Father, we really mean that with all of our hearts. You are very, very great to us this morning.

We receive the bounty of your greatness and how we want to bend it outward in the kind of

preaching that will awaken the kind of obedience that will reflect that greatness to the world.

So come and help us now. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

If I were to put a title on this morning's talk,

it would be a preaching for radical obedience,

luring our people to God.

Preaching for radical obedience, luring our people to God.

Let me define what I mean by radical obedience and then try to make a bridge to preaching for you.

I mean obedience that is radical in the sense that it comes from the radix, the root of your life that is sunk down into

the subterranean promises of grace and is drawing up joy and strength and hope which then

are bearing fruit on the limbs of the tree of your life for people to eat the fruit of love.

Radical obedience. I mean the kind of obedience and love that the early Saints had in Hebrew's 1034

where at great peril to their life and the plundering of their property they

joyfully went to visit those who were in prison.

I mean the kind of radical obedience that according to Hebrews 11 Moses had when he left the palaces of Egypt and embraced this recalcitrant people of Israel and led them all those years so thanklessly in the wilderness

when he could have been enjoying all the pleasures and the fleeting sins of Egypt.

And I mean what Paul means when he says,

counting everything is loss, we count Christ as gain,

and I mean what he means what Jesus means when he says take up your cross daily and follow him or what Paul means when he says

when he says love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things,

and doers all things. Radical obedience has a flavor about it that is so satisfied in God that it is released from the

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