Today’s topic is taken from verse 22 of 1 Samuel Chapter 15
22. But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
This verse is definitely one of my favorites. It answers a lot of questions for me and tells me what is more important to God; thus, helping me make good judgement of any situation. To understand what it means, let us consider the context in which it was used by Prophet Samuel and the culture of the Israelites back then.
In those days, the Israelites made burnt offerings to God whenever they committed an act of offence against Him or sinned, to seek His divine forgiveness. Now, look at this is way, for the sin to have taken place, it means they were disobedient to God in the first place. While God will always forgive, He delights more in their obedience than the sacrifices that were made after the fact.
Prior to Prophet Samuel making this statement in the above verse, he had given Saul an instruction from God saying Saul was to attack and totally destroy the Amalekites including all that belonged to them. However, Saul disobeyed God by sparing the King of the Amalekites and everything that was good including the best of the sheep, cattle and lambs. When Samuel confronted him, Saul’s excuse for sparing them was to sacrifice these animals to God which was rooted in his own self-righteousness and desire to please others (i.e., the soldiers who were with him) rather than obey God. He thought God will be delighted if he were to sacrifice these animals, his thinking was why wouldn’t He? After all, these were choice animals and the best of the best. Well, unfortunately for him, God’s pleasure was rather in his complete obedience and not in the sacrifices of fattened calves and as a result, he lost God’s favor and the throne of Israel.
What this tells us today is that sometimes we may make sacrifices such as, never missing a Sunday service, abstaining from alcohol, cleaning the church building, or joining the choir etc. however if we are going against God’s instructions by doing things he said we shouldn’t, such as committing acts of pride, lust, adultery, envy, stealing, gluttony etc., then we’re just like Saul acting from a place of self-righteousness, thinking that these things we do will please God whereas He takes delight in our obedience to His word and not sacrifices. Don’t get me wrong, our sacrifices are not of waste of time because He accepts sacrifices that are pleasing to Him, but there is something above that which He prefers, and that is our obedience of His word and whatever He has laid in our hearts to do.
