I recently heard the story of a man is a follower of Jesus, but he allowed his life to go down a pathway that was not in line with the heart of God. This guy started drinking heavily. And it showed. You could drive by his house and over time you could see just from driving by the house that something wasn’t right. I’m not saying that you can tell a Christian by the quality of their landscaping, but for this particular guy his deteriorating property was outward evidence that he was struggling deep within.
That outward/inward dynamic was happening in the life of Israel’s King Saul, as we have been studying in 1st Samuel chapter 15 this week. Saul disobeyed God, is then confronted by the prophet Samuel, who gives Saul the news that God is rejecting Saul as king, taking the kingdom from him. Saul expresses sorrow for his behavior, begging Samuel to hold a worship service to make things right with God. Samuel doesn’t want to do the worship service, but Saul won’t relent, and Samuel gives in, holding the worship service.
But once the worship is done, Samuel takes a shocking action. Look at verse 32:
“Then Samuel said, ‘Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.’ Agag came to him in chains. And he thought, ‘Surely the bitterness of death is past.’ But Samuel said, ‘As your sword has made women childless, so will your mother be childless among women.’ And Samuel put Agag to death before the Lord at Gilgal. Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.”
Samuel kills someone? Why would a prophet of God kill someone? As we learned earlier in the week, Saul’s disobedience was that he allowed the king of the Amalekites to live, when God had commanded Saul to totally destroy the Amalekites. I discuss that fraught situation in this post.
Now Samuel has cleaned up Saul’s mess. Samuel has obeyed where Saul has not.
But there is a rift. Even though they have held a worship service together, and even though Saul has claimed repentance, we pause the story of Saul feeling a darkness. The way 1st Samuel 15 concludes reminds me of the end of the Empire Strikes Back. Things are settled, but it seems like evil has won that day. Samuel the prophet and Saul the king go their separate ways, never to talk again. God has declared that Saul’s disobedience has cost him the throne. Though Saul remains king for the time being, God has rejected him.
So we reflect on what Saul got wrong. We reflect on the central teaching, “To obey is better than sacrifice,” which we talked about in this post.
We can perform rituals like attending worship services but not understand or practice all the other ways God wants us to obey him.
Jesus would confront the religious elites in his day about this very practice of looking good or religious on the outside, but having hearts that are far from God. When Jesus called the tax collector, Matthew to join his group of disciples, Matthew accepted and invited Jesus to a party at Matthew’s house. The religious elites observed this and questioned it. How could a religious leader party it up with sinners? Jesus says this in Matthew 9:13,
“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
I desire mercy, not sacrifice. That is nearly identical to what Samuel said Saul in 1st Samuel 15, verse 22. God wants our hearts. Jesus is quoting two Old Testament prophets, Hosea and Micah. The Micah passage is quite interesting. Turn to Micah 6:6, page 759.
“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
While our worship services are not wrong, we need to be people who give our hearts to God by acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God in the other 167 hours of the week. In our families, in our schools, in our jobs, in our neighborhoods. God wants our hearts. That is the worship God wants. He is not thinking, “I just want them to show up at a building for a worship service for an hour each week.” God wants us to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with him throughout the rest of the week. He wants us to worship him in everything we do. And in particular he wants us to worship him by living lives of obedience to him.
When Jesus told his disciples that he wanted them to make more disciples, he did not say, “Teach them how to create worship services, and get people to come to buildings to attend those worship services, because I really like worship services.” No Jesus said, “make disciples, teaching them to obey everything I commanded you.”
This teaching “to obey is better than sacrifice” when paired with Jesus saying “make disciples teaching them to obey everything I commanded you,” is a reality check for me, because my life for more than 20 years now has focused quite a lot on worship services. We live in a culture where many people have very specific expectations about worship services. If the music isn’t what they like, if they sermon style isn’t their preference, if the programs for their kids aren’t what they think they should be, then they move on. A visitor to my church once told me that they were an introvert, and they were disappointed that we didn’t have a worship buddy to come alongside them and be with them.
This is why we as a church spend far more time on serving our community. This is why we share the good news of Jesus in word and deed. This is why we support Conestoga Valley Christian Community Services, because they are reaching people in need of food and clothing. This is why we support Conestoga Valley SEEDS because they are reaching people in need of housing, education like learning English, and health services. This is why we support Church World Service starting a Welcome Team to help a refugee family from Congo. This is why we started a Prison Worship Team. This is why we have a quilting group making attractive warm quilts for people in need.
I am not anti-worship services. That would be pretty ironic wouldn’t it? I believe it is right and good to regularly, consistently participate in worshiping God through worship gatherings. But what we learn from 1st Samuel 15 is that God’s heart beats for his people to have hearts that follow his ways throughout the rest of our lives.
Remember the story I told at the beginning of this post? The struggling man had friends who started praying for him to have a change of heart, a heart that returned to the Lord. And nothing happened, at least not right away. They kept praying for weeks and months. One day, they noticed a dumpster outside the house. They noticed the property that had been let go being cleaned up. What they were noticing was a heart change.
Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 