CONTEXT: In 1 Samuel 15 the prophet Samuel gives Saul explicit commands from the LORD of hosts to bring judgment on the Amalekites as a recompense for their treatment of Israel when the nation was coming up from Egypt. Saul is told to “strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him, but put to death” everything (15:3). Stated in four different ways, the command could not be clearer, yet Saul does not carry out the command. Instead he saves some of the sheep for sacrifices and spares Agag the king of Amalek.

This is the third and final installment in a brief series of blogs on this chapter (1 Samuel 15) and on what we can learn from the negative example of Saul.

Meditation 3

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

The final and most critical area in which Saul was casual and careless was in regard to the sacrifices which God has ordained to provide for atonement, propitiation and forgiveness. In the Old Testament Law, God had graciously provided sacrifices that allowed His righteous wrath against sin to be directed against an innocent animal instead of against the sinner. Saul did not regard the sacrifices of the LORD as holy, but instead viewed them as a part of the Hebrew religious system. Here are some of the ways that I believe Saul erred:

• He believed that any sacrifice was an acceptable sacrifice and that the LORD would receive any sacrifice. He did not understand that the LORD only accepted those sacrifices that He Himself had deemed to be acceptable;
• He believed he could decide what sacrifice to offer and when he could offer it, but it is the LORD who decides what sacrifice can be offered and when;
• Saul did not understand how serious sacrifice was, that blood must be shed for sin;
• He did not understand the purpose and the necessity of sacrifice. God’s holiness had been violated by man, the disobedient creature. God’s wrath has been kindled by man’s sin and a death was required.
• Saul trivialized atonement, which is using the God-ordained means of blood sacrifice to propitiate God’s wrath against a person’s sin;
• Saul did not understand that God’s provision of an acceptable sacrifice is an act of His grace. God is providing the death of an innocent substitute as a means of covering man’s sin;
• Saul assumed that God’s provision of a sacrifice was a right that Saul could exercise whenever he chose.

Many of these ideas overlap and may sound redundant, but I am trying to capture the essence of Saul’s attitude toward sacrifice. In summary, Saul despised the holiness of a God-ordained sacrifice and instead treated sacrifice as a common thing, as simply a part of the Hebrew religion or even as part of his own self-made religion.

Why was the act of a blood sacrifice so significant and Saul’s attitude so wrong? We must realize that every God-ordained sacrifice pointed forward to the final, glorious, awesome sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Every lamb, ram, bull and goat sacrificed under the Law was but a foreshadow of Calvary’s crucified Lamb. Thus to treat as casual or trivial or common any of the Old Testament sacrifices was to despise the One to whom all those sacrifices pointed. “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). All the rivers of blood that ran from the temple in Jerusalem down into the Kidron ravine could not by themselves atone for one single transgression, but every drop of that blood was holy to the Lord, for every drop anticipated the lash and the crown of thorns and the nails of the King of glory.

Instead of destroying the Amalekites, as he was commanded by the word of the LORD to do, Saul thought to sacrifice the best of the sheep of this cursed people to offer to the LORD as a means of worship. In so doing, Saul revealed his real view of both obedience and sacrifice. He has a casual view toward obedience, he trivialized the LORD’s sacrifice and he despised the LORD’s glory and grace.

How should we respond to this and what are the lessons that we can take away from Saul’s failure? The disciple of Jesus Christ must understand the beauty and the holiness and the power of the one sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that takes away the believer’s sin. Unlike Saul, the disciple should understand the offense of sin and grasp the grace of our holy God who has provided a sacrifice to cover sin. Yes, God’s grace is supremely manifested in His gift of the sacrifice of His Son. Unlike Saul, the disciple must never despise the blood of the sacrifice, but should regard this sacrifice as holy and embrace this Sacrifice as the means of salvation and forgiveness.    SDG    rmb     8/27/2016

CONTEXT: In 1 Samuel 15 the prophet Samuel gives Saul explicit commands from the LORD of hosts to bring judgment on the Amalekites as a recompense for their treatment of Israel when the nation was coming up from Egypt. Saul is told to “strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him, but put to death” everything (15:3). Stated in four different ways, the command could not be clearer, yet Saul does not carry out the command. Instead he saves some of the sheep for sacrifices and spares Agag the king of Amalek.

This is the second in a brief series of blogs on this chapter (1 Samuel 15) and on what we can learn from the negative example of Saul.

Meditation 2

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

As we further consider this passage, the second thing that we notice is that Saul had a casual attitude toward obedience. What did Saul do in this encounter with the Amalekites? He made only a token effort at obeying the clear instruction of the LORD and planned to offer a sacrifice instead. He presumed that, in the face of his overt and willful disobedience, he himself could offer an acceptable sacrifice. Notice Saul’s attitude toward obedience: it was easier for Saul to presume on the LORD’s grace than to obey the LORD’s command, but it is obedience that the LORD desires from His people.

Notice that Saul had certainly heard the command of the LORD, so he could not plead ignorance. Notice also that it was completely within Saul’s power to obey and to carry out the command as issued, so he could not plead inability.

So what could Saul do? Saul could make excuses (“I have carried out the command of the LORD” 15:13; and, “I did obey the voice of the LORD” 15:20), claiming an obedience that he did not possess, and he could blame other people (15:15, 21) for his failure. Of course, Saul did both. Saul again provides us with a negative example in his casual attitude toward his flagrant disobedience and in his pathetically feeble pretending of repentance.

By contrast, Jesus lived His life striving against sin in perfect obedience to all the Law of God. Likewise we, as disciples of Jesus, are to have the same attitude toward obedience that our Lord Jesus Christ displayed, striving with all our might against sin in radical obedience.

Yes, we loudly proclaim that there is surely an acceptable sacrifice that has been offered to cover all our sin. “For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast” (1 Cor. 5:7-8). Absolutely! We celebrate God’s grace in the sacrifice of His Son on the cross to atone for our sin. Hallelujah! We know that if we do sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2). So of course we do not presume on our own sacrifices, but we totally depend on the grace of God displayed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to deliver us from our sins.

And THEREFORE we obey the LORD. BECAUSE Christ has paid for our sins and BECAUSE we have been wrapped in His robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10) and BECAUSE we have had His perfect righteousness imputed to us (2 Cor. 5:21), we now walk as He Himself walked (1 John 2:6). Our obedience is the mark of genuineness on our salvation.

Therefore, we search the Scriptures and pore over the word of God to know what radical obedience looks like, so that we will never be ignorant of the Lord’s commands.

We also pray for the Holy Spirit to fill us with His power so that we will never complain of our inability to obey the Lord’s commands (1 John 5:3; Phil. 4:13).

We live lives of radical obedience, not seeking the minimum to hopefully get us by, but living holy lives which intentionally draw attention to the Holy One who has called us into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9; Matthew 5:14-16).

Saul was casual about obedience. Let us be radical in our obedience so that we can point people to our Lord Jesus Christ.   SDG   rmb   8/22/2016

CONTEXT: In 1 Samuel 15 the prophet Samuel gives Saul explicit commands from the LORD of hosts to bring judgment on the Amalekites as a recompense for their treatment of Israel when the nation was coming up from Egypt. Saul is told to “strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him, but put to death” everything (15:3). The command could not be clearer, yet Saul does not carry out the command. Instead he saves some of the sheep for sacrifices and spares Agag the king of Amalek.

This will be a brief series of blogs on this chapter and on what we can learn from the negative example of Saul.

“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

The first thing that we notice is how Saul viewed the word of the LORD. When the LORD of hosts speaks through His Word, He demands that His Word be obeyed completely. Thus when Samuel speaks to Saul the word of the LORD of hosts, Saul should pay close attention and orient his life to obey what he hears. But Saul did not carefully heed the word of the LORD. Instead he explicitly and knowingly disobeyed. The main reason was that Saul was casual about the word of the LORD. He believed that, as long as he came close to what the LORD had commanded, he was okay. Surely the LORD would be satisfied with a token effort at obedience. But notice that his approximate obedience is declared to be “evil in the sight of the LORD (15:19)” and Saul is seen as having “rejected the word of the LORD (15:26).” It is rebellion and insubordination (15:23) to not listen to the voice of the LORD and to not then orient your life to obey His commands. The word of the LORD is to be obeyed precisely and fully and intentionally. Unlike Saul, the disciple of Jesus is deadly serious about the word of God and seeks to obey it fully. Caleb is a good model for us, because Caleb “followed the LORD God fully (Joshua 14:8,9,14).” Jesus is the perfect example, who always did what was pleasing to the Father (John 8:29) and who fulfilled the whole Law (Matthew 5:17).

Let’s make it our aim to know the Word and then to heed the Word fully and precisely.

SDG  rmb 8/20/2016

Here begins a series of meditations on Hebrews 12:2 and a series of thoughts on how this verse can benefit the believer in his struggle against sin.

The first meditation will be on the phrase, “fixing our eyes on Jesus . . .” The idea here is fixing my eyes on Jesus in such a way that all ‘wind’ (Matthew 14:30) and all distractions (1 Cor. 7:35; 2 Cor. 10:5; 11:3; etc.) are eliminated and overwhelmed as I meditate on Jesus and His glory (His death and resurrection and His soon-coming return) and as I concentrate on my mission as His witness in the world.

“Fixing my eyes on Jesus . . .” means having Jesus so dominate my experience that only two clearly distinguished categories of thought occur to me: in one category are my thoughts of Christ and His glory and power and thoughts of my obedience to Him in everything, and in the other category are those thoughts controlled by the world, the flesh and the devil, which seek to enfeeble, to frighten and to distract me from my worship and my witness of Christ. Simply put, there is Christ and there are distractions from Christ. In simplest terms, all thoughts and actions are either for Christ or they are distractions from Christ (Matthew 12:30).

Therefore I must A) discipline my mind to distinguish between these two categories of thinking and then, having discerned the difference, B) I must focus my mind on Christ and His glory and His greatness and force out of my mind all other “flaming arrows” (Ephesians 6:16), which are designed to neutralize me and to blunt my witness.

Satan hates me and has structured the world such that the distractions and lies of this world are intended to silence me and to cause me to turn inward in self-pity and fear. Therefore, in anticipation of his attacks, I will unflinchingly fix my eyes on Jesus and when Satan’s attacks come, I will respond with skillful defense (Eph. 6:10-18) and damaging counter-attack (Acts 19:10).

In Christ, my weapons are stronger (1 Samuel 17:45; 2 Cor. 10:3-5; Ephesians 6:10-18).

With Christ, my Champion is more powerful and He cannot be defeated (1 Sam. 17:46-47; John 19:30; Revelation 19:11-16). My Champion holds the keys to death itself (Rev, 1:18) and He has conquered death and the devil.

Praise the LORD, for He is the Champion and the Conqueror!

So I will discipline myself to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and His glory, while resolving to reject all distractions to my mission in life.   SDG   rmb   8/15/2016

Only our God, the LORD, the one true and living God, speaks. The idols and the false gods of the pagans and of the nations cannot speak. Psalm 115 lists a lot of things that idols cannot do, but the ‘cannot’ that heads the list is the ‘cannot’ of speech. “They (the idols) have mouths, but they cannot speak.”

The idols of the nations do not speak because they cannot speak. Not only do they have nothing to say, but they are unable to say anything.

They cannot issue commandments. They cannot say, “Thou shalt not . . .” They cannot declare to their people, “Thou shalt . . .”

They cannot tell their people what they are like. Are they holy? Are they vile? Are they evil? Are they capricious? Are they powerful? No one can ever know because they cannot speak and therefore cannot reveal who they are or what they are like.

They cannot threaten their adversaries and tell those who oppose them of their might.

They cannot warn men and women to repent or to flee from the coming wrath and judgment.

They cannot make any promises to those who worship them nor can they make prophecies of what they are going to do (Isaiah 41:21-24).

They cannot enter into covenants with their people (Genesis 12:1-3; 2 Samuel 7; Matthew 26:28).

They cannot call the stars by name (Isaiah 40:26).

They cannot declare their love to their people.

They cannot speak blessings.

They cannot call men and women to come to them (Matthew 11:28; Isaiah 55:1-3).

They cannot call the world and the universe into existence.

They cannot speak to any person.

They cannot communicate any ideas.

They cannot express comfort for their people.

This is powerfully important. The Bible opens with God speaking and the voice of the LORD commands the universe into existence (Genesis 1). The gospel of John opens with “in the beginning was the Word . . .” (John 1:1) John describes Jesus Christ as the Word, the “logos,” because Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Jesus is the eternally existent Word, the Person who manifests the speech of the living God. By contrast, their idols cannot speak, and it is obvious that words have no meaning for idols who cannot use words.

One of the common traits of all mankind is the ability to speak. It is the ability to speak that makes man human. What then are we to make of idols who cannot speak? How are they going to communicate to mankind? The LORD declares that He made man’s mouth and He teaches us what to say (Exodus 4:11-12). God the Holy Spirit gives us the words to say when we are to witness before kings (Matthew 10:20) and the Holy Spirit speaks to God the Father with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), but their idols cannot speak to anyone at all.

“They have mouths, but they cannot speak.” It is the ultimate mockery. What good is a mute idol to anyone? Their idols cannot promise or threaten. They cannot command or encourage. They cannot warn. They cannot foretell the future and declare what is to come. They cannot claim credit for the great acts of the past. They cannot express love or compassion, wrath or mercy, forgiveness or joy. They simply stand there mute, expressing nothing, saying nothing. Stupid and soundless, they are “like a scarecrow in a cucumber field (Jeremiah 10:5). They can do no harm, nor can they do any good.”

But our God raised His voice and the earth melted (Psalm 46:6). He speaks and the dead come out of the tomb (John 11:43). And one day, an hour will come when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and will come forth (John 5:28-29). With His voice the LORD spoke the universe into existence and one day with His voice He will speak the universe out of existence, but forever and ever there will be the sound of ten thousands of ten thousands lifting their voices and crying out to the LORD and to the Lamb, “Holy, holy, holy!” Voices, voices, voices of the redeemed are crying out to the infinitely worthy One.

Meanwhile, their idols stand by: “They have mouths, but they cannot speak.”

Let us join our voices with all the redeemed.  SDG   rmb    8/10/2016

Psalm 114 is a psalm about God’s deliverance of Israel from the house of slavery in Egypt. The psalm speaks of the time when Israel went forth from Egypt and became God’s sanctuary. Then the psalmist declares that “the sea looked and fled and the Jordan turned back (114:3).” He then asks the sea what caused it to flee and what caused the Jordan to turn back. These are, of course, two of the great miracles that the LORD performed for Israel when He split the Red Sea and allowed Israel to walk through on dry land and then when He stopped the Jordan and had it pile up as a heap as the people walked through into the Promised Land. These two biblical events are emblazoned in our minds and etched on the pages of Scripture, identifiable and unforgettable.

But then we have to consider the other events which are described next. After speaking of the two water miracles, the psalmist says, “The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs (114:4).” Later he asks, “(What ails you,) O mountains, that you skip like rams, O hills, like lambs? (114:6)” Evidently the mountains and the hills moved so much that they appeared to be skipping about like sheep in the midst of the flock. Now this is a mystery, for when in the pages of Scripture have the mountains ever skipped like rams or the hills played like lambs? We search back into the pages of the Bible, into the history of Israel or even into the sayings and the visions of the prophets and we scan the pages in vain for any event like that. There is no historical time when the mountains and the hills “skipped like rams.”

And so, since there is no event like that looking backward, then we must need to look forward. This, in fact, is exactly what is going on here. First the psalmist is remembering the times in Israel’s history when the LORD performed miracles to rescue His people and he is also seeing into the distant future when the Lord Jesus Christ will return for His people. In that day, when the Lord returns, the mountains will skip like rams and the hills like lambs. The following are some verses that describe the events of Jesus’ return which suggest the mountains and the hills skipping as the earth writhes in anguish over the coming of the King.

Psalm 97:5 “The mountains melted like wax at the presence of the LORD.” It is not difficult to imagine that if mountains are melting like wax, the hills will also skipping like rams.

Isaiah 55:12 “The mountains and the hills will break forth with shouts of joy.” If they are shouting, could they not also be skipping?

Revelation 6:14-17 “Every mountain and island were moved out of their places.” In the cataclysmic chaos marking the end of the age before the return of the Lord, every mountain will rock as a drunken man. This is the terrifying time when the mountains will appear to skip.

Ezekiel 38:20 “The earth will shake at the presence of the LORD and the mountains will be thrown down.” This is the time at the end when the LORD’s zeal and blazing wrath will manifest themselves in earthly upheavals. Again, this could be described as the hills skipping like lambs.

Isaiah 42:15 “I will lay waste the mountains and the hills.”

Habakkuk 3:6 “The perpetual mountains were shattered, the ancient hills collapsed.”

Nahum 1:5 “Mountains quake because of Him and the hills dissolve; Indeed the earth is upheaved by His presence.” In this picture of the day of the Lord’s wrath and vengeance, we can imagine the hills skipping like lambs.

Micah 1:4 “The mountains will melt under Him and the valleys will be split.”

Zechariah 14:4 “The Mount of Olives will be split in the middle.”

My contention is that this psalm not only describes the miracles of the LORD moving the waters in Israel’s past at the Red Sea and the Jordan, but it also describes the way the mountains will move and shake and “skip like rams” on the terrifying last day when the Lord Jesus comes to judge the world. That will be an awesome day – “Tremble, O earth, before the LORD, before the God of Jacob (Psalm 114:7).”   SDG   rmb   8/9/2016