1 Samuel 15
“When God Himself speaks, all the reasonings and imaginations of men must be silent. Everything may deceive—who can venture to deny it? But the word of God never deceives.” Important truth, and needed, for most certainly “God will be justified in His sayings and overcome when He is judged.” Will man implead his Maker and think to carry his cause? In view of the destruction of Sodom by fire, Abraham said, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And Paul, when writing, not of temporal visitations, but of the final judgment when heaven and earth shall flee away and the award be eternal, added, “We are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth.” Men reason from human feelings, but (quoting again) we ask, “Has God ever suffered Himself to be hindered in executing His righteous threats by what men call love?” Was not Saul rejected because of his rejection of the word of the Lord, the righteous sentence pronounced by Him on the Amalekites, and sparing, when he was commanded to spare not? And are we to judge these ways of the Lord by our feelings, thoughts, and standards? Let us consider the facts. “Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment.” This was certainly true of the Amalekites.
The Lord had delivered Israel out of Egypt with signs and wonders, and had brought them to Himself. Never were they nearer to Him. The pillar of cloud and of fire, the manna from heaven, and the water from the rock were visible proofs of it; yet it was at that time that the Amalekites sought their injury, and this from real hatred to them as the people of the Lord, for they could reap but little advantage from their attack. It was made in the presence of “the glory,” a wicked insult to God, a lifting up of their hand against His throne (Ex. 17:16, marg.). It was both cowardly and cruel, for they fell upon all that were feeble and hindmost and when they were faint and weary. The righteous sentence went forth at once against them, and was subsequently written, the people they had wronged being appointed as ministers of judgment (Deut. 25:19). Thus the Lord made His people's cause His own. To touch them was to touch the apple of His eye.
Dean Milman may be right in saying that the Amalekites were the most harassing of Israel's foes; but he was scarcely so in adding, “It was a cruel but inevitable policy to carry a war of extermination into their country.” Saul last his kingdom and was rejected of the Lord, not because of a mistaken policy in sparing Agag and the best of the spoil from destruction, but for disobedience to an express command. “Now go,” said the Lord of hosts, “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.”
No truth is more clearly revealed in scripture than that the Lord put the sword of judgment into the hands of Israel and commanded them to use it with unrelenting severity in certain cases (Deut. 20:10-18). It was an honor conferred on them to execute the judgment written, and this will yet be true of them again, strange as it may sound in our ears (Zech. 9; 10; Psa. 149:6-9, and col. freq.). How different now! Those who have been led to discover in Jesus a Savior, to know the ransom of their souls by His blood, and to receive in Him risen and glorified the free gifts of righteousness and eternal life, are made God's ministers of love, of mercy, and of grace to a rebellious world. The same Divine Lawgiver who, in perfect harmony with the dispensation of the law, said to Saul, “Utterly destroy, and spare them not,” now, in the day of salvation, says to His redeemed, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matt. 5: see also Romans 12:17-20,
1 Thess. 5:15, 1 Peter 3:9). This is the superlative honor put upon those that are Christ's, and to hear these sayings of the Lord and not to do them is to be like unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. Rejection of any of the words of the Lord will assuredly entail loss. The path of obedience in every dispensation is not only the safe path, but the path of present blessing and future glory. The believer is saved, for he has received the word of the truth of the gospel; but let him not stop there. Having life, he is to live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. He may lose his crown, though not his soul. To receive Christ is everything now; and as Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord, so the Holy Spirit by the word deals unsparingly with all that is of the flesh in Christians (Gal. 5:17).
In this final test of Saul it is important to observe that there were no difficulties in the path of obedience. The resources at his command were abundant, and the victory was an easy one. The temptation to disobey came wholly from within.
The commandment tested his heart, and it is the heart that the word of God lays bare. As for actions, how many in Saul wore a fair appearance! At first he was modest and humble, little in his own sight, and he ascribed his victory over the Ammonites to the Lord. When “the sons of Belial” insultingly opposed his elevation to the throne, he controlled his feelings and “held his peace “; and afterward, when he was urged to use his power and put them to death, he refused, “For,” said he, “to-day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel.”
Indeed most of his expressions savored of piety and his doings of religion. On his introduction to David, when he was refreshed and relieved by the music of his harp, he loved him greatly, and desired of Jesse that he might remain with him; and these memories seem never to have left him. How well, to almost the last, he knew David's voice; and how deep was his remorse in the cave of Engedi when with tears he confessed to him, “Thou art more righteous than I... The Lord reward thee good for that thou hast done to me this day.” And so we read that immediately after his anointing, when he left Samuel to return home, he “was turned into another man,” not only gifted to rule and made valiant in war as became a king, but his whole character got a religious tone. In this latter respect it is one of the most solemn examples, in the most solemn examples in the Old Testament, of what is described in 2 Peter 2:20-22, as true of some in Christendom; and as Saul, more than most, brought ruin on Israel, so have these caused the most mischief in the church. Mere change of character, even when accompanied with forms of piety, is of no account with God so long as the gospel of his grace is not received by faith in the heart. In is a totally different thing when it is.
When that gospel is an implanted word (logos emphutos), not received naturally, but implanted by the Spirit, is believed as the word of God, and is rooted in the heart, then the reformation is radical, permanent, and saving (James 1:21, 1 Peter 1:23, Matt. 13:23). The mind is renewed, the truth is in the inward parts, Christ is received, the soul is saved.
Saul's extreme deadness of conscience is one among many proofs that he was never really converted to God. He never received with meekness the implanted word, but was to the last a rejecter of it, turning at last to witchcraft and necromancy. When Samuel was grieving over him, and spending the whole night crying to the Lord because of his sin, he was setting up “a place” —that is some memorial of his victory—but like Absalom's pillar, a monument to himself (15:12; 2 Sam. 18:18, R.V.). So, when the prophet came to announce to him the judgment of God on his rebelliousness, he boldly met him with a blessing and said, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord” — “a benediction and a falsehood in a breath.”
So callous had he become that he seemed surprised to hear that rejecting the word of the Lord was sin, that “rebellion was as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry;” and when this was pressed, he, although the king, pleaded his fear of the people! and thought to cover his robbery of the spoil by saying that they took of it to sacrifice unto the Lord.
It was but too evident that, with all his show of religion, the word of God had no place in his heart, and nothing remained for Samuel but to pronounce the sentence passed on him; and never did a judge set before a convicted criminal his guilt in clearer terms. And with what effect on Saul? When everything was at stake with him for time and eternity, when there was no hope save in taking his true place as guilty, self-ruined, and helpless, and seeking mercy of the Lord, he thought only of his position in the world. “I have sinned” he said, “yet honor me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people and before Israel.” Oh! this fatal lust of the praise of men. How many are the souls that have been eternally ruined by it! (John 5:44.)