This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day three of week three of our Look Through First and
Second Samuel. We're looking at chapter 15 today. Yesterday we looked at Saul's
first major sin, his selfish sacrifice.

Today we're going to look at his second major sin in this chapter. This is his
selfish success. He selfishly did some good things, and these were these major
areas of sin in his life.

Both seemed to be good things, but they were done in dependence on self and not
on God. And for a leader, that is the greatest temptation in sin. Saul's selfish
success.

Listen to what happened beginning in verse one. Verse one through three, "Samuel
said to Saul, 'Here was the direction. I am the one the Lord sent to appoint you
as king over the people of Israel.

'" So listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty
says, "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they
waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go and attack the Amalekites and
totally destroy everything that belongs to them.

" And he goes on to say, "Totally destroy all of them. " So what does Samuel do?
Beginning in verse eight, "He took Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive.

And all his people he totally destroyed with a sword. But Saul and the army
spared Agag and the best of the sheep and the cattle, the fat calves and the
lambs, everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy
completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel, 'I am grieved that I have made Saul
king because he's turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions. '
Samuel was troubled and he cried out to the Lord all that night. " Here's the
second major sin in Saul's life.

And the attitude behind this sin, we're going to look at attitude, excuses and
consequences here too. The attitude here was, "I've got a better idea. God has
an idea, I've got a better idea.

" God told Saul to utterly destroy. So it seemed so much better though to Saul
to keep the best. So he destroyed only what he thought was the worthless thing.

Trying to out reason God inevitably leads to a troubled heart. Now I have to
admit many of us do this even with these passages because we didn't live in this
time. We don't understand the battles that went on.

We don't understand why God would allow a nation to actually totally wipe out
another nation. It doesn't fit with the message of Jesus to us. And so we begin
to question God.

We begin to think, "God, I've got a better idea. If I'd been God I would have
done it in this way. " But the truth of the matter is I can trust God.

God is a God of love and if he allowed this to happen there were reasons for it
that are beyond what I can understand. Now back to Saul, back to his sin. He
thinks he's got a better idea and so because of that he decides to go his own
way.

This was actually, this passage of Scripture, one of the first passages of
Scripture that I taught as a young pastor. Some 40 years ago I've got all my
sermons numbered and then thousands of sermons now this is number five, the
fifth sermon I ever spoke and I realize how important a message it is to me
because I realize how easily I can try to out reason God, make my idea more
important than his command. That's the sin.

God, I've got a better idea and God's command always outweighs my idea because
God knows more than I would ever know. Now Saul immediately, like he did with
the sin yesterday that we looked at, he immediately goes into excuses for the
sin and that's where we learn the most about our own troubled hearts and what
keeps him troubled. These are the things that I have to overcome.

The excuses for the sin he has here are very common in our human nature. First
thing he does is he spiritualizes the sin. He spiritualizes it.

Verse 13, "When Samuel reached him, Saul said, 'The Lord bless you, I've carried
out the Lord's instructions. ' But Samuel said, 'What then is this bleeding of
sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?

' Saul answered, 'The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites. They spared the
best of the sheep and the cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we
totally destroyed the rest. We took the best,'" here's the excuse, he
spiritualizes it, "we took the best, but we did it to sacrifice it to God.

" We do the same thing today with the sacrifices that God asks us to make. We
spiritualize it. We do it with things like money.

God, if I give this money to you, that means that you will love me. That means
that you'll take me to heaven. That means that you'll forgive me.

Or more commonly, if I give this money to you, that means you will bless me in
ways that I want to be blessed. God owns it all. He doesn't need our money.

He merely gives us the privilege of sharing in the ministry of His blessings by
giving. And He does bless us in return many times. He promises us to do that.

So when I start to try to manipulate God with the giving of my money, when I
start to spiritualize it and think somehow my selfishness is a spiritual thing,
I've gotten in trouble. That's a troubled heart. When God becomes a way to get
my selfish desires met, that's a troubled heart.

We can do it with our money. We can do it with our time. You know, if I spend
more time reading the Bible this week, if I spend more time serving people, then
God has to do this for me.

He has to give me what I want. Instead, I should just thank Him for the
privilege of serving Him, of living, of life, of being able to serve Him. We
think sometimes that it is our sacrifice that causes God to bless us.

But Samuel teaches Saul here, it's not the sacrifice that's important, it's the
heart that's important. It's depending on Jesus that's important for you and I.
When you spiritualize your sin, you find yourself saying things like, "Well, but
it turned out for the best.

I know what I did was wrong, but it turned out for the best. " We can use these
animals for sacrifice. We can use these money.

I know I shouldn't have earned this money this way, but we can use this money to
serve God. I know I shouldn't have said that thing. I know I shouldn't have
committed that sin, but I know I've got more of a heart to serve.

It's amazing how often we come up with some spiritual flavoring to our sinful
actions and we expect God to somehow bless that. I understand that God blesses
us, even in our sin. He loves us.

He is gracious to us. But I've got a troubled heart and I allow my selfishness
to somehow seem to be a spiritual thing. When I say, "I feel the Spirit's
direction, but the truth of the matter is, it's what I want.

" Or, "I give to God out of ill-gotten gains and I think somehow that means it
makes it all okay. " You and I, we're never going to change until we admit to
ourselves there is no magic trick for changing sinful actions into good results.
What I need to do instead is just confess, say, "God, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Forgive me. " Now, there's another excuse in Saul's life and that is
the excuse of hiding behind other sins.

In verse 20, he says, "But I did obey the Lord," Saul says, "I went on the
mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and I
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.

" Now he's saying, "The people did it. They did it. The soldiers did it.

I was there, but I wasn't involved. " Now he simply lied. He was involved, but
the truth of the matter is, he was king.

He was responsible no matter what. The pointed finger, it is a dangerous thing.
After a while, you begin to believe yourself.

It's so easy to allow the actions of others to blind you to the truth about
yourself. You will never begin to change as long as you're pointing the finger
at others. And the truth is, oftentimes when God convicts you of a sin, the
first thing Satan will tempt you to do is to look around for someone else who's
committing the same sin, who's not getting punished for it, who's maybe even
worse than you are, and you start pointing your finger at them.

Get your eyes off of them and get your eyes back on God. They did it. That's the
second excuse.

And then the third excuse is, he blames others for his sin. He blames others for
the fact that he's sinned. He says, "They made me do it.

" Verse 24, Saul says to Samuel, "I have sinned. I violated the Lord's command
in your instructions. I was afraid of the people, and so I gave in to them.

And now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me so that I may worship
the Lord. " He blames others. He says it's peer pressure.

He's the king. He's in ultimate control, but he blames others. Teenagers
students talk about peer pressures of friends that cause them to sin.

"I did it because everybody else was doing it. " But all through our lives,
we're pressured to keep up materially, and that pressure can cause us, because
of some success that we want that somebody else has, that pressure can cause us
to turn our back on Christ. Do any of these things, the pressure of others, the
need for material things that other people have, do they make you sin?

No. What makes you sin is not even Satan. James 1, 14 and 15 says, "It's our own
lust that makes us sin.

It's our own heart that's evil. " We have to admit that. Just come to a place
and say, "It's not them, it's me.

It's me. " So, Saul says, "I have sinned, but his confession was insincere. " He
was trying to use a false confession to get the support of Samuel.

Strangely enough, this becomes one of our excuses for sin. We feel guilty, but
we never do anything about our guilt. We just feel guilty.

You'll never change until you begin to see guilt as a call to change, and not
just a reason to feel bad about yourself. It's a call to change. That's why God
allowed that guilt in your life.

So, here is Saul struggling with this sin, and the consequences are the same as
we saw before, as severe as we saw before. In verse 26, Samuel says to him, "I
will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord
has rejected you from being king over all Israel.

" Rejected from being king. Saul lost his purpose. His fatal mistake was that he
blamed all the wrong things for his sin.

First saying he'd done it to please God, and then saying it was the other guy's
fault, and then saying, "Maybe it was my fault, but other people forced me to do
it. " He was never able to come to the all-important point of saying, "I was
wrong. I'm at fault.

I need God's forgiveness. " Now, why the hesitation? In verse 30, we see that he
says, "Will you go back and honor me?

" We see that he was so afraid of losing his honor that he would not confess his
sin. Nothing changes under the sun. You can miss out.

I can miss out on the life that God has for us because of this same fear.
Instead of confessing my need for Jesus, instead of confessing the wrong
direction in my life, the sinful choices I made, I get caught up in wanting to
appear honorable to others. And the truth of the matter is my own pride at that
moment.

My own pride can keep me from living the life that God has for me. It keeps some
people from eternity. It keeps some believers from all the blessings that God
has for our lives.

There's this moment of honesty with ourselves that we're not trying to protect
our honor. It's only our own selfish pride. God can help us to live above that,
beyond that.

He has a different kind of life for us to live, beyond excuses life, the kind of
life he's made us for. As we pray together, I just ask you to pray, and maybe to
pray a very simple prayer today. Just to say, Father, I confess to you this sin.

I confess it to you. And I'm willing to be open about it with others, to confess
it to one other. Lord, help me to not get so caught up in my own selfish pride
that I miss the eternity that you have for me, the life that you have for me.

Instead, I come to you, I confess my sin to you, and I depend on you. Help me to
live that life before you, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow, the next couple days, we're going to see how Samuel teaches us to turn
failures into successes.