Obedience is better than sacrifice. How many times have you heard this and wondered what it means? Or perhaps you wondered why isn’t sacrifice better than obedience. What I’ve learned is that when you are obedient than you are sacrificing. Sometimes sacrifice itself is actually delayed or abolished when obedience to God is put first. In the book of Genesis, we all know that God promised Abraham in Genesis 15:4 that he would have a son that comes from his own body. God also told Abraham that his descendents would be like the stars in the sky. And so Abraham believed God, and it was accounted onto him as righteousness. It is not our deeds that make us righteous or the fact that you go to church. You can go to church and have ill motives. But blessed is the man whose desire it is to bless the Lord. The man who knows that God is who he says he is, and if God spoke a promise it will come to pass, despite the contradictions of the seasons.
Now we know it took 25 years of waiting and trusting God for Isaac to be born. God will always speak to you about where you are going, not about where you are. In those 25 years, Abraham was obedient to God. At one point we know he became weary and took the advice of his wife sarai who was tired of waiting for God’s promise and decided she would do it herself. So she gave her maidservant Hagar to Abraham and he lay with her and conceived and bore a son named Ishmael.
Now it came to pass, that 25 years after the promise was spoken, Sarah conceived and bore a son named Isaac, which meant laughter. In Gen 21:6 Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. 7And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
The example of obedience and sacrifice that I want to share with you comes in Genesis 22. God decided to test Abraham and told him “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah (places are very important to God). Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Wow, could you imagine God telling you to sacrifice one of your children. I can guarantee you we would put up a fight. We would probably ask God to repeat himself or ask him if he had lost his mind. Abraham does none of this. The very next morning, he gets up early, saddles his donkey, and takes with him 2 servants, Isaac and enough wood for the burnt offering. He sets out for the place that God told him about, and on the THIRD DAY, he saw the place afar off. On the THIRD DAY, he saw the place where he was to sacrifice his only son. How many of us have been given an assignment from God and we see it from afar off? Wondering if it will ever come to pass. I want to encourage you that he saw this place on the third day of his journey. Christ rose on the third day, so anything that is dead or about to be sacrificed has to rise on the third day. I took courage when I read this because even though the journey appeared to be a death trap, God showed me that it was the third day. That right there, is telling you that Isaac wasn’t going to die. How could he possibly die on a day meant for resurrection?
At this point Abraham says to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Isaac says three vital things here that we need to examine. First, he told his servants to stay behind. That is because not everyone that is in your life, can go where you’re going. It doesn’t mean that they are not of God, or evil. It could just be that they are not ready to go to the next level of trust with you. The second important thing he says is “we will worship…” Abraham understood that he needed to worship God before the sacrifice. Before you know the end result you are actually going to declare the end of a thing at the beginning. That is essentially what he did. He didn’t let the mountain or the task of sacrificing his son control his faith. He developed an intimate and personal relationship with God through years of faithful stewardship, and although that faith was being tested to the max he still trusted God. “…Then we will come back to you” was proof that Abraham trusted God and he had an expectation of deliverance. He must have said to himself, “It can’t end this way!”
As he and Isaac climbed the mountain, Isaac asked his father… “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” And Abraham replied, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
When they got to the place where Isaac was to be sacrificed, Abraham prepared the altar, bound Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. This act of obedience was honored by God and He sent an angel to stop Abraham. I believe that when you live with a spirit of obedience there will be some sacrifices that should have been made that will no longer be necessary. Because, you were righteous, and put the desires of the Father first he will cause you to be exempt from the sacrifice.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham then looks up and sees a ram caught in the thicket. So he took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son. Abraham called the PLACE The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” I highlighted the word PLACE to bring up another point worth noting. When God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, he was specific and said go to the region of Moriah to the place that I tell you of. If Abraham ignored this detail, the outcome could have been very different. You see, we are to go the place where the Lord sends us. He has already made “room” (provision) for you in that place.
Your obedience is needed to get you to the place of ordainment, the place where God has called you to, where all of his benefits await you. Your gifts will flourish and make room for you when you stay in a covenant, intimate relationship with God just as Abraham did. (Genesis 22:17-18) He will then surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.
So in closing obedience is better than sacrifice and in some cases it will abolish the sacrifice. In the case of Christ however, the sacrifice had to take place in order to save humankind. For his obedience, Abraham received abundant blessings. The same will be afforded to us, because the Lord is no respecter of persons (Romans 2:11).
Evangelist Nadia Marinaccio
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