I Samuel 15:1-23

Israel’s Great King

Travis Yonkman

Glory – what is glory? It is the ever fleeting dream so many chase with all their might. In different forms and in many different ways we chase glory as a carrot dangling in front of our eyes, ever out of reach. At times we might just grasp it, but then in the next moment it is gone and the chase begins once again. Our passage today revolves around this concept of chasing glory. Israel erred greatly by seeking their own glory. Saul erred greatly by seeking his own glory. All this because they took their eyes off of the true source of their glory. The message, then, of our text is that where Saul failed, Christ prevails, where Saul failed Christ prevails.

Our story begins well before what we read in chapter 15. God had delivered Israel from Egypt by performing many incredible miracles: He turned the Nile into blood, rained down great hail storms from heaven, sent plagues of boils, caused darkness to fall over the land, and killed off every first born Egyptian! In all these ways, the Lord showed Israel that He is God. The glorious acts of the Lord will protect His people. Now, after hundreds and hundreds of years of slavery under Pharaoh and after wandering in the desert for a generation, God delivered Israel into the promised land. Finally, Israel did not have to be ruled by the harsh hand of Pharaoh – Israel was the Lord’s. They were free to accept an absolutely priceless gift– they were free to be ruled by the Lord. He would be their glory, rule over them and protect them and they would be a reflection of the heavenly kingdom. What an incredible blessing!

Yet let me ask you, what happens to you when things are good? Do you continue to work hard? Do you continue to constantly, remember all of the good things you have? Unfortunately, when things get good in life, our sinful hearts still want more. It did not take long for Israel to get comfortable. Their minds began to wander from the Lord who had done them such good, their minds drifted. The glory of having the Lord as their ruler no longer satisfied them. Now that they were a people with their own land, they desired that they have a king over them, like other nations. They thought, as many of us often do, that the grass is greener on the other side. Israel, just as we often do, wanted to be like the world even when they had far better gifts in the Lord. They forgot all that the Lord had done for them, and as first Sam. 8:20 says, they wanted a king “to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles,” as though the Lord could not do that better than any man! The Israelites asked the Lord their king if He might consider standing down, letting a human take the position. The Lord warns them sternly of the consequences of making such a terrible decision, as a loving Father to his child who wants to do something that will hurt the child. In I Sam. 8:11-17 He warns them that if He gives them a king as they desire, the king will take their sons and daughters as his own, he will take the best of their fields, houses, and all of their possessions by force and give them to his servants, and he will take them themselves to be his own slaves. Even after such a warning, Israel wants the glory of the world so badly that they agree. For reasons only the Lord knows, He let them have their wish – he gave them someone in whom they could glory, Saul the Benjamite, a head taller than any other man.

This is where our passage picks up. In verse one Samuel reminds Saul that the Lord anointed him as king over His people – Saul is king over God’s people! But has God really relinquished His power to Saul over His people? No, God is still calling the shots, as we see in verses 2 and 3 when God tells Saul what Saul is going to do with the Israelites.

I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

Saul, even though king, cannot say to God, “hey, I’m the ruler here!” All he can do is try to obey.

Now Saul has his orders: the Amelekites must pay for “opposing” or “waylaying” Israel in the desert. This is no random act of violence on behalf of God – the Amalekites had treated Israel wickedly by actually attacking Israel in the desert as we see in Exodus 17:8. Deut. 25:18 paints the picture for us when it says, “When you were weary and worn out, they (the Amalekites) met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God.” Not only had the Amalekites struck and killed others who were weak, they struck and killed God’s people when they were weak! They had no fear of God, no fear that He would avenge His people! The glory of the Lord will not be spit upon. Now God is exacting retribution against those who slaughtered His children, His chosen people.

All Saul has to do is follow the command of the Lord to totally destroy the Amalekites. This is not a very difficult command to understand, but just in case the message is not crystal clear, God elaborates: kill the cattle, the sheep, the camels and the donkeys; kill every man, woman, child and infant (literally every infant and yonaqe, or one suckling). Even the smallest and youngest of the babies must be put to death, devoted to destruction. Simply put, God says, “Saul, you must utterly destroy them. Leave nothing breathing and everything smoldering.”

Now, is God acting wickedly? Is God decreeing something sinful, commanding his people to do something evil? How can God demand that a whole nation be destroyed, even the youngest of the young? Such a thought as the total destruction of a nation seems terrible, heinous, wicked – how can God command such complete annihilation?

God is exacting justice upon the Amalekites. We know that the Amalekites sinned grievously by striking down the Israelites in the desert, but there is even more than that going on here. God is not merely exacting justice for killing the Israelites (PAUSE) He is condemning the Amalekites as sinners. The Amalakites, like all people, are sinful, sinful from conception as the Psalmist says in Ps. 51:5. God Himself says in Gen. 8:21 that "every inclination of a person's heart is sinful from childhood." Yet even more than this, we are not only condemned because of our own sinfulness, but also because of Adam's sinfulness. Paul says in Romans 5:19 that by the disobedience of one man, Adam, all were made sinners. Adam was our federal head, that is, the one who represented all of humanity before God. As our representative, once he sinned he broke the terms of the covenant of works which God had made with humanity. As a result of Adam's sin, every human afterwards, as we read in Ephesians 2:3, is by nature an object of God's wrath. The only reason that we are not all destroyed immediately for our sins is because of the grace of God. God, in His mercy, allows us sinners to live and not be immediately judged so that we might turn to Him. This is called common grace. The Amalekites were no exception to all of this - they too were by nature objects of God's wrath who were not destroyed because of God's grace. However, in our passage God decides to no longer give them His common grace. He decides to bring them to judgment immediately. This is the same thing that will happen in the final judgment of all people, of you and me - God will remove His common grace and call all peoples to immediate judgment. The total destruction of the Amalekites foreshadows the judgment that will come upon all sinners.

Yet even though everyone deserves God's justice, there is a way that a person can be freed from the debt that he or she owes to God - through faith in Christ who has paid our penalty for us. This sort of freedom is symbolized here by the what happens to the Kenites. The Kenites, just like the Amalekites and all others, were sinful from birth, deserving total destruction. Yet unlike the Amalekites, they had shown great kindness to Israel in the desert, literally, they showed hhesed to Israel in the desert, a word that describes steadfast love and covenantal faithfulness. The Kenites, who also deserved judgment, can sigh a sigh of relief. They are saved because they were identified with Israel, God’s people, just as you and I escape judgment only by identifying ourselves with Christ. Here before us in the Amalekites and the Kenites is the stark contrast between heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, eternal life or complete destruction: all deserve judgment, but those who are identified by their faith in the Lord will be saved.

Then, finally in verse 7 the battle cry is sounded and Israel attacks! We read that “Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to the east of Egypt.” This might not sound very intense, but this is the way that the Bible describes all of the action in these few words. It does not depict the every twitch of every muscle as stories we hear today. Rather, it says that Israel drove them from Havilah to Shur. Shur is approximately 100 miles East of Amalak on Shur's Eastern most border and then you have Egypt way over in the West, and just before Egypt lies Shur. The point is that Israel was absolutely crushing the Amalekites, driving them back over 100 miles out of their own land! It wasn’t even a battle. Saul and his men were more than able to utterly destroy them. The Amalekites had fled from their city and were in Israel’s hands.

…Then we come to verse 8. “Saul took Agag king of the Amalekites alive.” …the problems begin. In verse 9 and 10 we read, “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.” While at first Saul's action might seem unbelievably sinful, like something you would never do, think about the situation again. First, imagine that you are king, able to do anything you want to do. Then, imagine that you just took over an entire civilization. Everything in this civilization stands before your eyes, the best that the civilization produced is right there. Why not add to the glory of your kingdom? Why not increase in wealth and riches? After all, you are king - you can do whatever you want? Saul took all the goods.

(shaking head) God is grieved. Literally, He repents of having made Saul king. This is not because He didn’t know what would happen – He was not surprised. No, the author is describing God and depicting God’s hatred for sin. God is still pained by sin. He is not happy with it, as though He sits in heaven smiling when we sin. No. The Lord is grieved by the action of Saul.

Samuel, God’s faithful servant, also realizes the great magnitude of Saul’s sin. Samuel gets up early in the morning to go and confront Saul, but he can't find Saul – where is he? He cannot find Saul because he is away erecting a monument in honor of himself! Imagine being Samuel at this point. You had just been up all night crying out to God because of Saul's great sin, and still you arise early to find Saul, and what has Saul done? He has gone out to heap glory upon himself by setting up a monument to himself! Finally, when Samuel reaches Saul at Gilgal, how does Saul greet him? “LORD bless you! I have carried out the LORD's instructions.” Right, Saul is just doing the Lord’s bidding! Immediately Samuel rebukes him, “Really, you carried out the Lord’s instructions…? Then what is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?” Immediately Saul knows his error and tries to pass the blame. 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.” In other words, “you see, the soldiers are the ones who disobeyed, but we totally destroyed the rest.” Saul, as so many of us often do, tries to get out of the blame but still take the credit for the good that was done.

Samuel immediately sees right through Saul’s lies and yells out, “STOP!!! Just stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night!” “The Lord recalled how you were once small in your own eyes, from the tribe of Benjamin, the smallest of the tribes, and yet He picked you and anointed you as king over all Israel. You have your glory because of Him. And what have you done? You, in your vanity, have forgotten the Lord who gave you your glory.”

Saul, still trying to save himself, replies, “But, but, but…I did do what the Lord demanded!” He knows that he did not fully obey the Lord, but he still tries to get out of trouble. He goes on to list only the things that he did right, trying cleverly to highlight the good and look past the bad. “I obeyed, I went on a mission from the Lord, I destroyed the Amalikites...(then in verse 21)… They took the spoils.” Saul was obedient, but only partially obedient. While Saul’s defensive actions might at first seem obviously wrong, don’t we often do the same thing? We know the good that we should do, and yet we do only some of that good and then try and explain to others why we should still be rewarded for doing only part of what we should have done.

Samuel sees right through Saul, and as we will see, so does the Lord. Samuel says in verse 22, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” What is sacrifice without obedience? Disobedience. True obedience is not merely doing some of what God commands - true obedience is doing everything that God commands! Saul’s rebellion “is like the sin of divination,” for just as divination seeks some sort of knowledge or power outside of God, so did Saul. Further, his rebellion is “like the evil of idolatry,” for Saul did not seek the glory of the Lord, but his eyes grew big and he coveted that which he should have destroyed. Because of Saul’s failure to serve Him and His failure to properly lead God’s people, Samuel announces the Lord’s sentence upon Saul: “Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” (slowly) Saul…has…failed.

THE TRANSITION

So we see that the Lord rejects Saul as king, yet what do we make of this story? Is this simply a fairy tale, a story told for entertainment or told to teach us morality, “Don’t be like Saul.” It is so much more than that.

As Christians, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ has completely changed our lives. The way that we understand the world today is totally different, the way we understand the future is totally different, and even the way we understand the past is totally different. As Christians, we see that the Lord has ordered all of history for the coming of Christ. He is the most important historical event to happen to this earth. We are now in a position to better understand what the Lord was doing through the Old Testament. Prophecy that didn't make sense then now makes sense. Things that happened then are shown to have far greater significance than they did originally. In this way, the history of the Bible points forward to Christ and His coming. So it is with this story. This is not merely a cool story about how some king messed up in the past. While it may teach us the importance of obeying God, the history does much more than that: in our story the Lord points forward to a coming king, a king who will not seek His own glory, but a king who is fit for the position and who will lead God’s people, who is wise and noble, who will completely fulfill the judgment which the Lord demands. All of Saul's failures point forward to the need for a king who will not fail, the need for a perfect King, and that King is Christ Jesus.

CHRIST THE OBEDIENT KING

In all of the ways in which Saul failed as a king, Christ will reign perfectly. Saul was a selfish ruler, thinking first of himself as king over his people. Christ, on the other hand, loves His people so much that He sacrificed His own life by not only brutally dying upon the cross, but also by having the full wrath of God poured out upon Him for the sins of His people. He bore the immeasurable suffering which His people should have suffered. Saul sought his own glory, even setting up a monument to himself after the victory which the Lord commanded! Christ, on the other hand, sought not His own glory. Rather, He humbled Himself by stooping down and becoming a human even though He was God Almighty. Saul’s obedience to God was incomplete, and still he wanted to be in God’s good favor. Christ’s obedience to God was perfect, and yet Christ still was willing to be removed from God’s favor. Yet most of all, our passage points to Saul’s failure to exact judgment upon the sinful and completely annihilate the enemies of God. In this way, Saul was not able to fulfill the Lord’s command. He was not a king fit for the task. Yet where Saul failed, Christ most certainly will prevail.

Here it might be easy for us to remove ourselves from Saul, thinking, "Oh, what a terrible man he was! He was selfish, he sought his own glory, and he did not even obey the Lord's direct command!" However, saints of God, let us remember that we are no better than Saul. In fact, in most every way we are exactly like Saul. We are both sinful from birth. Both of us, by nature, seek to serve ourselves, to do that which makes us happy, to fulfill our own goals. We are not first inclined to think of others, to serve others or sacrifice something good for ourselves in order to do good for someone else. Our hearts are inlined to please number one (pointing to self), instead of the Lord God, the Creator of the universe.

How absolutely horrendous is it that we think first of our own selves? We are sinful people, deserving absolutley nothing but wrath since we have disobeyed God. Yet even that thought can become fearless in our minds, even the thought of the necessity of our own destruction can become no more scary than the thought of a small bunny rabbit because we have heard it so much. Maybe, then, we need to think about the consequences of sin from a different angle. Alright, it doesn't strike you very strongly when Scripture says that you deserve complete destruction because you are a sinner...but what about your family? What about your husband or your wife...what about your children? Even the smallest of your nieces and nephews, the youngest and most beloved that you know, each one of them deserves to be utterly destroyed for being sinful. If you can grasp the absolute terror of a seemingly innocent child dying, then you are better able to grasp the incredible horror of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who was completely blameless. Perfect, pure, in every way without blemish, the most loving man that you could ever know and the most selfless and giving man to ever walk the face of the earth - this man was completely destroyed, utterly crushed although He committed no crime. This is the a true act of injustice on God's behalf. If you want to blame God for something, blame Him for killing this innocent lamb. Jesus allowed Himself to suffer, the only one who did not deserve it, because of His love for His people. Jesus experienced in His death the destruction that we all deserved - He bore our wrath for us so that we can avoid it by placing our faith in Him. This is the power of the Old Testament concept of total destruction: for it is exactly this unjust total destruction that Christ Jesus willingly experienced out of love for us.

Now, Christ has been raised and He reigns already as King, seated at the right hand of God. Just as the placard on His cross read, He is indeed King of the Jews. He will return and judge the nations, those who hated and ignored Him. At that time “all of His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet,” as David says in Psalm 110 and Luke repeats in 20:43. At that time Christ will completely destroy all who have opposed God as a rider on a white horse with a double-edged sword coming out of His mouth as He is described in Revelation 19. He will fulfill the Lord’s decree as King; He will exact justice on those whom have sinned against the Lord and have not kept His covenant and He will welcome into His presence those whom have been declared righteous through faith in Him. He will leave none behind. He will not seek glory for Himself. He will not be distracted from His kingly function. He will complete that which Saul was incapable of doing: He will totally destroy the enemies of God with one clean swoop.

Israel erred by seeking their own glory. Saul erred by seeking His own glory. All this because they took their eyes off of the source of their true glory. Glory – what is glory? It is that ever present reality earned for us through the life, death, and resurrection of our perfect King, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Let us pray.