OBEDIENCE AND MANNA
Probably one of the most difficult jobs for a parent is to teach a child to obey. Every child is born with a will to do what they want to do, and that behavior must be trained to do as a parent says to do. But obedience goes against the grain even of adults. How many drivers exceed the speed limit? Or cheat in school or on their income tax returns? Cheating isn't disobedience, you say? How about the teacher's admonition: Keep your eyes on your own paper, or No copying! The IRS has guidelines that must be followed, too, and cheaters are often discovered and made to pay up!
Obedience demands that we become subservient to someone or something else. It may be to our parents. It certainly is to the laws of the land. Former marriage vows even promised to obey the spouse. But obedience is very unpopular these days. "Do your own thing" is the rule of the day. "Push the envelope" tries to see how far you can get away with doing something wrong before being caught.
When it comes to God and His Word, obedience is another story. God doesn't have "envelopes" that can be manipulated. Jesus said that IF we love God, we keep His commandments. It's that plain and simple. You do or you don't. To say we love God while being disobedient to His word is an oxymoron, yet many professing Christians make that claim and take for granted that they really do love God even in disobedience.
Though Adam and Eve were created with the perfect image of God that made possible their fellowship with their Creator, that image had to be tested to make it theirs by choice.. Their command was to eat of every tree in the Garden except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they ate of its fruit, they would surely die. Sadly, they failed the test. They disobeyed God, and, because of their sin, the whole human race became disobedient sinners by nature.
In the book of Hebrews, we find the stringent fact of obedience being the foundation of our salvation. Listen to what the writer says:
"Although He (Jesus) was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered."
Jesus had to learn obedience as the GodMan. It did not come to Him naturally, but only through testing. During His earthly ministry, even in all the events leading up to His crucifixion and while on the cross, Jesus was tempted to give up and not suffer. We know that because the Bible says He was tempted in ALL points just as we are, yet He did not sin. He did not disobey God even a little bit. Regardless of what He could have chosen to do differently, Jesus obeyed. He learned what obedience feels like physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually by enduring whatever test He was going through without giving up or taking the easy way out.
You ask, In what ways was Jesus tempted? He was God, so how could He be tempted?
Let's examine His life more closely. As a child, Jesus was raised in a household with other siblings and two earthly parents. He had to choose to be obedient to His parents and to live harmoniously with his brothers and sisters. While He would have been a pleasant child to raise, there had to have been times in the family when tensions rose and when the other children became obstinate. Yet, Jesus did not sin in any of those tests.
When He was twelve years old and went with His parents to Jerusalem for the feast, He obeyed His heavenly Father by remaining in the Temple and teaching the scribes and Pharisees. He was not disobedient to his parents by not staying with the group of people traveling back to Galilee. Rather, His priority was obedience to the Father and He obeyed Him.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus faced many temptations beginning with His forty day fast in the wilderness followed by three severe temptations posed by the devil when Jesus was at His lowest state of hunger and weakness. Even then, Jesus withstood each one by quoting a Scripture verse that countered what the devil tried to get Jesus to do contrary to the Father's will. Again, Jesus obeyed His Father first and foremost. In that He knew He was on earth to die as the Perfect Lamb of God for the sin of the world, He did not fail!
Then He began His earthly ministry. He called out twelve men from various walks of life to be His disciples. Together they traveled on foot from town to town and sometimes Jerusalem. Jesus was always ready to heal and deliver the ill and demon-possessed. While He never countered the complicated burden of laws imposed on the people by the religious leaders of the day, Jesus healed on the Sabbath, for instance. No one was supposed to do ANY work on the Sabbath and He enraged the Pharisees by working miracles of healing. But He fulfilled the Law through His acts of mercy and rebuffed for doing so, yet never sinned in retaliation.
Jesus suffered time and again from the reproof and condemnation poured out on Him by the scribes and Pharisees, those who ought to have recognized His as God in the flesh, but rejected Him instead. Though Jesus condemned their actions and hypocrisy, He did not sin by using His divine power to strike those men dead. God the Father had Jesus come in human form to show the people who the Father really is and to finally die for sin in their stead. He had to be the Perfect sacrifice---and He was!
So, along the way for three and a half years Jesus was tempted to remonstrate against accusers. He felt hunger and thirst, weakness, exhaustion, joy and love, but never promoted Himself as God as a face-saving measure when He was not embraced for Who He was.
The next verse in Hebrews goes on to say this:
"And having been perfected, He became the source of eternal salvation for all those who OBEY Him."
Jesus met His tests of obedience perfectly and completely as the Second Adam. He never failed to obey. Because of His faithfulness in obedience, He became the source of our salvation for all eternity IF we also OBEY Him.
Obedience is the only requirement of the believer...unquestioning, unhesitating total obedience. All we must do to inherit eternal life is obey Christ ever and always. When He taught His disciples on the night of the Last Supper, Jesus said this:
"If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and remain in His love."
That's a pretty tall requirement, but is not greater by far than what Jesus did for His Father. To go to heaven we must remain in God's love and fellowship. That way is obedience.
We can obey only what we know to obey. That is why God says we are to hunger for the Word of God and feast on it by reading and meditating on what He has said when we read. Even as the human body must eat daily, so, too, we must read the Word daily to know what God expects of us.
When the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness, God fed them manna. It was a flaky white food that came from the heavens every night, so it could be picked up every morning. What was gathered today was fresh and good for that day. They had to pick more manna up the next day and the next. God's word is the same: we must eat it fresh every day. Just hearing it in church once a week isn't enough. You can't gather enough on Sunday to last all week. Manna rotted if more was gathered than they could eat in a day. The manna of God's word will keep us nourished only as we read it every day and meditate on and OBEY what we read.
It is when we eat the word of God that we learn His commandments and manner of living and obey what we read. Obedience. Nine letters that mean the difference between eternal life and eternal damnation. Anyone who wants to can OBEY. Who wants to and is willing?