1 Sam 15:22, "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.  
We have spent a number of weeks in our consideration of what it means to obey the Lord rather than to just elevate ourselves through the dogmatic mannerisms of habits and rituals. There is an immense difference in sacrifices and offerings that are intended to honor and reverence God out of our love for Him. This is as opposed to those elements that are offered with only the pagan attempt at appeasing some deity out of fear of the consequences or superstitious repetition of taught and practiced habit and custom. The Lord will not accept those things which are done for any purpose other than the expression of our obedient love and our adoration and our worship and our reverent desire to add to His glory and His majesty and His Honor.
Our Lord Jesus Christ addressed this whole reality in His ministry on this earth. Please open to Matt 9:11-13 where we can read one such interaction with the religious leaders of His day. He was accused of associating with those who were the pariah of their religious society. The Pharisees were outraged because Jesus was ministering to those who were, by custom, the discards and the outcasts of their social order. 
Matt 9:11-13, And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, "Why is your Teacher eating with the tax-gatherers and sinners?" But when He heard this, He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. "But go and learn what this means, 'I desire compassion, and not sacrifice, 'for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." 
Jesus detailed the fact that when He was ministering to the needs of those in such dire desperation. He was doing what the Lord required. We are to show compassion on those in need, not spurn them. We are to offer our hands to those who are not the accepted and the desired within our society. There is to be a willingness to offer assistance and aid to those who are ill and the supposed refuse of our culture. 
These are the ones in greatest and most urgent need of the love of God. As Jesus broke apart the walls of separation in His day in order to do the will of the Father, so are we to do in our day. We are to set aside all those imagined barriers that we place between us and those who are so desperate for even just the kindness and the compassion of someone who truly cares for them in their dire situations.
Again, Jesus had to admonish the Pharisees as recorded just a few chapters later in Matt 12:2-8. This was in dealing with the fact that to the Pharisee, gathering food from the field on the Sabbath was an outrage. Jesus and His disciples were hungry and in need of sustenance. Through this episode, Jesus took the opportunity to show that the stipulations which man put upon the society, in the guise of religiosity, was not that which was from God. 
There are so many ordinances and regulations which are all based in man’s ideas and conceptions. These are the means of control and of keeping what man considers to be the order required to govern and lord positions over the masses of the people beneath their feet.
However, Jesus put the heart of the issue on direct display when He brought to the forefront the fact that God is not interested in the way that man tries to control others. He is interested in the heart that seeks to be honoring and reverent and obedient unto Him. He made it very evident that the whole reality of the Sabbath rest is found in Him. He, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. The day of rest is that which honors the Lord, not the dictates of some human regulation and restriction. 
Matt 12:2-8, But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, "Behold, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath." But He said to them, "Have you not read what David did, when he became hungry, he and his companions; how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priests alone? "Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath, and are innocent? "But I say to you, that something greater than the temple is here. "But if you had known what this means, 'I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. "For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." 
Then, in the next verses, Matt 12:9-14, the true heart of the religious leaders of that day came to light when they tried to trap Jesus. They were looking for the way to maintain their supremacy in the heart of the people rather than see it wither away and dissipate like the dust of the earth. We can see the innermost beast of resentment and jealousy and animosity rearing its ugly head as the matter at hand and the significance that a person had been healed was lost on them. 
Matt 12:9-14, And departing from there, He went into their synagogue. And behold, there was a man with a withered hand. And they questioned Him, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" — in order that they might accuse Him. And He said to them, "What man shall there be among you, who shall have one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it, and lift it out? "Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Then He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand!" And he stretched it out, and it was restored to normal, like the other. But the Pharisees went out, and counseled together against Him, as to how they might destroy Him. 
Jesus was continually pointing to the truth that God was interested in meeting the needs of those who were crying out to Him in their agony and illness and distress. Whether it was the physical healing, or the healing of the soul, or the forgiveness of sin, Our Heavenly Father, through the Only Begotten Son of God was showing those elements of love and compassion and forgiveness which would heal, and rescue, and save those in such dire situations, those such as we all are in this world! 
Yet at every turn with the increasing evidence that Jesus was the Lord of the Sabbath, the religious leaders were scheming and plotting His demise. They were seeking every manner and means to discredit and to get rid of this trouble maker. He was tearing down the entire basis of their power structure. He was showing the people that the man-made stipulations and interpretations of the Word of God is not that which pleases Jehovah. It is the heart and the love and the honor that is given to the Lord that matters. It is the obedience which shows how much the people love God, not the prescribed, man-made ordinances which are binding them to the practitioners of religiosity and ritual. 
Jesus spoke directly to the whole heart of this matter in Matt 23:23, as He decried what man had made of the lovingkindness of God’s mercy and grace and compassion and Holiness and Honor. There was a completely justified cleansing that needed to take place in the heart of those who were supposedly the guardians of the gates to the altar of the Lord.
Matt 23:23, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.
The reality of what is in the heart of God for the sake of the treatment of others in the light of the love of God for us was encapsulated by Jesus as recorded in Mark 12:28-31. He set the entire way in which we are to govern our hearts and minds before the Lord into this concise declaration of what it is that pleases God in the obedience of His people. 
Mark 12:28-31, And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?" Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Notice that the crux of everything is tied up in these two commandments. When we love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength, we will only do those things which please Him. That will be the very course of our walk on this earth. We will only want to honor and to add to His glory, so our lives, our actions, our thoughts, our words, our deeds, and our motivations will all be in line with what His will is. There will be that sensitivity to the Holy Spirit which will seek to only do those things that will bring honor and worship and praise to Our Heavenly Father. 
It will not be a matter of ordinances and obligations and customs and rituals. What will be at the core of our beings is that we are more and more honoring to God in line with His Word according to the direction of His Holy Spirit. That will most certainly be within the framework of what we call the Law, because those are the things that will show God that we love Him with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength.
This is deed sets before us the manner of our interactions with others. We will treat everyone with whom we come into contact according to the love of God with which we have been loved. We cannot treat anyone as a lower class citizen and still say that we love the Lord. We cannot cause grief to our brothers or sisters and then proclaim that the Love of God is the course of our desire and our way of honoring Yahweh. 
It will be evidenced very distinctly and very brilliantly how much our love for God really is the reason for our walk on this earth as it is manifested in the way in which we deal with those around us. Be they family, friends, work associates, school mates, bosses, neighbors, or the meeting of someone anywhere we go - our interactions will show exactly how much we love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. The two cannot be separated in any manner whatsoever! 
As we so regard The Lord in our actions, the Writer to the Hebrews highlights the full effect of what it means to set aside the obligations of custom and ritual for the revealed evidence of the Love for God to be the course of why we so honor and express our adoration to God. Please open to Heb 10:1-17 so we can read this explanation of the manner in which we obey because of our love for Jehovah. It is not because of some fear or stipulated regulation, but because of the perfect and final work of Jesus Christ.
Heb 10:1-17, For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, "Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired, But a body Thou hast prepared for Me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast taken no pleasure. "Then I said, 'Behold, I have come (In the roll of the book it is written of Me) To do Thy will, O God.'" After saying above, "Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast not desired, nor hast Thou taken pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Thy will." He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, "This is the covenant that I will make with them After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, And upon their mind I will write them," He then says, "And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." 
The Apostle Paul, then makes known the difference that is in place in the hearts and minds and actions of those who so love the Lord, having been redeemed by the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God. Please turn to 1 Tim 4:1-10, as we continue to read together.
1 Tim 4:1-10, But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer. In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers. 
And in our final passage of this morning, Titus 1:10-16, we bring this to a conclusion in terms of why we are not to listen to those who would try to put us again under bondage. We love the Lord. He has set us free from those empty and worthless rituals and customs and regulations and stipulations made to elevate man over each other. Rather, in Christ Jesus, we need to encourage one another to so love the Lord and to honor Him with all our heart and all our mind and all our being and all our soul and all our strength.
Titus 1:10-16, For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach, for the sake of sordid gain. One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. For this cause reprove them severely that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless for any good deed. So be it!
"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. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 26:6+7. I shall wash my hands in innocence, And I will go about Thine altar, O Lord, That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving, And declare all Thy wonders. Amen.