1 Samuel 15: The Most Precious Offering in God's Eyes

Introduction

"What do you think is the most precious offering in the Lord's eyes? And don't look at your Bible yet." With that question, Evangelist Judith opens her message at Fukuoka Agape Church in Japan. Answers come from the congregation: "obedience," "myself," "following the Word." She points out that at this stage, you might think the sermon is already over.

It is not. Starting from 1 Samuel 15:22-23, Judith walks through the lives of several people in the Bible to show what makes the difference in those God uses. Preparation matters, but one thing is decisive: obedience. And that obedience is most often played out in small things that nobody sees.

Outline of the Message

1. Saul, a King Rejected for His Disobedience

• When Samuel, the last of the judges and the first of the prophets, is told to anoint Saul, Saul starts out humble: "Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel?" He defeats the Ammonites, and the people rejoice that they finally have the king they wanted.
• Facing the Philistines, Samuel tells him to wait for his arrival before offering the sacrifice. Samuel is late, Saul grows impatient and, driven by fear, offers the burnt offering himself, though he has no right to. Samuel arrives right afterward and announces that God will choose another king.
• Saul never truly repents. Against Amalek, God commands that everything be devoted to destruction, livestock included. Saul keeps the best of the livestock and brings back King Agag alive. This is the context in which Samuel speaks the words of the passage.
• "Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying Yahweh's voice?" The question calls for the answer no. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams."
• "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft." The law of Moses treated divination as a very serious sin. At its root, Judith explains, it is rebellion against God: wanting to spy out what he has not revealed. Saul will in fact end up at the home of a woman who calls up the dead.
• "And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry." Stubbornness means putting yourself first and living as you please. It is worshiping the idol "me." Whoever is stubborn has made himself a god.
• "Because you have rejected Yahweh's word, he has also rejected you from being king." A terrible word, which the preacher invites us to receive from its other side: whoever keeps God's word receives great grace from him.

2. God Prepares Those He Uses

• In those God uses, we first see a period of formation. Joshua served Moses throughout the forty years in the wilderness. He went up Sinai with him as his attendant and learned from him what a leader who follows God's will looks like.
• David tends his father's sheep and defends them against wild animals. When his father sends him to bring provisions to his brothers at the front, he obeys at once. There he is given the opportunity to strike down Goliath, and the shepherd becomes a mighty warrior of God.
• Samuel, the child his mother Hannah so longed for, is trained from his earliest years under the priest Eli. Daniel, deported to Babylon, refuses to be shaped by the customs of the land and stays faithful to the God of Israel.
• Judith invites everyone to look back on their own life: have you, too, gone through a time of preparation?

3. More Decisive Than Preparation: Obedience

• Jeremiah is called around the age of twenty: "Ah, Lord Yahweh! Behold, I don't know how to speak; for I am a child." Born into a family of priests, he was below the age of thirty required for service (Numbers 4:3). He had no time of formation, but he obeyed, and he fulfilled his ministry.
• Gideon is threshing wheat in secret in the winepress when the angel says to him: "Yahweh is with you, you mighty man of valor!" He protests that his clan is the poorest in Manasseh and that he is the least in his father's house, then asks for signs with the fleece. God adapts to his pace. This fearful man ends up obeying and becomes the mighty man of valor God already saw.
• Moses, at eighty, tries to back out: "I am not eloquent," then "Please send someone else." Trained for forty years as a prince of Egypt and forty years as a shepherd, he becomes a man of obedience as he leads the Exodus.
• Abraham leaves his country at seventy-five without knowing where he is going, then agrees to offer Isaac. Noah builds the ark for nearly a century for a flood that nobody expected.
• For Judith, God's work always begins with the obedience of his servants. You could even say that obedience is everything.

4. To Love God Is to Obey Him

• Romans 8:28 speaks of "those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose." Loving God is not only saying so. Jesus affirmed it: whoever loves him keeps his word.
• Working with God does not mean presenting him with our plans and projects. It means obeying his word. We do not choose the direction: the Lord sets it, and we walk under his yoke.
• You can tell God "I love you," read the Bible with zeal, memorize verses, serve and sing with all your heart: without obedience, you remain halfway there.

5. The Wilderness, a School of Obedience

• Israel's forty years in the wilderness were the consequence of unbelief, but also a time of formation. After four hundred thirty years in Egypt, God wanted to drain the dirty water of this world out of his people.
• The tabernacle stands at the center of the camp, with three tribes on each side: God in the middle. The manna falls every morning, never enough for a year in advance, so that the people look up to the one who gives daily bread. The security the world gives can draw us away from God.
• All were trained, but the first generation died in the wilderness. When you believed in Christ, you came out of Egypt. If you do not learn in the wilderness to renounce yourself and obey, you risk going in circles all your life without entering Canaan.

6. Jesus, Obedient to the Cross

• The summit of obedience is Jesus: "He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him" (Philippians 2:8-9).
• In Gethsemane, he prays: "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you desire."
• Gethsemane means "oil press." Judith recalls an earlier message: having the lamp is not enough, you have to prepare the oil, and the oil flows when the self is pressed like an olive. Jesus, though he was God, let himself be pressed to the very end in order to surrender his will to his Father.

7. Obedience in Small Things

• God is looking neither for gifted people nor for billionaires. He is looking for pure hearts, without hidden motives, set apart from the world. When people talk about obedience, many think of something painful, or fear that God will ask everything of them. Yet most of the time he asks for small things, like the errand David's father had entrusted to him.
• "You have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things" (Matthew 25, Luke 19). Joseph stayed faithful as a slave and in prison, forgotten for two more years. Elisha was plowing his field before he was called.
• The Bible says to forgive: you forgive, even after what was done to you. It says to keep the Lord's day, to proclaim the Gospel, to pray, to read the Word: you do it. These are small acts of obedience, and it is through them that God does great works.
• Why are they harder? Because they go unseen. They cost effort, money, and time, and they bruise our pride. A great act of obedience, by contrast, has something spectacular about it, and we want to tell the story. But whoever seeks the praise of others has already received his reward: "don't let your left hand know what your right hand does."
• Faithfully doing the small things, choosing at every moment the Word over your own idea: that is the narrow gate. And that is where God pours out his anointing.
• "God has favorites," Judith dares to say, a "holy favoritism." Treating everyone the same way would be equality in form only. God practices real equality: to the one who has, more will be given, and from the lazy servant even what he has will be taken away.
• God cannot help loving those who obey him, who renounce themselves to take up his yoke. Obedience gives us back intimacy with him.
• Obedience is repentance, and it is what opens the door to revival. The preacher closes by praying that a spirit of obedience would come down from above on her and on every member of the congregation, so that each one would work with God and see his great works.

Key Takeaways

• The offering that pleases God most is not a sacrifice, it is obedience to his word.
• Disobedience is rebellion, and stubbornness makes an idol of yourself.
• God trains those he uses, but what is decisive is obedience, after the example of Jesus in Gethsemane.
• To love God and work with him is to obey him, not to present him with our own plans.
• Small, hidden acts of obedience are the hardest and the purest: it is through them that God entrusts us with more.

Personal Application

1. What small thing has God asked of you that you keep putting off, telling yourself "later"?
2. Is there someone the Word asks you to forgive, even if you do not feel able to?
3. In your service for God, are you following your own plans or what he asked of you?
4. When you do something good, do you need people to know about it? This week, try an act of obedience that nobody will see.
5. Where are you looking for the security the world gives rather than depending on God day by day, like Israel with the manna?

Verses Cited

• 1 Samuel 15:22-23
• 1 Samuel 9:21
• 1 Samuel 13:8-14
• Exodus 24:13
• 1 Samuel 17:17-20
• Jeremiah 1:6
• Numbers 4:3
• Judges 6:11-40
• Exodus 4:10-14
• Romans 8:28
• John 14:23
• Philippians 2:6-9
• Matthew 26:39
• Matthew 25:21-29
• Luke 19:17
• Matthew 6:1-4
• Matthew 7:13-14

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "obedience is better than sacrifice" mean?

In 1 Samuel 15:22, Samuel asks a question whose answer is no: Yahweh does not delight in burnt offerings as much as in obedience to his voice. Saul had kept the best of Amalek's livestock instead of obeying. God is not looking first for our offerings, he is looking for a heart that listens and does what he says.

Why is disobedience compared to divination and idolatry?

According to Evangelist Judith, divination tries to pierce what God has not revealed: at bottom, it is rebellion against him. Stubbornness, for its part, consists in imposing your own will, which amounts to making yourself an idol. Saul will in fact end up consulting a medium.

Why are small acts of obedience harder than big ones?

A small act of obedience goes unseen: you tell yourself that doing it or not changes nothing. It costs effort, time, or money, and it bruises our pride, without earning any recognition. That is precisely why it is pure, and why God watches it closely.