So we're going to be reading
today 1 Samuel chapter 15, and we'll read from verse one. I
was a little inclined to read the whole chapter, but it is
long, so what I'm going to do is read down to verse 23, and
I will leave you to read the rest of the chapter at your leisure
another time. But we'll read from 1 Samuel
chapter 15 and verse one. Samuel also said unto Saul, The
Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over
Israel. Now therefore hearken thou unto
the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of
hosts. I remember that which Amalek
did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way when he came
up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and
utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but
slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel
and ass.' And Saul gathered the people together and numbered
them in Telahim, 200,000 footmen and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to a city of Amalek,
and laid wait in the valley. And Saul said unto the Canaites,
Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I
destroy you with them. For ye showed kindness to all
the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt. So the
Canaites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul smote
the Amalekites from Havilah until thou comest to Shur that is over
against Egypt. And he took Agag the king of
the Amalekites alive and utterly destroyed all the people with
the edge of the sword. But Saul And the people spared
Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings,
and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy
them, but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed
utterly. Then came the word of the Lord
unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to
be king, for he has turned back from following me, and hath not
performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel, and he
cried unto the Lord all night. And when Samuel rose early to
meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul
came to Carmel, and behold, he set him up a place, and is gone
about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. And Samuel came
to Saul, and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord,
I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said,
What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and
the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have
brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best
of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord thy
God, and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel said unto
Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me
this night. And he said unto him, Say on. And Samuel said, When thou wast
little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the
tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel? And the Lord sent thee on a journey,
and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites,
and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then
didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon
the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul
said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord,
and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought
Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil,
sheep and oxen, the chief of the things, which should have
been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, Hath 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 hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion
is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity
and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the
word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I have skipped a few chapters,
which some of you perhaps have realised. I've skipped a few
chapters which contain some accounts of Saul's conflicts and successes
against Israel's enemies around about. Israel, as you may remember,
wanted a king who would lead them into battle. and they got
what they asked for. Saul and his son Jonathan got
them some victories, and we can read about them in the previous
few chapters. But we also read there that Saul
acted foolishly. He took upon himself to make
sacrifices to God, which he ought to have left to Samuel. He made vows before God which
he could not keep. And while he showed himself to
be a strong man in some ways, he showed himself to be foolish
and self-important and indeed weak in other ways. And at the beginning of chapter
15 that we read here today, the Lord instructs Saul to do an
important task. Indeed, it seems to be a task
which was waiting for God. a long, long time until a king
would be appointed in Israel. And so Saul, as it were, was
fulfilling the role of king and God had waited many, many years,
indeed centuries, in order for that king to lead his people
into battle with Amalek or the Amalekites. and God instructs
Saul to go and destroy God's sworn enemies, the Amalekites. Now, fighting seems to have been
what Saul was good at, but when he got victory, he became proud
and he became disobedient to God's command. God had told Saul
that he was to utterly destroy Amalek. because of the way that
Amalek had treated Israel in the past. And we read that together
in verse three. It really is quite an emphatic
command that the Lord gives. He says, go and smite Amalek
and utterly destroy all that they have. and spare them not,
but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep,
camel and ass." Now this seems very drastic to our ears, but
Amalek was an existential threat to Israel. we might think of
it as them or us. Amalek so hated Israel that if
Israel did not destroy Amalek, Amalek would someday destroy
Israel. And in fact, they nearly did. If you read the book of Esther,
you discover that Haman was of this nation, the Amalekites,
and he nearly did destroy all the Jews that lived in the mighty
empire of Amalek. Persia. But in the Bible, Amalek
is a picture of sin, of sin that grows and festers like an infection
until it kills the body. And Saul was told to bring judgment
and to completely remove the source of Israel's trouble, but
he didn't do it. He kept the Amalekite king Agag
for a prize and he allowed the best of the cattle to be preserved. He disobeyed the word of the
Lord. And now Samuel's task is to tell
Saul that his sin will cost him the throne of Israel. Saul had
rejected God or rejected God's command and now God had rejected
Saul as king. Now that deposing of Saul did not happen
immediately. He still continued king for some
time yet. But what this does mean is that
Saul now knew that his line would not be the royal line. His family, he and his family
would be cut off and another would take his place. And this
happened when David became the king of Israel and came to the
throne, but more about that on another day. I want us just to
think about a couple of things here in this chapter. How do
we read and how do we explain such passages as the total destruction
of a nation? Men and women and boys and girls. It seems such an intense and
almost cruel thing to do. Well, let me say this. At one
level, we do not need to explain what God has told us to do. God's word is not to be debated. It's not to be reasoned about. It's not even to be explained
when it comes to us as a command. It is to be obeyed. Because God
knows what we do not know. And the Lord had sworn to have
war with Amalek. He had sworn to have it from
generation to generation. And this is what I mean when
I say that Amalek is a picture of sin. This sin that is in the
world is typified by Amalek and the way in which sin encroaches
in the lives of God's people, there is always a battle from
generation to generation that goes on between the holiness
of God and the sin that is in the world. This battle that continues
in the lives of God's people. The Lord referred back to the
time when Israel was coming out of Egypt, and the Amalekites,
who lived in that southern part of the wilderness, waited until
the children of Israel had passed, when they didn't have any real
strength, they didn't have any real organisation except for
that leadership that Moses gave them, and Amalek assaulted and
slew the weak and the vulnerable and, as it were, the Lord's little
ones. It was now 400 years later and
the Lord still held that Amalek should pay for their sins. Now
was the time of judgment. Now the time of vengeance from
God had come. The iniquity of Amalek was full
and it would be tolerated no more. Saul had a job to do and
that was to act as God's hand of judgment. And I think there's
a lesson here for us as well. A lesson for the Lord's people.
God has promised vengeance on all those who touch and who harm
his people and he says that he will repay every offence that
is enacted against his people. He will reward in kind every
hurt that is perpetrated against those whom he loves. and we may
be sure of it. Sometimes we look around and
it may seem as though Christ's enemies are prospering and that
the wicked people in this world seem to get away scot-free, seem
to get away without having to pay for their crimes. They act
in brutal ways, in vicious ways. They act, it appears, with impunity. and then they seem to be able
to enjoy the fruit of their vicious ways. It was 400 years later
before the Lord brought this judgment on Amalek and there
will be a day of reckoning. We do not see the future but
God knows that there will be a time of accountability, there
will be a time of judgment and he knows how severe it will be. Sin must be punished. and it
must be totally wiped out of our lives. There's no alternative. And the scriptures show us that. The Lord in his holiness will
not tolerate sin. And every little sin that remains
in our lives will simply grow up again. We might try and pull
it out. We might try to get rid of it
like weeds in a garden. but sooner or later it will grow
back and it will grow bigger and it will grow stronger. Sooner
or later, sin will destroy us. So how are we to rid ourselves
of sin? How are we to get sin out of
our lives? How is that possible? Well, some
people try to do good works, but good works cannot remove
sin. Some people try to suppress bad
thoughts, but that won't remove sin either. Some people like Saul did in
our passage here, they tried to explain it away. that it was
done for good motives or they tried to blame others like Saul
did. He said, oh the people brought
these animals, they hoped to sacrifice them to the Lord. I
think Saul was making that up as he went along. God knows the hearts of men and
women and boys and girls and God will not be mocked. In fact, in and by ourselves,
we are helpless to remove sin from our lives, no matter what
we try to do. God has to do it for us. Our sin has to be taken away. Our sin has to be laid upon a
substitute. It has to be laid on the Lord
Jesus Christ in order to be carried by him. Only the Saviour can
deal with our sin and that is why I tell you so often about
the Lord Jesus Christ and I tell you so often about the freedom
from sin and the freedom from judgment and the freedom from
guilt that he alone can bring to sinners like you and me. Amalek's crime incurred God's
wrath and Saul's disobedience brought God's judgment, and your
sins and mine have also earned God's wrath and judgment. The Lord Jesus told his disciples,
I tell you, this is Jesus speaking, I tell you, except ye repent
ye shall all likewise perish. Except ye repent, except ye repent
to the Lord, except you say sorry, except you tell the Lord that
you are sorry for your sins and ask for his forgiveness and ask
for that cleansing that comes only from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then to quote Paul, the wages of sin is death. but the apostle
goes on to tell us that there is hope. But the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And that's
the gospel. That's the message that we need
to hear. That's the message that we need
to believe. Let me ask another thing because
there's something else interesting in this chapter. We're told that
the Lord repented. that he made Saul king. What
of this repenting? What of this statement of God
repenting for Saul's appointment as king? Does this mean that
God made a mistake in appointing Saul king or that he changed
his mind? No, that's not how we are to
read this. The Lord does not make mistakes. God does not change. In fact, the Lord says, I am
the Lord, I change not. He doesn't change, he's the same
yesterday, today and forever, nor does he change his mind.
When we read such language in the Bible, it's phrased like
this in order to reflect our natural way of thinking. The difference between us and
God is that he knows the future and we do not. He knows the end
from the beginning and all his will and all his purposes and
all his plans must be done. And though God himself does not
change, he may nevertheless alter the way in which he is dealing
with a particular situation. So that the Lord at one time
may be patient as he was with Amalek for 400 years and then
he changes his way of doing things and he brings judgement and that
was true also with Saul. God placed him in that position
until Saul showed that he was a disobedient man and then God
changed his dealings with Saul. The Lord does not regret doing
anything, but by acting in this way, the Lord allows us to discover
the effects of man's folly. We get to see the disappointment
of man's failures and foolishness, despite all the goodness of God
and despite all of the blessings that he gives to someone like
Saul, raising him up, giving him so much in this life, and
yet Saul could not obey the commandments that the Lord gave. And there
was no second chance for Saul. There was no mercy granted. His
remorse, as we read it in the end of this chapter, appears
to have been insincere and his apologies were not accepted. And Samuel, despite grieving
for him and praying for him, did not gain a reprieve for the
disobedient king. Samuel, we learn right at the
end of the chapter, visited the king no more with words of advice
or messages from the Lord. What a sad state Samuel had,
I'm sorry, what a sad state Saul had reached. Samuel couldn't
help Saul anymore. The Lord had rejected him. but
here's the message of hope for you and me. The Lord Jesus Christ
can still help you and can still help me in our sin. whether we are young or whether
we are old, we can keep coming to the Lord Jesus for forgiveness
of sin and for help in our daily lives. In the Lord Jesus there
is mercy with God and today you and I can experience mercy when
we come to the Lord Jesus, when we look in faith to the great
work of The Lord Jesus on the cross. We can come for cleansing
and for forgiveness of our sin. May the Lord give us grace, the
grace that we need to turn to him. May he give us such help
as will allow us to confess our need and trust in the Saviour's
power to take our sins away. and then there will be mercy.
Then we shall find peace for our souls. Then we'll know the
love of the Lord and the blessings of his grace. So may the sad
case of Saul be a lesson to each one of us. Amen.