READING: 1 Samuel 14:15-16:23, Luke 18:24-19:10
Saul may have been the king set apart by God, but he didn’t do what God commanded. God required him to attack the Amalekites and “destroy everything they have. Do not spare them. Kill men and women, infants and nursing babies, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys”(1 Sam. 15:23). The judgment on God’s enemies was a severe one, but Saul was nonetheless required to carry it out.
He did not, however. Instead, he spared Agag the king and then preserved the best of everything else (e.g., sheep, goats, and choice animals). Perhaps those steps made the most sense to Saul, but the call wasn’t his. He chose to defy God’s command and determine that his choice was apparently the best one, even claiming that his soldiers had saved the best animals to sacrifice to God. It was then that Samuel spoke these words to the king:
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.(1 Sam. 15:22-23)
I am most challenged not by the truth that God wants genuine obedience rather than offerings from unfaithful people, but by Samuel’s words that “rebellion is like the sin of divination,and defiance is like wickedness and idolatry.” One might, from a human perspective, conclude that Saul’s sin “wasn’t so bad.” After all, he had defeated the Amalekites, and he had been mostly obedient to God’s commands. God, though, reminded him that his sins of rebellion and defiance were the equivalent of “sins of divination” and “wickedness and idolatry”—comparisons that surely would have caught Saul’s attention.
Thus, I’m reminded today never to take my sin too lightly. Anytime I consider my sin “not too bad,” I’m asking for trouble.
PRAYER: “Help me, Lord, to see my sin like You see it. Always.”
TOMORROW’S READING: 1 Samuel 17-18, Luke 19:11-27
