I have been a seriously truant blogger of late. Hoping to correct that a bit... at least post more than once every 4 months. :-/ As we are studying through Deuteronomy on Sundays, there's one topic that comes up fairly often, and on which I've been meaning to post for a while: obedience. For any of us familiar with the stories of the children of Israel in the desert, we also know it seems to be something that they were not particularly good at. But the interesting thing that stands out in these passages is the nature of their disobedience.
Perhaps the most infamous act of disobedience the Israelites committed was when they refused to go into the promised land. The epistle to the Hebrews gives us some fascinating insight into what the essence of their disobedience actually was in that instance. The writer of Hebrews explains that they could not enter in because of unbelief. That might not be news to us. But the question is, "what did they not believe?" Surely it doesn't mean they didn't believe in the existence of God. What then did they not believe? In Heb. 4 the explanation is more specific: "For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard." We are told that the essence of their sin was unbelief in the Gospel. What Gospel? That God was giving them a land purely by His grace. As He says to the Israelites while the are still gathered around Sinai, presumably not moving on because they think they need to keep the Law first, "Enough sitting on this mountain! Go in and take the land! It's a gift!" (Deut. 1:6-8)
The reason they didn't enter into the promised land is because they still believed it had something to do with them, that it somehow depended on their ability and strength. See, the thing was, God had set their bodies free from the slavery of Egypt, but in many ways it took much longer to set their hearts free. The only king they had ever known was a demanding tyrant who would severely punish them for not fulfilling his every whim. The only life they had known was a life where they had to sweat and bleed and perform back-breaking labor to receive even the smallest amount of provision. It was completely foreign to them that their new King, the Lord, would bless them, would give them something so bountiful as a whole land of their own, simply by His grace. The Israelites were torn between their complaining and infidelity to God on the one hand and their fearful attempts to fulfill the Law and hesitance to believe in the grace of God on the other. These are really just two sides of the same coin.
This is the same dilemma many Christians find themselves in. They toss back and forth between wandering from the Lord to serve idols and fitful attempts at keeping God's commands. But both of these come from the same root: a lack of belief in the Gospel of grace. On the one hand, our lack of belief manifests in running to things that really can't fulfill us, because mistrust the heart of God. If we believed that we were accepted by God no matter what, we would not be snared in the trap of people-pleasing. If we believed that God cares so much for us that He gave His life to secure our blessing, we would not be greedy out of a fear that God will not provide for us. The root of any and every sin is a lack of belief in the Gospel of grace, a mistrust of the generous heart of God.
On the other hand, and this is the more deceptive part, our obedience would be a very different obedience if we truly believed the Gospel. See, the Israelites at times attempted to prove their worth, their ability to earn God's love. But the truth is, they were still obeying like slaves: out of fear. They didn't obey out of joy or thanks that God had shown them grace or in a confidence that their obedience was a reaction to His favor, not a condition for it. That is, their "obedience" was not obedience at all because it was born out of a mistrust of God's heart. Paul writes of this distinction in Rom. 8 saying, "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'"
A slave mentality is summarized by the motivation of fear. A slave must obey otherwise the the master will beat him or worse. There is absolutely no trust involved. In fact, the master-slave relationship exists for the purpose of the slave's obedience. That is what the slave is there for and if he should cease to perform his tasks, the relationship is in jeopardy. But God has, by His act of grace, redeemed us and made us children and heirs. We, as Jesus told His disciples, are no longer called slaves but friends. The obedience of a child is entirely different than the obedience of a slave. Ideally, the son obeys his father not in order to earn love or favor, but because he is confident that the father already loves him. His obedience (again, we're talking ideally here) exists for the purpose of relationship with the father. Not the other way around, as with the slave. His obedience is not a condition for the father's love but a response to it.
When, as children of God, we attempt to keep God's commandments or fulfill the instructions of the Bible with the mentality of a slave, we are actually disobeying. When we see God's acceptance of us as dependent on our obedience, when we do what we are supposed to do out of fear that He will punish us or cast us out if we don't, then despite what we are doing externally, it is not obedience. It is the mentality of slave. But that mentality implies of our God that He is a cruel and harsh master rather than a loving and gracious Father. Therefore, any fulfillment of commands which is born out of a mistrust of His loving, fatherly heart is actually disobedience. This view of obedience ought not to surprise us, since God Himself was the one who said, "the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
Is your obedience that of a slave or a child? Is it born out of a trust of His grace or unbelief in the Gospel? Have you mistakenly thought you were obeying God when the doubt in your heart of God's fatherly love actually meant that your rule-keeping was disobedience? May we learn to be just as attentive to the motive of our hearts as to the works of our hands, because God does not want slaves, but children.
This post is adapted from the sermon on Deut. 1:1-8 - Slavery and Sonship, available in Russian here.
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