“Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Be quiet! And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.’ And he said to him, ‘Speak on.’ So Samuel said, ‘When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?’ And Saul said to Samuel, ‘But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.’ So Samuel said: ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.’” (1 Samuel 15:16-23 NKJV)
Before we dive deep into this passage of Scripture, I want to give you a little background first. We know that Isaac and Rebekah had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Furthermore, we know that the descendants of Jacob were the Israelites, for God changed Jacob’s name to Israel Himself. But, the descendants of Esau are a different story. Esau had a son, whose name was Eliphaz. Then Eliphaz had a son whose name was Amalek, who was the father of the Amaleks that we read about in 1 Samuel 15 above. Before Jacob and Esau were born, they fought in their mother’s womb. Now, years later, their descendants are fighting against each other as well.
Years before, when God instructed Moses to bring the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage, something interesting happened on their trek towards the promised land. Allow me to show you in Deuteronomy 25:17-19 (ESV): “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.”
Did you catch that? Remember, the Israelites and the Amalekites were cousins! But here we see that when Israel was tired and weary from their journey, that the Amalekites snuck up behind them and killed all of the feeble and weak people that were lagging behind towards the end of the massive convoy heading to the promised land. And when they did, they messed up bad. Why? Because God had already said, “Abraham, I will bless those that bless you and I will curse those who curse you.”
So, when the Amalekites attacked like this, guess what happened? God was true to His Word. He put a curse upon the Amalekites. Exodus 17:14 (ESV) tells what God said, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’” Continuing reading from the same chapter, we now look at verse 16: “Because Amalek raised a defiant hand against the throne of the Eternal, He has promised to wage war against Amalek through future generations” (Exodus 17:16 VOICE). And God did too. In Judges 3, God used Ehud to fight against the Amalekites. In Judges 4, God used Barak to fight them. In Judges 6, God used Gideon to fight them.
Now, though, four-hundred years have passed by, when suddenly God says, “It’s time to wipe the Amalekites off the face of the earth.” So, what does God do? He sends his prophet Samuel to Saul in order to tell him, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’” (1 Samuel 15:2-3 ESV) [italic emphasis mine]. Did you catch that phrase “devote to destruction”? That particular phrase is mentioned several times throughout Scripture. It means “ set apart (devote) as an offering to the Lord (for destruction).” King James Version translates it as “utterly destroy all,” but that does not convey the idea totally. God was saying that their destruction, the killing of every man, woman, boy and girl, every ox and sheep and camel and donkey, was an offering unto Yahweh. Their enemy's destruction was actually offering up to God an offering!
What does Saul do when he receives the Word of God through Samuel? First, he gathers two hundred thousand footmen. Nothing wrong with that. That's a good battle strategy if you are about to wipe out an entire race of people. Then, he gathers ten-thousand men from Judah. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. If you’re going to win a battle, it’s always good to send out the ones who know how to praise God. And God did give them a mighty victory.
But, then, Saul messed up big time. After the battle was over, he decided not to kill king Agag, or the sheep and oxen. He, instead, captured king Agag and took him back to the Israelite camp. You may ask yourself, why would he do that? It was pure pride. In that day, in the Old Testament, if one king conquered another kingdom, it was tradition to capture the enemy king and bring him back to your camp in chains to show the great military victory that you had just won. The conquering king would make the defeated king lie on the ground, then he would put his right foot on the defeated king’s neck, reach down and take his crown off and put it on his own head. This was symbolic of a great military victory.
All that is well and good, but that is not what God told him to do! As king Saul marches his conquered enemy into the camp, and as his soldiers start to bring with them sheep and oxen, the prophet Samuel comes up to Saul and asks him, “What is the meaning of all this?” Saul, of course, answers back with, “Don’t worry Samuel. I did exactly as God commanded me to do. We won the victory over our enemies.” Samuel didn’t budge an inch though. He told Saul immediately that what he had done was not what God had commanded. God had instructed them to utterly kill everyone, humans and animals. Samuel then said something to Saul that rocked his world: “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He also has rejected you from being king.” (v.23) Saul lost his kingship because he disobeyed God.
Saul didn’t see anything wrong with keeping king Agag around. Why? Because, as mentioned previously, it was tradition. Listen to me fellow warriors of the cross, there are churches today, as well as many Christians, who have kept king Agags in their life when they were instructed to get rid of everything. Habits. Hidden sins. Types of king Agags. We have to destroy all the king Agags in our lives. To obey is better than sacrifice. We are instructed to make our lives a living testimony unto the Lord. As such, we are told to put away every sin that does so easily beset us. We must devote to destruction all the things in our lives that have any way of pulling us back into the same old battle again and again.
Because of his disobedience, God took the kingdom of Israel away from Saul in 1 Samuel 15. Then, in 1 Samuel 16, the Bible tells us that Saul lost his anointing. After that, the Word of God tells us that “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him” (1 Samuel 16:14). Finally, one more thing happened to Saul, and this is the one I want you to let sink deep into your heart today. “Saul leaned upon his spear; and, lo, the chariots and horsemen followed hard after him. And when he looked behind him, he saw me, and called unto me. And I answered, Here am I. And he said unto me, Who art thou? And I answered him, I am an Amalekite. He said unto me again, Stand, I pray thee, upon me, and slay me: for anguish is come upon me, because my life is yet whole in me. So I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen: and I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm.” (2 Samuel 1:6-10)
Please tell me that you caught that. The thing that Saul did not completely, utterly destroy like God had told him to, was the thing that eventually killed him! An Amalekite! Obviously, Saul had spared more than just the king, sheep and oxen. Here was another Amalekite. God said get rid of them all. But Saul said, “I’ll just destroy 99% of them. 99% is close enough.” I must tell you though that 99% is NOT enough! When God says, Be holy, for I am holy,” that’s exactly what He means. You can't be holy if you still have king Agags running around in your life. It’s the little things that will destroy you. The hidden king Agags that people just don’t want to destroy are destroying their lives.
Do you know what happened to king Agag? The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel 15:33 (ESV): “And Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.” The prophet of God destroyed king Agag, not the warrior king Saul. And he didn’t just kill him, he chopped him up into little pieces. And so must we do the same with our own king Agags within our lives. We must destroy everything that is holding us back, everything that is keeping us from pursuing God, everything that causes us to compromise with the world, the flesh and the devil.