He Brought Back More Than He Was Asked For and It Counted for Nothing

Somewhere around twenty-two, a person can find himself doing more than he has ever done and feeling further away than he ever has.

The services are up. The serving is up. He is at the building four times a week now instead of three, and he has taken on a thing nobody asked him to take on, and if you asked anybody in that congregation how the young man is doing they would say he is doing very well.

And there is one thing, one specific thing, that he knows perfectly well God has been asking him about for about eleven months. He has not done it. It is small. It would take a conversation, or a decision, or an apology, and it is the only item on the list that is actually his.

So what he has done instead, without ever deciding to, is turn the volume up on everything else.

I have watched this in other people and been slow about it, and then watched it in myself and been slower. It never feels like avoidance while it is happening. It feels like devotion. That is what makes it hard to catch, and it is why the story in 1 Samuel 15 is so uncomfortable, because the man in it is not lazy and he is not a hypocrite. He came back with more than he was sent for.

He came back with extra

Saul is given a specific instruction and he carries out most of it, and then he keeps the best of what he was told to destroy, and he keeps it for a religious purpose.

That detail matters. He did not keep it to sell. He kept it to sacrifice, which is to say he kept it for God, which is to say his disobedience was pointed in a devotional direction.

And Samuel arrives, and Saul greets him first, cheerfully, with a report.

And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD. And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? (1 Samuel 15:13-14, King James Version)

What meaneth then this bleating. One question, and it is not a theological question. It is a question about a noise.

You are heard by Someone who notices the noise as well as the report. 1 Samuel 15:14 has the question landing on a sound rather than on a statement, and it is the Spirit of God, John 16:8, who is described as the one who convicts, which is a work done gently and from inside rather than by an audit.

The extra was the problem

Saul explains, and his explanation is completely sincere and it is where the whole thing turns.

But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Gilgal. (1 Samuel 15:21)

To sacrifice unto the LORD. He is not defending greed. He is defending worship. In his own account of the day, he improved the instruction, because more offered to God had to be better than less.

And Samuel answers with the sentence the whole chapter is remembered for.

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)

Notice it is a comparison and not a dismissal. Sacrifice is not called worthless. It is weighed against something and comes out lighter, which is the same move Jesus makes in Matthew 23 about weightier matters.

You have not been asked for volume, and volume has never once counted as the answer. 1 Samuel 15:22 puts obeying above sacrifice in plain words, and it is the Holy Spirit, John 14:26, who is given to bring to remembrance what He actually said, which is how a person knows which item is the real one.

God says this about His own appointed system

Here is what makes this more than a story about one king. God says the same thing about the sacrificial system He Himself set up.

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6)

He designed the burnt offerings. He wrote the instructions for them in Leviticus. And through Hosea He says He wants something else more, which means the ranking is not a criticism of the practice, it is a statement about what the practice was for.

And David, who had every reason to want a mechanism for getting right with God quickly, says the same thing from underneath.

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 animals and the standing and the priests. He is saying he would gladly have paid in that currency, and the currency was not accepted, and what was asked for was the thing he could not delegate to an altar.

You are wanted, and the offering was never a substitute for you. Hosea 6:6 says He desired mercy and the knowledge of God rather than the offerings, and it is by His Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person comes near as a child rather than arriving with goods.

Volume is the most respectable way to avoid one thing

Let me be plain about the mechanism, because it is nearly invisible from inside.

The one thing God is asking about is usually small, specific, and costly in a way nobody else would notice. It has a name. It probably involves one other person.

Everything else on the list is larger, more visible, and applauded. So a man who is avoiding the one thing is not avoiding God, in his own experience. He is drawing nearer to God in nine visible directions, and the ninth one is louder than the eight before it, and every increase makes the avoidance harder to see, including to him.

I am not describing a hypocrite. A hypocrite knows. This man does not know, and that is why Samuel had to say it out loud, and why Saul's first sentence in the chapter is a genuine report of having obeyed.

You are not a fraud for having done this, and being told about it is a mercy rather than a verdict. 1 Samuel 15:22 comes as a spoken word to a man who did not see it, and it is the Spirit who reproves, John 16:8, which is a work of God rather than the collapse of a person.

What He asks for is inside a relationship

The reason obedience outranks sacrifice is not that God prefers rules. It is that obedience is what love does in a relationship, and sacrifice can be done at a distance.

Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23)

Keep my words. Not keep a practice. Words are said by somebody, to somebody, and keeping them is a response inside a relationship rather than a transaction outside one.

That is the whole difference between the two currencies. A sacrifice can be arranged. Somebody else can carry it for you. But nobody can do the one thing on your behalf, which is exactly why it is the one thing, and why the pile of other things never adds up to it however high it gets.

You are invited into keeping His words rather than into paying in another currency. John 14:23 ties keeping to loving and to His coming, and it is the Comforter promised three verses later, the Holy Spirit, who is given as the means of it.