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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE
Andrew Murray
KYPROS PRESS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Murray
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The School of Obedience
PREFACE
I. Obedience: Its place In Holy Scripture
II. The Obedience of Christ
III. The Secret of True Obedience
IV. The Morning Watch in the Life of Obedience
V. THE ENTRANCE TO THE LIFE OF FULL OBEDIENCE
VI. THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH
VII. The School of Obedience
VIII. OBEDIENCE TO THE LAST COMMAND
NOTE ON THE MORNING WATCH.
THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE
PREFACE
These addresses on Obedience are issued with the very fervent prayer that it may please our gracious Father to use them for the instruction and strengthening of the young men and women, on whose obedience and devotion so much depends for the Church and the world. To all of them who read this I send my loving greeting. The God of all grace bless them abundantly!
It often happens after a Conference, or even after writing a book, that it is as if one only then begins to see the meaning and importance of the truth with which one has been occupied. So I do indeed feel as if I had utterly failed in grasping or expounding the spiritual character, the altogether indispensable necessity, the divine and actual possibility, the inconceivable blessedness of a life of true and entire obedience to our Father in heaven. Let me, therefore, just in a few sentences gather up the main points which have come home to myself with special power, and ask every reader at starting to take note of them as some of the chief lessons to be learnt in Christ’s school of obedience.
The Father in heaven asks, and requires, and actually expects, that every child of His yield Him whole-hearted and entire obedience, day by day, and all the day.
To enable His child to do this, He has made a most abundant and altogether sufficient provision in the promise of the New Covenant, and in the gift of His Son and Spirit.
This provision can alone, but can most certainly, be enjoyed, and these promises fulfilled, in the soul that gives itself up to a life in the abiding communion with the Three-One God, so that His presence and power work in it all the day.
The very entrance into this life demands the vow of absolute obedience, or the surrender of the whole being, to be, think, speak, do, every moment, nothing but what is according to the will of God, and well-pleasing to Him.
If these things be indeed true, it is not enough to assent to them: we need the Holy Spirit to give us such a vision of their glory and divine power, and the demand they make on our immediate and unconditional submission, that there may be no rest till we accept all that God is willing to do for us.
Let us all pray that God may, by the light of His Spirit, so show His loving and almighty will concerning us, that it may be impossible for us to be disobedient to the heavenly vision.
Andrew Murray.
Wellington, 9th August, 1898.
I. OBEDIENCE: ITS PLACE IN HOLY SCRIPTURE
In undertaking the study of a Bible word, or of a truth of the Christian life, it is a great help to take a survey of the place it takes in Scripture. As we see where, and how often, and in what connections it is found, its relative importance may be apprehended as well as its bearing on the whole of revelation. Let me try in this first chapter to prepare the way for the study of what obedience is, by showing you where to go in God’s Word to find the mind of God concerning it.
1. TAKE SCRIPTURE AS A WHOLE.
We begin with Paradise. In Gen. 2:16, we read: ‘And the Lord God commanded the man, saying.’ And later (3:11), ‘Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?’
Note how obedience to the command is the one virtue of Paradise, the one condition of man’s abiding there, the one thing his Creator asks of him. Nothing is said of faith, or humility, or love: obedience includes all. As supreme as is the claim and authority of God is the demand for obedience as the one thing that is to
DECIDE HIS DESTINY.
In the life of man, to obey is the one thing needful.
Turn now from the beginning to the close of the Bible. In its last chapter you read (Rev. 22:14), ‘Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have a right to the tree of life.’ Or, if we accept the Revised Version, which gives another reading, we have the same thought in chapters 12 and 14, where we read of the seed of the woman (12:17), ‘which keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus’; and of the patience of the saints (14:12), ‘Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.’
From beginning to end, from Paradise lost to Paradise regained, the law is unchangeable—it is only obedience that gives access to the tree of life and the favor of God.
And if you ask how the change was effected out of the disobedience at the beginning that closed the way to the tree of life, to the obedience at the end that again gained entrance to it, turn to
THAT WHICH STANDS MIDWAY
between the beginning and the end—the cross of Christ. Read a passage like Rom. 5:19, ‘Through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous’; or Phil. 2:8, ‘He became obedient unto death, therefore God hath highly exalted Him’; or Heb. 5:8, 9, ‘He learned obedience and became the Author of salvation to them that obey Him,’ and you see how the whole redemption of Christ consists in restoring obedience to its place. The beauty of His salvation consists in this, that He brings us back to the life of obedience, through which alone the creature can give the Creator the glory due to Him, or receive the glory of which his Creator desires to make him partaker.
Paradise, Calvary, Heaven, all proclaim with one voice:
‘Child of God! the first and the last thing thy God asks of thee is simple, universal, unchanging obedience.’
II. LET US TURN TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Here let us specially notice how, with any new beginning in the history of God’s kingdom, obedience always comes into special prominence.
1. Take Noah, the new father of the human race, and you will find four times written (Gen. 6:22; 7:5, 9, 16),
‘According to all that God commanded Noah, so did he.’
It is the man who does what God commands, to whom God can entrust His work, whom God can use to be a savior of men.
2. Think of Abraham, the father of the chosen race. ‘By faith Abraham obeyed’ (Heb. 11:7).
When he had been forty years in this school of faith-obedience, God came to perfect his faith, and to crown it with His fullest blessing. Nothing could fit him for this but a crowning act of obedience. When he had bound his son on the altar, God came and said (Gen. 22:12, 18),
‘By Myself have I sworn, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee; and in thy seed shall all nations be blessed, because thou hast obeyed My voice.’
And to Isaac He spake (26:3, 5), ‘I will perform the oath which I sware to Abraham, because that Abraham obeyed my voice.’
Oh, when shall we learn how unspeakably pleasing obedience is in God’s sight, and how unspeakable is the reward He bestows upon it! The way to be a blessing to the world is to be men of obedience; known by God and the world by this
ONE MARK
¬ — a will utterly given up to God’s will. Let all who profess to walk in Abraham’s footsteps walk thus.
3. Go on to Moses. At Sinai, God gave him the message to the people (Ex. 19:4), ‘If you will obey My voice indeed, ye shall be a peculiar treasure to Me above all people.’
In the very nature of things it cannot be otherwise. God’s holy will is His glory and perfection; it is only by an entrance into His will, by obedience, that it is possible to be His people.
4. Take the building of the sanctuary in which God was to dwell. In the last three chapters of Exodus you have the expression nineteen times, ‘According to all the Lord commanded Moses, so did he,’ And then, ‘The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.’ Just so again in Lev. 8 and 9, you have, with reference to the consecration of the priests and the tabernacle, the same expression twelve times. And then, ‘The glory of the Lord appeared before all the people, and fire came out from before the Lord, and consumed the burnt-offering.’
Words cannot make it plainer, that it is amid what the obedience of His people has wrought that God delights to dwell, that it is the obedient He crowns with His favor and presence.
5. After the forty years wandering in the wilderness, and its terrible revelation of the fruit of disobedience, there was again a new beginning when the people were about to enter Canaan. Read Deuteronomy, with all Moses spoke in sight of the land, and you will find there is no book of the Bible which uses the word ‘obey’ so frequently, or speaks so much of the blessing obedience will assuredly bring. The whole is summed up in the words (11:27),
‘I set before you a blessing if ye obey, a curse if ye will not obey.’
Yes, ‘A BLESSING IF YE OBEY’! that is the key-note of the blessed life. Canaan, just like Paradise and Heaven, can be the place of blessing as it is the place of obedience. Would God we might take it in! Do beware only of praying only for a blessing. Let us care for the obedience, God will care for the blessing. Let my one thought as a Christian be, how I can obey and please my God perfectly.
6. The next new beginning we have is in the appointment of kings in Israel. In the story of Saul we have the most solemn warning as to the need of exact and entire obedience in a man whom God is to trust as ruler of His people. Samuel had commanded Saul (1 Sam. 10:8) to wait seven days for him to come and sacrifice, and to show him what to do. When Samuel delayed (13:8-14) Saul took it upon himself to sacrifice.
When Samuel came he said: ‘Thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which He commanded thee; thy kingdom shall not continue, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.’
God will not honor the man who is not obedient.
Saul has a second opportunity given him of showing what is in his heart. He is sent to execute God’s judgment against Amelek. He obeys. He gathers an army of two hundred thousand men, undertakes the journey into the wilderness, and destroys Amelek. But while God had commanded him ‘utterly to destroy all; and not to spare,’ he spared the best of the cattle and Agag.
God speaks to Samuel, ‘It repenteth Me that I have set up Saul to be king, for he hath not performed My commandment.’
When Samuel comes, Saul twice over says, ‘I have performed the commandment of the Lord;’ ‘I have obeyed the voice of the Lord.’
And so he had, as many would think. But his obedience had not been entire. God claims exact, full obedience. God had said, ‘Utterly destroy all! spare not!’ This he had not done. He had spared the best sheep for a sacrifice unto the Lord. And Samuel said.
‘To obey is better than any sacrifice. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord hath rejected thee.’
Sad type of so much obedience, which in part performs God’s commandment, and yet is not the obedience God asks! God says of all sin and all disobedience: ‘Utterly destroy all! spare not!’ May God reveal to us whether we are indeed going all lengths with Him, seeking utterly to destroy all and spare nothing that is not in perfect harmony with His will. It is only a whole-hearted obedience, down to the minutest details, that can satisfy God. Let nothing less satisfy you; lest while we say, ‘I have obeyed,’ God says, ‘Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord.’
7. Just one word more from the Old Testament. Next to Deuteronomy Jeremiah is the book most full of the word ‘obey,’ though alas! mostly in connection with the complaint that the people had not obeyed. God sums up all His dealings with the fathers in the one word,
‘I spake not with them concerning sacrifices, but this thing I commanded them, OBEY MY VOICE AND I WILL BE YOUR GOD.’
Would God that we could learn that all that God speaks of sacrifices, even of the sacrifice of His beloved Son, is subordinate to the one thing—to have His creature restored to full obedience. Into all the inconceivable meaning of the word, ‘I WILL BE YOUR GOD,’ there is no gateway but this, ‘Obey My voice.’
III. WE COME TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
1. Here we think at once of our blessed Lord, and the prominence He gives to obedience as the one thing for which He was come into the world. He who entered it with His ‘Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God,’ ever confessed to men, ‘I seek not My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.’
Of all He did and of all He suffered, even to the death, He said, ‘This commandment have I received of My Father.’
If we turn to His teaching, we find everywhere, that the obedience He rendered is what He claims from everyone who would be His disciple.
During His whole ministry, from beginning to end, obedience is
THE VERY ESSENCE OF SALVATION.
