In 1Samuel 15, Samuel sends Saul to utterly destroy the Amelekites but Saul has a better idea. He saves the King alive and returns with the animals to sacrifice to the Lord. Saul has a good reason for His actions; he genuinely thinks his idea is better than the instructions Samuel gave him. This begs the question, “Does Saul genuinely believe that Samuel speaks for God?” If Saul doesn’t believe that Samuel is speaking for God, this might explain why he thinks saving the king alive so that he can be properly publically humiliated and killed is better than an anonymous battlefield death.
In the days of Samuel and Saul, when one king went up against another kingdom and won, the king was publically humiliated and killed to prove that its god was greater than the god of the kingdom that lost. This principal was important for the safety and welfare of the society that was left. As long as the conquering king can be demonstrated to be the greater king to the whole of the society that is left, peace is more assured.
Saving the animals alive to be sacrificed to God likewise makes better sense, humanly speaking, than killing them all on the battlefield. God requires sacrifice in this age; lots and lots of sacrifice. If the animals of a neighboring kingdom can be sacrificed in lieu of the animals of the Jews, it would accomplish two positives. The sacrifices required by God could be made; plus the Jews could keep their animals. Saul’s wisdom would appear to be better than that offered by Samuel on both counts. However, the disdain God feels toward the wisdom of man shows through plainly in Samuel’s response to Saul’s disobedience.
It was man’s wisdom that caused Adam to disobey God in the Garden of Eden. It was man’s wisdom that caused the fall of the human race. It was man’s wisdom that brought pain in childbirth to women; and it was man’s wisdom that caused the earth and it its inhabitants to be cursed. It was man’s wisdom that caused the earth to bring forth briars, brambles, and weeds and it was man’s wisdom that distorted God’s creation from the beauty He created to the mosquitoes, ticks, and violence of predators we see today.
Saul returns from the killing of the Amelekites full of himself. He obviously thought that he had the mind of the Lord more accurately than Samuel. He fully expected to be rewarded by the Lord for executing His will more correctly than Samuel had suggested. Saul evidently felt confident with his knowledge of the Lord, confident enough to change Samuel’s instructions. Saul said unto Samuel, “Yes, 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 Amelek, and have utterly destroyed the Amelekites. 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.” Saul exudes confidence in his response to Samuel and offers a plausible reason for his inability to perfectly obey; Saul could not control the zeal of God’s people, who wanted something from the battle to offer up to God as a sacrifice.
Samuel’s response to Saul is somewhat dry and direct, “Has 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.” This response is curious in the light of the modern Church’s emphasis on sacrificing to and for the Lord. While it is true that the Lord required sacrifices in this age, it is also clear that sacrificing to the Lord could not make up for disobedience. No amount of sacrifice can cover for disobedience. However, even though obedience is what the Lord requires; what the Lord desires is someone to hearken. Jeremiah 33:3 states: “Call unto me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you don’t know.”
One of the deepest desires of mankind is to have someone listen to them, to feel that they have been truly heard and are we not created in the image of God? God’s desire is that mankind would be so interested in what He has to say that he would search diligently for His words and hang on every one. Obedience is required of mankind but the Lord desires fellowship, true, honest, fellowship; fellowship based on integrity and honor. If we are honest with ourselves we must acknowledge that God is greater than ourselves, but not just greater, He is also smarter, knows the future and remembers the past perfectly. He is a person who has pertinent words to say, words that would benefit our well being, words that are worth hearing. If we are honest with ourselves, the Word of the Lord is worth searching out, for finding it is better than finding gold or silver. Our problem is being honest with ourselves.
Saul was not honest with himself when he responded to Samuel. He should have known that God had commanded him to utterly destroy the Amelekites and he should have known that he had failed to accomplish his task. Instead of coming to God in humility and admitting his mistake, Saul painted a pretty picture with words that were not true. He attempted to deceive God into thinking that he had done his best and that the situation had gotten out of his control. Saul failed on two levels; he failed to obey, but more than that, he failed to hearken to God’s words. In other words, Saul failed to give the proper level of significance to God’s words. He downplayed the importance of hearing exactly what God had said. The colloquial term is “yea, but.”
The problem is that mankind thinks more highly of himself than he should. Consider Adam in the Garden of Eden. Talk about having it made, Adam lived in a perfect world. What happened was that Adam failed to put the proper amount of importance on God’s Word. Adam felt that his own wisdom was just as important as God’s. He failed to hearken to God’s words. His failure to hearken caused his disobedience. Mankind has not changed in the last 6,000 years. Each man hears God’s Word with his own filters. It is very hard to hear God’s Word without these filters. Most of the time, mankind is unaware that he is changing God’s Word as he hears it, but many are more arrogant, charging that they have a right to their interpretation and disdaining the idea that God’s Word should not be interpreted. These people would argue that God’s Word is personal and must be personal. However, making God’s Word personal is the sin of Saul, the sin of Adam. Saul changed God’s Word to suit his needs and fully expected God’s approval but this is the argument most every wife makes of her husband.
Man’s intelligence is his downfall. The husband hears his wife’s instructions and thinks, yes, but there is a better way. In so doing he has shown his wife that her words mean nothing to him, which makes her feel that she is not important, not co-equal. God’s view is somewhat different than the wife in that when man changes God’s Word to make it personal, he has made himself greater than God, placed himself as a co-equal to God. This is not endearing to God, it is an affront.
This is why man’s interpretation of Acts 1:4 is believable. The Church is willingly ignorant of the truth that Jesus was temporal before the cross. He was a man just like any man. He died on the cross, just as dead as any man that has ever lived has died. God, the Father had to raise Him from the dead, otherwise, Jesus would still be dead today. However, after the cross, Jesus was an eternal being, a being that would never die. Every word Jesus spoke before the cross was temporal just as Jesus was temporal, but every word Jesus spoke after the cross was eternal, just as Jesus is eternal. The commandment found in Acts 1:4 is not a temporal commandment. It is not a commandment for a temporal period of time. It is an eternal commandment, a commandment made outside of time just as Jesus exists outside of time.
The Church has done the same thing Saul did in 1Samuel 15. It has failed to place the proper emphasis on what Jesus said after His resurrection. The Church has failed to treat this commandment with honor and respect; it has failed to walk in integrity with the Christ. The Church took liberties with this commandment, interpreting it in such a way that negated its authority over believers and exempted them from obedience. The Church does not have this authority. It does not have the authority to explain God’s Word in a way that changes it and obey its version. This is exactly what Saul did.
Saul’s version of Samuel’s instructions was very different from the instructions Samuel had given him. Saul was perfectly comfortable with the changes he had made, he was perfectly comfortable with his interpretation just as the church is comfortable with its interpretation of Acts 1, but Saul’s version was not obedience to God at all from God’s perspective and Saul lost his place as king as a result. God seeks obedience to His Word, plain, simple, obedience, but what He is really looking for is someone who will hold His words with integrity. Someone who is not looking to change His Word to suit their agenda, but someone who will respect His Word, honor His Word, someone who will treasure His Word as precious, too precious to change.
Some would say this argument is ludicrous. They will argue that Jesus was obviously addressing eleven men. However, this thinking fails to take into account that Jesus has transitioned back into an eternal being after living as a man for 33 years. It fails to take into account that this is the only commandment Jesus issued to the Church, or that this is the only commandment issued by the Christ, a title Jesus earned by His death. It fails to account for this commandment being the only commandment Jesus issued under the authority of the new covenant, which was not ratified until Jesus’ death on the cross. It fails to account for this being the only commandment Jesus issued with all authority, the authority of Lord of Lords and King of Kings. The idea that Jesus was addressing eleven men in Acts 1:4 but was addressing the whole Church before His death in all that He said is ludicrous.
Ask yourself these questions: “Why is it Christians should obey commandments Jesus spoke before the cross but ignore the one spoken after?” “Why is it none of the commandments Jesus spoke of before His crucifixion were fulfilled by the apostles but the one spoken afterward was?” “How is it reasonable that the Church should ignore the commandment Jesus gave with all authority, but strive to keep one He gave with no authority?” “When Jesus said, If you love me, keep my commandments, was He speaking of commandments He issued with no authority or with all authority?” Which commandment do you think it would be more important to obey? If the commandment to love one another should be obeyed, which was issued before the cross, before the new covenant, 1,000% more effort should be put into obedience of the commandment issued after the resurrection to allow the gift of tongues to flow out of the belly like a river.