True Obedience

            "The prophets received numerous visions and prophesies, all calling the people back to God, but the prophets' messages fell on deaf ears."  I read this recently in one of my textbooks and was reminded of how God wrestled constantly with his people in order to get them to obey.  But then I remembered that natural man can't obey God (Rom 8:7-8).  It's impossible.  Our hearts are desperately wicked and any righteousness of our own is like filthy rags in God's sight.  What's more, God has known this about man from the beginning... so why did he wrestle with his people for so long?  Was the whole point of the Old Testament merely to weave a compelling narrative, or were the incessant failures of men intended to set the stage for the Gospel, to pave the way for Christ?  In Genesis 6, God saw that "every intention of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually."  Pretty bleak, huh? God responded by flooding the earth, but after the flood, He promised Noah, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, because the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth."  Notice:  God's reason for flooding the earth became his reason for never again flooding the earth.  It's as if He was saying, "I could flood the earth 1,000 times and it wouldn't remove evil from the hearts of men."  Ezekiel refers to people having "hearts of stone," and Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2 that we were "dead in our sins." Apple trees produce apples and leopards produce spots.  Even so, men produce wickedness, and no amount of cajoling or arm-twisting can ever draw righteousness from evil hearts.  Why then, I ask, did God continually command his people to obey - when he knew they could not? 

            God didn't give the Law in order to inspire obedience but to illuminate disobedience.  He never intended the Law to serve as a means of self-congratulation (as it so often becomes) but as a catalyst for desperation, a teacher to help us realize our sinfulness and force us to cry out for help.  Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." His point was not to make it harder than the Pharisees.  His point was to make it  impossible! He was raising the bar so high that we'd stand there, dumbfounded, and ask, "Who then can please God?!"  That's precisely where the rescuing power of Christ enters the scene, producing in us the very thing we could never produce in ourselves:  Godly obedience.

            Perhaps this is why God wrestled for centuries with his people - to show us that no command, no threat, no promise can ever bring about true obedience.  Only a new heart, a heart filled with Christ and animated by the Spirit of God, can enable men to lead righteous lives.  We need Him!, not just in creed, not just at conversion, but for every day, for every moment, for everything!