No Light In The Lamp

Opening Story – The Boy in the Corner

A little boy had been disobedient. His mother sent him to the corner and said, “You sit there.” With folded arms, slumped in his chair, he muttered, “I might be sitting on the outside, but I’m standing on the inside.”

That’s obedience… but only on the surface.

This morning I want to talk about something better. Something deeper. Something Jesus called us to in the Sermon on the Mount. A new obedience.

For many of us, the word obedience doesn’t sound very happy. It can feel like subservience. It can feel like legalism. It can feel like exasperation because we cannot live up to it.

But God’s desire is very different.

The Lord desires us to appreciate the great plan of redemption, to realize our high privilege as the children of God, and to walk before Him in obedience, with grateful thanksgiving… He longs to see gratitude welling up in our hearts because our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Let’s pray.

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Opening Prayer

Lord, help us surrender our hearts and lives to You in true obedience and godly humility. Build us into a spiritual house where Christ is the cornerstone. May Your Spirit guide us in newness of life and love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Silly Questions – and God’s Question

This past week I wondered about some silly questions:

1. How do deer know where to cross at those yellow road signs?

2. How do you know when it’s time to tune your bagpipes?

3. Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?

4. Why do TV stations report power outages?

5. Why does someone ask you, “Are you asleep?”

They don’t make sense. They’re not supposed to.

But they remind me of another question that at first sounds silly. God asks Moses: “What’s in your hand?”

Didn’t God know? Of course. So why ask? Because that staff represented Moses’ whole life.

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Moses and the Staff

Once Moses had been a prince in Pharaoh’s court — mighty in word and deed, trained to rule. Now he was a shepherd, caring for sheep that weren’t even his, using a staff that wasn’t his own.

And God asked him to throw it down.

Moses obeyed. The staff became a serpent, fangs and venom flashing. God told him to pick it up by the tail. Terrifying — but when Moses obeyed, it became a new staff. No longer his shepherd’s crutch — it became the rod of God. With it he would part the Red Sea.

Moses had to face his fears, his failures, and his past. And in obedience he discovered God’s power.

One of Satan’s sharpest weapons is regret — regret for sins, regret for failures. But when we realize we can’t, that is when we lean on the One who can.

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The Heart of Obedience

That’s the difference between the old staff and the new. The old was dependence on self. The new was surrender to God.

True obedience is never about grinding out duty. It is Spirit-born. It flows from the heart.

Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches… apart from Me you can do nothing.” Grapes don’t grow by worry — they grow by life in the vine.

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Tolstoy’s Struggle

Leo Tolstoy, one of the greatest writers of all time, wrestled with this.

He freed his serfs. He gave away the copyright to his writings. He inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And yet — he never found peace.

Tolstoy tried to live by rules, to master himself by sheer willpower. But he was tormented by failure. He asked his wife to hide the ropes and guns so he wouldn’t take his life.

John Updike wrote, “Tolstoy’s beautiful art never penetrated the thick walls of his own soul.” He wrote brilliantly of others’ lives — but could not find peace in his own.

Why? Because obedience without Christ becomes despair.

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Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount

That’s why Matthew 5–7 is so breathtaking. Jesus raises the standard impossibly high. “You’ve heard it said… but I say to you…” Not just murder, but anger. Not just adultery, but lust.

It’s frightening. It’s beautiful. How do we live so deeply?

Matthew 6 gives us the key — right in the middle of the Sermon. Jesus teaches us to pray:

Our Father in heaven…

Not a tyrant. Not a taskmaster. A Father. Patient as a parent watching a child grow, messy and imperfect, but growing all the same.

Give us this day our daily bread. Just one day at a time. Not perfection overnight — but daily dependence.

And when the Sermon ends, Matthew records that the first person Jesus touches is a leper. An outcast. A failure. Jesus stretches out His hand and says, “I am willing.”