Today, I want to speak to parents and grandparents on raising children who have a stalwart character all their lives. Let’s look at one of the most interesting kings of ancient Israel, King Saul.
Today’s Scripture
The word of the Lord came to Samuel: 11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night. 12 And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. And it was told Samuel, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.” 13 And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” 14 And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” 15 Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” 16 Then Samuel said to Saul, “Stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night.” And he said to him, “Speak.”
17 And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. 18 And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ 19 Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” 20 And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. 21 But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” 22 And 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 listen than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has also rejected you from being king” (1 Samuel 15:10-23).
Today we are looking at one of the three significant figures in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel: Saul. Saul’s life spirals downward to an abusive tyrant to his tragic ruin. He doesn’t start out that way. If you take the time to trace out the beginnings of his life, you’ll note that he doesn’t start out that way. When he is to be anointed as king, he actually hides in the luggage (1 Samuel 10:22). He feels unworthy in the beginning stages. In the beginning, he is even merciful to his opponents rather than seeking revenge when he came to power. Yet, Saul changes into someone who is radically different as he grows. He becomes an ugly character, someone that even hates himself. How does this happen? In a word, self-deception. When we teach obedience to the next generation, we have to highlight self-deception.
1. Teach the Next Generation to Recognize Self-Deception
Let’s see how it happens by looking at Saul a little closer. The Amalekites were a neighboring tribe and a violent people. They did atrocities and God wants Saul to engage them in battle. God instructed Saul to keep nothing after he had defeated them. He was to destroy everything of the Amalekites. He wasn’t to leave a person or an animal alive: “And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed’” (1 Samuel 15:18). This wasn’t so much about Saul and Israel expanded their kingdom or an act of imperialism, but it was an act of justice.
Yet, Saul kept the best of the livestock or the wealth of this tribe, and he kept their leader alive. This was clearly against what God had said. God didn’t want Saul to profit in the least bit from the Amalekites’ injustice. You don’t keep the wealth of the German people after their slaughter of millions of people in the middle 1940s. You don’t profit from their gold. God’s command was an act of justice against wicked people. God doesn’t want his people to use force to profit from others.
Saul became the Amalekites. This is why God didn’t want Israel to have a king. He didn’t want Israel to become like the other nations. Saul had become just like the Amalekites when God wanted the Amalekites destroyed. Saul was deceiving himself. Notice in verse nineteen: Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (1 Samuel 15:19)? Saul responds: “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction” (1 Samuel 15:20).
You need to know that there is no word for “obey” in the Hebrew language. Instead, the word translated “obey” many times in the Old Testament is the word meaning “to hear.” Samuel says literally, “Why did you not listen to the voice of the Lord?” There is a hearing but not listening. Saul didn’t heed God. He didn’t truly grasp what God said. He didn’t listen to God’s instructions because he didn’t want to listen to God’s instructions. He had a better idea. You can hear but not really hear. The human heart has almost unlimited capacity to hide the truth from itself if the truth is too painful. It’s possible to hear but not really hear.
Children must be made able to recognize self-deception. We do this by giving them the tools to watch for self-promotion.
You can know something but not really know it. Like when your wife asks you what the noise is as you driving the car and you turn up the radio. The first thing Saul says when Samuel shows up is found in verse thirteen: “And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, ‘Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord’” (1 Samuel 15:13).
See the self-deception. Before Samuel, the prophet, says anything, Saul is already protesting. Self-deception is the ability to justify things you know are not right. It’s to know something and yet to smother your conscience. It’s the parents who take their children from school to school and everywhere they go, the teachers tell them, “Your child is a bully.” And at stops along the way, the father says to the principal, “My child is fine. It’s the other kids.” Yet at home, the father works to protect his other children from this child. He keeps the cat away from his son because he knows his son’s cruelty. He knows but he doesn’t want to know.
At the conclusion of WW II, General George Patton visited Ohrdruf, a concentration camp in Germany. There, blood and guys George Patton was confronted with the first-hand experience of the Nazi’s atrocities. He vomited when seeing 2,000 bodies partially incinerated in the ovens. The next day, Patton had questioned the remaining prisoners, he made the town’s people come out to bury the bodies. Every night, Patton learned, that the prisoners would go into town and drink and brag. The town’s people must have known. Patton made the town’s people bury the bodies including the mayor and his wife. They spent the whole day digging individual graves That very night, the mayor and his wife both committed suicide. They hung themselves. And they left a note. This is what was on the note, “We didn’t know, but we knew.”
The same mechanism that allowed very decent people to become complicit in their horrendous evil is the same mechanism that keeps me from admitting my selfishness to others. You see, when we teach our children about obedience, we must teach them about their mechanism called self-deception. We have an enormous capacity to hide from ourselves truths that are painful to us.
In fact, we are so good at this, we need to watch how self-deception works in King Saul. Here is how Saul does it. The first way he does it is to shift blame in verse fourteen: “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear” (1 Samuel 15:14)?
Notice Saul’s reply: Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” (1 Samuel 15:15)
Saul was good at misdirection. Notice, the second way he does this in verse fifteen: Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” (1 Samuel 15:15)
Saul hides behind his religion. Mafia hitmen rationalize, “Yes, I kill people but I’m really good to my mother.” We are incredibly good at self-deception. People who are religious often use their religion as something to hide behind. People hide behind their religion to evade obedience. Non-religious people evade God when they say, “Look at the hypocrisy of all the religious people.”
Why did Saul do this? What is the psychology behind this? In essence, he wasn’t to make himself look big or good before others. Watch the narrative carefully. Look back at verse twelve: “And it was told Samuel, ‘Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.’” (1 Samuel 15:12). And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:17).
Why has Saul made a statue of himself? Why has he kept Agag, the king of the Amalekites? If you keep the king of the Amalekites then you are now king of kings. He did all this because he wanted to make himself big. Why does the bully beat up the kid on the playground but to make himself big? Samuel says to Saul, “You were small in your own eyes and God made you great.” Why are building the monument? Why are keeping the wealth? Why are you keeping Agag? Why are trying to make yourself look great?
2. Teach the Next Generation to Regain Humility
It is essential we help our children learn to love humility. Self-deception comes in when we are often desiring to make ourselves look great before others.
Author David Brooks was on his way home from work when he was listening to an old radio program rebroadcast from V-J Day, August 15, 1945. It was an episode when the Allied Troops were being entertained by such big-name celebrities of the day as Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Bette Davis. The Allies had just defeated the Nazis in Europe but the broadcast was a celebration filled with bragging. Instead, the feeling was the exact opposite. A solemn version of “Ave Maria” was played followed by Crosby himself saying, “Today, though our deep-down feeling is one of humility.” This statement was repeated throughout the broadcast. Here was a generation of people who had been a part of one of the most historic battles known to history and they won. Yet, they didn’t go around telling everyone how great they were.
Brooks said turned off the radio in his car and walked inside his home. He turned on the football game on his TV where a quarterback threw a short two-yard pass before being tackled by the defensive player. Immediately, the defensive player did what nearly all professional athletes do these days, he did a victory dance to tell everyone how great he was. The contrast between the two scenes is telling.
The back door to prevent this is to teach children to find their real worth not in their accomplishments but in Jesus Christ. If God loved them so much to send His Son to die for their sins, what accomplishment in life can eclipse this fact?
We are great sinners but we are also greatly loved. Our worth is discovered when we know Jesus Christ. Receiving His love deep in our souls will stave off the desire to make ourselves great. Humility is the key to preventing much of our self-deception. Humility is gained by reinforcing in your children they find their ultimate worth in the eyes of God who loves them. The cross is where their sins are paid for but also where they find their worth. They receive an exchange when they embrace Christ by faith. Any child of God exchanges their sin for Christ’s reward. In place of their sin, God now sees His children just as if they had never sinned, or justified. But at a deeper level, justification is God seeing His children just as He sees Jesus Christ. When we embrace Christ by faith, we are now viewed by God the Father as having achieved the moral goodness of His Son (2 Corinthians 5:21).
