Obedience is Better than Sacrifice

Introduction

Have you ever done something because you were worried about what others would think? Or maybe it was kind of the opposite of that. You did something to build a certain kind of public image. Maybe you posted that amazing family photo while chaos was hiding in the background behind that picture. You all sort of know what I mean. With that, we want to portray all the right things, and we’re tempted to do that. And sometimes social pressures can be a good thing. In fact, they kind of keep us in check at times, and they’re not always bad, but there are aspects of that can be very negative. We don’t want to let everybody know about all the chaos in our lives and all the difficulties that we’re going through.

But sometimes we do things just to avoid criticism or just to improve public image. And today I want to spend just a few minutes talking about a king who let his image in his desire for self-glory override obedience. It took primary place in his heart and in his mind over actually fulfilling his duty as king of Israel. The duty that Samuel had given him that God had anointed him for, and instead of fulfilling that responsibility, instead, he was too worried about other matters, particularly the way that he looked.

Things like sacrifice, worship, proclamation of obedience.

And if it weren’t for Samuel and God coming to Samuel, it seems like Saul would have gotten away with it. People would have got along, and everything would have gone as he planned, and there would have been very little change. Samuel steps in and begins to take care of the issues at hand. And of course, you know, most likely, most of you know the story here progresses that the kingdom is ultimately going to be torn away from Saul and given to someone who is better, who we know now to be David. I want to read just a few parts of this text in 1 Samuel chapter 15. First Samuel 15, I want to try to hit some highlights, and I’m gonna read maybe the latter part of the chapter in fullness, but I want to start in chapter 15 and verse 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, 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. 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. Jump to verse 8. Saul has now taken his army and has gone to Amalek to destroy them, and it says, And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites alive, and devoted to destruction 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 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. The word of the Lord came to Samuel. I regret that I 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. And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, and it was told Samuel, Saul has come came to Caramel, and both, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, Blessed be you to the Lord, I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, What then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?

And Saul said, They have been 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. Then Samuel said to Saul, Stop. I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night. And he said to him, Speak. 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, 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. 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?

And Saul said to Samuel, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord has sent me. I brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction, but the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice the Lord your God in Gilgal. 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, 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.

Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the Lord. And Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you’ve rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. As Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe, and it tore. And Samuel said to him, The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man that he should have regret.

Then he said, I have sinned, yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may bow before the Lord your God. So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul bowed before the Lord. Then Samuel said, Bring here to me Agad, the king of the Amlekites. And Agad came to him cheerfully. Nagag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. And Samuel said, As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord and Gilgal. That ending may be the part that we remember the best. I know at least the boys. I was a boy one time in Bible class, and that’s the part of the story we loved, because Samuel’s a real man, and he does what he’s supposed to do and what God has called him to do.

Saul is weak. Saul is not the kind of man we aspire to be as young boys or even as men. And Samuel has to come in and do the Lord’s work for him. And sort of this is the direction the story is going to head here. And I want to talk about just a few obstacles this morning. Obstacles to obedience that are very obvious in the story of Saul. And the story of failed mission. God sent him on a mission. He imagined he went on this mission and did what the Lord said, and Samuel’s there to tell him he didn’t. He didn’t actually do what God told him to do. And Saul, through a variety of means, has convinced himself that things are okay and that they did what they were supposed to do.

But now Samuel is enlightening him on what God actually thinks about what took place. And so I think these three obstacles we’re going to look at this morning will help us in understanding sometimes, at least where I’m at, when I am tempted to justify the things I’m doing or thinking, and in violation of God’s will, and maybe you as well, tempted to go the way of Saul to feel good about what we’re doing or what we’re thinking, when in reality God has instructed us precisely what he wants. And yet, for whatever reason, we may do something else. It’s interesting to me the way this story starts. Samuel comes to Saul and reminds him, the Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the very first thing he says to him is listen.

1. Casualness Toward God and His Word

Listen. And then what does Saul do? He ignores the very things that God tells him. And so the first obstacle I see in this story, I feel like the story itself is fairly well known, and we’re going to retell some pieces, but I’m not going to go through all the elements of the story. I just want to sort of hit the highlights and get these big ideas. And the first of these is that an obstacle or a hindrance to obedience is just outright casualness toward God. Toward God and toward his word. Right? Taking the things that God has said and kind of taking them lightly, right? Sort of taking license, just we’re always thinking of the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.

And yes, we can get turned up the other way as well, which I may talk about here in just a moment. But in this situation specifically, and at various times, God is very precise on what he wants and what he’s asked for.

And yet when Saul and the people go into Amalek and they begin to carry out this mission, they decide they’re just going to do things the way that they want to do them. And so part of this casualness is just self-seeking. It’s following core desire, right? We have desires, we are made with desires, and those desires are meant to be attached to God and fulfilling the things that he wants. But it’s very easy, as we all know, to allow our own personal desires to usurp God’s desire and will in my life. And that seems to be the sort of thing that’s happening here. That is very much caught up in self-seeking and selfish desire. Here’s what they do. They devote to destruction, which this is a form of a sacrifice.

These are things under the ban. They’re all to be destroyed, and this is for the glory of the Lord. It is to be given to him. And here’s what they do, they decide they’re only going to do that with the worthless things. The things they don’t care about. That really don’t have much value. They go in, they kill the people. Who cares about them? They’re not worried about them. They kill the worthless livestock and sheep. But the things that are good, the things that have value, they decide they’re going to take those and do something else with them. Saul then honors himself with a monument at Carmel. I’m going to talk about presumption in the next point. So I’m going to save some thoughts about some of that as we move forward.

But there’s certainly a whole lot of presumption that’s happening in this story, both with Saul and the people. But he goes to Carmel, he puts this monument up, and then he’s going to go down to Gilgal, which is this place of religious significance where they sacrifice. And so all of this is kind of masked under the guise of spiritual devotion. Look at the victory God has given to us. And of course, you know, I, Saul, was part of that. And he wants his name attached to this, and if whether it’s a steel or some kind of stone monument or whatever it is, he clearly is going there to honor himself. The text makes that abundantly clear. And then he goes down to Gilgal, which is kind of the center point of Israel and their religious life at the moment, and he’s going to offer sacrifices there.

And this is where Samuel then approaches him. But in the process of this whole story, Samuel calls him out for his disobedience. And the first thing he does is just outright denial. Have you ever done that? Your spouse calls you out for something. That’s not what I did. That’s not what I said. Or maybe as a parent, you talk to your child about something they did, and they that it wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. I’m like, I have video recording of you doing it. I know you did it. Right? I mean, sometimes it’s so blatant. I watched you do it, and you’re telling me you didn’t do it. I mean, this is Saul in the story. Samuel comes to him. God talked to me and said, You didn’t obey his commandment.

I did, I did obey it.

And just outright denial. And then when that seems to not be working very well, as tends to be the case, all of this is caught up in the first sin in the garden. The same sorts of things are happening at Eden. That now he starts blaming others around him, right? He starts blaming the people. And a little nuance in the text. He starts twisting words a little bit and ideas. Right. So he blames the people because they took the spoil and they took the best of all the things to sacrifice to the Lord. And so there’s a little element of twisting there. But if you look in verse 21, he says, the people took of the best of the things devoted to destruction to sacrifice. He’s sort of blending those ideas together, even in the way he says it.

Now, in the ancient Near East, it was very common for gods to send their people on missions to destroy nations, to pillage them and take the spoils to then fill their temples. That’s not an uncommon thing. And so maybe you can see the idea that Saul or the people have that’s what God wants. God wants them to go and destroy the Amalekites, and it’s, you know, we’re devoting to destruction, but we can then, you know, take the things and bring them to this place of the tabernacle, or whatever this place of worship is, and this is like enriching God. That’s the idea. Of course, God doesn’t need any of that. It’s not what he actually asked them to do. But we see the people are caught up in the things around them and what they’re seeing, much like Achan, right?

And they begin, and this is not just purely motivated to fill the tabernacle or the temple or the house of the Lord, because sacrifices are different. I mean, they go into Amalek and they slaughter the people, and like, man, this livestock’s pretty valuable. You know, we could take some of that, and we can offer sacrifices to God, and of course, in some sacrifices, the priests get to eat of the sacrifice. There’s benefits that come from taking some of these sacrifices, and that God probably would be happy with that. You know what’s wrong with that? It’s sacrifice. I know he said we’re just destroying this thing. We will. We will destroy it. We’re gonna take it, and then we’re gonna sacrifice it to the Lord. The priests will get to eat a little bit and we’ll get some benefit from it.

But it’s still essentially the same thing. The selfish motivations of the people to then take this, and then Saul, I don’t even know the truthfulness of this, honestly. Saul then says, Well, they were gonna take this to sacrifice it to God. Well, that sounds really good. Right? Under the pretense of devotion, worship, sacrifice. Sounds really good to say this is why we were doing this. And of course, again, much like when we’re caught or someone else we’re confronting as caught, we like to kind of twist it and turn it into the best sounding way of why we did this. And then when none of that works, he offers what is essentially an empty apology, mostly focused on damage control. And we’ll do some more with that in the last point this morning.

Saul’s clearly mostly focused on his own honor in this story, he hasn’t taken God’s honor seriously at all. He’s very casual in his approach to the things that God says. Even in what God says to Samuel, and Samuel comes to him, he is outright denying what Samuel says God told him. And there’s a whole backstory to all of this that we can’t go in depth on this morning, but I’ll just give you a brief summary of the things that happen. You remember Israel asks for a king. And they reject God as their king, is essentially what happens. This is, you know, back in chapter 11 and 12, working through this process where Samuel says, okay, I got you a king, I anointed Saul. Here’s what you need to do.

You follow him, and if you’re obedient, and if you do the commandments of the Lord, he says this multiple times, then he will be with you and he will bless you. But if you do not, if you rebel and if you reject the commandment of the Lord, then he says very specifically, he will pull you out and your king with you. Over and over again, this is said. Back in chapters 11 and 12. And then the very next story, the very next thing that happens, those of you who are Bible students who’ve been through these stories, you remember everything’s going great up to this point. You know, Saul defeats the Ammonites, this huge victory. At the moment, he seems like this great man of war who God has called for his people, and then Samuel anoints him as king.

He then becomes over the people, and everybody they commit themselves to him. The very next thing that happens is when Samuel doesn’t show up on time, Saul he says, forced himself to understand without going in depth here that Saul is an idolatrous, ritualistic person. There’s not a lot of faith here. There’s not a lot of trust in Yahweh. He is the kind of person who feels the need to go through the motions, to do the things that need to be done, so he feels like he has God’s favor. And right, so the sacrifice isn’t happening, and it is very common for kings in the ancient world to be both a priest and a king to offer sacrifices and to lead the people. I’m sure Saul was aware of that idea.

2. Presumption Is Rebellion

I’ll just do it myself. And you remember what Samuel tells him? You were foolish. You did not heed the commandment of the Lord. So this is a pattern for Saul. This casualness toward God, and then ultimately what we’re talking about next is presumption. It’s a part of Saul’s story that is pulled out all along the way. And the various stories were revealed that Saul is a presumptuous person. And his criticism in the mid part of chapter 15, when he calls Saul out and says, has God delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord. That strange little text that comes after all of this, for rebellion is as the sin of divination. Divination, which we know later Saul is very much into because he’s an idolatrous, ritualistic person, is really the idea of without God telling you can figure out what God wants.

It’s, you know, through looking at the entrails of an animal or some other method, you can, because you have some sort of enlightenment or you’re an oracle of some sort, you know what God wants, even though others don’t. And that concept, that idea is all throughout this story that Saul and the people, they somehow know what God wants better than God knows what he wants. And what Samuel says is this is just rebellion. I mean, you think you can figure out, you can speak for God. And God has already spoken for himself. God is already very clear about what he asked you to do, and yet you’ve decided that you can go a different way and that you’ve got a better way to do this.

I want to stop for a second to just make a couple applications. The first of these is we better not make religion a means of self-glorification. Have we set up monuments to ourselves, proclaiming our own greatness and performance of God’s commandments? Isn’t that what Saul does? He feels really good about it. I mean, Samuel comes up to him, he says, Bless you in the Lord. I’ve kept and fulfilled the commandment of the Lord. He feels really good about what he’s done. And so I have to ask myself, do I feel really good about what I’ve done? Am I kind of proclaiming my greatness? How much better I am and holier and more righteous than other people? Am I really careful about what God has actually told me to do?

Let me give an example of this idea of kind of setting up monuments to ourselves. Really, it’s about self-glorification. It’s not about honoring God. I think something we can all identify with. Something like politicians that lean hard on their spirituality to gain voters. They really don’t have all that much commitment, especially some of them who we know are liars and are cheaters and accept bribes and are corrupt, and yet they lean hard on this without really caring that much about biblical ideas or principles. But this is done just to get support.

And this is evidenced by their fruit, by the things that come out of their lives and the things that we see. That they really aren’t interested in this, but they are interested in you supporting them. And so essentially, like Saul, they have done things essentially just to rally support for themselves. It’s not about God. It’s not about his kingdom or what’s actually best. And before you get any ideas about any of this, both sides of the aisle do this regularly in any type of campaign season. They’re all talking about God and their values and their morals, and yet then they’re all being brought up in corruption and affairs and all kinds of other stuff. And this is Saul. He’s about Saul. He’s about his own honor and his own glory and self-seeking and insincerity.

The whole story reeks of insincerity. Samuel approaches him, and now just contrast this with David. Right? When Nathan comes to David and he works through the story and he finally shows David that he’s the man in the story, David is immediately repentant. He realizes the magnitude of his sin. Saul’s apology is empty. It’s self-focused and oriented. It’s again about his PR department and about looking good and not being embarrassed. Thinking that’s going to be the means by which he continues to get support, and he doesn’t want to interrupt that or create some kind of problem. In the midst of all of this, he and his people think that they have a better solution than God does. They think their own human thinking is the direction to go.

God’s way doesn’t really make sense to them. Why would we go and destroy all this livestock and valuable things like sheep? Like, what good does that do? We could use this for things that would be helpful. And so, along with this idea of presumption is the concept of rationalization. Right? This is where we go down this road that Saul does with Samuel that you know, sacrifice is good. I mean, it’s something good. God wouldn’t mind. We’re doing a good thing. Certainly, God would support us doing things that are good. As we’ve already seen in the story, the motivation behind this is clearly corrupt and self-focused. I think there’s times when people can sincerely be wrong and think they’re doing good things. That’s certainly possible. But it seems with Saul here, this is just mere excuse.

Samuel begins questioning him, and then suddenly now it’s about sacrifice. It’s about this fake kind of devotion that is actually about honoring self, which is essentially what idolatry is all about. And Samuel calls him out for this in his response to him. Right? For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Now, idolatry is all about ritualism, getting caught up and trying to get the favor of the gods, essentially just for your own benefit. It’s not about the good of anyone else. It’s about obligating from the this is from a pagan standpoint, which Saul is very caught up in pagan ideas, as are the Israelites in general. That’s why they want a king to rule over them. But it’s the idea of you obligate the gods to bless you.

And so there’s formal ways that you go about this in pagan religion and ideas. And it seems the Israelites, and we know this later on in 2 Samuel, when they think that the Ark of the Covenant is somehow going to save them just by its presence. They’ve turned it into a ritual, a formality. When in reality it’s just completely empty.

And sometimes it won’t. Now, actually, in this story, he gives a reason to Saul. He tells him, hey, I took note of how Amalek did not help you on the way. They are wicked and evil. And now it’s time for their judgment, and you are the instrument I’m going to use to make this happen. And we’re given a little hint of more of this when Samuel actually kills Agag later in his statement, his rendering of judgment. As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. He’s ruthless. And God is judging him for his evil behavior and the evil behavior of his people, as we see God do throughout scripture at various times. And so Saul’s actually given a reason. He’s told exactly why he’s supposed to do this.

Now, they may look at this situation and say, why would we have to destroy all of this? Destroy the land and all the livestock and the cattle and the sheep and all the children. Why do we have to do all this? Here’s the reality. And as humans who are created in God’s image, and he is the creator, and we are the creation, we have to understand we are in no place to question God. Our human rationalization, our human thinking and logic actually doesn’t matter. What matters is exactly what Samuel told Saul. Listen. Whether or not we understand is actually rather insignificant. God has plans, and God is thinking on a higher level that I could ever dream of doing.

And we see this throughout the pages of scripture fairly regularly, that things are happening that hundreds of years later are significant, that the people that it happened to had no idea why that would matter later on. Who am I to question God? Who is Saul or the people to question what God has told them to do? They’re simply the tool through which God is working.

Think about Abraham with Isaac, just the classic example. A classic example of faith that Abraham he doesn’t understand. In fact, it seems completely contrary to everything God has told him.

And now he’s telling him to take him to Mount Moriah and to sacrifice him there. I mean, none of this makes any sense. Zach can do a talk later to show you why it all makes sense. And what God’s doing there and how he’s thinking hundreds of years into the future, and he’s setting everything up in just the right way, where it all connects to the Messiah later. Amazing. Was Abraham thinking about that? No, he had no clue. God’s ways are higher than my ways, and just because I don’t understand, or it doesn’t make sense, is not an excuse to say I’ve got a better way. Presumption under the pretense of worship is rebellion. And I want you to hear this thought specifically. Partial obedience is disobedience.

Only doing part of what you were told to do is still disobedience. Saul’s very confused by this. I mean, he’s so far down the road of just seeking himself and what he wants, that when Samuel confronts him, he just can’t. I did. I went on the mission. I did what you told me to do. See, here’s here’s a gag. This is kind of weird. Like you’re outing yourself for doing the thing God told you not to do. He doesn’t even get it, right? We’ve been there before, maybe with our small children, when we tell them something and they sort of betray themselves with the way they respond. I think I’ve told you the story before about Xander. We he would he would push and hit Titus and shove him around, and he was like less than half his size, and Titus was just sweet and nice and didn’t want to do anything about it.

And then at one point, I told Titus, hey, you gotta, you know, you’ve got to do something. You can’t let him push you around and hit you. And so we’re downstairs, and Xander starts screaming and crying, and he comes down the stairs and says, Titus, hit me back. Like we just don’t get it sometimes, do we? We got to think more carefully. And this is the struggle that Saul’s having. He’s only thinking on a selfish, self-glorifying level. And everything about what’s happening is about him and how he can portray himself in the best light. And God desires obedience, not showy ritualism. Right? Not the sensational. God calls us to the simple. He says, listen, just do what I’m telling you to do. Here’s what I expect from you.

Here’s what I want. Don’t try to go do the big sensational thing to get all sorts of attention and acclaim. And yet that’s exactly the sort of thing that Saul and the people are doing. They get all the sheep and the livestock, and then we’re going to make a big sacrifice to the Lord. Why didn’t you just destroy it all like God told you to do? It’s simple. And yet, in our presumption and in our self-desire, sometimes we decide we need to do something bigger. More sensational. We need to help the gospel a little bit. So we’ve got to get a little more sensational with talking to people about Jesus and all the things it can do for them. And this is where the health and wealth sort of thing comes in.

Promising people prosperity and all the great things they can have in this life. The gospel doesn’t do that. But what the gospel does do is promise people peace and rest in their souls and harmony with God and a future glory with him, where they will sit on the throne with Jesus forever and ever. And it’s not about this life, it’s about the life to come. That’s the actual message. We don’t need to make it more sensational. And in human effort and thinking to try to think we can bring more people in with a message that’s not the truth.

3. The Obstacle of Fear

And then there is this obstacle of fear. Maybe this is the biggest one, the hardest one. There’s probably nothing more despicable than fear and cowardice. I mean, in the stories throughout history, the foil in every story is the person who’s a coward, who’s afraid. And the protagonist, the hero, they’re the ones who will walk through any situation and do whatever it takes to make things happen. So for a very long time, we’ve understood the idea that fear is weak. And that cowardice is weak. Saul certainly doesn’t want to portray himself in this way, particularly at first. He tries some other things first. And then when none of that’s going to work with Samuel, he says, You’re right, I sinned, I listened to the voice of the people, I was afraid.

Saul’s willing to throw it on them. Samuel’s not going to have any of that sort of mentality, though. Notice in verse 17, he actually kind of attacks this in a preemptive style. Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? I mean, God put you in this place. Why are you listening to the voice of the people? Your job was to do the very opposite. When the people say, no, we can’t do it. Your job is to say, yes, we can’t. God told me to. When the people say, Hey, I won’t we take some of these things for ourselves and we can offer a sacrifice or whatever other thing they come up with, you say, No, that’s not what God told us to do.

You’re the leader. Why are you obeying the voice of the people? This just makes it worse. I mean, his admission of this, the reality that he just fears the people or the popular opinion is not a positive thing for Saul. It’s not a very good excuse. Remember the very beginning? Remember, the Lord anointed you as king over Israel. Listen. We get ourselves in all kinds of messes because we don’t do that. And we want to make excuses and blame other people and come up with the reasons why we shouldn’t be held accountable the way we ought to be. And that’s what’s happening here with Saul. And then again, there’s this pretense of spirituality, of religious orientation. Yes, I’ve sinned. Now he’s going to start admitting this.

Samuel says, I’m not returning with you. You have no interest in obeying the will of the Lord and keeping God’s commandments. I’m not going back with you.

And as tends to happen with people who are caught up in this kind of mentality, Saul then betrays himself again, showing what he’s actually concerned about. Again, it’s about the people. He says in verse 30, I’ve sinned, yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may bow before the Lord your God. Saul, why do you care about bowing before the Lord? What does it matter?

You do your own thing anyway. Right? He’s so worried about this. He wants Samuel to come back with him, to return with him. And three times in the text, we’re given this phrase, this idea about Saul bowing before the Lord. This is just a complete pretense. It’s a guise that he is actually devoted, and he’s trying to serve the Lord when in reality he’s not at all. He is fearful. He’s weak. He obeys the voice of the people. He claimed to do that himself. And yet, in his apology, in his admission of sin, what he’s actually interested about, again, is damage control. He wants to make sure the elders view him well and the people view him well, and that his reputation is not ruined, and his image is not marred.

At this point, Samuel has kind of given up. The kingdom’s been torn away. Okay, fine, Saul. As God tends to do at times, he just gives him what he wants. But it’s not going to help him. And probably the saddest thing in the whole story is he returns with him, he bows to the Lord in this kind of fake worship and sacrifice. And then it says that Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death. He had no interest in this man. Because he was self-focused and glorifying, uninterested in the things of God. He was fearful and unwilling to stand up for what actually mattered. And we should be learning from this story the reality that it is hard sometimes to stand up against popular opinion, but that’s what God has called us to do.

It’s easy to give in to personal desires as the people are doing, or even as Saul is doing. It can be easy to go along with the harmful choices because we don’t want to be the one who has to stand up and say, no, we can’t do that. It’s not fun. Anyone who’s ever done that knows it’s not enjoyable. But sometimes that’s what we have to do, and that’s what God calls us to do. That’s hard to truly admit failure and wrongdoing. Parents, it’s hard for us to admit to our children that we’ve wronged them, isn’t it?

To actually sit down and apologize and say we’re sorry. We’re supposed to be the one who’s making the good decisions, right?

And we may even think, oh, this is going to undermine their respect for me. Their image of who I am is going to be marred and destroyed if I go and tell them I made a mistake and I did something wrong. And ironically and paradoxically, it’s actually completely the opposite. Saul, this man who had done all this wrong, if he had sincerely apologized and told the people, look, we did wrong, we need to correct it. We’re going to follow the Lord. Just imagine the difference of what happened in that story. But he was too important in his own mind for that. His image mattered too much. It’s a common problem among church leadership and preachers to admit when they have messed up and done wrong, to hide it or sweep it under the rug, to hope it just goes away rather than to address it head on.

Protect the image, protect reputation rather than honor God. How many stories do we see like this all over the place in the news about corrupt leaders, all sorts of evil and wicked things that happen and that weren’t stopped even in the middle of them happening when people knew about them, and it’s all about protecting image, reputation, all the things that are about honoring man rather than honoring God. And this is a story that shows us how that works. What the result of that ultimately is. And so there are ways in which we are going to worry about what people think. Social pressure can matter and it can be positive. I mean, certainly we want to encourage each other to do good things and to do right things and to feel that pressure.

But there’s also times when we are worried and so worried, so caught up in building image, and focusing on our PR department. That we aren’t focused on honoring God and obeying Him. And it can even happen through the pretense of worship. Spirituality, being religious. I mean, it’s like the typical sort of influencer thing we see these days, right? It’s showing how you’re reading your Bible and all this stuff all the time, and you’ve got to make sure everybody knows you’re doing it. All I can say about that is be careful. What’s our purpose? What are we trying to accomplish? Is it about me and who I am and what I’m doing? Or is it to lead people to Jesus Christ and to honor and glorify him?

Is it about my public image and the way people view me? And I think the way we can come down on that is those things are not always wrong, so don’t hear me incorrectly. I think it’s fine to post a picture of yourself reading the Bible. That’s okay. But I think we see the balance there of are we actually willing to stand up and say something when something’s not right? When it’s going to be unpopular, when people aren’t going to hit like and praise us and tell us how great we are. When we tell the people, no, you can’t do that. That’s not what God said to do. Am I willing to do those things and balance to the others? That’s where we figure out where we really stand and who we’re truly honoring in our life.

Conclusion

And what we see with Saul, unfortunately, is that his focus was on himself. And because of that, the kingdom was torn away, and God was not pleased. Here’s the thing if we are set out to build our own kingdom, it will be torn down. And God will not be pleased. But if we’re setting out to build up his kingdom and to honor him, we will be honored and we will be exalted in return. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and you will be lifted up, he tells us. That’s the goal. Can we help you do that this morning? You can give your life to Jesus Christ, submit to his will, stop fearing people and what others think, and to realize it’s what Jesus thinks that truly matters.

It’s what God thinks that actually matters. And sacrifice self and begin living for him. You can begin that process by dying with him and baptism, be resurrected in newness of life, and start walking this life of following Jesus Christ with many others who are here this morning. Can we help you do that? Come now as we stand and we sing together.