Obedience, sacrifice or sacrificial obedience...?

I've been reading through some of the Old Testament psalms in recent weeks, and two words seem to keep cropping up a lot. One is obedience and the other is sacrifice.

In fact, both words are recurring themes in the Bible as a whole, but it's interesting that God keeps bringing them to my attention in a season where I've sometimes found myself in a position of having to make a choice between the two.

The Bible tells some stories that are examples of sacrificial obedience - obeying God even when it is very costly for us. An Old Testament example would be in the book of Esther, where Queen Esther risks her own life in order to save her people. A New Testament example would of course be Jesus Himself, who obeyed God and sacrificed His own life in order to purchase salvation for mankind. The phrase sacrificial obedience is so common in Christian circles that it would be very easy for us to believe that they are always one and the same thing.

Of course, they're not. The people who wrote the psalms, for example, often speak of their joyful obedience or their willing obedience - of times when God's favour and blessing are so obvious that it's a joy to obey Him and there seems to be no sacrifice involved at all. Obedience and sacrifice are not always the same thing.

This was a principle that God sought to impress on the very first king of Israel, King Saul. In 1 Samuel 15: 22, Saul was told, "To obey is better than to make a sacrifice." Pressurised by people and circumstances, Saul had rushed to offer up a sacrifice, believing that it would ensure God's blessing on himself and his army. (I wrote about this incident in a blog post a few months ago: see here.)

But, speaking through the prophet Samuel, God tells Saul very clearly: It is not your sacrifice that brings blessing; it is your obedience.

In the psalm I was reading this morning, Psalm 40, we can see that God has impressed that same lesson on the heart of Saul's successor, King David. In that psalm, David says to the Lord: I finally understand that you don't take delight in sacrifice; that's not what you require of us. What you're looking for is obedience, and I take joy in doing your will, my God, for your instructions are written on my heart.

Of course, sometimes obedience is costly for us because our desires and our priorities are not always the same as God's. But it's important for us to understand, like David, that sacrifice and obedience are not always the same thing. Sometimes we have to make a choice between them. Sometimes true obedience requires us, unlike Saul, to have enough faith not to make the sacrifice. 

An anniversary...

Today is an anniversary. It is exactly 16 years ago today that I moved to live in Spain. It means that I have lived in this town of Alhaurín longer than I have lived anywhere else in my entire life. Moving here wasn't specifically "planned" at the time, yet when I look back I can see how God has confirmed very specifically, again and again, that this is the place He wanted me to be. 

If you were already reading this blog back in 2008, you might remember the incredibly specific Bible verse about the 12 springs and 70 palm trees; that was only one of the ways that God confirmed the rightness of my being here. 

When you’ve lived somewhere for a long time, leaving it permanently can be a very challenging transition. I can still remember how traumatic it was for me to leave South Africa after living there for almost fifteen years. Suddenly, absolutely everything in my life was changed or simply lost.

I lost my home; I lost my friends and team mates; I lost my church and my missions/ministry involvement. I had to give away my car, my furniture, my books and all kinds of other things that it is impossible to take with you when you change continents. I lost my dog and my cat… and although they lived quite a number of years after that, I never saw either of them again before they died.

I moved to a situation where everything was different: different culture, different language, different way of doing things, different church, different ministry opportunities…

That’s the way things are if you’re single. When a couple or a family move to another location, they take their team with them. When a single person relocates, they lose absolutely everything and have to start completely from scratch. There were many times in those early years when I reflected that I felt like a refugee. I’d had to leave everyone and everything behind and it felt like I was starting life and ministry from scratch. There was a long period of loss and grieving as I made such a huge transition.

I knew that, one day, the “new place” would become home, but until that happened, I felt cast adrift, having to learn a new language, make new friendships and build a new life as a missionary in a completely different setting.

And now, here we are, many years down the road. It’s amazing for me to realise that I have now lived in Spain even longer than I lived in South Africa. Today marks the 16th anniversary of my moving to Spain.

Eight years ago, I was invited to consider moving to another part of the world to pioneer a new ministry there. I remember counting the cost - realising that Spain had become home and that leaving here would likely be just as costly as it had been for me to leave Cape Town…. perhaps even more so, as I was almost sixty, and “starting from scratch” is even more challenging when you’re in an “older” stage of life. I confess to feeling a sense of relief when God confirmed that He was not in fact asking me to make that move.

Almost another decade has gone by since then and I’m at the age when some people give up work and retire. I don’t at all sense at this point that the Lord is prompting me to retire from missions, but I have given some thought to the question of where I should live if I ever do retire. And I realise that it would be here in Spain. The climate is so much better for my lungs and my arthritis than colder places in northern Europe, including the country where I was born and from where I hold a passport.

The world has also changed a lot since I’ve been here. In particular, Britain’s decision to exit the European Union has had huge implications for missionaries serving in Europe or for those who might hope to end their days here.

Fortunately, I got my Spanish residency before Brexit happened. I still had some battles to get back into the healthcare system, but at least I didn’t lose my residency and find myself restricted to just “90 days in Europe” at a time. But if I ever leave Spain, and lose my treasured residency, it would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, for me to get a visa to move back here again. And the same would be true for any other country in Europe. Any departure from here would be as permanent as my long ago departure from South Africa has been.

So today, on this anniversary, I look back and thank God for the many different ways that He demonstrated His faithfulness in the past. I honestly do not know all that the future holds, but as I seek to stay close to Him and obey Him, I know I can thank Him in advance for the many different ways that He will demonstrate His faithfulness in the future.

In what ways do you celebrate the faithfulness of God in your life?

What made these women wise?

I was translating for our church service this morning. It's something I do several times a month - wearing headphones and translating the Spanish into English for visitors to the church or for members whose grasp of Spanish is not strong.

Today we came to the end of a four-week series on stewardship - on what it means to be faithful with everything that the Lord has entrusted to us. One week we looked at stewardship of our time, another week at stewardship of our finances and possessions, and still another week at stewardship of our gifts and talents. Today, for the last preaching in the series, the pastor was speaking about "integrated stewardship" - how it all fits together.

From passages in Matthew's Gospel chapters 24 and 25, he was asking the question: What does God expect of us if we are to be good stewards and hear His commendation: "Well done, good and faithful servant." ?

The two parables in Matthew 25 are well known: 

• the parable of the wise and foolish virgins with their lamps
• the parable of the three servants with their talents

Sermons on these two parables typically focus on the obvious: 

• using our talents rather than burying them
• being alert and ready for the Lord's return

So it was interesting that some of the truths the pastor highlighted this morning went beyond the usual surface explanations of these two stories that Jesus told. He highlighted aspects like looking ahead and being faithful to God for the long term, rather than being pressurised by an immediate need in the present.

For example, when the "foolish" girls ask the "wise" ones to give them some oil for their lamps, the ones commended for being wise say, "No." 

That might shock us. Their response may seem selfish, lacking in compassion or generosity. But the reason given (vs 9) makes it quite clear why those girls were wise. If they had given away some of their oil, none of the girls, neither the wise nor the foolish, would have had enough oil to do what the Lord, the Bridegroom, was asking of them: to keep their lamps burning right to the end, as long as God was asking them to.

The principle is this: If we give beyond what God is asking of us, we are not being good stewards; we are being "foolish."

Being compassionate, giving generously, and even sacrificing ourselves to do so, can all be very commendable. But such behaviour is only "wise" if it is not to the detriment of what God has entrusted to us, of what He actually asked us to do.

Reflecting later, I realised that the first two parables in Matthew 25 illustrate a few different ways that we can be poor stewards of what God has given us:

The first, illustrated by the story of the ten girls warns against:

• not being ready, not being sufficiently prepared
• not being wise, giving beyond what God wants or expects of us

The second parable warns against:

• holding back out of fear or self interest; having a wrong picture of God
• neglecting what we were asked to do and thus failing to be fruitful with what God has entrusted to us

Perhaps it's our personality that determines which of the mistakes we're most likely to fall into. But if we want to hear His, "Well done," we need to be wise in how we steward what He has given us and asked of us.

The prophet, the lion and the danger of guidance from other people...

I've worked most of my life with children and teenagers, discipling them in how to be faithful followers of Jesus. I believe that one of the most important things we can teach our children and youth is how to hear God's voice for themselves. As believers, if we don't know how to hear from God, we become vulnerable and risk becoming gullible too.

God speaks in many different ways; in the Bible, we see Him speaking to people through angels and dreams, as well as through prophets and visions. But, as we work with the young people, we often tell them that the three most common ways God speaks to us are:

1. through the Bible
2. through prayer
3. through other people

It's this third way - through other people - that we need to be careful with. God often chooses to speak to us through the wisdom of other people: through a preacher in church, through a friend who prays for us, through a prophet who gives us a "word"... 

But we simply can't afford to be indiscriminate in following the counsel of others. We need to "test" what we've heard, checking it against the teaching of the Bible and against what God has been speaking to us personally. Words from others are almost always a confirmation of what God has already been saying to us; they are very seldom something brand new and different. Paul tells the Thessalonians not to quench the Holy Spirit and not to despise words of prophecy... but always to test them to be sure that they are really from the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 5 vs 20 - 21)

Nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the Old Testament story I read this morning in 1 Kings chapter 13.

The story takes place just after the kingdom of Israel has been divided into two. The southern kingdom is called Judah, and it retains the city of Jerusalem as its capital, together with the recently built Temple for worshipping the Lord. The northern kingdom keeps the name Israel, but its king sets up golden calves and an alternative religious system for the people. (He's afraid that he might lose the people's allegiance if they keep going down to Jerusalem to worship.)

As 1st Kings chapter 13 begins, God sends a "man of God" from Judah to the northern kingdom of Israel, to denounce the pagan altar that King Jeroboam has set up in Bethel.  We're not told how old this man is, but he obviously knows how to hear God's voice because part of what he prophesies (that the altar will split apart) happens right there and then, and we know from later scriptures that the other part of his prophecy (the birth of a child king named Josiah) also comes true.

So sure is he of what he has heard from the Lord, that he refuses the king's invitation to stay for something to eat and drink, and he begins to head straight home to Judah, exactly as God had told him to.

But, for reasons we're not told, an older prophet pursues him and lies to him, telling him that an angel has brought a command from the Lord  - for the man to eat and drink at the older prophet's home. The man from Judah complies, perhaps reasoning that the other man is "older and wiser."

In doing so, he disobeys what God has specifically spoken to him, and later he pays for it with his life - killed by a lion that he wouldn't have run into if he had gone straight home earlier like God told him to.

It's a sober warning for us. We're probably not going to have deceptive older prophets lying to us, but it's very likely that we'll regularly have well-meaning people giving us their opinion on what they think we should do. We need to respond in humility - taking that input from others and "testing" it before the Lord, as Paul told the Thessalonians to do. 

It's encouraging when someone gives us a word that confirms something God has already been showing us... but indirect revelation can also be a trap for us. We always need to remember that God will hold us personally accountable for whether we've obeyed what He Himself told us ... and not what we heard "second hand" from others.

Understanding Uzzah's undoing ...

In my reading through the Old Testament books of I and II Samuel, I recently came to a passage that has always seemed to me to be one of the "difficult" Bible stories to understand. A superficial reading of the first eleven verses of 2nd Samuel chapter 6 could leave you with the impression that some poor guy (his name was Uzzah) died just because he was trying to be helpful.

The context here is that the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of God's presence, was being transported back to Jerusalem after being quite some time in another location. Now, God had given very clear instructions about how the Ark was to be respected and transported. In Numbers 4: 15, for example, we read specific guidelines about how the "holy things" were to be wrapped by the priests appointed for that duty... and an explicit warning that death would be the result if any of the other priests carrying the Ark were to touch those holy things.

Here in 2 Samuel 6, however, it seems that the Ark was being transported by a bunch of willing volunteers..... loaded onto an ox cart like a piece of luggage. So when one of the oxen stumbled and Uzzah reached out to touch the Ark, it was inevitable that he would pay for that with his life. It might seem harsh, but it didn't happen because God was cruel or vindictive.... it was just the way things were, a consequence of disregarding the holiness of God, and the people had been clearly warned of this possibility.

In our modern world, God is often "blamed" for things that happen - things that were not caused by God in any way, but which are a result of mankind's sin and disobedience. Some sicknesses are a consequence of our unhealthy lifestyle... like when people suffer a "burnout" because of their failure to honour God's instructions for Sabbath rest. Some road fatalities happen because people drive too fast, drive when drunk or fail to fasten their seatbelt. It's easy to blame God for things that were actually a consequence of our own poor choices.

When I first discovered that it was going to be difficult to find a new home here in Spain, a number of friends kindly offered me other options - either for the short term or the long term. I appreciated their kindness and care, but when I prayed about the different possibilities, I felt that God clearly told me no; He had made a way for me to have residency in Spain and I wasn't to throw that away.

Later, when I was telling a friend about my decision, she replied in a way that is typically blunt and direct for the people of the nation she comes from. "But, of course," she said, "With your lungs, why on earth would you move to a cold country, spend half the year with bronchitis and maybe end up shortening your lifespan?!!"

Of course, if God had been telling me to move to Switzerland or Germany or Scotland... there would have been protection on my lungs and my health. But I understood her rather bluntly expressed opinion that choosing something that was a "good idea" rather than a "God idea" would not be good for me or for others in the long term.

And so this is what happened to poor Uzzah. No matter how well meaning he probably was, he was doing something that God had never asked him to do.. and he compounded that by doing something that God had expressly forbidden people to do.

God is not to blame when we suffer the consequences of our own wrong decisions... but it seems, in this chapter, that David did blame God for what happened. First he became angry, and then he became afraid.  This man, who had known the Lord since childhood, began to harbour a wrong picture of God's goodness and justice. As a result of this wrong perspective of God, David was no longer willing to have the Ark, the symbol of God's presence, come to his city. Instead, he sent it away to the home of a man called Obed-Edom, where it brought blessing to this man and his entire household.

Our wrong pictures of God can rob us of His blessing. For three whole months, David robbed himself of the blessing that God's presence would have brought to himself, his home and his city. It was only when David heard about how much blessing Obed-Edom was experiencing that he changed his perspective and decided to go and bring the Ark back to Jerusalem.

This time, they did things properly, and there was much celebration - so much so that David came in for some criticism, even from his own wife - but the important thing was that he was able to lay aside his wrong attitudes and to embrace the presence of God again.

True obedience isn't necessarily "the obvious" thing to do...

In my previous post, I wrote about how Saul allowed pressure - from his people/soldiers and his circumstances - to make him deviate from what he knew to be the revealed will of God. That sad pattern continues throughout the following chapters of the book of 1st Samuel. Saul's weak character, his failure to obey God in the details, is shown in multiple ways as he pursues young David with the intention of killing him. But then we get to chapter 26, and now it is David who is faced with the temptation to resolve a difficult situation by side-stepping what he knows to be the revealed will of God.

The context is that David and a rag tag company of soldiers have been on the run for years, while King Saul is hunting David down and hoping to kill him. There has already been one occasion (in chapter 24) where David had the opportunity to kill his wicked enemy in a cave, but he refused to do that. Instead, he cut off a piece of Saul's robe... as a testimony that he meant the king no harm.

Now, in chapter 26, a second opportunity to rid himself of his foe has presented itself. Saul and his men are so fast asleep that David and a man called Abishai are able to walk right into the enemy camp. It would be logical to assume, as Abishai did in verse 8, that God was delivering their enemy into their hands. "God has handed your enemy into your hands," says Abishai. "Let me pin him to the ground with one thrust of my spear."

But David refuses to kill the person that God has previously anointed as king - even though the circumstances seem to be pointing that way, and it even says in vs 12 that it was the Lord who had put Saul and his warriors into such a deep sleep.

The powerful lesson from this episode (as I wrote in my journal, pictured above) is that circumstances are not always an accurate indicator of the right thing to do.... not when they violate a principle or a directive that God has previously spoken.

In my own situation, the circumstances seem to be saying clearly that it's not possible for me to live in Alhaurín. Some might even think these circumstances mean that I should no longer be in Spain or that I should no longer be a missionary. 

So, how should I respond to long-lasting circumstances that seem to suggest I'm no longer in the right place?  The axe-head principle (from a story in 2 Kings 6: 1 - 7) says that I need to go back to the last thing that God clearly said or did. And what a long list of things I have to confirm that God clearly brought me here to Spain after I left South Africa and returned to Europe:

1. He brought me here to Spain in 2007 - 2008 and led me through circumstances and relationships to be based in Alhaurín.
2. He later confirmed the rightness of that by reminding me that He'd spoken to me two years previously through a Bible verse about a place of springs and palm trees. (You can read that story here.)
3. Despite my not having enough money to rent a home in Europe, He made a way for me by proving a house mate to share the cost. Then, years later, He amazingly provided half-price housing when I first began living alone.
4. He provided a home church and many non-Christian friends here in town.
5. When we closed the leadership retreat centre after ten years of fruitful ministry, my intercessors and financial supporters were unanimous in believing that it was right for me to continue living in Spain.
6. God hasn't shown me anything else - despite my asking Him multiple times whether I should move back to Scotland or relocate to another country where I've received ministry invitations.

In dog training, we have a maxim that says we should focus on what we want the dog to do,  rather than on what we want him not to do. So, when someone says, "I don't want my dog to jump up on people who come to the door," the more important question is, "What do you want him to do instead ?" Sit politely to greet people, or go to his bed, for example.

In my own situation, there seem to be so many societal and circumstantial obstacles to my finding a new home here in Spain, but the bottom line is that God has not shown me any "instead." There's no alternative for me to pursue that wouldn't just be using my own human reasoning - doing the logical or seemingly obvious thing (like Abishai wanted to do) and therefore going against the last thing that God showed me. The only "wiggle room" is that perhaps I could enlarge my search to other towns, even if they're not as close to Alhaurín and church and friends as would be ideal. If God no longer wanted me to live here in Spain at all, He would have been faithful to show me where He wanted me to move to instead. But He hasn't done that, even though I have asked Him repeatedly over the past year and declared my willingness to obey Him no matter what the cost.

In David's case in this chapter, God's purposes seemed to be:

• to test David's obedience and integrity.
• to underline that David's kingship would be brought about in God's way and God's timing.
• to convict Saul, an "onlooker," of his own sin and selfishness.

David recognises that God will bless and reward him for being loyal and doing good  (vs 23) and even his enemy has to concede that God will bless him and give him success. (vs 24 - 25)

It's not easy to keep obeying God when a different course of action might seem more "obvious." We can only hold on to the fact that God will always honour those who seek to follow Him and do things His way, no matter how hard that might be.

Obedience under pressure...

The historical books of the Old Testament are such a rich source of lessons about how God interacts with His people and what it really means to obey Him faithfully and wholeheartedly. I remember, as far back as the late 1970s and early 1980s, that I preached a couple of sermons in church about the mistakes and weaknesses of King Saul. He had been hand picked by God to be the very first king of Israel, and yet he so often allowed himself to be pushed and pressurised by what other people thought of him. We read of a couple of occasions where he was more influenced by the fear of man than by the fear of the Lord, and as a result, he ended up losing his kingship... which God then gave to David. David made mistakes too, but he was quick to acknowledge them and so the Bible describes him as a man after God's heart.

My personal times with God during April and May found me reading once again in the book of 1 Samuel, and it was a rich time when God was speaking clearly and strongly to me about my own situation in 2024. One of the passages that really stood out was 1st Samuel chapter 13 because it addresses the issue of obedience under pressure and confronts us as modern day believers with the question of whether we are truly committed to obeying what God has said - even when our society or the people around us are putting us under pressure to do something other than what God has said.

If you remember the story of that chapter, Saul and his army are about to go into war against the Philistines, but first they are waiting for the prophet Samuel to arrive and offer a sacrifice to the Lord, asking for His favour in the battle that lies ahead.

However, the Philistine troops and chariots considerably outnumber the Israelites, and Saul's men are trembling in fear. Some of them begin to run away - hiding in caves, thickets, rocks, gullies and cisterns.  Some of them even escape across the Jordan River and disappear into other territory.

Now, King Saul knew what God had said - that only priests were supposed to offer sacrifices to the Lord - and so he knew that he should wait for Samuel to arrive.... but he was in a highly pressured situation.  He wanted to have God's favour on their upcoming battle and so he waited a whole week for Samuel to come - a week where he could see a formidable enemy preparing to attack them and meanwhile see his own army getting smaller as each day went by and ever more men continued to slip away.

Finally, it seems that Saul felt he had "waited long enough" and that he couldn't wait any longer. Even though he knows it's not what God has asked him to do, he takes matters into his own hands and offers the sacrifice himself. Just as he is finishing up, Samuel arrives and asks him what on earth he thinks he's doing.

Saul makes excuses, blames Samuel for not showing up, and says that he felt "compelled" to offer the burnt offering himself. But Samuel simply tells him how foolish his disobedience has been and tells him that the consequence will be the loss of his kingdom, the loss of the wonderful future that God wanted to give him and his descendants. Extenuating circumstances are not a good enough reason for failing to do the last thing that God told you.

Waiting is hard - especially when you're under pressure and it seems that your situation is getting worse with each passing day. It could be so easy to slip into feeling "compelled" to take matters into your hands and take some alternative course of action to resolve the situation.

That truth spoke to me really strongly because it had been sixteen months since I had started looking for a new home - sixteen months where the national housing crisis just got worse with every passing day. Huge numbers of people are facing homelessness and there's been a crazy escalation in prices for the few places that are available. 

We had even sold my parents' home in Scotland, so that I could pursue the option of buying a home instead of renting... but the housing crisis is so severe that it seems around 40% of the homes available within my price range are being occupied by squatters. Estate agents want you to put in an offer without actually being able to visit the house first, and then you inherit the legal challenge of trying to evict the squatters. As a result the prices for the few available unoccupied flats has escalated dramatically and I'd felt really discouraged after viewing some really tiny places with a really high price tag.

God was warning me that I was in danger of making the same mistake as Saul: doing something that seemed the only solution instead of waiting for what was the God-solution. I was in danger of settling for some un-ideal living situation instead of waiting for the something better that God wanted to give me. I was in danger of feeling that doors were closed in Spain and that perhaps I needed to move somewhere else - like back to the UK.

In the Bible passage, Samuel says those well known words that, "To obey is better than sacrifice." Sacrificing my calling and my ministry in Spain, might look noble or even necessary on the surface, but it would mean I was being disobedient to what God had been asking of me. And, as in Saul's case, being pressured into disobedience can lead to you losing everything that God wanted for you.

That very same day, a couple who had been praying for me got in touch and said, "We feel to say to you, don't allow the time pressure or the people pressure to get to you. Don't settle for something that isn't God's highest for you. Waiting is hard, but don't give up and one day you'll see God's reward for your faithfulness." I could hardly believe it; their words were so similar to what I had written in my journal that very morning.

And so I've been learning a lot about what it means to keep on obeying God, even when things aren't going smoothly and it looks as if your prayers are going unanswered.

Read on below for more thoughts on what it means to obey God even when it looks impossible.