1 SAMUEL 15 - THE SUPERIORITY OF OBEDIENCE
1 Samuel 15
This Chapter begins with Samuel telling Saul that God had noted the way that many years earlier, the Amalekites had attacked the people of Israel as they were coming up out of Egypt into the Promised Land, and that God wanted Saul to now go and completely destroy all of the Amalekites, including their livestock. There are a couple of lessons for us here. First, we should never think that God does not know when we are being attacked, and that He will not eventually do something about it. God will bring about justice for His people, but He will do so in His own timing, not ours. Second, just as God wanted the Amalekites to be completely destroyed, so He also wants the sins that He reveals to us in our own lives to be completely destroyed, with no remnant left.
In Vs. 4-9, Saul obeys God’s command, but only partially. He takes it upon himself to modify the command, so that he can spare the king of the Amalekites, Agag, as well as the best of the sheep, oxen, calves, and lambs, and anything else that he thought might be good to spare. This was a huge mistake. When God tells us to do something, He wants us to fully, not partially, obey Him. And, we should never presume that we know better than God, such that we can modify His commands to suit our own needs. In Vs.10-11, God reveals to Samuel His displeasure with Saul.
In Vs. 12, we see that Saul did something else that was displeasing to God, and that was that he built a monument to himself. Rather than give God the glory for defeating the Amalekites, Saul chose to give himself the glory. This was an incredibly selfish and presumptuous act, especially since Is. 42:8 tells us that God will not share His glory with anyone.
When Samuel comes to confront Saul over his multiple acts of disobedience, Saul at first tries to tell Samuel in Vs. 13 that he has performed according to God’s commandment to destroy the Amalekites. In what might otherwise be somewhat humorous, if it were not so serious, Samuel responds in Vs. 14 by asking why then he is hearing the sounds of sheep and oxen. Saul then does something in Vs. 15 that we have all probably have been guilty of doing – he tries to cover his sin in feigned piety, by claiming that he spared the sheep and oxen, so that they could be used for making offerings to the Lord.
Saul goes on in Vs. 20-21 to use another tactic all too familiar to us to try to excuse his sin, as he tries there to blame it on others by claiming that it was the people who actually spared the sheep and the oxen. Blaming our sin on others or on our circumstances is as old as what Adam did in the Garden of Eden when he tried to blame what he did on either Eve, or on God for giving him Eve.
In response to all that Saul had done, Samuel speaks forth a profound truth that we would do well to pay heed to, and it is this:
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings 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. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.”
Whereas Saul was claiming to be focused on being able to make offerings and sacrifices to God, what God wanted most of all was Saul’s obedience. The importance of this point was driven home to me years ago one day when our children were little, & we were spending my birthday together as a family. All through the day, they kept bringing me little gifts that they had made, but at the same time it had been a pretty unpleasant day for all of us, since they had been rather disobedient all day. As I reflected upon the day, it dawned on me that the dismay I was feeling about the day was giving me a tiny glimpse of how God must feel when we give and do things for Him, but won’t obey Him.
As the Chapter closes out, Samuel informs Saul that his disobedience is going to cause him to lose his position as king of Israel. Although Saul expresses some sort of repentance in Vs. 24-31, he says something that reveals the heart of his problem, and it is in Vs. 30 where in speaking to Samuel, he refers to God as “your God”, rather than “my God.” Evidently, while Saul acknowledged that God existed and that he had broken God’s command to him, he did not see God as his own personal God. Without a personal relationship with God, it is difficult to have the desire to fully obey Him. Both Gen. 39:9 and Ps. 51:4 make it clear that the ultimate problem with our sin is that it is a relational offense against God, not just a violation of His law, and it is in the realization of this truth that we can find the power to obey God as an act of loving Him.