A Sinful King and a steadfast god
1 Samuel 15:1:35
Main Idea: God is faithful to his promises even when we are unfaithful to his commands.
I. A Sinful People (15:1-3)
Misconception: God is a moral monster
Correction: God is a just judge
1 Samuel 15:2: 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.”
Exodus 17:14-17: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
Deuteronomy 25:17-19: “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.”
To modern ears, this sounds alarmingly like ethnic cleansing. But this is ethical cleansing rather than ethnic cleansing. This is an act of judgment against sin. Destruction will come to the Amalekites not because they are Amalekites, but because they are sinners. In a sense, this should alarm us. Not because it is unfair, but because it is fair; and because while we are not Amalekites, we are sinners. Their destruction is a picture of what humanity deserves, and faces, from God. When judgment comes, nothing—nothing—is left.
-Tim Chester
Exodus 34:6-7: The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
Genesis 4:7a: …sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.
Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.
-John Owen
II. A Sinister King (15:4-31)
Misconception: God is arbitrary and fickle
Correction: God is unchanging and steadfast
1 Samuel 15:6: Then Saul 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 people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.
1 Samuel 15:7-9: And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. 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.
1 Samuel 15:10-11: The word of the Lord came to Samuel: “I regret that I have 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.
Frequently the first step, upon hearing such a text, is to wax theological and ask how God could be so grieved over something he, if he’s God, must have known would happen. The next step is to introduce the term anthropomorphism (attributing human forms or characteristics to God) or anthropopathism (attributing human feelings to God) in order to indicate that sometimes the Bible must use the grammar of humanity to communicate the truth about deity, that sometimes Scripture stoops to use human categories to tell the truth about a God far beyond all our categories. That is all right, but there is a danger that we will dismiss the matter there and not go back to the text!
-Dale Ralph Davis
We so focus on the form in which the truth comes that we neglect the truth that comes. Did we really hear the parallel clause in Genesis 6:6, “and his heart was filled with pain” (NIV), and sense the intensity of divine sorrow over human sin? And ought not verse 11 of the present chapter move us beyond the problem of anthropomorphisms? “I am sorry that I made Saul king, because he has turned back from following me....” It is a tragedy when Saul refuses to be Yahweh’s disciple; it grieves Yahweh. He is not a “you win some, you lose some” god. Nonchalance is never listed as an attribute of the true God. Verse 11 does not intend to suggest Yahweh’s fickleness of purpose but his sorrow over sin; it does not depict Yahweh flustered over lack of foresight but Yahweh grieved over lack of obedience…We need to know that the God of the Bible is no cold slab of concrete impervious to our carefully defended apostasies.
-Dale Ralph Davis
III. A Sorrow-Filled Prophet
Misconception: God is vengeful
Correction: God is true, good, and beautiful
1 Samuel 15:32-33: Then Samuel said, “Bring here to me Agag the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him cheerfully. Agag 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 in Gilgal.
