A Nugget from New Life Network
Scripture for the Day (November 21, 2017)
And Samuel said, Hath 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 hearken than the fat of rams. (1 Samuel 15:22)
I heard a true story the other day about a five year old girl. Her father worked a lot with electronics and often used a soldering iron, which is a tool that gets very hot. The father told his daughter not to touch the soldering iron because it would burn her. Well, the father walked off for just a minute and guess what the little girl did? She picked up the soldering iron and it burned her hand.
The father came running when he heard his daughter crying. When he saw what she had done he asked her why she did exactly what he told her not to do. Her response was very telling for a five year old. She said, “It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have left it there. You know how I am”. That story reminds me of Adam in the garden when he ate of the very tree that the Father God told him not to eat of. It wasn’t my fault. It was your fault God. It was that woman that you gave me. Even though it is not recorded in the Bible I can hear Adam justifying his actions in his mind, why did you leave that stupid tree in the garden in the first place? How we love to shift the blame to someone else.
I don’t know how many times I have heard the following statement quoted in sermons and teachings over the years but it has been a lot, “Obedience is better than sacrifice”. If you are anything like me I understood the obedience part but I never really got past that. But the other day I finally got it as I was writing about the Bible being a Christian’s job description.
I am not a Hebrew scholar or an expert on Jewish culture but I do know enough about the Bible to know that burnt offerings and sacrifices were partly used to cover sinfulness. In other words, the blood sacrifices were made to atone for sin. I am pretty simple in my beliefs so usually the Holy Spirit explains things to me in a very simple way and the following is what I now believe is the core meaning of this scripture.
Obedience is much better than having to make a sacrifice for your sins. In other words, you are much better off to do it right the first time and that way a sacrifice will not be needed. For example, it is much better to never take drugs than it is to go through all the mess you go through from taking drugs and then having to ask for forgiveness. God’s desire is for us to believe Him in the first place and not have to ask for forgiveness. It saves a lot of heartache, hurt people, and some lifelong consequences if we would just believe and obey God in the beginning.
I heard a great statement made by a preacher the other day that goes like this, “We believe for eternal life. We continue to believe for abundant life”. Our eternal salvation is free. It was paid for on the Cross by Jesus. All we have to do is believe it and confess it with our mouth. There is no amount of works that will gain us entrance to Heaven. We are saved by grace, not by works. Now, the second side of that coin is Jesus came to give us life and life more abundantly (John 10:10). For us to experience that abundant life requires something from us. It requires us to believe but it also requires us to be obedient. It’s not by grace anymore. It’s by choice. It’s already paid for but we have to choose it and we have to walk in it through obedience.
That’s what it means to me when it says obedience is better than sacrifice.
