“For rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft, and arrogance like the sin of idolatry”(I Samuel 15:23).

“Oh, he’s so cute. Can I pat him?”

Our little daughter was fascinated by the large black bear that was crawling through the garbage cans near our house.  We were attending a weeklong conference at the conference center near Glorieta, New Mexico, and had noticed signs warning about bears.  Traps in the form of large steel drums had been set for them.  (They would be hauled back into the mountains and turned loose.)  This night, we had just returned from a two-hour service of worship and were going from our car into the duplex when we spotted the bear across the street.

“No, you may not pat him!”  The very idea.  We hurried inside and watched through the window.

What the child considered a teddy bear could have easily been a killer.

My sin was not a big thing.

At least in my eyes it wasn’t.  It was just a minor offense, something (ahem) natural to me. God understands these things, doesn’t He? After all, He made us, and you could make a case for us being the way we are because of Him.

Everyone does it.  The Bible hardly mentions it.  God understands.

Rationalizations, thy name is legion.

All King Saul did was to take God’s commands and adapt them to the realities of his situation.  Surely, if the Lord knew the circumstances as well as Saul did, He would want Saul to spare King Agag for the moment, and make a public example of him in some kind of exhibition.  However, earlier, when Israel went to battle against the Amalekites, the Prophet Samuel had said God’s instructions were that no one of the enemy was to survive. No one and nothing. That included the king and every other citizen, as well as all their animals.

God had His reasons.  I for one will not be sitting in judgment on Him for that–or anything else.

“But Saul spared (King) Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs–everything that was good” (I Samuel 15:9).

Saul had plans for them. What a cookout they would have.  And some of those animals would make great breeding stock.

That was not how God saw things.

“The Lord said to Samuel, ‘I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions” (15:11).

Obedience matters to God. (See 2 Corinthians 2:9 and Luke 6:46.)

We can imagine Saul defending his disobedience.  “Now, Lord, Give me credit. I haven’t committed adultery.  I haven’t blasphemed you.  I haven’t forgotten to go to worship or to tithe or pray.  It’s true I did not carry out your instructions to the letter of the law regarding the Amalekites, but I did pretty good, I think you’ll have to agree.  I mean, we beat those heathen, didn’t we?  And so, if what I did was sin, you know it was from good intentions. I wanted to upgrade the bloodlines of the livestock and give a little reward to our faithful warriors.”

Rebellion is on a par with witchcraft. (See Deuteronomy 18:10 for God’s word on that forbidden subject.)

Arrogance strikes the Lord in the same way as idolatry. (Idolatry is one of the “big ten.” See Exodus 20:4.)

Who knew such little things registered so huge on His scale?

Answer: Those who know their Bibles do.

1) We never look within ourselves for information about sin.

Sin is an offense to God.  He names them, decides what is pleasing to Him and announces what is not.

We are not allowed to take a vote on what Heaven will find acceptable.  God cares nothing at all for public opinion polls or conventional wisdom.

When David sinned with Bathsheba and then committed manslaughter to cover it up, his life spiraled downward.  Finally, in repentance, he confessed and prayed for forgiveness. “Against Thee and Thee only is my sin,” he said (Psalm 51:4).  We might disagree with him.  He’d certainly mistreated a lot of people.  But the concept of sin is a spiritual thing, and involves our obedience to God.

If I hurt another person, I sin against God.

My heart understands little of this and has no patience with the subject.  Like a crooked PR agent intent on spin control, the heart always seeks to justify my wrongdoing.  “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked,” said Jeremiah (17:9). It cannot be trusted.

2) We are not excused because our wrong behavior rose from good intentions.

A cartoon shows a caption on a gravestone: “He meant well.”  Yeah. Good luck with that.

Moses’ brother Aaron sought to defend his blasphemous acts while the man of God was on the mountain receiving the Law. “You know how wicked these people are,” he said rather lamely to Moses.  “They’re always up to no good. And when they asked me to make them a golden calf, I told them to bring me their gold. I threw it into the fire and–out came this calf!” (Exodus 32:22ff.)

That little imaginative prevarication did not fly.

3) We let ourselves off too easy by categorizing sins.  Some are big; some little.

Now, I’m not ready to say, as some of my friends seem to be, that all sins are equal. While Jesus said the man who lusts has committed adultery in his heart (Matthew 5:28), no reasonably minded person would say, “Well, he might as well go through with the act now that he is guilty of doing it.”  No, the two are separate and vastly different.  Some sins are indeed worse than others.

However, it’s not our decision to make.  In Matthew 23:23, Jesus spoke of “the weightier matters of the law” and named them: justice and mercy and faith.

4) Invariably, the small sins are mine; yours tend to be of the larger, more serious variety.

I will let myself off with a warning; you will receive the severest judgment.

It’s the speck-of-sawdust versus the plank-in-the-eye syndrome our Lord spoke of in Matthew 7:3-5.

5) Arrogance registers on heaven’s scale at the same weight as idolatry?  Wow. 

If “justice and mercy and faith” are “weightier” (more serious, of greater consequence) in the mind of God, then surely the great sins would involve injustice, a failure to show mercy, and lack of faith.  And the finest obedience would involve “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with (our) God” (Micah 6:8).

“Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23).  Think on that one for an hour or a week.

That, some might be interested to know, is what spurred this article in the first place.  I was dreading something on my calendar, something I must do and is not one of my favorite things.  What I was feeling was, for want of a better word, “fear.”

Then, I remembered the line from I Samuel 15:23 (our text today) and realized that my fear is akin to Saul’s disobedience.  It may seem normal to me, but it’s an insult to the living God who is in charge.

So, I will make a conscious decision to believe Him and will not try to rationalize or justify my fears.  I will go forward by faith and rejoice in Him.

Today, I will look for an opportunity to do justice.

Today, I will look for someone who needs mercy.

Today, I will look for an occasion to demonstrate faith.