To Obey Is Better than Sacrifice

Saul’s false zeal to exalt his own name drove many people into sin, yet he did not repent. He claimed the credit for Jonathan’s honest faith and still would not repent, and that conduct revealed what a hypocrite he was. Even so, God made Saul go on winning his battles. God did this because Saul’s victories would become the strength David would have once he was king. Watching Saul win, one might think that God was helping an evil man, but God was preparing to give David the kingdom Saul had built. The success of the wicked is preparation for the righteous, and so we must not grumble about our circumstances or lose heart.

Saul won a great victory in the war with the Philistines, and he struck Moab, Ammon, Edom, the kings of Zobah, and the Amalekites, triumphing over them all. As victory followed victory, his royal power grew ever more secure, and by the time of the war with Amalek his army numbered a hundred and thirty thousand men. When God commanded Saul to make war on Amalek, he told him to leave nothing of theirs but to utterly destroy all they had, killing man and woman, infant and nursing baby, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. God gave this command so that Amalek would be destroyed and never again attack Israel. By human standards it is cruel, but God ordered Amalek put to death so mercilessly to call them to account for how they had afflicted his people when Israel came out of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 25:17-19 records that as the people came out of Egypt, Amalek attacked the feeble who were lagging behind. To kill those weak ones was the same sin as opposing God himself, the King of Israel. It kindled God’s anger, and he promised that once Israel had settled in the land of Canaan, he would blot out the memory of Amalek. Now he is keeping that promise. God has not forgotten it; he is fulfilling it through Saul. God had spent long years planning the exodus; he raised up Moses and at last brought Pharaoh to his knees. Amalek, by attacking the people of such a God, became God’s enemy forever. In the same way, the world must never oppress God’s people when they are powerless. Those who live by faith have God himself as their Father, so to despise them is to set oneself against God.

1 Samuel 30:1-2 tells how David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day to find that the Amalekites had raided the town, burned it, and carried off all the women who were there. God’s command may seem cruel, but he ordered Amalek destroyed, down to the nursing infants, because even a small ember left behind would flare up into a great fire, just as it did here, and harass Israel again.

Saul, however, heard God’s command and did not obey it, and because of that Israel would later come under attack again and again. This Amalekite raid on David and his people took place while David, hunted by Saul, was living at Ziklag in the land of the Philistines. Achish, the Philistine king, was preparing for war with Saul. He summoned David, who happened to be living among the Philistines to escape Saul, and proposed that they attack Saul together. Fortunately the Philistines objected: however much David might be living in Philistia to escape Saul, they said, he could turn on them in the middle of the battle. So David narrowly escaped having to fight against Israel and went back to Ziklag, where he had been staying.

While David was away meeting Achish, the Amalekites struck and carried off David’s wives and the wives and children of his soldiers, who had no way to resist. David and his men went after Amalek in fury. The Amalekites, having won, were drunk with the joy of victory. David and his men threw everything against them and killed man and woman, infant and nursing baby, ox and sheep, camel and donkey — all except four hundred young men who fled. Set David’s thorough destruction of Amalek beside Saul’s bringing home whatever looked good to him, and you will see how different the faith of these two men was.

Sin, whatever form it takes, has to be cast away. If we know something is sin before God and yet, like Saul, cling to the greedy thought that it is still useful and can be thrown out later, that sin will become full-grown and in the end topple our faith.

Verse 7 of chapter 15 says that Saul struck the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is before Egypt. That means the mighty Amalekites held that entire region at the time. A great victory over an enemy spread across so wide an area was not Saul’s achievement; it was God’s resolve to judge Amalek. Still, although it was God’s will that Amalek be utterly destroyed, Saul defied his command. Even if God’s will is to destroy Amalek, Amalek will survive if Saul — that is, if people — will not obey, and God’s plan may be pushed further back. How vital it is, then, to obey just as the word says!

To magnify his own achievement, Saul spared Agag, king of the Amalekites, kept the best of the animals, and killed only what he judged worthless and contemptible. He even set up a monument at Carmel so that his name would live on. He was what he now was thanks to God, by God’s help, and through God’s sacrifice — and yet he was lifting his own name above God’s.

Once their troubles are gone, everyone forgets gratitude and strives to raise their own name and honor, and at that point they will come to see God as their greatest obstacle. The more grace someone has received, the farther they flee from God into the world to forget his love, and the more they speak against him. They do so because they think that only in this way can they bury God’s grace beneath evil. But we must understand this: God’s love and grace cannot be covered over by flimsy human words and deeds. As darkness cannot hide the light, Saul cannot prevail against God.

1 Samuel 15:15

15Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the cattle, to sacrifice to Yahweh your God. We have utterly destroyed the rest.”

When Samuel heard that Saul had set up his monument and returned to Gilgal, he came to Gilgal to meet him. Saul greeted Samuel warmly and boasted that he had carried out Yahweh’s command. But because this was the man who had raised a monument to exalt his own name, nothing he could say was going to persuade Samuel.

What God and Samuel wanted from Saul was not a great victory. Anyone can win a great victory when God helps; what God wanted was a Saul who understood his will and obeyed it. Here is what you need to know: at all times God is at work with two aims — to fulfill his covenant and to save souls. Only when we know this and walk with him accordingly can we live according to his will. Our walk with God breaks down because we insist on having our own way first. Just as Saul, once satisfied with the world, lived a life that had nothing to do with God, so whoever seeks their own satisfaction can neither grasp God’s will nor live by the word, and because of that a life of constant wandering is all that is left to them.

God had commanded that no spoil at all be brought back from Amalek, but Saul took the Amalekite king captive and kept the best animals alive and brought them home. When Samuel rebuked him for disobeying God’s command, Saul made excuses instead: he had spared them, he said, to offer God a fine sacrifice. Samuel grew angry at the excuse, and Saul shifted all the blame onto the people, saying that it was they who had done all this, not he. Samuel had prayed with tears through the night after hearing that Saul had set up a monument at Carmel; his rebuke came from a heart that loved Saul’s soul. But Saul would not listen.

God had exalted Saul so that he could become a true king, yet Saul did not obey a single one of God’s commands. He had even come to the foolish notion that, though he broke the command, God would overlook everything so long as he offered fine animals in sacrifice. People in the church think the same way: they do not worship in spirit and truth, yet they imagine God will be pleased if they show their devotion through service or offerings. This is a human misjudgment, a sin that comes from not knowing God at all.

Isaiah 1:11

11“What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?”, says Yahweh. “I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I don’t delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats.

God is saying that he will refuse a faith that only tramples his courts without sincerity. Every offering not made according to the law is vain and detestable. When God accepts an offering, what he is accepting is the heart of the worshiper who offers their faith; so if the heart is not whole, he does not accept the offering either. Samuel knew this heart of God, and when such a man rebukes, the rebuke is itself an act of love. So Saul was being given another chance. Had Saul seized that chance, which would never come again, and repented, he would certainly have received God’s forgiveness.

In verse 22, to a Saul who did nothing but make excuses to the very end, Samuel declared that Yahweh delights in obeying his voice more than in burnt offerings and sacrifices. To obey is better than sacrifice, he said, and to listen than the fat of rams, and with these words he urged Saul to repent. To rebel against God’s word is like the sin of divination, and to be stubborn, wrapped in pride and falsehood, is like the sin of bowing down to idols.

Saul had rejected Yahweh’s word, and for that he would now lose Yahweh’s help and be removed from the throne. Because it was God who had set him there, it was God who withdrew his grace. Here is the folly of people: they forget that if it was God who answered them in their affliction, it is also God who can take that answer away. The wise course, then, would be to offer sacrifice according to the law God commanded and to live as he desires. But once they have what they wanted, they foolishly abandon God and end up losing everything.

God does not accept offerings because he is poor or in want. He accepts them because the sacrifice has died in place of the children he loves, for their sin, and because it carries a faith that trusts God and leans on him. In all this sin, Saul had been deceived by Satan into defying God, which is why every opportunity he had been given now passed him by.

Saul heard God’s heart toward him — that God had made him king when he was little in his own sight — and still, for his own purposes, he had no intention of putting Agag to death. Seeing this, we realize how frightening human righteousness can be. It is frightening because, if only we can hold on to the honor and power we now enjoy, we can abandon God all too easily.

It was God who made Saul king. And it is God who can remove him. Whom, then, should Saul serve as his master? God raises up and brings down; he rules over human history. And still it is human nature to keep trying to live as we please. Had Saul utterly destroyed Amalek as the word commanded when God gave the order, he would have received a far greater blessing, because obedience to God’s word is itself power.

Saul shifted his sin onto the people because they were many, and he meant to depend on their numbers as his strength. But people slip through your fingers like oil you try to grip, so in the end Saul is left with nothing. Had he leaned on God instead of clinging to the people, God would have helped him go on living as king. As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of him and begged him to come with him to the people, to hold a grand sacrifice, and to uphold his honor and his standing. This is how far a person can fall to protect what is theirs. Saul would not walk wholly before God, yet he begged to have his honor upheld so that people would praise him; such a man was of no use to the Kingdom of God.

In his anger Samuel summoned Agag, the Amalekite king who had been brought in as a captive. Agag, thinking that Samuel, a priest, would spare him, came cheerfully, rejoicing that the bitterness of death was past. As Agag came out smiling, Samuel denounced the many evils he had committed and put him to death. A man of God may seem too cruel here, but if God’s will is to destroy Amalek, we must be as resolute as Samuel was.

Samuel put an end to the evil of Amalek, who had slaughtered a defenseless people without mercy. He knew God’s heart — that God would not pardon Amalek for tormenting his people — and it was that knowledge that made him obey the word. As Samuel put Agag to death without pity, you too must cut out the Amalek that has settled in some corner of your heart, because if you do not, it will rise again to attack your faith, just as Haman the Amalekite sought to kill Esther and the Jews.

1 Samuel 15:6

6Saul said to the Kenites, “Go, depart, go down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them; for you showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.

There are nations, like Amalek, that God commands to be destroyed without mercy; but there are others to whom he shows grace, telling them to leave quickly so that they will not perish. The Kenites had shown kindness to a weary Israel during the exodus.

Judges 1:16 records that Moses’ father-in-law was a Kenite. Jethro was kindly disposed toward Moses; when Moses set out for the exodus, he gladly gave him leave to go, and later it was Jethro who devised the wise plan of rulers over thousands and over hundreds so that the people could be governed well. God did not forget the love the Kenites had shown Israel in its affliction, and he extended grace to their descendants. If God repays even a small kindness shown to Israel, how could he forget the faithful labor of those who sacrifice themselves for him?

God does not forget the faith of those who serve him out of sight, and he blesses their descendants. He rewards those who humble themselves to lift high his name, so if we listen to his voice and obey, he will pour out more grace and blessing than we can hold. When we strive in all things to live by God’s word, we can spend our whole lives within his grace, because he sees the heart.

May you always strive to live by the word. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 16:11-23

11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your children here?” He said, “There remains yet the youngest. Behold, he is keeping the sheep.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12He sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with a handsome face and good appearance. Yahweh said, “Arise! Anoint him, for this is he.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the middle of his brothers. Then Yahweh’s Spirit came mightily on David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. 14Now Yahweh’s Spirit departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh troubled him. 15Saul’s servants said to him, “See now, an evil spirit from God troubles you. 16Let our lord now command your servants who are in front of you to seek out a man who is a skillful player on the harp. Then when the evil spirit from God is on you, he will play with his hand, and you will be well.” 17Saul said to his servants, “Provide me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me.” 18Then one of the young men answered, and said, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person; and Yahweh is with him.” 19Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, “Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.” 20Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by David his son to Saul. 21David came to Saul, and stood before him. He loved him greatly; and he became his armor bearer. 22Saul sent to Jesse, saying, “Please let David stand before me; for he has found favor in my sight.” 23When the spirit from God was on Saul, David took the harp, and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.