OBEDIENCE TO THE WORD OF GOD. My beloved of the Lord, are you obedient to the Word of God? Are you really adhering to His instructions in wholeness? Do you fear when He says “fear not”! Do you take ‘thought of’ when He says ‘take no thought of’? I was seriously disobedient to the Word of God and this caused me serious harm in my system. It is true that for the past three and a half years now, I have been bedridden due to accident, but I have not experienced high blood pressure until recently when my thought was full of mundane things. I thought of my health, my children education, my bills, the Theological School I run, the progress of the ministers under my pastorate, the missionaries that my ministry takes care of, the accumulating house rents, and so many things that my physical incapacitation has helped to accumulate and especially, the royal transfer of my father to eternity, and the fact that I will no longer see him physically again except in pictures. All these and care for the saints weighed me down and the next was the jolting up of my blood pressure. You may wonder why I take this so serious. The reason is simple, my thoughts were in direct opposite to the command of my Lord and God who says to me, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. 6:34). This chapter has a lot of anti-depression therapy to our thought patterns and concerns, and a healing to the ‘serpent’s vine’ in our minds with the attendant blood of Jesus that gushed when He was crowned with the crown of thorns specifically meant to heal our thought pattern. Many instances of loss of authority and places of promise are as a result of our disobedience of the instructions of God while active in His service. Each time we disobey God’s Word with advanced reasoning of any sort, we are rebellious and God’s government is to silence every rebellion while His grace sustains us during the execution of this just government’s justice. For instance, Adam disobeyed God’s Word, the mercy of God provided him with a covering, yet, he lost Eden due to the government of God in righteousness. Moses and Aaron did not honor God in the presence of the people, they disobeyed the instruction of God and acted in their own way, the great prophet lost his leadership and prophetic office, and the high priest Aaron lost his priesthood to his son, yet the grace of God recons with their work as the servants of God while they were not spared by the just government of God. When the wilderness Church, the Israelites settled in the land of promise, they demanded for a king and God gave them one in Saul. God instructed Saul to utterly destroy the Amalekites, Saul disobeyed, and he lost the kingship due to the just judgment of God’s government, yet the grace of God saw him lead Israel up to forty years. God’s grace will continue to lead one, but will not prevent the just judgment of God’s government on the disobedient no matter who we are. Saul who became Paul was a chief persecutor of the Way, when he became a propagator of the Way, he experienced persecution all through, and while he entreated the Lord to take the messenger of satan away from him, the Lord replied him that ‘My grace is sufficient unto you’, just the same way He answered Moses that Moses should not ask Him for permission to enter Canaan Land again. Do not ask me why this reference because Jesus told Peter that those who kill by the sword; shall by the sword die too. We must recognize the place of grace and the righteous judgment of God’s government. The government of God executes righteous judgment at all times. David killed and took possession and repented, forgiven, but there was a pronouncement of the just judgment of God’s government that sword will not depart from his house. Many of us have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness as Jude lamented. This is as a result of our refusing to understand that the law of God was not and never abrogated, rather the curse of the law in its literal ceremonial sense was removed and this removal is only applicable to those who appeal to the efficacy of the provision made on the cross of Jesus Christ. When you talk about the law as preached by Paul, you will understand that Paul was apologetic to the gentile nations and not to the actual people the law was given. If there is anywhere in the Bible that the law would be abrogated, that place would have been in the Book of Hebrews. However, Hebrews is a book of better things, comparing the good to the better. My fellow ministers, let us remember that we, in our fancied wisdom, might deem all this very severe. Are we competent judges? This is a grand question in all such matters. Let us beware how we presume to sit in judgment on the enactments of divine government. Adam was driven out of paradise, Aaron was stripped of his priestly robes, Moses was sternly refused entrance into Canaan, and Saul was deprived of his kingdom – and for what? Was it for what men would call a grave moral offense – some scandalous sin? No; it was, in each case, for neglecting the Word of the Lord. This is the serious thing for us to keep before us, in this day of human willfulness, in which men undertake to set up their own opinions, to think for themselves, and act for themselves, and judge for themselves. Men proudly put the question, “has not every man right to think for himself?” the reply here most certainly is not; we have a right to obey. To obey what? The Word of the Living God – the testimony of the Holy Ghost – the voice of the Holy Scripture. This is what justly claims our implicit, unhesitating, unquestioning obedience – not the commandments of men, not the authority of the so-called church full of fallible claims, not the decree of general councils – in a word, not merely human authority, call it what you please. Only to the Word of God are we to bow down our whole moral being. We are not to reason, speculate, weigh consequences, think of the result, ask why or wherefore, in the matters concerning this infallible divine instruction. It is our duty to obey and leave all the rest in the hands of our Master. What has a servant to do with consequences? What business has a servant to reason the result of the duty he is asked to do? It is of the very essence of a servant to do what he is told to do regardless of all other considerations. Had Adam remembered this, he would have remained in Eden; had Moses and Aaron remembered this, they would have crossed the Jordan into the Canaan land, had Saul remembered it, he would not have been deprived of his throne. And so, as we pass down along the stream of human history, we see this weighty principle illustrated over and over again; and we may be rest assured that it is the principle of abiding and universal importance as far as the government of God is concerned. The gravest offense man commits against God his Maker is the neglect of His Word which is His instruction to what He has made. The Word of God is the operational manual He has given to man for his maintenance procedure. Man is called to obey the plain Word of God; he is in no wise responsible to know about God’s secret purposes and counsels. Man’s responsibility rests upon what is revealed, not upon what is secret. The secret things belong to God while the revealed things belong to us and our children, is a Biblical statement. What, for example, did Adam know about God’s eternal plans and purposes when he was set in the Garden of Eden and forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Was his transgression in any wise modified by the stupendous fact that God took occasion from that very transgression to display, in the view of all created intelligences, His glorious scheme of redemption through the blood of the Lamb? Clearly not. He received a plain commandment, and by that commandment his conduct should have been absolutely governed. He disobeyed, and was driven out of Paradise into a world which has, for well over six thousand years, exhibited the terrible consequences of one single act of disobedience – the act of taking the forbidden fruit – the act of neglecting the Word of God – the act of self-will. It is true that grace has come into this poor sin-stricken world and there reaped a harvest which could never have been reaped in the fields of an unfallen creation. But man was judged for his transgression; he was driven out by the hand of God in government, and by an enactment of that government, he has been compelled to eat bread in the sweat of his brow. “Whatsoever a man (no matter who) soweth, that shall he also reap” was re-echoed by the manifest grace of God. Here we have the condensed statement of the principle which runs all through the written Word, and is illustrated on every page of the history of God’s government. It demands our very gravest consideration. It is, however little understood. We allow our minds to get under the influence of one-sided and therefore false ideas of grace, the effect of which is most pernicious. Grace is one thing, and government is another; they must never be confounded. We would earnestly impress upon the heart of our fellow ministers and Christians and by extension our hearers the weighty fact that the most magnificent display of God’s sovereign grace can never interfere with the solemn enactments of His government. Remember, He has appointed one man to judge all humans on the day He has equally appointed. This is the execution of enactments of His divine government, irrespective of the work of His divine grace. Think of this my beloved and see whether you are obedient to the Word of God your Creator. Shalom. +DR. INNOCENT O. ALOZIE (Th.D., D.D., Ph.D.)
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 12:11:41 +0000
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