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“Faith: Simply Doing What God Says”
Categories: Christian character, discipleship, Faith / Trust, Sunday Family Report articles
An important phrase is peppered throughout all the narratives in the Exodus arc: “Moses did as the Lord had commanded him.” He spoke to Pharaoh like God told them to. He built the Tabernacle like God told him to. He set the Levites apart for service as God had told them to. We are told over a dozen times in the Torah that Moses simply, trustingly did what God said.
This demonstrates a powerful principle that God’s faithful ones talk about regularly, but which is often overlooked by the broad spectrum of all that calls itself Christian: respecting God’s authority.
Authority means the right to command. A person with authority is the person in charge; the one who can make decisions that affect others; the one whose words have the weight to make others obey. And in all of reality, no one has more authority than YHWH—the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, and of our lord and savior Jesus.
Our job, then, is to obey the ways of God, plain and simple. In church life and in our personal lives, we are called to obey God’s spoken word—the Bible. Has he said how he wants his church led? Then we obey that. Has he said that his people should be generous with our money? Then we do it. Has he said to flee from sexual immorality? Then we do it. Has he said to worship him in certain ways and not in others? Then we do as he’s asked.
Our hope is that, as simple as it is, when the Holy Spirit looks at the whole of our lives, he will be able to say something similar of us to what he so often said of Moses: “They did just as the Lord had commanded them.”
- Dan Lankford, minister
