B4 – The Lord Jesus Wants Me To Obey Him
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ…” 2 Peter 3 vs. 18
“If you love Me, keep My commandments” John 14 vs. 15
In the previous lesson we considered three reasons why we should love the Lord Jesus.
As we think about all the things that He did for us, we must be moved to love Him with all our hearts. Not only so, the Lord wants us also to obey Him. This means that we must keep His commandments and do what He asks us to do in His word. He said in John 14 vs. 15,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
Some people make the claim that they love the Lord Jesus but they are not prepared to do what He says in the Bible.
How can we obey the Lord Jesus?
We obey the Lord Jesus by keeping His commandments
The Bible contains many commandments that we need to obey. In this lesson we will look at just a few of them and you can see whether you are truly obedient to the commandments of the Lord or not.
In Ephesians 4 vs. 32 we read these words:
“And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”
Now, what do you normally do when someone has done you wrong? Perhaps you sometimes hold a grudge against that person. You may have told yourself, “I will never forgive that person for what he did.” Feeling like this is normal. We get hurt when people do us wrong. However, if we read this verse carefully, we will notice that we are commanded to forgive one another because God has also forgiven us.
The Bible tells us we are forgiven because Christ died for us. When we remember what Christ did for us on the cross we will be happy to obey God’s word and, therefore, we should forgive each other.
Another commandment is this:
“Do not lie to one another.” Colossians 3 vs. 9.
We can all understand this commandment. When we tell a lie, we do so against the commandments of the Lord.
There is another verse in the Bible and it reads,
“Let him who stole steal no longer…” Ephesians 4 vs. 28.
Stealing is a great temptation for many boys and girls. There may be so many items on sale in the supermarket that one may desire to have. It can be so easy to look at a small item such as a packet of sweets and assume that this is only small. No one will see me if I take it, but the Lord knows and sees everything. When we steal, we are actually disobeying His commandments.
We obey the Lord when He speaks through our conscience
The Lord helps us to obey Him by speaking to us through our conscience. We know deep within us that we have a sense of what is right or wrong.
If you have ever cheated, for example in a school exam, then you know the feeling you felt afterwards. You were not happy. Why? Because softly and kindly, the Lord Jesus was speaking to you through your conscience to make you realize that what you were doing was wrong. You proceeded to do it deliberately and you were disobeying the Lord Jesus.
Perhaps you were tempted to cheat in the exam but you stayed strong and did your best on your own. You did not cheat. The results were not impressive but nonetheless you had no feeling of guilt. You were happy knowing that although the exam results were poor, you were able to obey and please the Lord.
Whenever you are not sure what to do in difficult situations, ask yourself this question: “Would the Lord Jesus want me to do this?”
Your conscience will let you know whether it is the right thing to do or not.
We obey the Lord by keeping the instructions of our leaders
God is our loving heavenly Father. He has given us our homes with our families so that we could be loved and protected. It is very important to God that we become obedient to our parents. In Colossians 3 vs. 20 we read that,
“Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.”
When we obey our parents, we obey the Lord.
There are other authorities we must obey. For instance, the Bible says,
”Remember those who rule over you.” Hebrews 13 vs. 7.
We need to obey our teachers at school, the police officers in our villages, our leaders in government and our supervisors at work. By so doing we obey the Lord because He commanded us to obey those who rule over us.
When the Lord Jesus was here on earth, He was obedient to His earthly parents. He taught His disciples to obey those who were in authority, for example through paying taxes. He also obeyed His Father in Heaven. The Bible says of Jesus Christ:
“He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2 vs. 8.
We must be truly grateful that the Lord Jesus Christ was obedient to His Father that He even died for us. Let us show our gratefulness to Him by being obedient to His word. Let us be obedient to His gentle voice within us in our conscience and let us be obedient also to Him by being obedient and submissive to those whom God has placed in authority over us in all walks of life.
Your memory verse for the day is:
“If you love Me, keep My commandments” John 14 vs. 15
Next Steps
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