Tag: Obedience

Digging in Deeper: 1 Samuel 15:22-23

Leave a comment

“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. 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.'”‬‬  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Saul’s excuse for disobeying the Lord’s clear command to destroy everything related to the Amalekites especially including all the spoils of war, was that he was going to offer a celebratory sacrifice to God. Now, this was probably mostly a lie because he’d gotten caught, but at least it sounded good right? I didn’t obey you, Lord, because I was going to give you a gift. What Saul reflects in this excuse is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character and identity of the Lord. It’s a misunderstanding that Samuel moves immediately to correct. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: 1 Samuel 15:9, 13

Leave a comment

“But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. . . .And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, ‘Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.'”‬‬  (ESV – Read the chapter)

What were God’s instructions to Saul? He was to destroy everything when he attacked the Amalekites. Everything is a hard word to misinterpret. In pretty much every occasion it means…everything. It doesn’t leave anything out. Now, perhaps it can be used hyperbolically, but that wasn’t how God used it in His instructions to Saul. He meant everything. And Saul didn’t obey. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Judges 6:7-10

Leave a comment

“When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel.  And he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery.  And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land.  And I said to you, “I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.”  But you have not obeyed my voice.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

The people of Israel were hurting and broken and desperate. They were starving. The Midianites were taking everything. They were keeping them weak and unable to mount any kind of a meaningful resistance to their reign of terror. The Israelites were but a couple of generations into the land God had provided for them and it looked like he had abandoned them to this enemy for good. Now, the reality was that it had only been like this for a few years, but when you’re trapped in misery, a few years can seem like a lifetime. They did the only thing they could: Scrape together a meager survival and cry out to the Lord. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Judges 2:4

Leave a comment

“As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Do you remember a time as a kid when you were misbehaving, knew it, but weren’t doing anything about it? You just kept right on down that path figuring that you’d deal with the consequences when that time came. And eventually, the time did indeed come. Your parent or teacher or some other authority finally caught you and sat you down and basically said, “You’ve had your fun, but what were you thinking? Now it’s time to pay the Piper.” Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Judges 1:19

Leave a comment

“And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Starting here and six more times in this chapter we see this phrase, “And he did not drive out…”  The command was to drive out completely or else you are going to pay for it, but they did not obey.  They did not obey, and as the rest of the story of Judges makes clear, they did indeed pay for it.  They stopped doing what the Lord had commanded, so He stopped helping them do it, so the peoples of Canaan remained in the land.  The Lord had told them that if the peoples of Canaan were allowed to remain in the land, they would trip them up and lead them astray.  If the people went astray, they were going to lose the blessings of obedience and gain the Lord Himself as their chief opponent.  And it all happened. Read the rest…