Sunday Sermons
What Does God Like?
“Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams”
(1 Samuel 15:22)
It is so easy to get caught up in ourselves, our preferences, likes, dislikes and our lives and completely forget that God actually has things that He delights in and things that He hates. The above verse makes it very clear that God delights in obedience to His voice. In this lesson we want to explore of the question, “Why does God delight in obedience?”
God delights in obedience because it is the right placement of fear
“I have sinned; I have indeed transgressed the command of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people” (1 Samuel 15:24). In the end, people often resist the teaching of Scripture because they have a greater fear for some temporary or human consequence (like the ridicule of men), rather than fearing the divine punishment that will come upon sin. “He feared the displeasure of the people more than the displeasure of God. And that is a great insult to God” (The Pleasures of God, John Piper, pp. 236-237). This is a common problem, for not only did misplaced fear affect Saul; it affected many people in Jesus’ time as well. “Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God” (John 12:42-43). Jesus would say, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do” (Luke 12:4). Isaiah had said something similar, “You are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it. It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy, and He shall be your fear, and He shall be your dread” (Isaiah 8:12-13). Notice how Isaiah connects the proper fear with the right respect for God. “If our lives are guided by the same fears that unbelievers have, then we do not ‘regard God as holy’. The point is this: if you fear man, you have begun to deny the holiness, the worth, of God and His Son Jesus. God is infinitely stronger. He is infinitely wiser and infinitely more full of reward and joy. To turn from Him out of fear of what man can do is to discount all that God promises to be for those who fear Him. It is a great insult. And in such an insult God can take no pleasure” (Piper p. 237).
Obedience is the right placement of pleasure
“Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord, but rushed upon the spoil?” (1 Samuel 15:19). The word rushed is also translated to “pounce upon” or “swoop on”, and it denotes a greedy eagerness to consume. The same word is used in 1 Samuel 14:32, where the people were so hungry that they slew the animals on the spot and ate the flesh with the blood. “He implies that the people were driven by an overweening desire for the pleasures of all that meat. They delighted more in the meat of sheep and oxen than they did in the smile and fellowship of God” (Piper p. 238). Yet, to look to God’s promises and delight in the prospect of pleasing Him and being in His presence for eternity more than in all the fleeting pleasures of disobedience is a great honor to God (Hebrews 11:26).
Obedience is the right placement of praise
“Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself” (1 Samuel 15:12). It looks like Saul is far more interested in making a name for himself than in glorifying God by careful obedience to His word. “Is it not true, though you were little in your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel? And the Lord anointed you king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:17). Earlier in chapter 9:21, Saul had been absolutely amazed that God would want him to be king over Israel even though he was from the smallest tribe, and then from the least of the families of that tribe. He should have been fully satisfied with the honor that God had already given him! What about us? Are we still little in our own eyes? Are we still amazed that God would want us saved?
Obedience delights in God’s wisdom
“For rebellion is as the sin of divination” (1 Samuel 15:23). “Why are rebellion and disobedience like the sin of divination? Divination is seeking to know what to do in a way that ignores the Word and counsel of God. It discounts the guidance and revelation of God, or regards them as wrong or insufficient. And that is exactly what disobedience is based on. God says one thing, and we say, ‘I think that I will consult another source of wisdom’. In the case of divination the added source of wisdom is a medium of some sort. But most often in the case of disobedience the added source of wisdom is simply oneself! Disobedience of God’s Word puts my own wisdom in the place of God’s and thus insults God as the only sure and reliable source of wisdom” (Piper pp. 239-240).
Obedience has the right object of worship
“And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23). When God says one thing and we consult ourselves or others, and then stubbornly choose to do our own way, we are, in effect, idolaters. Refusing to listen to God is in essence the deification of either our own wisdom or the wisdom of others. We actually end up esteeming the direction of our own mind over God’s direction the god that people often erect when in rebellion is the idol of their own selves. When people say, “I want to do what I want to do”, or “I don’t agree with that verse” or “I doesn’t sound right to me”, what they are saying is that they are worshipping and serving themselves. “So it stands to reason that God will be displeased with disobedience because at every point it is an attack upon His glory. It puts the fear of man in the place of the fear of God. It elevates pleasure in things above pleasure in God. It seeks a name for itself instead of a name for God. It seeks out additional guidance besides God’s, instead of resting in the wisdom of God. And it sets more value on the dictates of self than on the dictates of God and thus attempts to dethrone God by giving allegiance to the idol of the human will” (Piper p. 240). And this explains why it seems that some people have such a hard time obeying what God said, because such obedience would demand a radical change. Self would have to be dethroned, as well as the glorious stories that were woven around the past.
God delights in obedience because everything He commands is for our good
“Jesus is the great physician, not the great dictator (Luke 5:31-32). “Jesus dictates. He commands. But all His commands are like a doctor’s prescription, or a physician’s therapy. They are not arbitrary. They are meant to make us well and happy. If they have some painful side effects, that is not because the doctor is unkind or unwise. It is because the disease is so bad that severe medicines may be required” (Piper p. 241). God really cares that we get well and overcome the deceitfulness of sin(Deuteronomy 6:24; 10:12-13).
He delights in obedience because His commands are not too hard for us
“This commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you” (Deuteronomy 30:11). In addition, both Testaments make elaborate provision for forgiveness (Exodus 34:6-7; John 1:29; 1 John 1:8-10). The reason that the Bible says that His commands are not a burden (1 John 5:3), rather they are indeed a lighter load (Matthew 11:28-30 “For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light”, is because “His commands are only as hard to obey as His promises are hard to believe” (Piper p. 243). “It means that there is something about Jesus that makes His demands (even when they sever us from home and wealth and life itself) ‘light’ and ‘easy’” (p. 243).
The obedience God loves is an obedient faith
“This concept is so widely misunderstood today that some people cannot see how faith and obedience are necessarily connected as root and branch. So you often find in many churches and ministries the cultivation of an implicit two-stage Christianity: a faith stage and then (maybe) an obedience stage. But this is not the way the Bible pictures the life of faith. The separation of faith and obedience, as though faith were necessary for salvation and obedience were optional, is a mistake owing to a misunderstanding of what faith really is. It is a great irony that the people who cultivate a two-stage Christianity do so in the name of grace, but in effect nullify grace. They say there is a faith stage necessary for getting to heaven, and then an obedience stage not necessary for getting to heaven (but perhaps for getting better rewards there)” (Piper p. 244).
In the Bible, faith and obedience are at times used interchangeably: In John 3:36 the term believes is set in contrast to the expression does not obey. In fact, unbelief and disobedience are also interchangeable terms (Hebrews 3:18-19). The Holy Spirit speaking through the apostle Paul coined the expression justified by faith (Romans 5:1), equally coined the expression,“the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26).
Faith is necessary to please God (Hebrews 11:6), but so is obedience, “And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:9). Obedience is necessary to go to heaven: “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter” (Matthew 7:21; Matthew 21:28-32; Luke 13:23-24). I see a lack of consistency among people who claim that obedience is a “work” and that we are not saved by work but are saved solely on the basis of grace, yet will at the same time argue that obedience will improve our reward in heaven. Compare with Luke 17:7-10.
How does faith produce obedience?
“When you trust Christ to take care of your future (‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for’ (Hebrews 11:1), the inevitable result is that sinful strategies to gain happiness sink in the peaceful confidence that God will make a greater joy for you in His own way. It is not merely the promises of God that satisfy us. It is all that God Himself is for us. Faith embraces God—not just His promised gifts as our treasure. Faith banks its hope not just on the heavenly real estate of the age to come, but on the fact that God will be there (Revelation 21:3). The other thing emphasized in defining faith as being satisfied with all that God is for us. Faith is not just believing facts about God. It is not just intellectual assent. Faith is the quenching of the soul’s thirst at the fountain of God. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Believing means coming to Jesus to eat and drink (John 4:10,14). Here is the power of faith to break the enslaving force of sinful attractions. If the heart is satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus, the power of sin to lure us away from the wisdom of Christ is broken. And we will love holiness because it is an expression of the personality of the One who brings us so much satisfaction” (Piper pp. 247-248).
