Greetings Friends!!!
I Samuel chapter 15.
Saul reminds me of a little kid caught in a lie. He shoots out excuses and more lies. Saul became very proud of his accomplishments against the Amalekites.
Pride seem to start it off: look at what I did against the most feared Kingdom! His pride resulted in disobedience to God. He didn't destroy everything. And he makes a monument to honor himself and not God.
When he sees Samuel, he knows he's in the wrong and he gets all spiritual with Samuel and lies:
- He says bless you Samuel as if Samuel will be pleased with such a nice welcome.
- Then the LIE follows the spiritual welcome. See how I carried out ALL of GOD'S INSTRUCTIONS?
When Samuel confronts Saul, he responds with MORE LIES as he tries to justify his sin.
- I didn't really disobey, the soldiers did by not destroying all the good animals because they wanted to sacrifice them to YOUR GOD! Another spiritual answer when there was no intention of sacrificing anything to God.
- Then Saul says but we destroyed the rest. As if God is content when we give him only our half best and not our very best. As if God is content when we are not totally obedient just half obedient.
It's easy to see Saul's world of lies and justification.
It's easy to see when our kids do that.
It's easy to see others do that.
It's not so easy to see it when we do it.
In reality, I often know it when I do it. When I do, I try to justify it. Oh that's not really wrong. Once we justify a little act of a sin by focusing on the good thing we did, we lose focus of God and lie to ourselves and others. Our focus becomes in our own pleasures and not pleasing God through 100% obedience. God forgive me!
Verse 22 stuck out to me today as it tells us that to obey is better than sacrifice. We see Saul continuing to go in the wrong direction in this chapter. There’s no such thing as ‘sort of’ obeying God. We either obey Him or we don’t. God wants us to serve Him with all our heart and be fully committed to Him. Samuel is about to be sent to anoint a new king as the kingdom is being torn from Saul. Samuel parts ways with Saul and we will see even more poor decisions that Saul will make in the coming chapters. I’m reminded once again of Revelation 3:15-16.
“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
Hey very nice blog!
That verse stayed with me too, Jim.
Not only is the Bible known as the greatest love story ever told but it is also the way we learn about God’s character. Why do we want to do that? As believers we are to become more like him … this is our training for eternity. How awesome is that? In today’s reading about Saul, we learn that God desires heart obedience over any ritual sacrifices we might make. The sacrificial system in the Old Testament was never meant to replace an obedient life but rather to be an expression of it. Likewise today, think about things like our charitable volunteering or donations – is it done in obedience to God or is it self-serving. Search my heart, Lord.
Jim and Jeanine, I agree with you both about that verse. As I was reading it was almost as if the words jumped off the page,
“ “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.”
No matter how much time we sacrifice for the Lord, how much money we give in His name, how much we give of ourselves to show our faith, none of it matters if we are still disobeying God.
Saul wanted to have his cake and eat it too by keeping the best of all the plunder that was supposed to be destroyed. On top of it all he thought he could be deceive Samuel.
It’s a reminder to us, we must obey God and we can’t hold onto anything in our lives that God has put on our hearts to get rid of or destroy. We have to ask ourselves, what plunder are we choosing to hold on to, when God has told us to destroy it?