“To obey is better than sacrifice”

Image credit

Through the prophet Samuel, God commanded King Saul, “Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation—men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.” (1 Samuel 15:3, New Living Translation) [1]

Now, before we go further, allow me to explain why God is not a moral monster for issuing this apparent genocide. The Lord Himself gave the reason for the extermination of that nation: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.” (v. 2) According to “Hard Sayings of the Bible,”
Why was God so opposed to the Amalekites? When the Israelites were struggling through the desert toward Canaan, the Amalekites picked off the weak, sick and elderly at the end of the line of marchers and brutally murdered these stragglers. … When a nation starts burning children as a gift to the gods (Lev 18:21) and practices sodomy, bestiality and all sorts of loathsome vices (Lev 18:25, 27–30), the day of God’s grace and mercy has begun to run out. [2]
As to why the women, children and livestock were included, according to “Hard Sayings,” “If the women and children had been spared in those profane Canaanite nations, how long would it have been before a fresh crop of adults would emerge just like their pagan predecessors?” [3] We have to remember that the sovereign God Who authored life has the right to take away life.

 Sadly, King Saul did not fully obey God’s commandment. 
But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. (1 Samuel 15:9)
Image credit
Just as delayed obedience is disobedience, so also partial obedience is full disobedience. And when Samuel confronted him, Saul pulled a piety card. He gave a religious reason for not obeying God: “[The soldiers] have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” (v. 15, emphasis added) But that was not what God commanded them to do. Saul even tried to shift the blame, “I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them.” (v. 24b, New International Version) But the Lord held him accountable for command responsibility at the very least. He was supposed to make sure that God’s mandate was fully implemented. Thus, Samuel declared,
Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. (vv. 22-23, emphasis added)
Image credit

To sacrifice is much like religious activities nowadays. There’s nothing wrong per se with such activities. But it’s not a substitute for obedience to God’s Word. For the Lord, disobedience is a rebellion against Him and rooted in the arrogance of men. It is at par with divination and idolatry. Both are detestable before God. Simply put, to disobey God is to reject His Word. To obey the Lord is to listen to Him.
Still today, in our human attempts to look good in serving God, there is the temptation to perform certain religious duties rather than to truly obey God. Even good activities, such as giving money to charity, attending church services, or praying in public, are not as important to God as obeying His commands. [4]
We should neither delay obedience nor obey partially. We are to obey fully and immediately.

Brothers and sisters, to obey is better than sacrifice.

 [1]  All Bible verses are from the English Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.

 [2]  Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. et al, Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 15:18.

 [3] Ibid.

 [4]  “Why is obedience better than sacrifice?” Got Questions Ministries, accessed October 14, 2016, https://gotquestions.org/obedience-better-than-sacrifice.html. Emphasis added. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God Knows Judas Not Pay

In the National Geographic Magazine (May 2006 issue), in its cover story, The Judas Gospel , Professor Eliane Pagels of Princeton University claimed that the so-called gospel of Judas “ changes the history of early Christianity. ” Even UP Professor Randy David took notice of the Judas Gospel: “Strictly from a sociological standpoint, I think the discovery of the Gospel of Judas makes Christianity a far more interesting religion than what centuries of metaphysical theology has made of it.” (A Gospel for the Postmodern, Phil. Daily Inquirer, April 16, 2006) That’s why I spoke in our Young Pro Fellowship a few days ago on God Knows Judas Not Pay (A Biblical Response on the Judas Gospel). I believe opportunities like this hype on the Judas Gospel or the Da Vinci Code opens a door for us to share the true Gospel. For those who did not attend last Thursday, let me share briefly why we reject the Judas gospel. I came up with the acronym J-U-D-A-S. J udas was portrayed as a traitor in the Bibl
Read more

“Ubus-ubos Biyaya, Bukas Nakatunganga”

Image
That’s what my mother always told us when we were still kids. (Translation: “You spend everything today, you will have nothing tomorrow.” ) Image source: So, What's New ? Dionie did just that. Last April 2008, he won PHP14,125,032 in the Lotto 6/42 draw. Excitedly, he “lived the life of a millionaire, something he had been longing to experience. He lived in a P4-million house in a posh subdivision, drove around in a sports utility vehicle [which he bought the very same day he claimed his prize] , and gave goodwill money, ranging P1,000 to P 850,000, to relatives and friends. He also gambled daily, womanized, and went on regular drinking sprees.” (Source: Manila Bulletin ) He estimated that he squandered a minimum of P100,000 almost every day. He also lent money even to people he did not really know. “I just gave them and told them not to pay me back.” (Ibid) His bank had to issue him a special card so he can withdraw huge amounts of money quickly from the automated teller m
Read more

“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!”

Image
Forty years ago, this expression became known as a description of blind obedience.   Source: Los Angeles Times On November 18, 1978, members of Peoples Temple, a cult group in Guyana, drank Kool-Aid drink laced with cyanide to commit a mass suicide “at the behest of their charismatic but paranoid leader, Jim Jones”. [1] According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica , “The death toll exceeded 900, including some 300 age 17 and under, making the incident one of the largest mass deaths in American history. ”  [2]  What made those people submit to such atrocity? According to Stella Morabito, a senior contributor to The Federalist online magazine, Peoples Temple is “Exhibit A… [of]  the dangers of the cult mindset or how vulnerable all people are to cult tactics.”  [3] She pointed out that, Coercive persuasion has immense power to shape and twist the human mind.  …[Jones’] utopian preaching of a humane world in which all lived happily in harmony resonated with the
Read more