Obedience is better than sacrifice. In the Strong’s Concordance the word in Hebrew is Shaw-Mah.
To hear intelligently, attentively call or gather discern and give ear, be content, make a
proclamation, shew forth, hear and obey. Consent (submit self unto). Page 8085 To obey
or be put into subjection.
 
Obedience is submission to authority. In the Greek, humble obedience to another.
 
It was obedience that led the Isralites out of Egypt. Exodus 12:28. They were submitted to
God. They trusted and obeyed God. The main reason they came out of Egypt was because
Moshe heard from god and was obedient. Moshe and Aaron were obedient to hearing Gods
voice. The Isralites were submitted to God. God was the Superior Authority.
 
They had seen god do miracles in Egypt. A mixed company of men including women and
children, a large crowd of people left Egypt. They were so happy to finally be free to leave
Egypt. They were there for 430 years of slavery. They trusted Moshe and Aaron. The
Isralites bowed down and worshiped God. They watched miracles, signs and wonders in Egypt.
 
They watched Moshe hold his staff over the edge of the sea and God caused the water to
part and all walked on dry land. If Moshe and Aaron had not trusted and obeyed God they
would have not left Egypt.
 
God told Abram that he would bless him and make him a great nation.
Read Genesis 12: 1-6. When God chooses a person for His purpose He does so according to the persons
heart. That person must have a loyal heart full of trust and faith. God must have a
person who loves Him with all their heart, with all their soul, and all their strength.
Deut. 6:5. anything less than this is unacceptable to God for carrying out His purposes.
 
Unless that person had such a heart, God would find these people’s arguing with Him,
rejecting God, disobeying God, and the outcome ultimately straying from God.
The Eternal purpose of God could not be accomplished in such a persons life. Only
a heart that is thoroughly loyal to Him is acceptable to God.
 
We know little of Abrams life before God called him. The Bible sheds light on this
significant moment for Abram: for example, in 2 Chronicles 16:9. And later it was
said the Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart. Abram’s response
was immediate and full of faith. He evidently knew God well enough to know it was
God and he knew how important it was to obey and set his heart and life to obey God.
He did not then recite his qualifications and gifts and his vision for serving God. He
immediately obeyed God.
 
Is your heart responsive and committed to God? That He knows you will respond
to Him no matter what He directs or calls you to do? Are you willing right now to
release your life to Him in Love and faith and obedience so he can reveal his
eternal purpose for your life?
 
What God intales in your life or in my life as in Abrams life, he completes. Phil. 1:6.
In James 2:22-23 the Scripture was fulfilled which says Abraham believed God and
it was accounted to him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God.
Abram has a strong faith, a very strong faith. He was a leader of others. He seems
to have set the pace for others to follow. These changes that Abram made were
changes that changed his life. These changes that Abram made were not minor
changes but major changes.
 
Abrahams obedience brought him then into leaving the family that he had lived
with for some times, including business friends, his comfort., Security and success.
And having his family leave what was familiar to them and also experiencing
traveling into the unknown, the unfamiliar and the uncertain to them but not to
God…And establishing a new place of residence not knowing where that would be
until God told him to stop. Only pure faith in God would take such a step and it would
also require the family to not only trust in the God of Abram but to also trust in Abram
and all they had observed in his life.
 
God saw Abrams obedience and his heart and immediately established a covenant
with him. The Bible says in Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and
lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways remember Him and He will
direct your paths.
 
Spiritual pride and intellectual pride can stop us from obeying God in your lives.
Proverbs 16:18. If you are proud you will be destroyed. Spiritual pride says, as
the Pharisees of old did: I think thee that I am not as other men are. Being smug,
self satisfied and full of conceit. Spiritual pride says I am better than anyone else.
It says that I am right and everyone else is strong. Pride comes before the fall.
If you are proud, you will fall.
 
Spiritual pride would be humorous if it were not so tragic. God gave a stern
warning to the Pharasies. He said in James 4:6. In James 4:6 God resists the
proud but gives grace to the humble. Read Proverbs 3:3-4.
There are others that glory in their self righteousness and think they are better
than other people. They think “I don’t do this or that.” They keep the letter of the
law and have long since forgotten the spirit of the law.
 
There are others that think they are pure and others are impure. They have forgotten
that there is no such thing as a completely pure body with Messiah.
 
Y’shua taught that the chaff and wheat would grow together and that we would not be
able to distinguish them until the end of time. Yet we have many Pharisees today
going about trying to throw the chaff out of the wheat, doing that which God said;
could never be done until Y’shua comes again.
 
We have many people pulling the specks out of other peoples eyes when they have
beams in their own eyes. In other words, judging others. Mathew 7: 3 – 5.
They have a haughty superior, chip on their shoulder attitude. They spend their
time criticizing others. This is the worst pride of all.
 
Another form of pride is an intellectual pride. The Bible says to those who suffer
from this level of pride suffers from spiritual delusion in 1st Corinthians 8:1-3.
Knowledge puffs up but love edifies. And if a man thinks that he knows anything
he knows nothing. This kind of pride manifests itself in arrogance toward the
unlearned, illiterate and the oppressed.
 
It forgets that our mental capacities were given to us by God, and the knowledge
that we are able to attain is largely the labor of others.
 
Paul says in Romans mind not high things, live condescended to men of lesser
states. (Read Romans 12:116).
 
Intellectual pride is too often the enemy of the Gospel because it gives its possessor
self-confidence rather than confidence in God. God confidence. Remember what the
Bible says in Proverbs 3:5. To trust in the Lord with all they heart and lean not unto
thine own understanding. But the intellectually proud are not like that. They put God
in a test tube. They cannot grasp Him. They do not like to learn of Him and trust Him.
 
They cannot understand that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. In
Psalms 111:16, the kind of intellectual pride that leads to intolerance, bigotry and
smugness God hates. God does abhor intellectual pride. In Proverbs 26:12 Lets
read it. A man wise in his own deceit is more hope for a fool than him.
 
God loves us so much He corrects us, disciplines us. He corrected Israel as His chosen
Nation. Read Deut. 4:5-7.
 
The purpose of the Law and the Commandments that God called the Israelites to keep the
Law of Love. He showed what He was going to do for them and how they were to live
their lives with wisdom and understanding. Deut. 4:2-3. God can do anything and he is
the best one to tell us how to live. Keep the commands that He give to you. Obedience to
God is what allowed Abraham to be willing to sacrifice Isaac. It was trust in God also that
if Isaac had died that God would raise him up. Remember it was the obedience: examples
of trust in God the examples of others.
 
Lets find out why Saul didn’t ober God. 1ST Samuel 15:18. Why he didn’t obey God. What
did disobedience cost him? What did Samuel say to Saul. Lets read in 1st Samuel starting
with verse 17-21. (read it). And verses 22-23 (read) what was Samuels reply? You have
refused to do what god told you to do so He has refused to have you as King.
 
The soldiers took sheep and cattle from what was taken from their enemies. They took the
best that of what had been set apart to God. They wanted to sacrifice them to the Lord their
God at Gilga.
 
The most important example of all was Y’shua. He showed the example of humility and
obedience to God. One example of humility and obedience to god was Y’shua the God Man
who was equal with God through out all eternity, long before the earth was created, He
emptied Himself of this honor and laid aside this position of honor, to become like man.
 
Paul writes about this in Philipians 2: 6 and being found in appearance as a man He humbled
Himself by becoming obedient. Interesting thought. Humility and obedience are the
cornerstone of the Kingdom.
 
As a result of this revelation you can thus assume the lowly position in many situations and
watch how God will allow room to be made for your gift as you keep lowliness in your heart.
 
The second quality of humility is inner humility or the in working of humility that is just what
God does with your heart and life over time to cr5eate a lowliness is seeing God for who He
really is and yourself as you really are and then realizing that you can never live up to that
comparison. Recorded in Isaiah 6 a remarkable incident of inward humility. In the first three
He has a vision of the Lord and that something of His character is revealed. It is a character
marked with awesome holiness and the wide spread of His glory through His creation.
 
Humility is seeing yourself as truly undone, having no righteousness of your own in which to
appear before God. Humility is seeing yourself as a beggar.
 
Another example of obedience was Noah. When Noah was 500 years old when he became
father to Shem, Ham and Japeth. Noah was a Godly man. God spoke directly to him. He
heard god’s voice. He gave him instructions as how to build the ark, dimensions height with
and depth of the Ark 450 feet long. 75 feet wide 45 feet high. God gave preparations for
the building of the ark. Make the Ark of gopher wood. Is merely the Hebrew word for it.
 
It was obedience to God that allowed Daniel to face the lions in confidence because of his
trust in God. The Bible didn’t say he wasn’t afraid, he obeyed God even in danger. Let’s read
about Daniel.
 
And it is obedience that will allow us to be obedient to the superior authority, which we know
is God, to learn of God’s laws and commandments, so that we can say as God said to those
men of old, obedience is better than sacrifice.