Series: Youth for Jesus
Number: Vol. 9, No. 4
“Why did you not obey the LORD? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?” (1 Sam 15:19NIV)
Who were these words said to? King Saul! And why were they said to him? They were said to him because he did not completely obey the command of God given to him by Samuel.
Now what was the command of God given to Saul by Samuel? It was that he should go and completely destroy the Amalekites and everything they had, leaving nothing alive. Did he, then, go to destroy these people and everything they had? Yes! And did he completely destroy them and everything they had, as He had been commanded by God? No!
Why did he not make a complete destruction of those people and everything they had? Greed! How? Well, when he and his men saw the fat and well-groomed livestock of those Amalekites, they changed their minds about completely destroying them and decided to spare them. They even spared their king, Agag. Why? It may be that he had promised to give his wealth to them. Who knows?
In any case, it was greed that made Saul disobey God the way he did. Yes, in his own eyes, he felt that he had obeyed God by destroying all the Amalekites and sparing only their king and the best of their livestock. He even thought of what he did as an opportunity to sacrifice some of the animals to God.
But as far as God was concerned, his partial disobedience was as bad as total disobedience. That means he did not obey Him at all. That being the case, He judged him by removing him from his throne.
What, then, do we learn from this? It is that we should not allow greed to push us to take for ourselves a reward that God has not given to us. King Saul did what he did because he felt that he and his men deserved to be rewarded by God for the hard work of destroying the Amalekites. But they were not the ones to tell God what they deserved or did not deserve. They were His servants and were meant to obey whatever command He gave them, whether He was going to reward them for it or not.
As the bible shows us, even though God always rewards people for doing His will or for doing good, we are not to see that as an entitlement. Rather, we are to see it as a manifestation of His grace towards us. That is because He is the source of our lives and everything else. So, He does not owe us anything. We are the ones that owe Him everything. (Cf. Job 41:11; Luke 17:7-10; Romans 11:35)
Therefore, regardless of what we may have done for God, we should never attempt to reward ourselves with what He has not given to us. Others around us, including preachers, may be doing that, rewarding themselves through extortion, manipulation and threats with rewards God has not given to them. But we must always turn away from such. That is because He will never forget to reward us adequately for our labour of love at the right time (Gal 6:9; Heb 6:10).
If we, however, should decide to reward ourselves by ourselves and in our own way, we may lose even our souls in the process. So, mind yourself.
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