To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice
To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice
To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice
(1 Samuel 15:22)
Introduction: For the past several months, we have been looking in a very
brief way at what the Bible says we are obligated to believe concerning God
and concerning what He has done. You must never forget that true religion
is impossible without correct knowledge. This is not just true of religion,
but everything else as well. You cannot work with electricity and harness
it for your purposes, unless you understand the nature of electricity. You
cannot successfully raise children in the ways of God’s covenant without
understanding something about the covenant. In the same way, you must have
enough knowledge, enough information about God and the things of God, before
you can come into a relationship with the Lord. You must know who God is,
and what He is, and you may only do this through His revelation about
Himself. You must know who man is, what he is, and what his miserable
condition is in God’s sight after the Fall. You must know what God has done
through His Son to redeem fallen man to Himself, and what man must do before
he can become a partaker of these blessings. God even gives to you
incentives to come to Him, promising wonderful future blessings based upon
the finished work of Christ. God desires you to know all these things in
order that you might come to Him, and having come to Him, that you might
fully appreciate what it is that He has done for you, so that you might give
Him all the glory. What we have been looking at is not merely theory, some
irrelevant facts that have no relationship to life, but the revelation of
God’s truth through His Word, and for that reason your soul ought to delight
in it.
But God has not only revealed what it is that we are obliged to believe
concerning Him and His works, He has also revealed to us how we ought to
live now that we have come to Him through Christ. This is the second main
division in the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Here, the
Westminster Divines give to us a systematic overview of Christian ethics,
answering the question, as Francis Schaeffer put it, How Then Should We
Live? God has not left it up to our own imaginations how we should worship
Him, how we should serve Him, how we should relate to our neighbors, or to
our brethren, or to His church officers, or the civil government. He has
told us plainly in His Word what He wants us to do. Therefore it is our
responsibility to know these things and to do them to the best of our
abilities, as it is also to know and believe what God has revealed.
Just how important is obedience to God? We find one example in the book
of 1 Samuel.
In this account, the Lord had commanded Saul to go and to utterly
destroy the Amalekites because of what they had done to Israel when they
came up out of Egypt. You will recall that the Amalekites came out and
fought against Israel, but were defeated by them (Ex. 17). They attacked
those who were weak and weary at their rear. For this reason the Lord
commanded Israel that after He had given them rest in the land, they were to
blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven (Deu. 25:17-19). So Saul
went and did as the Lord had commanded, except he feared the people more
than his God by sparing the best of the livestock in order to make a
sacrifice to the Lord. He also spared king Agag. When Saul returned, he
was rebuked by Samuel for failing to do what God had commanded him. Saul
argued with Samuel saying that he had obeyed all that the Lord had commanded
him to do, and blamed the people for sparing the livestock. But Samuel set
the record straight for Saul, showing him what is most important to the
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Lord. He says, ”HAS THE LORD AS MUCH DELIGHT IN BURNT OFFERINGS AND
SACRIFICES AS IN OBEYING THE VOICE OF THE LORD? BEHOLD, TO OBEY IS BETTER
THAN SACRIFICE, AND TO HEED THAN THE FAT OF RAMS. FOR REBELLION IS AS THE
SIN OF DIVINATION, AND INSUBORDINATION IS AS INIQUITY AND IDOLATRY. BECAUSE
YOU HAVE REJECTED THE WORD OF THE LORD, HE HAS ALSO REJECTED YOU FROM BEING
KING” (15:22-23). Saul was still responsible for following the Lord’s
commands, even though the people tried to persuade him otherwise.
Consequently, Samuel had Agag brought out and he hewed him into pieces, and
Saul lost the kingdom forever. People of God, obedience to the revealed
will of God is never optional. There is never a reason to disobey God.
Even if the entire world, including the Christian church, should hold to an
opinion which is contrary to His Word, you are still bound to believe and do
what He says. To disobey God is tantamount to divination and idolatry. It
is the exalting of the will of some creature over that of the Creator, and
that is the same as worshiping a false God. And so what this account of
Saul teaches us this evening is,
I. First, Notice that God Requires Full Obedience to His Revealed Will.
A. God Has Never Left M a n in a Position Where He Is Not Sure What the
Lord Requires of Him.
1 . He originally revealed His law to Adam in the garden of Eden.
a. M a n was made in the image of God, a part of which was moral
conformity to His law. Moses wrote, ”AND GOD CREATED MAN IN
HIS OWN IMAGE, IN THE IMAGE OF GOD HE CREATED HIM; MALE AND
FEMALE HE CREATED THEM” (Gen. 1 :27).
b. A Puritan by the name of Edward Fisher, in his work on the
covenant called The Marrow of Modern Divinity, shows how
Adam, when he ate of the tree, broke not only the specific
command of God not to eat of that tree, but also broke all
ten of God’s commandments.
(i) He chose for himself another God when he followed the
devi1.
(ii) He made his appetite for wisdom into an idol and sought
to worship it.
He took the name of God in vain, when he refused to
believe Him and believed the devil instead.
He did not keep the rest wherein God had placed him,
but entered into sin.
He dishonored his Father who was in heaven, and
therefore his days were not prolonged in the land which
the Lord had given to him.
He killed himself and all of his posterity.
He committed spiritual adultery by worshiping the devil
instead of God.
He stole from God that which God had commanded him not
to take.
In believing what the devil had to say, he bore witness
against God that He was in fact lying.
And he coveted that which was God’s, and not his,
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B. And Since the Giving of that Law, God Has Required Full and Absolute
Obedience to It.
1 . Micah 6:8 tells us, ”HE HAS TOLD YOU, 0 MAN, WHAT IS GOOD; AND
WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE OF YOU BUT TO DO JUSTICE, TO LOVE
KINDNESS, AND WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD?” This is a summary of
the commandments.
2. Paul tells us in Romans 12:l-2, ”I URGE YOU THEREFORE, BRETHREN,
BY THE MERCIES OF GOD, TO PRESENT YOUR BODIES A LIVING AND HOLY
SACRIFICE, ACCEPTABLE TO GOD, WHICH IS YOUR SPIRITUAL SERVICE OF
WORSHIP. AND DO NOT BE CONFORMED TO THIS WORLD, BUT BE
TRANSFORMED BY THE RENEWING OF YOUR MIND, THAT YOU MAY PROVE
WHAT THE WILL OF GOD IS, THAT WHICH IS GOOD AND ACCEPTABLE AND
PERFECT.”
a. Notice that you are to give yourself wholly to God as a
whole burnt offering, not partially, a little here and a
little there. The obedience which God requires is not just
a now and then obedience, where you just put forth the
effort that you feel like doing, but it is to be a continual
obedience which you put forth with all of your might.
b. This is your spiritual service of worship. This is your
duty. This is what the Lord requires of you. This is what
the Lord requires of all men.
c. You are not to spend your time in the world being conformed
to the world. Rather you are to be transformed by putting
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11. Secondly, Notice that to Obey God Is Better Than Any Sacrifice Which
M a n May Choose to Give Him Instead.
A. God Had Issued a Command to Saul, But Saul Offered to God in Its
Place What He Thought Would Be Acceptable.
1 . The command that God gave to Saul was not to every person
living, but to Saul himself. For that reason, Saul should have
paid closer attention to it.
a. God has given His whole law for all men, and they must obey
it.
b. But He sometimes gives specific commands to specific
individuals.
(i) When He commanded Jonah to go and preach to the
inhabitants of Ninevah, he did not mean that anyone
else should go.
(ii) Only Jonah was bound by that commandment. All others
were free.
2. But instead, his fear of man motivated him to veer off the
course which the Lord had set for him and to take his own.
a. ”THEN SAUL SAID TO SAMUEL, ’I HAVE SINNED; I HAVE INDEED
TRANSGRESSED THE COMMAND OF THE LORD AND YOUR WORDS, BECAUSE
I FEARED THE PEOPLE AND LISTENED TO THEIR VOICE” ( 1 Sam.
15:24).
b. But you see, that was no excuse. There is no excuse for
failure to keep the Lord’s commands. If we choose to
disobey, we are the ones who are choosing to do other than
what God has said; no one is forcing us.
c. This is not to say that there is no forgiveness for these
sins. All sins can and are removed in Christ. But there
are certain things which may be forfeited because of our
sins: in this case, Saul forfeited his position as ruler
over the kingdom of Israel. Many Christians under
persecution in the early church buckled under it and gave up
their copies of the Scriptures, as well as offered a pinch
of incense to Caesar with the words, ”Caesar is lord!” They
did not commit the unpardonable sin; if they truly repented,
they were truly forgiven. However this does indicate
something about the condition of their hearts.
d. Others, who have had supreme love for the Lord, have gone
even as far as to lose their lives, in order that they might
obtain a better resurrection.
e. Saul feared the people, and instead of obeying God, obeyed
them and offered unto God a service which was not
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acceptable.
B. But God Declares that Obedience Is Better Than Anything Which Anyone
Might Choose to Bring to Him.
1 . God didn’t want Saul’s sacrifice of compromise.
2. He wanted obedience. He wanted Saul to hear His Word, listen
carefully to what He said, and then obey it to the letter.
3. Of what good are your sacrifices if they are offered to Him in a
state of rebellion? Can you expect to please God with
sacrificial acts, while at the same time you are refusing to
submit to His authority?
4. ”TO OBEY IS BETTER THAN SACRIFICE.”
III. The Lord Is Showing You This Evening that:
A. You Are Not to Offer to God Anything to Replace Your Whole Hearted
Obedience to His Commandments.
1 . Saul justified the breaking of God’s commands in order to please
the people.
a. His fear of man was greater than his fear of God.
b. Whenever you are in that kind of position, you are always on
the road to ruin.
c. Jesus said, ”AND DO NOT FEAR THOSE WHO KILL THE BODY, BUT
ARE UNABLE TO KILL THE SOUL; BUT RATHER FEAR HIM WHO IS ABLE
TO DESTROY BOTH SOUL AND BODY IN HELL” (Matt. 10:28). He is
not here speaking of Satan, but of God.
d. Do you fear displeasing God more than displeasing men? Are
you a man-pleaser here this evening?
e. Do you conveniently set aside the commandment of your God in
order to get yourself out of tense situations with your
friends, family members, or brethren in the church?
f. Have you compromised the truth of God in order to preserve
peace in your personal relationships?