“Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” (Col. 3:20)
For how long? When does a man become the man of his household? As long as Jacob was alive, was everyone under his tent, so to speak, did everyone have to do what he said as long as he was yet alive, did those who became men with families of their own ever completely and totally run their own household, or was much of what they did subject to what Jacob said?
For many years we obey our parents because they provide for us, food, clothing and shelter, we are too young to do so for ourselves, when we reach an age when we can provide for ourselves, are we still required to obey our parents? You obeyed those who taught you in the education system, did you not? Did you allow them to form you into what society said you were to be, what those who give the education system the money to continue have told those teachers what they want the children of that nation to emulate?
You obey what your employer tells you to do, do you not, providing a service for a specified amount of time each day and being renumerated for your time financially. You obey the rules and laws of the society that you live in, staying within the boundaries set by that nation or locality, for if you don’t, they will either remove some of that money you obeyed your employer to accumulate, or they will remove from you your time by placing you behind bars, where in fact, you will once again obey your new masters.
Open, face to face rebellion is not in the nature of most men, it is imagined only in their minds, spoken of in anonymity, or at best with those who are like-minded. You do what your boss says, you did what the teachers told you to do, you did what your parents told you to do, you have lived a life of doing what you were told to do for one singular reason, you were taught to obey, or you would face the consequences of not doing so.
“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Heb. 10:25) Obedience in perhaps the least form possible, no need to act openly upon those words of God that you have hidden in your heart. “For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.” (Mark 9:41) Easier just to put a little extra in the plate as it passes by, or maybe a small donation in an envelope from that place that serves the Lord that arrived in the mail yesterday, stand to sing when you’re told to, sit to listen, pray when you are told to. Another Sunday mornings obligation completed, “Got any plans for the rest of the day?”
Today is Easter, as soon as the service is over, if you care to call it that, a vast amount of those who obeyed will now go out and teach the young how to hunt for Easter eggs, because that’s what they were taught to do. I wonder, how many pastors will open the festivities of the day with a prayer, thanking God for the sunshine and all the “rabbit eggs.”
“This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.” (Matt. 15:8)
But try to explain anything written in this letter to them and you will receive one consistent answer, an excuse they dare not call by that name. “It’s just traditions.” Like most of their Sunday services are.
All of these things that we have been taught to obey, either openly or by subtlety and deceit have turned our faces from the true worship of the Lord, the only One we are to obey, no matter what others think.