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Scripture for the day: John 14:15-16, 21, 23 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever …. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him …. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
Thought for the day: A couple of days ago, I wrote a bit about obedience, primarily as it was manifested in the Old Testament. I know that the word obey isn’t one of our favorites and the topic is one usually avoided by the vast majority today. However, this word was used 122 times in the Old Testament and I’m pretty sure the Lord still considers obedience by those who claim His name to be an essential ingredient of a right relationship.
When a speaker or writer, any speaker or writer, emphasizes the same point three times in a very short period of time, as the Lord did in today’s scripture, we can confident that it’s an important point. The writer wanted to make sure no one could misunderstand the point; he left no loophole we might use to argue that the need for obedience somehow doesn’t apply to us. In the Sermon on the mount, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). From first to last, Jesus reminded us that He had not come to do His own will, but that of the Father. He didn’t say anything or do anything except as that thing reflected His obedience to the commands of the Father. Read again the words of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden just before His crucifixion: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Your will be done.”
In the book of Acts, Peter said, “God has given His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him.” And later he told the Sanhedrin, “We must obey God rather than man.”
Paul stressed obedience from the beginning of his letter to the Romans to the end. He said we have “received grace for obedience to the faith” (1:5; 16:26). He even took great pains to explain how disobedience in Adam brought death as obedience in Christ brought life.
James reminds us that we must not be hearers of the word only, doers.
Peter once again, in his letters to the churches, reminds them that they are to live “as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:14-15).
We could go on and on, but I think the point is made. An indispensable key to salvation is obedience. The Old Testament religious leaders codified and expanded the simple demands for obedience until the Law looked nothing like that which the Lord had asked of Abraham, thinking, I suppose, they could earn their way into His favor. When Jesus came to live among His own creation, He provided a more perfect means of living in obedience. He called it grace. But grace doesn’t exempt us from obeying the commands of a Holy God; grace provides the power to be the obedient disciples we’ve been called to be.
So, here’s the big question each of us must answer: How am I doing? Is simple obedience of such importance in my own life that I can easily answer “Yes, Lord,” to anything the Lord asks of me? Is the desire of my heart to please the Master in the smallest of things as well as in the grander scheme of life? We’ll talk more about this, but for now
Go take on your world. - Bill