Having
been distraught for a night, Samuel decided to confront Saul. He probably had a
hard time getting to sleep that night. So very early the next morning, he arose
looking for Saul. It was told to Samuel that he went to Carmel, built a
monument for himself before proceeding to Gilgal. This Carmel was another place
and not the Mount Carmel where Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal. Saul
even had the gall to build himself a monument at Carmel. Nothing could be
said if he had built the monument to God but he didn’t, he actually built it
for himself. How incongruent could he be?
Samuel
must have caught Saul by surprise and the first thing Saul said to him was
“Blessed are you of the Lord!
I have carried out the command of the Lord.” These
words contradict what the Lord told Samuel the night before. First Samuel 15:11
explicitly said that God regretted that He
had made Saul king over His people, for he had become wayward and
had turned from following the Lord and had not carried out His
commands. Saul not only failed to obey the Lord, he now even lied about it. He
did not fulfill the word of the Lord as he claimed to have. Saul’s ability to
say that to Samuel without even batting an eyelid indicates to us how sheered
his conscience was. This is not peculiar to Saul. This is the tendency of every
man’s fallen nature – to cover disobedience with lies.
It took Samuel’s probing question to ferret out the truth form Saul. The
prophet asked, “What
then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the
oxen which I hear?” We see how Saul went from bad to worst. He first tried
to cover his disobedience by lying. When he was exposed, he told another to
cover the first lie. Isn’t this how lying often leads to? Tell a lie and one
will have to keep on lying to cover the truth. The best thing in life for
failure is to own up to it. At least there would be an opportunity to repent
and change. But it would be difficult if one refuses to own up to one’s
failure. Know it or not, it is always more difficult to cover one’s failure and
yet try to live with freedom. The truth according to the Lord Jesus always sets
us free.
Scrutinize
verse 15 and look at it closely. He said, “They have brought them from the
Amalekites, for the people, spared the best of the sheep and oxen, to
sacrifice to the Lord your
God; but the rest we have utterly destroyed.” He was literally shifting the
blame to the people. He said it was the people who spared the best of the sheep
and oxen. He even used a religious reason as if they had such a noble motive to
spare the animals. Disobedience cannot be camouflaged no matter how one tries
to disguise it. At least we know that this game of passing the buck was a
tradition that began at the fall of Adam and Eve. It is common for fallen
humanity to push the blame to others for their failure. The fault always
resides in others. If its’ not our parents, then it’s our circumstances. If
it’s not our boss than it’s our government. It is never our fault. Let’s
not descend to such a position.
The
truth is that Saul had backslid so badly. The tell-tale sign was the way he
framed his reason for the failure. He told Samuel that they kept the best of
the animals to sacrifice to “your God.” He couldn’t even refer to God as his
God. The animals were for sacrifice to Samuel’s God. All this while God was
viewing the matter very differently. So Samuel's response was “Wait,
and let me tell you what the Lord said
to me last night.” Saul even dared him to speak. He had fallen so
badly, and he was still unaware. That’s the deception of sin. Sin always blunt
one’s conscience. Unless we keep pace with God and constantly yield to the
work of the Holy Spirit in our life, we are in danger of becoming dull of
hearing. Take heed and we will do well!
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