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Romans 9:15 (NIV)
For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
We might begin to wonder why God chose the Jews as His peculiar people. Back in those days, most of the tribes that existed were so rooted in idol worshipping and they have a mixture of intermarriages too among what we call the 'gentile' nations. God desires to have His people to Himself. He wanted people who will preserve the purity and continue in the laws He would give unto them. He wanted them to marry from within and rather than marry outsiders which was why most idol-worshipping came into the camp of the Israelites based on intermarriage. God knew ahead of time.
God entrusted the Jews with His laws for them to reproduce it and entrust it also into the hands of their children. This is why it made sense when Joshua said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord". God wanted to maintain a pure and complete lineage and He found Abraham worthy.
The covenant God had with Abraham is key and it was tied to his faith because of His obedience to the things of God. This is why despite all they went through, they still grow and flourish anywhere they were planted. They grew in Egypt and spent 430 years there and even though they were slaves, their growth and strength became a threat to the Egyptians.
When Adam fell, we already passed sinful nature into our DNA and that's why the Bible said we have all sinned and come short the Glory of God. Obedience to God's laws would guarantee all the things we can ever dream of - loving and caring family relations, success in building business wealth while still maintaining our personal, physical and emotional health.
God punished His people back then due to their lack of Obedience just as Adam and Eve were chased out of the Garden due to the same. They always get punished for their disobedience but God knows how to restore them when they come back to Him.
Psalm 51:16-17 (NIV)
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
Even when they spent 70 years in Babylon and before they were carted away, the temple of God was broken down to the rubble as predicted by Jesus and Jeremiah and reiterated too in the book of Isaiah, God still found a way to bring them back where they even came to lay the foundation of the new temple as recorded in the book of Ezra chapter 3.
For the Jews, the promise of the blessings that comes from God based on His covenant with Abraham became the motivation for them to walk in obedience to God. God will never change His standards to suit man. When we pray, we are not praying to change God but to change ourselves so our will and desires can be subjected to His will for our lives.
Isaiah 1:19 (NIV)
If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land;
Yes, Jesus came and He died for us but what we need to understand as believers is that, our trust and faith in Jesus has not taken away the moral, ethical and the judicial rights God expects of us. Jesus has given us assess to the Father but we still need to walk in obedience to the things that are expected of us as a believer. Jesus did His part but the Word and instructions remain the same.
The roots of Christianity are in the justification by faith and that began way back from Abraham. He was told to leave His father's house and he left all behind - the gods, the people, the comfort and everything. It takes a great act of faith and obedience to be able to pull that off. God saw that in Abraham already because He knew every man.
Jeremiah 1:5 (NIV)
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
All blessings are linked to Abraham and that was due to his obedience to God's instructions. We are the seeds of Abraham and God still requires the same from us today.
As Abraham progressed in Obedience to God, God increased the magnitude of the promise He had with him. God told Him he would become a great nation and then afterwards told him he would be a father of many nations. He further went and told him nations and kings would come out of him and in Genesis 18:18, God told him that he would become a might nation and bless the nations of the earth. God also told him that all nations of the earth shall be blessed because of him, as recorded in Genesis 22:18. The key needed to unlock these promises as a covenant He had with Abraham was obedience. That is still what God requires from us today.
Abraham tried to do a shortcut when he had Ishmael. Abraham left his father's house at 75, gave birth to Ishmael at 86 and it was not until he was 99 before God revealed to him that circumcision is vital in the steps to obedience and it was a year after this revelation that Isaac was born. God was intentional. God waited for 13 years to reveal unto him the importance of circumcision and a year after he had Isaac and he was circumcised. God requires total obedience from us.
1 Samuel 15:22 (NIV)
But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
What instruction has God given you personally that you are struggling to go a tad with? Whatever it is, you can be sure that in the end of it, you will be more blessed than you started, even if you feel you are losing so much. Abraham left all his people behind and the key to his blessings can be attributed to his obedience. He must have felt he lost it all too but then God rewarded his faith.
Have faith in God. He is on His throne. He never fail and He always prevail. You are in a safe hand of God when you choose to go all out to do whatever it is that He instructed you to do. If you don't have a specific instructions yet too, don't forget that His Word is the manual that we need to live a fulfilled and pleasing life to God. To obey is better than sacrifice. Don't take for granted the work of His Grace.
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