And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord. 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 the Lord thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord 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 the Lord anointed thee king over Israel? And the Lord 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 the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord 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 the Lord thy God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, Hath 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 hearken than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
-First Samuel 15:13-23 (King James Version)
Obedience is something that God requires of each one of us. Obedience is something that many of us despise. We try and raise our children to be obedient, but your child likes to test and see just how much they can get away with. It's like that with us and God. We read His word, we see His commands, and we see just how far we can stretch them. That's the picture we see here in First Samuel 15.
Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, came to Saul, King of Israel. We read in verse 13-14, "And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" Saul tells Samuel that he had, indeed, done what God had commanded him to do. Samuel knew otherwise, and he was about to challenge Saul's obedience to the command. The command God gave to Saul is reiterated in verse 18, "And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed." Saul was to destroy the nation of the Amalekites, leaving nothing behind, and taking nothing home. Yet, in verse 14 we read, "And Samuel said, 'What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?'" If Saul had truly done what God had told him, if he had obeyed God, there would not have been any bleating of the sheep, and lowing of the oxen, they would have also been destroyed. Yet, there was bleating of the sheep and lowing of the oxen, and Saul knew he was caught.
In verse 15, we read Saul trying to justify his actions. "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 the Lord thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed." He is trying to make his disobedience look like something good. In other words, Saul is saying, "But Samuel, we've spared the very best of the Amalekites to sacrifice unto God. Everything else, we've destroyed, but we saved God the very best." While that might sound good and noble, it was disobedience nonetheless. Finally, Samuel said, in verse 22, "And Samuel said, Hath 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 hearken than the fat of rams." Samuel teaches Saul that to obey is better than sacrifice. Saul would have been better off obeying what God had called him to do, rather than try and add to, or take away from, what God had called him to do.
God desires obedience from us. Are you being obedient to what He's called you to do? Or, have you, like Saul, made your own form of calling, and your own form of obedience? Think About It.
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