What did God say to Saul, with Samuel as his spokesperson, have the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices that's worship?
As in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.
He cites 1 Samuel 1522, obedience is better than sacrifice.
Before moving forward, we have to establish what Samuel said this in response to.
Okay, we are going to read...
1 Samuel, 15, 17 through 24, pay very close attention.
And Samuel said, Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel?
The Lord anointed you king over Israel.
And the Lord sent you on a mission and said,
go devote the destruction, go devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.
Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord?
Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the side of the Lord?
I obeyed the voice of the Lord,
I have gone on a mission on which the Lord sent me,
I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction.
But the people took of the spoil,
sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.
And Samuel said, has Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rain.
For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.
I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.
And thus the reading of God's holy word.
1st Samuel 15 is a story about Saul who rationalized and explained his sin away.
He was God's chosen king over Israel, but disobeyed God by following his own desires influenced by being a people pleaser.
He was given the honor of being God's instrument of judgment with an easier said than done task, utterly destroy the Amalekites.
And says he swooped down to the spoils, some translation.
which was evil because God commanded that all the material goods of the Amalekites also be destroyed for God's honor, not just the people.
But Saul proceeds to uphold his innocence contradicting himself, actually, in shifting the blame.
Because on the one hand, he claims to have killed all the Amalekites, sparing their king, Aegeg.
back in the earlier verses,
he accused the people of bringing back the material goods to sacrifice to God while recognizing they should have been destroyed.
And he did this at the behest of seeking the approval of man rather than God.
So it is to this defending of his error that Samuel then says, God does not take much delight in the sacrifices as in obedience.
Saul didn't plunder the goods that God commanded him to plunder, but instead took them to then be used as sacrifices to God.
And God responds by saying that he preferred Saul would have listened to what he commanded and destroyed the goods,
not kept them to then try and sacrifice them to God.
which is why he then goes on to contrast rebellion, which Saul was engaged in with the sin of witchcraft.
The problem in 1 Samuel 15 is not The offerings,
but the disobedience of God's commands, and the desire for approval of people rather than the approval of man.
Saul is a picture of how fallen humanity rationalizes their sin, blame shifts, etc.
points us to the good news of the gospel,
that humanity does not have to suffer in their sins because Christ took sin upon himself such that Through his final,
you know, imperfect sacrifice and obedience, you can have peace with God.
But this is a historical accounting that applies today to point us to the gospel.
There could be many applications, I guess, valid application to the text.
I'm sure that, or he brace.
I'm sure that they could point out a number of other things better than I could.
But the point being, understand that's what's going on in that verse.
