All right. Well, if you would open your Bible to 1st Samuel and Chapter 15. 1st Samuel and Chapter 15. We are in the midst of 1st Samuel. And last time we looked at 1st Samuel was a while ago. And there were many things we looked at. If you'll remember, we covered the 13th and 14th chapters all together. But the main thing was that Saul's kingship had been rejected. Saul's dynasty had been rejected of God. His son would not succeed him. Jonathan would not follow him. His dynasty was ended. But Saul is still the king for the time being. And so though he has started to spiral, he has not yet hit bottom. Well, we will see him in a sense, hit bottom tonight. Last time we also looked and saw that Samuel left Saul. We saw that Samuel went to another place, but Saul is still king. And so Samuel returns to Saul to once again give him the word of the Lord. And that's where we pick up our reading in 1 Samuel 15. And we will be reading the entire chapter. So if you will, please read along as I read. Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, over Israel. Now, therefore, heed the voice of the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts. I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel. how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have. And do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. So Saul gathered the people together and numbered them in Telim, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to a city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley. Then Saul said to the Kenites, go depart, get down from the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt. So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul attacked the Amalekites from Hevelah all the way to Shur, which is east of Egypt. He also took Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed. Now the word of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I greatly regret that I have set Saul up as king for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel and he cried out to the Lord all night. So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel saying, Saul went to Carmel and indeed he set up a monument for himself And he has gone on around, passed by, and gone down to Gilgal. Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, Blessed are you of the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. But Samuel said, What then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites. For the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God. and the rest we have utterly destroyed. 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, as the Lord has 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. Then Saul said to Samuel, I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me, that I may worship the Lord. But Samuel said to Saul, I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned around to go away, Saul seized the edge of his robe and it tore. So Samuel said to him, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the strength of Israel will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent. Then he said, I have sinned, yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may worship the Lord your God. So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord. Then Samuel said, bring Agag, king of the Amalekites, to me, So Agag came to him cautiously. And Agag said, surely the bitterness of death is past. But Samuel said, as your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. Then Samuel went up to Ramah, and Saul went up to his house at Gibeah of Saul. And Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul, and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. This is the Word of God, and there are many solemn things in the Word of God in this passage. It's a very serious and very, very clear passage in some respects. And so, As we look at this passage tonight, I am going to talk about revenge first. Let us talk about revenge, specifically the revenge of the Lord. The word of the Lord by Samuel comes to Saul, and that word is go and utterly destroy the Amalekites. Utterly destroy them. The first question we have to ask is why? Why are the Amalekites being utterly destroyed? And the answer is not that they were a certain race. The answer is not that they were somehow different than the rest of the peoples. The answer is that they were ungodly. The Amalekites were ungodly. We see this all the way back in Exodus as they are fleeing as the Israelites are fleeing and they are attacked by the Amalekites and the Lord promises to destroy them. We also see that they are mentioned in Deuteronomy by Moses as those upon whom the Lord will revenge himself. Well when we come to a passage like this we often ask ourselves, is it really, is it really this bad? Did God really do something this horrific? I mean, just look, look at the language. Kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child. Some would look at this even as a reason to not believe in God, to not believe in the God of the Bible. They would say, how can a God who created you, who created everything, who's all-powerful, do such a horrible thing. How can that God be good? And if that God is not good, why should I believe in Him at all? The other thing they want to do is they want to explain this passage away. They want to say, that was an exception, right? Oh, they were somehow different. Oh, they were subhuman. Oh, there is something different about the Amalekites, about these horrific passages in Scripture. But the truth is that this is not the exception. This is the rule. The rule of God against the unjust taking vengeance upon those who disobey who rebel who break his laws and persecute his people is vengeance. This is the God we serve now this God This God of the Bible is long suffering is he not. Three hundred years have passed since the Amalekites committed these sins and that is ample time would you not agree for the Amalekites to repent. And yet we still see in this passage that they are called sinners and that when Samuel addresses Agag he addresses him and he ascribed to him horrible sins. of making mothers childless. Quite a horrible, horrible man. And this horror of sin, this evil of sin, is why God's vengeance upon it is so strong. Now in our culture today, we don't want to think of sin as this bad. We have all types of polite names for sin. Oh, we have all types of ways to excuse our own sin. We look at our lives and we say, oh, I'm just struggling a little bit. Oh, I'm mostly doing what God has asked. But this sin is horrific. We remember the days of Noah, do we not? When man was wiped from the face of the earth, this was because of sin. We look forward, do we not, to a day when God, when Jesus will return in His second coming in glory and judge the just and the unjust, those who are in Him and who are not in Him. This will be a terrible day, a day like it was for the Amalekites when the Lord returns. We need to beware of the deceitfulness of sin that would convince us that it's not that bad, that they're just good people doing their own thing over in Amalek, that we're doing something, they're doing something, we're all trying. But no, there are two types of people. There are the just and the unjust. There are God's people and there are those who are not God's people. God's vengeance is swift. Take the thoughts of The. Of how. Take those things which tell you that sin is not that bad and take them to scriptures like this and remind yourself smash them up against it until your mind is utterly convinced that sin is horrible and horrid and God will take vengeance upon those who disobey and who fight against him. This also, for the Christian, for the one who is in God, for the Israelite back then, are words of comfort. How can you say that? How can you say that these words are words of comfort? Well, scripture gives us the words to say, Deuteronomy 32, 43 puts it this way, and this is from that song of Moses before he dies, in which he says those words quoted In Romans, which say vengeance is mine. We are familiar, right? Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay. Well, those are quoted from this song. And the end of that song says this. Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. Who's rejoicing? All those who are with his people. For he will avenge the blood of his servants and render vengeance to his adversaries. He will provide atonement for his land and his people. The ultimate success glory and everlasting bliss of those who follow God is equally as sure as the judgment upon the wicked. If you are not sure of a God who brings judgment upon the wicked how can you be sure of a God who will surely bless his people. If you are his people, you are his servants, are you not? Then be comforted by this promise, a promise of vengeance upon those who would go against God and a promise of salvation for those who would follow him. Isaiah 35, verse 4, see your God will come with vengeance. This is warning to every, every enemy of the Lord, but a comfort to his people. Well the horrible and I do mean horrible vengeance asked for. We then have the responsibility of Saul the responsibility of Saul. He was given a task a very clear task by the Lord and he goes to execute the judgment of the Lord. And it is not supposed to be a military excursion where they raid and pillage. It is to be a judgment. of the Lord and he does. He does most of it. He mostly obeys. He assembles his men. He numbers them. He goes into goes into hiding. He waits for the right time. He defeats the city and the Amalekites are his. He wins. He defeats the Amalekites. Isn't that what the Lord asked. But the Lord had said do not spare. And what do they spare? They spare the things they want. And so the obedience to the Lord is but a deed half done. The clarity here of the word of the Lord makes it so that the excusing of disobeying it is just not conscionable. Saul was given a very direct very clear command to do what the Lord commanded, and he did not do it. And we can do this, right? We can look at the Word of the Lord. We can see what it commands. We can see what it clearly commands. Repent, obey, follow your Lord. The commands in Scripture are clear, are they not? We can read throughout the pages of Scripture how we're to act and who we are to be, and then go away and forget it all. And when we marginally succeed, we can tell ourselves, I'm doing enough, right? I've obeyed that word of the Lord. No, I haven't obeyed that one, but we'll just focus on the one that I did get right. Well, before you know it, you've built a monument to yourself for all the good things that you've done. And that's what Saul did. Can you imagine it? He thinks he's done everything right. He goes and builds a monument to himself. How ridiculous. How ridiculous it is. How ridiculous it is, dear Christian, when we do that. When I've done that. How ridiculous that I should ever look at myself and say, oh, you're doing pretty good, while only half obeying the commands of the Lord. We have a responsibility. Saul had a responsibility to obey the commands of God. Well, the revenge and the responsibility lead us to the regret. The regret. And I'm speaking specifically here of the regret of Samuel. We will deal with the regret of Yahweh later. But the regret of Samuel, because Samuel gets word from the Lord that Saul has failed. And not only that Saul has failed, but that he is no longer the Lord's man. And Samuel's reaction is to go into profound mourning. He is deeply hurt. and saddened at this. Now, you might, given the rocky relationship that Saul and Samuel had, think, why is he so put out about this? But just think with me, if you will, about Samuel and his relationship to Saul. Saul was to be the king of Israel. Samuel had spent a great part of his life, especially his latter years, establishing Saul as king over Israel. He had fundamentally changed the politics, the way Israel was run, in order to anoint and install Saul. He was the savior of the people of Israel. He was the man And what did Samuel been charged to do? What did he say he would do in chapter selves? He said, I will continually pray for him, for the ruler and for the people. Samuel had been praying day after day, night after night for Saul, that he would do the exact opposite of the thing he's just done. And so Samuel is now left saying, look, Lord, I prayed I did everything you command. I followed your word. I obeyed to the letter, to the T. And yet failure. I think the thing we can draw from this understanding of Samuel is to look at a minister today. What are they commanded to do? They're commanded to bring the scriptures. They're commanded to care for their congregants. They're commanded to put their heart and mind and soul into the ministry of God's word. And so how do they feel when someone leaves? I'm not saying, oh, don't leave so you won't hurt them. I am saying, what do they feel when they have poured time, energy, and their heart and soul into someone and they forsake the faith? That's what Samuel's experiencing here. We get a glimpse into the personal cost of ministry. This is not meant to discourage our pastors. I want it to remind all of us why we need to pray for our pastors, why we need to encourage them where we can, because it is not an easy thing to go day after day into the ministry and yet have things like this happen. Samuel has a dark night of the soul. How could he not? He grieves for Saul. Saul is lost. He is gone. But he wakes up the next morning and he does what? He keeps on obeying. He keeps on obeying. He has a dark, dark night and he is just as resolved as ever to serve the Lord when he wakes up. May we be like that too, to even after disappointments and failures and things not working out the way you prayed they would, to get up in the next morning and to keep on serving God. Well, Samuel goes to confront him. Get the bad stuff out of the way, right? Let's go deal with Saul. And I entitled this, The Result. If you're keeping notes, you can use that. Otherwise, just know that we're going to go through the narrative of the rest of the chapter a little bit verse by verse, just so we can pull out some truths here, and then we'll look at the passage overall in the end. So Samuel goes to confront Saul, and Saul has this misplaced confidence, right? We see this in verse 13. Samuel went to Saul and Saul said to him, blessed are you of the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord. Whew, was that not true? But Saul thinks it is. He's riding high. He's covered his sin. He's forgotten his iniquity. He is ready to proclaim victory. And Samuel says, what do I hear? What is this lowing of cattle, bleeding of sheep? And then Saul begins with his excuses. And if there's one thing Saul has, it's excuses. If there's one thing you can characterize Saul by, man, it's his good excuses. He begins this blame game right away. Notice when he says, this is what happened. He doesn't say I. What does he say? He says they. The guy who's just erected a monument to himself So, but they, well, who's really in charge here, Saul? Anyway, he says they, and what did they do? Well, they saved some of these and didn't utterly destroy the good parts to sacrifice to the Lord. Well, Samuel is having none of this. Samuel says, be quiet. It's almost pleasant words for us to hear when Saul is going on about, oh, this happened and that happened. And Samuel just says, be quiet. I will give you the words of the Lord. He accuses Saul of disobeying, and he points out that Saul is head over Israel, that he was sent on a clear mission. And that instead of following this mission, he stooped down. And let's read that in verse 19. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you stoop down on the spoil and do evil in the sight of the Lord? It is very clear here that Samuel is accusing Saul of being more interested in the riches than he was in obeying God, what was he trying to do? He was trying to have it all. He was trying to serve both God and, as we say, mammon. He was supposed to be following God. He wanted both. And so he ends up disobeying God, stooping down, taking the spoil. It turns that righteous judgment of God into just another military excursion for the gain of men. It sullies what was supposed to be God's will. More than that, it is Saul not following God, not having God first in his mind, but rather having his own personal gain as his driving force. And Saul tries to excuse himself again. He hasn't yet got it through his head. He says, but I have obeyed the voice of the Lord and gone on the mission and brought back Agag, king of Ammon. I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. See, I obeyed, but the people took 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. Well, there's a number of things we need to look at this. We've seen that Saul is blame shifting onto the people. We've seen that Saul is making excuses and we see it slip through. Remember in chapter 12 when the people changed from saying the Lord our God to the Lord your God to Samuel. I know this was a long time ago but The people in chapter 12, after the miracle of the storms during the dry season, say, we have sinned against the Lord, your God now prays for us. Well, Saul switches here his language to your God. I'm not sure if Saul was consciously doing that or not, but what he's betraying is the fact that it's not his God. He sees it as Samuel's God. Your God really wants this. And look, I brought it to him. And then the big thing he is doing is he is trying to substitute sacrifice for obedience. And this is what Samuel calls him on. Verse 22, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams. To obey is better than sacrifice. This is a recurring biblical theme. We see this in Psalm 40 in verse 6. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire. My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. We do not have time to go through all of the scripture references, but from the Psalms to the Proverbs to Isaiah, 1, 10 through 13, and Jeremiah 7, 21 through 24. And then the one that I will mention, because we have just recently covered it, but Matthew 19, right? Behold, go and learn what this means to have mercy. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I understand that mercy is substituted for obedience, but the message is the same. Sacrifice will get you nowhere without obeying the commands of the Lord. There is not a single point in history where you can make a sacrifice and have that cover you without obedience to the Lord. There is no substitute for obedience to the Lord. The first way in which we obey the Lord is our obedience in faith, Romans 1, 5, that obedience of faith. But this obedience must be there. Sacrifice cannot substitute for obedience. Worship cannot substitute for obedience. Giving cannot substitute for obedience. You could take just about anything and put it in that blank. Nothing, nothing will substitute for obedience to the Lord. We must obey. Now, we must be careful that we do not think of this obedience as works. Again, I must stress that we as Christians obey through faith, but we still must obey. You cannot think that just because you showed up at church enough in your life that you are going to heaven. You cannot think that just because you gave enough money, you know, I reached X number on the little thermometer that our church was filling up. You cannot do anything. To substitute for obedience to the Lord. Well he goes on and says this, for rebellion is as a sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. And what Samuel's doing here is pointing out that the sins which Saul is committing are just as bad as those sins which the Amalekites were committing themselves. Witchcraft, very clearly one of the things that the people who are against the people of God did. They were engaged in all types of witchcraft and divinations and things which we very clearly know are not the things of God. He says rebellion is as witchcraft. Not obeying is the same as if you went and hired a soothsayer to tell you your future. And stubbornness is iniquity and idolatry. Now this word stubbornness could be translated also as insubordination or presumption. This word means that we, in our hearts, in our minds, are convinced that we know a little bit better, that we can presume upon the will of God, upon the commands of God, that we can stick to our own ways. And that's just as bad as idolatry. If you think you can follow God, but in your own way, you might as well not follow him at all. It's just as bad. You can't say, Lord, I follow you, but I'm gonna do it this way, not the way you told me. It's just as bad as if you said, I'm not going to follow you at all. I'm going to go serve another idol. Indeed, in your heart, that is what you are doing. And so Samuel concludes that Saul has rejected the Lord and the Lord has rejected Saul. And so Saul finally admits that he's wrong. He finally repents. And I put that in air quotes because this repentance just does not does not fulfill the biblical category for true genuine repentance. Look at it with me if you won't if you will. He says, I have sinned for I've transgressed the commandment of the Lord because I feared the people and obeyed your voice. Now, therefore, please pardon my sin and return with me that I may worship the Lord. He is repentant and yet he does not seem to want to spend any time thinking about the fact that he sinned against such a great God. His first interest is to get back to the way things were. Let me repent. Okay, I've done my repentance. I'm going to go back and serve and worship the Lord and everything will be hunky-dory. It'll all work out. And that might not be apparent in this verse, but if we continue to read on, we see that Samuel completely rejects and he turns away from Saul And Saul reaches out and grabs, grabs his robe. It's probably not the robe that his mother knitted for him, but his robe has a very special significance. Saul reaches out and he grabs it to turn him back around and it tears. And Samuel uses it as a lesson, turns him and says, behold, I'm sorry, I lost my place. And so Samuel said to him, verse 28, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And also the strength of Israel, that is, the Lord will not lie nor relent, for he is not a man that he should relent. The Lord has made up his mind. The king of Israel will no longer be Saul. That kingship is taken. away from him fully. And finally now we must be precise when we look at this and understand that this is not a personal. Rejection in that saw himself still could have repented. Saw himself still could have turned and been personally saved. But from this moment on he is no longer God's king over Israel. He is rejected. Rejected though he might be he can still turn to the Lord and it's what happens after this Permanent ceiling of that rejection that tells us that that repentance wasn't what it looked to be Because he says I have sinned Yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel and return with me That I may worship the Lord your God. I Well, you see, there's the Oregon, right? It's the Lord, your God, not the Lord, my God. But what is his what is his desire? What is Saul's desire in this verse? Is it that he would be restored before the eyes of the Lord? Is it that he is showing genuine repentance and being horrified over his sin? Or is he is he truly turning away from that disobedience that he has so recently done. He's thinking about politics. He's thinking about what are the people going to think? What are the elders going to think? Honor me before the elders. He is more interested in what the men around him are going to think. Even in his moment of repentance, when the kingdom is being stripped from him by Almighty God, he's more worried about appearances. how this is going to look to the elders than he is about personally repenting. Saul shows his true colors. Now, at this point in the narrative, Samuel agrees to go with Saul, but it is not because Samuel thinks that Saul is somehow repentant or that he is agreeing to acquiesce to Saul's demands. Instead, he's going to continue to obey. And he's doing that by obeying God's original command to strike vengeance. And so we do have a small, this is a small point, but I'm just calling it revenge part two. Samuel carries out a horrible sentence upon Agag. He goes to him, and notice this is not done in hot anger. This is done almost with a steely resolve. Do not think of it as you are going out and you're finding someone and you're killing them. This is, as it were, the judgment of the court being meted out here upon Agag. Horrific though it is, it is because God has commanded this judgment. So Samuel goes and he is cautious, but he thinks, oh, it's all over. They won't kill me. And then Samuel, we would think out of nowhere, but we know he's obeying the Lord. Says, you have made many women childless, so your mother shall childless be. And he kills Agag. He hacks them to pieces before the Lord. This was Samuel's call to be obedient to the Lord. We thankfully are not called to do this before the Lord, but we are called to obey in just as clear and true a way. So. We come then to look at repentance. And this is where I'm going to back up. from the narrative that we have been running through and look at this chapter as a whole and ask the question, did God repent? Because we have in this passage three times where God, in our translation, greatly regrets. And once we are told that God does not greatly regret, does not repent, And twice we are told that God does greatly regret or greatly or repent. And so let's look at those verses and we'll read all three of them and then we'll go through what this means to us. Verse 11, I greatly regret, this is God speaking, that I have set up Saul as king for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. Verse 29, and the strength of Israel that is God will not lie nor relent for he is not a man that he should relent. And then verse 35, and the latter part, nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel. Well, then what we have in these verses is a paradox. And I think, I am convinced, that we can benefit from this paradox and can be very fruitful. But we need to avoid two pitfalls when we come to these verses. And the first pitfall we need to avoid is on-godding God. What do I mean by on-godding God? Well, I think you will be familiar with this, but what do I mean is that if we think that God is like a man, then we are bound to misunderstand what these verses teach us. God is not on our level. No one is on God's level. God is the only one who thinks, who acts like he does. There is no sense in which these verses are saying that God is regretting in that he would not have put Saul there had he known. Why? Because God knows all. God knows everything. He's not saying, oh, I regret it. I should have done something different. He is saying instead, I am deeply sorrowful, not changing. But this does not mean that God is not capable of grieving over a situation that he himself has brought about. God in himself is capable of regretting an act of foreknown evil and yet still bring it about for his own reasons. He is sovereign over it, though it is the evil ones who commit it. This then is a place where God reveals himself in scripture in human language. He reveals himself to us in time. He reveals the way God thinks and acts as we can best understand it. I have a slightly longer quote from John Newton. This is from the Orthodox evangelist. And he says, it is objected that God in Scripture is often said to repent. He that repents is not immutable. That is, he does not, that he is not unchangeable or that he changes. That he is immutable, that he is not God. He says, this is the answer. Such speeches, though spoken after the manner of men for the help of our understanding, yet are to be understood as becometh the nature of God. God is therefore said to repent, because he doeth as a man do when they repent, that is, he changes his deeds, yet without any change in his will. Nay, those changes of his deeds are the executions of his unchangeable will. God executes his deeds and though they seem to change, What changes is man. God does not change. His will does not change. His knowledge does not change. He is as changeless as, well, as God, because everything else changes. God does not change. Those things which we perceive as changes are but the execution of His unchanging will. Well, that's the pitfall that we can fall into. Godding God What's the second pitfall we can fall into? The second pitfall we can fall into is not returning to the text because after we have waxed theological After we have looked at God and beheld him in all his unchanging glory We need to go back to the text. We need to ask ourselves. Why is God then using this language? I Why did that writer, inspired by the Holy Spirit, very consciously and clearly use this same word, and it is the same Hebrew word, three, actually four times, twice to say that God repents, relents, is grieved, and once to say that he doesn't? Well, if there is a contradiction here, then we must truthfully say this is not God's word. But understanding who God is allows us to see that God repents, yet not as man. But God still repents. God still is greatly grieved, greatly regrets. One of the translations of this word is Heart is broken. Breaking of, I'm sorry, my heart is filled with pain. And that comes from Genesis 6-6, the first time this word is used. That's in the NIV translation in case you're wondering. But what happens in Genesis 6-6? God is grieved because of man's sin. In Genesis 6, 6, that's the beginning of when God wipes out all but eight people in the world for the sake of sin and saves alone no one in his family. How seriously do we take that? The Lord does not look upon sin. The Lord does not look upon Saul's sin here as a idle observer. He doesn't say, ah, Ah, that one messed up, oh well. He, in God's terms, though we cannot comprehend it, is as grieved, nay, more grieved than Samuel was. He hates sin, he is grieved by it. The Lord hates when he is not obeyed. And so the application is this, how dangerous, is the grieving of the immutable God. How dangerous is the regret of the Most High. If God were to say this about you, there is no hope. There is no shadow of turning within God. And so he is not going to change his mind. He is never going to say, well, I really did used to discipline those sins. I really did used to hate all that was disobedience. But now, God is God. And so when he is grieved, when he is greatly grieved, we should take that so, so seriously. There will never be a day when it is okay not to follow God. The potter will take his vessels of dishonor and he will smash them to pieces. The potter has the right to do so. What comfort is that to the smashed dust of a piece of clay? That is what we are if we are not obeying God. How dangerous it is. We should not grow lukewarm Well, God remains as hot as ever against sin. We should not think that God has gone soft. We should not think that God has in any way stopped grieving over sin just because he sent his son to die for him. Think of the anguish that Christ suffered on the cross for you. That's the seriousness. That's the anger of God towards sin. So intense that the Lord, when he renders it to us so that we can hopefully apprehend, if not comprehend, he calls it, I greatly regret, I repent. That is how the Lord has chosen in this passage to communicate how deeply he is against Saul's turning away, and therefore how deeply against he is us when we turn. Dale Ralph Davis puts it this way, the paradox tends to split our mind, but a little thought tells us that this God who both repents and does not repent is the only God we can serve. only the consistent God of verse 29 and the sorrowful God of verse 35. In only this do we find the God worthy of praise. Here is a God who is neither fickle in his ways nor indifferent in his responses. Here is a God who has both firmness and feeling. If we cannot comprehend, we can perhaps apprehend. at least enough to adore. This is the only God that is worthy of our worship. This God, the unchanging God, who yet grieves over sin. Who can understand it? I can't. But it's here in the text, and so we believe it. That this God, who does not think as we think, yet hates sin. Well, we need to conclude. And so in conclusion, I'll just ask you. When this revenge of the Lord comes. Will you not see how fiery the revenge is and prepare for the day? None will escape. Will you see the responsibility that you have to obey? Will you have that regret and anger and heartbreak over sin? And what will be the result of you? If you are a Christian, if you are following, if you have repented, if you are continuing to repent, to trust, to have faith, then this is an opportunity to Take that nice cover of polite excuses that you have laid over your sin and tear it off and say, this is how bad sin is. I'm going to turn from it again. I'm going to pour myself into abhorring the sin that my savior abhors. And then repentance, if you are not in Christ, if you have not Put your faith, your trust, your hope in God. If you don't have that obedience of faith, then today's the day. Today's the day you can repent. Look how long-suffering God is. Even in Saul's most disobedient time, there's still yet an opportunity for him to repent. He didn't take it. Look what happened to him. You don't have to read far to find out. Will you be Saul, or will you be the one who turns and repents? And I'll just close on a more positive note, the end of Romans, verses 25 through 27. Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery kept since the world began, but now made manifest, and by the prophetic scriptures made known to all the nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for the obedience to the faith, to God alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. Let's pray.