Learning from 1 Samuel 15 - Saul’s Rebellion

1 Samuel 15:23 - “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…”

Saul sinned and lost everything God had given him. The prophet Samuel even called Saul’s sin “idolatry,” even though Saul had not worshipped any statue or graven image. How was Saul guilty of idolatry? Why was his sin so serious that God permanently rejected him? This study examines these two questions.

Saul’s sin was a common one for religious people. He simply followed his own opinions and will. He departed a little from what the Lord revealed. He offered sacrifices to God, and he thought God should be satisfied. Yet he sacrificed something the Lord had said He did not want. Human religion does not care what God really wants; religion gives God what it wants to give, and expects God to accept anything. When it came to obedience, Saul would obey parts of what the Lord revealed, and he thought God should be satisfied with that. He did not understand that neglecting the other parts of God’s will constituted simple “disobedience.” God sent Saul into a battle with a specific enemy, and told him to take no plunder and no captives. Yet Saul took a little plunder to offer as a sacrifice to God, and a few captives who were royalty, who seemed special. Saul disobeyed, deviated from God’s plan. The prophet Samuel calls this idolatry.

Today, God has a project, a Work that He is completing according to specific plans and guidelines. When we deviate from this plan and follow our own preferences and desires, this is idolatry. We can be idolaters even if we do not have statues or religious images. Idolatry is deviating from the revealed project. We are not talking about emotions or sentimentalism here, or about the vague idea of “idolatry in our hearts.” We are talking about what we do - whether we obey God or not.

Suppose God reveals that He does not like a certain kind of music in worship, or that He wants us to baptize people in a certain way. Perhaps the revelation does not fit with our personalities, our culture, our preferences, or our opinions. As a result, we decide to obey everything except the parts we do not like. This is what Saul did. The Bible calls it idolatry.

Idolatry takes subtle forms, as when people take a good thing – like family – and turn it into an idol, something we obey instead of God. Family should be a priority, and it is godly to have a loving family. Yet Jesus cautioned us: “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37). Sometimes the Lord reveals something in the church, and one of the mothers in the church wants the pastor to make an exception for her son or daughter. If the Lord revealed the exception (not to the mother, who is biased), that is one thing – but if we are deviating from God’s revealed plan or project because of family affection, this can be idolatry.

Idolatry also takes blatant forms. We must be careful about this as well. False religions make statues of their imaginary gods and the men who founded their faith. Even Christians sometimes do this, thinking idols are acceptable as long as they represent Jesus, angels, or characters from the Bible. When God gives Moses the Ten Commandments, He explicitly forbids making or worshipping carved images. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image – any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…you shall not bow to them nor serve them…” (Exodus 20: 4-5). Making them and worshipping them are both violations. The Lord forbade even images that represented the true God – this was not just a prohibition against false gods. “…you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you…lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female…” (Deut. 4:15-19). Because of these rules, the Israelites could not make images representing God, the prophets, or any other image, whether carved images or drawings.

The warnings about idolatry run throughout the New Testament, just as they are everywhere in the Old Testament (1 Corinthians 5:10-11; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Corinthians 10:7; 1 Corinthians 10:14-22; Ephesians 5:5; Galatians 5:20; Colossians 3:5; 1 Peter 4:3; 1 John 5:21).