Today
we come to a very significant low point in Saul’s career as king. The last time
I spoke we were in Chapter 13, where Saul failed the test of waiting seven days
for Samuel in Gilgal. He became impatient and went ahead and offered the burnt
offering on his own. Because he had not kept God’s command, Samuel told him
that his kingdom would not endure but that he would be replaced by a man after
the Lord’s own heart, someone who put intimacy with God before all else. Still,
in our story today we see that God is in a sense giving Saul one last chance, a
final test to see if his heart could be fully devoted to what God would tell
him to do.
But
as we have seen several times already, Saul’s connection with God is seriously
deficient. He had moments when he sought God, but it was often in a
half-hearted way. He made foolish oaths and then tried to stick with them even
when he knew that God was on the other side. That’s what we saw last week in
the story of Jonathan attacking the Philistine outpost. Jonathan had clearly sought
God and had been led by Him in what he had done – but Saul didn’t recognize
that. Saul was so full of himself that he would have killed his own son as a
supposed matter of honor. He was only stopped by the other men, who recognized
what a twisted sense of justice this represented. He was more concerned about
Jonathan’s “sin” against his irrational oath than about his own disobedience to
God’s commands. He had cursed anyone who would eat before he had avenged himself on his
enemies. It made no sense that the army should fight without eating – Saul
didn’t get that from God.
Jonathan’s
supposed transgression was that he tasted some honey, without realizing what
Saul had commanded. It is significant that it was honey that Jonathan ate. Later,
his friend David would compare the Word of the Lord to honey. Do you remember
the passage in Psalm 19?
The precepts of
the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of
the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of
the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of
the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They
are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than
honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned; in
keeping them there is great reward. But who can discern their own errors? Forgive
my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not
rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression.—Psalm
19:8-13
This
represents such a different view of God’s word than Saul had. David delighted
in the commands of the Lord. They were more precious to him than gold. Jonathan
would have understood this. It wasn’t just honey that made his eyes light up.
It was seeing how God would work through obedience and submission. David in
this psalm admits how difficult it can be to discern and turn away from one’s
sins, in particular the willful sins that can so easily rule over us. He was
quick to admit that he could not live a holy life without God’s help. Not so
the case with Saul.
In
Psalm 34 David encourages us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” It seems
that Saul had indeed tasted, but he had forgotten – or at least he had not been
willing to go beyond that initial taste to a full and complete commitment. It
had not made a deep and lasting enough impression on him to give him a continual
hunger and thirst for God. As the deer longs for the water brooks – that’s how
much David longed for God. As we have noted before, David was far from perfect,
but any separation from God soon became intolerable to him and he did whatever
was necessary to repent and restore that connection and dependency. In
contrast, when Saul was confronted he tended to either ignore it or pout about
it. You get the sense that Saul thought that God was not being quite fair. When
he allowed that resentment to build up he began to go his own way, and it got
him into trouble every time. Let’s look at what happens in today’s passage,
Chapter 15 of 1 Samuel:
Samuel said to Saul, “I
am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people
Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what
the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what
they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now
go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not
spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep,
camels and donkeys.’”—I Samuel 15:1-3
Samuel
appears before Saul to give him this assignment from the Lord. Samuel reminds
Saul of who he is – the one sent by the Lord to anoint him – to make sure that
Saul understands that this is a divine command. The Lord wants him to execute
his judgment on the Amalekite people, the descendants of Esau who had attacked
the children of Israel as they came out of Egypt. You may have a note in your
Bible that explains that the term for “totally destroy” refers to the
irrevocable giving over of something to God. Our holy God is always justified
in destroying sinful people. Every person on earth is deserving of death, and
it is only by his grace that some of us are saved. The Lord had promised to
Moses that he would wipe out the memory of Amalek, so nothing at all could
remain to remind people of them, even their animals.
Every
time that Israel did not wipe out the people that the Lord commanded them to
totally destroy, the remnant regrew and returned in the future to cause them
trouble, either by attacking them or leading them into sin. We know that in
this case as well, some Amalekites must have survived, because in David’s time (perhaps
a couple of decades later, in 1 Samuel 30) there were enough of them to attack
the town of Ziklag and capture the families of David and his men. Hundreds of
years later, the villain of the book of Esther, Haman – a descendant of King
Agag of the Amalekites – was on the verge of completely destroying the Jewish
people. The Lord wanted Saul to remove this kind of threat. Let’s see what
happened.
So Saul summoned the
men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten
thousand from Judah. Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the
ravine. Then he said to the Kenites, “Go away, leave the Amalekites
so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all
the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites moved away from
the Amalekites.—I Samuel 15:4-6
Moses’
wife was a Kenite. They had been friendly with the Israelites for some time,
and some had traveled with the Israelites on their journey to Canaan, but not
much else is known about them.
Then Saul attacked the
Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of
Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his
people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the
army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat
calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to
destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally
destroyed.—I Samuel 15:7-9
So
Saul was victorious in battle, but he failed in his commission. Rather than
obeying God completely, he used his own judgment, succumbing to the oldest of
temptations, spoken by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, “Did God really
say…?” Satan is always trying to get us to doubt God’s word. Does this really
apply to me? Is God actually serious about this? Is this really the best way
forward? It is easy to start questioning what God has said and begin making our
own decisions. So Saul kept the best of the animals alive, along with King
Agag. Conquered kings were often kept as prisoners. They would be disabled in
some way but displayed as trophies of war. Saul was looking to improve his own
status, as well as his popularity with his soldiers who could keep the animals.
Then the word of
the Lord came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul
king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my
instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to
the Lord all that night.—I Samuel 15:10-11
How
can God regret something? Didn’t He know what would happen with Saul? Of course
He did. His regret does not mean that changed his mind or wished that he had
not done something. Regret can simply mean feeling sad over something that has
happened. And God does have these kinds of emotions. When Lazarus died, Jesus
wept. He knew what was going to happen. He knew that he had the power to raise
Lazarus. But He still wept, because his friends were weeping. We regret (mourn
the loss of) the death of terminally ill friends, even if we knew it was
inevitable and we know that we will see them again if they are a believer.
Somehow our sovereign God, who knows everything that will happen and knows that
sometimes He needs to use hard things to accomplish His purposes, enters into
the emotion of the moment. He didn’t intend to change his mind. His regret does
not mean that He would do things differently. In the case of Saul it simply
means that He would have preferred a different result that what happened.
Samuel,
too, got emotional. He also knew that it was too late now for Saul, but it
still hurt him deeply. He was probably crying out in desperation, “Why? Why did
it have to be this way?” Saul had such potential; he was anointed by God and
moved by the Holy Spirit. But he kept turning aside and going his own way.
Samuel was no doubt angry at Saul’s disobedience, but he was probably also
angry at Satan for leading Saul astray. Continuing at verse 12:
Early in the morning
Samuel got up and went to meet Saul, but he was told, “Saul has gone to
Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honor and has
turned and gone on down to Gilgal.”—I Samuel 15:12
Saul
was too full of himself. His first thought after his victory is to set up a
monument in his own honor rather than giving glory to God.
When Samuel reached
him, Saul said, “The Lord bless you! I have carried out
the Lord’s instructions.”—I Samuel 15:13
Did
Saul actually think that? It sounds more like he is about to once again try to justify
his own disobedience.
But Samuel said, “What
then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I
hear?”
Saul answered, “The
soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep
and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally
destroyed the rest.”—I Samuel 15:14-15
The
Lord has somehow become Samuel’s God, not Saul’s own. And once again Saul tries
to distance himself from responsibility. It is the soldiers who saved the
animals. Perhaps they did intend to sacrifice some of them to the Lord – they
would still get to eat the meat – but they no doubt would have kept some as the
spoils of war. The total destruction was, in a sense, supposed to be like a
sacrifice to the Lord: the irrevocable handing over of the entire people group
and their possessions to His judgment. So by only including the despised and
weak animals in that, Saul was effectively giving the worst to God and keeping
the best for himself and his men. The Law of Moses demanded that only animals
“without blemish” be offered to the Lord. God doesn’t want the leftovers.
In
the area of Nepal where we lived at the end of our time there, I noticed a
certain kind of lemon tree that I had not seen before. The fruit were big and
beautiful. However, when I asked about them, a local man picked one and cut it
open for me. “Look,” he said, “there’s nothing really inside.” Indeed, the
fruit was almost entirely rind, with essentially no juicy pulp. “Actually,” he
said, “we only use them as offerings to the idols.”
I
realized how this was symbolic of how many of us treat God. We don’t give him
the best; we give him the leftovers, whatever isn’t useful elsewhere. God wants
our best. He needs to be our first priority. Saul tried to keep the best for
himself and his men, rationalizing that attitude with a token sacrifice to the
Lord. Samuel is not buying it.
“Enough!” Samuel said
to Saul. “Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”
“Tell me,” Saul
replied.
Samuel said, “Although
you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the
tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And he
sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people,
the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why
did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do
evil in the eyes of the Lord?”
“But I did
obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned
me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their
king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of
what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your
God at Gilgal.”—I Samuel 15:16-21
Saul
is still desperately trying to wriggle out from this, attempting to justify his
actions rather than admitting that he was guilty of disobeying the Lord’s
command. He refuses to acknowledge that the only reason he is in his position
is because of God’s choosing him. He was once small in his own eyes. He has
gone from zero self-confidence to overweening pride.
But Samuel replied: “Does
the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in
obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is
better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and
arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of
the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”—I Samuel 15:22-23
To
obey is better than sacrifice. Samuel goes to the heart of the matter. God
doesn’t care about appearances; He cares about what’s on the inside. Rituals
are meaningless if a person’s heart is not in the right place. Time and again
Jesus would confront this in the Pharisees, who had reduced religion to a list
of external observances. True obedience must spring out of genuine love for and
submission to God. Sacrifice can be half-hearted or even done for the wrong
reasons – I can give something to God and still keep something for myself.
Complete obedience requires complete submission. That is why Samuel compares
rebellion to divination – trying to determine the future apart from God’s
revelation. Saul was turning away from God, saying, in effect, “I can do this
myself. I can figure this out. I know best. I don’t really need God.” In his
arrogance, he was setting himself up in place of God. His pride had become an
idol. He was more concerned with how he appeared to people than with how he
appeared to God. He had rejected God, so God had really no choice but to reject
him as king. This finally got through to Saul, but by then it was too late.
Then Saul said to
Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your
instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them. Now I
beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship
the Lord.”
But Samuel said to him,
“I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the Lord,
and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!”—I Samuel 15:24-26
Saul
finally admits his sin. And he acknowledges here that he feared men more than
he feared God. But Samuel does not accept this as genuine repentance. Saul had
turned so far from God that he needed Samuel around to even know how to
worship. Saul was groveling on the ground at this point.
As Samuel turned to
leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore. Samuel said to
him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you
today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you. He
who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not
a human being, that he should change his mind.”—I Samuel 15:27-29
It
is interesting to note that the Hebrew word translated here as “change his
mind” is the same as we talked about in verse 11, where it said that God
“regretted” that he had made Saul king. So this is clearly a word with multiple
meanings. The King James translates it as “repent” in both verses, which might
seem a little confusing. The Lord repented, but then Samuel says repenting is
not something that God does. That’s why the NIV is more helpful in rendering
the first as “regret” and the second as “change his mind.” God does not change
his mind as people do. Saul had missed his chance. This is a sobering prospect.
His days as king were numbered.
Saul replied, “I have
sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before
Israel; come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord your
God.” So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord.—I Samuel
15:30-31
Saul
finally talks Samuel into going with him, and they do worship the Lord.
However, it seems that Samuel is less concerned about honoring Saul before the
people than in finishing off the task that Saul had left incomplete.
Then Samuel said,
“Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.”
Agag came to him in
chains. And he thought, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.”
But Samuel said, “As
your sword has made women childless, so will your mother be childless
among women.” And Samuel put Agag to death before the Lord at Gilgal.
Then Samuel left for
Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. Until the day
Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel
mourned for him. And the Lord regretted that he had made
Saul king over Israel.—I Samuel 15:32-35
Saul
does continue for some years as king, but in several ways this is the end for
him. God’s word would no longer come to him through Samuel. God had pronounced His
judgment; there would be no more chances for him to redeem himself. Samuel
mourned for him and the Lord joined in that sadness. It would have been so
different if Saul had been obedient and submissive to God.
We
have one more message in our series. In the next chapter we will read the story
of Samuel anointing David, the “new hope” for Israel. David would be that man
after God’s own heart whose kingdom would be established forever. Jesus would
come from the line of David and bring salvation and reign eternally.
So
what do we do with the sad story of Saul? Do you see something of Saul in your
own heart? I know I have certainly been like Saul at times, subconsciously
thinking that I can handle something on my own or being more concerned with
outward appearances than God’s approval. It is so easy to see Saul as a tragic
figure, trapped by his own pride and self-centeredness. But it is only by God’s
grace that all of us don’t fall that same way. Is God’s word pure gold to us,
or do we take it with a grain of salt, maintaining a Plan B in case things
don’t work out? We so easily rationalize God’s will to things that make sense
or that clearly benefit us in material ways, just like those bleating sheep and
lowing cattle. Oh, we make little sacrifices here and there, we contribute out
of our abundance and feel good about that. And if others notice what we do,
that’s just a side benefit. To be radically sold-out for God, completely open
and obedient – that might sound just a little too dangerous. Are we willing to
trust God to that extent, holding nothing back?
I
am speaking to myself here, because I am just as guilty as anyone else. The
closer we come to the light, the more we notice the little blots of sin all over
us. Let’s take a moment for each of us to examine our hearts and ask the Holy
Spirit to reveal where we have committed the sins of Saul. And then as we
confess those let’s ask God to take us beyond them into the wholehearted
commitment and true freedom that He desires for each of us.
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