Lately I have been reading through the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Always before, I would read these books with the thought in the back of my mind, “These are the historical accounts of God’s chosen people who would end up being punished and disciplined due to the fact that they just could not put their idols away, could not serve God singularly. These books describe a people unable to keep God’s command because the sin that started with Adam continued to run through their blood. Their disobedience proved that they just couldn’t obey the law that Paul tells us in Romans seven brings death.” That’s what I thought was to be the lesson learned from, well, pretty much the whole Old Testament: God showing man that He had a plan, a desire, a command that He knew man couldn’t keep and that the Old Testament was recorded and preserved so that we might be warned that men can never meet God’s requirements.
The more I read, though, the more I began to see a different story. In both Isaiah and Jeremiah there is this repeated phrase that God uses when He talks of His reasoning behind the punishment that was coming to His chosen people: “You did not obey my voice.” Over and over in these books, I just see the command...obey. Obey Me, God says. “Obey my voice and it will go well with you. I will be your God and you my people. I will go before you and dwell with you. Obey my voice…”
Obedience. I had to ask myself...is obedience just an Old Testament principle? Forget trying to make the, “Well that’s the whole point, they couldn’t obey,” argument. How about today? Here and now? Are we called to obey God? I think the answer would go unchallenged among most Christian circles. Most, when asked if they are to obey God, would say, “Yes, absolutely!”
So why do we look at the Old Testament and say, “These things don’t apply to me today because I am in Christ and am no longer trying to live by my own righteousness.” Stop there. Read that last statement again. The truth behind that one simple statement is so monumental that many are clueless as to what they have just said. If that is your honest belief, that Christ came and you now no longer live by your fleshly righteousness but have His righteousness, then you, more than anyone ever, should absolutely look at the Old Testament. You should understand that it applies to you more than ever before.
Here’s the damning truth...The God we read about in the Old Testament had much to say about His anger. He was angry with His people whom He rescued from slavery and gave them a land of their own. He was angry that, in spite of His care, they refused to obey His laws. He had called and rescued a people in order to set them apart to be a righteous nation, but God’s righteousness wasn’t their desire, they wanted their own definition of righteousness. They had God’s command but, with eyes that could not see, hearts that would not love, and hands that continued to do evil, these commands were constantly ignored and broken. God later would call them a people who always went astray in their hearts and for this, His anger was kindled.
We, on the other hand, stand today before that same God with transformed hearts. We have been given eyes that see and ears that hear. No longer does the veil remain that separates us from a holy God. The gospel teaches that we have been rescued from the slavery of sin. If this is true, then this morning, as I read the Old Testament, I ask, “If the nature of God is to be angry with an unrighteous people who are disobedient, wouldn’t He be even more enraged by a people who are filled with His righteousness and yet still disobey?” Would that fact alone bring even more anger, more wrath?
“Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.” Romans 2:4-8
“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.” 2 Peter 2:20-21
The God of the Old Testament is very clear about what He wants man to do...Obey his voice. Over and over He says His will is for man to obey. So many times the Word of the Lord comes to the prophets in the Old Testament to direct them to tell the people that His anger and wrath were being kindled because of their refusal to listen and obey His words. I thought I would look up the word “obey” in just the Old Testament to try to see the pattern. One Hundred and eleven verses later, the command was clear...God requires that men obey His voice.
“Now, then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine” Ex. 19
Obey my voice. Keep my covenant. You may say, “Well, Wendy, He’s talking about the Mosaic law and we are no longer under that covenant.” True. We may no longer be under the Mosaic covenant, but are we not under another covenant now? We absolutely are! If you are a believer, you today sit under the new covenant sealed with the blood of Christ. Hebrews nine reveals that the believer now has a new high priest that made a way to come before the Father based on His indestructible life’s blood offered in the true Holy of Holies. This is the covenant Jesus made with God for the people who would be His. Are we not now required to obey His voice today?
A friend of mine and I have been talking lately about the vital importance of the written Word of God in the believer’s life, and He made the comment, “Why do we think that God requires obedience in BC but not in AD?” This stopped me in my tracks. Of course I don’t believe that only the men of the Old Testament are required to obey...but I have to admit, I’ve been reading it with that mindset. I believe that if we don’t understand God’s message in the Old Testament, we, as believers might just be missing a truth that points to the most weighty, most important reality of our salvation, and it all revolves around His voice.
If the Old Testament reveals a God that interacts with His created man through His words that He demands obedience to, then we must ask, “Is that still true of God today?” In the Old Testament God says over and over, “Obey my voice, listen to Me, keep My commands, remember Me, and do not forsake Me.” Look again at these requirements and ask yourself, “If God still requires this of a man today, then what do these actually mean?” I mean, how does a human man actually obey, keep, remember, not forsake, and listen to God?
The Christian life has become such a convoluted mess of feelings and self-based emotional realities. The world says believing in God is a hope in silence. They scratch their heads at a people who willingly spend their whole life making themselves content to hope in a God who will always be silent. Unfortunately many Christians have subconsciously come to believe this as well. The strong in “faith” are quick to remind each other, “The man of great faith, even though he’s unable to see or hear the object of his faith, still believes.” The gospel message is proclaimed, “You must believe not just that Jesus was a real person but that the real man Jesus was who He claimed to be, fully God, fully man. You must believe that His life, death, and resurrection accomplished your eternal salvation,” and then for so many, it stops there. From this point forward a man is told to be content with silence, that greater faith is based on believing even in the silence.
The Christian life then becomes this thing where you take all the things you know about Christ and God, all the commands He left behind, and try to live them out the best that you can. Man now is taught to look at the words God wrote, contained in the 66 books of the Bible, as they would a letter left behind by a loved one: informative, even instructive, but just a letter, remnants of a power that did great and mighty deeds in the past...as if the purpose of God’s words only serve as a reminder of bygone years. The Bible then becomes the “left-behind” gift from a God who sits in silence, waiting till the end.
I want to put to you that if this is how you see the Word of God, then you are missing something monumental. God says something vitally important about His word in Hebrews 4:12-13
“For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we must answer.”
The Word of God is far from a letter left behind. It is a current conversation between God and man. It is living. It is active. It penetrates. For what reason? To judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. In your hands you hold no ordinary book. This book is God.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word WAS GOD..” John 1
This book that you hold in your hands is the answer to the question posed before. How do I obey, remember, listen to, and not forsake God? That Hebrews 4 passage tells us that when you open the word, the God of the universe inspects the heart and exposes our nakedness before God. We aren’t shown anywhere else in scripture where this takes place, only when the Word is read by man. This is the answer to the obedience question. This is what a relationship with God looks like. Unfortunately we’ve succumbed to the idea that since God is silent, a relationship with Him is mystical and requires a man to drum up enough feelings to make it seem like a real relationship. (Hence the ever increasing need for Christian music to help us “feel” God...but that’s a whole other topic…)
We've taken “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” and applied it to how we are to relate to God, but that whole chapter in Hebrews 11 is talking about men and women who were looking for a future promise.... THAT is what couldn’t be seen.
God, Christ, on the other hand, can be seen, must be seen, He can heard, and to those who have the Holy Spirit, finally understood. Far from being a silent God who says, “Close your eyes and just believe,” He is physical and resides in that book you pick up every Sunday before you go to church, that book that you pull down from the shelf each morning for the 20 minute read, and the book that you struggle at times to understand (and it’s no wonder..you are looking at the God of the universe revealing Himself in written form).
Do you ever think, when your eyes fall on those pages that the Holy God is examining you, weighing out the intentions of your heart? This is what I’ve never understood before now... that when I read the Bible, I’m not just seeing and discovering God...I’m presenting myself before Him and saying, “Look, examine, test me.” Oh how I think we would be changed if we truly understood that this is the case.
I started this off by talking about obedience and ended up talking about the living inspection of God.. how do th these two go together you may ask? Through the Old Testament we see we are required by God to obey. If the people of Israel, in their dead state were required to obey, how much more we who have been brought to life? What then does that obedience look like today? I truly believe it physically looks like getting up each morning and opening the word of God. This coming before God in order to be examined and tried, is, in and of itself, an act of obedience. The Holy Spirit living inside of us, that God jealousy desires, spoken of in James 4:5, then communicates with the Father and transforms my heart into Christ’s righteousness. This daily discipline isn’t just a suggestion or a good idea. It is God’s requirement... the requirement first given to a wandering people over 3000 years ago in a middle eastern wilderness when He said, “Obey My Voice.” Today, as I look at the God of the Old Testament, I realize the freedom of being able to say, “Your voice, O Lord, I will seek,” is now mine. I understand that in saying that I now have a responsibility to present myself daily to a God who never has been silent. I must open the Word, listen to His voice, and let Him examine my heart. When this happens, I will be transformed inwardly and outwardly. This is life. This is obedience.