As we begin this morning, I want to read from Revelation chapter 15, beginning in verse 1. It says, Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire. And those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God. And they sang the song of Moses, the bondservant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God, the Almighty. Righteous and true are your ways, King of the nations. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy, For all the nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed." We gain a picture of the holiness of God. We gain a picture of the righteousness of him who is seated on the throne. Oftentimes a holiness and a righteousness that we. We cannot fathom. We cannot fully comprehend. And as we come to first Samuel, chapter 15, it first Samuel's been really about the rejection of of leadership of poor leadership of Israel. At first in chapter 2, we had the failed leadership of the sons of Eli, the priest, of his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. And God then rejecting the line, the priestly line of Eli for all time. And as Samuel rises up as the prophet of God, Israel rises up in chapter 8, to reject God as their king. And so reluctantly, Samuel anoints Saul as king. And by chapter 13, God has cut off the dynasty, the family line of Saul for the monarchy. And now by chapter 15, He's going to reject Saul as king. Samuel grieves deeply. When we see in verse 11. After God says, I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not carried out my commands. Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all night. And then in chapter 35, or verse 35 of chapter 15, Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death. For Samuel grieved over Saul. This is the king of Israel. This is the king who in chapter 14 and verse 47 and 48 speaks of his accolades. Speaks of giving him praise for what he has done. And verse 48, valiantly he has defeated the Amalekites. But these are mentioned to us in extreme brevity. Because from the perspective of biblical history, as we study this and as we've looked at this, from the godly standards that are set before him as king, Saul's failure is decisive. There's no doubt of his failure. By what did Saul's failure consist? Well, you have the words of God that you have not kept the commandment of the Lord, your God, 1 Samuel 13, 13. And God told Samuel, I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned Back from following me and has not carried out my commands. Verse 11. And when you come to verse 23 of chapter 15. For rebellion is as the sin of divination. And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord. He has also rejected you. From being king. So. Here we are, verse one of chapter 15. We've had this brief brevity of Saul's accolades. And now we come to see the rest of the story concerning the Malachites. Let's pray. Would you open our ears to hear? Would you open our hearts to understand by your spirit? Speak to us this morning, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. So now we get the rest of the story. Verse one is a key importance in this, really in the book. Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you as king over his people, over Israel. Now, therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. In this verse, we see three unique things about the kingship of Saul. The first thing that we see in this is that Samuel is talking to Saul and Yahweh, the Lord, he says, sent me to anoint you as king. And so the question is, Saul, who made you king? Who made Saul to be king? And the answer is Yahweh. The Lord made you king. We saw that in chapter 9, verse 16. In chapter 10, verse 1 and verse 24, Yahweh anointed, made Saul as king of Israel. It was not because of Saul's family. It was not because he came from a long line of kings or valiant men. It was not because Saul was a valiant warrior or that he was popular. Remember, Saul was really unnoticed by the people until they found him hiding in the baggage. You remember that? And then when he stood up and he was head and shoulders above the rest, then they began to say, long live the king. But he was king because God chose him to be king. Samuel, God chose you to be king. Secondly, the unique aspect of this is that God sent Samuel. In verse 1, the Hebrew language really emphasizes the word, me, or the word that we use for I here, I or me. And it literally has this emphasis of I. It was I whom Yahweh sent to anoint you as king, or Yahweh sent me to anoint you as king. The picture here is that Samuel is above Saul. Samuel is the prophet of God. Samuel's the one who brings the word of God to Saul. And so Saul is to be in submission first and foremost to God. Secondly, to God's prophet, Samuel. And then we see a third unique thing about Saul's kingship. The Lord sent me to anoint you as king over his people, over Israel. Whose people is Saul king over? It's not Samuel's people. It's not Saul's people. Whose people is it? It's God's. These are God's people, Saul. Don't forget that it was Yahweh who chose you as king. Saul, don't forget that it was Yahweh who sent me, the prophet, to anoint you as king. Saul, don't forget. It's Yahweh's people whom you are king over. They are Yahweh's chosen ones. But in chapter 13, 14, and 15, Saul seems to have forgotten these things, hasn't he? In chapter 13, he fails to wait for Samuel. He fails to submit to him. And he fails to follow the words of the Lord. In chapter 14, verse 24, it is Saul who says, "'Until I have avenged myself on my enemies.'" His enemies? I thought they were the Lord's. And then in chapter 15, verse 12, it says, Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, and it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself, then turned and proceeded on down to Gilgal. How quickly and easily has it turned in Saul to be about him and not about God? not about God's people, not submission to Samuel, but really rebellion towards Yahweh. So Samuel says in verse one, listen to the words of the Lord. Do you think that's important that Samuel is telling Saul to do that? Has Saul listened to the words of the Lord to this point? He hasn't, has he? And Samuel comes to him and reminds him of who he is, reminds him that, look, it is the Lord who set you apart. Look, it is me who he has put over you to bring the word of God to you. It is his people that he's put you over. It's time that you listen to the words of the Lord. In fact, the phrase here really is listen to the voice or listen to the sound of the words of the Lord. Listen to the voice of the words of the Lord. This is so important for Samuel to follow. Turn back with me to Deuteronomy in chapter four. In Exodus before Moses got the commandments, he goes up on the hill, up on the mountain, and God says to Moses, I want to speak so the people hear me. And he's going to give his commandments. Moses remembers that in Deuteronomy in chapter four. And so we pick it up in verse 10. where he says, remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb when the Lord said to me, assemble the people to me that I may let them hear my words so that they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth and that they may teach their children. God wants them to hear his voice, hear it, so that it not only resonates in their mind, but it goes down to their heart that they would teach it to their children. And then verse 12 says, then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire, and you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form, only a voice. Here again, the word of the Lord comes to Saul. Samuel says, listen to the voice of the words of the Lord. I mean, we are surrounded by a lot of sounds, aren't we? As we gather here. If we just got silent, we'd hear the air conditioning unit going, right? Thank goodness for that, right? But you hear different sounds. As I was studying for this, I heard the sound of doves outside as I stopped. I heard the sound of my dog snoring. The mail truck coming down our street. Some sounds will catch our attention. Maybe the sound of your spouse or the sound of a parent or a baby crying. Or a loud unexpected noise. And of all the sounds, some will affect you deeply, right? Some will affect you deeply. For the king over God's people, He has to hear the sound of the Word of God. The sound of God's words. to not just hear them, pay attention to them in order that He may obey them. When we were raising our children, there'd be various times that we would go to them and we would let them know of maybe something that they needed to stop doing or something that they needed to do. And we would go in and we'd get their attention and we'd say, look at us. Now, do I want you to listen as I tell you what what what I expect? And then we let them know. And then we say, now, did you hear that? Do you understand it? OK, so that they knew. That's really, in a sense, what Samuel's doing to Saul. Listen, Saul, hear these words so that you understand them, because it's important that you keep them. And so immediately. Here comes the word of God. Thus says the Lord of hosts. I will punish Amalek. For what he did to Israel. How he set himself against him on the way. While he was coming up. From Egypt. Stop there, Amalek. Amalek is the grandson of Esau, right? Isaac's brother. Or, I mean, Jacob's brother. Chapter 36, verse 12. And so the Amalekites, the sons of Amalek, are the descendants of Amalek. And they have a long history of violence towards Israel. In fact, after the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea, they were really the first threat of the Israelites that came to them. It speaks of that in Exodus chapter 17. I wanna pick it up in Deuteronomy chapter 25, because Moses is gonna remind the people of what they did and why the judgment of God is coming upon them. So in Deuteronomy in chapter 25, we pick it up in verse 17. Moses says, remember what Amalek did to you along the way when you came out from Egypt. How he met you along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were faint and weary. And he did not fear God. And so the ones that would be walking at the rear of the group would be those who were most faint, who were the most weak, probably children and babies and older people. He did not fear the Lord. Verse 19, therefore it shall come about when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. You must not forget. God's judgment was gonna fall upon Amalek. That's what happened in Exodus. That's what he tells them in Exodus. God is going to bring judgment and blot Amalek's memory from the earth. Moses reminds them before they go into the promised land. Now here we come into chapter 15 of 1 Samuel, and now it's time. It's time to blot out Amalek. It's time for judgment to fall. And so I'm going to punish Amalek for what he did to Israel and how he set himself against them on the way. He did what he did to Israel coming on the way coming up from Egypt. Verse three. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has. And do not spare him. but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." These are troubling words, aren't they? This is the Word of God. God does not sanitize His Word. These are hard things to understand. He tells them to utterly destroy all that He has. He tells them to put to death both man and woman. He tells them to put to death both child and infant, and then ox and sheep and camel and donkey. We don't have much trouble with ox, sheep, camel, and donkey. And we don't have as much trouble with man and maybe a little more trouble with woman. But when it comes down to children and infants. The word utterly destroy is that they were to put them under a ban. It's. It's the idea of devotion, all of it is in devotion to God. For his exclusive disposition. It's what happened with Jericho. And the sin of Akin was because he took some things that were under the ban. Nothing is to be spared. It all belongs to the Lord. But see, it's really in this context, it's the picture of divine judgment of God. But see, it tends to make a modern day Christian somewhat uneasy. Because there's no way to lessen the horror of this moment. As a Christian, and reading this maybe for the first time as a Christian, you wish that it didn't have at least children and infants in there. But we must remember that this is a holy and righteous judgment of God. This is a holy and righteous judgment of God. All the things that God does are righteous, are holy. And it's because He does them, they are righteous and holy. That's who He is. And sometimes we don't fathom that. We don't understand that with our finite minds of just how holy and righteous He is. These words of the Old Testament must not be avoided. But also they must not be lifted out of the context that they fall. Because today, biblical incidences like this are condemned as genocide or ethnic cleansing. That's the furthest thing from the truth. It has nothing to do with genocide and nothing to do with ethnic cleansing. It has everything to do with the righteous and holy judgment of God. But it's because they're taken out of the biblical context of God's holy and just judgment. When you come on in 1 Samuel chapter 15, you come to verse 18. We see, and the Lord sent you on a mission and said, go and utterly destroy the sinners. The sinners, the Amalekites. Who are the sinners? Men, women. Who are the sinners? Children. Who are the sinners? Infants. All of them are sinners. All of them are sinners. People, there's not an innocent baby that is born. There's only been one innocent baby that's ever been born. That's Jesus. Because of the sin of Adam in the garden, sin has come to all, and we all are sinners. We sin because we're born sinners. That's why you don't have to teach your children to hit your brother or hit their sister, right? That just comes natural. We don't have to teach them to be angry and to throw fits. That's natural. These are sinners. I want you to also know that from the time that the Amalekites did this to Israel, it's been 300 years. God tells Saul it's time. 300 years they had to repent. And there was no desire whatsoever. Any sense of revulsion against God for his dealings with the Amalekites really speaks of an unwillingness to face the fact of God's perfect holiness. The fact of the utter sinfulness of sin. We really don't know how utterly sinful we are and will not know until we come face to face with him. The fact that the wages of all sin is what? Death. That's the wages. That's the payment of sin. That's what God told Adam and Eve. For the day that you eat from this tree, with the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die. That's why we die today, physically. Because of the first sin in the garden. Because we're sinners. The fact is, That God is just in all of his judgments. That's the fact. He's just in all of his judgments. How about you? If you put yourself in this situation, how about you? Do you understand the simpleness of your sin? On a personal level, the fact is, is I'm a sinner. I'm fully deserving of the same condemnation. But it is only because of the Lord's loving kindness that we are not consumed. People, that's so true. Lamentations 322. The Lord's loving kindness. It's only because of the Lord's loving kindness that we are not consumed, that you are here this morning. It's only because of the Lord's loving kindness, his mercy towards you. His mercy towards me. And if you've come here this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ, it is by his mercy that he has brought you to this place at this moment to hear the truth of the gospel. The fact is. All of sin and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 323, that's the fact. The fact is, is that in God's creation, the standard that God holds us to, Jesus said, you must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's the standard, perfection. But we're all sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God. The fact is, is that the wages of this sin is death, Romans 6.23. The fact is, is that in as much as it is appointed for man to die once, that we're all gonna physically die sometime unless Jesus comes back. We're going to die physically. And after this comes judgment. Hebrews 9.27. That's a fact. That's what's gonna happen. And the fact is, because I'm a sinner, I am worthy of death and condemnation. That's a fact. That's what we see here in just these two verses. This is the fact. concerning the Amalekites. But can I just tell you, this is a fact concerning Israel. This is a fact concerning you and I. This is a fact concerning the United States. This is a fact concerning Iran. This is a fact concerning Russia, Ukraine, all the places in the world. This is a fact. This is the truth. We're all sinners worthy of this. But let me give you some more facts. Let me give you some more truth. However, The fact is, by the love of God, God demonstrated his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5 8. That's a fact. In Romans and Chapter three, he lists a bunch of facts. As it is written, verse 10, the fact is there's none righteous. Not even one. None. See that? None righteous. Not even one. There's none who understands. That's a fact. None. There's none who seeks for God. There's nobody who in and of themselves will seek for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. Not even one. But verse 21 says, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested. The righteousness of God has been seen. We behold the righteousness of God. How do we behold it? We behold it in the Son. We behold it in Jesus Christ. We see the righteousness of God. that's been witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for those who believe, for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. It is a gift, we are justified, we are declared righteous by a gift from God. And that comes through the redemption The paying of our debt which is in Christ Jesus. Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation. Meaning that it appeased God's wrath. The wrath that is going to fall upon the Amalekites by Saul. The wrath that we ourselves deserve, Jesus is going to take. It was appeased through his blood. Through faith. To demonstrate the righteousness of God. For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just. God has to be just. His justice will prevail always. Vengeance belongs to him and him alone. And he will avenge. And it's because of his justice. But understand that he is also the justifier, meaning the one who's put their faith in Jesus. Jesus is the justifier. Second Corinthians, here's the fact. God made him who knew no sin, Jesus, who knew no sin. To be sin on our behalf, meaning that that imputed to him was all the sins of everybody who would ever believe was imputed on Christ at that moment at the cross. My sin was imputed on him as if he committed my sin. And God treated him as if he committed those sins. Every single one. The wrath, the judgment fell upon Jesus. God made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf in order that we might become the righteousness of God. Here's the righteousness of God in him. It is the righteousness of Christ. His perfect life. His perfection. That we need. God then takes and puts it in us. As if we were the perfect ones. And he was the sinner. When in fact, It's reversed. We were the sinner and he was the perfect one. That's a fact, people. The fact is that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that who would ever believe in him would not perish, would not die, but have everlasting life. John 3, 16. It is Jesus who said, truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. Does not come into judgment because Jesus took it and it's passed out of death into life. The fact is, for by grace you've been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves, this is a gift of God. It's not a result of works should any man boast. People, here's the facts. We're sinners worthy of condemnation and God sent his son to redeem us. That's what we celebrate in the Lord's table. Is that what Jesus did of having his body given, his blood shed for the forgiveness of sin and for his righteousness to be put in us? And you understand that those who put their self, their trust in Jesus Christ, He declares you holy. Right now, you are declared holy. And that never changes.