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July 25, 2004
Obedience Better than Religion
Obedience Better than Religion
I Samuel 15: 10-23
Acts 5: 1-11
July 25th, 2004
(Ordination of Necia Ketterman)
It is often intriguing to see the Scripture passages that come before us on a Sunday morning and the events taking place in the life of the Church, or in what is going on in the world. God knew beforehand as I plotted our worship schedule some weeks ago what passages of the Bible would speak today or in time yet to come.
This morning we will ordain Nescia Ketterman to the office of elder in the church. It is good that the message Nescia hears today, and we all with her, emphasizes that deep obedience to God is vastly important.
In the Presbyterian Church there is much emphasis on the term, “decently and in order.” The work of the church is to be done “decently and in order.” This is a guideline taught us by the Apostle Paul. But he used it not with regard to doing the work of church government, but as a word of caution when a church speaks in tongues. Paradoxically, speaking in tongues arose out of a full heart and had the goal of building up the church from within. Paul wrote this caution: “So, my brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; but all things should be done decently and in order.” But we have applied this teaching to the outward work of the church.
Maybe we should choose another biblical phrase as our watchword. Perhaps, in fact, “to obey is better than sacrifice” would do. We may do things decently and in order. But what is really important is obedience to God—from the heart.
But then the question comes to us, obedience to what? You would remind me that Christianity is different from the religion of the Old Testament. Then everything hinged on obeying that detailed list of laws God gave through Moses. Now we live according to a different pattern. Obedience to the law didn’t work. We are saved by grace not by works. The Ten Commandments, sure, but overall our religious life is not governed by laws.
Indeed, as we are seeing in our study of I Peter on Wednesday evenings how general are the guidelines Peter gives these early Christians! Don’t incur the wrath of the civil authorities by your wrongdoing. You may suffer for a life of obedience to Jesus. But don’t suffer for wrongdoing.
We assume that in the background of Peter’s teaching were the precepts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The attitude still governed that Jesus taught when He reminded people that “Don’t commit murder” includes, “Don’t hate.” “Don’t commit adultery” includes, “Don’t think evil thoughts.”
The way of Jesus does not begin with laws to obey, but moves outward from the state of the heart to a way of life. This was the pattern of life Jesus left, and it became the way of the early Church. They trusted the Holy Spirit to guide them. A lot of rules and regulations got added to church life as time moved along, but this is not how it started. God looked for a relationship of fellowship with a unified body of people loving Him and one another from the heart.
So what do we do with stories like the two we have just read? Why is it useful to read how King Saul did wrong in exercising a little thrift and showing mercy to the enemy king—a brother in royalty? Why is it useful to read about the deceitfulness of Ananaias and Sapphira and the dreadful consequences that came to them?
Perhaps a preliminary answer to this question begins with a vivid reminder that what goes on at the heart-level really matters most. You and I see outward behavior. We often interpret the motives of others unjustly. There is so much we don’t know, things we assume, that go into our judgments of one another. But even if we knew all the circumstances that went into the deeds and misdeeds of each other, we still know nothing about the deepest motivations that move others to do as they do. Even depths psychologists can’t get to the inner springs of our deeds. Freud understood a little about what drives us, but there are matters deeper than the instinct to propagate the race.
When we read King David’s prayer, “Search me, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” we find something resonates inside our own hearts—about ourselves.
Similarly, the Apostle Paul lamented about himself, “The things I want to do I do not do. The things I do not want to do, I do.” We might expect more of an apostle! How courageous and helpful that Paul let us see into his heart in this way! We all can say, “Yeah, Paul, I know just what you mean.”
Then we come to these passages of Scripture and see the extreme consequences that came to Saul, Ananias and Sapphira, and our confidence in the grace of God is shaken. We might say that what happened to King Saul happened before Jesus came. But still we believe there is a consistency in the character of God throughout time. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, God is “eternal, infinite, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” Saul’s veniality collided with the holiness and justice of God. Might not the same results happen to us in our lifetime even if we get eternal life afterwards, if we violate God’s will as we know it now?
And does not the instant death that came to Ananias and Sapphira after they calmly tried to appear more generous than they were warn us that we had best not pretend to be better than we are?
We may unleash the barbed accusation, “hypocrite!” when we detect apparent falseness—and brand a person as a hypocrite in character. But, we wonder, does God have an even more devastating response? Perhaps we try to keep our motives vague, neither too gung-ho nor too indifferent so that we hide in a fog of vague respectability rather than be taken for either a zealot or a couldn’t-care-less Christian.
Let’s look at these two stories for clues to what God would have us understand.
King Saul had just come from a successful battle with the Amalekites, a neighboring country that was descended from people who had stood against their ancestors who left Egypt to go to the Promised Land. The Amalekites made an unprovoked attack on the Israelites at a moment in their trek through the wilderness when they were most vulnerable. When they were desperate for water at Rephidim and Moses had to strike a rock to get some, they swooped down on Israel in their weakness.
God told Israel to destroy the Amalekites because there was virtually a genetic defect in them by which they stood against the purposes of God for Israel. King Saul’s mission was to completely eliminate every trace of them. But after his forces defeated them in battle he spared their king and the best of their cattle. Why not enjoy the spoils of war, or, to put a pious face on what he did, save the best cattle as sacrifice victims?
Then Samuel came along. The king greeted him cheerfully. “We won, Samuel,” he said. But instead of congratulating him Samuel asked, “Isn’t that Agag the Amalekite king over there? What is this bleating of the sheep and the lowing of oxen that I hear?” The king piously replied, “We saved the best sheep and oxen to offer in sacrifices to the Lord.” But Samuel wasn’t impressed. As the king tried to defend himself for this practical omission in obeying God, Samuel responded with those burning words so basic to life before God.
“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 hearken than the fat of rams.”
It was a hard lesson to learn. It still is.
In days to come the prophets of Israel would bewilder people by saying that God despises your sacrifices. David wrote in the 40th Psalm, “Sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire.” “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit and a contrite heart.” The prophet Hosea echoed God’s plea, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burn offerings.” Why, when God had commanded Israel to offer sacrifices?
This is a very hard idea to grasp. Part of our identity as Christians is found in going to church. Going to church figures in our thinking as offering sacrifices did for Israel. It is good to worship together, but how are things in your heart and mine? That is the question.
When Ananias and Sapphira made their generous contribution to the church it was like the offering of a sacrifice. In fact, the whole idea of giving in the New Testament was “sacrificial giving.” “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice,” Paul wrote. Give cheerfully from a grateful heart. But these two folk tried to appear more generous than they were. “We sold property for the good of our church and here all the whole proceeds!” They lied. They didn’t have to say they were giving everything.
Peter suspected something was amiss. He asked Ananias why he was lying to God. Peter didn’t strike him dead. We don’t know the mechanics of Ananias’ sudden death, but it had to do with this deceitful act and the effects on the body of a guilty conscience. When his wife came to Peter three hours later he asked her about her contribution, and she lied as her husband had.
It might seem God was very harsh. Or maybe you think their death was completely unrelated to their lying. It was coincidental simultaneous heart attacks. I believe it is as Luke tells us here. Indeed, I have seen thought-provoking “coincidences.” We might say these were psychosomatic effects of their troubled consciences. As you and I feel physical effects to a sudden rush of fear in a time of danger, so something happened that took the life of these two early Christians when they were detected in their deceit.
We don’t know how it was. But we can understand the idea. What goes on inside of us has physical effects. Our bodies, minds, and hearts are connected. “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Proverbs also tells us, ‘The fear of the Lord prolongs life.”
God speaks to us today as we read the Bible’s account of ordinary people in days past whose temptations to wrong were like our own, and who suffered consequences that remind us that it matters not only what we do, but what motivates us. God calls us to sincerity and transparency. Had Saul, Aninias, and Sapphira prayed as David did, “Search me, and know my heart,” we don’t know how their stories might have been different. But we can do something about our own stories. Pray to God to make you desire sincerity and transparency before yourself, before Him, and before others.
Then, as St. Augustine taught us, “we can love God and do as we please,” since it has become our pleasure to please God. Think on these things. I pray God may fit us, each one, with such a heart.
O Lord God, we who do as we ought not ask you to purify our hearts so that we may will to please you. We bless you for your grace that abounds the more where our sin abounds. Grant that your grace may flourish in leading us in deeds of gratitude and mercy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at July 25, 2004 09:30 AM