The Obedience

God gave King Saul a plain and hard command, to go and utterly destroy Amalek and all that they had, sparing nothing. And Saul went, and won the battle, but he did not obey. He spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, and he spared Agag the king, keeping back the choicest of the spoil. And when the prophet Samuel confronted him, Saul had his answer ready. The people had spared the best, he said, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God. He had a religious reason for his disobedience. And Samuel answered him with words that have searched the people of God ever since. 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.

See what Saul had done. He had substituted sacrifice for obedience. God had asked one thing, obedience, and Saul had offered another, sacrifice, and thought the substitution would please. He would give God a grand religious offering, the fat of the best rams, in place of the plain obedience God had actually required. And God was not pleased, for the offering, however costly, was no substitute for the obedience withheld. To obey is better than sacrifice. The plain doing of what God commands is worth more to him than the grandest offering brought instead of it.

THE SUBSTITUTE OF SACRIFICE

We are all tempted to Saul’s exchange, to give God something in place of obeying him. It is often easier to make a sacrifice than to obey. We would rather give God our money than our obedience in the matter he has actually pressed on us, rather offer him religious activity and busy service than do the one plain hard thing he has asked, rather bring him the fat of rams than hearken to his voice. The sacrifice can become a way of buying off the obedience, a costly gift offered precisely so that we need not do the simple thing he commanded. And God is not deceived by it. He sees the obedience withheld behind the offering brought, and he is not pleased with the trade.

For God is after our obedience, not our offerings, and the offering that is meant to replace obedience is worthless to him. This does not mean he despises true sacrifice, the offering that flows out of an obedient heart; that he receives. But the sacrifice offered instead of obedience, the religious gift brought in place of the plain command, is an offense, for it is disobedience dressed in the robes of devotion. Samuel named it plainly. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, he said, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. The refusal to obey, however piously excused, is rebellion, and God calls it by its true name.

PARTIAL OBEDIENCE

And notice that Saul’s disobedience was partial. He did obey, in large measure. He fought the battle, destroyed most of Amalek, kept back only the best and the king. He would surely have called himself obedient, pointing to all he had done. But partial obedience is disobedience, for it is still the setting of our own judgment above God’s, the keeping back of the part we choose to keep. To obey in the ninety-nine things God commands and withhold the one is not obedience but the substitution of our will for his in that one thing, and it was in that one withheld thing that Saul lost his kingdom. God does not grade obedience on a curve. He asks for all.

For obedience is the very test of love, and cannot be feigned. If ye love me, the Lord said, keep my commandments. He did not say, if ye love me, feel warmly toward me, or worship me with great offerings, but keep my commandments. Love is proved in obedience, and the love that will not obey is not love at all, whatever it professes. Why call ye me Lord, Lord, the Lord asked, and do not the things which I say? To call him Lord while refusing to obey him is an empty word, for lordship means the right to command, and the one who will not obey has not truly made him Lord at all.

CHRIST THE OBEDIENT

Over against Saul the disobedient king stands Christ the obedient Son, and the contrast is the whole gospel. Where the first king kept back the best for himself, the Son kept back nothing, but humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. His whole life was obedience, a delight in the Father’s will. I delight to do thy will, O my God, he could say, yea, thy law is within my heart. And though he were a Son, the Scripture says, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered, walking the path of obedience through suffering all the way to the end, without ever once, like Saul, keeping back the hard thing for himself.

And it is his obedience that redeems our disobedience, and his Spirit that enables our obedience now. We do not obey to earn God’s favor, as though our obedience could purchase what only Christ’s has bought; we obey out of the favor already given, in the strength of the obedient One who lives in us. As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, the apostle says, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Our obedience flows from his, is enabled by his, is the fruit in us of the Spirit of the obedient Christ, and so it is not a grim self-effort but the working out of a life already given.

OBEDIENCE AS LOVE AND TRUST

So obedience is not legalism, not the cold keeping of rules to earn a wage, but the response of love and the act of trust. We obey because we love, and love keeps the commandments of the beloved. And we obey because we trust, believing that his commands are good, that he sees what we cannot, that the hard thing he asks is wisdom though we do not understand it. Abraham obeyed and went out, not knowing whither he went, and obeyed again on the mountain with his son, trusting God past his own understanding. This is the obedience of faith, to do the plain hard thing God commands before we understand it, because we trust the One who commands, and love him.

THE BLESSING ON THE OBEDIENT

Obedience is not only what God requires; it is the path along which his blessings come to us. If ye be willing and obedient, the prophet says, ye shall eat the good of the land. The good of the land is met on the road of obedience, and the soul that forsakes that road forsakes the very place where God’s promises are kept. This is not that we earn the blessing by our obeying, but that obedience is the appointed way, the channel in which grace runs, so that to step off the path of obedience is to step out of the stream of blessing, not because God is withholding it, but because we have left the place where it flows.

And obedience is what brings us into the very family of God. Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the Lord said, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. The mark of his true kindred is not profession but the doing of the Father’s will. The obedient are his family, brought near, owned, embraced, and the disobedient, however loud their profession, are strangers to him. It is a searching test, and a tender promise, that the plain doing of God’s will is the thing that makes us, in the Lord’s own reckoning, his brothers and sisters.

There is even a promise that God will show his salvation to the obedient in a way the disobedient never see. To him that ordereth his conversation aright, the psalmist says, will I shew the salvation of God. There is a seeing of God’s salvation, a deeper knowledge of his saving work, that is given to the one who orders his life aright in obedience, and withheld from the one who will not. Obedience opens the eyes to what disobedience keeps hidden. The obedient soul is shown things the disobedient cannot see, for the will of God is known most fully in the doing of it, and he that will do his will shall know.

So obedience is not a grim and thankless burden but the very road of blessing, the way into the family of God, the path along which his salvation is shown. The disobedient, keeping back the hard thing for himself, imagines he is holding on to something good; in truth he is stepping off the road where all the good is found. Obey, and eat the good of the land; obey, and be counted the Lord’s own kindred; obey, and be shown the salvation of God. The way of obedience, that looks so narrow and costly, is the way where all the promises wait.

So do not offer God a sacrifice in place of your obedience. Do not give him your money, your religious activity, your grand offerings, while withholding the plain hard thing he has actually asked. Do not settle for a partial obedience that keeps back the part you choose, for partial obedience is disobedience, and it was Saul’s ruin. Obey fully, and obey out of love and trust, in the strength of the obedient Christ who lives in you. For God has no such delight in the fat of rams as in a soul that hearkens to his voice. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.