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1:01This is not the point of my message. It's just the intro. I see people, like my kids, writing this down, which is great. But the Lord's desire for us is to walk in what delights him. This delighting obedience must be done in faith. I don't want to skip over that. In fact, we see in Habakkuk 2.4, Romans 1.17, and Hebrews 10.38, I believe, that the righteous will live by faith. It is faith first before we even start on what we're going to talk about. About, which is obedience as being greater than sacrifice. But this delighting obedience must be done in faith. Saul would have done well to do this. He would have done well to, in faith, obey from the heart as opposed to sacrifice, and will do well to have the same heart posture.

1:50Not like Saul, but like I'm going to explain to you. The other thing I want you to really key on in this text is the gravity of man, a man who offers heartless sacrifice to God. It's shown here by Saul. Saul is going his own way. He has a heart far from God, as you'll notice. And what he'll do is he'll cover his rebellion and his rejection of God with ritual deeds, which the Lord despises. There's an awful weight that follows that of the rejection from the Lord. The result of Saul's heart posture that is truly oriented to self, he's going to get rejected from the Lord. And while you're watching this story unfold in this chapter, maybe you're familiar with the previous chapters and the rest of the story, but you constantly want to shake Saul and say, wake up, Saul. You want to beg him to do that because he's going his own way, and his own way is going to end in disaster, as we all know. And he's too in love with himself to not go his own way unto disaster.

2:55Ultimately, his life bears this out. He's pitted against God. It's his ways are. Higher than God's ways. His thoughts are higher than God's thoughts. And his understanding is higher than God's understanding. And that verse comes from a belief problem, a faith problem. That's why he goes his own way. Let's read these verses, then I'll pray and we'll talk some more. 1 Samuel 15, verse 22. The anchor verses here. And Samuel said, Has 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 listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he also has rejected you from being king. All right, let's pray. Fathers, we come to you. We love to open your word. We delight to read your word. And I want for every person here to delight in your word and your ways because they have confidence and trust and faith in you. And that this faith would be born in them. And then it would bear out all these wonderful graces like love and joy and peace and patience and on and on.

4:22We want to obey, Lord. We want to obey not like Saul with mere sacrifice, but we want to obey from the heart. We want to have a heart that delights to walk in your ways to the glory of your name. I pray that you would speak through me as I try to bring clarity to your word that you've delivered to us, that we might grow and be equipped into maturity, that we might be more and more growing into Christ-likeness. Help us this evening, we pray. We need to pray. Amen.

4:59Right, the thesis point again is to obey, is to obey from the heart is better than sacrifice. Saul would have done well to do this. I do want to make a note, there is one sacrifice, however, that the Lord is pleased with, and that sacrifice would be a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. So says Psalm 51. The Lord wants your heart. He wants your devotion. He wants your exaltation, and he wants your reverence. This devotion is not given to him. It's not to be given to him out of mere duty or obligation. He does not want heartless deeds. The true sacrifice spoken of in Psalm 51 is done from faith. Faith begets or causes obedience from the heart. The Lord desires the heart, not sacrifice and offerings. Mere sacrifices and offerings are an abomination to him.

5:57I'll give some. Verbs here that will really put that into the right picture here. The Lord says he hates, despises, abhors, detests, cannot endure, cannot stand, has no delight in, finds no pleasure in sacrifice. Here are some supporting verses for that. Amos 5.21, if you want to just write these references down, it says that he hates and despises your feasts. I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Isaiah 1.11 says that I take no delight in the blood of bulls and goats. Isaiah 1.13, I cannot endure iniquity in solemn assembly. Jeremiah 6.20, your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor sacrifices pleasing to me.

6:45So let's mine for treasures in 1 to 28 of 1 Samuel 15. And let's see how Saul got into such a state where the Lord ends up rejecting him as king. I'll go through four main points for the message tonight. The first one is the outline will be like this: authority speaks, man is to obey. Or you could write, there's an expectation of obedience. Authority speaks, and man is to obey. Then we'll talk about that there's a clear command. And the next point will be the clear rebellion. And then the last point tonight will be: true obedience is from the heart. Heartless sacrifice is worthless. Let's start with point number one. Authority speaks and man is to obey.

7:31The framing of authority here is in verses 1 and 2, and I want you to notice that. And then what I want you to really take away from this is that when the Lord's voice thunders, when it speaks, how come it is that sinful man gives little notice to it? You'll see Saul will ultimately give little notice to it. Look in verse 1 with me. And Samuel said to Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, Israel. Now, therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: I have noted what Amalek did to Israel and opposed them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Again, his voice is thundering, and Saul should take notice. There's some cross-references for you I want you to take note of about authority speaking. You can flip to Deuteronomy 17, verses 18 to 20. And when there's a king in Israel, this is a command for the king in Israel. So Saul knows of this command. This is the rights and duties of kingship are here described. Verse 18, and when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with them, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them. That his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children in Israel. So he's to write a copy of the law, so that, there's four things I noticed here, so that he learns to fear God by keeping all the words and doing them, so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, so that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the left or to the right, that he would obey the Lord along his way, the path that's laid out before him. Don't go to the left or to the right, keep the straight path of the Lord, and that he may continue long in his kingdom. Another cross-reference you can write down a couple more, just for amplification here. 1 Samuel 12, 14 through 15, just a few chapters previously, it says, If you obey the voice of the Lord, then it will be well with you. If you will not obey, but rebel, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king. This is talking to all of the nation of Israel. And then 1 Samuel 12, 24-25, just a few verses later from that cross-reference, he says, Only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart. That's in verse 25.

10:23No, that was previous. But verse 25, if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king. Realize there, when it says, serve the Lord faithfully, and we're talking about the subject of obedience, we keep having this theme. This is Old Testament, same God, He keeps harping on. It's with all your heart when you obey. Obedience is not the same as mere sacrifice, it's not the same as rite or ritual, it's not rote mechanical doings. Obedience is from the heart, and the authority of the Lord is speaking here, and He's saying, I want your heart when you obey. That's something that we need to take in. So, with all your heart is a sign of true worship.

11:10The text does not say, Do this no matter what, even if you don't want to. You parents who have kids, if you were to tell them to do a chore, vacuum the living room, the dining room, and the hallway, and that room over there. And if they get the vacuum cleaner and they do this thing that you want them to do, but they do it grumbling, they do it out of obligation, they're compelled to because you're their father and they must do what you say. That is not honor. You know, the word honor, when you look at the Ten Commandments, it talks about honoring your father and mother. We get a lot of mileage in the youth group when we talk about this and in our family as well. This is really good to consider. The word honor means to make weighty. To make heavy, to cause to be glorious. When my kids obey me, the obedience that I'm looking for is obedience with honor. With a, oh, my father is waiting in my life, and I delight to serve him. And that's why they're vacuuming the way they're vacuuming on a good day, which is, you know, every day. Otherwise, I have to call my kids out about stuff like that. No, I'm just kidding a little bit there. But the Lord wants true worship, He wants obedience from the heart. He does not want mere sacrifice. And parents can see the same thing.

12:39Again, authority speaks, the Lord speaks. Our question for you is: Did Saul do well here? You see the end result in verses 22 and 23, where he is rejected by the Lord. So the answer is obviously no. Did he hear the warnings? When authority speaks, did he care? Did God's word weigh on Saul? Was Saul careful to obey? I want you to consider the word careful, full of care. So careful as to not divert to the left or to the right. Did we notice Saul going God's way with all his heart? No, we did not. Saul did terribly. So a point of application here is when the Lord thunders, which is whenever he speaks, when the word of God is even held in your hands, When authority speaks, what is the response that God expects from Saul? What is the response that God expects from us? Consider the word response. Man has a responsibility to respond to God. When God speaks, there should be a natural response from man. And we know that if man is not in Christ, his natural response will be towards the inclination of his flesh. But to the saints of God in this room, your response should be to obey and to obey with all your heart. Authority speaks, there's an obligation, sorry, not an obligation, that'd be the opposite of what I'm trying to teach you. There is an expectation of obedience, but there's also a delight of obedience there.

14:20Perhaps you struggle to obey God like the rest of mankind. If that's the case for all of us, is the answer to try harder? Is the answer pull up your socks, obey harder? That would be a silly way to think, wouldn't it? Obedience cannot beget obedience. What really will spur on, we'll talk about this throughout the night, graces in your life that would be growing in the fruits of the Spirit is what I'm talking about. What will really cause that to happen if you're trying to grow in your obedience to the Lord and his commands and his word and his precepts is... You need to grow in your faith.

15:02There must be something behind obedience. Some might say, well, yeah, behind my obedience, I need to revere God more, then I would obey God more. But even that is not quite the points you need to land on. You cannot force reverence. Reverence also will come from faith. It is a belief in who God is as creator and who you are as His creature. It is that right believing of that relationship, creature-creator relationship, that will cause in you a reverence that will then respond to God.

15:34So, faith is the root of even humility. We would talk a lot about in the youth group over the last year about how humility is the root of all the virtues. We must have a posture of humility in order to grow in love. Well, even before that, you have to first believe God, that his ways are higher than my ways, his thoughts are higher than my thoughts, that I am in desperate need of a Savior, and on and on it goes. That's why it says the righteous will live by faith. The righteous live by faith, and that begets reverence, which begets obedience, or causes obedience from a heart that delights to follow the Lord. So, that was the first point that was authority speaks, man is to obey. The next is there's a clear command. Read with me in verse 3. Now go and strike Amalek, and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and. And donkey. I want you to see how distinct this scenario is. We just saw in the first point about authority. There's an emphasis on listening and then obeying, and now you have right before you, Saul, he just set you up for this. Here's a clear command. And there are very simple ideas that are expressed here: Go, strike, devote to destruction, do not spare. There's no need for further explanation. Does Saul have the context of the history of the Israelite people for reference? Yes, he does.

17:04Does he have the context of Joshua who preceded him in front of him? Yes, he does. There are simple ideas. At the same time, I'll tell you this: this is a hard text to read when you think about the total destruction of a people group. Yet, to have a problem with this, total destruction here is to have a problem with the justice and the wrath of God at large. Did God judge the world in Noah's day unto destruction? Yes, look at Genesis 6 for that. Did God judge the other Canaanite tribes unto destruction? See Deuteronomy 7 and the book of Joshua. Does Revelation 20 also speak of judgment of all the dead whose names are not found written in the book of life, that they will be thrown to the lake of fire? Yes, it does. We're not callous here or lacking feeling. Even God does not take the light and the death of the wicked, as Ezekiel 33, 11 would say, or 2 Peter 3, verse 9. Yet God must be a God of justice, or he is not. A good judge. He would not be a good God. God must be able to be perfectly just as he is also perfectly loving.

18:11The implications for all this is really another sermon for another day that we can't go into. But one thing I do want you to grasp on this is Romans 9 says that you must remember that God is the potter and we are the clay. You would expect that an infinite God would do things that are outside of your finite mind's ability to grasp. And at some point, he does give us the why. I want to encourage you, the why is there in Romans 9. A lot of people want to give up on the why too early. But the why in Romans 9, why does God do these things? Why do some believe and some not believe? He gives the big picture why is it for his glory. He says, do I not have the right to make vessels for honorable use and vessels for dishonorable use that my love might be shown or manifested more by having these two distinctions? And he says, and basically, it is for my glory, my manifestation of who I am as the deity. He makes this point. But then you want to know, well, why me and not them? Why this guy and not that girl? And he says, at that point, Paul says, who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? You need to remember your place that you are not the potter, but that you are the. Play. I will tell you, maybe you still have a problem with this after I've talked about it, but will God's justice wait forever? You actually have to deal with that reality. You who are sitting here, who are outside of Christ, who do not have the blood of the Lamb covering you, who have not yielded your hearts in repentant faith to the Lord, will you treat the maker of the universe with apathy, presuming that his justice will never fall?

19:57If you're a man that is outside of God's grace and forgiveness, know this. Paul says in Acts 17 that God gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, that all men should seek God and that he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man, whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. And in Hebrews 3 and 4, he says, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. And in John 3:36, he says, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son, again, tying obedience and belief together. See how that obedience and faith theme comes up again? Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. And Romans 10, 9 says, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Consider this in verse 10 of chapter 10 of Romans. We often don't even really speak of this verse as much as we do 10. 9, but consider this. It says, with the heart one believes. I also want you to consider this. It is also with the heart that man goes astray. Therefore, if you don't know the Lord, you must realize that your heart is desperately sick, bent on your own desires, and far from God. You must forsake yourself and turn to the Lord.

21:21Do not suppose that you will stand before God, offering Him a list of deeds that you perform. You will be found wanting on that day, if that's you. You must be righteous as He is righteous. When you stand before the Lord, there's one requirement you must have, and that is what we talk about in the youth group a lot: the ROG. It's the righteousness of God. I must have that. If I go to six flags and I have a ticket that says one admission to six flags, that's what it's going to say that. But my ticket in heaven, so to speak, would be, I must have it stamped, the righteousness of God. If I don't have the righteousness of God, then I don't have righteousness at all. I'd be left in my what? In my own righteousness, my own filthy deeds, my own deeds that I do to curry the favor of the God Most High, which will not do me any good. Because you must be righteous as He is righteous. And you cannot have that righteousness of God unless you come to Christ in repentance and faith.

22:26Can I remind you that the Lord's commandments are always clear? Are not the Ten Commandments? Summed up simply by Jesus in Matthew 22, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. So Saul's command was clear about what he needed to do to go strike and destroy, to vote to destruction. We get clear commands from God too. And the clearest of all is that they're summed up in two ways: love for God and love for neighbor. The application for this would be: this is the clear command for you today. The clear command for you today is that you must love God and love your neighbor. And I want to bring this so clearly into your focus.

23:12When you desire to bring your thoughts, your words, and your deeds unto subjection to the Lord, what is your motivation? The predictable answer would be love. And I would agree to a large extent, but that's not the ultimate root. The ultimate root of bringing your love to God is first you bring your love to God in faith. Because you must first believe God, and then you live out your faith in God. Essentially, what you're doing when you're saying, I believe God and I'm going to love him, is you're saying that his thoughts, his ways, his understanding are higher than my thoughts, my ways, and my understanding. And his righteousness is what is needed for the day of redemption. And my righteousness... Will garner me or collect for me nothing.

24:07So the symbol man is love God and love your neighbor, has to be born out of faith. It's belief in God, His Word, and His promises, confidence in Him. And that faith will then be bearing out love and joy and peace and patience and on and on. I would say this forced love is not love, and also duty masquerading as love is not love. You can help yourself out a lot here by considering: is it your faith that is spurring your love?

24:50Here's an example: why do you come to night church? Is it because you're supposed to? Is this a command of the New Testament? You better be at night church or else it's not. It's not. But in faith, I believe God. I believed Him unto salvation. And in faith, I believe this clear command of love for God, love for neighbor extends to what governs me to get myself to church as often as possible. Because when His Word says, you need a shepherd. I believe God. When his word says that I need to be, Ephesians 4, in the church for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, I believe God. That spurs me to be here with the saints. When it says that the saints of God are parts of the body of Christ, I believe God. And they need me, and I need them. You see, that faith is spurring my actions on. It's quickening my actions to come to fruition.

26:01And if you will do that, when you're thinking about love for God and love for a neighbor, it will help you not pretend to be loving, but just substituting the word duty for love and doing the same thing. But think about that. Is faith what is motivating you that God's ways are highest, God's ways are best, and I want to go his ways. His statutes, look at Psalm 119 sometime. His statutes, his words, his precepts, his commandments are all wonderful. And I want to go those ways. And in faith, I say they are wonderful. And I want to walk in them. And that's why I walk in them. Not because I'm supposed to. I'm trying to beat this horse sufficiently dead. Because it's easy for a solid church like Emmanuel with good reformed doctrine to get this a little mixed up. But our faith should be causing the graces of God in our life to flower and to blossom. Version talks about this as well. I read a great little article. I don't have it referenced here in front of me, but he talks about how when you go out in nature and you notice the flower blossom, and that would be our example of love. Love would be the flower blossom. The flower blossom doesn't cause the flower blossom. It is the life in the plant that causes the plant to grow, the stem to shoot up, the bud, then the blossom. Right? So the spiritual life in you that comes from faith is what will cause those things to blossom in your life, the graces that are given to us by God, like joy and peace and love and stuff like that. So I hope that's helpful. But just to bring it back to Saul, like we have a clear command to love God and love the neighbor. Saul had a clear command as well.

27:54The commands are clear to us. It should have been Saul's delight to follow a clear command from God. And it should be our delight, delightful obedience. It should be our delight to follow the clear commands of the Lord because his ways are best. And he is higher than me. And he knows more than me. Point number three, the clear rebellion. Look at verses 7 to 21 with me. Point two was the clear command. Point three is the clear rebellion. This is disobedience that we'll see here. We'll pick up in verse 7. And Saul defeated. The Amalekites from Havilah, as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and devoted to destruction 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 fattened calves, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. The word of the Lord came to Samuel, I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night. And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told to Samuel, Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, What then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen that I hear? Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction. You see the pragmatism there. Then Samuel said to Saul, Stop. I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night. And he said to him, Speak. And Samuel said, Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said to Samuel, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took up the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.

30:36I think our smallest classes in Sunday school could probably spot the disobedience there as Saul is trying to wiggle around being culpable, responsible for a sin. I want you to notice some things. We'll walk through this real quick. Verse 8 and 9, I want you to notice the exaltation of Saul's wisdom and understanding expressed in his actions. Look at 8 and 9 one more time. And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and devoted to destruction 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 the fattened calves and the lambs and all that was good and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. So Saul uses. His wisdom, his understanding, expressed in his actions. And I'm really glad we've laid the foundational work for this idea about believing first before obedience. Because again, you're seeing that his ways are higher than God's ways. His thoughts are higher than God's thoughts. Alright, look at verse 11 with me. I want you to notice here that God notices and he is not pleased. Verse 11: I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry and cried to the Lord all night. Why was he not pleased? Not performed my commandments, the text says. You cannot pretend to love God if you will not obey God. Again, my kids cannot pretend to love me if they will not do what I say.

32:24And the reason why they should be doing what I say is because they love me, not out of obligation, right? Notice the heart posture of Saul. Verse 12. This is the third point here in this point three. So this is 1, 2, 3 of 0.3. Heart posture of Saul. Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. It was told to Samuel, Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal to honor himself juxtaposed to being not careful to obey God.

32:59You're getting up. A picture painted pretty clearly here about who Saul cares about. We're going to notice Saul's pragmatism in verse 15. I did mention that as we were marching through that, but it says, Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we've devoted to destruction. Paul's being pragmatic, he's just doing what he thinks is practical to the situation instead of being careful to obey. You'll notice there also, this is my fifth point here: is that Saul is blame shifting here. He's not taking responsibility here. You also see it in verse 21. He says, But the people took of the spoil, the sheep and the oxen. Okay, so he's trying to shift the blame on the people. Verse 17, notice how Saul is held responsible. And Samuel said, Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? Yeah, of Israel? I love God's assessment of this. Do we sometimes try to wiggle out of being culpable or worthy of blame when we sin?

34:08What will really help us here is that let God's weight of his word bear on you. A lot of times we try to shift the blame, and if you will take God's word as authoritative and as perfect as it is, you don't have any wiggle room when it comes to sin. Here's an example I've got. I was, I remember I was overseas and a chaplain, chaplains aren't always known to say the grace of things in the military. I actually like this chaplain a lot, but he said something that didn't strike me as right. He says, when you think about the perfection of God, you know, you can just think about completion. I'm like, no, that's not helpful to me. I need, when I think about perfection or holiness, I need to think about perfect without blemish. If I have any kind of mystical completion sense, I'll find a way to redefine those terms. And if you're trying to bear the weight of responsibility for a sin you've committed, you need to let God's weight, the weight of his word, really bear down on you with how pure his word is, how pure Jesus is, how holy the Lord is, and how he's called you to that same holiness.

35:30I love how Samuel says, basically, behold, you're the man. You're guilty. And then the last point here I've got for this third point would be: I want you to let Saul's clear rebellion be a watchword for us. I want you to notice the heart posture of Saul in all these things. He's a heart that's not for God. It's a heart that's for self. He is not loving God. He loves self, and that is the ultimate display of rebellion.

36:00Believer, like I said before, don't hide behind justification of your sins. The law of the Lord is perfect. His word is pure. His holiness is pure. Let his searching words search you out. Let it cause you to not give justification for your sins. Think about all the sins we do in relationships: the harsh words, the rude words, biting tongue, thrusting of the sword, and you just say, well, you know, you're tired, or you were stressed. That is not the Lord's way. Don't do that if you're a believer. Let the word bear on your life. How can you see that if you're in clear rebellion? If you're a believer and you're rebelling against the Lord, what you can do is you can analyze your heart posture. The way you analyze your heart posture is consider: was I loving God, loving my neighbor, or was I loving myself? How can you tell if you're loving yourself? We talk about this a lot in Emmanuel, thanks to Pastor Baber. Love draws near. Love draws near, hate pushes away. It's a great theme that we've spoken of here, and just analyze. Am I drawing that person near or am I pushing them away? Am I saying, be gone? That's what divorce is. It's saying, I'm done with you, away with you. If you're in rebellion, consider if you're drawing near or pushing away. What also points you to something helpful in my own life is 1 Corinthians. Corinthians 13, look at the chapter on the characteristics of love and just drag your finger. Some people will put their name in the place of love. Dustin is patient, Dustin is kind, you know, all that kind of stuff. But just consider, you know, am I believing the best about people? Am I, you know, rude? Am I assuming the worst and on and on and on? That helps me. Another good way would be Galatians 5. In Galatians 5, you have the works of the flesh and you have the fruit of the Spirit. I would take my finger and drag it along the text when you're in conflict or in rebellion to God and consider, okay, was I doing something that was being full of strife or enmity or division or dissension? And ask yourself those questions if that was true of you. And it can help to root out that rebellion, to show what your heart is really wanting.

38:29To me, it's fairly obvious after you get done with Galatians 5 and goes, okay, that was the flesh. That was obvious. The flesh. And the Spirit of God, I'm rude to my wife. No, no, that's definitely not the Spirit of God. That rudeness was the flesh. It's pretty easy to see if you consider it. If that's you, repent. Repent when we do these things. Remove the sin that separates. That's the only thing that in a relationship, if something is separated, which is sin, what you have to do is you have to reconcile. And the way to reconcile is to remove the sin and to remove the sin. You have to confess, repent, and the other person transactionally needs to send your debt away. If you're not a believer, my question to you is: do you see the perfection that the Lord demands from you? You need to see that your love for self and your apathy or antipathy towards God is rebellion to your Maker. And if you're looking for an idea of how to see your clear rebellion to God, I want you to consider the Ten Commandments of God. It's just a great thing to go through to see the moral commands of God and how you do not meet God's perfect moral standard, which would be, an example would be that you shall not lust. But the Lord Jesus says, if you lust in your heart, you've committed adultery already in your heart. That's how pure God's word is and how searching it is. It looks into your heart.

39:55Okay, last point here. And then I'll wrap it up with a conclusion. True obedience is from the heart. Heartless sacrifice is worthless. It's a little more wordy. Verses 22 to 28. I want to look at 22 again. I'll say that one more time. True obedience is from the heart. Heartless sacrifice is worthless. Okay, my first point on this is that obedience is exalted in verse 22. And Samuel said, Has 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 listen than the fat of. Rams. I do want you to cross-reference Psalm 51 here. David and Bathsheba is what we're dealing with. David's repentance over his sin, his adultery with Bathsheba. And it says in verse 16, For you will not delight in sacrifice, for I will give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. We've already talked about this a little bit, but I do want to revisit it. It's interesting that in Leviticus, God specifically requires sacrifice. So, why here does he say that he does not require sacrifice?

41:02Look at the text one more time. Does it say in 51:16 that he requires sacrifice, or is he talking about delight in sacrifice? God has never wanted mere sacrifice or the offerings of men. The sacrificial system could be summed up as a bunch of religious acts of men. God's desire has never been large or small amounts of deeds or of dead religion from man. What does he desire? What does he delight? What would he be pleased with? He wants your heart. Holy yield to him. Verse 17: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. What does God want? He wants your heart. He's always wanted your heart. The man in rebellion goes astray from his heart. And God wants a person's heart to be yielded to him, completely his, wholly his.

41:59He does. Want your offerings until, look at verse 18 and 19 in Psalm 51. This is really neat. Once he has your heart, verse 17, verse 18, do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. What does that mean? That means that once he has your heart, he loves your works. In fact, Ephesians would say that he's prepared works beforehand that you might walk in them. God wants your heart, and then he loves when you, in faith, do works for him. But you're doing these works not for salvation. You're doing these works because of salvation. Because you've been saved. Because you've been brought near.

43:02Notice also back in 1 Samuel. Notice also that the heart posture to obey is better than sacrifice. I do want you to notice that one more time. If obeying is without the heart, it's just a duty. It becomes the same thing as heartless sacrifice that the Lord takes no pleasure in. So true obedience, that The lights of the Lord has a pleasing heart posture behind it. Saul's heart was bent on self. Then it was bent on justifying actions under the guise of sacrifice. His heart went astray. His rebellion was likened to witchcraft and idolatry.

43:48Another point here: the heart that disobeys is the heart that rejects the Lord. Verse 23 and 26: Rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. Verse 26. And Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And in verse 28, he says, He has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to his neighbor of yours, who is better than you. What neighbor is that? That's David, a David who is a man after God's own heart. This theme could not be any larger to us about how much God desires the heart that is for him in faith, in obedience.

44:46Application for you here, for the believer, this ought to be great encouragement to you. The true saint of God has yielded themselves to God. Notice in Romans 10:9, there's a heart posture. We already spoke of it. There's a heart posture in Romans 10:9. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. There's a heart posture there that is so comforting that the Lord wants. So the saint of God, having a broken and contrite heart before the Lord, has been brought near. Now do the works of the Lord. What works are these? Love for God, love for neighbor.

45:22What works do not please the Lord? It'd be another point of application. What works do not please the Lord? Something I would warn you about. Be works that are done that can be equated to mere sacrifice or heartless sacrifice. Doing things because of ritual. There are rote actions, R-O-T-E, rote actions, mechanical doings. Some people get in trouble with this. They chase holy doings instead of chasing Christ. Your goal is faith in Christ and then Christ's likeness, and then the fruit of these holy things manifests themselves in your life.

46:04I really would like for that to be what you really learned tonight. Let me wrap this up. The heart of the matter of this text is faith causing a love for God and a love for neighbor to be born in our hearts, which is what obedience can be surmised as. I want you. To see Saul, I want you to behold him and all the rejection of Saul. Think why did the Lord reject Saul? His heart was for self, he exalted self, and he showed ultimately that he loved self and he did not love God. Can you see Saul's unbelief?

46:48His rejection of God says, I don't believe you. I don't believe your ways are the ways that a man should go. There is more pleasure found going this way, my way, than going God's way. Though God's authority is clear, his commands are clear, man's rebellion is clear, man is tempted to feign or fake worship. Is this not true worship? Tempted to feign worship by offering up heartless sacrifices. And God wants none of that. God wants our hearts fully yielded and committed to Him. True obedience is from the heart, and that will be true worship, which is who the Lord is seeking. True worshipers, he says in the Gospels. I didn't look the verse up.

47:39We show this love for God by faith, by believing God and then walking in Him. As a Christian, do not get distracted falling back into the works that resemble heartless sacrifices. Give glory to God that He has, if you're in Him, that He has redeemed you, and He has brought you near, that you might walk. In the works that he's prepared beforehand, and you might say, Oh, Lord, you want true obedience, and I want to worship you truly. And you might lovingly and in delight do those things.

48:20He's made his authority known, his obedience is clear, or sorry, his command for me is clear that I obey him, obey him with my whole heart behind my obedience, with your whole heart behind your obedience, loving him and giving praise to him and glory to him as you go through your days. Let's pray. Father, we love your word. It is so searching. And it does crush us as we try to shift our blame and not bear the weight of responsibility for our sin, even if we're in Christ.

49:03We try to wiggle out of accepting fault or responsibility. Lord, we need you to grow us. Pray that we would grow in faith. We would grow in seeing that your thoughts are higher than our thoughts, your ways are higher than our ways, and your understanding is higher than our understanding. We would so desperately want to go that way. Because it is clear that that is the way of life, and you have purchased us for such a life. You've given us eternal life, but you've also want us to be sanctified in the truth and grow in Christ-likeness. Help this church body to grow in obedience that is born from the heart. Lord, help me to grow in obedience born from the heart. Help me not to get stuck. Help us not to get stuck in mere ritual. Where we beg you for a bunch of lists of do's and don'ts to follow that we might feel close to you instead of understanding that we have been brought near to you and we should therefore walk with you in loving, delightful obedience. We ask these things in your name. Amen.