Love = Obedience = Sacrifice

A couple months ago I had a conversation with a friend about what was more important, obedience or sacrifice. The point I was making was obedience to God’s voice leads to the surrender (sacrifice) and giving away of one’s self. It’s our sacrifice which reveals our obedience. He said obedience to God’s voice is far more important than our sacrifice, to which I 100% agree. Without obedience, there is no sacrifice that glorifies God. When I look back at the story of Jesus in the garden and recount His prayer before His crucifixion. Although He struggled and agonized in prayer over God’s plan for salvation, He ultimately submitted Himself and said “not My will, but Yours be done”. Then He obediently followed God's plan and willingly sacrificed all of Himself. His obedience HAD to result in sacrifice. I think we were essentially arguing different sides of the same coin. Regardless, that conversation has been stuck in my head (and the text history in my phone) for a couple months now.

Fast forward to my quiet time this morning and I read: But Samuel replied, “What is more pleasing to the Lord: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.” 1 Samuel 15:22

That’s all it took to spur a recounting of the above conversation and solidify how obedience and sacrifice fit together. Obedience is no doubt the measure of our maturity in Christ. You want to measure your "spiritual maturity"? Here's one question you can ask (this is not THE only measure): Do I obey God when He directs me? Obedience is no doubt how we measure our success in Christ. My church (Element Church in Cheyenne, WY) recently re-worded our core values. Our first core values reads: Obedience IS our success! - Our success will not be determined by outcome but by obedience to God. Obedience is the measure. Obedience is what matters to God.

Sacrifice should be a result of our obedience. That is not to say that people sacrifice things and think they are doing it to the glory of God. Sometimes we have our own preconceived notions as to what glorifies Him and we go to great lengths to do those things, regardless of whether they are disobedient to God (i.e. the case of Saul above). Those things are often our way of bolstering our ego making them the result of pride and intended to bring us recognition. This is far from obedience.

Jesus said, "If you love Me obey my commands." (John 14:15). Obedience is the result and evidence of our love. We obey because we love. Sometimes God will ask us to sacrifice something. Every time God will ask us to surrender ourselves and submit to Him. Our only response is obedience. In that regard, our sacrifice, our surrender, our submission should only be a result of our being obedient to God. Anything surrendered outside of obedience is chaff and doesn't matter because it doesn't glorify God.

Here's how it goes: Love = Obedience = Sacrifice.

Any other order doesn't add up the same.

Striving for obedience,
Bruce

I can do it MYSELF!

I think there are a lot of times that we believe, although I'm not sure how we logic it out in our brains, that we can control sin.  Maybe we don't call it sin in our heads, which is another blog and issue all together, but I'm talking about whatever that temptation we face that we believe is easily controlled if "only we have enough self-control." But whatever we call it, let's be honest and call it sin.  We get this idea that we can control sin and that we don't need God to resist it. 

I've been reading out of the book of Judges right now for my quiet time and noticed that this has been the take on sin for quite sometime.  When God gave the promise land to the Israelites He commanded them to drive the people living there out of the land (many were to be destroyed), to not make covenants with them and to destroy their alters.  However, we see (starting in Judges 1:19-36) the people Israel fail to drive the Canaanites out of the land and instead take them as slaves.  

Judges 1:28 says, "When the Israelites grew stronger, they forced the Canaanites to work as slaves, but they never did drive them completely out of the land." (emphasis added)

The truth of the matter is, when the Israelites grew strong enough that they felt they could run things themselves (pride), they made the decision to take the Canaanites as slaves (because they believed they could control them) and ignored the command of God.

So what then were the consequences of this disobedience?  Judges 2:1-3 say, "¹ The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. ² For your part, you were not to make any covenants with the people living in this land; instead, you were to destroy their altars. But you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this? ³ So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.”

Verse 3 tells us that the Canaanites would be a thorn in the Israelite's sides and their gods a constant temptation to them.  Essentially, the Canaanites would be a constant problem for the Isrealites and their way of life would be a continuous temptation, ever drawing them away from God.  

They chose to disobey God because they believed they were capable of controlling the source of temptation, without God.  Eventually this decision will lead to Israels downfall (on more than one occasion).

They were so pompous, so prideful, so disobedient and we think (somehow) we're different.  We've been making that same decision ever since.  How many times do we know (with certainty) that God is trying to remove a source of sin from our lives and we either completely resist him on it, until it consumes us or so ruins things that we have no choice to surrender it to Him.  Or we achieve some victory (whether it be large or small, many or few) in it and we assume that it was our own doing and we allow bits of it to stay, because "we have the self-control" to resist it.  Truth be told, we don't have the power (apart from God) to resist temptation or beat sin by ourselves.

When God wants to take something completely out of your life, the only option is COMPLETELY.