19 May 2022 - Obedience is better than sacrifice
1 Samuel 15:22b (NLT) “Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice”
Jeremiah 7:23 (ERV) “Obey me and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Do all that I command, and good things will happen to you.”
Job 36:11 (MEV) says, “If they obey and serve Him, they will spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasure.”
Disobedience separates us from God’s plan and ability to trust God. Our decision to obey or disobey God will determine how we finish the race. Faith and obedience go hand in hand. Over and over, the Bible tells us that God blesses and rewards obedience. Obedience enables us to live a life of joy, without shame, rooted deeply in the Lord and confident in our eternal hope.
God says that He will instruct us and teach us in the way we should go; He will guide us with His eye”
Psalm 32:8 (ESV) “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Our part is to trust in the LORD with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. In all our ways we are to submit to Him, and He will make our paths straight
Proverbs 3:5-6 (ESV) “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
“The man who cannot obey God cannot say that he loves or trusts his Master. If God knows best then how dare we interfere with His will?” ― Alan de Jager
C. S. Lewis beautifully illustrates the kind obedience that Christ requires from us. He writes: “Christ says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.”
The first step toward obedience is to submit your life under the control of God’s rulership in your life.
Paul makes this clear in Romans 14:8-9 (NKJV): “For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died, and rose and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
1 Peter 5:6 (ESV) “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you”