THE WAY TO OBEY

The Way To Obey Is Always Christ

There are two roads. The first is the Way of the flesh, prideful, blindly following lies, and giving heed to the devil. It seems right. The second is the Way of the Spirit, humble, discerning, following God's Word, and giving heed to the Holy Spirit who always points to the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

"Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes,

And I shall observe it to the end." Psalm 119:33

Yesterday, after praying and pleading with God that I might be more obedient to Him, I opened my Bible, not turning to something I had decided to turn to, which I often hope is a leading of the Lord. The days of an organized reading list have long since vanished from my practice. I am not a mystic, nor a charismatic at heart, but a Biblicist to my dying day. However, when I opened my Bible and began to think about where I left off the day before, with no intent of my own, the Bible opened to Psalm 119. The day before, I spent time with my wife reading from the same Psalm, no mysticism here.

Nevertheless, the words leaped off the page and jumped into my head as if they were energized on their own. Verse 33 was the next verse from the day before, "Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes..." No further words were needed. How many times have I read that verse and never did it occur to me before? The thought sprang to mind, God speaking through the one inspired wrote, "Teach me, O LORD, THE WAY." That very thought came into my mind, it is not saying teach me Your statutes, but the way of Your statutes. Before I looked at the Hebrew meaning of the word THE WAY, 'a course of life or mode of action, often an adverb.' I instantly understood what I was looking for. God was speaking.

The Way To Obey Prevents Fleshly Effort

The next thought that came to mind was the commandments. You shall not murder. The way instantly came to mind. Whatever makes us angry at another, be it jealousy, covetousness, moral judgment on bad behavior, pride, and all the sins that lead to murder, even if it's only in the heart with no action attached. Sin begets sin.

The way of the LORD'S statutes is the way of life and peace and truth and the Way Himself. We are no longer talking about information or a means of doing something; we are talking about a relationship with THE WAY. The Way to obedience begins with finding our identity in the One who created us, predetermined our existence, begat us, chose us, called us, justified us, and one day will glorify us.

The Way To Obey Precedes Our Rebirth

Human effort in the flesh is not the means of producing anything good if it is not energized by God-given faith. Years ago, I read the two volumes of Dolimore's work, 1,232 pages about George Whitefield. It took twenty years of his research, and people with dedication like his don't want to lie or be wrong about anything. I went to see the movie A Great Awakening with much consternation, hoping the filmmakers would not distort such a wonderful story as his. Out of two hours and nine minutes of storytelling, I think I cried for about an hour. The truth is so hard to find in our present day in anything, so when I find some, I'm usually moved to tears.

George Whitefield almost died in his attempt to serve God by the efforts of his sinful flesh. Fasting as an activity of the sinful flesh can never replace the humility that the spiritual rebirth accomplishes. For George, the transcendent reality that we must be born again carried him through decades of unparalleled preaching of the word of God. The cry of a godly man was, "Let the name of Whitefield perish, but Christ be glorified." There are Wesleyan churches and Methodist churches, but there is no Whitefield church. Truth be told, there is only Christ's church, and He alone knows who are His. Our rebirth is The Way To Obey; it is predestined, sovereignly chosen, and performed by the One who loved us before the foundation of the earth. Nothing in the Christian life has reality or production apart from being born again. Walking an aisle, saying a prayer, sharing the Gospel, preaching the word, discipling people to follow Jesus amounts to nothing apart from being born afresh into the Divine Family.

The Way To Obey Prohibits Demonic Interference

There is a battle to do good in this life as the saints are confronted by him who hates God and hopelessly seeks to overthrow Christ's kingdom by corrupting God's people. When we survey the writings of the New Testament authors, we should realize that the glory of Christ is always on display, and equally, in every letter there are many warnings to the churches. The Apostle, however, said it this way, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:12)

We are repeatedly warned against encroaching sins instigated by Satan and his army, who seek to destroy the work of Christ our head, who continues to further His work of making faithful followers of Christ through His saints. We need to see the war for what it is and who we are fighting against. The endless divisions among professing believers are very fatiguing. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of God? The answer is the same as Jesus told the twelve: "Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." It's never been the scholar but the little child, not the properly educated homeletician but the saint with child-like faith, not the professor but the born-again child with reckless abandon to their heavenly Father.

The Way To Obey ends as it was prophesied to at the very beginning. "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel." (Genesis 3:15) It ends in this way, "And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." "And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."