1 Samuel 15:20

Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me.

Saul’s obedience

We invite your attention to some features of Saul’s character, as drawn out by the way in which he obeyed the Divine command.

1. First, let us notice the zeal and alacrity with which Saul proceeded to carry out the Divine will. Unlike Moses, who complained of his want of eloquence when bidden to go to Pharaoh in Jehovah’s name, and plead for the deliverance of his oppressed countrymen--unlike Jonah, who positively refused to bear the dread message with which he was charged to the inhabitants of the great city of Nineveh, and fled to Tarshish, to escape an unwelcome tax--Saul displayed a commendable zeal in executing the command that was laid upon him. It is obvious that he undertook the work willingly, and executed it zealously. No victory could be more complete. The King was a prisoner. The people were slain. In the King’s estimation the Divine command was fully carried out. Saul does not seem to have had the slightest misgiving as to the correctness of his own interpretation of the Divine command. He felt that be bad done a great work, and that on this occasion no one could breathe a word against him. Poor deluded, self-conceited King of Israel! We are often told that history repeats itself, and it is certain that the history of Saul, King of Israel, has been often reproduced in the history of the Church of Christ. Jehu did a work for God, and he did it with alacrity. He destroyed the worshippers of Baal--nay, more than this, for it is said that he “destroyed Baal out of Israel.” And yet the future of that man was a sad one. We read that he “took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart; for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin” (2 Kings 10:1). The Pharisees in the time of our Lord had a zeal for God. They reverenced the law of Moses, and paid to it a certain obedience (Matthew 23:1). And yet upon no body of men did our Divine Master so pour forth the torrent of His indignation as upon those arrogant, self-righteous, self-satisfied Pharisees. And is there not a voice of warning for us in these instances of antiquity Men of wealth may dedicate that wealth to God. They may build a church, or a hospital, or a school. And yet that building so externally lovely may be hideous--hideous, I say, to that God “that seeth in secret.” Self, and self alone, may have been its foundation stone It may be but a monument of human selfishness and ambition. Another man may take an interest in the missionary cause and devote his wealth to the spreading abroad of the knowledge of God. This indeed is a good object, and worthy of our best energies But, oh! if men engage in the work from any but the highest motive--the desire of saving precious souls for whom Christ has died--if being men of narrow views they seize it as an opportunity for advancing their own religions party; if above all they allow their so-called religious zeal to deaden their instincts of common justice and even humanity; if they would fain silence all but those as narrow-minded as themselves--surely they have not caught fully the spirit of our Divine Master.

2. We have seen that Saul’s obedience was marred by a spirit of boastful self-confidence. And his history is instructive, because the spirit of Saul still lives in the religious professor of the present day. Tell the respectable man as he leaves the church porch that he is a sinner, that there is iniquity in his “holy things”--sin in his prayers, sin in his praises--tell him, in the touching language of the good Bishop Beveridge, that his very repentance needs to be repented of, and that his tears need washing in the blood of Christ, and he indignantly repudiates the charge, and says, “Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me.” Self-confidence is the mark of the natural man. Self-distrust is the mark of the genuine disciple of Christ. (C. B. Brigstocke.)