“For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” (1 Samuel 15:23, NIV)
For nearly all of us, it’s no trouble to look at the players we see on TV each week and say with easy honesty, “That will never be me.” They’re not only good, they’re very good.
We slip into similar evaluations around our club, and not just with “the good guys.” When the big talker spews his hubris again, or the curser burns our ears, or the gambler rolls his dice and the drinker throws back another, we might tell ourselves, “Glad that’s not me.”
In other words, we do a pretty good job of brushing aside who we are not. But how good are we at seeing who we are?
There is a reason passages like 1 Samuel 15 make us wriggle in our self-reflection. Saul was chosen by God and anointed by Samuel to be king of God’s people. He had won important battles and was revered by his men. Saul was a man of true standing. And he compromised.
Compromise is the sin that ensnares us all. We can’t look around at others and say, “Not me!” in the way we do with “sinners’ sins.” Compromise is subtle, often hidden. To everyone but God.
Scripture casts unceasing light on two things: the wealth of God’s grace and the poverty of our sin.
In 1 Samuel 15, Saul was instructed by the Lord to exact punishment on the Amalekites, destroying them and all they had. Saul did and he didn’t. He won the battle, but he took the king alive and “spared…the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good.” He even told Samuel he had a legitimate reason for doing so: he was going to sacrifice these animals to the Lord.
Samuel wasn’t buying it. He replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”
We might ask, “But isn’t this letter-of-the-law stuff?” Perhaps, but the law was what Saul had—as well as, in this case, the direct instruction of God for this battle. And he could not keep it. This is quite in contrast to the ark-building of Noah, who took the Lord’s measurements and instructions and “did all that the LORD commanded him” (Genesis 7:5). The difference exposed Saul.
You may be familiar with the picture James painted in the New Testament, the picture of the mirror: “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” (James 1:23-24).
Scripture casts unceasing light on two things: the wealth of God’s grace and the poverty of our sin. Only when we see these two things clearly and hold them together does our own exposure lead us to God rather than away from him.
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Jeff Hopper
March 31, 2021
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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