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 are deep in the deliberation of what it is that pleases the Lord in the lives of His people. We are so prone to try to appease God with those things which would try to deflect His gaze upon the true intent of what we do and how we do it. As with King Saul, in allowing the people to gather and preserve the best of the booty from the battle in which the Lord declared that all should be destroyed, we often try to hold to ourselves those things that are part of this age and which catch our eyes and our imaginations. 
As we have so frequently voiced, rather than follow the heart of the Lord in full obedience to His will and that which is His perfect way for us, we try to negotiate with Him. Or, we just disobey Him and put forth all sorts of reasons as the excuse for the fact that we just did not want to follow His way. We want our own way despite His directions set forth in His Word and the prompting of His Holy Spirit in our hearts. 
We are brought back to the fact that even when the Children of Israel were led forth from their captivity to Egypt, they were not given orders to sacrifice and to carry out rituals and customs and activities to show how spiritually minded they may have been. They were to simply do one thing. Obey the Lord. That was it! In so doing they would show just how much they valued and loved the Lord God Jehovah. 
We read this in Exodus, as given directly through Moses. This morning, we will start with the reminder to all of us as given through the Prophet Jeremiah. Please turn to Jer 7:22+23, wherein the Prophet was bringing to mind the fact that the Lord desired not their rituals and their sacrifices. There were being given with the view to show those who watched just how great and expensive and exquisitely prepared were those who could afford to do such deeds so much better than anyone else. There was that entire tattered and torn fabric of self-elevation and holier than thou manipulation without any true honor or even concern if God would accept what was being presented as exalted spirituality. 
Jer 7:22+23, "For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. "But this is what I commanded them, saying, 'Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.' 
The Prophet was reminding the posterity of those who had been released from their slavery to the customs and the idolatry and the falsehood of Egypt about what was important in the course of how the succeeding generations had been raised. This is an area that we need to take so very sincerely and desperately before the Lord. Let us remind ourselves of the difference of what was taking place in their hearts and what may be taking place in our hearts.
The first generation, born in slavery, raised with all the idolatry of the power binding them had no clue what was right and what was wrong. They were brought up in a society that worshipped and did homage to the various deities which they were constantly forced to honor. At the time of spring and the renewal of the earthly life in action, they sacrificed to those deities who were supposed to bring increase in the harvest and in the numbers of the flocks and of the herds. They did so with the idea that there would be no multiplied food sources etc if the gods were not appeased in some manner.
Then, in the summer heat, they were forced to do homage and sacrifices and offerings to the deities who brought the rain, etc. Each season had its own idols and each chapter of daily living was under the auspices of some god or another. This had been engrained into the Children of Israel in their slavery. They were under bondage to Pharaoh and to all the ritualistic idolatry of the gods of Egypt. 
In their shackled misery, they called out to Jehovah, the distant God of their parent’s parent’s parents. They were desperate for some relief from the anguish and the heart-ache and the longing to be out of that bondage. 
Jehovah, the Only Living and True Lord God Almighty, Yahweh, heard their cries. He responded with the Omnipotence which shattered the hold of Pharaoh upon God’s Chosen People. Then, after the release, God had to work in the hearts and the minds and the customs and the rituals and the practices of the people to break asunder the hold that the false deities of this world power had upon the Children of Israel. 
That is the course of so many lessons that were taught to the Israelites in their time in the wilderness. God was bringing them out of the bondage that was of the old life in Egypt. He began instilling into them the newness of the Life that He gave them as they were brought into being the nation of the people of God. He was fully working in those first and second generations to prepare a people who would honor Him and love Him as He so loved them. That is why, the stipulation that is brought to the remembrance of the heritage of those freed parents was so urgent in its delivery.
"For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. "But this is what I commanded them, saying, 'Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.'
The heritage of those first generations of Israelites forgot the lessons that the Lord had taught their parents. The children’s children began to willingly dabble with the things that had been worked out of the hearts and minds of their parents. The hard lessons of the wilderness had faded with the ease and the fatness in the land of milk and honey. The holding true to the Lord in obedience to His Word had been forgotten. 
Rather, the nation was willingly partaking in the obligatory activities of sacrifice and offerings as an appeasement to the idols of the people’s surrounding them. Even when they brought their offerings into the temple of the Lord, it was with the idea of appeasement as if God were just another one of those deities of the land and the sky and the wind. 
They had lost the love for Yahweh that was His due. All that was being done was now in terms of custom and ritual and with the idea that if God was not at least meagerly honored, there would be dire consequences as He would spew forth lightening and thunder in the heavens. The whole reality of the love of God was replaced with the have-to’s of law and retribution and anger and regulatory obligation.  
That is why the Lord spoke so forcefully through the Prophet Hosea, as in Hos 6:6. Please open to it in your Bibles. This is something that we need to have put into place within our hearts as we read and listen together.
Hos 6:6, For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 
God was crying out to His people. He was longing for that relationship with them as was in place with their forefathers in the wilderness regions. There the people and the Lord communed together in all the provisions and majesty and honor as a people who were so enthralled and dependent upon the One True Living God of all creation. 
They were not perfect in that adoration. We know that The Lord had to work constantly and manifestly to continually remove any trace of Egypt with all its schemes and lies of idolatry. But there was, in evidence, that growing recognition of how awesome and glorious was this relationship together. The Lord was in their midst as represented by the tent of meeting and the Ark of the Covenant. 
At the same time, there was that wondrous and amazingly miraculous provision of the Lord for the every need of His people. They were absolutely functioning together as God and His Holy people, walking hand in hand, as it were, through all the valleys of the shadow of death. 
God kept and sustained and protected and multiplied His blessings day by day upon those to whom God meant everything. They wanted to honor and obey Him to the best of their abilities, growing away from obligation into that relationship as characterized by Moses, that of love for God. It was the means of their expression of love as they honored God and obeyed His commands and ordinances because to not do so was to dishonor and besmirch the One Whom they loved so much.
Sadly, this was not the continued manifestation with the children and the children’s children. There was that willful and obstinate seeking after self rather than the Lord. They, as do we so very often, chose to try it their own way, turning their backs on the Lord and any love for Him. They began to bring their sacrifices and their offerings and their worship as a means of self-gratification, showing off their own station in life, as it were.  
That is why Jehovah had Hosea pronounce the Word of the Lord upon this defiled and willingly obstinate generation, even as they were celebrating their ungodliness in the very place of God’s Holiness. Turn to Hos 9:1-6, and let us grieve as unto the heart of God. He was dealing with a people whom He loved, but who had no reciprocal manner of love for Him. He was watching His bride flaunt herself unto the lifeless idols of this age. It broke His heart to see this nation so deceived and so wantonly tossing its affection to the gods of the nations with such adulterous, lust-filled hearts and minds. 
Hos 9:1-6, Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations! For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God. You have loved harlots' earnings on every threshing floor. Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them, And the new wine will fail them. They will not remain in the Lord's land, But Ephraim will return to Egypt, And in Assyria they will eat unclean food. They will not pour out libations of wine to the Lord, Their sacrifices will not please Him. Their bread will be like mourners' bread; All who eat of it will be defiled, For their bread will be for themselves alone; It will not enter the house of the Lord. What will you do on the day of the appointed festival And on the day of the feast of the Lord? For behold, they will go because of destruction; Egypt will gather them up, Memphis will bury them. Weeds will take over their treasures of silver; Thorns will be in their tents. 
The Lord, through the Prophet Amos again had to speak so forcefully to the remnant of His nation. In Amos 5:21-24, Jehovah let the people know exactly what He thought of the sacrifices and the gathering together to show off how much spirituality they possessed. Again, there was no real concern about Yahweh and the way in which He would or would not receive their offerings. It was all just a matter of show and of ritualistic custom. They gathered together because they had always been part of this festivity. They put no real value in it other than if they were not there, the neighbors would talk and criticize the lack of social obligation. The whole matter was just a conventional contrivance which could not be broken without the societal stigma and judgment of their peers. No concern about what God thought of their actions and deeds, just what the others would think and how they would become objects of gossip. 
Amos 5:21-24, "I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. "Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. "Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. "But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 
Then the Prophet Micah closes our consideration of the fruitlessness of the Old Testament practitioners of religious custom and contrivance. This is with the reminder of what really honors the Lord in the activities of His people. 
In Mic 6:6-8, we have a summary of what the Lord desires as the expression of love from those whom He has redeemed unto Himself. This is not in terms of obligation or of custom or habit. It is in the reality that because we love the Lord, we want to show that love through the way in which we give Him all our fealty and honor and obedience and contriteness and humbleness of heart.
Mic 6:6-8, With what shall I come to the Lord And bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, With yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, In ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my first-born for my rebellious acts, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? 
Next time, Lord willing, we will foray into the New Testament with the view to what is to be true of us as the Redeemed of the Lord. There is that tremendous parallel between the Children of Israel walking hand in hand with Yahweh in the wilderness regions and then into the Promised Land. It is seen in the church walking hand in hand with Our Redeemer, all to the praise and honor and glory of the Lord God Almighty – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 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 once again our morning’s passage. 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. Amen.