To Restart Recognizes that Partial Obedience is Total Disobedience...

Yesterday, we looked at a section of a letter in our Bibles called the book of Joshua and discovered that several tribes of the Jewish nation were failing to follow God's commands when to came to occupying and settling the land that they had received. Just as the tribe of Judah did not care enough to fully follow God’s commands and instead were satisfied with doing the right thing 99.9% of the time; Just as the tribe of Ephraim chose to be pragmatic problem solvers who bent the rules in a way that would benefit and make their lives easier; the tribe of Manasseh failed to fully follow God’s commands when it came to restarting their lives.

While these three tribes followed God’s commands most of the time, they were able to rationalize a reason why they did not have to follow God’s commands all of the time. And it is the story of these three tribes that we see God reveal for us another timeless principle that is necessary when it comes to restarting our lives. And that timeless principle is that to restart recognizes that partial obedience is total disobedience. The timeless reality is that partial obedience is total disobedience.

And intuitively we know this to be the case, don’t we? Intuitively, we recognize that our lives are often guided by this principle. That is why parents do not ask their children to unload the dishwasher and then say “I’m so proud that you partially unloaded the dishwasher”. No, what we usually say is “why didn’t you unload the dishwasher like I asked”, because partial obedience is total disobedience. That is why our employers do not give us pay raises and bonuses when we accomplish 75% of what we were supposed to do on the job. Instead, employers usually fire people who accomplish 75% of what they were supposed to do on the job, because partial obedience is total disobedience. That is why doctors do not say to their patients “I’m so glad that you took your high blood pressure medication 50% of the time”. Instead, the person who took their high blood pressure only 50% of the time dreads what they are going to hear from their doctor, because intuitively they know that partial obedience is total disobedience.

Now I have a question for us to wrestle with. And the question is this: if we intuitively know and recognize the truth of this principle in other aspects of our lives, then why do we tend to discount this principle when it comes to our spiritual lives? Why do we have a tendency to want to dismiss the principle that partial obedience is total disobedience when it comes to the message and teachings of this book? Why are we o.k. with not being uncomfortable or even disturbed when we are satisfied with doing the right thing most of the time, but not all the time? Why do we have a tendency to want to be pragmatic problem solvers in order to bend the rules to make our lives easier instead of following God’s rules and do the right thing even when it isn’t the easy thing to do?

You see, just like the Jewish people, our default mode apart from Jesus work and the Holy Spirit’s activity in our lives is to rationalize away and excuse partial obedience as being o.k. with God. We see the tribe of Manasseh’s attempts at rationalization and excuses for their partial obedience revealed for us in Joshua 17:14:

Then the sons of Joseph spoke to Joshua, saying, "Why have you given me only one lot and one portion for an inheritance, since I am a numerous people whom the LORD has thus far blessed?"

Here, the tribe of Manasseh tries to excuse and rationalize their failure to follow God’s command to occupy and settle that land that was given them by blaming Joshua and his leadership team. The phrase “One portion for an inheritance” literally means one piece of territory to possess. In other words, the tribe of Manasseh was blaming Joshua for not giving them two pieces of territory in light of how large their population was. The tribe of Manasseh wanted to sidestep taking the right and obedient course of action to instead take the easy path of least resistance.

The reality, however, was that Manasseh’s rationalizations and excuses fell short on credibility for two reasons. First, while Manasseh claimed to be a numerous people, their population was around 20,000 less than Ephraim, who was the other tribe from the sons of Joseph. In addition, there were other tribes that were even larger than Manasseh. Second, as we discovered earlier, the tribe of Manasseh had already been given two large pieces of territory. And just like Manasseh, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, often our attempts to rationalize and make excuses for our partial obedience when it comes to following God’s word fall short on credibility and factual reality. We see Joshua’s response to Manasseh’s excuses and rationalizations revealed for us in the verse that follows:

Joshua said to them, "If you are a numerous people, go up to the forest and clear a place for yourself there in the land of the Perizzites and of the Rephaim, since the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow for you."

In other words, if you are a numerous people, you have no excuse for not being able to occupy and settle the land that you have been given. So, get to work, clear some additional land and settle down. But don’t think that you are not responsible for following God’s command. And, just like we often do, Manasseh is able to come up with another excuse for their partial obedience. Here is what Joshua heard from the mouth of the tribe of Manasseh:

The sons of Joseph said, "The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the valley land have chariots of iron, both those who are in Beth-shean and its towns and those who are in the valley of Jezreel."

I would love to have seen the look on Joshua’s face at this point. While we are not able to see his expression, we do have his response recoded for us as this story concludes:

Joshua spoke to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, saying, "You are a numerous people and have great power; you shall not have one lot only, but the hill country shall be yours. For though it is a forest, you shall clear it, and to its farthest borders it shall be yours; for you shall drive out the Canaanites, even though they have chariots of iron and though they are strong."

These verses, if this letter was written today with the language of our culture in 2011, would sound something like this: "Quit whining. You are the fourth largest tribe of the Jewish people. And yet, even though there are three tribes larger than you, you didn’t get just one piece of land for your tribe; no you received two pieces of land for territory. You have more land than any other tribe except Judah. So quit whining. Instead of trying to take the easy path, the path of least resistance; do what you are supposed to do. I don’t want to hear about trees and chariots. You are quite capable and have everything you need to follow God’s commands and dispossess and destroy the inhabitants of the land so that you can occupy and settle the land like you are supposed to."

You see, as far as Joshua was concerned, partial obedience is total disobedience. And throughout the pages of the Bible, we see this principle affirmed over and over again. And what this story does not tell us is that the partial obedience of these tribes resulted in a gradual moral erosion in the lives of the Jewish people. We see this erosion revealed to us in the very next letter in our Bibles, called the book of Judges, in Judges 2:10-12:

All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals, and they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the LORD to anger.

These three tribes failure to recognize that partial obedience is total disobedience led to the following generation of Jewish people rebelling and rejecting the Lord. The Jewish people became influenced by the evil practices of the cultures that they failed to destroy and worshipped and served idols. The rationalization and excuses for partial obedience by one generation resulted in a moral erosion that led to full-fledged rebellion and disobedience by the next generation. They failed to recognize that partial obedience is total disobedience.

So where do you find yourself failing to recognize that partial obedience is total disobedience? Where do you find yourself rationalizing and making excuses for being satisfied with doing the right thing most of the time, but not all the time? Where do you find yourself rationalizing and making excuses for being a pragmatic problem solver in order to bend the rules to make our lives easier instead of following God’s rules and do the right thing even when it isn’t the easy thing to do?