S05E089, Obedience v Sacrifice, Andy B 2 Minute Video
To Obey is better than Sacrifice. It’s a beautiful gem in the Old Testament which can sometimes be missed! And, when we read something in the bible about sacrificing animals, it’s all too easy to disregard it as out of date because of what Jesus did on the cross.
Jesus’ death and resurrection means we don’t need to sacrifice animals in the Temple. But it doesn’t lessen the importance of obedience for us Christians.
But Samuel replied, “What is more pleasing to the Lord: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice… 1 Samuel 15:22 (New Living Translation)
Put really simply, animal sacrifice made God pleased in the Old Testament times. But, despite that, obedience was what mattered above and beyond that. Actually that theme reappears elsewhere in the Old Testament – when God gets fed up with people doing what their duty is, rather than simply obeying God.
Obedience almost sounds like a dirty word these days, outside of the Armed Forces where soldiers are taught to obey the commands of those senior to them. And that obedience is even more important for us as Christians.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that giving to the poor, fighting for social injustices is what God wants from you. It is good to care for the people we meet. In the book of James, the author – of the same name – tells us that pure religion is exactly that of caring for orphans and widows.
More important that any of that, though, is being obedient to God. He desires our hearts over our hands.
Just a thought…
Andy B
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[00:00:00] So another Andy B Two Minute Video. Have you ever had someone suggest to you what you should do? Maybe it's, oh, don't cross the road just yet cuz you didn't see the car coming down. Maybe it's more than that, your hedges are a bit overgrown there. Don't you think you should be cutting them? We have that all the time.
[00:00:25] We're not allowed to cut our hedges and we get complaints that we haven't cut the hedges, but it would be illegal to do so. There's actually bylaw. So we don't trim our hedges cause there's birds in there and they need looking after and protecting.
[00:00:36] Have you ever had someone suggest in such a way they're not really suggesting, they're telling you, but they don't feel they can tell you so what they do is they, they suggest in a really, really unpleasant way. I've had that many, many times, and we need to discern between suggestions and orders. We need to determine between suggestions that are helpful and suggestions that are not.
[00:00:57] Obedience and sacrifice is one of those bits of scripture that [00:01:00] if you only ever stick to the New Testament, you're gonna miss such amazing gems. All the gems that you are enjoying in the New Testament, that all the people who wrote the New Testament you enjoy, enjoyed, in the Old Testament. And one of those gems in the Old Testament is this, to obey better than sacrifice.
[00:01:14] What's obedience and sacrifice gotta do with it? Well, it's very easy in the Old Testament kind of day, you, you go to the temple and you, you pay your tax and you get your animals burned. It's a bit like the Catholic idea of, I've done ma bit, all's good now. And one of the beauties of what Jesus did on the cross is it gave us a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And the thing about obedience and sacrifices, it's very easy to make our lives sacrificial without obeying God.
[00:01:39] We sacrifice our money, we give to charity. We do good things. We, we help people. We, we trim next door's garden, but none of those things is gonna get you into heaven. We can't ever do enough good to overcome the evil of who we have been, and are, and will be, without what Jesus did for us.
[00:01:58] To obey is better than the sacrifice [00:02:00] means whatever we are doing, we need to obey God. God can never contradict Himself. He's never gonna tell us to do anything that goes against scripture cuz He is scripture, so He can't go against himself.
[00:02:11] But to obey is better than the sacrifice means simply this. When things are coming along, and you're not quite sure what to do, be careful that you're not just going with a sacrificial heart and will I sacrifice this and this and this when God just wants your heart to be obeying Him.
[00:02:25] To obey God is better than to sacrifice.
[00:02:28] is actually quite easy most of the time, but to be obedient means a whole lot more. Which is why to obey is better than sacrifice is there. There's lots of other theological reasons why it's there. That's what I wanted to bring out.
[00:02:39] To obey is better than sacrifice. Where is God asking you to obey Him?
[00:02:46] Just a thought.
Andy B, 13/06/2023