Obedience--Pursuing God, Part 2

Obedience.  Oh, how we seem to hate this word. For some reason, we have fallen into the trap of thinking that obedience somehow means we lose our identity; that we somehow become less of an individual, and thereby lose our significance.  Hogwash!

 

Consider this:

 

‘Yet He (Jesus) learned obedience by the things which He suffered’ (Hebrews 5:8, NKJV).

‘He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross’ (Philippians 2:8).

 

Jesus, the great I AM, embraced obedience to a degree you and I never will. So if the Savior of all mankind was obedient, then we ought to follow His example and rid our thinking of all the nonsense that obedience is bad. And while last week we explored two key elements in pursuing God—prayer and Scripture—this is the third key to pursuing God—obedience. 

 

‘Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome’ (1 John 5:1-3).

Interestingly, the above reference calls us to obedience while also stating that being obedient is not burdensome. In other words, God’s commandments are not heavy or weighty. This truth is much to the contrary of what the enemy wants us to think.  So much of faithless religion is based solely on works; the more we work then the more favor we have with God. Yet here God is saying that His commandments are not burdensome; man’s commandments may be, but God’s commandments are not. 

But is this true? Let’s look at a couple of examples.

 

Let’s begin with Jesus Himself by looking at the Mark 12, where a scribe poses a question to Jesus:

 

“Which is the first commandment of all?”

Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:28b-31).

Hmm. I can just imagine this exchange. The Scribe, probably in some sort of robe, wanted to trap Jesus by asking Him a question that seemed impossible to answer (see also Matthew 22:34-40 and Luke 10:25-28). But Jesus, leveling His gaze in a way that looked right through the man, had no hesitation in His answer. Not only that, Jesus gave two commandments back at the man, not just one (you can’t put Jesus in a box).  He didn’t throw out a bunch of rules and regulations; instead, he spoke of love.

 

The Apostle Paul spoke to this as well by way of an admonition.

 

“We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the conning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ” (Ephesians 4:14-15).

Again, the exercise of obedience from 1 John 5 as further defined in Ephesians is speaking the truth; but it isn’t speaking it hatefully or as a verbal weapon. Instead, truth is to be spoken in love.

 

So a third key in pursuing God is obedience. Obedience to God is not burdensome because it is to be bathed in and motivated by love.  So as we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our souls by intentionally pursuing God in prayer and Scripture with the desire to be obedient, He will empower us to also love with the love by which He first loved us (see Galatians 5:22 and 1 John 4:19).  

Pursuing God

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

─Jesus, Matthew 6:33

 

“Believing, then, is directing the heart’s attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to ‘behold the Lamb of God,’ and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives.”

─A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

 

‘Seek’ in Matthew 6:33 is the Greek word, zeteo. It means to strive or desire; it also means to seek a thing or to crave.  The sense of the word and its usage in the verse is not a simple seeking for my car keys or wallet.  Not to get all technical, but ‘seek’ is a present-active-imperative which means it can be interpreted to be an ongoing command. In essence, Jesus is saying, “Continually seek after, crave, and desire the kingdom of God and His righteous.” So unlike our car keys, that when we find them our seeking ends, Jesus is saying that seeking God is a life-long pursuit.  After all, the Creator of the Universe has no beginning and no end, so we could never contain God like we can contain our car keys. As we begin to grasp one aspect of God, a myriad of others begin flooding our soul, thus, continuously giving us small doses of the eternal nature of the living God.

 Yet striving after the things of God is itself a key to deepening our relationship with Him. 

But is Matthew 6:33 a prosperity doctrine? Is He saying that as we pursue God we’ll get rich, get the big house, the big car, and the exotic vacations?  I don’t think so. While these things may not be inherently bad, Jesus is looking at the deeper things of life, He’s looking at the spiritual things.

 First of all, Jesus actually states that Solomon, the richest man ever up to that point, wasn’t even as arrayed as the lily of the field. That’s quite a statement. Solomon had everything there was to have, whether moral or immoral. A lily by contrast, is a simple, but beautiful flower. So Solomon vs. the lily could also be stated as mass materialism vs. simplicity.  Jesus is speaking to the need of mankind, not the greed of mankind. What’s more, I think He’s also speaking to spiritual riches, not just material riches. Material riches rot, fade, break, and wind up in landfills or wills. Spiritual riches lead to eternal rewards in Heaven. 

The big question, of course, is how do we pursue God and His Kindgom?  Is there a specific devotional or discipleship plan we should follow? While there are several of these types of plans available, I think the better place to start is to observe the Master Himself. Jesus lived a life of pursuing God, of doing God’s will at all times; therefore, He is the logical example to follow.

One of Jesus’ primary actions was prayer. The Gospels are filled with examples of Jesus seeking solitude early in the morning to pray to His Heavenly Father. In fact, often one of the first things a person thinks about when they think of Jesus is prayer.

Another key aspect of Jesus’ life was His knowledge and grasp of Scripture. He didn’t just know Scripture as a thing to memorize or a box to check on a daily to-do list, He ate, digested, and lived what the Holy Writ taught. He came to the Scripture with no personal agenda. Or as Chris Webb states, He read with “empty hands.”

“To read with empty hands means setting aside our agenda and developing an interior silence…Without this silence, it is much harder for us to hear the living voice of God speaking through that Word” (Chris Webb, The Fire of the Word: Meeting God on Holy Ground, Chapter 6).

So to truly establish a pursuit of God in our lives, we must have a genuine prayer life; not rote prayers, but honest, heart-felt prayers in an attitude of full attention on God and the things of the Spirit. Next, we must become comfortable and familiar with Scripture; intentionally laying aside our agenda and seeking God’s heart and voice through His written Word.

Applying these two keys in our lives will deepen our identity in Christ and strengthen our faith.

My next blog will look at even more keys for deepening our pursuit, and therefore, the presence of God in our lives. 

Jesus, Faith and Action—Installment Two of Jesus and the Centurion (Matthew 8:5-13)

We left with Jesus offering to immediately leave and personally attend to the sick servant Himself. The Centurion, however, states that he feels it won’t be necessary, just the supreme authority of Jesus speaking it into being is enough. Stop and read that last sentence over again…think about the sheer intensity of that one man’s faith in the midst of an unbelieving and pagan culture.  This draws my thinking all the back to Genesis 1:3:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  

The Centurion basically said that if Jesus states, “Let there be healing,” there will be healing. 

He is also revealing that he understands Jewish tradition about entering a Gentile’s home and how that will make them unclean; but the deeper and more profound exhibition of the Centurion is simply his faith.  As we saw earlier, he has accepted Jesus as the Messiah by the fact he addresses Jesus as Lord, not as teacher or rabbi or “hey you.”

But his acceptance is not merely in his head, he believes so intently in Jesus that he risks his reputation to publicly approach Jesus, pleading for the healing of someone he greatly cares for. That’s a deeply abiding faith; a faith that is stronger than status, ideology, or culture.  It’s a faith that will withstand trial and tribulation. It’s a faith that spurs him to action. (For more on faith in action, read the Book of James.)

Even Jesus is astounded by it:  “When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith’” (v. 10).  Then He goes on to teach in verses 11 and 12 that God’s salvation will be for all people, not just “the sons of the kingdom (Israel).” This is a significant pre-cursor to the Apostle Paul’s grand proclamation “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6).

This record closes with Jesus saying to the Centurion, “’Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.’ And the servant was healed at that moment” (v. 13). We don’t hear from the Centurion again.

It’s tempting to say, “Well, that was nice of Jesus to help out like that,” and then move on with the rest of our day, as if the record was nothing more than a mere story to tantalize but not to internalize. The same thing happened in Jesus’ day, He performed miracles but the masses were more tantalized by events but did not internalize the message of the Man.

I think part of the message of the Centurion is simply that Jesus is real and wants to work in our lives now. Rather than looking to Him for the next big thing, the next mass-feeding; look to Him for the even greater miracle of overhauling your soul. Let Him and His Words fill your being with awe; open your heart and your thoughts to His work by way of the indwelling Holy Spirit to heal you.

So God hasn’t reached down and healed my neck, I still have a triple fusion held together by surgical adhesive and a large titanium plate and I still have aches and muscle spasms; but does that mean He hasn’t reached into my soul to heal it?   Quite the contrary. Just last night while praying with my bride, I cried out my discouragement with certain recent events in life. I awoke to find the circumstances unchanged, but my sense of joy and zest for life was renewed. That’s healing, my friends. That’s Jesus making His presence effervesce from deep within my soul.

Faith isn’t just a surface-level salve for a minor scrape; it is an-ever bubbling fountain, continually springing up from the depths of a soul saturated in Jesus. This Holy Spirit infused saturation then cleanses the internal parts of man—the heart, the soul, and the mind; this births the transformation of a continual renewal in a person’s life (see Romans 12:1-2). And this continual renewal shapes us to be more like Jesus right now in our everyday life. Isn’t this what our hearts are craving, to be like Jesus on this earth right now?

As we ponder this, the lesson of the Centurion becomes internalized in our soul, it now has relevancy to our lives by prodding us to ask ourselves, “Do we believe?”

So take some time to get quiet with God and ask that question, and see what stirs in your soul.