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.

The Psalms are full of beautiful songs and prayers that will fill our heart with worship and praise for our gracious heavenly Father. Psalm 103 is a song of praise to God that reminds us of two truths: the dreadful reality of my sin, and the extravagance of God’s love.

This Psalm does not shy away from calling out our sin for what it is. Our iniquity (vs. 3) is perverse and corrupt. And the effect of sin in our lives is dreadful—just look around at the wicked things that have been done and continue to be done. Sin is also willful. The word David uses in verse 12 (‘transgressions’) highlights the fact that when we lived in sin we were in active rebellion against God. Sin is not merely a “slip up” or a “mistake,” like missing a turn when we’re driving. It is much more sinister than that. Our sin is also terminal: sin leads us to “the pit” (vs. 4). The saying is true that “Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.” As Paul said in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death…”  When we read and reflect on this Psalm, we cannot escape the fact that it reminds us how serious the sin problem is.

I’ve painted a pretty dark picture from this Psalm about the reality of our sin, but the Psalm reminds us of something else too—the extravagance of God’s love. The Psalm describes his extravagant love in at least three different ways. First, he is forgiving. “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (vs. 10). He removes our sins from us as far as the East is from the West! Second, he is gracious. “The Lord is merciful and gracious…” (vs. 8). God is not stingy with his grace. He has given us extravagant grace, grace that is greater than all our sins, as the hymn reminds us. Third, he is compassionate. He is gentle and tender with us, taking into account our weakness and human frailty. “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (vs. 14). When we read these descriptions of God’s forgiving, gracious, and compassionate love for us, we should be filled with love and worship for him.

When we have come to know and experience God’s extravagant love, we will also want to imitate him and be forgiving, gracious, and compassionate toward others. It is hard to be all those things, which is why we need constant reminders that God has been so good to us. This week, praise God for his extravagant love and ask him to help you show that same kind of love to someone in your life who could use a little forgiveness, grace, and compassion.

When we look back at the Old Covenant it can be easy to see all the rules and think that the covenant just amounted to rule keeping. We can even begin to think of the Old Covenant as if it were a matter of business-like transactions: ‘If I just do X, Y, and Z that is commanded in the covenant, then God will give me A, B, and C and I can go on with my life.’ We know that this is how God’s people began to view the covenant. Instead of being faithful and loyal exclusively to the Lord, they began to practice syncretism, which is to say they began to mix elements of pagan religion with their worship to the Lord. They never completely stopped worshipping the Lord, but they began worshipping other gods alongside him (for example, see Zeph. 1:4). They thought that if they performed the rituals of the law and external acts of obedience the Lord would still bless them.

In fact, it was not merely external acts of obedience that God wanted from his people. In the book of Deuteronomy, when Moses reestablished the covenant with the people of Israel, God made it clear that he demanded their full and undivided loyalty and their glad and willing obedience from the heart. God warned the people that if they were unfaithful to him, he would punish them for their wickedness. “All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you… Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything.” (Deut. 28:45-48, italics added).

The punishment for the stubborn and unfaithful Israelites who refused to serve the Lord with glad and joyful hearts was that they would serve cruel, foreign nations. How much better it would have been for them to serve the Lord who gave them an abundance of all things than to serve their wicked enemies. But they refused to listen to the Lord and love him with all their heart, soul and might. They did what was right in their own eyes instead of trusting that what the Lord commands is always best. They made a mockery of God by offering empty, hollow worship from hearts that were lifeless and devoid of love for their Lord who saved them. They did not give God the undivided loyalty he deserves. They did not serve him with glad and willing obedience from the heart. May we never forget that God wants our hearts, our love, our loyalty. May we always love him and serve him with joyfulness and gladness of heart!

What a sight it must have been when the people of Israel brought their gifts to Moses for the building of the tabernacle. The people generously brought the expensive materials that were needed for the tabernacle and its furnishings—gold, silver, and bronze; blue, purple, and scarlet yarn; woven linen, leather, and precious stones (Exod. 35:4-9). In fact, the people brought so much that eventually they had to tell the Israelites to stop bringing their contributions (Exod. 36:3-7)! 

Now, you know how children are. They like to be involved in things, even if they are not really in a position to be especially helpful. What do you think the children were thinking—and doing—when the Israelites were taking their contributions to Moses? Did they watch as their mothers carefully spun fine yarn on a spindle and their fathers carried the family’s gold and best animal hides to Moses’ tent? When they understood what it was all for—God’s special tent—did any little girls or boys decide that they too wanted to contribute something? Was there a child who saw the generosity of his father and mother and decided to give his or her most treasured possession to the contribution? Maybe it was just a well-worn leather satchel that her father gave her back in Egypt. Or maybe it was just a beautiful rock he picked up when he was walking through the Red Sea on dry land. To an onlooker, such a gift would seem insignificant compared to the other gifts, but it is exactly the type of gift that pleases God.

Hundreds of years later, someone else was watching people bring their gifts to the temple. He watched as many rich people put in large amounts of money. When Jesus saw a poor widow put in two small coins (worth just a few dollars in today’s terms), he told his disciples, “…this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all that she had to live on” (Mark 12:43-44). To an onlooker, her gift might have seemed insignificant, but it was exactly the type of gift that pleases God.

Sometimes children pick up something in the house, wrap it or put it in a bag, and ‘give’ it to their parents as if it’s the best gift in the world. In reality, everything we give to God is like this—it’s already his. Everything we ‘give’ him has already been given to us by God. We cannot impress him with the size of our gift. Ultimately, it is not the value of the gift that matters. What matters is the attitude of the heart. To an onlooker, our gift may look insignificant, but if it is sacrificially given with the joy and faith of a child and love for God, it is exactly the type of gift that pleases him. 

One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament is found in Numbers 6:22–27, the passage that is commonly referred to as Aaron’s blessing. Although our contemporary western culture makes it difficult to have the same appreciation for spoken blessings that many people have had throughout history, these words that were a comfort to the Israelites so long ago are nonetheless still a source of comfort to God’s people today. This blessing should be in our heart and in our mind; we should read, pray, sing, and meditate on the words of this blessing. (If you are not familiar with the song based on this blessing, you should look it up and listen to it—it’s beautiful!) “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them’” (Num. 6:22–27). This blessing was oft repeated by the Israelites and is well loved by Christians today. Its elegance, simplicity, and comfort cannot be surpassed. It speaks to our great need for God and answers our deepest desires for protection, forgiveness, acceptance, and peace.

The LORD bless you and keep you. Although we are frequently tempted to look to things of this world for our meaning and security, these words remind us that it is the LORD who blesses us. Nothing else in the world can bless us the way God can. Furthermore, he will keep us—that is he will watch over us and guard us. 

The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Bible often speaks of God’s face as a metaphor for his acceptance and favor. God smiles on his people and shows us the grace that we all need.

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. To lift up the countenance means that God will pay attention to us. He will not forget about us, nor is he inattentive to our needs. The gift of peace is a summary of all God’s good gifts, the greatest gift of all being salvation and peace with God himself. Peace refers to the feast of all the good things God will give us, a feast that we have only just begun to nibble on in this lifetime. Imagine how comforting these words would have been to the Israelites as they journeyed through the wilderness towards the promised land. As we journey toward our promised land, these same words bring us comfort and point us to our gracious God who gives us his blessing. We serve an amazing God! 

If you’re following our 2025 Bible reading plan, you have been reminded that Leviticus is one of those Old Testament books that can feel eternal. The descriptions of the various sacrifices can seem endless, and unless you’re a dermatologist, the detailed chapter about leprous boils and spots on the skin might gross you out or put you to sleep. But in spite of all the lengthy and detailed material in Leviticus that seems irrelevant to us today, there is a message in it for Christians—a crucial message if we are to fully appreciate what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us.

The central message of Leviticus is that God is holy and that his people must be holy. Leviticus 19:2 says “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” By his very nature God is righteous and just and holy. There is nothing wicked or sinful or filthy in him. If we lose sight of God’s holiness, then we have lost sight of God. If we—as is easy to do—think of God as our pal who doesn’t take sin very seriously, then we have misunderstood God. He reveals himself to the Israelites as a just God who is the very embodiment of all moral perfection. The LORD our God is holy.

Because God is holy, his people who are called by his name must be holy too. God makes this point very clearly in Leviticus (see Lev. 11:44, 45, 19:2, 20:26, 21:8). The details that fill the pages of Leviticus were God’s instructions to the Israelites on how to be holy so that they could receive God’s blessings. All the instructions about ritual washings and sacrifices unmistakably taught the lesson that God is holy and that God’s people must be holy.

The New Testament also teaches us that God is holy and that his people will be holy. Hebrews tells us that “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), a reference to his holiness. The same chapter urges us to “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). If it were just up to us, we could not be holy in God’s sight. But praise God that he has made a way for us to come near to him through Jesus. Instead of all the priests and rituals and regulations of the Old Law, Jesus offered himself as the perfect sacrifice once for all and opened up a new way for us to come into the Father’s very presence. So as you read the lengthy, detailed chapters of Leviticus, focus on the main lesson: God is holy, and his people must be holy. And give thanks for Jesus, who died and was raised for our sins, who makes us holy, and who brings us near to our holy and loving Father.