Obeying God

But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. – Exodus 1.17

There is a lot in the news, especially from America at the moment, about Christians who choose to disobey the law and the consequences of doing so. As time goes by more and more God fearing people are going to be faced with the same dilemma.

What are we going to do?

Here in Exodus the midwives had to face such a decision. The king had ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all the new-born male Hebrew babies. His goal was to wipe out the Hebrew race. Infanticide was the easy road to genocide. 

But the midwives feared God more than they feared the king. They disobeyed the king and let the boy babies live.

When called on it they said that the Hebrew women were strong and were delivering the boys before they could get there.

These women made a choice that they had no idea how it would turn out. They could have been imprisoned or killed because Pharaoh had absolute power. But they feared God. They knew they had to obey Him. And God blessed them. They were not killed or imprisoned. The did right and it turned out well for them and for the Hebrew people.

There are other times when God’s people must choose to obey God rather than man. As a general rule God’s people are to obey the law and submit to the government. That is clear. We need to be the best citizens we can be.

But when obeying the law would bring us into conflict with obeying God we have no choice. We must obey God, and the consequences are not always going to be positive. God’s people have been jailed or persecuted or killed for disobeying the law in order to obey God.

This is not a light matter. We can’t just do it flippantly. We have to weigh the consequences and realise that if we are going to disobey the law the law may very well punish us for doing it.

We should not be surprised. We can’t expect the laws of world to go along with the word of God. Why should they?

Do right. It may not always ‘go well’ like it did for these midwives – but we can be absolutely assured that God will honour us for doing it.