To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice

Welcome to Vespers, where we take up the last hour of your day.

Tonight: the king who could not wait, and would not let go. Last week the readings watched Israel demand a king like all the nations, and heard the warning that God sometimes grants a request as a judgment. Tonight we sit with the man who was that grant — Saul, the son of Kish — in three scenes: the sacrifice he could not wait to offer, the command he would not fully keep, and the song he could not bear to hear. The old writers will keep us company along the way, on obedience, and on envy.

A reminder: this is a survey of great ideas, not necessarily an endorsement of any one contribution.

Begin with the day Israel got what it asked for. From the first book of Samuel:

And they ran and fetched him thence: and when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upward. And Samuel said to all the people, See ye him whom the LORD hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people? And all the people shouted, and said, God save the king.

Head and shoulders above everyone — a king who looked like a king from the nations, which is what they had asked for. Early in the reign the first test came, and it was a test of waiting. The Philistines had gathered at Michmash, and Samuel had told Saul to wait seven days at Gilgal until he came to offer the sacrifices.

The scripture reads:

And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude: and they came up, and pitched in Michmash, eastward from Beth-aven. When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, (for the people were distressed,) then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits. And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.

The reading continues:

And he tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering. And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him.

And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash; Therefore said I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the LORD: I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.

And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.

I forced myself, Saul says — as if obedience were the compulsion and the disobedience were the sacrifice. From Barnes:

Motives of worldly expediency were not to be weighed against the express commandment of God. All the circumstances and all the dangers were as well known to God as they were to Saul, and God had bidden him wait until Samuel came. Here was exactly the same sin of willful disobedience which broke out again, and was so severely reproved.

The old expositors asked the hard question about this scene, and Matthew Poole states it plainly: why did God so severely punish Saul for so small an offence, occasioned by great necessity, and done with an honest intention? Part of his answer:

Men are very incompetent judges of God's judgments, because they see but very little, either of the majesty of the offended God, or of the heinous nature and aggravations of the offence. For instance, men see nothing but Saul's outward act, which seems small; but God saw with how wicked a mind and heart he did this; with what gross infidelity and distrust of God's providence; with what contempt of God's authority, and justice, and many other wicked principles and motions of his heart, unknown to men.

He goes on:

It must be remembered that the kingdom of Saul and of Israel was now in its infancy, and that this was the first command which he received from God. And it hath been ever held a piece of wisdom in all lawgivers, severely to punish the first violations of their laws, to secure their honour and obedience, and to affright and caution offenders for the future.

From Gill:

It matters not whether the thing commanded is greater or less, it is disobedience to the command that is the sin, and is resented.

The commonplace books gathered the moralists on this point — obedience, and what it is made of. From Francis Quarles:

Let the ground of all thy religious actions be obedience; examine not why it is commanded, but observe it because it is commanded. True obedience neither procrastinates nor questions.

From Thomas Adams: The obedience of the heart is the heart of obedience.

From Thomas Brooks: A man sincerely obedient will not pick and choose what commands to obey, and what to reject.

From Luther:

True obedience to God is the obedience of faith and good works; that is, he is truly obedient to God who trusts Him and does what He commands.

From Aristotle: Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.

And from the poet Metastasio: Prepare thy soul calmly to obey; such offering will be more acceptable to God than every other sacrifice.

That last line could have been written in the margin of the next scene, for it is the scene where those exact scales — offering on one side, obedience on the other — are weighed in public.

The second scene opens with a commission. Amalek had attacked Israel on the road up from Egypt, and the sentence long pronounced against that nation was now given to Saul to carry out — a command of judgment, total and unsparing. From the first book of Samuel:

Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not.

The reading continues:

And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt. And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.

Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.

He goes on:

And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. 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?

And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.

Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the LORD hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over Israel? And the LORD sent thee on a journey. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the LORD?

And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the LORD, and have gone the way which the LORD sent me. 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.

And Samuel said, 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. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

From Matthew Henry:

Saul boasts to Samuel of his obedience. Thus sinners think, by justifying themselves, to escape being judged of the Lord. The noise the cattle made, like the rust of the silver, witnessed against him. Many boast of obedience to the command of God; but what means then their indulgence of the flesh, their love of the world, their angry and unkind spirit, and their neglect of holy duties, which witness against them?

He goes on:

Humble, sincere, and conscientious obedience to the will of God, is more pleasing and acceptable to him than all burnt-offering and sacrifices. God is more glorified and self more denied, by obedience than by sacrifice. It is much easier to bring a bullock or lamb to be burned upon the altar, than to bring every high thought into obedience to God, and to make our will subject to his will. Those are unfit and unworthy to rule over men, who are not willing that God should rule over them.

From Jamieson, Fausset and Brown:

His shuffling, prevaricating answer called forth a stern rebuke from the prophet. It well deserved it — for the destination of the spoil to the altar was a flimsy pretext — a gross deception, an attempt to conceal the selfishness of the original motive under the cloak of religious zeal and gratitude.

From Poole, on why obeying outweighs offering:

To obey is better than sacrifice, because obedience to God is a moral duty, constantly and indispensably necessary; but sacrifice is but a ceremonial institution, sometimes unnecessary, and sometimes sinful, when it is offered by a polluted hand, or in an irregular manner; therefore thy gross disobedience to God's express command is not to be compensated with sacrifice.

Keil and Delitzsch, the German expositors, preserve two older voices on this verse. First Calvin:

It was as much as to say that the sum and substance of divine worship consisted in obedience, with which it should always begin, and that sacrifices were, so to speak, simple appendices, the force and worth of which were not so great as of obedience to the precepts of God.

And then the old Berleburg Bible:

In sacrifices a man offers only the strange flesh of irrational animals, whereas in obedience he offers his own will, which is rational or spiritual worship.

He offers his own will. That is what Saul kept back at Gilgal both times — the animals went on the altar, and the will stayed home.

On the second half of the sentence — rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft — the Cambridge commentator writes:

Opposition to the will of God is as bad as divination by the help of evil spirits, which is tantamount to apostasy from God: obstinate resistance to Him is no better than worshipping idols and images. Disobedience is in fact idolatry, because it elevates self-will into a god.

He adds a sharp observation:

There seems to be an allusion to Saul's zeal in abolishing the practice of witchcraft. Samuel charges him with being not less guilty than those whom he had been so eager to condemn.

And from Matthew Poole, on the word stubbornness:

Either wilful and presumptuous sin, whereby a man violently breaks loose from God's command, and resists his authority; or rather, perseverance or contumacy in sin, justifying it, and pleading for it, which was Saul's present crime.

The Cambridge commentator calls Samuel's sentence the key-note of the long remonstrance of the prophets — the standing protest against supposing that ceremony can be of any value in the sight of God when separated from the devotion of the heart. The line echoes down the rest of the scriptures. From the psalms of David:

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

From Hosea:

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

From Micah:

Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

And Jesus himself took the line up, saying: But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Spurgeon preached a whole sermon on Samuel's sentence, and pressed it first on the people most likely to think it did not apply to them. From Spurgeon, in a lightly modernized text:

Be it ever in your remembrance, that to obey, to keep strictly in the path of your Savior's command, is better than any outward form of religion. And to hearken to His precepts with an attentive ear is better than to bring the fat of rams or anything else which you may wish to lay upon His altar. Probably there are some of you here tonight who may be living in the neglect of some known duty. It is no new thing for Christians to know their duty — to have their conscience enlightened about it — and yet to neglect it.

He goes on:

Noah's sacrifice sent up a sweet savor before God, but in God's sight the obedience which led him to build the ark and enter in with his family was far more precious — and for this his name is written among the champions of faith and handed down to us as a word of honor and renown.

And further:

Though you should preach with the tongue of men and of angels, though you should give your body to be burned and your goods to feed the poor, yet if you do not hearken to your Lord and are not obedient to His will, all besides shall profit you nothing.

He ends the appeal with questions:

Is there anything that you are neglecting? Is there any sin in which you are indulging? Is there any voice of conscience to which you have turned a deaf ear? Is there one passage of Scripture which you dare not look in the face because you are living in neglect of it? Then let Samuel's voice come to you, for to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

Now hear how Saul answers the sentence — because his confession is the most revealing thing he ever says. From the first book of Samuel:

And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD.

I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. The king Israel demanded because they wanted to be like the nations turns out to be a king governed by the people's voice — the demand of the eighth chapter wearing a crown. The reading continues:

And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent. And Samuel said unto him, The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.

Then he said, I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD thy God. So Samuel turned again after Saul; and Saul worshipped the LORD.

Yet honour me now before the elders. Even the repentance reaches for the throne. A modern writer, Gene Edwards, built a whole meditation on Saul around a single question, and it is worth carrying to bed tonight: do you want anything God does not want you to have? Saul's ruin was not that he wanted the throne — God gave him the throne. His ruin was that when God said it was no longer his, he would not open his hand.

The kingdom had been promised to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou. The next scene shows that neighbour arriving. From the first book of Samuel:

And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.

At Jesse's house the tallest and likeliest son passed before the prophet first, and the reading records the correction:

And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, and said, Surely the LORD'S anointed is before him. But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

Height of stature was the one qualification Saul had carried into office. The reading continues:

And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither. And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the LORD said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah. But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.

The kingdom has changed hands in heaven long before it changes hands on earth — David anointed while Saul still sits on the throne. And the man who will not let go of what God has taken back must now watch his replacement rise. That is the third scene: the song, and the spear.

From the first book of Samuel:

And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of musick. And the women answered one another as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.

And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him; and he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands: and what can he have more but the kingdom? And Saul eyed David from that day and forward.

The reading continues:

And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul's hand. And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.

And Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with him, and was departed from Saul. Therefore Saul removed him from him, and made him his captain over a thousand; and he went out and came in before the people. And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the LORD was with him. Wherefore when Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he was afraid of him. But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them.

From Matthew Henry:

David's troubles not only immediately follow his triumphs, but arise from them; such is the vanity of that which seems greatest in this world. Compare David, with his harp in his hand, aiming to serve Saul, and Saul, with his javelin in his hand, aiming to slay David; and observe the sweetness and usefulness of God's persecuted people, and the barbarity of their persecutors.

On the words Saul eyed David, Gill writes:

Instead of looking pleasantly, and with a smile, upon him, as a courtier and favourite, he was justly entitled to by his gallant behaviour, he looked at him with a sour, ill natured look; he looked at him with an evil, spiteful, malicious, and envious eye; he diligently watched and observed all his motions and actions.

Barnes notes the thought under Saul's question — what can he have more but the kingdom — and quotes the old antiquary Camden: A kingdom brooketh no companion, and majesty more heavily taketh injuries to heart.

Here the commonplace books open their longest chapters, for envy and jealousy are among their great subjects. From Aeschylus:

Few men have strength of mind to honor a friend's success without a touch of envy; for that malignant passion clinging to the heart doubles the burden of the man infected by it; he is weighed down by the weight of his own woes, and sighs to see the happiness of others.

The collections print this under the name of Socrates:

An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and revenge, the beginner of secret sedition, and the perpetual tormentor of virtue.

From Benjamin Whichcote: No man is greatly jealous who is not in some measure guilty.

From Madame de Puisieux: Jealousy is an awkward homage which inferiority renders to merit.

And from Augustus Hare:

Jealousy is said to be the offspring of love; yet, unless the parent makes haste to strangle the child, the child will not rest till it has poisoned the parent.

Lord Bacon has a figure that fits Saul with terrible exactness. He is writing of ambition:

Ambition is like choler, which is a humor that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be not stopped; but if it be stopped, and cannot have its way, it becometh fiery and thereby malign and venomous.

Saul stopped is Saul venomous. And the venom does not stay aimed at David. Later in the story, when Jonathan takes David's part at his father's table, the scripture reads:

Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan. For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be established, nor thy kingdom. Wherefore now send and fetch him unto me, for he shall surely die. And Jonathan answered Saul his father, and said unto him, Wherefore shall he be slain? what hath he done? And Saul cast a javelin at him to smite him: whereby Jonathan knew that it was determined of his father to slay David. So Jonathan arose from the table in fierce anger: for he was grieved for David, because his father had done him shame.

The man who cannot lose the throne ends by throwing the spear at his own son — at the very heir the throne was being grasped for. That is where grasping goes. The psalm that remembered the wilderness put the whole pattern into one line we heard last week, and it bears repeating over Saul:

They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel: but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.

Saul is that verse with a crown on. He would not wait at Gilgal; he took counsel from the people's voice instead of the LORD's; and the kingdom he clutched grew lean in his hands until there was nothing left of it but a spear.

Thomas Watson, in a lightly modernized text, gives the other side — what a hand looks like when it is open. From his exposition of the Lord's Prayer:

We hallow God's name by obeying him. How does a son more honor his father, than by obedience? I delight to do your will, O my God. The wise men showed honor to Christ, not only by bowing the knee to him — but by presenting him with gold and myrrh. We hallow God's name, not only by lifting up our eyes and hands to heaven and bowing the knee in prayer — but by presenting him with golden obedience.

And from his little book called A Divine Cordial:

Another fruit of genuine love to God is obedience. He who has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me. It is a vain thing to say we love Christ if we slight His commands. Does that child love his father, who refuses to obey him? If we love God, we shall obey Him in those things which cross flesh and blood.

Golden obedience. The night began with a king who offered God gold of every other kind — burnt offerings forced from an anxious hand, the best of the sheep and oxen saved back from the ban, worship performed before the elders for honour's sake — everything except the one metal asked for. To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

George Herbert wrote a poem on that one word, and it makes the fitting end of the night. He imagines his obedience as a legal deed of conveyance, making his whole self over to God — and prays that some reader might add his own name to the document. It is called Obedience, with the spelling smoothed a little for reading aloud. From Herbert:

My God, if writings may Convey a lordship any way Whither the buyer and the seller please; Let it not thee displease, If this poor paper do as much as they.

On it my heart doth bleed As many lines, as there doth need To pass itself and all it hath to thee. To which I do agree, And here present it as my special deed.

If that hereafter Pleasure Cavil, and claim her part and measure, As if this passed with a reservation, Or some such words in fashion; I here exclude the wrangler from thy treasure.

O let thy sacred will All thy delight in me fulfill! Let me not think an action mine own way, But as thy love shall sway, Resigning up the rudder to thy skill.

Lord, what is man to thee, That thou shouldst mind a rotten tree? Yet since thou canst not choose but see my actions; So great are thy perfections, Thou mayst as well my actions guide, as see.

Besides, thy death and blood Showed a strange love to all our good: Thy sorrows were in earnest; no faint proffer, Or superficial offer Of what we might not take, or be withstood.

Wherefore I all forgo: To one word only I say, No: Where in the deed there was an intimation Of a gift or donation, Lord, let it now by way of purchase go.

He that will pass his land, As I have mine, may set his hand And heart unto this deed, when he hath read; And make the purchase spread To both our goods, if he to it will stand.

How happy were my part, If some kind man would thrust his heart Into these lines; till in heaven's court of rolls They were by winged souls Entered for both, far above their desert!

Good night.