Saturday
Saturday
Saul’s Later Unfaithfulness
Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD.
1 Chronicles 10:13
Saul’s unfaithfulness took the form of disobedience, and three distinct examples of it are given us. Firstly, Saul usurped a priestly prerogative. He had been told to wait seven days in Gilgal until Samuel arrived in the role of priest to offer sacrifices. But when the specified week passed and Samuel had not come, Saul took the law into his own hands. He was full of excuses. He had “felt compelled” to act, he said. But Samuel said to him, “You acted foolishly…. You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you” (1 Sam. 13:12–13). His sin was a mixture of impatience, arrogance, sacrilege, and disobedience.
Secondly, Saul failed to destroy the Amalekites. He had been told that God intended to judge Amalek for attacking Israel soon after they escaped from Egypt when they were weary and unprepared. We considered last Sunday why these nations were to be “devoted to Yahweh,” that is, totally destroyed, both people and livestock. But Saul spared Agag, their king, together with the best of the sheep and cattle. When Samuel accused Saul of disobedience, Saul blamed his soldiers and added that they had done it to sacrifice the animals to the Lord. Samuel responded with the memorable words, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22).
Thirdly, Saul consulted a medium. All forms of necromancy (trying to communicate with the dead) were forbidden by the law of Moses (Lev. 19:31; Deut. 18:9–14), and earlier in Saul’s reign he “had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land” (1 Sam. 28:3). So Saul broke both God’s law and his own edict.
Saul is an object lesson in the dangers of disobedience. Because he had rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord had rejected him from being king over Israel (1 Sam. 15:26). No wonder the Lord sought in his place “a man after his own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14; cf. Acts 13:22). We turn next week to David.
For further reading: 1 Samuel 28:11–20