1 Samuel 15:22

kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

Sullivan gets his army gathered up, he gets them ready to go, and he goes to war with the Amalekites, and God blesses them with a great victory. Right after this, we see something that should stand out to us in verse eight, and something that should very much concern us in verse eight. It says this.

And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword.

So we see that Saul and his army are disobedient in the slaughter of all of the Amalekites by first taking King Agag alive. And then verse 9 goes on to explain that Saul did not only spare the king, but he spared

the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fattened calves, and lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them.

" You see, the only thing that he actually destroyed were the things that were worthless. That's what the text says. So, we see already this disobedience, and we can also hint a bit of motive. The things that are worthless are destroyed. The things that are good are kept.

God then reveals to Samuel his anger towards Saul. Samuel is extremely grieved through the night, only to wake up the next morning to find that Saul has erected a monument to himself, and he's moved on. So Samuel's grieved, he's a prophet, he's given the word of God, and then he goes to find this king, this king that's supposed to be leading God's chosen people, that's supposed to be leading them to worship God, to give glory to God, and yet he's erected a monument to himself and he's moved on. And this series specifically that we're going through on Wednesday nights is about worship. And I'm going to highlight some of the folly in how Saul tries to organize his own worship, tries to twist biblical worship because of his fear of man, and for another motive that we'll see as we continue on.

When Saul sees Samuel, he has the audacity to proclaim that he has done the will of the Lord. And then there's this line that we always laugh at. When Saul sees him angry and tired, distraught, Samuel replies back to Saul and says,

what is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?

So he's told to slaughter. All living things. Everything that's alive, every human, every animal, he's supposed to slaughter them. Israel's supposed to do that towards the Amalekites. And Samuel replies that he can hear the disobedience behind him. He can hear the animals making the noises behind him.

He knows that Saul was not obedient to the command of the Lord. And then I imagine Saul, Saul's ready for this. He gives an answer that he thinks is going to please God's prophet. He thinks he's going to be able to flatter God's prophet. He's prepared for it. He knows what he's going to say. He confidently, I picture him pulling his pants up and he's ready to go.

And he says, the people, notice that he doesn't say we, he says the people, he doesn't take accountability.

spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God.

" He doesn't say our God. He doesn't say my God. He says your God.

And the rest we have devoted to destruction. So I'm going to read that again without my commentary. He says,

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.

Samuel stops Saul right there, and he tells him what the Lord has told him to tell Saul. And that brings us to the verse that we're in tonight, that we're zooming in on, that's 1 Samuel 15, 22. I'm gonna read it once more.

And 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.

Tonight I have three questions that are gonna be my points, so if you're taking notes, you can write down the questions, and then underneath those questions will be anything that stands out to you, any application, anything like that, so just know three points, and then the application explanation goes under that. The first question is directly from our verse.

Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

This one's easy. No, he doesn't. On to question two. Has the Lord told you how to worship him?

How we are to worship God

You see, Saul's answer back to Samuel is that he spared the animals specifically for the purpose of worshiping God by offering them to him as burnt offerings. The only problem is, is God told Saul what to do. So we see, if you look at the Old Testament, we know there are burnt offerings, there are pleasing aroma to the Lord, but there are animals that are sacrificed as a type and a shadow to then point forward to the eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ for everybody who has faith in him, right? So this is a way to worship God in the Old Testament.

But we know that it's not the way God told Saul to serve him here. He went his own way and he knew what he was doing in his heart of hearts. We see selfishness through and through this story because we see that Saul has erected a monument for himself to glorify himself and not to glorify God. In verse 24, Saul reveals that he disobeyed the Lord and he knew it, but he did so because of his fear of man.

And he thought he could get away with it by making his motives look externally good. So if we go just past the verse that we're in tonight, we see he says, I did it because of the people. So he's passing the buckle onto the people and he has this fear of man that is greater than his fear of an almighty, sovereign, beautiful, glorious God.

Michael Reeves in his book Rejoice and Tremble writes this,

we fear because we love. We love ourselves and so fear bad things happening to us. We love our families, our friends, our things, and we so fear losing them.

Well, if we fear God, we fear that which only wants good for us. So often we distort what it means to fear God. And it might be this type of fear that we get that makes us feel like we've got to hide from God.

But in reality, in truth, in fullness, the type of fear that we are supposed to have for God should make you not fear anything else. There's one thing in this entire world, in this entire universe, that we are to fear. and that thing will not leave you, that thing is unchanging, that thing is perfectly good, and that is our sovereign, good, holy, and beautiful God, which allows you to be free from all other fears. What else do you have to fear if you get to fear this awesome and beautiful God? God hasn't only told Saul how he is to be worshiped. He has revealed to us how we are to worship him. Don't let fear stop you And please don't be the stumbling block for the church's obedience to how we are to worship God.

You can close your eyes and you can picture it. The nice lady from the back pew walks into the pastor's office and tells him, instead of preaching the whole counsel of God, why don't you just preach the things that make all of the UVA students feel good? You can skip all the wrath, you can skip all of the hard stuff, and then more of them will come in.

We'll have more members at this church. Then her husband comes in the next day and he tells the pastor that he should close every service with this big emotional appeal. Maybe he has tears in his eyes, maybe he gets some music playing and he calls everyone up to the altar to get saved again and again and again, Sunday after Sunday. Then there are the members who are upset that we pray too much or we read too much scripture. They think, if we just had a rockin' band that put on a really good show for everybody and we prayed for like five minutes and maybe preached for like 15, we'd be bustin' at the seams. We might even have 10 services.

That's the goal, right? That, my friend, is not in the text. That is not what God has given us as the way to worship him. God has given us, the church, the charge to guard the word. not just the parts we like. He's given us the Lord's table and baptism, not an altar call. He has given us a body of believers to joyfully lift one another up in congregational singing, not a concert. The Lord has told you how to worship him. Question three, has the Lord provided a better way? Remember as we opened, I said that we are saw in this story? We choose to go our own way because deep down we think it's better or we have a fear of man. We think it's going to make us more happy. This is clear on a larger and more obvious scale. This isn't.

God has provided a better way

I'm just giving this example because I think it's a way that we can clearly see how some churches distort a definition of something and then treat that as if they are worshiping the Lord. And that would be some of the examples that we see today on a larger scale is when a church will misdefine what love is.

It's so easy to do that. It's so easy to take love out of its context and to say, well, love just means making people feel good. And so they hang things like colorful flags outside of their church. And this is love. This means love. But we divorce it from truth. We divorce it from what true love is for those people. So I don't think we have an issue with that specific thing here at Jefferson Park Baptist Church, but that's just to get your mind in the right place.

Think about the times when you struggle internally trying to justify something that your conscience tells you you should not do. Now, what I'm gonna give you next is a conscience issue, and so I don't want to convict you of something that the Bible doesn't convict you of, so just know that. Romans 14 says conscience issues are to be done in faith, and if they're done in faith, they're not sin, and if your conscience convicts you and you do them any ways, they are sin.

But what I want to talk about tonight is something as simple as social media use. So that first example I gave in point two was for the corporate body and how we worship. And now we're getting more into your individual life every day and everything you do, how you can worship the Lord and in what ways we might distort that.

I think oftentimes, and this includes me, we as Christians are convicted of how much time we waste on things that don't really matter, things that aren't really real. I had to wrestle through this, so I'm with you. If this is you struggling with this, I have the gray scale turned on on my phone because a mentor of mine taught me how to do that and that keeps me off my phone a lot more and not wasting time. I spoke with one of the students here at a UVA football game recently who told me he and a friend are holding each other accountable with this, so I just know it's something that people are struggling with.

I think that we know we should be worshiping God in some other way, such as reading his word, spending mentally present time with our families, discipling our kids, or even going to sleep so we can serve the Lord and rest and wake up rejuvenated the next day to serve God in all that we do. But instead, we go against our conscience, we grab the phone, we hop on social media, and we scroll the day or the night away. And maybe that's not you. Maybe you are disciplined in your social media use and you use it as a tool to serve the Lord.

And if that's you, that's great. But I'm still convinced there is some area of your life where you can compare this to and think, my conscience does convict me there. And I somehow convince myself that I'm going to do something good with this. So I go and I do it anyway. You convince yourself that you can do this in faith because you're going to send the funny videos to your spouse and you're going to enjoy a laugh together as you watch them. This is exactly what Valerie and I do. So I'm using an actual example from my life. Or you're on for educational purposes to learn what's going on in the world. You're going to skip all the useless stuff, yet you know you're not. And what you're really going to do is what Saul did.

You're telling yourself these things to convince yourself you're going to do something good with this when you know you ought to be doing something better that he has provided for you. God provided a much better way. We know he did. Because when we decide to worship him the way he has told us to in his word through the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, memory, fasting, we're fulfilled because we are aligned with the purpose for which God made us.

That's known as your telos. So your telos is your ends. This is for the purpose that God made you as you pursue it and you're aligned with it, you are filled, right? When we go against that, we are empty. The larger catechism has a question on this and it sums it up pretty nicely. It is,

what is the chief end of man?

Does someone have that answer?

Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

So yes, God has provided a better way. He designed you and he knows what you need. So don't wallow in the muck and mire. of selfish and prideful fulfillment, worshiping the way you want to, because that will leave you empty. He has provided ways that will leave you filled.

We are not that hero

As we opened, I said that we aren't the hero of this story, but we are Saul. I said it's good news that we are not the hero, and this is why. Your ways are bad for you. His ways are good for you. Could you imagine how dreary life would be if we were the heroes of the story arc of scripture?

Instead, we can look at Saul's failure and we can see that he is not that hero. We can look at ourselves and we can see that we are not that hero. We are not the everlasting king who will come and set all things straight. We are not all powerful. We are not all loving. We are not perfectly just. And we are not that wonderful and righteous king who ascended 2,000 years ago whom we wait for today.

That would be King Jesus, the only one who walked worthy enough to live a perfect life and die for the sins of all who would put faith in him. He didn't stay dead, but he ascended to the right hand of the Father, he took his rightful seat, and he intercedes for his church.

He will return for his bride. Until then, he has told us how to worship him. Until then, as we do that, he takes his dirty bride and he cleans us up one day at a time, preparing us for that day when we will be with him forever, worshiping his holiness. So he has told us how to worship him. How we are to worship him is good. So let's carry the mantle in faith and hand it on to the next generation as we march onward towards an eternity face to face with him.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have freed us from our own human inventions of worship. We pray that you would help us to worship you as you have told us to in your word. We pray that you would give us cheerful hearts that cling to biblical worship, that love your precepts. Help us to have faith, to trust that you will bless these efforts, and we praise you all the more because those very efforts come from you. Lord, we love you. Without you, we would have no true concept of joy. And we pray all of this in Jesus's name. Amen.