There are many places throughout the Bible, where we read bone-chilling words; words that cut deep into the dark places of our souls. I think of the time when God enters the Garden and calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” and then subsequently says “Who told you that you were naked?” (Gen. 3:9, 11).

I also think of the time when Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Matt. 16:23). You may also remember Paul’s words where he says, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1).

Or again when Paul says, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Tim. 6:3-5).

Or even when Paul says, “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica… [and] Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message” (2 Tim. 10, 14-15). When I read words like that in the Bible, I am cut to the heart because those words remind me of how serious the sin that still lives within me really is.

But I must be honest here and say that none of those words cut as deeply as when I read in verse 19 of our text, “Why… have you done what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” This singular question from the mouth of the prophet, Samuel, to the King of Israel who was being confronted for his sinful rebellion against God, this question is absolutely bone chilling when I stop to consider the context and the details of the confrontation. Look at the passage with me…

12And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told Samuel, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he has set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.” 13And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the LORD. I have performed the commandment of the LORD.” 14And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” 15Saul said, “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.”

16Then Samuel said to Saul, “Stop! I will tell you what the LORD said to me this night.” And he said to him, “Speak.” 17And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. 18And 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.’ 19Why 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?” 20And Saul said to Samuel, “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. 21But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal.”

22And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. 23For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you from being king.”

24Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. 25Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may bow before the LORD.” 26And Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you. For you have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you from being king over Israel.” 27As Samuel turned to go away, Saul seized the skirt of his robe, and it tore. 28And Samuel said to him, “The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you. 29And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.” 30Then he said, “I have sinned; yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me, that I may bow before the LORD your God.”

31So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul bowed before the LORD. 32Then 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.” 33And 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. 34Then Samuel went to Ramah, and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. 35And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.

If the Word of God, written and or spoken prophetically through the mouth of a servant of God was ever meant to cut deeply like the double edged sword it is (Heb. 4:11-13), then, here in this passage, we have an example of just how ruthlessly committed, God is to his own Word – not to mention how committed he is to disciplining and confronting evil among his people. Look at the first confrontation in our passage as Samuel begins to confront King Saul for the evil things he has done.

#1: THE FIRST CONFRONTATION (VV. 12 – 15)

As we examine this first confrontation between Samuel and King Saul, we must remember that Samuel gave King Saul some very specific and difficult instructions in verses 1 – 3 of this chapter, and the key phrase in those instructions were “listen to the words of the LORD” (v. 1). We must also remember that King Saul failed to listen to the words of God – he failed to follow through in obedience to God in verses 4 – 9 – which resulted in God saying to Samuel in verse 11, that “I regret (or I am grieved) that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.”

Again, these are very difficult words to contemplate. The essence is this, King Saul failed to listen to the words of the Lord, he turned backward from following God, and he refused to be obedient to God. All of those details form the immediate context of this first confrontation as well as the escalating confrontations that follow.

In this first confrontation, Samuel gets up early in the morning (v. 12) after wrestling with his anger and sadness before the Lord all night (v. 11) and he begins his search for King Saul. He learns that Saul built “a monument for himself” (v. 12) – which appears to be some kind of monument intended to bring attention or glory or honor to King Saul, rather than to God – and then Samuel finds King Saul in the town of Gilgal. Is King Saul running from Samuel at this point? I suppose it is possible. But it is really worth noting that in King Saul’s rebellion, he appears to be more interested in his own self-glory than anything else.

And as soon as Samuel approaches King Saul, Saul greets him with a blessing and an immediate statement proclaiming that “I have performed the commandment of the LORD” (v. 13). It almost seems like King Saul is gloating over his own self-deceived notion of obedience. But Samuel is not having any of it; he shoots straight for King Saul’s heart when he says in verse 14, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” In other words, “You think you have been obedient, you claim to have listened to God, but if that were true, why do I hear the sounds of the very livestock you were told to destroy?”

I am thinking that in this moment, the pride-filled smile on King Saul’s face became a grim look of utter shock and confusion. The darkness of his sinful disobedience was beginning to be laid bare in front of his very eyes. And how does King Saul respond? Well, rather than falling on his face in true repentance with godly remorse, he shifts into an ancient tactic – the good old-fashioned game – of blaming and minimizing sin while taking credit for half-hearted obedience; this game is as old as the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3).2

Notice verse 15, where King Saul basically says, “hey this is not my fault, because it was the people you gave me to lead who did this bad thing and it really is not all that bad because they only did it so they could perform religious worship ‘to the LORD your God’ (not my or even our God) and by the way, I helped them obey in every other way.” Outside of the blaming, minimizing, and credit taking nature of King Saul’s statement, I am struck with the fact that he was so self-deceived that he actually believed that sinful disobedience could actually be spun into a story of religious worship to God. This makes my head explode.

One commentator says that this “chapter is a brilliant study in the deceptive, corrupting power of sin” and in King Saul we can see that “The very sinfulness that leads to disobedience often blinds the sinner to the reality of his or her disobedience”.3 You see, the reality is this: once sin gets you to believe that her promises are better than the promises of God, she then deceives you even further by suggesting that disobeying God is not your fault, especially if you can spin your sin into something that looks or sounds good, and most especially if you can point to some half-hearted obedience that you now wear like a self-righteous robe.

This is where King Saul is at in this very moment of the story; he is fully enveloped in his self-righteous robes of blaming, minimizing, and taking credit for half-hearted obedience and Samuel has heard enough, which leads us into the second confrontation as things escalate and heat up.

#2: THE SECOND CONFRONTATION (VV. 16 – 21)

In response to King Saul’s game of blaming, and minimizing, and taking credit, Samuel disrupts the deception in verse 16 when he forcefully says, “Stop! I will tell you what the LORD said to me this night” to which King Saul invites him to keep speaking. So, Samuel, in verses 17 – 18, dives into reminding King Saul that God made him “king over Israel”and that he also sent him “on a mission” with clear instructions to “devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and [to] fight against them until they are consumed”.

This little reminder of who God called Saul to be (King of Israel) and what God called Saul to do (destroy the enemy), is merely the preamble to the big questions he really wants to ask. Once that preamble is set, Samuel strategically and ruthlessly drops a sin-revealing bombshell in a series of bone-chilling questions in verse 19 when he asks, “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?”

These questions should have stopped King Saul in his tracks; they were meant to lay King Saul’s sin wide open so that he could repent and grieve and seek forgiveness before the Lord. But the problem is that it appears to be too late. King Saul seems to be too far gone at this point because his response, in verses 20 – 21, to Samuel’s bombshell questions, is basically a doubling down on his original answer with an emphatic “I have obeyed the voice of the LORD” along with a slipup that adds new information to his puzzling defense when he says “I have brought Agag king of Amalek” (presumably as a trophy of his victory in battle).

So, instead of falling on his face before the Lord in repentance, King Saul doubles down on his defense and he also brags about taking the enemy king captive even though he was instructed to destroy the enemy. This reminds me that whenever we play games with Sin, rather than walking in repentance, we will inevitably hang ourselves with our own words. King Saul appears to be cooked, fully exposed, and wildly trying to defend himself against the truth that shines like a bright light in the darkness of sinful, deceptive, depravity. The stage is now set for the third and final confrontation.

#3: THE THIRD CONFRONTATION (VV. 22 – 30)

In this third and final confrontation between Samuel and King Saul, Samuel, in verses 22 – 23, basically says that Saul’s (and the people’s) plan to offer sacrifices to the Lord with the spoil that they disobediently held onto, would not only be meaningless but would also be an act of demonic rebellion that was full of iniquity and idolatry, and because King Saul had failed to listen to and obey the word of God, because he had “rejected the word of the LORD” then the Lord would now reject him as the king of Israel.

The bottom line here is that Samuel and the Lord are done playing King Saul’s games. One would hope, once again, that King Saul would open his eyes, wake up from his stupor, and fully repent. But sadly, even though it looks promising at first, in verses 24 – 26, as Saul admits that he has sinned and transgressed God’s commandments, he ultimately blames his own fear, and begs Samuel to forgive him and honor him in front of the elders of Israel, but Samuel holds his ground by repeating his earlier judgement about Saul being rejected by God because he rejected God first.

At that point, Samuel begins to leave in verses 27 – 29, Saul grabs hold of Samuel’s robe and tears it, which prompts Samuel to announce that Saul’s kingdom will be torn from him and given to another person who “is better than you” (once again, bone-chilling words) as he caps it all off with a proclamation of God in his holiness who never lies or needs to repent since he is not a human being.

Saul’s final words in this final confrontation reveal just how fully cooked, or completely gone he really is. The dude ain’t coming back; he is passed the point of no return. Saul’s words in verse 30 reveal a weak admission of sinfulness, an obsession with being honored in front of the people, and a weird infatuation with bowing in front the God he does not even call his own; his separation from God seems to be fully complete and that is what Sin’s intentions were all along.

As friendly as sin appears to be, the outcome of playing games with sin will always be greater separation from God as sin gets fully rooted and makes her comfy bed in the heart and mind of her victim who is now on a full-blown flight towards death and eternal separation from the God that he or she never really fully knew.

This is a sad situation for many in the world today, but it is also a sad situation for many, in the church today, who have just enough theology to look and sound good on the surface while deep down inside they have rejected the Word of God and have continued in disobedience to him. The aftermath of ongoing sin and disobedience is never pretty. That acknowledgement leads us into the aftermath of this series of three confrontations. Brace yourselves. The aftermath, in these five closing verses of our study is violent, bloody, and chilling.

#4: THE AFTERMATH (VV. 31 – 35)

After three escalating attempts to get Saul to come to his senses and repent from his sin, Samuel follows Saul back to the people of Israel (v. 31) where Saul bows publicly before the Lord, presumably in a big show of false humility and worldly remorse (Saul seems to be more sorry that he got caught rather than being truly broken over his sin). If Saul were truly repentant, if he were really full of godly sorrow that accompanies repentance (2 Cor. 7:9-10), he would have taken action, destroyed the livestock, and killed King Agag. But he did not do that did he?

Ultimately, Samuel follows through in obedience, with what Saul should have done in verses 32 – 35 as he cuts King Agag “to pieces before the Lord” and then he promptly returns to his home leaving Saul alone to do the same and we learn that “Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death” and that “Samuel grieved over Saul” and God “regretted (or grieved) that he had made Saul king over Israel”.

The violent, bloody, and lonely aftermath of refusing to repent, is the dark side of the cross of Christ. In this instance, the violence, blood, and loneliness (he did not see his spiritual mentor again until he died) that Saul experienced on the backside of his backsliding and unrepentance is an image of the horror of hell on earth.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, as I said at the beginning of this message, I am often stopped in my tracks by the words of the Bible. Those words “Why… have you done evil in the sight of the Lord?”are as bone-chilling as they get. I hope and pray that none of us will experience hearing those words. But if we do… I pray we do not willfully ignore multiple escalating attempts of confrontation from someone the Lord sends to firmly and lovingly correct us and call us to repentance.

I can also take heart and be deeply encouraged by the bone-chilling words of another King many years in the future from Saul, on one of the most violent, bloody days in the history of mankind who said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). As Jesus hung on that cross for you and me, his prayer recognizes the blinding nature of sin in the life of a person tangled in her deceitful web of lies, and it communicates absolute grace and mercy for all sinners, while begging God to do what only God can fully do, which is to forgive – meaning to wipe the slate clean.

If you have listened to this message and have heard some of the bone-chilling words of this text, and have been provoked to repent from your sin, please do not hesitate to come to Jesus, admit and confess your sin, trust and believe in the power of that bloody cross and that empty tomb where Satan, Sin, and Death were defeated, and ask God to forgive you and to help you live like a brand new person from this day forward.

If you are hearing this message, then you are not too far gone in your sin yet. God has given you another chance to turn away from your sin, to him, in faith and desperation. And honestly… the most bone-chilling words in all of Scripture are “Welcome, my good and faithful servant” because every one of us knows that we have not been fully faithful to God.

Yet the God of the universe is overjoyed to call you his own son or daughter based on your profession of faith in him as evidenced by your continued walk of repentance. The grace and mercy of God should chill each of us to the core and encourage us to continually come to that bloody cross in full repentance and faith in God’s power to save. – Amen!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 John, Woodhouse, 1 Samuel: Looking for a Leader, Preaching the Word Commentary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2008), 269 – 270.

3 Ibid., 267 – 268.