1 Samuel 15:1-35: Saul Rejected as King

1 Samuel 15:1-35: Saul Rejected as King

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 1 Samuel, and today the next passage we come to is 1 Samuel 15:1-35, so I’ll be reading a selection of verses from that passage. Hear now the words of the Living and True God:

¹ And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. ² Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. ³ 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.’ ” ⁴ So Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand men on foot, and ten thousand men of Judah. ⁵ And Saul came to the city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley…. ⁷ And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. ⁸ And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. ⁹ But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. ¹⁰ The word of the Lord came to Samuel: ¹¹ “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night. ¹² And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told Samuel, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.” ¹³ And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” ¹⁴ And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” ¹⁵ Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.”… ¹⁷ And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. ¹⁸ And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ ¹⁹ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” ²⁰ And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. ²¹ But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” ²² And Samuel said, “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. ²³ For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.”…

May God bless the reading of his Word.

 Let’s pray: Father, we pray according to Isaiah 55 that as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so would your word be this morning—that it would not return to you empty but would accomplish that which you purpose and succeed in the thing for which you send it. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

When I was a child, one of the things my parents would make me do that I didn’t usually desire to do was eat my vegetables. Perhaps some of you can relate to that. The rule in our house was that I’d have to sit at the table until I finished all my food—which included eating the generous helping of vegetables that was typically on my plate. And those vegetables and I frequently did not get along with each other. So, like many children, I tried to find creative ways of making my vegetables disappear without actually eating them.

Now, at first, I’d just throw my vegetables into the kitchen trash can when my parents weren’t looking. But, as I soon discovered, that wasn’t really the best idea because, more often than not, my parents would see the vegetables in the trash can and I’d get in trouble. So, I then started placing my vegetables further down into the trash can or even wrapping them in a napkin or several napkins and putting that ball of vegetables down into the trash can. But, unfortunately, it turned out that my parents were actually pretty smart people, and it wasn’t long before they caught on to what I was doing.

So, eventually, I figured out that the best way to make my vegetables disappear was to remove them from the house entirely. So, I’d wrap up the vegetables in a few napkins, stuff them in my pocket, and then nonchalantly walk out to the back porch, remove the vegetables from the napkins, and throw them as far as I could from the porch into the field behind our house, where there was plenty of very tall grass. And that’s how I became quite skilled in making my vegetables disappear. 

Now, I could argue that my creative methods for making my vegetables disappear weren’t all that bad since I was being at least partially obedient to what my parents told me to do. They told me to eat my vegetables, and I usually ate some of them—at least, while my parents were still at the table. But, of course, I think it’s evident to just about all of us that my partial obedience was, in fact, disobedience.

And as we see in our main passage this morning of 1 Samuel 15, that principle extends far beyond the dinner table. Partial obedience is disobedience. And Saul ends up learning that lesson the hard way. This passage records the story of Saul being rejected as king because of his disobedience to God. That’s the main idea of this passage. Saul is rejected as king because of his disobedience.

And as we go through this passage, not only will we be challenged to address ways in which our own obedience to the Lord is often lacking, we’ll also consider how our entire mentality toward obedience is often backwards and in need of a massive overhaul. In other words, we’ll see that we need to not only become more obedient but also that the way many of us approach obedience and the mentality we have toward obedience in the first place needs to be radically altered.

So, let’s begin by looking at verses 1-3: ¹ And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. ² Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. ³ 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.’ ”

Now, I think the initial reaction that just about all of us have when we read what God tells Saul to do in these verses is to wonder, how in the world could God command something like this? It’s extremely perplexing and, for many of us, downright disturbing.

Yet the more we learn about the situation, the more we’re able to at least begin to understand why God would tell Saul to this. In verse 2, God states, “I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt.” This is a reference to Exodus 17, in which the Amalekites—without any provocation whatsoever—attack Israel while Israel is still in its infancy as a nation. At that point, the Israelites hadn’t even entered the Promised Land yet but were still wandering around in the desert. Not only that, the Israelites were in a particularly desperate situation because they lacked water. So, it was while the Israelites were in that situation of desperation and extreme vulnerability that the Amalekites attacked them. The intention of the Amalekites was clearly to wipe the Israelites out of existence. 

The Amalekites then continued to demonstrate this desire by attacking the Israelites on several additional occasions over the next few hundred years—repeatedly seeking to eradicate God’s people. And not only were the Amalekites an existential threat to the nation of Israel, they were also an existential threat to God’s plan for one day bringing salvation to the world through the promised Messiah—since that plan depended on Israel’s continued existence. In other words, if the Amalekites were allowed to have their way, Jesus would have never been born into this world, and there would be no way for any of us to be saved from our sins. So, when you get right down to it, that’s what was at stake in Israel’s struggle against the Amalekites—nothing less than the salvation of the world. 

Of course, at this point, someone might ask why God commanded Saul in verse 3 to kill not only the men and women of the Amalekites but also the children. And the answer is that God—in his infinite knowledge—knew that every generation of the Amalekites would have hostile intentions toward Israel. It was in their blood, so to speak. God knew that those children would one day grow up and seek to eliminate Israel just like their parents had. So, that’s why he commands Saul to put the children to death as well.

For example, imagine that someone invented a time machine that enabled us to travel back in time and intervene in history. Now, knowing what you know now about the atrocities Adolf Hitler committed, how would you feel about someone traveling back in time and killing Adolf Hitler before he had a chance to do all of the horrible things he did? Personally, I wouldn’t be opposed to that. And that’s essentially what God was doing in commanding Saul to kill every last one of the Amalekites.

You might also compare it to removing cancer. If there’s cancer in your body, it’s necessary to eliminate that cancer before it spreads and is able to kill you. It’s not enough to just remove some of the cancer. If you want to live, you have to remove all of the cancer. Likewise, the Amalekites were functioning like a spiritual cancer of sorts and therefore needed to be eradicated. So, that’s why we can still view God as good and righteousness even as he commands Saul to “devote to destruction” the Amalekites. Although God’s command may still be shocking and even disturbing for us to think about, it doesn’t violate his righteous nature. In fact, God’s judgment on the Amalekites is an expression of his righteous nature toward a profoundly wicked people.

We then read in verses 4-6 about Saul mobilizing an army of 200,000 Israelites to attack the Amalekites in response to God’s command. Verses 7-9 then tell us: ⁷ And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. ⁸ And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. ⁹ But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.

So, Saul doesn’t do what God had instructed him to do. God had explicitly told Saul in verse 3, “Do not spare them.” Yet what does Saul do? Verse 9 states that “Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good.” Of course, Saul did do as God commanded with everything else, but—as we already established earlier—partial obedience is disobedience.

And that becomes painfully clear in the subsequent verses. Look at verse 12: And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told Samuel, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.” Isn’t it amazing how disconnected from reality someone can be? Even though Saul has just done something that’s about to result in God rejecting him as king, Saul thinks so highly of himself and is so pleased with what he’s just accomplished that he actually sets up a monument for himself.

Verse 13 then tells us, And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” You know, as I read this, I can’t help but wonder whether Saul might have actually believed what he says here. Was he really so lacking in self-awareness and disconnected from reality that he actually thought he had kept God’s command?

It kind of reminds me of when you tell a young child to clean their room, and they spend several minutes putting a few items where they belong and shoving everything else under their bed. And then, when you ask them if they’ve cleaned their room, they’re like, “Yeah, I cleaned my room!” But then you go in there and very quickly discover everything they’ve shoved under their bed and all the other things they haven’t even touched. And you wonder, could this child actually be so ignorant of what it means to clean their room that they somehow thought this qualifies as a clean room?

Similarly, that’s what I can’t help but wonder about Saul in this verse. Can he really be so disconnected from reality that he thinks he’s followed God’s command even though it’s so obvious that he hasn’t? If so, that just goes to show how deceitful sin can be. As one commentator has written, “The very sinfulness that leads to disobedience often blinds the sinner to the reality of his or her disobedience.” So, be very careful that your sinfulness doesn’t blind you to the reality of your sinfulness. That’s why we need the Word of God to show us our sin, Spirit of God to convict us of our sin, and the people of God to lovingly bring our sin to our attention whenever we seem to be oblivious to it.

The story then continues in verses 14-15: ¹⁴ And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” ¹⁵ Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” 

So, Saul makes two excuses for his disobedience. First, he tries to shift the blame from himself to “the people.” He states that “the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen.” Yet, if you go back to verse 9, you can see that Saul’s claim is blatantly untrue. Verse 9 was very specific in telling us that “Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen….” In fact, the verb “spared” in that verse is actually singular in the original Hebrew language. According to one linguistic scholar, this indicates “that Saul is the principal actor and the troops only accessories.”

In addition, returning to verse 15, not only does Saul try to shift the blame for his disobedience, he also tries to justify his disobedience by claiming that their intention in sparing the best of the sheep and oxen was to sacrifice them to the Lord. Wow, what noble intentions they have, right? Yet, even if they did intend to sacrifice the animals, that would still be disobedience. God had told them not to spare the animals so that they could be offered as sacrifices in the future but rather to devote them all to destruction.

Yet, even though it might be relatively easy for us to identify how misguided Saul’s excuses are in this verse, let’s not forget how often we ourselves are tempted to respond to our sin the way Saul does. Instead of repenting of our sin, how often do we try to blame others for our sin—such as our parents for what they did or failed to do during our childhood or perhaps our boss or coworkers for how frustrating they are or maybe our spouse for not being sensitive or supportive enough. And how often do we, like Saul, try to come up with a justification for our sin in order to avoid having to repent of it?

In addition, it’s also not uncommon for people today to claim to follow God but to try to do so on their own terms—just as Saul does in this passage. Even though they claim to be Christians, in reality, they pretty much make up their own rules for how they’ll live. Instead of following God’s instructions, they follow their own desires and intuitions.

John MacArthur hits the nail on the head when he states that “We live in an age of personal autonomy where the highest virtue seems to be doing what feels right in your own eyes.” Our society not only tolerates but actually celebrates personal autonomy. It celebrates people living on their own terms. And it’s not uncommon for people to do that even while they, at times, profess to be Christians.

You might compare their approach to God’s commands to way we approach a buffet. When you go to a buffet, you only put the kinds of food onto your plate that you desire to eat. You take some of what’s offered at the buffet and pass over the rest—picking and choosing which foods you’ll eat. And that’s the way a lot of people approach the Bible. They obey the commands they feel like obeying and just kind of ignore all of the other commands. And that’s essentially what Saul does in this passage. He obeys the part of God’s command that he desires to obey but conveniently disregards the rest.

Samuel then calls Saul out for his disobedience in the subsequent verses. He says to Saul in verses 18-19, ¹⁸ And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ ¹⁹ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” That’s a really good question.

Verses 20-21 then tell us, ²⁰ And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. ²¹ But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” So, Saul again repeats the same two excuses he mentioned earlier. 

But, of course, Samuel’s not having it and spells it out for Saul in verses 22-23: ²² And Samuel said, “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. ²³ For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.”

After that, the rest of the verses in the chapter record Saul finally admitting his sin and taking at least some responsibility for it but, at the same time, trying his best to escape the consequences. As you might expect, though, he’s not particularly successful in doing that. Samuel has to tell Saul two additional times that God has rejected him as king.

By the way, you may remember from chapter 13 that God had pronounced a similar judgment on Saul for another instance of disobedience. That judgment is best interpreted as a rejection of Saul’s dynasty, whereas here God’s rejecting Saul himself as king. In other words, God had previously informed Saul that his descendants wouldn’t inherit the throne, but here God tells Saul that he himself will be removed from the throne.

And as we look at what Samuel says to Saul here in verses 22-23, I believe the core component of Samuel’s rebuke is his statement that “to obey is better than sacrifice.” Think about that as it relates to our own lives—“to obey is better than sacrifice.” God doesn’t want our worship if there’s an area of our lives that we’re willfully holding back from him. He doesn’t care about our religious rituals such as attending church or having a personal devotional time if we’re knowingly engaging in disobedience to him. Religious involvement is no substitute for personal holiness.  

You know, it sometimes seems like people think they can negotiate with God or work out some sort of compromise with God that’ll allow them to quietly tolerate certain sins in their lives as long as they’re faithful in other areas. Yet that’s not the way things work. It’s not like we can indulge in a certain secret sin that we’re particularly attached to and then compensate for it by doing enough religious things. For example, you might compare it to my desire to eat sugary foods. I have a major sweet tooth and love all kinds of sugary treats and desserts. So, in order to compensate for that, I run a few miles each morning. And so far, that seems to be working out okay for me—at least, when it comes to not gaining weight. But that’s not the way things work when it comes to obeying God. You can’t compensate for sinful indulgences by doing enough religious things.

I think Hudson Taylor said it well when he stated that “Christ is either Lord of all or He is not Lord at all.” Again, “Christ is either Lord of all or He is not Lord at all.” Don’t think that you can call Jesus your “Lord” and yet withhold from him a certain area of our life.

I heard it compared one time to a person giving Jesus access to every room in their house except for one room—a room that was kept locked and that Jesus, in a manner of speaking, wasn’t given access to. That’s not what lordship means. Jesus being the Lord of your life means that there’s not a single room that off limits to him. It means you give him full access and full control over every aspect of your life. That includes our relationships, our words, our schedules, our finances, our careers, our entertainment choices, our friendships, our thoughts, and the way we spend every moment of every day. Again, “Christ is either Lord of all or He is not Lord at all.”

The Apostle Paul expresses the mentality we should have especially well in Romans 14:8, where he writes, “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” Is that the mentality you have? Can you honestly say that the totality of your life is lived “to the Lord” and that you have the mentality that you “are the Lord’s”—that is, that you belong completely to him? That’s the only kind of lordship there is. In our main passage, Saul apparently thought there was a such thing as partial lordship—as evidenced by his partial obedience. Yet he was sadly mistaken, because the only kind of lordship that exists is total lordship.

So, I encourage you to take stock of your life and ask yourself two questions. First, is there any sin God’s calling me to forsake? And second, is there any step of obedience God’s calling me to take? Again, negatively speaking, is there any sin God’s calling me to forsake? And positively speaking, is there any step of obedience God’s calling me to take? Then, after that, obviously, it’s necessary to respond in an appropriate way to whatever the Holy Spirit brings to your mind and do whatever he leads you to do.

Yet, ultimately, the reality is that we all fall lamentably short of perfect obedience. Every one of us is guilty of deviating from the way God’s instructed us to live and living our way instead of God’s way. Of course, we don’t typically like to spend very much time thinking about those shortcomings in our lives. Just as Saul confidently declared to Samuel in verse 13, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord,” we also like to view ourselves as basically good people. However, God sees our hearts and knows us even better than we know ourselves. And he says in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We can’t help but fall short of God’s glorious standard of perfect righteousness.

Thankfully, though, God’s revealed himself in the Bible not only as Lord but also as Savior. The Bible describes how God saw our wretched condition of being enslaved to our sinful desires and condemned to eternal punishment. So, in his mercy, God the Father sent his own Son Jesus to come to this world on a rescue mission to save us. Jesus did this by entering this world as a man, living a life of perfect obedience, and then voluntarily dying on the cross in order to pay the penalty for our disobedience. Essentially, God the Father’s wrath was poured out on Jesus so it wouldn’t have to be poured out on us. Unlike Saul, who failed to execute the full sentence of judgment on the Amalekites, God poured out the full measure of his judgment and wrath on Jesus instead of pouring it out on us. Jesus drank what the Bible refers to as the cup of God’s wrath until there wasn’t a drop left.

Then, three days later, Jesus was raised from the dead and eventually ascended into heaven, where he now sits at the Father’s right hand. And again, this is in stark contrast to what we’ve read about Saul. Whereas Saul failed his tests of obedience time and time again—culminating in the failure we’ve read about today that resulted in him being rejected as king—Jesus was perfectly obedient and was therefore not rejected as king but rather was exalted as king. We read in Philippians 2:8-11, ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

As a result, Jesus now stands ready to save everyone who puts their trust in him. This means renouncing not only all of the ways in which we’ve been disobedient but also all of our notions of being able to earn God’s favor through our own moral accomplishments or religious involvement. And it then means putting our total confidence in Jesus alone as our only way of becoming right with God and inheriting eternal life.

And when we do that, we’re able to exhibit what we might call an entirely new kind of obedience to God. You see, when God saves us, he performs a spiritual heart transplant, removing our old sinful heart and replacing it with a heart that loves him. God also sends the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. As a result, instead obeying merely in certain aspects of our external conduct, we’re now able to be obedient from the heart. And instead of obeying in a misguided attempt to merit God’s favor, we obey simply because we love God and are so grateful to God for saving us.

It's similar to the way a husband spends time with his life and perhaps takes her out on a date not because he has to but because he wants to. He takes her to dinner not out of duty or obligation but instead out of love and desire—because when you love someone, you naturally desire to do certain things for them. 

And that’s the heart behind true obedience to God. True obedience is about a lot more than external conformity to God’s moral standards in an attempt to earn his favor. Instead, it’s about loving God and living as he tells us to live as an overflow and a manifestation of our love for him. In John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” That’s how it works. It’s our love for Jesus that makes us desire to obey him. I’ve heard obedience referred to before as “love in action.” That’s what our obedience is supposed to be—“love in action.” So, for the Christian, obedience isn’t merely our duty—it’s our delight. We obey not merely because we have to but because we want to.

One noted theologian has said that “The essence of Christian theology is grace, and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” In other words, the way we’re saved isn’t by earning anything but rather by trusting God’s grace in Jesus—so “the essence of Christian theology is grace.” And then after we’re saved, our motive for obeying God, again, isn’t one of trying to earn anything but simply a motive of gratitude. So, “the essence of Christian theology is grace, and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.”