If you will, take your Bibles
and turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 15. 1 Samuel chapter
15. We'll be looking at two verses,
verse 22 and verse 2 of chapter 16. I'm going to show how these
two can be tied together. The title of my message this
morning is, To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice. To obey is better
than sacrifice. Now, the Lord here in our text,
just to get us up to speed at what is happening in this text,
the Lord having set Saul to be king over Israel, now in this
place has come and rejected Saul from being king. God set him
up and now God has rejected Saul because of his disobedience to
God. You see, Saul was given a very
clear-cut command. A very simple command that every
child can understand. Now, only a king could obey this
command because it was a very devastating one. But yet it was
one that was so clear that no mistake could be made as to what
God demanded. Let's look at that in verse 2
and 3 of chapter 15. Let us see God's command. Thus
saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Elimelech did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the
way, and he came up from Egypt. Now go, here's the command, and
smite Amalek." and utterly destroy all that they have and spare
them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox
and sheep, camel and ass." Now, is that not a clear command? Saul, go into the Amlekites and
I want you to kill everything. Spare nothing when you go. Very clear. God left no ambiguous
statement in this. You see, this nation was a very
wicked and evil people. They were a very sinister group,
and their cup of iniquity had come to full, and God had said,
Go and wipe them off the face of the earth. God's judgment
came down and He was using Saul as His instrument of judgment
upon this nation. Because of his love for pride,
because of his love for the praise of the people. Remember what
set him off with David? When the women of the city, they
gave praise to Saul, they said Saul had killed his thousands.
But David had killed his tens of thousands. That's what set
Saul off, because he had no more respect or praise of the people.
Saul loved that. And because he loved that, he
did not obey God. You see, he kept the king of
the Amlekites alive, as well as the best of the oxen, because
he loved the praise of the people. Look at that in verse 9. He says
this, but Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of
the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and of the lambs,
and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. But
everything that was vile and refuse, they got rid of. They
did everything that was ugly, everything that was worthless,
they got rid of that, but they kept the best for themselves. Saul, being proud of his great
victory, said, I did it. I did it. You can read that in
verse 10. When Samuel came out, God had told Samuel now, I have
rejected him. I am going to tell you to go
and reject Saul. And when they come out to meet
each other, guess what? Saul's got a big smile on his
face. He said, I did it! I did what God commanded me to
do. Bless me, the Lord, I did it. But you see, the noise of the
sheep betrayed him. Samuel said, if you did it, what
meaneth the bleeding of the sheep in my ears? What is this? What are these if you obeyed
the command of God? Did He not tell you to kill everything?
What is the king doing over there? Did not God tell you to kill
him? And then in verse 22, Samuel, he makes a statement,
and this is the statement that's the title of our message this
morning. Samuel said, Hath the Lord as
great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as obeying the
voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than
to sacrifice, to hearken than the fat of rams. To obey is better than sacrifice. My friends, oh, that God would
teach us all this lesson. That God would continually teach
us this lesson that goes against our very nature. See, our very
nature is to sacrifice, isn't it? It's our very nature to sacrifice. But see, my friends, we sacrifice
that which God has not commanded. We want to sacrifice what seems
good to us by nature. There are many who, like Saul,
think to offer the best of their hands. There are many who think
to offer the best of their works to God. The best of their treasures
they want to give. And some are so shadowed in disobedience
that they think for one minute that their works are going to
cover their disobedience. That's what Saul thought. He
thought that if I just give my best, that'll overshadow what
God said. And that's exactly what religious
man does. That's exactly what the natural
man does as he thinks that by his working, he will cover himself. Cover himself. Cover his disobedience. They say, surely God will accept
my worship if I'm sincere in it. Surely God will accept my
worship if I mean it with all my heart. Surely if I give my life for
worship of God, He'll accept me. Surely. Men will sacrifice everything.
Remember those guys that cut themselves before Elijah? Men
will do that for Christ today. Men will do that for Jesus. But
they have no idea who He is. And they would rather do that
than obey God. They would rather do it their
way and think God will accept them. But my friend, surely in
the end, they will be rejected. Surely. Just as Saul was. The only sacrifice God will accept
is the sacrifice He has already offered. There is no other sacrifice. You see, sacrifice is important.
God demands a sacrifice. But a sacrifice that is not done
in obedience is worthless. You see, Christ, when He offered
Himself, He offered Himself as a sacrifice in obedience to God. That's why His sacrifice was
accepted. But we by nature offer sacrifices
that are not in obedience and expect God to accept them. He
will not accept them. He will not accept it. The only sacrifice God will accept
is the one He already offered, and that is by grace, through
faith in Christ alone. That's the only way we'll be
accepted with God. That's the only way. There is
no other way. But again, natural man wants
to find another way. He doesn't like that way. So
he finds another way. And he says, surely God will
accept it. No, He won't. To obey the truth of the Gospel
is better than sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrifice. That is to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, to repent and turn away from our thinking concerning
ourselves and what pleases us. Forget what we thought was right. If it goes against God's gospel,
it's wrong. Period. Forsake our ways and
our thoughts. Be reconciled to God by Jesus
Christ. To obey the gospel is better
than to sacrifice our works or our religion. There's a way that
seemeth right unto a man. But where does that way end?
Death. Death. Death. To all that have not come to
Christ alone in obedience to God as an ambassador of Christ,
I beseech you, be you reconciled to God now. Believe now. Don't wait. Believe. Believe. Be reconciled to God. Cast away what we thought was
right and obey God. God doesn't want our sacrifice. Not for acceptance, He doesn't.
We who believe, we offer the sacrifice of praise. How do we
offer that? Through Christ. We don't offer
it through ourselves. Absolutely not. God will not
accept it. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And those who will not believe, those who go on in their sin
and love their sin and love this world and the things of this
life, they will be rejected. Period. That is the truth of
the gospel. But this morning, I'm turning
my attention to believers. I'm turning my attention to us.
And again, every one of us, take the gospel mirror and place it
in front of yourself this morning. Every one of us, take the mirror
of God's Word and place it right here, right here on our hearts. Place it on our hearts. I want us to talk to believers
and see how this relates to us, because it does. It does. You
see, the Amlekites, The Amlekites were a picture of something.
They were a wicked and evil people, as I've already said. And God
said He would wipe them off the face of the earth. He said, I
remember what they did. What did they do that was so
horrible? What did they do that was so evil? Well, when the nation
of Israel was coming out of Egypt, You see, they were walking along
and following after God, and this nation, this group of people,
they came in from behind and slew all of the weakest of the
nation. You see, when you have a big
procession like that, who falls to the back? The elderly, the
weak, The ones that are sickly, the children, all of those begin
to fall back because they can't keep up. And this nation, they
waited until all of the soldiers passed by and they came in on
the end part of the train and they just slaughtered them. They
just started killing them all. As many as they could. And God
says, I remember you. Your judgments come. And I'm
going to wipe you off the face of the earth. You see, the nation
of the Amalekites is a picture to us of something. Of sin. The nation, this wicked and evil
nation, pictures our sin. Does it not? Does not our sin
always crowd? Doesn't it always wait for the
weakest point and then it begins to attack us? Isn't that so with
you? When you always find yourself
in the weakest condition, in the worst condition, it's then
our sin jumps at us and pounces on us. That's exactly what these
people did and they picture our sin. It's the character of our
flesh. and the attributes of our sinful
nature. Yes, they do picture it. I was
talking to a man this morning and we were talking about Satan
and he says, isn't it something how every Sunday somehow Satan
gets in and he starts trying to rouse everybody up and get...
I said, don't give him too much credit. Don't give him too much
credit. You see, Satan is not omnipresent.
He can't be everywhere at once. You see, the problem, we want
to blame Satan, but the problem lies within ourselves. We have
an enemy within the gates and it is our own flesh. It is the
Amlekites. Our own flesh is our sin nature. And it waits for the weakest
moment before it pounces on us and attacks us, tempts us to
leave our God. Yes, they picture this, and therefore
God says to all of us as believers, kill the Amalekites. Kill your
sin nature. In the New Testament, how is
it worded? Mortify the deeds of the body, believer. Mortify
the deeds of the flesh. It is our nature that is prone
to fits of greed and sin, is it not? Is not our nature prone
to fits of pride? Yes, it is. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Is that not your testimony? It
is mine. It is mine. And so it is with our sin. God
has given us a clear-cut command. This is not ambiguous, is it? There's no room for movement.
No room for negotiation. God says, mortify the deeds of
your body. Remember the mirrors facing ourselves.
Mortify the deeds of my body. Mortify it. Kill it. Kill it. We know this command does not
even add one bit to our righteousness, does it? Not one bit. We know that Christ is our righteousness. We know that following this command
does not make us more holy. God has made us holy in Christ. We have His righteousness imputed
to our charge and we are righteous because He was righteous. Yet
this flesh did not change when you believed, did it? Some lightning
bolt did not strike you and all of a sudden you became a holy
being within and without. No. No, you didn't, and I didn't
either. The command is clear, and it
does not add anything to our righteousness. We have our righteousness
of God that's imputed to us by Christ, and we haven't imputed
that to us at the new birth. And yet to mortify the deeds
of the flesh, does not add anything to us,
for Christ is all. We that believe, we are reconciled
to God, aren't we? What did that mean? I went over
that Wednesday night. Reconciled to God. That means the change
of thought. In other words, everything God says is right and everything
I think that's against God is wrong. I'm reconciled to that,
aren't you? I agree with that. In every way
I agree with that. If God says it, it's true. If
I say something against it, I'm a liar. That's just all there
is to it. I believe that. I'm reconciled to that. I'm reconciled. I believe God. I'm reconciled
to God and I see that all sin is against God. And so we that once loved sin
now hate sin. And if we are reconciled to God,
is mortification of the flesh then grievous to us? Is it something
that we dread? Is it something that we fear
to do? Is it something that we think, well, you know, maybe
he just didn't say that right. Maybe I could keep just a little
bit for myself. No. God said, kill it. And it's not grievous to me to
kill it. I don't like it. I hate it. Why? I'm reconciled to God's thoughts
about me. I'm reconciled to God. I hate my sin. and every opportunity
we should mortify it. Yet this old nature is not changed,
as I said. The outward man perisheth, but
the inward man is renewed day by day. As we get older, we know
that this outward man is perishing, isn't it? You see, if the outward
man were perfect, then it would stay well, it would stay healthy,
it wouldn't die. But because it's corrupt, it
is dying. You, my friend, are dying. I am dying on the outward man."
Because it's corrupt. Jesus said, that which is born
of flesh is flesh. It'll live flesh and it'll die
flesh. And there's nothing you can do
about it. It's evil. It's evil. Therefore, we as believers, there
is always a struggle in our own chest. The flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two are
contrary one to another. They cannot be reconciled. They can't cooperate. They can't
shake hands and make a treaty together. And if you made a treaty
with your flesh, you were in sin and disobedience to God.
That's as simple as I can make it. I like that story about the
bear. You remember the story about
the bear and the hunter? The hunter went out to shoot the
bear and the bear came up and he said, hey, wait a minute,
let's talk about this. The guy was surprised. The bear talked. And he said,
well, let's just sit down and talk about this. You want my
fur to keep you warm, right? He said, yeah. He said, well,
I'm just wanting something to eat. Let's compromise. And so
they talked about it for a while and finally they reached an agreement. The hunter had his coat and the
bear had his meal. He ate him! He ate him! Do you see that there's no compromise
with our flesh? Don't compromise is the point. Mortified. The Romans in torture,
they used to have a dead man and they would sew his hands
together around the neck of a criminal. And they would take that dead
corpse and they would drag that corpse around until his hands
rotted off of them. That's a beautiful picture of
you and me. We have a dead corpse dragging
us down. Always weighing us down with
sin. And I hate Him. I hate Him. And every chance I get, I want
to cut a finger off. Every chance I get, I want to
get rid of Him. And I hate Him. I loathe myself. See, sin that best serves us,
sometimes we like to keep, though. So because of this flesh, we
have within us a pull toward keeping or harboring sin, don't
we? We have a tendency, if it is
convenient or comfortable for us, to keep a sin. This flesh
is prone to keep it, to hang on to it. The sin that is best serves us
or the one that pleases us the most, we are prone to keep, while
others that are more overt, we're gladly to get rid of those. You
see, when we come to faith in Christ, we see all the outward
immoralities go first, don't they? All of the things that
once pleased us, we see that that doesn't work anymore. It
doesn't please us anymore. But as we go along in the faith,
we see that there are smaller things that we didn't even know
were there. And I'll tell you, some believers, we harbor those
sins. And we figure if we don't mention
them to God, He won't recognize it. You ever thought about that?
Sometimes when you pray, you ignore certain things, so you
think God wouldn't know. I've done that myself. I understand. I'm just as wicked as you are. I understand. We harbor sins. in our own flesh
because they please us. We may get rid of the ones that
are outward, and the ones so everyone else can see, we get
rid of those. But the ones the others can't see, those are the
ones we usually harbor. The ones that serve us well,
the ones that are most convenient to us, and our flesh says, this
doesn't hurt anybody. I know that I'm not supposed
to be here. I know what God says, but it's
really... What is that? I mean, it's just
a little thing. It's not big in the scheme of
things. It is sin! Cut it off. Kill it. Mortify it. Don't sacrifice to
it. To obey is better than sacrifice. I know I should be someplace
else, I know I should be here, but I'm not, and well, I guess
it'd be alright. Yet, if we are in direct opposition
to God's revealed will, it is nothing more than sin. And I'm
going to illustrate this and bring this down to practical
things, to very practical things, and you can include many others.
I just had a couple that I only have time for. Let's just use
the example of drinking. Drinking alcohol. Okay? The Word of God is clear. I can
show you in Scripture, and if you want to see it or you don't
want to see it, it doesn't matter, but the Word of God is clear.
In and of itself, drinking is not wrong. It's not a sin. In
and of itself, drinking is not a sin. It's not. Yet we understand that getting
drunk is a sin, period. To be drunk is a sin without
exception. Say that one of you, or say myself,
if I could drink, and I hear that, and I say, oh, that's good,
you know, I like to drink, so I'm going to go grab one. Say
that I can't control myself. Every time I touch one, I have
touched two, or three, or ten, or twenty. what light you put on it, it's
sin. I don't care how much you want to disguise it and say,
I have liberty, there's nothing wrong with it, I guess I can
do it, to the extreme. No. No, you can't. And so you're going a different
way than God's Word's going. Don't do it. Forsake your own
thoughts about it. Obey God. It's very clear. And someone who says they don't
have a problem with it, they say, okay, I don't have a problem
with it. I can do it and it will be all right. Well, say that
you're with a brother that does. What are you supposed to be doing?
What is the Scripture's command concerning our conduct with other
believers in this matter? If you have a weaker brethren,
are you to take that and you say, look at me, I'm going to
show you liberty. I'm going to tell you this is
right and you're going to have to believe me. Watch me. No,
you offend your believing brother. That's wrong. It's sin. You're sacrificing to your liberty
in disobedience to God. Don't do that. Now, the illustrations work.
Everybody works, don't they? Work is a good thing in and of
itself. There's nothing wrong with work.
There's nothing wrong with providing for your family. Matter of fact,
anybody that doesn't provide for his family is worse than
an infidel and is denied the faith. Period. You must work. And working is a noble thing.
And I tell you, there are people who wish they had your job right
now. I know that. There are people that wish they
had work. Work is a good thing. It is a noble thing. It is a
necessary thing. Yet, because of our flesh, we
can always take a good thing and make it bad, can't we? We
can always take a good thing and our flesh turns it to corruption.
If this good thing takes the place of worship, public or private,
then we are not obeying God, are we? Anything takes the place of worship,
we are not obeying God. We are doing it our own way and
not walking in obedience. We are not obeying God. It is
better to obey. Scripture says, "...forsake not
the assembling of yourselves together, as some men are and
some is." Is that not clear enough for everybody? Is that not clear? That's not my word. It's not
the church's law. It's not a bylaw. It's not something
that we added just to make you be here. It's not something that
we are demanding for salvation or anything like that. God said
it. Is it not plain? And if anybody takes anything,
including something good like work, and replaces worship, they
are living in disobedience to God. Period. I tell you, many people are deceiving
themselves like Saul concerning their faith. I tell you, many
people come and they tip their hat to God on Sunday, drop their
dime in the plate, and check it off like a checklist. Went
to the grocery store, check. Took care of the kids this morning,
check. Oh yeah, by the way, I went to church, check. Paid my offering,
check. I did it God, just like Saul
said. I did it! I did it! Did you? Did you? Check it off. The worship of
God. Is it good to sacrifice your
time to come in here and your dime in the plate if you do not
give your whole self to it? What good is it? Is that obedience? No, that's sacrifice in disobedience. You're sacrificing. Look at me,
God, I sacrificed today. I had to come. I had to be here. Oh, it was rough, but I made
it." That's not obedience, my friends. I tell you this, can I say I love my wife if I
never want to see her? Can I say I love my wife if I
never want to spend time alone with her? Can I say I love my
wife if I never want to learn about her? No. That's not love. No matter how
much money I give her, no matter how much things I give her, if
I do not do those things, I don't love her. And the same is true
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many will say, I love Him, and
yet spend little or no time communing with Him in prayer. Many say,
I love Him and I believe in Him, and spend little or no time to
come and hear His Word preached. Many say, I love Him and spend
no time in witnessing to others of that great love that they
say they have. If it's so great, why don't you tell other people?
I mean, you know, if you get a new car, I guarantee you everybody's
going to say, hey, look at my new car. Isn't that nice? I do. I've got a new car. I go, hey,
look at my car. Isn't that nice? I show you all
the nice, neat things in it. Why? Because I like that car.
But yet we zip our lips when it comes to Christ. I want to
talk about Him in public. Too embarrassed. Too ashamed.
Can we say we love Him? People who say within themselves,
I know all I need to know. My friend, there are many people
who will not come because they look at me and say, ah, look
at that young guy out there. I know more than he does. I don't
have any time for him. I have more knowledge. I was
understanding Calvinism when that kid was a baby. I don't have anything for him.
He's got nothing for me. I know it all. I know many people
do that. They don't have any, it's not
me, it's that love. You know, I hope you didn't come
to hear me. Because my friends, I am sent of the living God for
you. To preach His Word to you. I didn't come here because I
decided one day to be a preacher. I didn't come here because I
all of a sudden thought this would be a good career plan for
me. No, God sent me here. God sent me to preach the gospel. This is His Word. This is His
church. This is His hour. This is His
time. Obey Him if you love Him. Jesus made it plain concerning
His disciples. Let me ask you this morning,
are you His disciple? Are you the disciple of Christ?
I confess that I am a disciple of Christ. And yet Jesus Christ
Himself said this, If a man hate not his father, and his mother,
and his sister, his brother, his wife, and his children, and
everything else, and he does not follow Me, he cannot be My
disciple. He must love me above everything
else, and everything must come a distant second to me, or He
cannot be my disciple. Martin Luther used to say this,
he said, I can't stop the birds from flocking, but I can stop
them from nesting. I like that thought. I like that
thought. In other words, we can't stop
things from trying to take the place of Christ, but my friends,
we can't chew them away when they come. You can't. You can't. He must be number one. And everything else must seem
like hatred in comparison. I tell you, may we say with David,
and I read this this week and I fell on my face when I read
it, examine me, O Lord. Not examine you, but examine me. Lay bare your heart before God
right now and see if you are obeying Him
or not. Lay our hearts bare, and compare
our hearts to the Word of God, and may the Spirit of God shine
in our hearts, so that we may see our wicked rebellion, and
repent, and believe the Gospel, and turn to Him, and loving turn
to Him, and confess to Him we are disobedient children. We confess that to obey is better
than sacrifice. Therefore, let us cast off our
will. Whatever it is we think that's
worshiping God, if it's not according to God's Word, cut it off. It's
not worship. Cast off our desires, our thoughts,
and our ways, and return unto the Lord, and He will abundantly
pardon us. Isn't that something? He will
always abundantly pardon when we repent and turn to Him. I
said this morning in Sunday school, I said repentance is not just
a one-time thing. We always are repenting. We're
always turning away from our sins, always mortifying the deeds
of the body. You say, well, pastor, how can
we do these things? I'm so overwhelmed. I'm caught
in a trap and I can't get out. I've put myself in a place and
I can't get out of it. I can't do it. If I start doing
this, then it's going to disrupt my whole life. Well, that sounds
a lot like the tribe of Manasseh and Ephraim. Remember they were
two tribes but they inherited one plot of land? And they were
kind of upset about that. They went up to Joseph and said,
hey, we're big and you only gave us this one plot of land and
we can't build over here, there's a bunch of trees. And up there,
there's these Canaanites and they've got iron chariots and
we can't overcome them. You need to give us a bigger
piece of land. He said, no, your land is big enough. Cut down
the trees and take over the Canaanites and your land will be plenty
big. Sometimes we believe our salvation is very small. We believe
God's power to be very small. And we say, well, I need more
salvation. I need more experience. I need
more feelings and emotions and all of these things. Roll up
your sleeves, cut down the trees and get rid of the sin. Pretty
simple, isn't it? But I don't have the power to
get rid of the sin. Yes, you do. God's commands to us, if we obey
them, always come with power. Always. God commanded that nation. He said, I have delivered the
land of Canaan into your hands. And that means even the ones
with iron chariots. God says, I've taken your sins
out of the way. There is nothing. Cut them off. Cut them off. Whatever gets in
the way of God's obedience to God, cut it off. Is that clear? I hope that's
clear. I don't want to muddy the waters. My friend though, if we struggle
in our own strength, our striving would be losing, wouldn't it?
We're not the right man on our side, a man of God's own choosing.
Now look at 1 Samuel 16 and verse 2. I'm sorry, it'll be... I lost my place, I'm sorry. Let's
go ahead and read verse 1. I'll read down to it. And it
says, And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for
Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill thine horn with oil, and
go and I will send thee to Jephthah the Bethlehemite, for I have
provided me a king among his people, among his sons. That's
it. I have provided a king. You see, we have strength. to overcome our sin because God
has provided a King to give us the power. To give us the power
to do it. The strength to do it must come
from God. And when we undertake to obey
God, He will come alongside us and gird us with His strength. Is that not enough strength?
I don't know of any more strength that we need that comes from
God. King, how long will you mourn for your sin? How many
times do we have to cut things off and we mourn about it? We
mope about it. We see some sin and we say, oh
man, if I cut that off, I'm not going to be as comfortable. I'm
going to have to give up some things. And they say, oh no. And God says, how long will you
mourn for that which I rejected? Don't mourn for that. Fill your
horn full of oil. My friend, He has given us the
oil of gladness, hasn't He? His Spirit. My friend, obey not
the lusts of the flesh. Put on Christ. The fruits of
the Spirit, love, joy, peace, meekness, temperance, faith,
these things are the root of joy in your life, not your sin. Don't let circumstance dictate
what we do and what we don't do for God. Don't let our feelings
about it dictate what we do and don't do for God. If we do those
things that our conscience, our circumstance, or anything dictates
against God's Word, we are sinning and it needs to be mortified. You know, my friends, I love
him. I truly do. And my heart's desire is that
you know him like I know him. And because of his love for me,
I love you. And I would not long for any
of you to see something in disobedience
and continue to run headlong in it. Because God's children
always have a brick wall waiting somewhere down the road. And
if you're running full steam into a brick wall, it's going
to hurt. And I don't want any of you to have to run into that.
But I know we're stubborn, aren't we? And unless God opens our eyes,
we'll run headlong into it. To obey God is better than sacrifice. I pray this be a blessing to
us, that God the Spirit would teach us to love and obey Him. Let's stand. We'll be dismissed
in prayer.