anything but peaceful. As the prophet Isaiah said, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

Obedience opens the door to purpose, a deep, settled sense that your life is going somewhere and that the steps you take matter in the kingdom of God. Obedience opens the door to God’s favor, not because you have earned it, but because you have placed yourself in a position to receive it.

I want to make this very personal this morning because today we are celebrating what God has already been doing in this church. Most of you have already made your pledge to the building fund, and we are grateful to each of you who stepped out in faith. When you made that pledge, you were not just writing a number on a card. You were doing what Abraham did. You were saying, “Lord, I trust you with what I cannot yet see. I believe in what you are building here, and I am putting my faith into action.”

If there is anyone here this morning who has not yet made a pledge and feels the Lord leading them to do so, today is a great day to take that step. But for most of us, today is a day to be encouraged and to remain true to our promises. Every pledge is an act of faith, and it prepares this church to receive everything God has prepared for us in this next season.

Obedience is not just something that happens in your personal life. It happens when an entire church moves together. And when an entire church takes a step of faith together, the blessings that follow will be felt for generations to come.

The fourth thing I want you to see is that obedience shapes our witness. At this point, the stakes become much higher than our personal spiritual health, because how we live is the loudest sermon any of us will ever preach. Remember the words of Jesus who said:

"Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

And so, the goal is not the good deeds themselves; the goal is to make the glory of God visible to people who cannot yet see Him. The good deeds are the means by which that visibility becomes possible, which means your obedience is not just between you and God. It is a public testimony to the reality of what God can do in a surrendered life, and the people around you are reading that testimony, whether you realize it or not.

You see, the world is watching the church, not primarily to hear what we say, but to see whether what we say aligns with how we live. In a culture that has grown deeply skeptical of Christianity, the gap between our profession and our practice is one of the biggest obstacles to the gospel. When we say we follow a God of love and then treat the people around us without love, we send a contradictory message. When we say we trust God with our finances and then give nothing, we send a contradictory message. When we say we believe in God's design for marriage and then our marriages look no different from those around us, we send a contradictory message.

These things matter because they are not merely moral preferences or cultural traditions. They are rooted in the character of God himself. His design for gender, marriage, sexuality, and family is not arbitrary or accidental; it reflects his nature and serves as a blueprint for us to flourish, or as the Bible says, to be fruitful. You see, when those designs are honored, families and communities are strengthened. When they are abandoned, pain, hardship, and the deterioration of society follows. In these last days, our culture is pushing hard against these truths, which means the church needs to stand firmly and lovingly on what Scripture says, without apology and without compromise.

This is a very real call to grow in our faith and to reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, because genuine faith always shows up in how we live. This is so important because our community is not looking for arguments; it is looking for evidence, and the most powerful evidence we can offer is a group of people who are genuinely and visibly changed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

When Christ's Community Church walks in obedience, we become a living sign to the people of Emmitsburg and the surrounding area that God is real, that He is good, and that following Him leads to a life worth living. Obedience is not merely personal; it is missional. Every act of faithfulness, every decision that honors God, and every moment of integrity, when compromise would have been easier, is another stone laid in the foundation of a witness that points people to Jesus.

The fifth and final point I want to make is the one that makes all the others possible, and it is this: obedience is not something you manufacture in your own strength or willpower. It is something the Holy Spirit empowers in you as you yield to his presence and surrender to his work in your life.

This is not merely a Pentecostal distinctive, though it is at the heart of Pentecostal theology. This is a biblical truth, the promise of God spoken through the prophet Ezekiel centuries before the day of Pentecost.

"I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws" (Ezekiel 36:27).

In other words, God does not simply give you the standard, the truth of the Word of God, and walk away. But he puts his Spirit inside you, and that Spirit moves you toward obedience from the inside out. He convicts you when you stray, guides you when you are uncertain, strengthens you when temptation is strong and the flesh is weak, and restores you when you fall and get back up. Every step of the obedient life is taken in the power of the Holy Spirit, not in your own strength, and not by your own willpower.

In other words, the Bible says:

"It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Philippians 2:13).

And so, God works in you, giving you the desire to obey, and he works in you, giving you the power to follow through on that desire. Both the wanting and the doing are gifts of grace, given to every believer who has opened their life to the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

This means that when you feel the pull toward old habits or the old ways, when the flesh rises up, and obedience feels impossible, you are not fighting that battle alone. The Holy Spirit is greater than every temptation, greater than the one who is in the world, and greater than every ingrained habit and every wound that has kept you from walking in victory.

In fact, the Bible promises in Romans:

"If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13).

It says, if by the Spirit, not by willpower or sheer determination, but by the Spirit!

You see, obedience is not about trying harder; it is about surrendering fully. It is about giving the Holy Spirit access to the different compartments of your life where you have been managing things on your own, and inviting him into the areas where you have been relying on your own wisdom and strength, trusting that he who began a good work in you will carry it to completion (Philippians 1:6).

Church, let me bring all of this together. A church that walks in obedience is not a church of perfect people who never struggle or fail. It is a church of people who love God enough to keep saying yes to Him, who trust Him enough to take the next step even when they cannot see the whole road, and who rely on the Holy Spirit enough to know that He will equip them for whatever He asks of them.

Obedience flows from love. It is the fruit of faith. It positions us for blessing. It shapes our witness. And it is empowered by the Holy Spirit.

God is calling us to be a people who obey Him, not out of fear or pressure, but out of love, trust, and a deep, settled awe for the God who redeemed us at the price of His own Son. And as we take this step together as a church, committing to being not just hearers of the Word but doers, I believe God is going to do something in this community that only an obedient church can produce.

So whatever your need is this morning, whether you have never surrendered your life to Jesus, or you have drifted and you are ready to come back, or you have been walking with Him but doing it in your own strength and running dry, God has an answer for each of those needs, and it begins with one word. Yes. Here is what the Word of God says about that word:

"For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ. And so through him the 'Amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God" (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Your yes to God is met by His yes to you, sealed in Christ and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit. That is not a transaction. That is a covenant. And today, in this place, that covenant is open to everyone in this room.

If that is your response this morning, I want to invite you to bow your head and pray with me right now.

Graphics, notes, and commentary from LifeChurch, Ministry Pass, PC Study Bible, Preaching Library, and Sermon Central. Scripture from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.