This message was preached by Pastor Fola Odufuwa some
time ago at an alumni reunion meeting in Lagos, Nigeria. I decided to feature
it ton this blog because the message therein is still very relevant to what is
happening around us today.
The word
which came unto Jeremiah from theLord in
the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying,
2 Go unto the house of the Rechabites, and speak
unto them, and bring them into the house of theLord,
into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink.
3 Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the
son of Habaziniah, and his brethren, and all his sons, and the whole house of
the Rechabites;
4 And I brought them into the house of the Lord, into the chamber of the sons of
Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, a man of God, which was by the chamber of the
princes, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah the son of Shallum, the keeper
of the door:
5 And I set before the sons of the house of the
Rechabites pots full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink ye wine.
6 But they said, We will drink no wine: for
Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no
wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever:
7 Neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor
plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents; that
ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers.
8 Thus have we obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son
of Rechab our father in all that he hath charged us, to drink no wine all our
days, we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters;
9 Nor to build houses for us to dwell in: neither
have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed:
10 But we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed, and
done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us. Jer.35:1-10
We bless the Lord for the opportunity to come together
again and to share together from the word of God. Our topic is highly relevant
in the age that we live in and I challenge you to open your heart to receive
wisdom from the word of life. As we fellowship together, may the Lord grant
unto us a release of His power to lift us into a new phase of abiding love for
God in Jesus name.
The Obedience of the Rechabites
From our text, there are some important points to note
about the obedience of the Rechabites:
1.
There are rewards for obedience and eternally
unpalatable consequences for disobedience. God said
that the Rechabites will never lack a pastor in any generation (vs. 19) and the
children will experience judgement and be deported from their inheritance. We
need to settle this fact in our spirit. Obedience is rewarded. Disobedience is
always punished.
2.
Obedience has to be secured under great pressure. There were a
series of pressure points on the Rechabites. First, there was pervasive
worldliness and moral decadence of the world they were living in. Two, there
was excessive pressure from pastors and church people who had reduced the
standard for serving God. They were asked to drink alcohol by renowned
prophets, and they were to do this in the house of God. Three, there was also
economic pressure because “Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon came up into the land” (v. 11). The
effect of the siege on their finances was to get them to find justification for
disobeying the word of God. Until your obedience is tested and proven, you
cannot claim to be a geniune child of God.
3.
Obedience has to extend to all the members of your
family. For the Rechabites, this included getting their
wives, sons and daughters to obey God. As easy as this sounds, it is extremely
difficult to do. Lot couldn’t do it. David
found it hard. For Solomon, it was impossible. Just as it was then, so it is
now. On the one hand, many pastors and church leaders are finding it extremely
difficult to get their households to serve God. On the other hand, in many of
our churches, the younger ones have abandoned the faith of their fathers and
turned to new ways of serving God – which really
do not work. If there’s time, we’ll come back to this point.
What is Obedience?
For now, let’s ask
ourselves again. What is obedience? If
we analyse the original words used in the bible, we would find that obedience
means:
·
To hear intelligently, to listen attentively
·
To subordinate yourself, to heed or conform to a
command.
·
To be persuaded by a ruler, to submit to authority, to
accept advice.
·
To convince by argument, to rely by inward certainty,
to assent to authority.
From these definitions, you can see that there is a
link between what you hear and what you do. You cannot obey except you hear.
You can only obey what you have heard. If you do not hear it in your spirit
man, you cannot do it. You cannot change your behaviour until you change the
instructions that run your life. Why is this so?
Ro 6:17-18 “But God be
thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart
that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin,
ye became the servants of righteousness.”
How did the Roman believers get themselves free from
sin? By obeying from the heart the instructions they received. It was what they
heard and believed that set them free from sin. Determination never works on
the long run. Obedience is activated by the word of God that you truly believe.
Once that word settles in your spirit, it becomes your life and changes your
behaviour.
Also, obedience is obedience only when it is done from
the heart! If it is done in eye-service or legalism, it is totally unacceptable
to God.
But as obedience is from the heart, so also is
disobedience. It is possible to obey externally but not internally, in form but
not in truth, to please men instead of to please God. Stephen said in Acts 7:39
concerning the people and Moses that “to whom our
fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned
back again into Egypt”. They were
physically heading for Canaan but in their hearts were running towards Egypt!
Obedience is EQUAL to disobedience if it is not from the heart.
So the Rechabites were not just observing a family
tradition. Each one of them believed it, and because they believed it they
found it easy to practice. 1Jo 5:3 “For this is
the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not
grievous (or burdensome).”
The Pillars of Obedience
In order to obey the Lord, you need the three pillars
of obedience as exhibited by the Rechabites:
1.
Revelation – they had to
hear the word, each man for himself. They had to buy into the instruction. Jer
35:6 “But they said,
We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us,
saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever”. It was not enough just to say, ‘we will drink no wine’. No! There was a basis. They had heard the word and
they had bought into it. Do you expose yourself to the word of God? Can the
things you do be located in the bible?
2.
Separation – To understand
the extent to which the Rechabites separated themselves, let’s quickly trace their history in 1 Chronicles 2:55 and
Judges 4:11. Here you will see that their progenitor “had severed himself”. You cannot obey until you have separated yourself.
Until you come to a point where you say “others may, I cannot”, you will struggle to obey God. Others may add a
little alcohol to their drink, I cannot. Others may indulge in a little kiss or
a little romance with someone to whom they are not married, I cannot. Others
may justify consultations and the patronage of personal prophets by the delay
they are facing in one area of life or the other, I cannot.
Let me add one
more verse here. 1Co 5:11 “But now I have
written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a
fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an
extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.”
You cannot
obey until you get yourself out of the wrong company, until you find
encouragement from those who are similarly separated (Psalm 1:1).
3.
Commitment – they had to
keep at it from one generation to the next regardless of the pressures they
faced. Why is commitment necessary? Because obedience is life-long and is in
phases (Phil 2:5-9). Yesterday’s obedience is
gone. The demand of obedience is new every day. For Jesus, at every point a
demand was made, he kept obeying the Father. Partial obedience is disobedience.
Remember the young prophet who died in 1 Kings 13? It was said of him “It is the man of God, who was disobedient unto the
word of the LORD” (v. 26). Why
did he disobey? He didn’t buy into the
instruction not to eat food in the land where he had gone to minister. Remember
Lot’s wife? She
escaped the judgement of the city but became a pillar of salt because she didn’t obey the current instruction. Why? Because she didn’t buy into what the Lord said about not looking back.
Securing Obedience
So how do we secure obedience? Obedience is not
activities. It cannot be replaced with sacrifice. It cannot be transmitted by
laying on of hands or by the application of anointing oil It is a virtue that
is personally learnt and acquired.
Heb 5:8 “Though he were
a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made
perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him”.
Obedience has to be learned by every son of God. The
power of obedience is tested and tasted only through suffering. You cannot
escape it. The opportunity to obey is discovered only in the furnace of
affliction. Obedience is not automatic. It is not acquired by sonship but by
suffering; suffering the distress of not being able to indulge oneself in
earthly passions like others do; suffering the indignity of practicing the
bible in an age where men everywhere generally despise the divine instruction.
Our fathers obeyed and served the Lord in their
generation and have slept. Are you going to keep the banner flying? Or will the
faith of the fathers be destroyed in your own time?
Let us pray.
Feel free to share or comment!
PS
If you would like to contact the writer of this article or any other
article posted on this blog, kindly call +234 802 359 9385, or E-mail:
ojabel2008@hotmail.com.
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