1 Samuel 15:11-23 It repents me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments… The story is graphic and pathetic. This is Saul's victory and also his defeat. Our defeats are often wrapped up in our victories. Some of our most dismal failures are hidden from us by the glare of a partial and disastrous success. Saul succeeded and failed. He conquered Agag, but disobeyed God. And so the glory of his victory is lost in the darkness of his defeat. A man may conquer the greatest of earth's kings, but his life is a consummate failure if he disobeys the King of kings. And so, instead of praising Saul's victory let us meditate on Saul's sin. His sin was the sin of disobedience, the sin by which our first parents fell. In Saul's defence of his sin we possess a study of conscience unsurpassed in the literature of the world. Samuel on hearing of Saul's disobedience goes to meet him. Saul is the first to speak. "Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord." Was he honest in saying this? he may have been. Other men have lied as outrageously and still believed themselves to be speaking the truth. The heart is deceitful above all things and is oftentimes unconscious of its own deceitfulness. To be sure he has preserved the life of Agag, but then imprisonment is a heavier punishment to a proud king than death itself. The people have been destroyed. This is the one thing essential. No danger can come from a king in chains. Saul has whittled down tire Divine commands a little, but only a little; and who is so foolish as to think that God will notice the swerving of a heir's breadth from what He commands? And reasoning thus we sometimes pare off the edges of God's commandments, blissfully unconscious that we are doing anything positively wrong. To be sure, we are not keeping God's commandment to the letter, but He does not expect us to keep it so. It is enough if we kill the Amalekites. There is no need of killing Agag. We take delight in slaying the Amalekites, but we are opposed to killing Agag. And later on we discover to our sorrow that Agag is the chief of the Amalekites and that ruin lurks in the survival of anything which God commands us to destroy Saving Agag costs many a child of God his crown. "I have performed the commandment of the Lord," so Saul says, and while he speaks his sentences are punctuated by the lowing of oxen and the bleating of sheep. A man's conscience may be so drugged that it will not cry out against him, but some outside voice is sure to break forth in condemnation. God never leaves Himself without a witness. And if the animals are dumb, then the inanimate earth will speak. Abel's blood will cry even from the ground. Saul had said nothing about the sheep, and so the sheep supplied what Saul had forgotten to mention. In their innocence they bleated out Seal's guilt. The universe is so constructed that a guilty man cannot hide his sin. You assert your innocence, and yet my senses take knowledge of the evidences of your guilt. You say you do not drink too much; what meaneth, then, this reddening of the eyes and trembling of the hand? You say your heart is clean; what meaneth then this rottenness that trickles now and then into your talk? You say you are an honest man; what meaneth then this style of living which runs beyond the limits of your income? You say you are a Christian; what mean these scores of duties unperformed, bleating evidences of your unfaithfulness? "And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites." Mark that word "they." We might have expected it. When a man is driven into a corner, the most convenient trapdoor through which he can make his escape is that little word "they." Conscience, when stirred, endeavours to shift responsibility. "They did it." So says every man not brave enough to face the consequences of his own misdeeds. Why do you not, O preacher, preach spiritual and Scriptural sermons? Do not begin your answer with, "Well, my people!" And why, O Christian man and woman, do you not inaugurate that reform which your town needs? Please do not say anything about the people. Let each man bear his own responsibility without flinching. But even those of us who are most ready to make a scapegoat of the people do not wish to be too hard on them. We would be merciful and considerate. We can see reasons why the people act as they do. "The people spared the best of the sheep." Only the best There was good reason for that. Why destroy the best of the sheep? Why cause unnecessary destruction? Extravagance certainly is not pleasing to God. We have used the same argument many a time We believe in saving the best of the sheep. We are so afraid of being reckless that we drop into disobedience. We would rather disobey God than kill one extra sheep. We are as afraid of killing good sheep as Judas was of wasting precious ointment and for the same reason. Many of God's commands sound reckless, and so we curb His Divine impetuosity by our prudence. We do not hesitate to kill the best sheep for our own banquets, but when it comes to killing them for God that is quite another matter. But the people in this case bad not preserved the sheep for selfish uses. They had kept them with lofty and beautiful intentions. "The people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God." To put these sheep to religious uses is certainly better than to slay them indiscriminately in the fury of war. God said to slay both ox and sheep, but it matters not to Him how they are slain. So Saul reasoned and so do we reason. There is a streak of the Jesuit in us all. If the end is good, we will not be too punctilious about the means. God cares for results. Methods are of comparative unimportance. The church must meet its expenses. It matters little how we raise the money, providing we raise it. It makes no difference how we get people to church, providing we get them. The Bible must be defended. It matters little what arguments are used, providing the blessed Book is saved. The sheep are to be slain. It matters little how or where they are slain, whether on the altar or on the side of one of God's hills. It must be acknowledged that God in His word lays tremendous emphasis on the How, but if we are only zealous to increase His glory we feel confident He will not scrutinise too closely our spirit and methods. This is Saul's apology. It gives us a full length portrait of the man. While he speaks we feel we are looking on a soul going to pieces, a moral character in the process of disintegration, a king degenerating into a slave. Every sentence which he speaks tarnishes the gold in his crown and falls like a blow upon his sceptre, which first shivers and tinnily breaks. It is the sacrifice of the will which is pleasing to God. Obedience is the queen of the virtues. Disobedience is the mother of sins. It is the vine, and other sins are only branches. Because of disobedience Saul lost his crown, and so shall we, if like him disobedient, lose the inheritance which is ours. (Charles E. Jefferson.) Parallel Verses KJV: It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night. |
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