Obedience to God

I don't know about you. I am a person that is a bit of a stickler for the rules when it comes to flying. I, yeah, like I said, I don't know about you, but I'm not one of those guys who makes sure that my seat belt is connected all the way when taxiing in to the terminal. I'm the person that never turns a phone on when I walk into the airport until I'm in the airport.

I'm the person that doesn't get up and move around when they tell me to stay down and keep the seat belt on. But have you ever been in a flight where this is just not adhered to? Last year, I had a flight to a particular destination. I won't tell you what that destination is for fear of stereotyping.

But I saw a phenomenon which I thought was quite funny. I think partly my obedience on a plane is part of a cultural conditioning as a person having been told to do all these sorts of things because that will make it a better flight for everyone. But in this particular flight, I saw people from all sorts of various backgrounds doing what they saw fit. And it was hilarious. People were getting up at the wrong times.

There was turbulence and everyone said they had to go and sit down, and people were standing and talking and having a right old good chat. People were talking on their phones during the middle of takeoff and landing. And obviously the stewards could do nothing about this because they were all buckled in. All they could do is give really bad glares at people, you know?

Kids running up and down the aisles. It was just absolute chaos. And it made me think, it made me question my obedience to these rules. I mean, the plane arrived safely, no one died, and we didn't crash into the ocean. Why do some passengers feel compelled to obey these rules and why did other passengers not feel compelled to obey the rules?

Perhaps you've asked this for yourself. Perhaps even when it comes to our own Christian life, you've wondered about a particular command, a particular law that we've received from God and questioned, just quietly perhaps, why would God require that of me? Surely it wouldn't be a problem if I did this or just did that. Perhaps if I can just be flexible in this area. Perhaps that's you.

I know that's been my experience. I've done that in the past. Now this morning, we're going to look at a moment in One Samuel where the issue of obedience to God's will is highlighted and where there are some real consequences that happen as a result of disobedience. And we'll see we'll look at the issues of why we fail to obey God in the first place and what should motivate us to obey Him? Or what should motivate us to live according to the way that God wants us to live? So we're going to have a look at One Samuel 15, if you have your bibles with you.

One Samuel 15, and we're going to read the whole chapter because we really need to understand the entire context here. It's a story of King Saul, the very first king of the Israelite nation. One Samuel 15, verse 1. Samuel, who's a prophet, said to Saul, I'm the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over His people Israel. So listen now to the message from the Lord.

This is what the Lord Almighty says. I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them. Put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men from Judah. Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. Then he said to the Kenites, go away. Leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them, for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.

Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur to the east of Egypt. He took Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But 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. Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel.

I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from Me and has not carried out My instructions. Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the Lord all that night. Early in the morning, Samuel got up and went to meet Saul. But he was told Saul has gone to Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honour and has turned and gone down to Gilgal.

When Samuel reached him, Saul said, the Lord bless you. I have carried out the Lord's instructions. But Samuel said, what then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear? Saul answered, the soldiers brought them from the Amalekites.

They spared the best of the sheep and the cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest. Stop, Samuel said to Saul. Let me tell you what the Lord has said to me last night. Tell me, Saul replied. Samuel said, although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel?

The Lord anointed you king over Israel, and He sent you on a mission saying, go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites. Make war on them until you have wiped them out. Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord? But I did obey the law, Saul said.

I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag, their king. The soldiers took the sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal. But Samuel replied, does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is like the sin of divination and arrogance like the evil of adultery. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as king. Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned. I violated the Lord's command and your instructions. I was afraid of the people, and so I gave in to them.

Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me so that I may worship the Lord. But Samuel said to him, I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel. As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe and it tore. Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbours, to one better than you.

He who is the glory of Israel does not lie or change His mind, for He is not a man that He should change His mind. Saul replied, I have sinned, but please honour me before the elders of my people and before Israel. Come back with me so that I may worship the Lord your God. So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshipped the Lord. Then Samuel said, bring me Agag, king of the Amalekites.

Agag came to him confidently thinking surely the bitterness of death is past. But Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so your mother will be childless among women. And Samuel put Agag to death before the Lord at Gilgal. Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him, and the Lord was grieved that He had made Saul king over Israel.

So far our reading. And it's a long chapter, but we need to understand exactly what happened here. We see a commandment come to Saul, king of the Israelites. A man, a prophet named Samuel, comes to Saul and gives him these words. Verse 2.

This is what the Lord Almighty says. I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Go and attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them. Put to death all of them.

Men, women, children, infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. When we read this, the first thing we think is, that's a bit harsh, isn't it? That's a bit harsh. Why would God command something like this?

And admittedly, many non-Christians, many people that wrestle with Christianity, have said to me, I can't worship a God who commands the killing of an entire people group. And it's something that I, in my limited understanding as well, wrestle with. But there is a very real story, a very real history behind this command, and I think we should know about that first. Firstly, the Amalekites were descendants of a man called Amalek. Wow.

That's amazing. He was the grandson of Esau in Genesis 36, verse 12. When the Israelites came up from their slavery in Egypt, when the Israelites came up, escaped that, they came through the country of the Amalekites. And remember, Esau was the brother of the nation of Israel.

And so they were like blood relatives. When they came up through the promised land, the Amalekites made a cowardly attack on the Israelites. As this nation, this group of, say, about a million came through, the Amalekites attacked the column of all these people and killed all the weak and the frail and the young in the back of this column. They didn't attack Israel from the front, but sort of came around them and attacked all the weak and the young. It's like if you watch National Geographic, a lion taking out one of the baby antelopes.

That's just not fast enough to keep up. That's defenceless. And so this is what the Amalekites did. And from that time onwards, as God Himself prophesied regarding the descendants of Esau, the Amalekites became ongoing enemies of Israel. They became ongoing enemies of Israel.

So why did God command then this destruction of this warrior nation? Well, firstly, God knew what the Amalekites would seek to do to His people in the future. God prophesied that this would be a nation that would continually be at war with Israel. But the second thing we know is that God always repays sin. God always repays sin.

And whether it is in this life or in the next, sin, murder, destruction has to be dealt with. God makes this explicit in Deuteronomy 7, verse 9. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God. He is a faithful God keeping His promises of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commands. And we read something similar in Exodus 20.

But those who hate Him, He will repay to their face by destruction. He will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate Him. So after the nation of Israel was given their commander in chief, King Saul, who was the first king, who was the one that united all these tribes for the first time, God said, now Israel will be the vehicle through which their sin will be accounted for. And that's the command that Saul receives here in verse 2. Destroy it all, just as they cut down your defenceless women and children and killed your infants, which is alluded to in this passage as well.

Now you are to do that to them. But the question is, what gives God the right to expect this of Saul? What gives God the right to expect obedience from Saul? And by extension, why should we be obedient to what God tells us or what God's will is for our lives? Well, basically, God is, we believe, our Master.

God is our King. At the beginning of the chapter in verse 1, we see the prophet Samuel come to Saul and said this basically, Saul, it was God who made you who you are. It was God who made you king over Israel. Because of this fact, because you are who you are, without your own efforts, listen and obey what I tell you. You did not become king by your own actions.

You did not become king by your own political strategising. You became king because I willed it. You became king because God, who is your true King, made it so. And for us, friends, the same is true. Just as God did not make Saul king of Israel because of his own merits, can we claim we are anything without the grace and the goodness of God?

In fact, we can only be talking about God in this way. We can only be sitting here in this very spot, in this very moment today. We can only call God Father today because He has made it possible. He has made it possible. The apostle Paul in Ephesians 2 makes it clear that we were dead in our sin.

We were dead in the water. Of our own accord, we were helpless and vulnerable, but because of God and what He has done for us, we were made alive. We were resurrected. Ephesians 2, verse 8 says, this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God. In One Corinthians 6:19, the apostle Paul goes further and adds, you are not your own.

You were bought at a price. You don't belong to yourself. You don't belong to your wife. You don't belong to your family. You don't belong to your boss.

You are not your own. You were bought at a price, and I paid that price. Therefore, Paul says, honour God with your body. In other words, God has complete right to expect obedience from us for His will, for His commands, to honour Him and to respect Him. Because we are not our own masters, we are not autonomous, and while we have been given free will before Christ, we would always, 100% of the time, make the bad decisions, make the worst decisions, and forfeit our free will and become slaves to sin.

And so we don't belong to ourselves nor do we belong to Satan anymore, which is great news, but we belong to God who has become our King, who has become our Master. At the turn of the twentieth century, so last century, a theologian by the name of Peter T. Forsyth, who was a liberal theologian at one point, who denied miracles, who denied any supernatural things in the Bible, a liberal theologian who didn't believe in the divinity of Christ and so on, who later became a Christian as he, I guess, developed in his faith. He lived in a wealthy England at that time, the beginning of the twentieth century, very opulent, fancy place, very much like our own actually today. Before World War One and the atrocities of the trenches, before the great depression, he wrote this about obedience to God. He said the first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom, but its Master.

The duty of every soul is to find not its freedom, but its Master. You are not your own. You have been bought at a price. Before you were bought at a price, you were not your own because you were sold as slaves to sin. You belonged to Satan.

You were never your own. And so Samuel the prophet comes to Saul and says, Saul, you are not king of your own accord. You weren't placed here to make your own decisions and to choose and pick whatever you want to happen. Saul, listen to what God, your King, is telling you. God has a right to expect our obedience.

But now we see what a heart and a mind can do that forgets. That forgets. Saul disobeys God. Instead of carrying out God's commands to the letter, Saul picks and chooses what works and leaves out the parts that he doesn't like. We see that he shows mercy to the Kenites, and this is not a problem.

The Kenites were a smaller minority group that lived alongside or among the Amalekites, but they were kind to Israel. They were good. They were gracious. They didn't attack them like the Amalekites did. So Saul says to them, guys, get out of here.

This is about to go down. You wanna be out of here. So they move on. He shows mercy to them. But then we also see that Saul's obedience only goes to a certain point where it perhaps made sense to him and where he thought, well, God might be satisfied with my attempt.

God might be satisfied with how far I go with this. Saul figured that it was unreasonable to destroy the good livestock. It says there. It was fine to destroy the weak and the frail and the ones that, you know, the land that only had, like, one and a half or three and a half legs or something like that, you know?

Everything else that was good was kept. Saul also assumed that God wouldn't mind if he spared Agag, the Amalekite king, to keep as a trophy or to keep as a bartering tool or to ransom off to a family or something like that. Now it's really easy to try and vindicate Saul in this situation. We can think, well, he almost did everything. I mean, that was a huge mission.

He almost did everything. It was like 0.5% he didn't do. But I think the truth of the matter is this, that for God, partial obedience is no obedience at all. Partial obedience is no obedience at all. Saul never completed the task that God gave him to do.

What it came down to is an attitude many of us have from time to time. And this is why it is relevant for us to look at it. I know better. I know better. For Saul, the healthy looking sheep and the cattle could feed his people.

They could make him a very wealthy and powerful man. In fact, he later tries to wrangle it that we took these sheep so we could slaughter and sacrifice them to you. Capturing Agag could mean that he asserted his dominance, his political power over the region, give him leverage with the other nations. Perhaps it meant that any remaining Amalekites would be forced to become vassals of Israel, become a nation that would pay them taxes and royalties, keeping him hostage. It seemed like a waste to stick to what God had originally said.

I know better. And so God sent Samuel to Saul to confront him about this. Samuel says to Saul, so great. You can just imagine this. What is this bleating of sheep in my ear?

What is this lowing of cattle that I hear? The evidence of Saul's disobedience is everywhere. Saul is sitting amongst the cattle and the sheep. There's no hiding it. But Saul attempts to do what is very common when caught red-handed in our sin.

Saul answers, firstly, God bless you. You know, fantastic. Great to see you. But then he also goes on when he's confronted by this and says, well, it was the soldiers that did it. He doesn't say it was me.

It was the soldiers even though earlier in the chapter, it says that Saul made the decision. Saul blames the soldiers. They spared the best of the sheep and the cattle, and they did it to sacrifice to the Lord your God. What happens? Well, Saul tries to shift the blame, and we saw that with Adam and Eve.

Remember when God caught them out? The woman you gave me, Adam says, forced me to eat this fruit. And Eve says, this snake that you've created has forced me to do this. Saul says it's the soldiers' fault. It was done for a noble purpose as well to sacrifice to the Lord your God, Samuel.

You should be proud of us for doing such a nice thing. But this is a great flaw in our logic. It's a great flaw in our thinking when it comes to obeying God. We, in fact, idolise our logic and our rationalism by placing it above the will of God. Samuel said to Saul in verse 23, rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Isn't that interesting? Why go to a spiritual metaphor when referring to disobedience? Well, because rebellion and self-will is basically the worship of self. It is placing one's own self and will ahead of God, and we deceive ourselves into thinking that with our limited understanding, we know all the possible outcomes of what the situation holds, and therefore we can choose and pick what is the best approach. We think we know better and therefore we can choose to obey God even in the simplest things, and we can rationalise or shift the blame.

That sounds very out there. Let me bring it home. Don't steal. We read that in Exodus. Don't steal.

But I can download music illegally because everyone else is doing it. Don't commit adultery. Don't go into something that is only meant to be for a man and a woman in a committed relationship in marriage. But if I do everything with my girlfriends besides having sex, I'm okay. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, but some areas in my life I wanna keep away from God so that I can indulge in that.

Give all your life over to God, everything in it, but this is mine. We deceive ourselves into disobedience or even partial disobedience which boils down to the same thing. And we think we know better. So having come to realise, therefore, this old nature that is still waging at war in our lives, it's still there, how do we conquer it? And I think, thankfully, although Saul never got there, I don't think, we still see it in One Samuel.

We see what the real motivator for obedience is or should be. The most meaningful and lasting motivation to overcome disobedience in our lives, in our Christian walk, is to view it in terms of a relationship with God. When Saul did the wrong thing, God spoke to Samuel in verse 10. And you can just hear the emotion in these words. God says to Samuel, I am grieved that I made Saul king.

I am grieved. This is an emotional word. Another older English translation of King James says that I regret. It's an emotional word.

It's not an objective pronouncement of guilt from a judge sitting on his, you know, pulpit or on his throne or whatever and saying that is guilty, it's a heart of a Father that is breaking. This was in fact not the first time that Saul had done this, and this is the amazing thing. This seems harsh, but this is the second chance that Saul was given. In chapter 13, Saul disobeyed God's simple instructions and again had taken matters into his own hands and sacrificed offerings, which was only meant to have been done by Samuel. And God said to him, don't do it.

And getting impatient, Saul went ahead and sacrificed what was only meant to have been sacrificed by Samuel. But God gives Saul this second chance to repent and remain faithful. But again, Saul turns away from God, and God, the Bible says, was grieved. God was grieved. And He wasn't grieved simply for Saul, although He was.

He was grieved for the entire Israel. Because what it meant was Saul was the example. It was meant to be the shining light of what a relationship with God looks like. That is why later, He chose David, a man after His own heart, to be king. And we have these beautiful psalms written by David that shows the intimacy he shared with God.

And this was the example that the king was meant to be. God was grieved for Saul, but He was grieved for Israel that lost an example of what a relationship with God is meant to look like. Saul grieved God's heart. The most meaningful and lasting motivation to overcome disobedience in our lives is not to think, oh, I shouldn't have done that. I am gonna feel really guilty about that in the morning.

I shouldn't have done that because now my self esteem is going to be shot. I shouldn't have done that because what will others think of me? Because these motivations never bring lasting change. These motivations never really correct us because it boils down to a works-based righteousness and something that the Bible over and over again highlights as dangerous and useless. Tim Keller writes this, and it's a great quote.

Write it down. Remember it. Legalistic remorse says, I broke God's rules. Legalistic remorse says, I broke God's rules, while real repentance says, I broke God's heart. You can see the difference.

I broke the rules. I broke the objective, you know, poster on the wall with the 10 commandments. Real Christian repentance is I broke God's heart. The most lasting motivation to overcome disobedience in our lives is to remember that our obedience is a relational thing, and it affects the God who loves us like a Father. He is King.

That's true. He is Lord and Master. That is true. He is Judge of all the earth. That is true.

But we know Him, and we love Him as Father. That's why Samuel asked this point question to Saul in verse 22. Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Or to put it in a special context today, does a dad's heart delight in a Father's Day breakfast as much as children who love him? You see, our obedience is intricately tied with our love.

And the difference between Saul and David, I believe, came down to this, love and affection. Saul knew God. Saul believed in God. Saul knew that God was powerful and so forth, but he failed to love God and therefore failed to be motivated to obedience. It's fascinating that the Bible puts disobedience and rebellion against God's will within a supernatural religious context.

Rebellion is like the sin of divination, of tarot card readings, of seances, dealing with the spirits. Arrogance is like the evil of idolatry, but it makes perfect sense. A religion or a spirituality takes up our thoughts and our emotions. Disobedience is not simply a slip up. It's a breaking of a relationship.

In the moment we sin, our thoughts are not with God. In the moment we sin, our thoughts are not what God wants in this situation. We're not even thinking about Him. We don't hear God's voice in that moment because otherwise, we wouldn't do it. We listen to other voices, to other reasoning, and so it becomes a rejection of God.

It becomes a worship of something else. We say basically through our actions, thanks God, but I don't need you. The only way, and we see this time and again through scripture, to be motivated to obedience is a heart that loves God and is distraught at the idea of breaking His heart. This love in our hearts comes to us, however, in a magnificent way. It can't be forced, but it's bestowed.

This love cannot be manufactured, but is reborn. You can't buy it because it is given freely. The only thing that will ever make you and I obedient is the news of what Jesus Christ has come to do. Titus 2:11-12 says this, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and to worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and holy lives in this present age.

Friends, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared in the message of Jesus. His life, which was perfectly lived, obedient to the will of God the Father, was offered as a sacrifice in our place. And while God may grieve at our disobedience and our faults, His heartbreak really happened on that day where Jesus hung on the cross. Where our sin and our rebellion and our idolatry, and our divination was laid on Jesus. Why?

Because of His love. If we understand the enormity of that love, how can we not be moved to love ourselves? If we hear that message of grace, why would we choose to be unfaithful to God? No. The grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodliness, no to worldly passions, no to the way we used to do things, and to live controlled, upright, and godly lives.

God has a right to expect our obedience. Disobedience comes from thinking we know better, but our obedience comes from a grateful heart moved by God's love. Let's pray. Father, forgive us for the disobedience in our hearts. Lord, it is so easy to look in the speck of someone else's eye and forget the plank in our own.

But it is so easy to be self-righteous, to compare ourselves, to justify, to rationalise, to even say things like I did this to worship you, to glorify you, God. But meanwhile, our sin is around us, like the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle. It is not something we can hide or ignore. Father, this morning, ask that you will create in us new hearts, hearts that love you and minds that are renewed to understand and reflect. And when we make poor decisions, where we decide to do things in our own strength, in our own understanding, knowing it directly goes against your will.

Father, remind us and convict us through your Spirit. But we don't want to go down that path. We don't wanna break your heart, Lord. Help us to know your heart, to love you more so that everything else will fall off us, will fade away. Our selfishness, our self-absorption, our self-will, our self-regulation, Father, that that may be turned to obedience to your perfect and holy will.

Like the psalmist writes, Lord, your word is like honey. It is sweet. Help us believe that, Lord. Help us understand that and give us the strength to stand in that conviction. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.