What God Wants - In One Word

What God wants in one word? What word would you be thinking of? Our love, our worship, growth, maybe service, or maybe God wants commitment or yieldedness. Lots of things I'm sure that we could think of and all of them would serve as good candidates for the right answer. But I have a different word in mind this evening. And it may not be the one that qualifies as the top thing that God wants, but certainly it would rank right up there. What God wants in one word? Obedience. Obedience. For Samuel, chapter 15, there is a story in the Old Testament about King Saul that highlights God's desire for obedience and actually serves to illustrate what obedience is and is not. It's one of those familiar old stories. And so we're just going to take some time this evening to basically read through the story and pause here and there and draw some application from it. Maybe a few words of explanation along the way. But see how it applies to us. The story itself about Saul. Saul's an interesting man. He is the first king of Israel and he was chosen because God had basically or the people of Israel had basically turned away from God as their king and wanted a king like the other nations. They wanted to be like the other nations they saw around them with their own king and someone that could lead them into battle and someone that could have a court and they could recognize they had a king. There was something special about that to them and Saul had great potential. In the beginning Saul was physically head and shoulders literally above everybody else. He seemed to be the right choice. He seemed to be a humble young man. He was certainly in the beginning. He did not want the kingship. Tried to hide from it and seemed very humble at least in the beginning. He was spirit filled. He was of the nature that the spirit of God would come on him and move him to do certain things and his early promise was excellent and yet once he was anointed king it did not take long for some of the character issues the cracks to appear that would become great fault lines in his character and life later on. Pride, impatience when he would not wait for Samuel to offer the sacrifice before battle but did it himself which was in violation of not only the agreement between them but what God had established about the offering of sacrifices envy and disobedience all of these began to show in Saul's character whether or not they were there before or whether or not it was the position of being king that surfaced those character defaults. We're not sure but by chapter 15 of 1 Samuel God basically is testing him and this will be the test that determines whether or not he will maintain his kingdom. It's a test of obedience. Will he completely obey God? Will he show himself to be faithful when God says to do something or will he choose his own way? You know the story if you're familiar with your Old Testament very much at all but I think we shall find some good solid reminders here and maybe challenges for our own lives. I know I've been challenged as I've reflected on the story again this week. There are four acts to this drama. Act one is in verses one through three and it is a difficult command. Let's notice this difficult command. Samuel said to Saul remember Samuel's the prophet that has been used of God to anoint Saul and install him into his kingship. 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 amalakites for what they did to Israel when they way laid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go attack the amalakites 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. This is a difficult command. This is one of those instances in the Bible that often causes skeptics to stumble. I remember reading not too long ago about a young man who had turned his back on Christian faith and had taken a stand against the Bible. Someone asked him why and he pointed out a verse. I think it was in Hosea but it was one very similar to this where Israel was commanded or was rebuked for not having killed everyone including infants and children and he said that's the reason why I can't believe in your God. Why would a God of love ever command something like that? These kinds of commands are hard to understand. Why would God command that everybody be exterminated? Women and children included and all the animals. Why would God do that? Why would God say that before we move to at least some understanding of an answer, let me remind you that God sometimes commands us things that are difficult. This would not be an easy command to obey. It was not going to be easy. This was difficult. And sometimes God commands us to do difficult things as well. We have many examples of this in the Bible, don't we? God commanding Abraham to take his son, Isaac? That's a difficult command. But we know the reason for that. God was testing Abraham's faith. God commanding Paul to go to Jerusalem. Paul says he was moved by the spirit pressed by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem, knowing what awaited him there. Read it in Acts 22. He says, I know what awaits me there. I know that I will be arrested. I know that I will be put in chains. But the Holy Spirit is impelling me, compelling me to go. Why would God cause his missionary, his evangelist, the one who's spreading the gospel all over the Roman Empire to go to Jerusalem and be arrested? Well, only God knows the ministry for two years. It will take place in Cessaria. Only God knows the ministry that will take place on the ship ride to Rome. Only God knows the ship wreck on Martha and the leader of the people there who will be saved. And many people who will be saved because Paul is on his way to Rome. Only God knows what Paul will do in prison in Rome as he is linked to Roman soldiers and has a gospel testimony in the Praetorian Guard, the special guard of the Caesar and into his palace and family. Only God knows that. But sometimes God asks us to do difficult things. Sometimes God asks us like Jonah to go to people we don't necessarily want to go to. Jonah is told by God to go to people who are the bitterest enemies of Israel and who will be if they are spared the enemies that eventually attack the Northern Kingdom with ferocious, ferocious intensity. God asks us to do some difficult things sometimes. It's not always easy to obey God. And sometimes God's difficult demands are for testing us. Sometimes when he asks us to go through hard times in life and difficult roads that he causes us to take or decisions that seem to have no good result or someone is going to be hurt no matter what you decide. Sometimes when God puts us into those difficult hard places he has a reason for it. Obviously all the time he has a reason. But sometimes it's difficult to obey isn't it? It's difficult to do what God says. Now those who criticize God for commands like this do not fully understand the justice and holiness of God and his provision for and protection of his people. In order to understand the wholesale destruction of the Amalakites we have to go back to the very thing the Lord hints at here in verse two. He says I will punish the Amalakites. So first of all remember this is God's judgment. This is not God gleefully just taken out of whole nation. This is God's righteous judgment. He says I will punish them for what they did to Israel when they way laid them as they came up from Egypt. This is God's just retribution for what the Amalakites have done. It is the just payment for their sins. So let's go back to Exodus 17 for just a moment so that we better understand this difficult command. Exodus 17 Israel is journeying through the wilderness. They are not a threat to anyone. There will be several nations that will see them as a threat and some who when they get assurance from Israel that they have no evil intent they're just wanting to pass through. Some will let them go through but not the Amalakites. In Exodus 17 verse 8 the Amalakites came and attacked the Israelites at refidine. Moses said to Joshua choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalakites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. This is that familiar story where Moses stands at the mountain and lifts his hands up and as long as his hands are in the air the Israelites prevail but he gets weary and finally has the help from one on each side to hold up his arms. The army prevails verse 19 Joshua overcame the Amalakite army with the sword. Now look at verse 14. Then the Lord said to Moses, write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it because I will completely blot out the name of Amalak from under heaven. Moses built an altar and called it the Lord as my banner he said because hands were lifted up against the throne of the Lord. The Lord will be at war against the Amalakites from generation to generation. This was not just a blundering attack on a nation. This was an attack on the glory of God. This was an attack on the throne of God. This was an attack on the very purposes of God and the Amalakites will be justly judged because of that but it was not only the attack itself which is entirely unprovoked. It is the nature of the attack. There's a little additional information given us in Deuteronomy 25. Flip over there real quick. Deuteronomy 25 verses 17 through 19. God reminds Moses and the people of Israel. Deuteronomy 25 verse 17. Remember what the Amalakites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind. They had no fear of God. See what they were doing? They were strategically picking off the weakest. Attacking those who were weary and worn from the journey. No fear of God. Not even any justice in battle. So verse 19. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possesses and inheritance. You shall blot out the name of Amalak from under heaven. Do not forget. Okay this is God's command and there is just reason for that command. And even sometimes when God makes commands that we don't understand we have to remember that we are not the creator of the universe. We do not see the scope of history from beginning to end as God does. We do not fully understand his purposes and so we have to leave those things with God and not try to figure them out or put them into the frame of our own feeble limited humanistic sense of justice. We must trust God with those kinds of questions. But is a difficult command. It is a difficult command for Saul. God is testing it. That's act one in this drama. Act two is a disobedient course. There is not only a difficult command. There is on the part of Saul a disobedient course. Verse four. So Saul some of the men and minister and mustered them at Talayan 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 from Judah. Saul went to the city of Amalak and said an ambush in the ravine. Then he said to the keynites, go away leave the Amalakites 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 keynites moved away from the Amalakites. So far so good. Sounds like he's being obedient to the Lord. He's doing what the Lord has told him to do. But let's read on verse seven. Then Saul attacked the Amalakites all the way from Havila to Shure near the eastern board of Egypt. He took a gag. King of the Amalakites alive. And all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared a gag 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. Now there's some question on the part of Scholar's Bible scholars who studied this as to whether or not it says he destroyed all the rest with the sword and verse eight. Whether or not that's all of the people of Amalek or just the army. He's been chasing the army down to the border of Egypt. And so it could well mean that he destroyed the rest of the army. But save the king did not totally destroy all the Amalakites. The reason I say that is because Amalakites show up later in second Samuel. And so there were some left. He did not fully obey the Lord in that regard. But certainly he did not obey the Lord in regard to the king and the best of the animals. He kept what was good. Obviously at best this is halfway obedience. In reality it is disobedience because halfway obedience or choosing what of God's commands we will obey and what we will not obey is not really obedience at all. It is the very spirit of disobedience. So it is not ours to choose when God says something in his word we are responsible to obey that and not to pick and choose what sounds good to us but to obey that completely. But notice he did not kill the king and he spared all of the animals that were good. Which indicates basically and it says they were unwilling to destroy them. Indicates basically they saw we can add to our possessions. We can add to our flocks the good animals. The weak we don't want those anyway. Let's deal with those. Destroy those but we'll take the good. And so they're obviously we'll see later Samuel confirms that. They're obviously is evil and selfish intent here. But before I too quickly criticize Saul I have to turn the search light on myself. And whenever we read the word of God like this and we see a story like this it's so easy to pluck our tongues and shake our heads at Saul and not realize if we don't think very deeply that we do a lot of the same thing. We do a lot of choosing as to what we will obey and what we will not obey. We do a lot of choosing as to what sins we will deal with and what sins we will not deal with. There's a sense in which Amalek and the Amalekites can represent our sinful nature and our fleshly desires and activities. Because the Amalekites were originally a descendant of Esau and Esau in the Bible represents not the son of promise not the Prince with God Jacob but the fleshly mindset. The one who would sell his birthright for a bowl of porridge and the one who would not care anything about spiritual things but only about earthly fleshly things. And so the Amalekites I'm not trying to be allegorical here and do away with the historicity of the story but the Amalekites can well represent our own fleshly nature. And if we are honest I think we will all have to recognize that there are times when we categorize sins and we have some sins that we know are ugly and gross and bad and we would never even think of doing them. And we would certainly be condemning of those who might. We would certainly not murder someone. We would not steal someone's property. We would not break into someone's house. We would not think of committing adultery. We would not think of those gross outlandish sins that we condemn others for. We wouldn't think of drug abuse or those kinds of things but there are lots of little things that we keep. We keep and we don't deal with. I have just begun reading this week a book by Jerry Bridges. If you've never read anything by Jerry Bridges you ought to get some of his books. He writes some great stuff. The pursuit of holiness, the practice of godliness and other books he's written. But this one is a rather new one. It's I think his latest book. It's called Respectable Sins. And before I read a book I always like to read the forward and get an idea of where the author is headed and then I just kind of skim through the book to see actually what he's dealing with. I didn't even have to read any of the book to get convicted. These are the kinds of things he deals with. Sins that are respectable to us. Sins that are not even really seen as sins anymore in our culture. And to a great degree we don't deal as strongly with as we should. We don't destroy these kinds of things. We deal with the other kinds of sins. He mentions ungodliness. Now that sounds like a really bad one but I did read that chapter. How he defines ungodliness I think is very good. It is basically living life without any thought of God. It is going through a day without any thought of what God has to say about the various things we're doing or the various situations we encounter. It is going through a day without practicing the presence of God and seeking Him and asking His direction throughout the day. It is living a life without God in a sense. That is ungodliness. We think of the term ungodliness. We think of wicked sin but ungodliness basically is living life without any thought of what God would have me to do or say or think in this situation. He deals with these other kinds of respectable sins, anxiety, frustration. How many times have I heard myself saying that's frustrating. I'm frustrated about that. Is that really a lack of faith? Is it an unwillingness to trust God who is sovereign over all the events of my life? Yeah? He deals with discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, self-righteousness, selfishness, lack of self-control. I looked at that chapter in the various areas he deals with and he nailed me on a few things. Impatience, irritability, respectable sins, anger, resentment, bitterness, holding grudges. How many times do we find ourselves thinking, I will never forgive that person holding grudges. Judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, gossip, slander, insults, and then he has a chapter on vicarious immorality. Sends that we would not consider committing ourselves because they would certainly ruin our reputation but we enjoy vicariously because of the media in our day watching others commit them or reading about others committing them in the romance novels that are way too graphic for a Christian to read. Those are respectable sins and before we cluck at Saul we ought to take a good hard look at our own lives. Is there some element, maybe a great degree of element of a disobedient course about my life, our lives? As we certainly would not consider the gross outlandish sins, the character defacing public shame kind of sins but we carry around in our lives all kinds of what Jerry Bridges calls respectable sins. So we feel like we've dealt the amalachites a pretty good death blow but we haven't dealt with the whole the whole sinful nature. We haven't dealt with everything yet. In fact there are lots of areas where we have been disobedient to God and we've kind of felt okay about it because we have we have put some other things to death. Disobedient course. Are we as guilty as Saul? Act number three in this drama is a daring cover-up. A daring cover-up. A difficult command. Disobedient course. Now a daring cover-up and this cover-up takes place in three stages. If you'll look first of all verses 10 through 14 there is a white lie. He tells a white lie to cover up what he's done. You know what a white lie is don't you? It's a lie that's been whitewashed. Kind of have good smear of paint put on it to make it look better. It's a little lie. It's a little fudging of the truth. That's exactly what he does. Look at verse 10. 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. Now this pause for just a moment this is called some people great consternation where God says I regret that I've made him king. I'm sorry that I made him king. Wish I hadn't made him king. Does God change his mind? Does God do things and then think oh I made a blunder? Obviously that's not what he's talking about. Whenever the Bible says that God regrets having done something it's revealing his emotional response to what has happened. It's not saying I made a blunder or I made a mistake which hadn't done that. No God's too big for that. His plan and wisdom and power is too big for that. This is God's emotional response to what Saul has done. I am grieved might even be a better way to translate it. I'm grieved that I made Saul king. I'm grieved at how things have turned out. I'm grieved at the decisions he's made. I'm grieved because he's disobeyed me and not carried out my instructions. I regret in the sense that I am grieved by what has happened and it grieves the heart of God whenever his people disobey him. So notice what happens. Middle of verse 11 Samuel was angry and he cried out to the Lord all that night. By the way this is a righteous anger and that's very different from the kind of anger we usually express. Whenever we are angry at sin whenever we are angry at disobedience that's a good kind of anger and that kind of anger should first of all be turned against ourselves. Anger at our own disobedience and sin that we've disappointed God. 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. That an evidence of another evidence of the pride seeping into and demonstrating his own character. He set up a monument in his own honor and has turned and gone on down to Gilgal. When Samuel reached him Saul said the Lord bless you I've carried out the Lord's instructions. I can almost see him wanting to make sure before Saul asked any questions that he tries to put the issue to rest. The Lord bless you I've carried out the Lord's instructions. I've done what I was supposed to do and let's hope it stopped right there. Now that is a white lie. He did carry out some of God's instructions but not all of them. And we'll see how God views that as we move on through the story. It's not that he didn't do anything that God said he did. He did carry out some of God's instructions but he did not do exactly what God had told him to do. And so this is kind of the first part of the cover up. It's a white lie that's a partial truth and a partial lie maybe to even try to convince himself that what he did was okay. You ever found yourself doing that? Shading the truth just a little bit, telling the story not quite like it happened but if people really knew what I did or what I said or what happened wouldn't look so good for me. And so we shade the truth, twist the story just a bit to make it look like really it was okay. Really I think I did okay. That's what he's doing. It's a white lie. It is a lie. Verse 14. You can't fool God. Verse 14 but Samuel said, what then is this bleeding of sheep in my ears? What is this lowering of cattle that I hear? The evidence of his lack of obedience is plain for Samuel to hear. It's obvious. Count full God. Sin will be found out. Sin will show itself. Our disobedience will move from small cracks in our character to serious, serious chasms in our character that will be demonstrated at some point. So here they are, here the sheep, the cattle that have been saved and spared by Saul. So the first part of the cover up doesn't work. So he moves to the second phase of the cover up which is to shift the blame. Oh, this one hurts. Shift the blame. Verse 15. Saul answered, the soldiers brought them from the amalicites. They spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God. But we totally destroyed the rest. Compare that with verse nine. Go back to verse nine. But Saul and the army spared A gag and the best of the sheep and cattle to fat calves and lambs. The actual way it happened is described in verse nine. That's the actual historical event. That's how it happened. Saul and the soldiers were guilty. In verse 15, Saul completely blames the soldiers. You know, I didn't want to do that. I didn't have anything to do. That would not my choice. The soldiers. They did it. Well, Samuel sees right through that one too. Verse 16. 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 amalicites, wage war against them until you have wiped them out. Now look at verse 19. Samuel puts his finger right on the problem. Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord? Ah, so that's the real problem. It's not that I didn't know that was happening and the soldiers. You can't always watch all your soldiers and the soldiers took those animals. I had nothing to do with it. Saul knows better. God has somehow shown him that what was in Saul's heart? Samuel knows that it was in Saul's heart to pounce on the plunder. The idea there is greed. The idea is to fly on it to have a passionate eager craving. When he saw the plunder, he wanted it. And so he will do anything to keep it and then he'll explain it away and rationalize it later. So the cover up not only has a lie side to it, but it also has a blame side to it. Shift the blame to someone else. But that's we've been doing that ever since Adam did that with in the garden, right? With Eve. Adam blamed Eve for the fall. Eve turned around and blamed the serpent. In reality, Adam was blaming God. He said, the woman you gave me. We've always done what our father taught us to do. Adam taught us to shift the blame to someone else. And we typically do the same thing. So we will blame our circumstances. We will blame our family history. We will blame the pressure we were under. We will blame the fact that we were burned out. We will blame whatever we will blame. And while I see great value in good psychology, particularly that which takes biblical truth into account, in general, psychologists have not done us any help here. And it benefits here because they have taught us to find someone to blame for our own irresponsibility and sin. Now, I understand that there are forces and factors in our backgrounds and so forth that can help shape the way we think and the way we respond. But we are still before God responsible for our own choices. And to blow off our own choices by saying, well, you just don't understand my upbringing, my parents, my, you know, all of this and that and the other, we do the same thing. Basically, we find anyone or anything else to blame. When the real trouble is our own sinful hearts, we pounce on what looks good to us. So the coverup continues. Lie, white lie, shifting the blame. And then here's the worst part of all, putting a spiritual twist on it. Hmm, putting a spiritual twist on it. It was 20. But I did obey the Lord, Saul said, I went on the mission, the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalakites and brought back a gag there, 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. He said this before, he repeats it again, he's trying to put a spiritual twist on what he's done. The reason we spared those animals, Samuel, was so that we could have a great sacrifice to God. Well, we're planning on killing them, but we're going to offer them to God as a sacrifice. Well, he really had no such offering in mind. His heart has already been revealed. He had an eager desire to add those animals to his own flocks and herds. He pounced on them like plunder. But now he's trying to put a spiritual face on it. Now, there's disobedience has been revealed, has been caught. He's trying to put a religious twist on it. And we sometimes do the same thing. It is amazing how much we try to compensate for our lack of obedience by trying to offer God something else. God says, do this. And we say no, but Lord, I'll give you this and I'll give you that and I'll do this and I'll serve you here in it. But I'm not going to do what you told me to do. One of my favorite Christian artists years ago, back in the 80s, was Scott Wesley Brown. Scott Wesley Brown did some, a lot of music in relation to missions. And he did a, he did a song called, please don't send me to Africa. And it was so, it was comical. It was, it was clever, but it drove home the point. And basically, it was a song about all the excuses we offer not to do what God's clearly leading us to do. And he talks about Lord, I'll serve in the nursery. I'll give 11% rather than 10%. I'll go door to door, witness into people and he gives all these excuses that we may use, things that we may offer God instead of what God may be leading us to do. And that God doesn't lead everybody to go to Africa. And that wasn't his point. But his point was basically sometimes God's moving in our hearts, telling us to do something. And rather than obey him, we want to offer him something else to compensate for what we're not going to do. We do much the same thing Saul did. I do it. I think we all do it. It's convicting to read about Saul because he is so much like us, offering God something else rather than what God says to do. So we're putting a spiritual twist on our disobedience. Well, yeah, I didn't exactly do that, but look at all I did do. Look at what I did give to God. Look at, so what we need to see is the fourth act. In the drama. The drastic consequence of disobedience, the drastic consequence, verse 20 or verse 22, but Samuel replied, and here's the crux of the whole story, if we don't get this, these lessons, we don't get the story. 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. In other words, don't offer God your worship. Don't offer God your gifts if you're tucking away in your heart and life and mind disobedience. Because God is not going to accept the worship that we bring if it is cloaked in a spirit of disobedience, the prophets would say the same thing over and over to Israel. Remember Amos? In Amos 5, he says, oh, go on, go on down, you know, offer your sacrifices, sing your songs, and he says, I hate your songs. I hate your worship. I hate your sacrifices. That's what God says through the prophet of Amos. It's very clear that halfway obedience does not please God. He wants complete obedience. The greatest sacrifice, the greatest offering is our obedience. Not to disobey and then say, okay, God, I'll make it up over here. I promise. I'll make it up over here. That doesn't work in God's scheme of things. To obey is better than sacrifice. To heed is better than the fat of rams. And notice God's view of disobedience in verse 23, for rebellion is like the sin of divination and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. That's pretty serious. I mean, idolatry and divination, the seeking of mediums and demonic spirits and the Old Testament, both of those were punishable by death. So God is saying, here's how I rank rebellion and arrogance, arrogance, meaning the spirit that I can do whatever I want to against God, just as long as I compensate in other areas. God says that's equivalent to me of the kinds of sins that are punishable by death. So pretty serious stuff. And then here is the penalty in the end of verse 23, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king. You cannot be used any longer of God. And from this point on, Saul's dynasty and Saul's rule goes on a steep downhill slide. He stays on his king, but he's no longer effective. And his whole kingdom is troubled. He himself is troubled mentally and emotionally. And he seeks to kill God's anointed choice, David. He does end up seeking a medium to find out what to do in battle. I mean, all things just spinning out of control, downward spiral. That's God's penalty. The rest of the story will just read it is a sad, sad ending, this drastic consequence. Then Saul said to Samuel, I've sinned. Now what we're going to read in the next few verses sounds good to a certain extent. But what I want you to listen for is listen for the motives. Saul's going to use the right words, but basically Saul is going to have a self-serving confession. It's going to be purely to appease Samuel and to save face among the people. It's not genuine. It's not real. Because you'll notice, as we go through here, all he's concerned about is appeasing Samuel and looking good in the eyes of the people. Saul said to Samuel, I've sinned. I've violated the Lord's command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men. And so I gave into them. Again, he brings up that excuse still trying to shift the blame. 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 of Israel. As Samuel turned to leave, saw a hole to the hymn 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. Verse 30, Saul replied, I've 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 worshipped the Lord. Now from what we know happens after this, we know that this is not genuine. He's using the right words, but it's not genuine. You can read between the lines and see, all he's concerned about is somehow appeasing Samuel so that Samuel will not turn his back on him and looking good in the eyes of people to save face with the people of Israel. Please just come out and so and honor me before the elders. I don't want to lose face before them. It's very self manipulative. There's no indication of true contrition, sorrow for sin. There's no indication of repentance. And I think one of the reasons why Samuel did go back was to do what he did next, verse 32. Then Samuel said, bring me a gag king of the Amalekites. A gag came in to him and changed and he thought surely the bitterance of death has passed. But Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so will your mother be childless among women, and Samuel put a gag to death before the Lord at Gilgal. Now here's the tragic ending of the story. Then Samuel left for Rama but saw him up to his home and give him a saw until the day Samuel died. He did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him and the Lord regretted or again was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel. One of the most tragic stories in all the old testament, one of the saddest stories in all the Old Testament. But one that we can certainly learn from, whatever God commands, he expects us to obey. When we do not obey, when we choose a disobedient course, when we pick and choose what sins we will readily put to death or deal with, but what sins we will consider respectable and not deal with, then really we're on a disobedient course. And when that happens, quite often there's a daring cover-up on our part, little white lies to shade the truth, shifting a blame to someone else or something else, and even putting a spiritual twist on it until we face the drastic consequences of being shelved by the Lord. And God says, okay, it's done, it's done, you will not be used anymore. Sad, but it can happen to any of us. They God help us to understand that what God wants in one word is obedience, obedience. Let's pray together. Father, you know that in our hearts and lives there are areas where we are not fully obedient to you. There are areas where we cover up, we blame others for our actions, for our words. Father, convict us deeply about how much we are like Saul. We ask that you will do that. We ask that we will respond not with a saving-of-face kind of bland, I have sinned, but with a true repentance and contrition. A willingness to deal with even the respectable sins in our hearts and lives and our attitudes so that we may be more fully people of obedience to you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.