Humility is not thinking lower of yourself. It simply is not thinking of yourself. And Saul, of course, always thought of himself, ergo, being self-centered. 1 Samuel 9, verse 21, Saul answered and said, Am I not a Benjamite of the smallest of the tribes of Israel and my family, the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then do you speak like this to me?
See, he had that humility, which wasn't genuine humility. It was just factual. You really are nobody and you just recognize him, but given the chance to be a somebody, you're going to mess it all up because you're going to think you deserve it anyway. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville.
Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Samuel. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 15 as he begins his message: the Lying King. 1 Samuel chapter 15. This message is entitled The Lying King.
And it is not my intention to sound self-righteous in pointing out. All of Saul's failures that the Holy Spirit is pointing out. and has preserved in history. Can Anyone point to any redeeming features about this man? Is there anything good in this man, really good, that you can say, hey, he did this?
Uh you'd you'd be hard pressed. In this chapter, what's remaining of we covered The first twelve verses last session, but here we find him lying to himself. Lying In the presence of God. lying to the prophet of God, and feeling that he could do no wrong. He had no problem covering up his sin.
His error and failures by blaming others. And this was habitual, it was a pattern here. It wasn't one or two times a prayer, it was just constant with this man. He's never wrong. And no matter Who it hurt?
or what it cost He was just unmoved by the damage he inflicted with his behavior. Because he has a lot of power, he's the king. He's not, you know.
Some person in an ign insignificant position. And he is shameless. And so let's look at verse 13. That's where we resume. Then Samuel went to Saul, and And Saul said to him, Blessed are you.
of Yahweh I have performed the commandment of the Lord. This would be a wonderful and welcomed greeting if it were coming from a man such as his son Jonathan, the crown prince.
Sort of like Judas Iscariot, you know, giving a kiss. A kiss is supposed to be an emblem of friendship, of love, of care. Coming from Judas it was something very ugly and unclean. And the same here, this greeting, blessed are you. In Yahweh's name, I've followed all the commandments of God.
It was insincere. It was religious language. And it was the language of a mere churchgoer. I mean, there are. good churchgoers and there are bad ones too.
So Was he trying to put Samuel off guard? and distract him with this pious behaviour? Or was he actually Just so full of himself, how could anybody catch him, call him out on anything? Did he really think Samuel was so Dumb? Because He's not obeyed God.
He's done the opposite of the commandment. And it just gets worse for him. Instead of owning his sin, When busted, He he continues to make things just go terribly wrong for him. He is too whatever to notice. And when I say that, he's too whatever.
What does he care? I mean, who wants to sit down and psychoanalyze the man? I mean, it's just too much stuff. We just know what he is.
So whatever it is, He doesn't notice that Samuel's fed up. He can't see. The man has traveled 15 miles looking for him. He's just come from the last stop that we read about, where they said, Well, Saul's not here, he's built a monument to himself. It's with that 15 miles of bad road, it's with the knowledge that he's disobeyed God.
that he's going to call out This king And This king can't see it in the face of Samuel. Because he's too he's that self-centered. The lessons, I mean, we'll be getting to David in the next chapter, and it won't be just like a nice cool glass of water. But Saul's still going to be part of everything. But it's just so many lessons about how not to be a human being, how not to be a believer of God, just looking at this man.
Maybe you have a neighbor you'd like to have read this.
So just tell me if you see yourself in this anywhere.
Well He really couldn't care about Samuel's face. Only face he cared about was his own. And It's just too easy to over-analyze the man, but at the same time, how do you pass by? I mean, I found myself. Shaving off so much information, okay?
It's just no time. We don't have enough time to say, and probably a little bit overkill, anyway. Anyway, he says, I have performed the commandment of the Lord there in verse 13. It said with self-satisfaction. There's a glee to this these words coming from him He really thought At least he behaves this way.
that God would be pleased with his better idea. Then God's idea, then God's commandment. It was Saul's brand of obedience. How could God reject that? You listen to this and you say, Can anybody be this delusional?
Yeah. Very quickly, too. These are the exact This is the exact opposite of what God commanded him. He said, I've obeyed everything he told me. Chapter 15, look at verse 3, going backwards a little bit.
Now go and attack Amalek, said the prophet to Saul. and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing, child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. I mean very clear. Rabbit and butterfly and flea, I mean, just nothing was to survive. But that is not what he does.
But he says, I have performed the commandment of Adonai. No, you have not. It is a blue ribbon lie. It is such a lie. You get an award from the the Liar Award Committee.
And this is the king, Starting off with a you know a pirate pious greeting And which is a pirated pious greeting.
Okay, I'm messing up my peas there. And Samuel is supposed to just be good with this, but Samuel is going to call him out. You're not going to let them off the hook. Saul doesn't pick it up yet, and even when he gets it, he really won't care too much.
So Was it fair? In Saul's thinking. To go ahead and kill the men, the women, the children, and the infants. But spare some of the sheep, And the king. A gag, as a trophy, of course.
And he is delusional. And he is arrogant at the same time. And he's an arrogant liar, and he thinks that everyone else is too dumb to see through him. And Only his opinion matters. Bottom line is, Saul did not love the truth.
You know, when Paul talks to the Thessalonians, writes to the Thessalonians, he says, because they did not have a love for the truth. but took pleasure in the lie. That's Saul. Verse 14. Then Samuel said, What then is this bleating?
of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear. Are you kidding me? You're looking right into my face lying to me. With all of the spoils around, and you think I'm too stupid to see this? Fat sheep.
Blue ribbon, a Malachite. Cattle. Voicing their objections to being there. Samuel hears it. classic response to a liar Is what about these facts I've got here?
The evidence, they disagree with what you're saying. And so Samuel pulled back the rug, Because Saul swept his lies underneath it. 1 Samuel 15, verse 11. He has turned back from following me. God speaking to Samuel.
and has not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to Yahweh all night. I think It exhausted Samuel at that point. He's past that now. And now he's just doing the business of of Yahweh.
Neither God nor Samuel were picking on this man. They were confronting They were confronting him. His disregard for truth, for God's word. They were not picking on, and if it appears that way, tough.
Someone lying to your face like that, oh, you're picking on me. That's what you believe, then you have it. I really don't care if you think that at this point. If that's the position you're going to take, I don't care enough to give in to it. And so I get the feeling reading this that Samuel arrived irritated.
By Saul's shenanigans, and he's greeted by more of them. And what are we supposed to do reading this? Anyway, verse fifteen. And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to Yahweh your God. and the rest we have utterly destroyed.
Let's just close and go home. He's such a fool. His first words, what are the first words out of his mouth? They Not me. They did this.
I'm innocent. You're the ruler, you're the king, you're not fit to command because you won't obey. Jesus was a man of authority. Because he was under the authority of his father. And he made that very clear.
I always do those things he tells me to do. It's his first words Shift the blame. To those he was supposed to be caring for and leading. The kings of Israel were supposed to be known as shepherds of Israel. This man's a butcher.
Shamelessly deflecting the guilt to other people. It was never his fault. As he did previously in chapter 13. When he went ahead and sacrificed without Samuel, all the people, you know, they were just getting upset and leaving me, and I had to do it. An excuse which could not be allowed.
And Samuel, thank God, is not going to stand for it. The word game. Will bite Saul and it's going to bite him very quickly. And it's going to sort of a time release because he's going to be suffering the fact. That David is liked much more than him, and it will burn in him with a hatred.
that is bloodthirsty for the man that is loved by the people. And As much as Samuel loved Saul and wanted him to succeed, Samuel is going well, he's not going to withhold the truth and the rebuke and the judgments that are coming Saul's way, which Saul is unmindful at the very moment. Samuel, of course, is not. He says to sacrifice to Yahweh your God. This is Saul speaking.
And the rest we have utterly destroyed. Yeah, God said, wipe out everything, but I felt I should. Exercise some executive privilege as king and make the decision to edit what God said in the interest of. There are Christians that do the same thing with God's Word. Saul has an answer for every prophet tell you what God has for him?
No, he cannot. He's too full of himself. David. David, when he's put in these situations, responds entirely different. No one is saying David was squeaky, clean, and pure.
We are saying when David was confronted with truth, he submitted to the truth. And he did it in a in a tremendous way. And so the first step toward this selective obedience is to reclassify sin. It's not sin. I've done everything God told me to do.
I've saved these for sacrifice. I'm changing the classification.
Well, you don't have that authority. Doesn't matter. All I need to have is enough dumb people who are able to to just submit to it. And so he Is looking to make sin look tolerable and acceptable instead of abominable, and he's using God to do it. This is for sacrifice, indulgences.
I will be forgiven if I pay it to Yahweh. Give him enough goodies and he will leave you alone. That has been the doctrine of the Catholic Church with their indulgences. God prohibited the tree of knowledge of good and evil. To Adam and Eve, but Eve, not as systematic as Saul, but still comes to the same place, she reclassified it as good for food.
And she looked and she said, It's good for food. No, it's not. It's poison. You're told not to eat it. You're reclassifying it.
You're saying it's something other than what God has classified it as. He's put it in this class. Keep your fingers off of it. Sacrifice is what he is saying. These are for sacrifice, Samuel.
If the humans can just be inconvenienced a little bit, Then It can take the place of obedience.
So I could be disobedient as long as I'm inconvenienced a little bit. I can order a mafia hit. But if I give enough money to the church, it really won't count against me. You know, Moses was not allowed to cross into the promised land as much as he even tried to just lean on God about this because. God said, Speak to the rock.
And Moses struck the rock. And for that, for that, he was prohibited in his lifetime from entering into the promised land.
However, The deal was with Moses, he presented God as angry with the people when God was not angry with them. Moses was angry with the people. And don't tell the Lord, as I always say, but I side with Moses. On a human level, it's like who can put up with these people, God? He should have sniped some of the people, never mind the rock.
Well, let's look at the school of the fool, Saul. The people spared The oxen and the sheep. Blame those whom you lead for the wrong that you do. Classic, right? And a petty person.
But they spared the best stuff, God. Surely you'll understand that.
So it is acceptable to disobey God if it is worthwhile. To sacrifice. This is why they spared the best. Ritual buys God's favor. You just walk up some steps on your knees, and all your sins are gone.
Who needs a Savior? And he says to Yahweh. That's his password, lip service. You got to have that. You can't say Baal or Astareth, but you can say Yahweh.
You can say, how many people try to disarm you by telling you, oh, this is a Jesus Christ-led business?
Well, maybe they're sincere sometimes, but sometimes they're not. He says, you're God to sacrifice to your God. Wait, wait, one minute here. Isn't he your God, too? Didn't you just greet me in the name of Yahweh?
What's going on with this? No communion. That's what's going on. Saul has no communion with God, he doesn't love the truth. And then finally, and he says, And the rest we've slaughtered.
Men-made standard. We've adjusted God's word because it really wasn't that good. It needed to be fixed. And so we've edited it. And there are s Scholars in the strict sense of the word, that they study something, but not that they're right or good or anything, or even believers, but scholars, many of them, over the centuries have done just that, tried to corrupt the Word of God.
By sparing what they felt was worth sparing, and just, you know, the Jesus seminar that used to be, I don't even know if it exists anymore. Uh but uh uh they'll continue it in hell when they get there. And what essentially it was is they've decided uh we will decide what in the Bible is to be accepted and what is not to be accepted. How do you even do that with a straight face? The neighborhood that I was raised in, that kind of behavior gets you a beat-up.
You get beat up for that kind of... Bold faces are lying about something that is special to others. But anyway, I drift a little bit there.
So if God wanted to spare, The best. He would have told you to to spare the best. And he does not. And attempts to buy God's approval with stolen items born of disobedience. It's not humorous.
It's not funny, but it is laughable. Suggesting that God could be calmed down with stolen livestock. Verse 16, Then Samuel said to Saul, Be quiet, and I will tell you what Yahweh said to me last night. And he said to him, Speak on. And Samuel said to Saul, Shut up.
Thank you, Lord, that Samuel stopped him. Because he would still be going on. He would just keep going on and going. Samuel, you royal backslider, I don't want to hear you talk. Just be quiet.
This is the prophet speaking to the king. He interrupts him. It's a hard verbal slap in his face. And I believe it did contribute. subconsciously, which would eventually become conscious on the surface.
to Saul's growing resentment for godly people. They ran away! He always got some goody two shoes thing to say about God. which interferes with what he wants. And that's what's going to happen with David.
I think when Saul threw the Spear of David, David was just ministering in the spirit, in truth. And Saul was being convicted, and to get away from it, he sought to kill the messenger. Because he was demonic.
Well Sam Mules. Present anger is a clear revelation of Samuel's loyalty to God. If the king will not be loyal, that's him. Me, as for me in my house, we're going to be loyal. Do what you gotta do, and we'll do what we have to do.
And so he says, And I will tell you what Yahweh said to me last night. Again, the tone is: I've had enough of you. And he's probably not even offered him a seat. or a cup of water. He just, you know, he sees Samuel coming, he goes, Oh, blessed are you, Samuel.
I've done everything God said. Why would he even bring it up right away? Why, Samuel, have you been? How was your trip? None of that.
I think if there was that happened, it would have been put in here. But Right now only God's opinion matters to Samuel. And I don't think that he could endure much more of Saul's outrageous brand of truth, tailored truth. But here's what Saul says. And he said, Speak on.
Don't you just want to taser the guy? It's a little arrogant say it. I don't care what his tone is, knowing the man, knowing the man. It was just won't say it. Get it out.
Yeah, it's going to cost you your throne. Is it worth it?
So all verse 17.
So Samuel said, when you were little in your own eyes, Were you not? Head of the tribes of Israel, and did not Yahweh anoint you king over Israel?
So Samuel winds the clock back and he says, Remember when you were at least apparently humble? You looked like you were humble. When I first met you But we pointed out when he first met him how the servant with Saul was more in tune to God than Saul was in tune. But What this also says is that God gives chances to nobodies. It gives them a chance to be someone.
He's going to repeat this with David. David was just a shepherd boy, son of Jesse. God gives him a chance to be the king of Israel, and he is he becomes the king of Israel. And how many psalms, how much scripture does, you know, in Deuteronomy, the kings were to write for themselves a copy of the law of Moses.
Well David Whether he did that or not, it is not explicitly said, but what we do know he did is he wrote more scripture. And so that what did Saul write? a terrible record. Humility And this giving nobody's a chance where he's taking them. You were once humble, at least in appearance.
Humility is not thinking lower of yourself. It simply is not thinking of self. And Saul, of course, always thought of himself, ergo, being self-centered. 1 Samuel 9, verse 21, Saul answered and said, Am I not a Benjamite of the smallest of the tribes of Israel and my family, the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then do you speak like this to me?
See, he had that humility, which wasn't genuine humility. It was just factual. You really are nobody, and you just recognize, but given the chance to be a somebody, you're going to mess it all up because you're going to think you deserve it anyway. Dave Hunt in his book. Beyond Seduction of Christianity.
Now, the seduction of Christianity, the characters are pretty much outdated, and that brand of sin is not as strong as it was when Dave Hunt wrote the book. But it is worth while. It is worth reading. Uh and we do carry it in the chapel store. Uh this is A shameless endorsement.
of the book. I have no, it is, I loved it when I first read it, but again, you'll just have to, you'll, everything still fits other people and other sins. But Dave Hunt says this. One of the Bible's major purposes is to correct man's high view of himself. Yet, It is now interpreted by Christian leaders to intend just the opposite.
This happened when the churches were pushing self-esteem for Christians. When the Bible says, humble yourself in the presence of the Lord, that He may exalt you when He is good and ready. Because you're going to have to go through a whole bunch of stuff to get your clock clean. And now we don't hear so much about it anymore because they found out man has too much self-esteem. That's the problem.
Cain had so much self-esteem, he would not dare let anybody cast a shadow on him, so he killed his brother. Because his brother's works were righteous. And John in the New Testament says, in case you missed it, Cain was wicked. And that's not the only one. And so he says, and did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel?
Yeah, like all the other kings in the nations, that's what the people wanted. Their request, of course, Was uh When God sits Samuel, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. They're dissatisfied with my authority. Because that's what the flesh is to all of us Christians. We're dissatisfied with our flesh is dissatisfied with what God wants.
And that's why we struggle against the spiritual man, against the carnal man. But we win because of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Verse 18: Now, now Yahweh sent you on a mission. And said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.
Well, of course, he stops. He conquers the city, but instead of continuing on to other Amalekite settlements, he starts to collect. The plunder. And He doesn't destroy them. Without submission to God, there can be no mission of God.
This is beautiful words. God sent you on a mission. to be on a mission from God.
Well, you know, go into all the world and preach the gospel. But that entails so much more. It's not enough to just know the gospel. You have to be doing it yourself as a witness to maintain. There's so much involved.
Mm. Um Thanks for joining us for today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. Currently, Pastor Rick is in the book of 1 Samuel. If you'd like to listen again to this or other messages or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreferenceradio.com.
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