Faithful Obedience

May 10, 2018 by Jenna No Comments

What is obedience and why is it important? The English dictionary defines obey as “to follow the commands or guidance of.” The root of the word obedience is based on the Latin word that means “to hear.” The Hebrew word that is often translated to obey is “Shema,” which also means “to hear.” Basically, a lot of what the Bible calls obedience means “listen and take to heart.” God wants us to “take to heart” his words and commandments as Christians.

Obedience in our culture has basically become a dirty word. I feel this is the case for two reasons:
- Our culture is obsessed with being independent.
- Our experiences with having to be obedient to people have been distasteful. People are not perfect and therefore don’t always have perfect motives. However, we serve a God who is perfect, who loves us, and has the best in mind for us.
There are two main parts of Christian obedience:
- Keeping God’s rules. (This is too generic of a topic and therefore we will not focus much on this aspect)
- Obeying the promptings of the Spirit. These are tasks that He prepares in advance for us to do as well as gives us gifts to accomplish.
  - Ephesians 2:10-For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
  - 1 Peter 4:10-God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.
The visible proof of our love for Jesus is through our obedience.
- John 14:21-Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.
God asks for our obedience but doesn’t always explain why.
- The story of Joshua and Jericho is a great example of God asking something that didn’t quite make sense (See Joshua chapter 6 for the full story).
- God prepared Jericho to be taken down by just marching and noise, simultaneously proving God’s power and heightening the faith of the army of Israel.
Obedience gives us blessings, but disobedience has consequences (Deuteronomy chapter 28 has many examples).
Satan battles desperately to keep us from being obedience (see Beware the Prowling Lion for further explanation).
- He wants us to be too scared of what God is asking of us.
- He wants us to be content where we are and therefore not seek God’s calling.
- He lies to us by telling us that something else is actually better for us.
- He tempts us into partial obedience: where we do what we’re asked with a bad attitude.
  - Philippians 2:14-16- Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless.
We will look different if we are obedient.
- 1 John 2:3-6- And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. If someone claims “I know God” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth. But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. that is how we know we are living in him. Those who say that live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.
- People will not like having that light shining near them, it will make them feel convicted and they will lash back.
  - Noah dealt often with criticism of his obedience.
    - Hebrews 11:7- It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before> by his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith.
    - Noah was ridiculed for building the ark because no flood anywhere near this magnitude had ever happened.
    - It took him 100 years to build! He needed incredible patience to do something with so little evidence leading to the flood.
Our God is in the fight, he protects us. He gives orders to keep us safe and to be a part of the battle’s victory.
- He does not ask for our obedience without being obedient himself. Jesus followed all of God’s commands. He even subjected himself to death on a cross, a horrific event, to rescue us.
What is the end result of our obedience? Peace!
- When we obey, we are trusting that whatever God asks for us, He asks because He created us and loves us and therefore knows what’s best for us.
- The ruler of the universe is on our side, directing our every step in this battle so we don’t have to worry about anything but following the path that He lights up for us.
Every rule and task that God gives us is based on one thing:
- The Shema is a pledge that Jewish children recite.
- Matthew 22:35-40- One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?’ Jesus replied ‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”