2026-09-30
1 Kings 9:4-7 And as for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’ But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
Very few promises and assurances in the Bible are indeed given indiscriminately as we are wont to expect. There’s almost always a responsibility attached to any promise— in that sense at least, every such promise is then conditional. And though God really has even the heart of the king like a river in his hand, to turn it wheresoever He wills, yet he often leaves men to themselves; he does not treat us like machines, like automatons. Several people have sometimes longed to know why God created the perfect and beautiful world that he did in Genesis 1 and still allowed for the possibility of evil. But that was the only way of making conditional good possible; real choices, free-will. There would have been no real choice to choose good and reject evil, and to obey, if there hadn’t also been a real choice to choose evil, to disobey God.
God tied his great promise of always keeping a son of David on the throne on the condition that these sons of David obeyed God, kept His commandments, and walked in his ways. God loved Solomon and bestowed on him wisdom, favour, fame, riches, and honour, but so soon as Solomon let his heart be led astray by his numerous foreign wives, God looked away. In 1 Kings 11:11 he tells Solomon: “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and I will give it to your servant.” Only that He has mercy on account of David and does not tear the entire kingdom from David’s sons.
It’s of course tempting and easy to look upon the commandments resentfully; to regard them as torture rather than a delight. That sly old trick with which the serpent tempted Eve of leading her to think that God did not mean the best for them when He commanded that they must not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden is really just the same that’s repeated to us again and again. We are made to and we make ourselves imagine that God doesn’t want us happy or free, and that He uses every chance to impose Himself and make us solemn and miserable. And easily enough, we think that it is He who gains from our obedience, and that our disobedience hurts Him.
But if our disobedience hurts God (in a sense it does, the same way any parent would be hurt by a child’s disobedience) it hurts us more, though we might not know it, at least at first. David rejoicing in God’s Law and Commandments in Psalms 19:11 affirms: “Moreover by them (God’s laws and commandments) is your servant warned, in keeping them is great reward.” It is to our benefit and not God’s that we obey Him and keep His commandments, and it is to our great loss that we do not. Elihu is quite right when he confronts Job saying:
If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him?
And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him?
If you are righteous, what do you give to him?
Or what does he receive from your hand?
Your wickedness concerns a man like yourself,
and your righteousness a son of man. (Job 35:6-8)
Augustine has this to say about us pursuing righteousness:
But who would be such a fool as to think that the things offered to God in sacrifice are necessary to him or that he needs them for any use of his own? God not only has no need of cattle or any other earthly thing, but does not need even a person’s righteousness itself. Rather, we must hold that everything done in rightly worshipping God is of benefit not to God but to man. For no one would say that he had served the interests of a fountain by drinking from it, or that he had served the interests of light by using it to see.
Aslan in C. S. Lewis’s in The Silver Chair speaks keenly and solemnly to Jill saying:
But first remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things might happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so in Narnia.
And the Lord’s command to Joshua was: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Joshua 1:8)
Lastly, Proverbs 4:20-27
My son, be attentive to my words;
incline your ear to my sayings.
Let them not escape from your sight;
keep them within your heart.
For they are life to those who find them,
and healing to all their flesh.
Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
Put away from you crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from you.
Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.
Ponder the path of your feet;
then all your ways will be sure.
Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil.
Brother, ponder the path of your feet, remember the signs, and obey His commandments. Only then shall it be well with us, shall we have good success.
Prayer:
Omnipotent God, merciful Father, and good Lord, thank you for your commandments. Thank you because they are the guardrails of our lives, to keep us from harm and death. May we delight to obey you, and out of our love for you keep all your commandments. Help us in this by your grace, because we could never get far enough by our own will and strength. In Jesus Name. Amen.