Completely Destroyed... But

1 Samuel 15:20-23

“But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.” But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”

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RECAP:

- There is a hole in every human, an infinite gap which can only be filled by the infinite God.

- Everything else we try to fill the hole with, rather than putting God first, is an idol.

- Idolatry's effects are not just long-term, but separate us from God's power here and now.

- The only way to get back onto the right track is to fully devote our idols to God, whether removing them permanently or temporarily. But either way, we need to devote it completely, or we run the risk of letting our idolatry grow...

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I was originally intending on covering something else today, but while doing some reading last night I felt we needed to make a slight detour. Like I mentioned in my last post, every time there is a gap, something is going to fill it. If we don't choose what that is going to be, something else will by default. So today I'm going to look at what happens when we either don't fully devote our idols or when we don't intentionally replace them to fill the gap.

Just before our passage above begins, king Saul had gone out on a mission by God's order to completely destroy the Amalekite people. There were a couple of reasons for this: for one, the Amalekites had tried to wipe out Israel right after they came out of Egypt, and God wasn't going to let that slide. But even more significantly, the Amalekites were an idolatrous nation, so leaving them alive would have led to Israel being corrupted by them and turning to idols themselves. Saul was told to destroy every single one of the Amalekites, including every single thing that they owned. So that's what Saul did... right?

Not exactly. Saul killed every single Amalekite... except for the king, who he took captive as a trophy of sorts. And he destroyed every single thing that they owned... except for the best quality animals, which he decided to sacrifice on an altar to God (which, by the customs of the time, he and his men would then eat part of to represent eating at God's table). Instead of fully following through on what God said to do, Saul held onto the things that would please him and boost his ego. Saul had created an idol of himself.

The most devastating part of all of it? I feel pretty confident in saying that Saul thought he was doing the right thing. After all, he was sacrificing animals to God! How could God not be happy with that? He had purged the idols from his life, but because he didn't finish the job, he was left in an even worse state than he began with. He was now in the most dangerous place any of us can be of - living in idolatry and sin, but convinced that we're right with God because we're doing the 'right' things.

Then along comes the prophet Samuel, a man who knows God personally and intimately. Samuel knows that God doesn't want us to do the 'right' things, because the 'right' things will never be enough to restore us in relationship with Him. Instead, God calls us to listen to His voice and do what He says - to obey Him.

This week began with Palm Sunday, the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem. Yesterday, then, would have marked the day that Jesus entered the temple in Jerusalem and started clearing house, quoting the prophet Jeremiah by saying “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11:17, Jeremiah 7:11 NIV) Jesus went through and thoroughly purged the idols from the temple of the Lord, leaving nothing untouched. Then, He went and died on the cross so that we could not only be free of our idols, but actually be restored into relationship with God - the one thing we could never do.

This week, what idols has God been revealing are in your life? Are you going to purge them like Saul did, or like Jesus did? In Saul's case, "completely destroyed... but" led to the kingdom being torn from him then and there (1 Samuel 15:28). In Jesus' case, "completely destroyed... and," led to him being seated, "at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him." (1 Peter 3:22 NIV)

Completely destroyed... but.

Completely destroyed... and.

The choice is yours.