Obedience

” . . . Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me), to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7).

These words were first spoken of our Lord Jesus Christ by David in the Psalms. They are repeated in the letter to the Hebrews. Although this is spoken of Christ, we are to make His life a pattern for ours, we must follow in His footsteps. Can we say of ourselves, “I come to do thy will, O God?” Truly we were not born for this purpose as was Christ, but we have made it our purpose, and we now find it our obligation to follow the example set for us, to do the will of God, to remain obedient unto Him.

The Scripture is filled with accounts of those who have learned the hard way what it means to disobey God. One excellent example is that of Saul, given in 1st Samuel, chapter 15. King Saul was commanded to go out and slay the Amalekites, but did he obey? He kept some of the best cattle for offerings unto God. And what did Samuel say to him?

“Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1st Samuel 15:- 22).

Yes, obedience is what God wants. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians, tells us: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise” (Ephesians 6:1,2). We are God’s little children. We must obey Him. This is very important.

We find a beautiful blending of this theme in both the Old and the New Testaments. Let us first look at the pro­phet Isaiah, chapter 26. Isaiah here sees a vision of the New Jerusalem much as John was to see it (only in more detail) and record it for us in Revelation. In the second verse he says: “Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.” Those who keep the truth, those who are obedient to the will of God shall enter in. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trust­eth in thee” (verse 3). This calls to mind one of David’s Psalms (Psalm 119:165): “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.” In the margin this word “offend” is translated, “to put a stumbling block before them.” The Jews had a stumbling block before them, “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” We have overcome this stum­bling block; but many times and only too often we place our own stumbling block before us because we would rather do our own will than be obedient to the will of God. If we love a law then we will obey it, and we will find that great peace of which David speaks.

Let us read verses 8 and 9: “Yea, in the way of thy judgments, 0 Lord, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” We might ask, what else is there to wait for or to desire? Solomon says: “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). This might seem a bit idealistic to some, for Solomon had experienced almost everything a man could experience, and yet this was his answer, “all is vanity.” There is nothing but to desire after the ways of God, to be obedient to His will. We can often see how lost many men’s lives are in the world about us. Their goals are so shallow, and they do not desire the will of God. Even we ourselves are so often prone to worry too much. One of our hymns, hymn 266, begins with the words: “Be careful for nothing; the Lord is at hand.” Do we really think about this when we sing it? It means we are not supposed to worry about any­thing. “Be careful for nothing, the Lord is at hand.” We are the ones who make the Lord at hand to ourselves, by doing His will.

It becomes obvious to us when we fail to do this. God seems apart from us, and sometimes we must experience some­thing that will bring us back to a reali­zation that we have dedicated ourselves to do the will of God. We read in verses 13 and 14 of this chapter of Isaiah: “0 Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us: but by thee only will we make mention of thy name.” Or as the Revised Standard version states this: “But thy name only will we acknowl­edge.” Yes, the children of Israel had many lords over them because of their disobedient ways, and there are many lords over the religious people of today. But all these lords are as dead as the images and the various phantoms which they worship, and their end is recorded in the 14th verse: “They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.” But notice the con­trast in verse 19: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise.” Now, if we leave out the words which are in italics here, it reads: “Thy dead shall live, my dead body shall they arise.” The entire group who finally receive the salvation of God is classified as a single body, one that shall be raised to glorification. This is the promise for the people of God. The verse continues: “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” “Dew” here is used to symbolize those who are raised from the dead, those who partake of the resurrection. This is a very beauti­ful figure.

Doctor John Thomas remarks upon it as follows: “The sleepers in the dust are styled “dew” because of the resemblance existing between the process of nature in the formation of dew and the operation of the Eternal Spirit on the generation of living beings from the dust. In com­prehending the formation of dew, we are enabled to form some idea of the evo­lution of a living body from dust. A dewdrop is a sparkling drop of water secretly and silently deposited upon the leaves of plants. The elements of which it is composed exist previous to its for­mation, free and uncombined in the air of night. These are the invisible gases term­ed “oxygen” and “hydrogen.” But, be­sides these, there is the indispensable formative agent styled “electricity.” Without this there could be no dewdrop, visible or invisible. The gases might be mechanically mixed, but without the in­visible and silent operation of electricity they could not be chemically combined in the manifested product called a dewdrop. This is a visible and tangible thing generated from invisible and intangible latent elements. According to the electri­cal law of its formation, it is globular and light-refracting, or sparkling in the open brightness of the dawn. These re­fractions are the brilliances, splendors, or glorious vestments of the dew. Before the dawn the dewdrops are all in the womb of night, of which both they and the dawn receive their birth, begotten by the orb of day. No figure can be more beautiful, no resemblance more com­plete.”

How do we attain this glorious resur­rection of which we have been speaking? Let us turn to the New Testament. In the letter to the Hebrews, chapters 7 and 9, we have an account contrasting the Levitical priesthood with that of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here we are told of the qualifications of a priest. We find the appointed order of Melchisedec and that particular appointed Priest who was raised from the dead after the sacrifice of Himself. This Priest fulfilled all that was foreshadowed in the law. He is now entered into the holiest of all and has confirmed the New Testament. The Le­vitical priesthood passes away. In the last verse of Hebrews, chapter 9, we find these words: “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” So here we have the picture of the return of Christ. This corresponds to the re­appearance of the high priest after his entry into the most holy on the day of atonement, but with this important difference: Christ in His returning brings sal­vation to the people who wait for Him. The high priest did not. Verse 2 of He­brews, chapter 10 states that these offer­ings would have been done away with had they abolished the conscience of sins, but they were not for that purpose.

The third verse tells us that they were to bring sin into remembrance that the children might realize their position be­fore God. Therefore these offerings had to be made every year. The lesson in these offerings is that the penalty of sin is death; for this is God’s law. The bring­ing of an offering was a recognition on the part of the person who brought it that this was the just law of God. Be­cause a man sins, he dies. But is the bringing of burnt offerings what God de­sires? Let us read what David says: “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would give it: thou delightest not in burnt of­fering. The sacrifices of God are a bro­ken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalms 51: 16,17).

God wishes a dedication of our will unto Him rather than to serve ourselves. David further states: “Hear, 0 my peo­ple, and I will speak; 0 Israel, and will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thou­sand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most High: And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me” (Psalms 50:7-15). Yes, as we call upon the name of the Lord, we then begin to reflect the glory of God, and this is pleasing to Him.

In verse 8 of this 10th chapter of He­brews, we have reference to “sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin.” These, says the verse, God would not.” The four main sacri­fices on feast days were the peace offer­ing, meal offering, burnt offering and sin offering. But verse 9 tells us what is really important. ” . . . Lo, I come to do thy will, 0 God . . . ” This portion of Hebrews ten, beginning with verse 5 and continuing through verse 9 is based upon the words of David in Psalm 40, verses 6 through 8. We find, however, a slight difference in the wording. He­brews, verse 5 states: ” . . . Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.” If we turn to Psalm 40, verse 6, we find these words: “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not de­sire; mine ears hast thou opened (margin “digged”): burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.” If we analyze these phrases, they actually say the same thing. The phrase, “mine ears hast thou opened” goes back to the Law of Moses. A servant who loved his master became a servant forever by having his ear bored through with an awl. (See Exodus 21:2-6).

When this was translated into the Greek, wording was needed to convey the same thought. A “prepared body” represented to them a servant because they spoke of servants or slaves as so many bodies. Philippians 2:7,8 states of Christ: “He made himself of no reputa­tion, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Yes, He was an obedient servant and we must follow His ex­ample. We must, as it were, have our ears “digged” or “opened” in both the idiom of the Hebrew and the literal sense of opening our ears and hearing the Word of God. We know how often this thought is expressed in Scripture: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).

With these thoughts in mind, let us look at another of our hymns, hymn 339. We will see, perhaps, a little more mean­ing in one of the phrases here. The sec­ond verse reads: “May he help us to ful­fill what is pleasing in His sight, Per­fect us in all His will, Keep us in the way of right.” Yes, we must become a dedicated servant. We must become per­fected, or fully equipped in the will of God. We pray that we may he among that happy throng that can say: “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God.”