Lastly his ruin comes out in the plainest manner in the next chapter, 1 Samuel 15. “Samuel also said unto Saul, Jehovah sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel.” He would have a fresh trial. There was a new opportunity. If peradventure he might remove the stain and the sentence, the Lord would give him another trial. So says Samuel, “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. And Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah. And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley.” And so the Amalekites came down; the people were defeated; the king Agag was taken; the mass of them were utterly destroyed by the edge of the sword. “But Saul and the people!”—how strikingly the Holy Spirit here associates them—“Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.” The flesh profiteth nothing. However tried by God, it fails. God's Word was plain, His will decided; but the king and the people were alike disobedient.
“Then came the word of Jehovah unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments.” How could he lead the people? How could he that was thus rebellious at every fresh trial—how could he that had compromised the victory of Israel when another had not failed to win. it—how could such a man be a shepherd of God's people? “And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto Jehovah all night”—a beautiful feature in the prophet. He felt it all, knew it all, but still it grieved his heart. “And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of Jehovah: I have performed the commandment of Jehovah.” And what did the grieved heart of Samuel reply? “And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto Jehovah thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what Jehovah hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on. And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and Jehovah anointed thee king over Israel? And Jehovah sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of Jehovah, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of Jehovah?”
All the excuses of Saul were vain, or worse. As Adam did with Eve, so the king put forward the people to shelter himself. For what was he raised up if it was not to lead the people? Was it not for the king to repress lawlessness, and not they to entangle him in disobedience? On his own showing, what was he for if it were not to command them in the name of Jehovah? Was it come to this, that the people commanded him? There could be only one effect of such a confession. His kingship was gone. The truth however was, “Like people, like king.”
“And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed.” For Saul keeps up his hypocritical pretense. “And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of Jehovah, and have gone the way which Jehovah sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto Jehovah thy God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Jehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” Let us weigh it well, my brethren: “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” and we know what that was even in Saul's eyes. “And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou ... .” No indefiniteness is found now, no mixing him up with the people. The guilty king is convicted and singled out for the fresh sentence from the Lord. “Because thou hast rejected the word, of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”
Mark what follows: “And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned.” It is not always a good sign when a man is quick to confess his sin. Have you not seen it in your children? It is matter of common observation that the child who is always ready to confess his wrong never feels much about it. It is not that the opposite of this is not a fault, or that it is a happy thing to find a child stubborn; but one likes to see a little exercise of conscience; to know that a child weighs the fact and considers his conduct and motives, bowing to what his parent says: then it may be after a sorrow that does not come out to us very articulately. The heart gains confidence, and the conscience too casts off its burden, and tells out its wrong. But the quick and hasty owning, “I have sinned,” is always suspicious; and is what may be found in even worse than Saul. Judas said just the same thing. The readiness to own wrong, in general terms at least, may be even where there is a seared conscience, the state being utterly bad. Even of old a principle was taught which made its worthlessness manifest.
This appears to me to have been a great point in that remarkable institution of the law—the ordinance for dealing with defilement. The water of separation was never sprinkled on an Israelite at the beginning of the term. The man must abide under the sense of his defilement until the third day. When he had fairly and fully felt his case before God, when there was an ample witness on the third day, then and not before was he sprinkled. It was repeated on the seventh day, and the whole process was complete according to the law. The seventh day's sprinkling would have been of no use without that of the third. But there was no such thing as sprinkling on the first day.
The reverse of what is taught by this we find in Saul. He thought to do the whole, if one may so say, on the first day. He sought to disencumber himself of all the burden of his failure by the most rapid confession. But no: such a confession is good for nothing. “I have sinned; for I have transgressed the commandment of Jehovah.” What! a man who had been just boasting about his doing some great thing? and that the beasts were kept to sacrifice to Jehovah? Clearly there was no good conscience there. “I have sinned,” said he when he was convicted, and not before. “For I have transgressed the commandment of Jehovah, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.” What a king! “Because I feared the people.” He did not fear Jehovah. Without this there is nothing right. “Because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship Jehovah. And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, and Jehovah hath rejected thee from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent.” Alas! Saul's sorrow was no more godly than Esau's. Both felt for themselves, as both afterward hated the man of God's choice. What could the importunity of either bring out but the sentence of their loss? So we see that here the act of the king only furnishes another opportunity for Samuel to warn the guilty king: “And Samuel said unto him, Jehovah bath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbor of thine, that is better than thou. And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent. Then he said, I have sinned: yet honor me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship Jehovah thy God.” It was too late. But what a thought at such a time! “Honor me now, I pray thee, before the people.” To have felt and confessed his dishonor of the Lord and misleading of the people would have been a far different attitude. Of this he did not think. Samuel turned again after Saul; Saul worshipped the Lord; but it was to no purpose. At any rate Agag was brought forward, from the delay thinking, from what we can gather from the account, that mercy was in store for him. Surely the prophet would have no less compassion than the king for a forlorn captive! “And Agag came unto him delicately. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before Jehovah in Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house to Gibeah of Sail. And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul. and Jehovah repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.”
But this is the moral close of Saul's history; and we have had sufficient for the present as to man's king. We shall next have the opening of the history of a better man, his “neighbor.” It may be profitable to compare the two in their mutual relations, when we are shown God's king reigning over Israel after that man's king had passed away. But there is another and an extremely solemn truth which runs side by side: the awful truth that the exhibition of righteousness and grace in one who serves God in faith always provokes and exasperates to the last degree of wickedness and hatred him who, while professing to serve the true God, is really serving his own belly. No amiability, no nearness of natural relationship, no struggles of conscience can ever deliver from this downward career to ruin into which Satan precipitates him who, not being born of God, finds himself in such circumstances in collision with a man of faith who walks with the manifest power and favor of God resting on him. There is but one way of escape—that repentance unto life which is the portion of the sold that rests only on Christ before God, and can afford therefore to renounce self, judging it as only and always evil, so that the life one henceforth lives may be Christ and not self, though it be there to be ever treated as vile. “For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Saul knew nothing of the principle of this, as David did. Whatever righteousness he aimed at was exclusively by the law, which, as it frustrates the grace of God, so it ends in disappointment and death. All such have this of the Lord's hand—they lie down in sorrow, as we shall soon see to have been the actual close of King Saul.
Samuel here shows us out the mind of God both in the slaying of Agag, and in mourning for Saul. It was according to His law to spare not the deadly enemies of Israel. Had He not sworn to war with Amalek from generation to generation? Samuel had not forgotten this, if Saul had. On the other hand, the tenderness that mourned after the king, guilty as he was, is a fine trait of that affection which is only strengthened by the faith of God's solemn judgment.