Obeying God

"Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’" (Acts 5:29)

Our highest authority should be God. As our highest authority, we should obey Him. There are blessings that come from obeying Him, and there are consequences for not doing so. Examples can be found in the Bible about what happens when we obey God and when we do not. 

Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and preach to the people there. He disobeyed God and ended up being swallowed by a whale. Something not generally considered a blessing. Another story in the Bible is of Moses. 

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, ‘ Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, ‘ Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, ‘ Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.’” (Numbers 20:7-12)

Moses was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt and to the promised land, and he was going to take them into the land, but because of what happened, he lost that opportunity. 

There are people who obeyed God even in really difficult times. Abraham was blessed for following God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac. In the end, he did not have to sacrifice Isaac, and God still gave him this big blessing:

“That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:17-18)

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar to bow down and worship a golden statue that he had erected. The punishment for not doing so was to get thrown into the fiery furnace. “Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up: And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” (Daniel 3: 4-6) One of the Ten Commandments is to not bow down to idols. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” (Exodus 20:4-5) Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego chose to obey God and not bow down to the golden image. By choosing to do so, they were thrown into the fiery furnace, but the LORD saved them so they did not die. “And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” (Daniel 3: 23-25) Also because they obeyed God, Nebuchadnezzar realized his wrong, and ordered that the people obey God, rather than his idols. “Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort.” (Daniel 3: 28-29)

We should take joy in obeying God, and not obey Him only because we do not want to get the consequences. That is one motivation to obeying Him, but we should ultimately be doing it because we love God. 

"With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men;" (Ephesians 6:7) 

All verses are from the KJV