GLEANINGS — October 5, A.D. 2014                                                                                                               "Keepers"

Some animals are stronger or faster than people. Many have better hearing, sight, and smell than we do. But God's word establishes a gulf of distinction between them and man, the image of God, that cannot be crossed. Today when some deny that gulf, the term zookeeper might be politically incorrect, but it still serves to illustrate. Fierce, feral beasts can be KEPT, but they can't be completely mastered. 

Exactly what we can be illustrated by this observation? Let's begin with God's word... 

1 Kings 8:57, 58 – May the LORD our God be with us, as He was with our fathers. May He not leave us nor forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways, and to KEEP His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, which He commanded our fathers.

In the greater context of that passage (specifically, chapters 3 and 9), we read that God appeared to and spoke with Solomon twice. Both times, God referred to Solomon's father King David as one who KEPT God's commandments, judgments, statutes and ways. In light of David's notorious sins, how can this be?

Like a zookeeper who cannot conquer a rhinoceros, like the scenario God describes when speaking out of the whirlwind to Job (41:1-10), fallen man cannot perfectly master God's law. Only Jesus was able to do that. He did it from the heart...perpetually and fully...in thought, word, and deed...never sinning even once. 

So when Scripture speaks about a man or a nation who KEEPs God's word, or exhorts us to do the same, we must understand this in light of the full counsel of God. Perfect obedience is required, perfect obedience describes the life of Christ, and walking in perfect obedience will be the blessed, eternal, unfailing state of the redeemed in glory, when they have become conformed to Christ.

But such heavenly obedience is impossible now on Earth. The taint of sin remains in our godliest thoughts, words, and deeds. And those who KEEP God's judgments, statutes, testimonies, and commandments are the first to recognize that their own obedience cannot justify them before God. They know that only the perfect obedience of Jesus their Substitute, Who also took the penalty for their sin, can do that!

So rightly understood, KEEPING God's Law is NOT impossible. It is a way of describing the walk of the righteous who perpetually wrestle with temptation. The spiritual debilitation arising from their indwelling corruption is their greatest sorrow. At times they fail in a big way as David did. Yet, their walk is one of loving God's law and continually striving toward perfect obedience. 

Christ's great commission to the Church is to make disciples, "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you..." (from Matthew 28:20). The pertinent original language word in that passage, rendered "observe" in several English Bibles, carries the sense of KEEPING as we have discussed it here.

A zealous and holy man put it this way, "Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me." (Philippians 3:12).

Without making excuses for sin or falling into complacency...with full recognition of what we might call the untamable, fiercely vigorous nature of the Law set before us, let us ever strive to be KEEPERS of it, until that day of which another apostle wrote: "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (1 John 3:2)