1 Samuel Lesson 18
Saul’s Confession – 15:23-35
…with negative volition and built the carnality into the various
areas. After negative volition in the
rise of chaos in the heart you have a darkening, and this carnality, the second
stage, the darkening can be minimized in some area, maximized in another. A person’s actual plot, if you plot a person
out as far their carnality, it may be very great in one area and as far as
other areas it may not be. It varies
from sector to sector in the life, but regardless of how it varies it does have
a set of steps and it starts out with negative volition. Negative volition leads to a darkening of
the soul or a blackout of the soul in that no new light is given. We want to
study these five steps in detail because we have to to understand why Samuel
deals with Saul as he is going to deal with him in the last part of chapter
15. So to get the background we have to
go back for a little diagram of chaos in the heart.
The first step is negative volition, negative volition disobedience to
the Lord leads to a cession of certain ministries of the Holy Spirit; not all
the ministries because a believer is eternally secure but some ministries and
one of the first ministries to go in the life of a believer who is out of it is
the ministry of illumination, with the result with this blackout the next stage
is quickly reached. So far we have what
we will call carnality or simply carnality.
This is being out of fellowship for a short time period and for the
subsequent blackout of the soul that lasts for however long you may be out of
fellowship. The third step is more
serious because now since the soul or the mind is blacked out of illumination
it begins to suck in human viewpoint, all sorts of weird ideas are sucked into
the mind to build the third stage in apostasy and retrogression in the
Christian life which is the rise of human viewpoint. The outward manifestation of this step is
dullness, in the sense that the person becomes very full toward spiritual
things and can’t think spiritually, reacts very stupidly to situations in life
and in general has a very low degree of spiritual IQ. He is not sensitive to certain issues that
come up and he is very dull, very sluggish and very slow spiritually.
That is the outward sign but inwardly the reason for the dullness is
that he has had a faith shutdown, i.e. that the faith technique is no longer
being used because human viewpoint always leads to doubt and when a person
doubts he cannot believe and so faith begins to shut down. And here we begin to enter what Saul is
entering into, what we will call compound carnality for reasons which will
become obvious as we finish this passage.
But simple carnality is the first two stages, this is when a person is out
of fellowship for a short time; prolonged stages out of fellowship lead to the
acceptance of human viewpoint. The human
viewpoint leads to doubt; doubt leads to a faith shutdown and so the faith
technique is used less and less in the life.
As a result of the third step we progress to the fourth which is the
experience of hate, hatred primarily directed toward God and secondarily all
toward all forms that remind that person of God. The outward manifestation of this is intense
resentment, jealousy and bitterness; this is one of the overt manifestations of
a person in the fourth stage of carnality or in compound carnality. The inward reason for this outward thing is
that he has begun to fall victim to pseudo authority; in other words, having
rejected God, having rejected the true authority of the Word, since man is made
in the image of God and must always submit himself to an authority, or any god,
then the person who has reached the fourth stage is always a person who has
bowed himself to some form of pseudo authority.
Pseudo authority can be the masses, it can be people in your peer group,
and you bow down to the consensus, and that’s a sign of spiritual weakness,
it’s a sign that you are bowing before pseudo authority. The mob never has any kind of legitimate
authority, only God’s Word has legitimate authority. But a person in the fourth stage of carnality
since he’s rejected the absolute authority will fall victim to forms of pseudo
authority, and also fall victim to the authority of his own emotions. And that is one of the key things that is
working to cause the resentment, the jealousy and the bitterness, is that such
a person in the fourth stage obeys, as it were, the authority of his own
emotional pattern. His emotions become
his authority instead of the Lord and His Word becoming the authority.
Finally, the fifth stage, the stage of frustration is reached and its
outward manifestation is neurosis and psychosis, neurotic and psychotic
patterns of behavior. The person can go
mentally ill so to speak, and here’s where you have the rise of neurosis and
psychosis in the fifth stage of compound carnality. If this persists there is one further step
and that’s death, the sin unto death.
Now that’s a biography of Saul; as we go through Saul’s life we are
watching a man move up the platform and moving from simple carnality into
compound carnality and eventually he reaches the final step of neurotic and
psychotic behavior and he was finally destroyed by God Himself. He is removed from the scene by physical
discipline of a very undesirable sort.
And this is the story of many believers today. What has happened is they’ve gone on negative
volition at some time in their life, they’ve experienced the blackout of the
soul so what Bible doctrine they did know doesn’t function in the crisis, the
result is they have sucked in human viewpoint, and somewhere along here as they
moved into compound carnality they went to see some psychiatrist or psychologist
who knew less about the Word than they did and was able to help them on up the
ladder by giving them more human viewpoint and to show them more gimmicks and
more devices to bypass personal responsibility and destroy volition. As a result, aided by this kind of advice,
the person learned to despise spiritual truth, despise anything that stood for
the authority of God, learned to despise the concepts of absolutes in the area
of truth and in the area of morals and learned to despise authority as it is
exercised in the local church. And
finally he winds up in total frustration unable to find happiness in anything
they do because such a person would be trotting from one thing to another,
always looking here and there, dabbling in this, dabbling in that, trying to
find some form of happiness, never finding it and always miserable, and in the
end winding up neurotic and psychotic, depending on the degree. This is the tragic fruit of negative
volition.
And we want to understand this process, the development of carnality or
chaos in the heart in Saul’s life. Saul
started out as the son of
Failure #1 was when he was on the road, he saw his army panicked by the
Philistines, he failed to exercise the faith technique; the failure to use the
faith technique in this kind of a situation is a sign of what Saul’s soul was
like. So let’s see if we can reconstruct
the soul of Saul at the time of his first failure and watch what happens. Saul was on negative volition and he had been
on negative volition for a long time.
The result was a darkening, so that here you have Samuel teaching him
over and over the Word of God, but because Saul does not want to hear the Word,
because he already is in rebellion against the Word he shuts off the
illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit, so therefore Samuel can teach and
teach and teach the Word and it goes in one ear and out the other because the
Holy Spirit has darkened his soul; Saul can’t see the truth because his
perception has been altered by the breakdown of the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. But that’s not all, because this
has gone on for an extended period of time, Saul is not just a believer in
simple carnality, Saul has moved into compound carnality and he is beginning to
have a massive amount of human viewpoint sucked into his entire framework and
this human viewpoint now controls what he can believe and can’t believe. As a
result he has a faith shutdown, his faith begins to be minimized and he can no
longer believe what he could believe earlier in his life.
The Christian is not static, you do not remain the same today, tomorrow,
and the next day; you are either growing in the Christian life or you’re
decaying in the Christian life and that goes for everybody; no one stays still
in the Christian life. Saul was exposed
to the Word, he heard it and heard it and heard it, and it didn’t mean
anything, and so the result is human viewpoint with a faith shutdown. That was the stage that Saul was in when he
reached his first failure. He was unable
to believe and watch his army go; he just couldn’t believe at that point, he
had weakened himself so that he was actually incapable of believing and that is
why Samuel responds with the kind of discipline that he announces, namely that
Saul will not have a son on the throne.
So the result of failure number one because of the faith shutdown is
that Saul will have no sons on the throne.
That means Jonathan will not get a chance to sit on his father’s
throne. The reason for that appears to
be discipline upon the entire family.
Unfortunately this is an illustration of suffering by association and
Jonathan suffers much in his life by association with his father who is an
apostate believer, one who is on negative volition and has rejected and
rejected and this has led to his son’s suffering.
Now we come to failure number two of Saul, recorded in 1 Samuel
The hatred stage is full of resentment, bitterness and jealousy. Those are the overt manifestations of this;
hatred and bitterness toward husband, toward wife, toward other people in the
second, third and fourth divine institutions, because those people represent
part of the structure of God. I’m
convinced that a lot of the bitterness in the second and third divine
institutions is not bitterness against the people in it ultimately, it’s
bitterness against the structure itself.
And this is a manifestation of the hatred toward God who is the God who
designed the very structure.
Now underneath all this, the reason for this is that Saul is bowing to
pseudo authority. We’ll see this in two ways.
In this passage, in verse 24, he is bowing to the pseudo authority of
his own emotions; he has certain emotions of hate and vengeance and he is now
using those emotions to be the issuing authority of his orders. Saul is issuing orders out of submitting to
the authority of his own emotions. He
has allowed, in other words, his emotions to get the better of him. He no longer thinks and he issues a very
stupid order. And as a result of failure
number two Saul loses the chance to have total victory over the Philistine
army.
Now we come to failure number three and we were in the middle of failure
number three last week in chapter 15. In
chapter 15 we have the failure to kill Agag.
Samuel in verses 1-3 gave him a command and the command was to slaughter
everyone in this space. Why? Not because they had a personal grudge. It had nothing to do with a personal
grudge. It had to do with the judgment
of God. These Amalekites had resisted
the plan of God; had the Amalekites survived in history they would have done everything
to destroy the ongoing plan of God. And
anybody that stands in the way of the ongoing plan of God will be mowed down;
nobody is going to stop God’s plan.
God’s plan is irresistible and it has been sovereignly decreed that He
will win and anyone who stands in the way will be destroyed. So the Amalekites are destroyed because they
stand in the way by rebellion against the plan of God and God orders their
extermination. This is legitimate
genocide. Here is actually biblically
ordained genocide where an entire tribe of people by God’s order is wiped out,
man, woman, baby, everyone, dogs, cats, and everything else that they had there
was eliminated. Now one person escaped,
it was Agag.
And here again we find Saul bowing down to certain bad emotions. In Saul’s case the pseudo authority in his
second failure was his emotions. But in
the third failure he bowed down to another pseudo authority. Verse 17, Samuel recognizes this bowing down
to pseudo authority and this is why he said, “When you were little in your own
sight, were not you made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD
anointed thee king over Israel? [18] And the Lord” said do this, and verse 21,
“But the people took of the spoil,” in other words, because Saul had reached the
fourth stage of carnality he now bowed to another authority, the authority of
the mob. And so here we have a man who
is systematically destroying himself; he’s destroying himself first because
he’s bowed to the authority of his emotions, he now destroys himself by bowing
to the authority of the mob, whatever the mob wants. Our elections are run in this country on the
mob principle; give anybody the right to vote; every ignoramus in this country
has the right to vote and this is the mob principle. It is what the mob thinks, whatever the mob
wants the mob gets. Here we have a
person like Saul, like many of our leaders, who bow to the authority of the
mob. And this shows his carnality and
shows the serious state he’s in.
So finally we come to verses 22-23.
The classic statement of Samuel and these two verses are also the
foundation of all future prophecy in the Word of God because Samuel is the
founder of the prophets; the line of the prophets remains unbroken after
Samuel’s day. Samuel begins the line of
the prophets and is grounded on this insight that Samuel comes out with in
verses 22-23, “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 hearken than the fat of
rams.” It is an attack upon human good,
because one of the great ways that leads a believer on down the path of
compound carnality is human good. Now
here’s why human good is more dangerous than overt sin, in the sense that overt
sin always shows itself in all of its corruption at an earlier stage so the
believer is warned that something is wrong.
But human good is far more subtle and therefore far more dangerous than
overt sin.
Now we have two men, we have David and Saul; David is a man of overt
sin, David is a man who, when he gets carnal, immediately it’s obvious, to him
and to everybody around him. His
carnality cannot be hidden, so David moves into simple carnality and by the
time David is hitting simply carnality he doesn’t go on to compound carnality
because he’s immediately aware that he’s out of fellowship. If some of you have trouble in these areas
you should be thankful; if you have sinful patterns of behavior that when you
get out of fellowship they are immediately obvious, this may be very
embarrassing to other people around you, and to you at times, but you can be
thankful that you have a pattern of behavior that is obvious because it enables
you to get back in fellowship faster.
Imagine now with Saul; Saul has a pattern of human good. Human good is not obvious, human good is
pious, human good always uses religious language, human good gives sacrifices,
human good says Samuel, God bless you and all the rest of it. Human good is full of human etiquette; human
good does all sorts of things that pass for spirituality. And therefore very hard to detect and so Saul
goes on to compound carnality; it’s never obvious to him what’s happening, and
it’s never obviously, apparently, to many people around him what is happening.
This way Saul gets himself into very, very serious trouble.
And then Samuel uses two words in verse 23 to describe this process and
warn believers against human good. “For
rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and
idolatry.” We have to look at verse 23
as a parallelism The first word is
“rebellion.” Rebellion is the Hebrew
word marah, which is the word which
is compounded and used as the meribah
back at the time of Kadesh-barnea. It
means rebellion against the authority of God, against trusting Him, because as
we have found in the Psalm series, trust and fear go together. Turn to Psalm 33, here those two words are
used as synonymous, a very important concept and one that will explain to many
of you why you have such a hard time believing.
It’s all wrapped up in this one principle and if you master this
principle you will have insight as to why you have been having such a
difficulty in believing and trusting the Lord.
Here are these two words, participles, in Psalm 33:18. “Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them
that fear Him,” that is yir’ah, and yir’ah is the word that is the word that
is used in Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of
wisdom.” It is the word that is used,
“thou shalt fear the LORD,” over and over and over in the Old Testament. The next participle, “Upon them that hope on
His chesed,” those that rely or trust
on His chesed. Now the two are used synonymously, which must
therefore mean that God, when we trust His Word responds to our belief and
confidence in His authority.
Turn to Matthew 8:5 we see this appear again in the Gospels, this same
dualism, the same principle. “And when
Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion, beseeching
Him.” A centurion was a military
officer, he was a man who had a great deal, not only of military training but
of military experience. This man appears
to be an older man. And in verse 6 he
comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and he says, “Lord, my servant lies at home sick
of the palsy, grievously tormented. [7] And Jesus said unto him, I will come
and heal him. [8] The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that
You should come under my roof; but speak the word only,” in other words, give
the order Lord, “and my servant shall be healed. [9] For I am a man under
authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goes; to
another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it.” And now what does Jesus respond to acceptance
of authority. In one of the most
emotional responses that you can find in the Gospels, all four Gospels, Jesus
Christ responds in a very exciting way in verse 10, “When Jesus heard it He
marveled,” the word “marveled” means that Jesus Christ is personally excited,
Jesus Christ recognizes in this centurion soldier something that is tremendous
and He wants the crowd to see what is happening, to look, “look, look at this”
Jesus Christ is saying, “He marveled, and said to them that followed,” this is
the whole crowd that followed to see what was happening, He says I want you
people to look here, look here you people, I taught you the Word over and over
and over again, and this man, manifests the principle I have been trying to get
across, and so He says, “Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great
faith, no, not in Israel.”
Do you see how faith is tied with authority because after all, what is
the faith technique, when you get down to it?
Isn’t it submitting yourself to the authority of the promise, and if you
do not believe and you go on negative volition you have minus faith. Isn’t that the same thing as saying God’s
promises are not authoritative? His
orders to cast everything upon Him are not authoritative. His orders that “all things work together for
good to them that love God,” that is not authoritative and I’m not going to
trust it. Now here’s why so many people
have trouble with faith, they have never learned what submitting to authority
is because they’ve never learned it in the home; they have no concept of
authority, and as a result they no concept of faith because you can’t have one
without the other. This is behind a lot
of pseudo intellectuals that seem to have all these intellectual problems with
Scripture.
There are some fantastic intellectual enigmas in the Word of God,
there’s no contradictions but there are some fantastic mysteries there. There are some depths and heights in the
Word of God that if you had an IQ of 280 you could think on it from now to the
rapture and you still wouldn’t exhaust it.
The Word of God is so intellectually compelling, it is fantastic, it has
answers and the only answer in every area.
All of the great intellectual questions are only answered in
Scripture. You will never find an answer
in any other religion, any other cult, any other philosophy except Biblical
Christianity. But all that said and
done, the real reason is a lack of expression of submission to God’s authority.
At the heart of it all it’s sin. And
everybody thinks, particularly in academic circles that sin starts with the
neck and goes down; man is fallen from his neck down but the Bible says that
man is fallen all the way, from the top of his head down, that includes all the
brains, and all the mind, all the mentality, that’s fallen too, and that is one
thing that the modern intellectual can’t stand.
You mean to tell me that sin distorts the way I think: you bet! And that’s what God says, you distort the
evidences that God gives you in history because you’re a sinner and you’re
trying to avoid them. So that is the
offense of the Word of God and we can never discuss Christianity without
bringing that issue out.
So rebellion, the marah of
Samuel is saying, Saul, you don’t want to submit to the authority of Jehovah
and therefore you don’t believe. So
let’s look at that word “rebellion” again.
The word “rebellion” is paired with another word, that’s translated in
the King James as “stubbornness,” except the word in the original language
doesn’t mean just stubbornness, it means pushiness, so we best translate that
as “rebellion and pushiness.” Now notice
what those things are compared to, is there any doubt in any of your minds as
to the abomination of contact with demon forces; obviously that’s what’s meant
when it says witchcraft, iniquity and idolatry.” This is open traffic with the demon forces of
Satan. This is where plots are made with
Satan to get certain magical power and so on.
Now what God is saying is look, rebellion and pushiness are just as
bad.
Now this is in part a prophecy of something that is going to come true
in Saul’s life. Saul is going to the
advanced stages of compound carnality.
He has already a human viewpoint built up in his mind, he is in the hatred
stage and he is finally going to go in the total frustration stage and when he
reaches the final stage, Saul is going to go to a witch, the witch of Endor,
and he is going to openly consult with demons and we’re going to learn about
necromancy and a few other things, demon possession, when Saul reaches this
step. So Saul is going to go on with
this but Samuel sees that eventually he has already arrived at that point. He might have just as well have gone to the
witch of Endor right here, “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” Now from this point forward Saul is a doomed
man personally. These two words,
“rebellion” and “pushing forward” discuss two aspects of this kind of
rebellion. The word “rebellion” means
the rejection of the promises of God.
See, one word emphasizes the negative; here’s the negative toward the
word, that’s one characteristic in Saul’s life.
The other word, the “pushiness,” or the pushing forward emphasizes that
he is trying to replace God with pseudo authority, meaning idols and so on,
idols are just a form of pseudo authority.
So the pushiness means you substitute your emotions for the Word of
God. Emotions can be one of the ways;
money can be another way, any of the details of life, sex can be another one;
you can substitute power lust, you can substitute all sorts of things but
something claims your authority; generally it’s mob rule and emotions because
all these other things just generally follow on those two. So conveniently in Saul’s life he’s done it
in two areas; he’s done it in pseudo authority of the mob; pseudo authority of
his emotions and he is in very serious shape.
Now this is why we over and over again make a point about the modern
charismatic movement and why the modern charismatic movement is not a sign of
the Holy Spirit operating in our day.
The people who are in the charismatic movement are people, most of whom
probably are in the fourth stage of carnality; they are in compound carnality
and they have made emotions their criteria.
So it is a dangerous thing and not something of the Holy Spirit of all.
All right, “rebellion is as the win of witchcraft,” Samuel says, and
your pushiness Saul, “is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the
LORD, He has also rejected thee from being king.”
Now in verse 24 we come to another interesting thing in compound
carnality. This will also answer a lot
of questions about what happens when a believer gets into the fourth stage and
wants to break out. Here he’s on
negative volition, he’s experienced blackout of the soul, he’s experienced the
faith shut down at the human viewpoint level, he’s experienced hatred and he’s
bowing down to pseudo authority and somewhere along here the Holy Spirit works
in such a way that he is at least aware of his problem. Now Saul is at least aware of his problem; he
is obviously conscious of his problem, but in the response that Saul makes at
this thing, we learn a tremendous lesson about dealing with compound
carnality. Dealing with simple carnality
is simple, 1 John 1:9, bet back in fellowship and move on unhindered. We’re going to study something; when you get
into compound carnality you use 1 John 1:9, get back in fellowship all right
but you do not move on unhindered; you have difficulty, and we’re going to
watch this.
Verse 25, “And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned; for I have
transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words, because I feared the
people, and obeyed their voice.” Now the
first verb, “I have sinned” is Saul’s personal confession At this point Saul makes a confession, at
this point Saul gets back in fellowship, for all we have to do to get back in
fellowship is to confess our sin, plus nothing!
You do not do anything else except confess your sin, just as you do
nothing else when you become a Christian.
When you became a Christian it wasn’t because you walked an aisle, it
was not because you raised your hand, it was not because of all the
gimmicks. That isn’t how you became a
Christian; now if you became a Christian under those circumstances you became a
Christian in spite of those obstacles that were thrown in your path. When you teach the Word of God, that is the
invitation, you don’t need anything else.
When we are in fellowship and we get out of fellowship and we’re carnal,
you rely on grace the same way you rely on grace at any other point in your
life; you trust the Lord to take care of the issue, remove it so that you can
have fellowship with Him again. It’s as
simple as that. Now when this happens a
person is back in fellowship and has everything going for them, in simple
carnality. Now what happens when a
believer is in compound carnality and they use 1 John 1:9; let’s watch what
happens and let’s use Saul as an example so we understand the principle. Here he is on negative volition, Saul is out
of fellowship, Saul uses 1 John 1:9 at this point, and we won’t go any further
for a moment, I want you to see how he uses 1 John 1:9 at this point, this is
also very instructive because he says “I have transgressed the commandment of
the Lord, and thy words,” now notice this.
Saul is confronting his sin and he confesses two things, he amplifies
how he has sinned. You see, he is naming
his sin here, he is identifying what his sin is, “I have transgressed the
commandment of the Lord,” what is the commandment of the Lord? Chapter 15:1-3, that is the commandment of
the Lord, go kill people. Now that’s a
very unusual sin to confess, Father I didn’t kill all the people as you told
me. And that’s exactly what Saul was to
do. He sinned and was put out of
fellowship because he didn’t kill people.
So Saul failed to obey an order, but how was that order passed to
Saul? It was passed through a human
representative and the human representative was a living prophet, who was
Samuel, and so it was Samuel’s words, it was God’s words but they were also Samuel’s
words, and when Saul confesses he confesses to the authority that passed them
because here Saul violated Samuel’s authority.
And God is going to discipline Saul for violating Samuel’s authority,
and Saul recognize it here. The
confession … [tape turns]
Now let’s see how Christians are involved in the same kind of
process. Turn to 1 John 1, the passage
on confession. Here is where you are
under authority to the body of Christ.
And the foundation of the body of Christ are the apostles. The apostles are not living today, they have
died away in the first generation because apostleship was a temporary spiritual
gift. However, in verse 3 the principle
is there. “That which we have seen and
heard declare we unto you,” the “we” are the apostles, we are declaring unto
you, “that you may have fellowship with” whom?
The Lord? No, the apostles, “and
truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” Notice, therefore that believers are here
and believers have fellowship with God through the apostles. That is the structure of the holy catholic
and apostolic church, that is the body of Christ and therefore when we have
fellowship we have fellowship through the apostles. Now how do we have fellowship with the
apostles? By having statutes of St.
Peter? No, that is not the way to have
fellowship with the apostles. You
respect apostolic authority when you respect apostolic orders and what is the order? The order is the New Testament
documents. And therefore all this Jesus
stuff that is separated from the New Testament apostolic writings is spiritual
hogwash. That’s all it is, it’s a lot of
junk. You can’t know Jesus Christ unless
you know Jesus Christ in the New Testament documents and do it the way the
apostles told you to do it. The Lord
Jesus Christ is the one the apostles tell you about and you submit and bow to
them; so here is an important principle in your life, that believers can be
knocked out of fellowship by violating the authority of the body of
Christ.
And this applies, though this is not the interpretation, the principle
applies in the local church. This
applies to believers who are violating the authority of the pastor and the
board; believers can actually legitimately oppose the board and the pastor in
one way. There are two ways of operating
in a local church with regard to the authority of the pastor and the
board. There is one way which you can
righteously oppose the pastor or the board or both and this is by privately
disagreeing with them on the basis of the Word and having a face to face
confrontation with them; separating from that local church if you cannot feel
free in good conscience to submit to their authority. That’s one way and that’s the right way. The wrong way is to by publicly undermine
their authority by going around behind their back and telling the board members
about what the pastor does and you don’t like this and that, and going to the
pastor and telling him you don’t like this board member and that board member. That’s violation of authority, and this
principle says to you that if you are that kind of believer you’re asking for
discipline and you’re going to get it.
So believers can get out of fellowship by violating the authority of invested
officials in the local body of Christ.
This is why we have so many people at Dallas Seminary and others that
don’t want to be pastor-teachers.
1 Samuel 15:24, we at least have Saul, as under it as he is, he does
recognize the authority principle and he confesses to Samuel that these are his
words, and I violated them. And then he
says, “because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.” Here Saul gives a formal ascent to the fact
that he’s now in the hatred stage toward the Lord, he’s in the hatred stage is
and one of the signs is that he’s bowing to pseudo authority, he has already
pseudo authority his emotions in the previous chapter and now it’s the
mob. I was afraid, and guess what the
verb is, the same verb that is used to fear and respect the Lord. He says I violated the Word because I
respected the desires of a mob.
Now in verse 25 he continues and requests something, He says, “Now,
therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin,” that also is legitimate, because
although Samuel was not a priest, it had been Samuel’s words that were passed
down, and the point of it was that Saul could confess, he was out of
fellowship, he could use 1 John 1:9 and confess his sin, but what his sin was
was a violation of God’s Word passed down through a living prophet. Now it’s not that Samuel likes this, it’s not
that Saul says okay, Saul, you come and lick my big toe. It’s nothing like this, and it’s not that
Samuel rejoices in this; that has nothing to do with it, the personal feelings
of Samuel. It is the principle; the
principle is that the Word has gone out of Samuel’s lips; Samuel’s lips have
added to the canon of Scripture, verses 1-3, he has just made Scripture come
alive into history. Scripture was born from Samuel’s mouth and now Saul must
say to him “pardon my sin.” “…pardon my
sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD.” And so he asks for this, this was confession
under the Old Testament concept.
Now in verse 26 you have to appreciate what we said up to here to
understand Samuel’s reply. It sounds
like Samuel here is very anti-grace; that’s not it at all. “And Samuel said
unto Saul, I will not return with thee; for thou hast rejected the word of the
LORD, and the LORD has rejected you from being king over Israel.” Now it sounds there like Samuel is rejecting
Saul. But if you will compare carefully
verse 26 with verse 25 you see that’s not the case. Samuel does not say I will not pardon your
sin; Samuel does pardon his sin. Saul
has made a confession, Saul is now back in fellowship, but Samuel will not do
the next thing, “turn again that I may worship the Lord.” Now why is this? Here we are introduced to a point about
compound carnality of believers and why when 1 John 1:9 is used it doesn’t
necessarily produce startling results.
When 1 John 1:9 is used a believer moves from compound carnality back
into fellowship. But since compound
carnality was also a whole set of –R learned behavior patterns he has a lot of
baggage that comes with him back into fellowship. In other words, this is inside of his
soul. These are patterns that he has
learned over a long time period of being out of fellowship. So although he is in fellowship, the Holy
Spirit is ready to go to work in his life, he is ready to be restored, he can’t
move an inch without dealing with these heavy accumulation of extra baggage;
he’s got to deal with that problem right away.
Now Samuel reacts the way he does in verse 26 because either through
divine illumination or revelation, or some other way, Samuel knows that Saul is
not going to deal with these –R learned behavior patterns; they’ve gotten too
big enough for him and he knows enough of Saul to know this guy will confess,
he’ll get back and he’ll ride it out for about five minutes and then Saul will
be out of fellowship again, adding to his carnality once again, he hasn’t got
the spiritual strength to break out of the carnality that is accumulated. And so he says I am not going to return with
thee, and this is an announcement that is synonymous with the last sentence of
verse 26. There are two parts to verse
26 and they are both synonymous; one is that “I will not return,” minus return,
and the other is minus king, those are saying the same thing. You know how?
If you paid attention to what a prophet does you should know how, you
should know that those statements are identical. Because what does a prophet do? A prophet is the leader of the team, he is
the king-maker, he makes the king, he chooses the king, he orders the king what
to do, he judges the king and he in essence takes care of the king. And when he says I will never return to you
Saul again, he is saying we break the prophet-king relationship right
here. That’s it, it’s all over, you are
now no longer legal king. Now does Saul
lose his salvation here? Negative. Saul does not lose his salvation, Saul at
this moment is back in fellowship. He is
ready to move, but Samuel knows that he is going to move about two inches and
then fall apart again and so that’s it, he’s had his opportunity and the opportunity
is over, and although his salvation is not removed from him, he is left alone,
God’s restraining lets him take over.
Verse 27, “And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the
skirt of his mantle, and it tore.” In
other words, you have this tremendously graphic picture of Samuel just turning
his back, that’s all Saul, I will never see you eyeball to eyeball again,
goodbye. And he walks away, and as he walks away Saul goes to grab his
garment. This is how desperately Saul
wants to do this, but even in this last desperate act, Saul betrays his
carnality, because why does he want Samuel to come? Because he wants to get rid of his –R learned
behavior patterns? Un-huh, what does he
say, Samuel turned around to go away, the mantle tore, [28] “And Samuel said
unto him, The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and has
given it to a neighbor of thine, who is better than thou. [29] And also the
Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should
repent.”
I’ll explain that but verse 30, “Then he,” that’s Saul, “said, I have
sinned,” he repeats his confession, he is back in fellowship, but then “honor
me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and
turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD thy God.” And at that point he clarifies what’s on his
mind. The issue of being right with God
is secondary to the issue of being honored in front of the people. So what’s happened? Human good all over again. All this time Saul’s point has been am I or
am I not socially acceptable? Am I or am
I not answering to the standards of the mob?
And he is desperately pleading with Samuel, Samuel, Samuel, you’ve got
to stay here, I’m going to be discredited in the eyes of the mob. And that’s his major concern. So isn’t Samuel justified in turning his
back? Yes, because at this point you
have a believer in compound carnality, one who has been negative so long he has
picked up all of this –R learned behavior pattern, all this baggage and he is
unwilling to deal with it, even when he is in fellowship.
So Saul is out of fellowship, momentarily he confesses his sin,
immediately he’s back in fellowship, he has all these spiritual assets
operating for him, but because he likes to do this kind of thing, bang, he’s
back out of fellowship again. So that
lasted about five minutes, five minutes of grace, five minutes Saul could have
gotten started again on the track, but it didn’t last and the reason it didn’t
last was the principle that when a –R learned behavior pattern is developed,
it’s like driving a car, you meet a situation, you have a certain programmed
response through your unconscious mind, strengthened by the flesh of course,
and you automatically respond this way.
Saul probably doesn’t even think when he says this; he doesn’t think
well now I’ve got to do this; it’s automatic with him by now. These –R learned behavior patterns have been
ingrained and Saul could break out now, and I’ll show you a Biblical proof why
Saul could break out and why the case is not hopeless at this point for Saul
personally.
Saul could go on positive volition with all the assets as a child of God
and begin to use his conscious mind plus the Word of God in the conscious mind
to consciously retrain and reprogram himself against the grain of his sin
nature. He could do that. And here’s how I know he could do it. God is going to leave him on the throne for
two decades after this point. Why does God bother and leave him on the throne;
legally he does not have title to the throne, but God graciously allows Saul to
sit on that throne where he will be the recipient of grace upon grace upon
grace upon grace. Saul is not a hopeless
case here; he has been disciplined, God has said you are not legally on that
throne any more, but in grace I’m going to let you sit there Saul. You don’t have a right to that throne but I
am going to personally let you sit there until my man is ready to take
over. And o for year after year after
year after year after year God in His grace allows this believer who has compound
carnality to go on and hear the words of the various priests and so on, some of
the disciples of Samuel, and hear the word from many different people and be
faced with many different situations which the Holy Spirit is using in calling
him back; Saul, come back, come back, come back, come back. And year after year Saul has this
opportunity.
Saul is not a hopeless case; no believer in compound carnality is ever a
hopeless case; they’re going to suffer and once these –R learned behavior
patterns pile up like this it is going to take a massive revamping program to
straighten them out, and the only way a believer who is in this form of
carnality can get straight is to go on a crash program of taking in the Word
and positive volition; taking in Bible doctrine and intense prayer; prayer is
the thing which you have conversation with God and it strengthens your human
spirit and the Bible doctrine tells you how to do it. And that is the answer, and there’s no simple
way of doing it; it requires hours and days and weeks of misery to straighten
it out, but God is gracious and He has providing the assets; God never abandons
you. You can be in the worst from of
compound carnality and God still hasn’t abandoned you, He’s letting you sit on
the throne too, year after year after year after year, after rightfully He
could have removed you He lets you sit there, hoping that in the last analysis
you’ll come around, giving you all the grace that He has as His disposal to see
if this comes to pass. So God is being very gracious to Saul but we’re going to
watch that Saul does not respond.
Now we have to backtrack to pick up the meaning of verses 28-29. “And Samuel said unto him, The LORD has rent
[torn] the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and has given it to a neighbor
of thine, who is better than thou.” The
“neighbor” obviously is David and we’ll see in the next chapter how David gets
the legal right. So verse 28 teaches us
that legally the title has been transferred at this point. To emphasize that the legal title has been
transferred, Samuel makes this enigmatic statement, [29] “And also the Strength
of Israel will not lie nor repent; for He is not a man, that He should
repent.” When he says this Saul uses a
Hebrew word, netzach or netsach. This word is a word which means
the enduring one, or endurance, “the Endurance of Israel” and it becomes a
title for one of God’s attributes, it’s the attribute of immutability. And this is one of the titles for God in the
Old Testament that emphasizes His immutability.
“The immutable God of Israel will not lie nor repent,” that is a signal
that this is a decree that has been ordered by Jehovah that cannot be
reversed. And this is important that you
understand that sometimes in the Christian life God decrees these kinds of
decrees.
Now this means that Saul had plan A, he’s probably in plan C by now, but
God had plan C for him and when Samuel says that “the Strength of Israel will
not lie nor repent” it means Saul, you have been transferred from plan C to
plan D permanently, no way to get back.
It’s an announcement of doom.
Actually this statement implies the sin unto death, but Saul still,
theoretically could have lived, Saul theoretically could have been removed from
the throne and go on living his life out as a believer who has been
restored. Saul theoretically could have
done that but he didn’t; he chose to go on in rebellion, go into the fifth
stage of compound carnality and experience the sin unto death. This is why when you see something like this
happen, and Samuel saw it and announced it, of course he had prophetic insight
we don’t, but this is why in 1 John 5 there’s that strange verse about
believers and not praying for believers.
1 John 5:16b, notice the contrast, “If any man sees his brother sin a
sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them
that sin not unto death. There is a sin
unto death; I don’t say that he should pray for it.” And this is one of those cases where in the
apostolic church it was obvious when a believer committed sin unto death and
there was no intercession to be made for that person, he was just cut out of
the program completely as far as that goes; not as far as his salvation but
there was no prayer that could be made for that person. There was no way to help that believer, none
whatever. And that is going to be the
condition of Saul ultimately and it’s the condition of Saul even partially now,
for if you turn to the end of 1 Samuel 15 you’ll see Samuel’s actions betray
this kind of thing is already in motion, because in verse 35, the last verse,
“And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death;” in other
words, Samuel, as much as he personally loved Saul, would never, never speak to
him again; he would never go near him; he would avoid him at all costs. “Samuel came no more to see Saul unto the
day of his death; nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul.” And this was Samuel’s response; he didn’t
pray, he couldn’t pray because he had already announced irrevocable decision of
God. God had said this is it, it will be done and will not be changed, I have
removed Saul.
Now Samuel is going to go into a stage of minor rebellion at this point
and next week we’ll see Samuel’s rebellion.
But before we see Samuel’s rebellion there’s a principle about verse 35,
when it says that he did come to see Saul until the day of his death, and that
he mourned for Saul all during this time, it explains a tremendous principle
about the Word. Although Samuel is going
to get out of control here for a few verses and he is going to have a
tremendous personal reaction because he loved Saul, it does show you the
principle of Samuel’s leadership, that he puts the Word first, and he can take
a personal friendship of the deepest sort.
This verse tells me that Samuel and Saul admired one another very
deeply. This was very hard for Samuel to
do what he had to do personally; he did not like it. This cut across his grain; Samuel wasn’t built
like Elijah, or like Elisha, where they could just go to Ahab and tell him you
know what, and they could care less. But
Samuel is built a little differently, he’s built closely, emotionally he’s tied
to Saul and this affects Samuel deeply.
But notice every time, as I pointed out at the beginning of chapter 15,
now at the end of chapter 15, when Samuel feels this way he never shows it to
Saul; it’s always in private. And though
Samuel is going to have a tremendous fight before the Lord he is never going to
let Saul find out about it because Samuel is the officer here, he is the prophet
and he can’t afford to do this kind of thing.
Next we’ll learn about the “neighbor,” David, one of the greatest men of
the Old Testament. And we’ll see how he
is phased into God’s plan to replace Saul.
[32, “Then said Samuel, Bring ye here to me Agag, the king of the
Amalekites. And Agag came unto him
cheerfully. And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. [33] And
Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless
among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in
pieces before the LORD in Gilgal. [34] Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went
up to his house to Gibeah of Saul. [35] And Samuel came not more to see Saul
until the day of his death; nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul. And the LORD repented that he had made Saul
king over