Obedience and the Example of God

Obedience and the Example of God

Jesus was born as the will of God and the extraordinary obedience of a young Jewess who was engaged to be married. Mary’s response was totally out of character for young engaged girls, she didn’t even wait to consult her loving fiancée. It would be bad enough today but in the days of Herod the Tetrarch it was not uncommon for future wives who fell pregnant to be stoned even if daddy was the fiancée.

When the news hit Joseph the Fiancée he initially planned to put Mary out of his life at some convenient time. That was until God gave him the plan then everything was back on track for the wedding.

Around about this time, well about 6 months earlier there was another pregnancy that sort of set the religious world abuzz. Mary’s cousin who was well past the age when one would normally expect to experience the “pitter patter of little feet” became pregnant. Elizabeth’s husband who was doing high priestly duties when God interrupted him with the news and he was so flabbergasted by it that God made him dumb until the day of his son. God had told them both the name for their son and it rather stopped the crowd in the street when Mum said, “his name is John”. There was no family member who had been called John and then father wrote on a piece of material, “His name is John” then promptly got his voice back. Now that really set the town a wondering what was going on.

Ever since these two events there has been a passing parade of extraordinary acts of obedience, but the most outstanding in a field of many, was the Passover when Jesus gave His life for us, the many. The story began the evening before His crucifixion. That night Jesus went out to the mount of Olives. It was a night that Jesus had to talk seriously to His Father. His followers went out with Him but couldn’t stay the course. While they slept Jesus prayed to the Father so intensely that we are told He sweated blood as He asked His Father if there was any other way than the Crucifixion to achieve what He had set out to do. Again, the issue was resolved by His classic comment “nevertheless Your will be done”

Having chosen obedience Jesus went back to where the disciples were asleep again and very shortly after the Temple officials arrived to take him back to the “High Justice” of the time and within one day all the hearings were heard, Jesus was nailed to the Cross of Salvation and there He died for the love of sinners like you and like me.

That wasn’t the end of the story God brought Jesus back to life as His honoured Son, the followers who kept going to sleep on that night were transformed as a result and became the beginning of a world changing tribe of obedient, to the end of life for themselves in almost every case, but only they passed on the message to others first: and the tribe goes forth even to today.