Saul’s Fall: Setting Up a Rival Kingdom

1 Samuel 15:1-28

Main Idea: Saul falls into sin and has his kingdom stripped from him because he failed to serve the Lord alone but instead set up a rival kingdom against the true King.

1. The Command: Destroy the Amalekites
   1. God is a holy, good, and loving Creator.
   2. “Holy war” in the Bible is not “holy war” at all.
   3. Divine warfare is limited and non repeatable.
   4. Divine warfare is commanded by a merciful God.
   5. Divine warfare is not genocide or ethnic cleansing but the elimination of false worship.
   6. Justice is meted out communally in divine warfare.
2. The Battle: Saul’s Halfhearted “Obedience”
3. The Cover-up: Saul’s Stubborn Rebellion
4. The Fallout: The Beginning of the End of Saul’s Kingdom
5. The Anatomy of Disobedience
   1. Disobedience is anything less than full, immediate obedience.
   2. Disobedience grows out of greedy desire.
   3. Disobedience further estranges us from God, leading to increasingly irrational behavior.
   4. Disobedience can only be overcome by the gospel.
   5. Disobedience exposed creates a choice: self-deception or repentance.

Introduction

King Saul started off well. He was good-looking and physically fit. He was a great military leader. He was a prophet. He was popular among the people. Most importantly, he was chosen by God to be king over Israel. But it would not last. First Samuel 15 shows the beginning of Saul’s long and painful demise.

The Command: Destroy the Amalekites

Samuel told Saul, . . . “This is what the Lord of Hosts says: ‘I witnessed what the Amalekites did to the Israelites when they opposed them along the way as they were coming out of Egypt. Now go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have.’” (15:1-3)

The Amalekites were the perpetual enemies of Israel, and they were—to put it simply—some pretty bad people. The whole conflict between Israel and Amalek began when Israel was on their way out of Egypt and headed to the promised land. They were alone and defenseless in the wilderness, and the Amalekites raided them (Exod 17:8-16; Deut 25:17-19). God rescued the Israelites, but He never forgot the Amalekites’ treachery.

The Amalekite opposition was not a one-time event, either. Throughout Israel’s history the Amalekites were constantly provoking and pillaging Israel. They were renowned for their excessive violence and ruthlessness. So God finally declares, “Enough.” He gives Saul the command to wipe them out completely: “Do not spare them. Kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys” (1 Sam 15:3). The language here describes what people normally call “holy war.”

This was not a war of conquest but a war of justice. The goal of the attack was not to make Saul rich but to execute justice on a rebellious group of people. Saul was explicitly told to take no prisoners and to leave the wealth alone.

This is a disturbing concept for modern minds. Why in the world would God order something as brutal as this? A self-defensive war may be justified, perhaps, but total warfare? Why destroy the animals? the women? the children? For modern ears this sounds disturbingly like Islamic jihad.

It is impossible here to give a full treatment to the question of Old Testament warfare. Entire volumes have been filled—and more will be—addressing questions about God’s justice and war.^[8]We encourage readers to consult these sources.

Still, we cannot breeze through passages like these without at least considering the question: What is going on with the command for holy war? We will put forth six points for help as we think about preaching and teaching the text, though no doubt more needs to be said, and this simply does not answer everything (we do not pretend that it does!). However, these six points do provide guides to help us work through the concept of “holy war” in the Bible.

God Is a Holy, Good, and Loving Creator

This is neither the first nor the last picture of God in the Bible, as we saw from the introduction (pp. 22–27). The book of Samuel (including 1 Sam 15) fits into the larger story of Scripture. God created the world, and then humanity committed cosmic treason against their Creator. When we consider how we can begin to make sense of “holy wars” in the Bible, we must remember God’s redemptive plan. This overarching narrative should form the backdrop to any such investigation. The Bible, from creation to new creation, reveals a God who is holy, just, and good. As one scholar has said,

Old Testament “holy wars” can only be rightly understood within a story that reveals a God who is committed to eradicating sin and renewing his creation. This point seems so simple, and yet it remains so profound. “Holy wars” (whatever they may be) are not the only part of the story or even the most important part of the story. If we rip the troubling accounts of the Old Testament out of their broader creation–new creation context, then we may well distort their contents. (Thomas, “The Old Testament, ‘Holy War,’ and Christian Morality,” 22)

“Holy War” in the Bible Is Not “Holy War” at All

The term holy war was coined by a German scholar (Friedrich Schwally) early in the twentieth century to describe the wars found in the Bible that are similar to what we see in 1 Samuel 15. In his work he compared the wars of the Bible and Islamic jihad. No wonder he uses the language of holy war, but he is wrong on the comparison. Biblical warfare is not primarily about people going out to fight in the name of God but rather God going to fight on behalf of His people. Most scholars today do not use “holy war” to describe what we find in 1 Samuel 15. Rather, they use the language “divine warfare,” and we will follow suit in the remainder of this discussion.

Divine Warfare Is Limited and Non Repeatable

These wars were fought in a particular time in Israel and are neither to be repeated by the Church nor to be justified for any peoples in the present world. The Church cannot use texts like 1 Samuel 15 to ground their obedience to Jesus in the world today and go out and “kill the infidel.” Such an application baldly rebels against the clear teaching of Jesus.

Divine Warfare Is Commanded by a Merciful God

As we have seen, there comes a point where God says “Enough!” Sin has consequences, and God does not allow creation-destroying sin to go unchecked forever, as a quick read through the book of Revelation will make clear! God will go out and defeat evil because He is merciful to the plight of the suffering. Moreover, He does not act on a whim or out of an outburst of wrath. Rather, He has extended grace on grace, with each kindness refused. Finally, His justice toward sin will be revealed.

Divine Warfare Is Not Genocide or Ethnic Cleansing but the Elimination of False Worship

Divine war represents a focused attack on sinful and idolatrous religion rather than simply an attack on people (Deut 7:3-6; 12:2-3; compare Exod 34:12-13). To get at the religious heart of an ancient people, one had to engage more than their spiritual lives. The ancients refused to separate the realm of the “secular” from that of the “sacred” as we do today. Ancient peoples like Israel and Amalek saw their national identities bound up with three factors: their particular place, their particular god, and their particular people group. For example: the Moabites lived in the land southeast of the Jordan River and worshiped Chemosh. They believed Chemosh cared for the Moabites in that particular place. The Canaanites revered the god Baal, who governed them in the land of Canaan. The Israelites (obviously) worshiped Yahweh in the promised land. Divine warfare fundamentally breaks the bonds within ­deity-people-land. When the Amalekites were displaced and defeated, their gods were defeated and revealed as powerless and false.

In order for Yahweh to show the gods of the nations to be false, and in order to punish sin, a simple sermon would not do. Yahweh demonstrated His authority over gods and sin so the world would know that He alone is God.

Justice Is Meted Out Communally in Divine Warfare

As Westerners, we tend to think about justice individually. Every person stands before the court of law alone. But other peoples, especially from majority world countries in the East—like those represented here—think about justice communally. Against us, they would claim that a person never truly “stands alone.” Each person is always a part of a group, and the group lives and dies together. The ancient world saw things this way (see “Individual and Community” in the introduction, p. 15).

Both the individual and the communal concepts of justice contain an element of truth. We in the West probably need to be reminded of the communal aspects much more often. We are, in fact, inextricably united to our community. No one is ever just a lone individual. What we do affects others in our community, and what they do affects us.

It is not difficult to think of modern examples of this. When a child is born with fetal alcohol syndrome, it is not the fault of the child. That child did nothing different from the child born physically healthy. No, the child with fetal alcohol syndrome is suffering for the mistakes of her parents. The sins of our parents really do affect us, whether we find the idea objectionable or not.

This can work positively as well. Children are blessed by their parents’ obedience to God. Look, for instance, at verse 6. God singles out a group of people, the Kenites, and commands Saul not to touch them. They were to be preserved because their ancestors helped Israel when they were in need. The descendants are blessed by the righteous acts of their parents.

So the Eastern and majority worldview of justice, not to mention the ancient Near Eastern view, is right as far as it goes. We can never be separated from our community.

It is also true, however, that justice has an individual element. Everyone will ultimately stand before God’s throne individually, judged not for the sins of their fathers but for their own.

Eastern, ancient, and Western conceptions of justice reflect sides of complete justice. In a passage like this, when God delivers someone over to death because of the actions of another, one side of the equation is more prominent. We should not, however, skew the picture by assuming this is a normative pattern for exacting justice. This was a unique situation: no contemporary nation or individual hears from God as Saul does here. We can recognize that God was at work in a way that normally offends our sensibilities without prescribing that pattern for the world today.

Finally, we would like to reiterate that divine warfare is not an acceptable practice for the church today. The following words are instructive:

In Jesus’ teaching, which is a revitalization of the Old Testament law, the task of people of the Kingdom of God is to love their “enemies” (including enemy nations) and serve them with the good news of the Kingdom (Matthew 5:43-8, 28:18-20). The book of Ephesians powerfully teaches that because of God’s victory in Christ, the Christian wages war neither for land nor for a place in the world. The whole world sits under the authority of Christ (Matthew 28:18), and so the world is the Lord’s. Wherever a Christian lives in God’s world, he or she engages in a spiritual battle against the cosmic rulers that futilely wage war against God’s victory in Christ (Ephesians 5:1-9, 6:10-18). Christian “warfare” involves learning to rightly live in the triumph that God has provided in Christ and His Kingdom. This is not physical, militaristic action. This subversive instruction in Ephesians reveals that God’s Kingdom is and will be established not through coercion and/or domination but through self-sacrificial love, in the manner of Christ. (Thomas, “The Old Testament, ‘Holy War,’ and Christian Morality,” 25)

Nonetheless, divine war is in play in 1 Samuel 15, and so we need to unpack its meaning and significance. The main point to remember, though, as it relates to this passage, is that this was not a war of conquest. Saul was not to enrich himself and expand his empire. He was to be God’s instrument of justice and was therefore forbidden from growing rich off of the spoils of war. In fact, growing rich off the wealth of conquered nations was the grievance for which the Amalekites were being punished.

The Battle: Saul’s Halfhearted “Obedience”

Saul, then, goes to meet the Amalekites in battle and does what God commands—though not entirely.

Then Saul struck down the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is next to Egypt. He captured Agag king of Amalek alive, but he completely destroyed all the rest of the people with the sword. Saul and the troops spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, cattle, and choice animals, as well as the young rams and the best of everything else. They were not willing to destroy them, but they did destroy all the worthless and unwanted things. (vv. 7-9)

Modern readers might find God’s command to totally destroy the Amalekites harsh, but even we would admit that the command was clear. Yet here Saul refuses to utterly destroy what God explicitly told him to utterly destroy.

The verb in verse 9, “spared,” is singular in Hebrew (Owens, Analytical Key). This is nearly impossible to present in English translations, in which the singular and plural forms of this verb are identical. Thus “the people,” although explicitly mentioned, are not the subject of the sentence. The implication, then, is that although the people are involved in this disobedience, the main actor in view is Saul.

God, of course, was not unaware of this deviation, so He informs Samuel about Saul’s disobedience, going so far as to say that He “regrets” making Saul king (v. 11). This is a strange emotion to attribute to God, and the original language does not immediately resolve the tension. The Hebrew word used here is nacham, which is often translated “repent.” What does it mean for God to regret a past decision, or—even worse—to repent of something He has done?

There are theologians who, in attempting to take passages like this seriously, posit that there are some limits on God’s knowledge. Certainly He knows more than we do, but Saul seems to prove that even God can be caught off guard. This has been made popular through an entire school of thought known as “open theism,” which is based on the notion that the future is as open to God as it is to humanity.

As interesting as this position is, it hardly does justice to this text. When God uses language like “I regret,” He is speaking in terms we can understand. It means that He really feels the pain of our current circumstances but not that He is unaware of the future. A quick glance ahead to verse 29 should suffice to illustrate this: “The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret” (ESV). In one sense, then, God has regrets but certainly not in the same way humanity does. He feels sadness and regret for our sake when our decisions are harmful, but He most certainly does not share the pervasive human sentiment of wishing He could just go back and fix a past mistake.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you set about thinking deeply about God. He refuses to be reduced into neat categories that can be shelved in a person’s mind. He is not a topic to be mastered. He is the Lord who commands obedience, whose ways are never contradictory but are ever mysterious.

The Cover-up: Saul’s Stubborn Rebellion

God delivers the unsavory news to Samuel, who is rightfully angry. It moves him to cry out and pray all night long, and to go to Saul at the first chance he has—early the next morning. Samuel wants to get this confrontation over with.

When Samuel arrives, Saul is throwing his victory party, complete with dancing girls, beer kegs, and karaoke machines (or the ancient Israelite equivalent). Before he even arrives, word gets to Samuel that Saul has set up a monument in honor of his recent victory. Not only is Saul disregarding the clear command of God, but he is in the midst of recasting the entire battle to make it about him. Samuel is none too pleased.

When Samuel came to him, Saul said, “May the Lord bless you. I have carried out the Lord’s instructions.”

Samuel replied, “Then what is this sound of sheep and cattle I hear?” (vv. 13-14)

Do you see how ridiculous Saul’s claim is, how absurd he seems? The evidences of disobedience are literally all around him, making noises and filling the air with the smell of livestock. Yet he carries himself with the air of approval. “That’s right,” he says proudly, “I am faithfully following the Lord.”

We are not off of the hook here, either. Too many of us show up to worship services every weekend, thinking everything is just fine between us and God. We sing worship songs and tell everyone that we are right with God. Yet the evidence of disobedience is all around us: our spouse (or child or roommate or coworker) knows our hypocrisy. Do you realize how offensive that is to God—and how silly?

We all get caught in our sin—all of us. We are all hypocrites from time to time. But what we do next when the Holy Spirit confronts us is of life-or-death importance. At this point Saul still has an opening, a chance to choose a path toward repentance. But he hardens his heart, going further down a road that becomes harder and harder to return from.

Saul answered, “The troops brought them from the Amalekites and spared the best sheep and cattle in order to offer a sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we destroyed.” (v. 15)

Look at what Saul has done here. Recall that in verse 9 the verb for “spared” was in the singular because Saul was the one that spearheaded this endeavor. Now he decides to shift blame to the people. Not only that, but like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, he ultimately tries to pin this back on God. The people spared the best sheep to sacrifice to God! That must justify this, right?

Samuel, however, will have none of it. He stops Saul in the middle of his excuses and says, “Although you once considered yourself unimportant, have you not become the leader of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel” (v. 17). Samuel brings Saul back to the beginning, pointing out that Saul was nothing when God decided to give him an entire kingdom. He says, in essence, “God made you everything, Saul! Was that not enough for you? After all that God has given you, you feel like you need more than that?”

Saul is after a name for himself—his own kingdom, his own stature. That is why he spares Agag and keeps him prisoner. Refusing to kill Agag is not an act of mercy. No, having an enemy king in your prison is an enormous status boost. In those days conquering kings would frequently parade out all the kings they had captured—emaciated, in chains—as a sign to the world: “I am the conquering king. I am the king of kings.”

The Fallout: The Beginning of the End of Saul’s Kingdom

Samuel is not finished scolding Saul. Samuel sees through Saul’s revisionist history. Saul was not strong-armed into sparing some of the spoils; he pounced on them at the first opportunity he had. And when Saul responds that he did most of what God had asked, Samuel fires back: God is not nearly as thrilled with this token offering, Saul, as you might hope.

Then Samuel said: “Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.

“For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and defiance is like wickedness and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king.” (vv. 22-23)

The same could be said for many people sitting in our churches today. God is not fired up about people singing some songs, giving some of their money. What thrills God is a heart that obeys Him. What thrills God is a surrendered heart.

The alternative to full surrender is rebellion. Even 98-percent obedience is rebellion, and Samuel says that we might as well be worshiping Satan. That is a bold statement. Imagine that you went to someone’s house for dinner, and just as you were leaving, they said, “So glad you came tonight, but before you go, I want to invite you upstairs with me. I’ve got a pentagram and some candles spread out on the floor, and I thought we could have sex with some temple prostitutes, sacrifice a few goats, and generally just offer ourselves to Satan. Don’t worry, we’ll go to church on Sunday, like normal.” How would you react to that? With revulsion, of course. And that is precisely how God reacts to our half-hearted “obedience.”

Many people in our churches are giving 90-percent obedience, just like Saul, and are completely at peace with it. Some are cheating on their taxes or cheating on their school exams. Boyfriends and girlfriends are sleeping with one another under the excuse of being truly “in love.” Some people are holding on to bitterness, refusing to forgive someone they know they should forgive. Many have heard a call to ministry or missions but are actively refusing to answer. And all these seemingly small acts of disobedience are just as disgusting to God as blatant worship of the Devil.

This is difficult to believe, but there is a common denominator between any act of disobedience and Satan himself. Satan’s sin, after all, was telling God, “I want to do my own thing.” He demanded autonomy to circumvent those of God’s laws that he found offensive. When we follow in his footsteps by displaying the same attitude, we are declaring that he is our true lord.

Our conception of sin is so often warped, as if the important aspect is what you do. Sin, however, is not wicked because of what a person does but because of whose authority a person rejects. As Samuel says to Saul, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king” (v. 23).

Saul knows that something is amiss:

Saul answered Samuel, “I have sinned. I have transgressed the Lord’ s command and your words. Because I was afraid of the people, I obeyed them. Now therefore, please forgive my sin and return with me so I can worship the Lord.” (vv. 24-25)

On the surface this looks like repentance. We should pat Saul on the back and raise him up as a model for this . . . right? Unfortunately, what looks like repentance is actually a fraud. This is evident in two ways. First, for the rest of Saul’s life, he will repeat this same rebellious attitude. Repentance entails a change, but Saul never evinces one. Second, the phrase in verse 25 indicates that Saul is still thinking of the whole situation incorrectly. Saul wants to “worship the Lord,” and he is not thinking of singing some God songs together or washing someone else’s feet. Saul wants to have a national thanksgiving sacrifice on behalf of the victory. He wants a big ceremony.

The problem with this is that Samuel is the only one who can offer an official worship ceremony. If Samuel refuses, this will be a major loss of face for Saul. Sadly, this is what Saul is so worried about. His main concern is still how he looks in the eyes of the people. He is still concerned about his status.

Again, far too many people in our pews think along the same lines. Too many of us are more worried about being caught in our sin than about the flagrance of the offense before God. We would be embarrassed if our sin was exposed, but we completely ignore the fact that the person most offended, most involved—God Himself—sees and knows our sin completely.

Samuel replied to Saul, “I will not return with you. Because you rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.” When Samuel turned to go, Saul grabbed the hem of his robe, and it tore. Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingship of Israel away from you today and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you.” . . .

Samuel said, “Bring me Agag king of Amalek.”Agag came to him trembling, for he thought, “Certainly the bitterness of death has come.”

Samuel declared: As your sword has made women childless, so your mother will be childless among women. Then he hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord at Gilgal. (vv. 26-28,32-33)

You must admit: the Bible has some vivid screenwriting. Imagine Samuel turning to leave, when Saul grabs his robe. Rip! Samuel takes one look at his torn shirt and says, “God has torn the kingdom away from you, fool, and given it to a better neighbor of yours” (see vv. 27-28). That neighbor will turn out to be King David. David would not be a perfect king, but he knew how to repent; and he knew how to let repentance be about God’s kingdom, not his own.

But the cinematic spectacle does not end there. Samuel drags Agag before everyone, which does not seem to bother Agag in the least (v. 32 ESV, NIV). The scene is dripping with irony. Agag comes forward happily, thinking, “OK, I’ve killed people. You’ve killed people. I’m sure we can work out a deal. I know people with money, and no one has to walk away unhappy.” But Samuel picks up his sword and puts a bloody end to a bloody king. This is one of those gory passages people are often surprised to find in the pages of Scripture.

The Anatomy of Disobedience

Saul’s disobedience offers us a crash course. This passage reveals five truths about the anatomy of disobedience.

Disobedience Is Anything Less Than Full, Immediate Obedience

According to Samuel, witchcraft-level rebellion is seen in any partial, conditional, or delayed obedience. If Satanists are those who worship the Devil, practical Satanists are those who do not live fully under the authority of God. We must ask ourselves: Are there areas of our lives in which we are not obeying God fully?

Those of us who are religious are often tempted to cover over rebellion with rituals, to substitute ceremony for surrender. We disobey in one area and try to “make it up” to God with some offering in another area. So we refuse the call to missions, but we resolve to tithe heavily in our local church. Or we refuse to break off the relationship with an unbeliever but resolve to share Christ with them instead. Or we refuse to give our money to God’s mission, but we resolve to “tithe of our time.”

Religion tries to pay God off. But religious people labor under the delusion that they have the right to retain control of their lives. Religion wants to obey God but on its own terms—terms that mean partial, delayed, or conditional obedience. But all of those are just various forms of disobedience.

Disobedience Grows out of Greedy Desire

The heart of Saul’s disobedience is that he wants to be a famous king with world-class power. That is why he spares Agag, why he keeps the spoils, why he builds a monument to himself, and why, when Samuel confronts him, his only concern is how he will look in front of the people.

Everyone has a king, something he craves and must have to feel happy and secure. Personal recognition is Saul’s king. It fuels his rebellion.

Sin always grows out of some deep soul dissatisfaction, something we feel like we must have for a happy and secure life. The man who must have respect compromises his morals for the sake of his peers. The woman who must have romance will pursue it at the cost of every other relationship in her life, dissolving marriages and breaking promises to find new lovers and better thrills. The man who must have pleasure will pursue it in drugs or alcohol or pornography, even when it is damaging to his health. The woman who must have creature comforts will do everything she can to move into a larger house and will do everything possible to avoid living in that downtown area that God has laid on her heart.

In all these our real problem, like Saul’s, is that our soul is not content in its possession of God. Our idolatrous, greedy desire for other things fuels our disobedience. Until we depose these false kings and deal with our idolatry, we will never really be able to quit sinning and truly surrender to God.

Disobedience Further Estranges Us from God, Leading to Increasingly Irrational Behavior

This moment is a defining one in Saul’s life. From this point on he will plummet into an epic tailspin. Instead of repenting, Saul will harden himself further. In response the Spirit of God departs from him. The absence of God and His approval leaves Saul with an enormous void in his life, and jealousy virtually consumes him. The slightest criticism will send him into a violent rage. He will spend years of his life tracking David around in the wilderness, trying to kill a man who continually goes out of his way to honor him.

Saul’s touchy spirit serves as a warning to us. Are we not like that at times? Does criticism shake us, if not completely unsettle us? Does jealousy consume our thoughts? Does being compared unfavorably with others send us into despair? We may not be as far from Saul’s mania as we imagine. Selfish desire grows out of a feeling of separation from God; and the longer we persist in maintaining that separation, the more erratic and destructive our behavior will become.

Disobedience Can Only Be Overcome by the Gospel

Samuel reminds Saul that God made him a king when he had previously been a nobody. This is a beautiful Old Testament picture of the gospel. Saul should have responded in gratitude because of God’s amazing grace. He should have allowed the value of God’s gift to him to break the captivating power of sin over his life. But he hardened himself against God’s grace instead.

God has said something similar to us: “When you were a sinner, I came to earth and hung on a cross for you.” The God of the universe sacrificed Himself for us and loves us immeasurably. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, who promises goodness and mercy to us all the days of our lives. When we understand this, it liberates us from the driving need to be great. Knowing the value of God’s gift breaks us from the captivating power of sin over our lives.

The great news of the gospel is that Christ fulfilled obedience perfectly for us but then was given rejection and punishment at the end of His life. He did it in our place, suffering the penalty for Satan worshipers. He died the witch’s death so we could have the saint’s acceptance.

“To obey is better than sacrifice.” The author of Hebrews alludes to 1 Samuel 15:22, applying it to Jesus: He obeyed fully and then sacrificed Himself on top of that (Heb 10:5-10). His obedience earns our acceptance before God—the one person whose opinion matters more than any other—if we will receive it. And when we do, the power of disobedience in our lives is broken, setting us free from anxieties, dissatisfaction, insecurity, and fear.

Disobedience Exposed Creates a Choice: Self-Deception or Repentance

Saul succumbs to the temptation of following the wrong narrative. He constructs a narrative that excuses his sin—blaming others for his disobedience, attempting to make up for his mistakes with other sacrifices, and generally asserting that he is still a pretty good individual. The revisionist history flows out of Saul’s mouth so freely that it seems he believes the deceitful story he has crafted to dupe others. He is falling prey to his own web of lies.

When confronted with our sin, we all find ourselves in situations similar to Saul’s. Like Saul we may rationalize our disobedience and follow a nonbiblical narrative. We can try to blame others for our disobedience, make up for our mistakes by giving extra money to the church, or point out that at least we are not as bad as that guy. But this is a path without an exit. Once we begin to rationalize, we begin to spin the web of our own demise, deceiving ourselves until, like Samuel’s robe, our lives are torn in two.

God does not want our rationalizations; He wants our repentance. He does not want our sacrifices; He wants our submission. The choice has passed for Saul but not for us. The choice between self-deception and repentance, between death and life, stands before each of us, even today.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does this passage help you understand about God?
2. How does this passage of Scripture exalt Jesus?
3. Do you identify with Saul’s disobedience? Why or why not?
4. What aspects of the anatomy of disobedience described above resonate with you the most? Why?
5. In what ways do we cover up our disobedience?
6. Read 1 Samuel 15:22-23. What is God’s judgment against Saul?
7. Out of this same text, what does God really want from Saul? What does He want from us?
8. What does it do to your heart to know that our disobedience can only be overcome by the good news of Jesus?
9. Too often we think we can obey enough to gain God’s love. What does it do to your heart to know that God already loves us so much that He gave us Jesus?
10. What do you need to put away or give up as you say yes to Jesus?