I suppose that all the readers of “Messages of Love” have not only read this verse in their Bibles, but have learned it so that they can say it without looking at their Bibles. What an important verse it is, and how necessary it is to remember and obey it. The most perfect example we have, of One who obeyed this verse, is the blessed Lord Jesus. If you will look at the second chapter of the gospel of Luke, and the fifty-first verse, you will see these words, “And He went down with them to Nazareth, AND WAS SUBJECT UNTO THEM.” Nazareth is the place where the Lord Jesus lived when He was a boy. There are a great many things the Lord Jesus said and did when He was a boy that we know nothing about, but one thing we do know and that is that He was an OBEDIENT boy. Just think of Him who made the worlds, and had power to create millions more if He wished, who was “God manifest in the flesh,” being in this world as an OBEDIENT child. He was twelve years old when this was said of Him. He had been obeying His parents for twelve years, and for eighteen years longer, He continued to do so. He obeyed them for thirty years, that was all the time He was with them. I am sorry to say there are some children who think that when they are sixteen or eighteen years old, they are no longer to obey, and have a right to do as they please. Was this the way the blessed Lord did? He is the example for all who want to please God. He obeyed His parents until He was twenty years old, and went on doing so for ten years longer. During the last three years He spent His life in raising the dead, healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, giving hearing to. the deaf, feeding the hungry, and many other things, but He spent the first thirty years of His life in teaching us the lesson of OBEDIENCE. Then how important it must be that we learn this lesson. How nice it would be if every little boy and girl would learn to obey as He obeyed. If we obey our parents we are obeying God at the same time, for it is He who says, “Children obey your parents.” And then on the other hand if you disobey your parents you disobey God.
I will tell you a story of a little girl whose name was Mary, who had learned to obey her parents, and you will see what safety it was to her. One day her mother told her she was going to call upon a neighbor and would be away for an hour or two, and told her to play in the garden and not go into the house. She was afraid the little one would get too near the stove and get burned, or in some way get hurt and for this reason told her to stay in the yard until she came back. Not long after mother had gone, a big dog came into the yard and ran into the kitchen. Mary’s dog, that she called Fido, ran in after it and it was not long before she heard him making a great noise. This big dog had bitten him. Some of the neighbors’ children came in when they heard the noise and offered to go in with Mary and try and take her little pet dog away. But she said, “Mother told me to stay here, and I can’t disobey her.” It was not long before some men came into the yard and asked the children if they had seen a big dog come in there. When these men heard that it was in the house, they went in and shot it. It was mad, and if Mary had gone in it would likely have bitten her and she would have died. Fido was dead. This mad dog had bitten him. How well it was for her that she had learned the lesson of OBEDIENCE. You will always find it the happiest path, and one that brings with it the blessings of God.
“Children OBEY your parents in all things; for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.”
ML 08/31/1902