June 7, 2009
The Bold Alternative - 1 Samuel 15: 1-23
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadLeah and I lived in Texas from the time we were married, in November of 1999, until we moved back to the Carolinas in June of 2005. As you might already know, Texas had – and I think still has – a very active system of capitol punishment. It used to always shock me when I would read about an execution on the second page of the “B” section in the paper, right next to the snippet about the Garden Club’s cookout. The Texas Monthly would often do longer stories on the condemned inmates, and it never failed that there was something deeply tragic about their past. I remember reading about one condemned inmate who was drawing a picture right before he was carried off to the death chamber, and he asked the guard if he could keep working on that picture when they got back. Add to that years and years of abuse and neglect, and you’ve got a life that seems almost destined for tragedy.
It’s that same sick feeling you get when you look at a maternity ward and think that a good number of those precious babies that God has just brought into this world are going to abusive homes. It’s a sickening thought, isn’t it? And it’s all too true.
And so is this story, sickening and all too true. In some ways, it’s the saddest story in all of Scripture. First of all, God didn’t want Israel to have a human king. God was the King of Israel, and God preferred to keep in the way. God’s prophet, Samuel, strongly discouraged the people from getting a king. Kings were bad, he said. They would raise their taxes and send their children off to war. Kings would eventually even make slaves out of the people, Samuel said in the 8th Chapter. But the people would have none of it. Everybody else had a king, so they wanted one, too. God told Samuel, then, at the end of Chapter 8 to go ahead and give the people what they wanted, a king.
Not only did God not want a king, but Saul didn’t want a king, either. And whoever Israel got for a king, Saul sure didn’t want it to be himself. Saul did not want to be king. In fact, Saul literally hid from being a King. Imagine if Barak Obama skipped town on his inauguration. Except in Saul’s case, Saul didn’t seek to be king. He was literally, honestly just looking for his father’s donkeys and the next thing he knew, he was king. He was good-looking, he was tall and handsome, and he had a commanding presence. But he had no desire to be King. But he became one anyway, with this peculiar prophet, Samuel, constantly looking over his shoulder.
Despite that, Saul was a pretty good leader at first. He defeated the Ammonites in Chapter 11. He defeated the Philistines in Chapters 13 and 14. He made some rookie mistakes, but nothing all that major. But then, in Chapter 15, it all came unraveled. Samuel told Saul to go defeat the Amalekites. We still aren’t sure why. The Amalekites had taunted Israel as they escaped Egyptian slavery, but that was hundreds of years earlier. Part of it, Samuel said, was to avenge that, which doesn’t make any sense. And, this other little tid-bit really doesn’t make any sense. Samuel told Saul “not to spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, camel and donkey.” Don’t ask me to explain or justify that. I can’t and I’m not going to try.
When Saul defeated the Amalekites, he didn’t completely follow God’s command. Saul decided that he would keep the king (Agag was his name) and the best livestock for himself, which was a really bad idea. In fact, according to verse 10, God even regretted that he had made Saul the king. “When Samuel came to Saul,” we read in verse 13, “Saul said to him, ‘I have carried out the command of the Lord.’ ‘What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears, and the lowing of cattle that I hear?’” Regardless of God’s command to Saul to destroy everything, Saul kept the good stuff for himself.
And for that, Saul had to go. This story is not about justifying war. It raises some very difficult questions, to be sure, but it’s really about something more. This story is about obedience. It may even be more than that. This story is about being bold in what God has called us to do. “Though you are little in your own eyes,” Samuel exclaimed to Saul, “are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a mission,” Samuel said. Saul ultimately disregarded that mission. I think it goes back to this: Saul didn’t want to be king. He wanted to do something else. But he was the King, you see, and none less than God had made him the King. Saul never fully recognized or appreciated that. And therefore, I think more than anything else, Saul was timid. He may have been a nice guy. He may have had a good heart. And he may have been singularly chosen by God to make history. But he ended up being insufficient for that task, solely, it seems to me, because he really didn’t want that task and he didn’t think he could ever do it well, anyway.
We may not like where we are right now. We may not like our jobs, and we may not like our paychecks. We may not like that we don’t have jobs. We may not like who we are. And when we really think about whom God is calling us to be, we may not like that either. We may not like it at all. I cannot tell you in all honesty that if you only follow where God is leading, that you’ll end up happy, or secure, or comfortable. People sometimes come to me and tell me that God has called them to seminary or to the mission field. I cringe when I hear that. I don’t at all mean to discourage them, but it’s just never that simple. They are always in for a very rude awakening. The idea following God will solve all of our problems, or will make life easier is patently false. It’s not an easy ride at all. It’s hard, it can be very lonely. Just read Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called the “weeping prophet” because he wept all the time. Or read about Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah told God just to go ahead and take him, that he would rather die than to do what God was calling him to do. Following God is always a hard thing.
So you could accept that. Following God is hard, and we don’t like hard things, so we’ll just stay where we are. That’s always the easiest route, you know. And, by the way, nobody is either worthy or even capable of doing what God has called them to do. That’s half the point. If you could do it on your own, you wouldn’t need God. But you can’t do it on your own, because you’re incompetent to do all that. And, even if you were competent, you don’t want to do it, anyway. So, forget God and do what you want to do.
That’s one option, which does have some distinct advantages. Saul partly chose that option. But then there’s another option, a bolder option, a bold alternative. By definition, you won’t be able to do it. And you won’t want to do it. But you’ve thought about it and prayed about it and prayed about it, and the community has felt that same call for you and they’ve told you that you ought to do this thing, and so you just step out on faith and do it. Moses couldn’t even put two words together without stuttering, and yet God expected him to go to the most powerful man in the world and convince him to release his cheap labor. It was laughable. Isaiah was a man of unclean lips, he said. He didn’t want to be a prophet. Who would? Jeremiah didn’t want to be one either. “Ah,” he said, “I’m just a child.” Before the Apostle Paul was Paul, he was Saul. If you remember, Saul persecuted Christians, until he became one of them. He was no more worthy or capable of carrying the Gospel to the four corners of the world than we are, but he did anyway. Or, shall we say, God did anyway through him. In everyone of those cases, they could have accepted the way things were and life would have been much easier.
Or they could have accepted the bold alternative to be transformed into the people that God called them to become. They chose the bold alternative, and the world was changed forever. I don’t know what God is calling you to do or whom God is calling you to become. But I can tell you for a fact that you aren’t there yet, and neither am I. It would be a lot easier to stay where we are, to accept the way things are, and to simply forget God. Or, maybe like Saul, we could try to do half and half. Or we, like Moses, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Paul, could choose the bolder alternative to be obedient, not to ourselves and to the world around us, but to God. There really is no other reason to choose that bold alternative other than the belief that we belong to God and none other. Saul forgot that here, and he tried to have it both ways, and that didn’t bode well for him. God is either God or we are. It’s not easy. It never will be. There will be countless slip-ups along the way. But, if we claim to be Christian, it is what we must do. So have courage. Have faith. And may we all boldly go where God is calling us to go.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
