Are we listening to God? I believe He is always trying to teach us something, but are we listening? In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel gives the Lord's instructions to Saul: totally destroy the Amalekites and everything that belongs to them. What did Saul do? He spared their king, Agag, and the best of the sheep and cattle, but destroyed everything else. Afterward, when Samuel reached him, Saul said, "The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord's instructions." But Samuel said, "What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?" Then he asked Saul, "Why did you not obey the Lord?" Saul's response: "But I did obey the Lord". Saul heard the Lord's instructions, but was he really listening? No. The end result: the Lord rejected him as king of Israel.
In Genesis 4, we read about Cain and Abel. "The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him." So Cain heard what the Lord said, but was he really listening? Unfortunately for Abel, no. The result was two lives destroyed: one dead and the other under God's curse.
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law knew the law and the prophets better than anyone of their time. The prophets clearly foretold of Jesus' coming and what he would be like (Isaiah 53), but they could not see him for who he really was. So what was their problem? As Jesus pointed out in Matthew 15, they nullified the word of God for the sake of their own tradition, honoring God with their lips while their hearts were far from him. When Jesus would heal someone on the Sabbath, instead of praising God, they got mad because he did it on the Sabbath. How unfeeling they were! They knew God's word, but they didn't really listen to it or follow it.
So what lesson can we take from these examples? Listen to God and follow his instructions! As Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 4:2 "Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you." Be careful not to substitute human wisdom or tradition for God's word, because as Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 1:20, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" The Bible contains God's complete and perfect instructions for holy living. Anything more (or less) is unacceptable!
