Consider the Benefits of Obeying God: 1

CONSIDER THE BENEFITS OF

OBEYING GOD

1

DR. EDET ESARA

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© 2013 by Dr. Edet Esara. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/20/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8153-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8155-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8154-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013900712

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preamble

Word By Word Exegesis Of Exodus 20:12

To Whom Was This Commandment Directed?

Teaching Of Jesus Christ On The 5Th Commandment

Apostolic Teaching On The 5Th Commandment

Biblical Examples Of Obedience

Saul’s Disobedience

Blessing Of Jacob By Isaac

Another Disobedience Of Saul

Commands To Parents

Harsh Language Against Parents

Parent Abuse

Related Issues In The Torah

Cursing Parents

Reverence To Parents

Showing Respect

Manifestation Of God In Creation

Reasoning Together

Biology

Abused Parents And Elders

What Should We Do?

Praying For The Offender(S)

Examples Of Forgiveness

A Father’s Blessing

Conclusion

Epilogue

About The Author

Endnotes

DEDICATION

This is dedicated to Elder Akon, my mother.

She would have been happy to edit this little work for me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With gratitude I acknowledge the tutorage and encouragement I have received from several people that God put in positions to mould my life. These definitely laid significant foundations for whatever writing I have ever done. I acknowledge friends, colleagues, and elders in the Lord who, by different ways and despite diverse circumstances, have contributed to and encouraged the publication of this piece of work.

Many friends read and had copies of the earliest manuscript of this work but Dr S Manthri, Dr R Brown-Obot, Mrs O Ayuk, and Mr Brandon Guthrie gave me some feedback. Rev. Canon Tony Parry’s invaluable discussions after perusing the final manuscript would encourage any writer. I am grateful.

After forty-nine years of meritorious Gospel Ministry, Bishop L A Bailey believes that this work is a manual suitable for a wider audience and has kindly crafted the foreword. To him, I express my sincere gratitude.

This piece would not have gone to any reader without the grace of God; hence to Him we owe all honour.

FOREWORD

At this critical point in Church history, there is little time available for Christians to be distracted over secondary issues. The challenges of a growing secularization that disparages the Gospel of Christ are all too evident to every believer. The Christian Church must be stirred to arise and live out the calling Jesus entitled us: as salt and light. But how can we see a radical change in the spiritual landscape without a radical return to biblical obedience to the Word of God? Biblical obedience is the standard that God hath set for his Church to maintain in this secular and humanistic age.

Samuel the High Priest of Israel declared to Saul, the first king of Israel: Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is greater than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness, is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, He hath also rejected thee from being king.

In Consider the benefit of obeying God, the writer has explored the concept of biblical obedience that is enshrined in the bible for us to emulate as a bright light in a darkened world. This book is much needed at this time and should be in the libraries of preachers, parents and all Christian leaders.

The Author has exhibited a great degree of skill, humility and maturity in producing this manual. We owe him a great debt of gratitude.

I wish each reader a transforming experience from reading this manual.

Bishop Levi Aston Bailey,

New Testament Church of God (NTCG)

PREAMBLE

The above quote is an example of a Predictive Prophesy.¹ It is loaded with promises of God for a better life. These promises of God are conditional and would be predicated on obedience of the commandments of God, or in God’s own terms. In above chapter of the Bible you may contrast the beginning (verses 1-3) against verses 58 & 59, copied bellow, and find that obeying and not obeying God’s commands would earn you opposite consequences.

"If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law

That are written in this book,

That you may fear this glorious and awesome name,

THE LORD YOUR GOD,

The LORD will bring upon you and your descendants

Extraordinary plagues—the great and prolonged plagues—

And serious and prolonged sicknesses"

(Deut. 28:58&59)

That is, obedience is rewarded with its blessings; while disobedience is not separated from its consequences, which may be curses or destruction. In Gods own approach, Jesus Christ came to redeem us from these curses (Galatians 3:13); so that we may not return to them (2 Peter 2:19-22).

This book is the first in the series of teaching on obeying God. In this volume, it is intended that the reader would be taken through specific instructions from the Scriptures with particular attention to honouring the source of our being.

The Commandments of God are God’s guide to successful life. We may be familiar with the Ten Commandments, but there are 613 commandments or laws in the Torah. For the purpose of teaching on them, in Judaism: 101 Course Module,² these 613 laws have been arranged into 34 groups by Tracy R Rich. In this account we are not attempting at treating all the 613 laws but shall concentrate on one of the Ten Commandments found in the 20th chapter of Exodus.

The Ten Commandments are chosen for this exercise because of three reasons. First, the Ten Commandments is the summary of the whole Laws in the Torah. Secondly, they are the only Laws of Moses that were spoken by God’s audible voice to Israel.³ Thirdly, God Himself wrote the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone on two different occasions.⁴ Hence we consider them to be the most serious injunctions or interdictions from God.

According to the Torah Resources International,⁵ the strict meaning of Torah is: Instruction designed to teach us the truth about God. It consists of the first five books of the Christian Old Testament which are together called the Pentateuch. In the Torah the Ten Commandments were initially referred to as Ten Words to reflect how it was named originally.

The introductory verse of Exodus 20 states: "And the LORD spoke all these words saying… . In the original Hebrew Torah, the expression transliterated word is dabar" meaning the following: word, matter, and commandment, among others, and is pronounced daw-bawr. This introductory verse indicates that the words following it were enunciated by the LORD (Jehovah). Those words were later styled Ten Commandments to endue it with the recognizable strict impact it deserves and its significance in the divine redemption covenant arrangement of God.

The whole Ten Commandments are to be found in Exodus 20, verses 1 through 17 (otherwise written Ex. 20:1-17). While the first two verses are considered introductory, in the King James Version (KJV) and the New King James Version (NKJV), the Ten Commandments have 10 sentences spread into the next 15 verses. Depending on the denomination these 15 verses are grouped differently: Thus the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics group verses 3 through 6 (vs. 3-6) as the first commandment and then divide verse 17 into two so that the commandments are separated into 10 distinct injunctions. Some other Christians start with verse 3 as the first commandment and then treat verses 4 through 6 (vs. 4-6) as the second. Whatever arrangement is familiar to the reader, the Ten Words from the LORD (Jehovah) or the Ten Commandments contain the same instructions. Copying out the whole 17 verses of the Ten Commandments may unnecessarily increase the volume of this book. Readers who do not know it and are interested may wish to refer to their own Holy Bible.

Our Assemblage of the Ten Commandments

It is customary to assemble the Ten Commandments into two subsets: those that relate to our interactions or relationship with God; and those related to our interactions or relationships with other humans. For ease of teaching, and because the family occupy a special place in God’s plan, as would become obvious later, we have divided the Ten Commandments into three groups as follows:

1. Commandments regarding our dealings with God: 1st to the 4th (Exodus 20 verses 3 through 11);

2. The Commandment dealing with the relationship between parents and their children: the 5th (Exodus 20 verse 12); and

3. Commandments dealing with relationships that operate in-between members of the community of God’s chosen people; and between members of God’s community and others: the 6th to the 10th (Exodus 20 verses 13 through 17).

The second group, dealing with the relationship between parents and their children, has been chosen for the attention of this book for the following seven reasons:

1. Exodus 20:12 has significant impact on how we view the other two groups. For example: if people do not give due regard to their own parents they are not likely to have due regard to other older members of the community. Furthermore, if they have no regard for members of their community then they are not likely to have regard for the living God of the community.

2. It has been shown that this commandment is strategically and centrally placed between those related to regard for God and those related to regard for the community.

3. This commandment is placed immediately after concerns about relationship with God as honouring the parents we are born to see sets the stage⁶ for honouring the God that our parents teach us about or we discover if we seek Him diligently (Jeremiah 29:13).

4. This commandment comes before concerns about murder. As serious as murder may sound, could it be that this commandment is placed earlier in an order of seriousness and significance? We think so.

5. The family is the nucleus of the society⁷ and where lack of order is dominant in the nucleus there would be disorder in the whole body of society.

6. This commandment is repeated essentially at every particular stage of the evolution of the Redemption Plan of God recognised in Christianity: Thus it is first documented in Exodus 20:12; it is emphasised in Deuteronomy 5:16 and most of the Old Testament is filled with its examples; it was fulfilled⁸ and taught by our Lord Jesus Christ in His teachings as recorded in all the three Synoptic Gospels