Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice Analysis

Obedience is Better than Sacrifice

1 Samuel 15: 20 – 28

In this passage, Saul’s obedience was again tested and again he failed.

He has no power, even his kingly power, to alter God-given instructions to suit himself (vv. 4-9)

• God commanded King Saul (v. 3) to attack and kill the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they intercepted them as they came up from Egypt.

• God’s instruction is “to attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

• But Saul disobeyed God (v. 8-9) He took Agag, king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people, he destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared Agag

He had proved himself unfit to be king of Israel, of God’s people. (vv. 17-23)

No appeal from Saul could alter the fact that God was going to replace him as King of Israel. (vv. 24-29).

Although not removed immediately, from the Kingship, Saul lost forever the services of Samuel.

God emphasized that obedience is better than sacrifice, for had man obeyed the will of God, and not sinned, there would have been no need of sacrifice and that was only acceptable to God when offered with a heart truly sensible of sin, and penitent for it.

God did not reject sacrifices and considered those as worthless; God did not say he took no pleasure in burnt offerings and other sacrifices, but simply compared sacrifice with obedience to the command of God and pronounced the latter of greater worth than the former.

It is quite enough to affirm that God’s first demand was obedience and that observing his word is better than sacrifice because (according to Berleb. Bible puts it,) “ 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 (Romans