To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice, and Saul Had a Good Reason

The strangest thing about doing too much is that it is easier than doing the thing.

That sounds backwards until a man tests it on himself. There is a plain instruction in his life. He knows what it is. It is not complicated and it is not ambiguous and he has known it for about four years, and it involves one conversation with one person and it would take twenty minutes.

He has not had it.

What he has done instead, in those four years, is a great deal. He has read more. He has given more. He has taken on two things at the church that nobody asked him to take on and that he does well. He has been up early. He has been, by any measure anybody could apply from outside, a more serious man each year than the year before.

And the twenty minute conversation is still sitting there, and every one of those good things has functioned, without him ever choosing it, as a reason it can wait.

There is a chapter about this and the man in it is a king and his explanation is the part that stings.

What he says when he is asked

Here it is, in the King James Version. The king had a plain instruction. He did most of it and kept some of what he was told not to keep, and then this happens:

And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. (1 Samuel 15:14-15)

To sacrifice unto the LORD thy God.

Read the answer carefully. It is not a lie in the ordinary sense. He is not denying the animals are there. He is explaining that they were kept for a religious purpose, and it is a real purpose, and sacrifices were a real thing God had commanded.

He substituted something good for the thing asked. And the good thing was expensive, and public, and would have looked like devotion to anybody watching.

That is why this is so hard to see in yourself. Substitution does not look like disobedience. It looks like extra.

You are not lying to anybody and you were never inventing your devotion. 1 Samuel 15:15 records a real religious reason offered by a man who meant it, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a sharper conscience who shows a man the difference between extra and asked.

The sentence that answers it

Then Samuel says the line that everybody knows and almost nobody hears in context.

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)

To obey is better than sacrifice.

Notice it does not say sacrifice is bad. It says one is better than the other, which is a comparison between two good things, and it only bites because both of them are good.

If sacrifice were worthless the choice would be easy. The reason a man can spend four years in this is that the substitute is genuinely valuable, and it produces genuine results, and other people are genuinely helped by it.

And to hearken than the fat of rams. Hearken is the listening word. The thing being asked for is smaller and quieter than what was offered, and that is almost always the shape of it.

You have something smaller being asked of you and you were never required to produce the larger thing instead. 1 Samuel 15:22 says obeying is better than sacrifice and hearkening better than the fat of rams, and it is His Spirit rather than more output who makes a man able to hear the smaller instruction.

Why the substitute gets chosen

And then Saul says why, and this is the sentence that turns the chapter from a story about a king into a story about anybody.

And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. (1 Samuel 15:24)

Because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.

Fear. Not greed and not defiance. He was afraid of what a group of people would think, and the extra religion was the shape that fear took.

That is worth having, because a man doing too much is usually assumed to be proud, and he usually is not. He is usually afraid, and the doing is what fear does when it has a sanctioned outlet.

And it works, in the short term, which is the trap. Nobody has ever been criticized for volunteering. The extra is applauded, and the applause makes the substitution harder to see every year.

You are not proud here and you were never doing this out of ambition. 1 Samuel 15:24 names the fear of people as the reason a king substituted, and it is the Holy Spirit who reaches a fear rather than a resolution to be braver.

Where the plain thing is, in plain words

The Bible is not vague about what is being asked. It is repeatedly, almost frustratingly simple about it.

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8)

He hath shewed thee. Past tense. The showing is done.

And David, who knew this chapter and its language, says it from the other side, out of the worst thing he ever did:

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. (Psalm 51:16)

Else would I give it. He would have. He had the means and the willingness and the standing, and he says plainly that this is not what is wanted.

And Jesus, reducing it as far as it can go:

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. (John 15:14)

Whatsoever I command. Which is a short list compared to what most men are carrying, and every item on it can actually be found.

You have a short thing to do and you were never handed an unlimited one. Micah 6:8 says He has already shown what is good and John 15:14 sets the whole thing at whatsoever He commands, and it is His Spirit who makes a plain instruction audible over the noise of a busy man's calendar.