Obedience As Worship

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Importance of Obedience in the Christian Life

As we begin, I want to ask you, how important do you think is obedience in the Christian life? I believe that many Christians in certain types of Christian movements nowadays are being taught that it is of very little relevance.

Because our God is a loving and gracious God. He will forgive anything at all times. Obedience is seen as a bad thing and often perhaps labeled as legalism. However, I believe that our text before us today will show us that obedience is very important in the life of a Christian.

Not at all as a means of salvation, but rather as an act of worship. An act of worship that pleases God. In fact, I submit to you that it is the one thing that pleases God the most and that he has always desired of his people.

As we study the text, we will see the rejection of Saul. And it will be a case study of disobedience as well as the obedience that God desires of his people. Firstly, we'll see the nature of Saul's disobedience.

Secondly, we will see the self-righteousness of Saul as he tries to justify his disobedience. Samuel then gives us an explanation of God's delight in obedience rather than sacrifices and the consequences of disobedience.

In our last two points, fourth and fifth, we will consider the rightful response to our disobedience. And ultimately, I hope we will come away from this seeing that because God delights in obedience, and because disobedience is sin, we must put our sin to death.

As we get into it, let's go to the Lord in prayer one more time. Oh Father, we thank you once again for bringing us together as your called-out ones, as your church. What a privilege it is to be part of your church.

We bring today before you, and we ask that you would be pleased with our worship today. We seek nothing else but to glorify your name amongst our midst, and we ask for the preaching of your word now. Lord, accompany the preaching of your word with power from on high.

Let it be truthful and faithful to what you have said, that you may be glorified in the hearts of your people, and that it will bear much fruit. Lord, these words of mine, I have nothing good to say apart from your word.

So take your word, bring it to your people, and let it not return void. Use some of this to bear fruit in the hearts of your people, and to conform them more and more to the image of your glorious Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Saul’s Defiance of God’s Word in 1 Samuel 15

I will not read everything that Lowell just read. I will highlight some verses as we go along. In verses 1 and 2, as we start with our first point, we'll see the defiance to God's word. We'll see in verses 1 and 2, Samuel comes to Saul and tasks him to destroy the Amalekites.

The Amalekites had ambushed the Israelites when the Israelites left Egypt during the Exodus. They attacked the weak and slow that were trailing behind in the back, slaughtered innocent women and children.

And, of course, you remember Aaron and her holding up Moses' arms as Joshua was down in the valley battling against the Amalekites. Moses, in Deuteronomy, for example, chapter 25, mentions that the Amalekites were a nation that did not fear God, and that Israel was to completely destroy them once they were in the land that God had given them.

God had decided that it was now time to execute that judgment. And so, in verse 3, we read, Samuel says to Saul, Now go and strike Amalek, and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

Saul is given a simple command, really, if you think about it. He is told to strike Amalek, devote to destruction all that they have, not to spare anybody, and to kill both man and woman, child, infant, ox and sheep, including camel and donkey.

I think it's easily understood that Saul was to kill everything and everyone. One important thing to note in that verse is the phrase, devote to destruction. Scholars also call it the ban. In the context of war, whenever this phrase is used, it indicated a religious act that dedicated the enemies and sometimes the spoil of Israel to God.

We find the same concept if you go to Jadestan. In Joshua 6, for example, in the destruction of Jericho, everything in the city was to be destroyed except Rahab and her family, because they had hidden the spies beforehand.

In Joshua 7, after Jericho falls, we see that the spoil that was devoted to destruction was not to be taken by any man of Israel's army. In Deuteronomy 7, Israel was commanded to devote seven nations that were in the land that they were to inhabit to complete destructions, including the idols that they had made.

It's important to know that this command always applied to a specific group of people. In Joshua 6, it applied to Jericho and not to Rahab. In our text, it applies to the Amalekites and not the Canaanites.

It does not always equally apply to every nation surrounding Israel at all times. Devoting something to destruction in that context meant that, given that certain something that God had devoted to destruction to him, it was consecrated to God.

The devoted thing belonged to God and to God alone. He had the property rights over that thing that he named to destruction. No man was to take or keep anything from God. Now, this principle was not very widely common in the Old Testament.

One lexicon that I looked up at notes that this concept of a holy war started to fade away with the beginning of the monarchy. But in our case, that still means that every woman, man, child, infant, ox, and sheep, camel, and donkey belonged to God.

It was his, and it was to be destroyed for his glory. The Amalekites had not feared God, had previously attacked his people, and later, in verse 18, we see Samuel identifying them as sinners, before, in verse 33, finding out that they had committed many cruel wars by killing many children.

So they had rightfully incurred God's judgment on themselves. And Saul was to carry out that judgment by killing everyone and everything. After having been given this command, in verse 3, Saul gets to work.

In verses 4 through 7, we see him gather an army, and he makes his way to the Amalekites. And he warns the Canaanites to flee because they were not devoted to destruction with the Amalekites. Israel then starts their attack.

You'll see in verses 8 and 9, it says,. And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and devoted to destruction all the people at the edge of the sword. Verse 9,. 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. Right on the onset, it is obvious that Saul did not obey the command that he had been given. He was told to kill everything and everyone, and instead he took Agag, the king of the nation, alive, and spared some of the oxen and some of the sheep.

It was not his to take or his to keep. As already said, everything devoted to destruction belonged to God and was his alone. When Saul keeps Agag alive and spares the sheep and the oxen, he is stealing from God.

He's taking what is not to be his. That which was consecrated to the Lord, he took for himself. Now we do not know the exact reasons why Saul would keep Agag alive, but perhaps after already having fought a few successful wars in earlier chapters in Samuel, perhaps he'd become greedy and prideful and wanted to keep Agag as a prisoner for some political reasons.

Either way, it is as if he decided that he knew better than God. He determined that there was a better use for Agag than to just randomly kill Agag and put him to death. He essentially said, God, I know better than you.

I have a better use for these things than what you had in mind. He made himself his own authority in defying the command that he had been given. Saul did what was right in his own eyes, not God's. He determined these things to be good, while God had determined them to be bad and evil.

In verse 11, God says, 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. We see God expressing his grief, his displeasure and sorrow about Saul's disobedience.

What's important to note is that Saul did obey parts of the command that he'd been given. Verse 8, as we saw, says that he had devoted all the people to destruction. Verse 9, we read that he had destroyed everything that was despised and worthless.

However, in verse 11, we're told that by God's standard, partial obedience is not good enough. Only submitting up to a certain point is still an act of turning away from the Lord and a failure to perform God's command.

Partial obedience is complete disobedience in God's eyes. That means as Christians, if we desire to follow Christ, we cannot choose when and what we want to obey. We have to obey the entirety of God's word.

This is a matter of authority and you ought to submit to what God's word says. You do not get to make the rules and decide whatever you want. Like Thomas Jefferson did when he cut parts out of his Bible and he ended up with an 84-page Bible without any of the miracles of Christ.

No reference to his resurrection or ascension. He chose to focus on Jesus as a moral teacher without the supernatural power of God. We cannot do that. You cannot say to God, I agree with you on this, so conform here.

But I think you're wrong here, therefore I will not listen and obey. You as the creature are not above the creator. And when you only obey what you deem as good and right, you serve the creature rather than the creator who is to be supreme overall.

Obedience is a good thing. It is a constant theme in scripture running from Genesis to Revelation. Just to highlight one place where Christ himself talks about obedience. In John 14, verse 21, he says, Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. In verse 23 and 24, he continues,. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him.

And we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. Obedience is a good thing because it flows from and is a sign of our love for Christ.

We do not simply obey out of a sense of duty, but out of a love for a Savior who gave himself for us. Obedience is a means of imitating Christ in word, deed, and thought. So obey your God by faith, out of love, for his glory and your good.

Saul’s Self-Righteous Justification of His Disobedience

Back to our text, we'll continue in verse 12 and our second point. When we look at the unyielding self-righteousness of Saul. Verse 12 says, He, that is Saul, set up a monument for himself. And this is really where we begin to see Saul's belief that he has completely adhered to what God wanted him to do.

On his return from battle, full of confidence, he comes through the city of Carmel and commemorates his victory by setting up a public display of his achievement. Saul displays tremendous pride as he sets up a monument for his own glory and his own honor.

Instead of making his way to Gilgal, which was the place where God was to be worshipped and where sacrifices were still offered at that time. In verse 13, we see Samuel come to Saul and Saul greets him.

And it's almost like as if he's excited to see him. And he says, hey, I've done what the Lord commanded me to do. In verse 14, however, we see that Samuel hears the bleeding of the sheep and the lowing of the oxen that were kept alive and begins to confront Saul about his disobedience.

In verse 15, Saul gives a most interesting response. He says, they have brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God and the rest we have devoted to destruction.

It's interesting how Saul tries to justify himself. Notice the way in which he attempts to make a case for his innocence. It should be all too familiar to us. He blames the people. He tries to put the blame on someone else.

He's doing the exact same thing that Adam did in the garden. You remember when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? When God confronted Adam, what did Adam say to justify himself?

He said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. Saul, as the king, according to the rules for kingship laid out earlier in Deuteronomy, he was to obey God and uphold the statues of God's word.

He was a representative of the people. He had a certain headship over them. And just like Adam in the garden, he failed in fulfilling his responsibilities and now tried to push the blame for his sin onto those whom he had headship over.

But not only does he attempt to put the blame on someone else, he tries to present himself in the best possible light. You see in verse 15 when he refers to the partial obedience of devoting everything else to destruction, he uses the term we.

He includes himself in the group of those that have obeyed. He's saying, I obeyed the command. I did what the Lord told me. But the people, oh, the people, they were the disobedient ones. Samuel, in verse 16, of course, knows a lot better than that and begins to put the blame directly on Saul.

In verse 17 through 19, Samuel says to him, Are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. He continues in verse 18, And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.

Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? In case it's not 100 clear from the text, Samuel is referring to Saul in verse 18 and 19, and every you there in the Hebrew is the second person singular masculine.

Every verb in these verses is the second person singular masculine. Saul is in the most straightforward manner that you could think of, blaming Saul directly for his disobedience and the disobedience of the people.

Saul is clearly being told that he has done evil. He can try to shift it onto the people as much as he wants. He, as the king, has sinned. Saul, however, continues to hold on to his innocence. And so in verse 20 and 21, again, we see him proclaim, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord.

I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took up the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.

Again, Saul relies on his partial compliance to the command and once again blames the people for failing to follow the word of God. This time, however, he goes one step further. Note that he says, I have brought Agag.

In his self-righteousness, he seemingly claims to have gone above and beyond the command that God had given him. He's gone beyond simple obedience, has gone the extra mile, and has even brought Agag as a prisoner instead of merely killing him.

Again, he tries to paint himself in a good light while blaming his people. Saul is so proud that he will not accept his guilt. His self-righteousness continues to contend for his innocence. All of this is in direct contrast to what a king was to be for his people.

This is laid out in Deuteronomy 17, specifically verse 20, where the king is commanded not to exalt himself over his people. He's not to turn aside from adhering to the commandment of the Lord. Saul had done both of these things.

The question I have for us is, are we not all too familiar with that kind of stubbornness? When you have been confronted about your sin, have you not argued in the same fashion? Have you never told yourself, perhaps when you've grown cold or numb, that surely God will overlook this one small sin over here?

Because after all, you have obeyed all these other things over there. You're actively serving the church. You're giving faithfully. Surely he will not hold this little sin that you're hiding in a corner against you.

A little bit of pride, greed, envy, or lust will surely not render useless your acts of obedience. You try to justify your sins. Are you still ashamed of your sins? Or do you just accept them as a normal part of the Christian life and wonder why you are this way?

Understand that Saul did not completely go against what God had said. He simply did not fully comply with it. But if simply not obeying fully is evil in the sight of the Lord, how much worse is actively pursuing sin?

Do not think that you can be obedient and pleasing to God in a great many things when you're hiding away habitual secret sins in your heart. To use the language from our passage, God hears the bleeding of the sheep and the lowing of the oxen.

Do not let your self-righteousness be so great that it prevents you from admitting that you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Next, we'll skip to verse 22 and 23, and we'll see the evil that disobedience is and the delight that obedience is to God.

Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice

Verse 22, This is the third time now that Samuel has to confront Saul about his sin. That's why Saul has now appealed to the good intent of sacrificing the sheep and the oxen. This is where Samuel begins to draw a direct comparison between obedience and sacrifices.

Samuel is not saying that God did not at all delight in burned offerings and sacrifices. We will repeatedly read in the opening chapters of Leviticus that the aroma of sacrifices was pleasing to the Lord.

But God did take delight in them only when it flowed out of active obedience to him. God was pleased, honored, and worshipped with the obedience. Sacrifice was merely an outward expression of an inward devotion to him.

Sacrifices had to be accompanied by faith, confession, devotion, and most importantly, repentance. They were a way for the people to restore their fellowship with God, and so were mainly, as we're told in Hebrews, a shadow.

They were pointing forward to Christ, who actually does take away sins once and for all. A heart, soul, and mind that obeys God's word stands far above any offering and any sacrifice. Obedience is of far greater pleasure and importance to God than the empty ritualistic observance of sacrifices and offerings.

To obey, according to Samuel, is even more pleasing to him than the fat of rams. The fat of rams was the choicest part of the sacrifice and always belonged to God. No man or priest was allowed to eat of the fat of the offered animal.

In summary, Samuel is telling us that sacrifices in and of themselves, without obedience, are utterly worthless and are in fact greatly displeasing to God. He has no regard for them. If you want to turn with me to Isaiah 1, actually, and we'll see a great case study of this.

We'll be quickly surveying verses 1 through 17. I just want to highlight a few phrases. I think it will be enough to paint a picture. In verse 4, we see God call Israel a sinful nation. They're laden with iniquity.

They're offspring of evildoers. They're children who deal corruptly. They've forsaken the Lord. They've despised the Holy One of Israel. They're completely estranged. In verse 5, we see they continue to rebel and their whole head is sick and their whole heart is faint.

Verse 11, God continues. He says, What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? I've had enough of burnt offerings. I do not delight in the blood of bulls. Verse 13, Bring no more vain offerings. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.

Verse 14, He says, Your appointed feasts my soul hates. Verse 15, When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.

Verse 16 and 17, and then we'll finish there. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless. Plead the widow's cause.

The sacrifices and offerings were not the be-all and end-all of worship. True worship always began and always ended with an obedient heart devoted to God. It seems that Saul merely intended to offer sacrifices to appear to be obedient.

Perhaps to appease his conscience while disobedience continued to reign in his heart. Back to 1 Samuel 15 and then verse 23 in that little section of Samuel's response. He says, For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.

Divination during the Old Testament times was actually a wide spectrum of things. It included reading of eros, consulting with idols or little household gods, examining and reading the organs of animals.

It included astrology, omen reading, and necromancy. Divination was prohibited for the Israelites. The sorcerers was not to be allowed to live. They were not to interpret omens or tell fortunes. And a medium or necromancer was to be stoned.

Even people who inquired of mediums and necromancers were to be cut off from the people. Divination was evil in the sight of the Lord and provoked him to great anger. It was a trademark of false prophets.

It was not the way God communicated with his people. It signaled a blatant disregard for God. It was a sign of rejection of him and his authority. It was not a seeking of God's will, but of man's will.

It was trusting in man rather than God. Samuel was putting rebellion on that same level. It says that rebellion or stubbornness towards God or resisting of his authority, just like divination, is making man rather than God one's authority.

It was not to be found among his people. His people were to seek God only and obey him only. We'll see that presumption, as Samuel says, regarding God's word and his character is a form of idolatry. Presumption turns God into an image that man has created for himself.

By saying God's character or will is like this or like that, what do you fashion in your mind to be without actually discerning who God is and what he has said, is insisting on one's own will and putting it above the authority of God.

One commentator writing on verses 22 and 23 said, all conscious disobedience is actually idolatry because it makes self-will, the human eye, into a God so that all manifest opposition to the word and commandment of God is, like idolatry, a rejection of the true God.

Samuel continues at the end of verse 23, he says, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. After Saul had already not kept what he was commanded, in chapter 13, when he offered a sacrifice that he wasn't supposed to offer, he lost the continuation of his kingdom there.

He now, in chapter 15, after continued defiance, finally loses the kingship itself. By his continued disobedience, Saul is made clear that his heart is far from God. Just like the people in Samuel chapter 8, when they rejected God as their king and asked for a human king over them, so Saul has rejected God.

Repentance, Fear of God, and True Repentance in Psalm 51

Now what do we do with this? I suggest that God wants your heart, obedience. Jesus himself said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

God finds no pleasure in you coming to church or singing songs or praying prayers and you're serving in whatever capacity or you're performing whatever so-called good deeds if you're not at all observing his commandments any other day of the week except Sundays.

None of these things can make up for a lack of obedience. They cannot deal with your sin. Rather, these things are to flow from a heart that seeks to submit to his word. He wants you to do all these things because you follow his word, because you're devoted to him, because you love him, not instead of him.

The seriousness of disobedience or defiance is shown in verse 23. If noncompliance, rebellion, and presumption are anything like the sins of divination and idolatry, like Samuel says, then the due penalty for them is death.

And though we will not stone you to death if you commit any of these sins, there will come a day when, like Saul, you too will be rejected by God and on that day you will pay that dreadful penalty. With everything we've looked at so far from partial obedience being complete disobedience, the pride and the self-righteousness of our heart in trying to justify our sins, our coldness of hearts in tolerating our sin, and now to the penalty of that rebellion, we ought to feel a heavy burden of our sin.

If you are a Christian, you know all of that. And I ask you to allow me to share this with you again, because we need to hear this every week, all the time. When I thought about verse 22 and verse 23, I think looking at verse 22, we have to admit that you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, but there is one who has, and he's done so on your behalf.

You have displeased God with your consistent disobedience, but Jesus Christ pleased God with his perfect obedience. The voice from heaven bore witness to it when it said, You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.

In verse 23, we see the rebellion. Don't we all have been rebellious? Many different ways you've committed sin and idolatry, and Jesus was blameless. He was tempted in every way, yet without sin, he was righteous.

He did not reject the word of the Lord like Saul did, because he is the word of God. It was made manifest to bring eternal life to those who believe on him. You have rejected God as king, but he is God the king.

And most importantly, he did not have to offer a single sacrifice or offering for himself, but he was the one, once for all sacrifice. The unblemished lamb of God who had come to take away all your sin, every single act of obedience, pride, and selfishness.

He's casted as far as away as the east is from the west. And not only did he take away your sin, but he gave you his righteousness, so that when you trust and believe in him, you do not have to fear the rejection of God.

He's been rejected and forsaken, hung up on that tree to bear the rightful punishment for you, when he became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So let's take a look at ourselves, consider our condition, and then look at Christ.

Let us never take our eyes off him. Our text doesn't end there, though. There's a couple more things that Saul needs to do. We'll look at the remaining few verses and our last two points here. Fourthly, our first response to our disobedience is a repentance of our sin.

Verse 24, Saul says, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Saul, after Samuel's explanation of his sin and the consequence of being rejected as Israel's king, finally seems to admit that he has indeed sinned.

He confesses that he has transgressed, and at last gives the reason for his disobedience. He feared the people more than God. There was no fear of God before his eyes. As the king of the people, no matter what the people wanted him to do and possibly threatened him with doing, he should have obeyed the word of the Lord, no matter the cost.

No human being, especially believers, should ever fear man more than God. You cannot obey man when it means to disobey your God. Any threat of harm and suffering done by man pales in comparison to falling into the hands of a living God.

Every day, the world wants you to obey any man and anything but God. You cannot give in. You need to stand firm on God's word and obey His word. In Matthew 10, 28, Jesus said,. And do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

Rather, fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. In comparison to God, what can man possibly do to you? I want to take you a little bit of a closer look, however, at Saul's repentance. In verse 25 and verse 30, we find some interesting details.

In verse 25, Saul is appealing to Samuel for the pardon of his sin. He's not appealing to God. It seems that he tries to gain a good standing with Samuel by appealing to him and saying he will bow before the Lord.

In verse 30, Saul again says, I have sinned. He admits his sin, but he says, Yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel. Notice also that he says your God and not my God or our God.

Saul's motivation seems to be made clear a little bit more in verse 26 and 28. He does not seek true restoration to God. He does not fear God, but wants to retain his kingship over the people. He wants to appease Samuel and regain good standing with the elders and the people of Israel.

Saul loved the glory of God, loved the glory of man, and is standing and being honored as king by the people more than humbling himself in true repentance before God. Repentance, as in the case of Saul that only confesses sin, is not true repentance.

Confession that stops merely at admitting one's sin is not repentance. There's only a way of easing one's conscience. Many wicked people have no problem of admitting that they have done many wrongs and many times without being truly repentant.

That's exactly what Saul did here. He confessed his sin, admitted that he sinned, even bowed down before the Lord, but did so only to appease Samuel and regain his honorable standing among the people.

I'd like to suggest that true repentance is what David describes in Psalm 51. If you like, you can turn there. We won't read the whole thing, but it's a famous Psalm that I'm sure many of you know. But true repentance, as described by David here, notice in verse 1, it is a plea for mercy and a plea for the blotting out of one's transgressions.

In verse 3, we see that it is a great awareness of one's sin. It is an admission of having done evil in the sight of the Lord, having sinned first and foremost against him. True repentance is accompanied by a pleading for a new heart and a renewed spirit.

It's in verse 10. It consists of a coming to God with a broken and contrite heart. In verse 17, Joel, the prophet Joel, in Joel 2, adds to this. He says, return to me with all your heart. Joel speaks about the rending of the heart.

True repentance is painful. It's where the heart is severed, cut, and torn apart in two as one grieves and agonizes over the shame of one's sin. There's an abhorrence of sin, and the person turns from it toward God.

Paul calls this godly grief that produces a repentance that leads to salvation, whereas worldly grief produces nothing but death. Perhaps maybe you are a Christian, but you have indulged in disobedience.

Maybe you harbor a besetting sin in your life that you've grown accustomed to. Do not merely confess to it. Confession is a vital part of repentance, but it is not where repentance ends. Do not simply admit to it to ease your conscience before man, but turn from it and run to Christ.

Trust and believe in his atoning work on the cross, and after you repent, kill your sin. We'll see this quickly in verse 32 and 33, and then we'll finish. Verse 32, 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.

Samuel has returned with Saul to Gilgal and asked for Agag to be brought to him. Notice that Agag comes gladly and cheerfully. He's sure that he's escaped death and that there is at this point nothing that can happen to him after being only taken prisoner by Saul.

But Samuel then enacts God's righteous judgment on Agag. Samuel fulfills what Saul failed to do. Samuel completes the devotion to destruction of the Amalekites. Samuel hacked Agag to pieces. It's interesting, the etymology of the Hebrew term there actually suggests an actual dismemberment, which was a common practice for the execution of high-ranking officers at the time.

Friends, you cannot become friendly with your sin. Do not entertain or play with temptation. Do not see how close you can get to the line without crossing it. You must know how and when sin comes crouching at the door.

When and how you're being tempted to lust, to slander, to gossip, to envy, or any other sin. You must, like Samuel shows us here, violently put your sin to death. Piece by piece, you have to cut it apart, and every time it shows its ugly head, you cut it off.

You tear apart its limbs that aim to carry you to destruction. You have to understand that you're at war, and war is not pretty, it's a bloodbath. And every day you will have to put on the whole armor of God and get out onto that battlefield.

Know your enemy, be alert, and be ready to kill it. Remind yourself of what's at stake, and of the price that Christ paid to ransom you. I'm not advocating for sinless perfectionism. Be sure that you will sin and that you will fall, possibly even before this day is over.