Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
“The LORD said unto me, ‘Take unto thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz.’ So I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah. And I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son.”
Isaiah 8:1-3
God instituted marriage as the way he wanted men and women to live and produce children for the continuance of the human race. He also condemned as sin the physical relationship of a man and a woman who were not married. But His commandments, such as the famous “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, are for people, not for Him.
As a warning to the nation of Israel, Isaiah was ordered by God to produce a child with an unnamed “prophetess” and to give that child a mysterious prophetic name. As a symbol of Satan’s seduction of Israel from the safety of God’s love, Hosea was ordered to seduce a woman and cause her to leave her husband. By one of God’s “Ten Commandments”, we humans are commanded, “Thou shalt not lie!” But later, God told the righteous prophet Samuel to tell a lie to King Saul about his true reason for going to visit the town of Bethlehem. God commanded that the death sentence should be carried out on anyone (other than a priest) who dared to eat the holy Bread of the Presence, but he instructed Ahimelech the high priest to use it to feed young David and his hungry friends.
God is not a great big one of us. If He was, He would be obligated to keep the very commandments He gave. But He is not obligated to do anything. He does everything, Paul said “according to the counsel of His own will.” In other words, God does only what He wills to do. We are blessed that He is a good God and that whatever He does is holy and right and for our good.
I heard Brother Oral Roberts say a long time ago, “God will move heaven and earth for one of His children.” This is so true! Not many people ever come to understand how much God loves His children, as Brother Roberts knows it. God loves us so much that, if we are in desperate straits, He will make an exception concerning His own commandments and will lead us or someone else to do something out of the ordinary in order to bring us the deliverance we need.
But be careful. God’s order to break one of His commandments is very, very rarely given, and the man who breaks God’s commandments on his own initiative is in danger of eternal torment and death. The best lesson we can learn from the few examples we have of God ordering His servants to ignore a previous commandment is not that God’s commandments can be safely disobeyed but that He Himself is not subject to the commandments He gives. He is greater than His commandments, and on very rare occasions, He has given certain men glimpses of that astonishing truth.