God has always expected his people to hear, love, and obey his voice. Just like parents teach children to obey (for the children’s own safety and good) so God teaches his children to obey (for our own safety and good). Hearing, loving, and obeying God’s voice is foundational to having a relationship with him. To put it in other words, our relationship with God is built on his terms, not ours. We are not free to disregard his commands, even if we think we have a good reason for doing so.

King Saul learned this lesson the hard way in 1 Samuel 15. The Lord commanded him to go and destroy a wicked nation neighboring the Israelites. Saul was not to spare any of the people or their possessions. God’s words were very clear on this point: “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them…” (1 Samuel 15:3). Saul fought against the Amalekites and defeated them, but he and the people under his leadership saved the Amalekite king alive and preserved the best of the livestock (15:8-9). Because of this disobedience, the Lord revealed to the prophet Samuel that King Saul was rejected from being King. When Saul met Samuel the next day, he tried to convince Samuel that he had obeyed the command of the Lord, but Samuel saw through Saul’s words and stopped him. He asked him, “Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord?” Saul protested, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. (…) But the people took the spoil… to sacrifice to the Lord your God.”

Saul failed to recognize that obeying the voice of the Lord is more important than sacrifices. Samuel said to him, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offering and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.” While we do not offer animal sacrifices any longer, the principle holds true. To obey God’s voice is better than any outward show of piety or devotion. God is after so much more than just worshippers who go through the motions. He is after your heart. He wants you to know his voice, to love his voice, and to obey his voice.

Are you listening to the voice of the Lord? Is his word your guide in life, the thing that— more than anything else—shapes your values, your priorities, and your life decisions? It is easy to fall into the rut of just going through the motions, going to church, and looking like a Christian without really loving and obeying the voice of God. As you go about your life this week, remember that God is after your heart, your obedience, your love, and not just external acts of religion.

Over the years, I have received some very thoughtful and generous gifts. When you are on the receiving end of a gift like that, it is so encouraging to realize that the gift-giver just wants to give generously and quietly and finds joy in meeting the needs of others. When they give in private, they may not be seen by men, but Jesus assures such people that their Father who sees in secret will himself reward them (Matt. 6:4). Paul was encouraged by the generosity of the Macedonian churches, and he told the Corinthians about the example that the Macedonian churches had set: “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us” (2 Cor. 8:1-5). 

Paul was in the process of taking up a collection from the churches in Greece to take back to the churches in Jerusalem who were suffering from a severe famine. He praised the Macedonian Christians for the way they gave generously to the cause in the midst of their poverty. But their greatest act of giving was not financial and it happened before they had given any money at all: “they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.” There is no amount of money we could give that could substitute for giving ourselves—our heart, our affections, our entire lives—to the Lord. But once we have given him our lives, then we find it easy to give in other ways too.

While he was on the topic of generosity, Paul did not miss the opportunity to point his readers to the greatest act of generosity ever: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). Christ left the glories of heaven for a time to come and suffer on our behalf so that we could be co-inheiritors with him. This is the greatest act of love, the greatest act of grace. Our giving is just one more way to be like Jesus, who gave us so much.

In the ancient kingdoms long ago, the king led a busy but luxurious life. Unlike many of his subjects, he did not work every daylight hour just to provide a meagre living for his family. He had the very rare opportunity in the ancient world to receive an education from world-class tutors and substantial collections of books. He lived in a spacious dwelling that had all the comforts money could buy—including hot water pipes to heat his house during the winter. He traveled quickly and more comfortably than anyone else in the kingdom. He dined on a variety of the finest foods that were brought to him from all over his kingdom—all prepared to suit his taste. I could go on and on describing his life, but the point is that kings of the past led very pampered lives, by all standards.

But in describing the life of ancient kings, we have described our own lives. We do not eke out a living by farming overworked land, and we have money in the bank to buy the things we need and a whole lot more. We have the opportunity to pursue education. We live in spacious homes that are way bigger than what the majority of humans in the past lived in. And our homes have amenities that could not have been imagined 150 years ago—like air conditioning! We travel faster and more comfortably than any other age in world history. At the store we can buy fresh food from all over the continent. If we don’t want to cook, we can go out to eat, and chefs will prepare our choice of food to our taste. The point is, we live lives of ease; we live like kings.

The temptation for us who have lives like I’ve just described is that we fall in love with the ease of our lives. We run the risk of slowly becoming so accustomed to having everything exactly the way we desire that we practically forget what it feels like to be denied. And as only kings could in bygone ages, we can control so nearly every aspect of our lives that we don’t have to be exposed to anything or anyone we don’t want to be exposed to. And therein lies the real danger: a life of ease and control means that we can isolate ourselves from anyone who is unlike us. Ask yourself, How often do I associate with people more than a few steps down the socio-economic ladder? How often do I get to know and befriend people who speak English as a second language or barely speak it at all? Am I taking the gospel to the nations right here in my neighborhood and in my city (Matt. 28:19)? Do I associate with people of low position (Romans 12:16)? And which will I choose to love: the comfort of my little kingdom or the glory and advancement of His kingdom?

Shortly after God brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, he promised them that he would reward their obedience and punish their disobedience. Sadly, their story was filled with much more of the latter than the former. God, being slow to anger, put up with their sinfulness for hundreds of years. He repeatedly sent them prophets to warn them of the coming punishment and to implore them to return to the Lord. Nevertheless, they did not listen. In the 7th century BC God used the Babylonians to take Judah and Jerusalem captive and exile many of the people for seventy years.

God was faithful to his word and brought the people back to their land after the seventy years were over. But the exile had not cured the people of their sinful ways. After the return to Jerusalem, the people of God continued to harden their hearts and continued in their sinful ways. Once again, God sent prophets to his people to teach them the right way to live in a covenant relationship with God so that they would receive his blessing and not his disfavor. One of those prophets God sent was Zechariah. This was the message God gave to Zechariah to speak to his people: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart” (Zech. 7:8-10). God had sent the same message through earlier prophets to his people but they had failed to listen. The people in Zechariah’s day, like their ancestors before them, “…refused to pay attention… They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the LORD of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets” (7:12).

Zechariah’s prophetic message is reiterated in the next chapter. The command of the Lord was to “Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD” (Zech. 8:16-17).

God’s expectation for his people has always been that they conform their lives to his moral standards and character. God’s goodness, justice, love, and mercy are supposed to overflow into our lives and be worked out in everything we say and do, from our speech to our performance on the job and in school to our dealings with our neighbors and those that society rejects. But God’s expectation that our lives reflect his character is not a burdensome expectation. In fact, we are most truly human and most fully what God intends us to be when we mirror his character. What’s holding you back from displaying the character of God in your life?

All around us we are witnessing the rebirth of life. Every spring, the world comes back to life as flowers bloom, trees put out their leaves, and birds begin nesting. It is beautiful the way God designed the rhythms and seasons of the earth. We know that God is the true Giver of life and we get a beautiful reminder of that every spring. Spring is also significant because it is when we celebrate Easter. We celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus every Sunday with the communion, but very early in Christianity the church also began a yearly celebration of Jesus’ resurrection around the time of the Jewish Passover feast, when Christ was crucified.

And Jesus’ death and resurrection is truly something to be celebrated! But for those of us who have grown up knowing the facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is so easy to forget the significance of those events. Because of how easily we forget its significance, we need frequent reminders of the gospel. We constantly need to be called back to marvel and wonder at God’s love for us seen in the fact that he would choose to send his Son to bear the punishment we deserved. We constantly need to be reminded of the significance of the resurrection for us—it is the only reason we can have salvation and it is the foundation of our hope in God. And we also need to be reminded that we are living with resurrection power.

Paul mentioned this resurrection power in Ephesians 1:17-21 in his prayer for the Ephesians. He prayed that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places…” The power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that is at work in believers today. No one and nothing can challenge God’s power—not even sin and death. You, Christian, are living with resurrection power working in you. There’s nothing that God’s resurrection power cannot overcome in you. So today, remember the resurrection of Jesus. Marvel and give thanks to God that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave for our salvation is the same power that is now at work in us.