The Supreme Star!

Reading: Psalm 40

"Behold, I have come ... to do Your will, O God!" (Heb 10:7a)

The Father God did not push His Son into the world. Rather the Son Himself volunteered to come down from Heaven. Perhaps in a dateless past, God the Father presented the dire need of the world in the Heavenly court saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" What we read in Hebrews 10:5,7 is probably the Son's response. "When He came into the world, He said: Behold, I have come... to do Your will, O God!" The Son's initial act of obedience gave us a Christmas and it culminated at Calvary. Apostle Paul combined both the incarnation and crucifixion, and wrote, "Coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross" (Phil 2:7,8).

Jesus is the "Word become flesh" (Jn 1:14). The spoken and written Word of God became incarnate in Jesus. Besides incarnation, all that had been written in the "volume of the Book" got fulfilled in the life of Jesus because He lived in obedience to fulfil every minute detail of the Law (Heb 10:7; Acts 24:27; Mt 5:17,18).

We earlier referred to the rich knowledge Mary had had in the Old Testament. How much of Scriptural teaching and training the Boy Jesus must have received in the carpenter's home at Nazareth is for anyone to guess. He thrilled the teachers at the Jerusalem temple with His understanding of the Scriptures. He asked His parents whether they had not known that He must be about His Father's business. But He did not allow His wisdom and knowledge to puff Him up and make Him unaccountable to His earthly parents. In obedience to the fifth of the Ten Commandments which was "the first commandment with promise," He was "obedient" to Mary and Joseph (Lk 2:47-51; Eph 6:1,2).

The gospel records are silent about the eighteen years of Jesus from His twelfth year. But that He walked in obedience before God is obvious from what His Father testified at Jordan when He turned thirty. "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mt 3:17). This must be our aim in life: To walk in obedience before God to please Him in everything. Consistent obedience is what pleases Him. Obedience is first an attitude, and then an act.

Obedience from the Cradle to the Cross!

A life lived out 100% to please God!