THE WONDER OF OBEDIENCE

When you think about it, the Bible is a very strange book.  It is, at the same time, extremely complex and extremely simple.  It’s divine principles are understandable even for children, yet it has come to us over a considerable length of time, in multiple languages, from many individual authors writing from a variety of cultural viewpoints.

Reading all the Biblical admonitions from Genesis to Revelation, from men of God like Moses, Hezekiah, Paul, Peter, and of course Jesus Christ, we are struck by how many  opportunities for obedience we are given.  The Bible continually offers its readers the choice to obey its commands or not.  It was John Calvin who said,

True knowledge of God is born out of obedience.

He made a remarkable observation:  without consistent obedience to God’s Word, God cannot be known.  Naturally, consistent obedience is only possible when the contents of the Bible are known.  Eugene Peterson, the man responsible for “The Message,” wrote,

With a biblical memory we have 2,000 years of experience from which to make off-the-cuff responses that are required each day in the life of faith.  If we are going to live adequately and maturely as the people of God, we need more data to work from than our own experience can give us.

1.  Obedience to God—Demanded, Leviticus 18:1—5; Deuteronomy 6:13—25

There is a warped view of God known as Deism that teaches God is like a great, cosmic director, who created the universe as His stage, set everything in it in motion and then left His creation to its own devices.  Man, then, is merely an actor being observed by God from a distance; whether or not he follows God’s commands has no effect of God whatsoever.  Of course, this aberrant theology is completely at odds with how the Bible describes God:  He being intimately involved in giving His creation every possible chance to succeed.

Unique Obedience, Leviticus 18:1—5

The LORD said to Moses  “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD your God.  Keep my decrees and laws, for whoever obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.

In Leviticus 16 and 17, Moses issued decrees concerning proper sacrifices and gave details about the Day of Atonement.  Those admonitions were very important because they explained to the people how God was going to deal with sin until the coming of Christ.

In chapter 18, Moses gave various laws concerning marriage and relationships within marriage.  These laws were given to safeguard this holiest of institutions against abuse.  One phrase is repeated several times in this section:  “I am the Lord,” or “I am the Lord your God.”  These phrases appear some 20 times in chapters 18 and 19.  Why repeat something that was obvious to the Israelites?  This was God’s way of indicating that Israel as a nation was different from all the nations around them because their God was different.  Jehovah was a holy God and He expected holiness from His people.

The problem with Israel was that their standards of behavior were based, not on God’s expectations, but on what they saw around them.  Because they were supposed to be different from other nations, they were not to be like the Egyptians, for example, or like the Canaanites.  They were to behave differently; they were to take their cues from the Lord.

After warning the Israelites, God issued an overreaching command in verse 4—

You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees.

The word “you” in this verse is plural; God is dealing with the entire nation; the whole of Israel was being called on to obey God’s laws; young or old, male or female, sick or healthy did not matter.  In verse five, however, God gets personal and addresses, not the collective Israel, but rather the individual Israelite—

Keep my decrees and laws, for whoever obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.

God’s intention was not just that Israel as a nation remained pure and holy, but He knew that Israel was made up of Israelites!  The health of the nation depended on the health of the individual.   Notice carefully the words of verse five:  obedience was evidenced by how one lived.   In Biblical terms, obedience never remains in the head; it always works itself out in one’s quality or standard of life.

God’s Gracious Response, Deuteronomy 6:13—25

The Ten Commandments form the basis of the covenant between God and the Israelites and is the nucleus of the Torah, the Law.  Many more regulations would be piled upon the Decalogue, but these ten commands from the heart of God are eternal and not one has ever changed, been changed, or been revoked.

It was vital for the Israelites to obey the Law of God because their very survival as a people depended upon it—

Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.  (Deuteronomy 6:3)

Deuteronomy 6 is really a call for Israel to keep God commandments in love.  But love goes both ways; God first demonstrated His love by delivering His people out of Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land.  Israel now had an opportunity to respond to God’s love by their consistent obedience to His commands.

Verse 15 is difficult for some people to understand because of the way human beings have come to understand “jealousy”—

[F]or the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.

To us, “jealousy” is a harmful sin often resulting in broken relationships and bitter feelings between people.  However, the reasons for God’s anger being aroused are very severe and always harmful to His people whether they are conscious of that danger or not.  God is very protective of those He loves and He will take action to preserve His people from harm even if the threat comes from the people themselves.  God warned the Israelites sternly not to test Him; in other words, they had been warned and for their own good the people should resist trying God’s patience.

For their own good the people needed to live in obedience.  The words of Moses are sobering:  if the people disobeyed, they would not survive in the land.  On the other hand, if they obeyed, things would go well for them.  Once again, the people were presented with a choice: obey and live or disobey and risk death.  It is hard to imagine that’s even a choice!  Who would choose death over life?  Apparently, many would rather die than obey.

In their obedience, not only would God bless the people, He would bless the land.  Imagine; the believer’s obedience results in an overflow of blessings!  That is the generous nature of God.  But the key to success was in obedience.  In verses 20—23, Moses commanded the people to recite the history of Israel to successive generations to remind them of why there was a Law and to remind all generations that they are never blessed by God based on their own righteousness, but only on the grace and mercy of God Himself.  All they had to do was obey, and He would simply declare them righteous.

And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.  (verse 25)

2.  Justified By Faith, Not By Law, Galatians 3:10—14; John 14:23—24

When we fast forward from Moses’ time to Paul’s, things in Israel have changed dramatically.  No longer was Israel a powerful nation; it was an oppressed nation.  Because the nation did not obey the commands of God, God handed them over to her enemies, which would eventually lead to Roman domination by the time of Christ.

We also notice that the relationship between the Law and the people had changed with the coming of Christ, who, while not obliterating the Law, fulfilled it completely.

Man’s Curse, God’s Redemption, verses 10—14

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “Whoever does these things will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”  He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

A key ingredient in Paul’s thesis is a bit obscure.  His thought related to those who “continued” to depend on obeying the law.  When Christ came, things changed.  Scripture, and in particular Galatians, exposes the limitation of the Law (or works) by teaching both by word and example that it can only bring a curse upon the people.  Furthermore, it was never the Law that saved anybody, it was always faith.  When Christ came, He literally redeemed His people from the Law and its curse and provided for them a way of life based on faith.  He did this by being made a curse Himself through hanging on the Cross.

Paul taught three main points:

• Those who choose to live under the principle of the Law are under the Law’s curse because the Law pronounces a curse upon all who fail to keep the every point of the Law.
• Nobody is justified by the Law because the Law itself taught that man is justified by faith.
• A person could not try to obey the Law and live by faith because the underlying principles of each way of life are mutually exclusive.

To prove his thesis, Paul quoted liberally from the Torah, the books of the Law.   In previous verses, Paul gave specific examples of Abraham and of the Galatians themselves, but with verse 10, he spoke in more general terms about people who were depending on the Law to make them righteous.  Of note is that Paul never says the Law is wrong or evil or that it should never be obeyed.  He addressed the issue of people who thought the Law could produce in them righteousness.  This is the essence of legalism, which teaches that a person’s character is the result of  his blind obedience to a system of rules and regulations.

Verse 11 makes it clear that even way back in Moses’ day man was saved by faith, not by keeping the Law.  Now, the Law did have value because it showed to sinful man the way of salvation, which Paul proved by quoting from Habakkuk 2:4.  But the Law was not faith which he says in verse 12.  One cancels out the other, which is why a person must choose to live either by the Law or by faith.

To the Jew who loved the Law and put so much “faith” in it, Paul’s words must be have been hard to grasp, so he gave the supreme example:  Jesus Christ.  Christ, Paul wrote, “redeemed us from the curse of the law.”  Here was a man who obeyed the Law to nth degree, yet He wound up hanging on a Cross!  The Law did not save Him, it in fact, cursed Him.  Jesus by His death demonstrated exactly what the Law does:  despite a person’s best intentions, their blind to the Law always must end in death.

But Jesus did an amazing thing:  He “redeemed” man from the curse of the Law.  The word “redeem” is from the Greek word exagorazo which means “to buy out of slavery” by paying a price.  Christ became a curse for us, which is another way of saying the same thing; He took our place by taking on the curse of the lawbreaker.

But what part of the Law did Christ fail to obey that resulted in His being cursed?  He was perfect in His obedience, so how could the Law curse Him?  To answer this question, Paul quoted from the Law again, Deuteronomy 21:23—

Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God came under the curse of the Law—God’s curse, really—through absolutely NO FAULT of His own:  He simply hung on a tree.  And because He technically violated only ONE PART of the Law, He became guilty of violating all of it and consequently bore the punishment of God’s wrath for every violation of the Law.   He became a curse, not when He was born or while He was engaged in His earthly ministry, but the moment He hung on the Cross.  The Greek word for “tree” is zulon, which really means “wood,” “timber,” or “tree.”  Christ was nailed to a tree; His cross, then, became His tree of death, so that He might make it a tree of life for you and for me.  What an astonishing thought!

Obedience Continues, John 14:23—24

The danger, of course, is to assume that because we are not to live “under the Law”  that we come think that the Law has no value to us and therefore may be ignored all together.  This, of course, is something the Bible does not teach.  Obedience is still the lynch pin of our salvation, except that our obedience is not blind nor forced upon us; our obedience is a matter of our freedom and it is to be born out of love, not for words of the Law, but for the Word Himself.

In John 14, we have Jesus’ last teachings to His followers.  They had no idea what was about to happen to the Man they loved and followed, nor did they fully grasp what His mission really was.  In frustration, Judas (not Iscariot) said this in verse 22—

“But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

In response, Jesus said this—

“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”

Jesus did not want people following Him because of His miracles.  Jesus wanted, and still wants, followers who will learn to live according to His teachings through simple obedience to them.

It’s a fact:  love for Christ is evidenced by obeying what He has taught.  This love flows both ways, for as believers obey in faith, the Son of God through the Holy Spirit dwells with them, making His home with them.  As far as Jesus was concerned, obedience equals love. Of course, the opposite is also true:  our disobedience shows that we do NOT love Christ.  There is NO other way to express your love for God and Christ except through obedience.  As one commentator remarked,

A loving heart will always be displayed by working hands.

As always, we have a choice.  We may choose to love the Man who loved us so much that He became a curse for us and bore God’s wrath in our stead.  Jesus Christ was obedient though that obedience led to His death on the Cross.  Our obedience, though, results in life!  Or, we may choose to be disobedient and face the cold consequences of that choice.

What will you choose to do?

(c)  2009 WitzEnd