Make-Up Monday - 1 Samuel 15:22

"And Samuel said,

'Has 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 listen than the fat of rams."

To obey is better than sacrifice. How many of us, when God tells us to do something that we don't like, seek to

do some work that is more "palatable" to us, under the false idea that God will overlook what we didn't do,

because we did something else that was "just as good" in our own eyes? Nothing can replace plain obedience to

God's word.

  In this chapter, King Saul is told by God to destroy the Amalekites completely, not even sparing the animals.

Yet Saul feared the people, and allowed them to spare some of the animals to use for sacrifices. God set up the

sacrificial system to point to Christ, and it was the appointed way of worshiping Him before Christ came, but

Saul used it, and the will of the people, as an excuse to disobey God's command.

  God rejected Saul as king because of this, because Saul rejected His word. Let us make no mistake, the Lord

is a jealous God, and He expects His people to give Him alone the praise He deserves, and to obey His voice.

All the more reason to fall on our faces and worship Him, because we do not do what we ought, and yet He

bears with us. Praise the Lord, for He is good!

(I have returned alive and well from a week of driver's-ed, thanks be to God, and am now an official person-

-who-knows-how-to-drive-but-can't-yet!)