Obedience

I have a pastor friend who tells the story of his five-year-old daughter riding her new “big wheel” tricycle on their driveway the day after Christmas.  He told her that she could ride the trike anywhere on the driveway all the way to the line that separated into a slope leading to the street but no further.  He was concerned that she would venture out into the danger of the street, so he wanted her well away from the slope.  The line was not to be messed with.  “If you cross it, you will get a spanking,” he warned her. 

Predictably, the girl (who, my friend says, was by very nature a “line pusher”) kept riding right up to the line and then looking back over her shoulder at her daddy to note his attentiveness.  He watched her intently as she kept trying to test the line.   Over and over she rode, circling and circling closer and closer to the limits of obedience.  Finally she stopped the big wheel and said emphatically and defiantly to her dad, “Well, I guess you had better start spanking because I’m gonna cross that line!” 

I love this story as a way to illustrate what is in the human heart.  The Bible teaches that our hearts are in open rebellion against God and that it is in our nature to say, “I’m gonna cross that line!” 

Our study this week is a lesson in obedience.  How often have we questioned God and wondered about His ways?  How often have we found it difficult to truly obey His will and subject ourselves to His word? And yet our lack of obedience is a sign of our lack of trust.  Just like a five year old who doesn’t understand the meaning of a parent’s hard line, we rebel against God because we see His ways as primitive or demanding.  And yet we know intuitively that a parent makes the rules because of love and sees that obedience is first and foremost an act of love and trust.  That is the deeper lesson of the text this week.     

2 Samuel 24:10-19:David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”
Before David got up the next morning, the word of the Lord had come to Gad the prophet, David’s seer: “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’”
So Gad went to David and said to him, “Shall there come on you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me.”
David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”
So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the Lord, “I have sinned; I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.”
On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad.