Learning to listen to the right voice

Intro:

In the year 386, there was a man by the name of St. Augustine. Augustine was a lecturer, a teacher in the Roman Empire. He would go around from different places and gather students and teach and lecture on various topics. He was well educated, and this type of lifestyle put him in all sorts of nice circles of comfort, affluence, and being liked by those around him.

But Augustine had this deep longing, even as a lecturer and a person of knowledge, to really understand and make sense of the world around him. Augustine was always on this spiritual pursuit to make sense of life's deepest questions. He had explored Christianity, other faiths out there at the time, and different philosophies. Yet, because he was brilliant, he was always finding a way to dissect them and see their inconsistencies or the ways that he felt they came short.

This began to plague Augustine more and more over the course of his life. He came to Milan, and in that journey ran across a pastor by the name of Ambrose—Ambrose of Milan. Ambrose was also very well educated and knowledgeable. He met with Augustine and began to have conversations with him to help him work through some of his objections to Christianity, to show him maybe how he didn't fully understand the scriptures or didn't think about them from a different perspective. That was very helpful to Augustine.

But there was one problem: Augustine was a ladies' man. He had an illegitimate child, he lived a free lifestyle, and he understood what the teachings of Christianity were. He knew how his life was, and the two did not mesh. He knew that if he ever truly believed the Christian faith, if he ever truly submitted and adopted it, things about his life would have to change. He would have to let go of some things. In a way, that kept him holding on to unbelief and objections with Christianity.

This began to burn more and more in his mind and in his spirit. Augustine one day was sitting in a courtyard, hearing some teaching from the book of Romans. He wasn't even really listening to all of that; he was just overcome with this need to decide, this need to reconcile his objections and this inconsistency with his life. He didn't know what to do, and it greatly upset him—so much so that he walked out into the park of this courtyard in the city of Milan, overcome with grief, and began to cry.

In that moment, he began to hear a child's voice say, "Take up and read, take up and read." He looked around and didn't see any children around; he couldn't make sense of where the voice was coming from. But in this moment, he saw it as a sign that he needed to take up and read. So he ran back to the courtyard where he was, found his Bible open to the book of Romans, and read a verse that essentially says: put away the darkness, this kind of lifestyle, debauchery, and all these things, and take hold of Jesus Christ.

He said, "I read these words and I looked up, and it was like light flooded my eyes and I became a Christian." Augustine's life was forever changed in that moment because he listened to a certain voice—not just the voice of the child, not just the voice of Ambrose, which were also good voices, but the voice of God speaking through the word to him. In that moment, it forever changed Augustine's life.

Augustine would go on, and for the next thousand years would be the strongest, most influential theological voice in the church. Even today, theologians still point back and look at Augustine. The things he said, the doctrines that he set forth, the way that he explained scripture—they were eloquent. He was brilliant because he listened to the right voice. His life was forever changed.

The Competing Voices of Modern Culture

You know, there are a number of voices in this world. They're all around us all the time. We wake up in the morning, we open up our phones—things that we hear, sound bites, images, words, videos, everything—they're coming at us. You drive down the road and there are signs, there are images. You go into shopping malls, you get on the internet and you're internet shopping, and there are advertisements, and all of them are saying something. They're all trying to shape us and pull us in various directions. "If you buy this car, it will fulfill this need in you, and you're going to feel this way, and you're going to be this kind of person, and it's going to give you this kind of meaning and identity."

There are other voices, too. We hear them all the time telling us, "Believe this and you'll be this way. Adopt this pattern. Vote for me." Whatever it is, right? There's all sorts of things that will tell you one thing is true and this is not. How do we make sense of the world? Because we are profoundly shaped by the voices that we listen to. We're influenced by all of these different things. Make no mistake about it: the books you read, the media that you consume, the people that you hang out with greatly determine who you will be in the next 5 years. You're shaped by those things.

So it's so important to make sure that you decipher the right voice. Augustine that day finally listened to the right voice, the true voice. But unfortunately, today we're going to look at the story of a man who's presented with various voices, and he listens to the wrong voice. Because of that, it sends his life on a terrible and sad trajectory. So we have the right voice and the importance of listening to it, and the danger of listening to the wrong voice and what the result of it is.

Intro

Today we're going to be looking at 1st Samuel chapter 15. This is a very powerful narrative, so I'm going to read most of the chapter for us today. I am not going to be able to preach everything that's in this text. It's a marvelous and amazing story, and there are so many implications that come from it.

The reason that I'm talking about voices today is because you can't see it in your English Bible, but the Hebrew writer is doing things in here where he mentions a word eight times in this chapter. It's translated various ways because sometimes he's doing a wordplay, but it's the word shema. The word shema in Hebrew means several things: it means to hear, to listen, and to obey. Because in Hebrew, the idea of hearing and obeying are synonymous. In fact, if you don't hear, you don't obey; and if you don't obey, you're not really hearing. You can have ears to hear, but not really hear. So there's a synonymous link between hearing, doing, and obeying—shema.

That's what's put forth for us. I wanted to preach this different ways today, but it was just resounding over and over: the author wants to call us to listen—to listen to the right voice, and what happens when we listen to the wrong voice.

1st Samuel 15:1–31:

And Samuel said to Saul, "The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel. Now therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'"So Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 men on foot and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to the city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley. Then Saul said to the Kenites, "Go, depart. Go down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them, for you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt." So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive and devoted all the people to destruction with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction.The word of the Lord came to Samuel: "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. 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." And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, "Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord."And Samuel said, "What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?"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."Then Samuel said to Saul, "Stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night." And he said to him, "Speak."And Samuel said, "Though you were little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. 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.' Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord?"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 brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. 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."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. 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."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. Return with me that I may bow before the Lord."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."Samuel turned to go away, and Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore. And Samuel said to him, "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and he has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man that he should regret."Then he said, "I have sinned; yet honor me before the elders of my people, before Israel. Now return with me that I may bow before the Lord your God." So Samuel turned back after Saul, and Saul bowed before the Lord.

This is God's word. Let's pray.

Lord, it can be such a tragedy in life to not listen to you, to not follow after you. You are the source of all that is good and all that is true. When we listen to other voices, we are deceived. We deceive ourselves, and the result is just a life of darkness, loneliness, and isolation. We cut ourselves off from the life, blessing, and goodness of God. What a great tragedy it is. Father, I pray that your word today would be true, and that you would speak and convict our own hearts to hear your voice today from the word. Give us ears to hear and eyes to see. In Jesus' name, Amen.

A call to listen

As we look at this text, ultimately it's about listening to the voice of the Lord. God gives a clear mission here, and as we look at it, I'm going to break it down in just a few ways. We're going to look at how this happened, why this happened, and what the result of all this is for Saul.

How does this happen? Ultimately, it's because he trusts himself and not God. And this isn't just in this moment—Saul has not been listening to the voice of God. If we recap and think about the events leading up to this moment, we can see that Saul offered sacrifices without Samuel in chapter 13. Things were looking shaky, if you'll remember from a few weeks ago. The Philistines were upon them, they were gathering an army, and Saul was supposed to wait 7 days for this sacrifice. Samuel was going to come, sacrifice, and give him next steps from the Lord. But Saul is watching everybody trickle away, and he thinks, "I've got to take hold of this moment, I need to make something happen." So he disobeyed the command of God. He didn't listen to the word of the Lord, and he decided to offer the sacrifice and step into a priestly role that was not his.

Then we see last week in chapter 14 that there's another situation going on. Saul decides he wants to inquire of the Lord in that moment, and it seems like, okay, maybe this is good. He has the priest inquiring, but then he tells him, "No, never mind." He senses the urgency of the moment and what's going on around him, and he feels like they're going to lose momentum. So he decides to abandon inquiring of the Lord. He's trusting his own instincts, his own intellect, and his own impulses instead of waiting for the voice of the Lord.

Then we see Saul make this rash vow to God: "Nobody eats at all for the rest of the day until we win this battle, and if anybody eats before the Lord, he's going to die." He even swears at the end when Jonathan is found to have eaten honey: "As the Lord lives, you shall die. May God do so to me and more if I don't put you to death." But then the people say no. Saul has put himself in a hard spot. He made a rash vow, but then there are the people as well. What's he going to do? Saul has just shown himself foolish, and he's shown himself not to listen to the Lord, being rash with the way that he uses God's name and makes these vows to Him. There's just this inconsistency in his life. He doesn't ultimately trust God.

Even here in chapter 15, Saul hasn't been listening to the Lord. It's almost like in verse 1 when Samuel comes, he says, "Listen to the voice of the Lord." This is like a softball. This isn't even a tenuous moment like the Philistines where he's losing people. It's a simple command: "I need you to go on this mission, here's the guideline, go do it."

Saul starts off, musters the people, gathers them together, and looks like he's standing like the king he should be. By the way, that word summon is a wordplay there—it is the word shema. It literally means that he made the people listen, and he stands as God's representative here. He says, "We've got a mission, we're going to go do it." It all seems good.

But somewhere along the way, they defeat the Amalekites and then decide to improvise the command of God. See, armies like a reward when they win. They like plunder, they like spoil—"We won, we need to celebrate!" But this was about the judgment of God. This was about going on a mission because the Amalekites were a cruel and wicked people—so wicked that when the Israelites were refugees, they came up behind them and started picking off the weak, the elderly, and the children. That's the kind of people they were. So God sends him on a mission to bring justice upon the Amalekites.

By taking the spoil, they were no longer being the representatives of God's justice. They were being like any other army that's ravaging, spoiling, and out for gain instead of carrying out the judgment of God. One of the reasons they want to do this and celebrate is because when you offer sacrifices—this is the guise of it: "Hey, let's keep some of the animals alive, we'll offer them as sacrifices to God." See, when you sacrifice, you usually burn off the fat and then you get to keep the meat. So everybody gets a steak dinner! People get some of the spoil.

Saul rationalizes this in his mind: "Well, the people are happy, I need to keep them happy. And God's happy—I mean, eventually the animals are dead, right?" A steak dinner seems like a good compromise. So he rationalizes. He listened to the voice of other people and found a way to try to play both sides of the fence.

God called him on a mission and gave him a simple command, but Saul thinks at the end of the day that the end justifies the means. He thinks, "Well, we're eventually going to kill all the animals, we're eventually going to do what we're supposed to do, so how we do it and how we get there—what's it really matter?"

That's what we can do in our own lives. We can have the truth of God, but then Satan doesn't usually come in with an alternate voice. The voices of our world will take the truth of God and just turn the dial a little bit, just twist it a little bit. Think about the Garden of Eden: "Has God really said?" There's a modification there. This may look like a small thing—like, what's the big deal about the fruit in the garden? What's the big deal about Saul turning the plan a little? At the end of the day, everybody's dead, they carried out the will of the Lord. But they did not do it the way God said.

Our choices and the voices we listen to create habits, patterns, and trajectories in our lives. For Saul, he listens more to the people, and he shows more love and fear for the people than he does for God. That's how it happens in our own lives as we begin to make small compromises. The path to unbelief isn't a light switch; it's slow ways that we rationalize and compromise.

Why we can trust God's voice

Why can we trust God? Why trust Him above the other voices? I want to pause on that for a second, because it's important to really think about—especially for someone who doesn't follow Jesus or doesn't know—why should we trust the voice of God? I'm going to give you three reasons really quickly.

One is the fact that fundamentally, you have to trust something. Even to reject the Christian faith or to reject God is ultimately to place belief and trust in something else out there. So even if you look to yourself and say, "I'm going to trust my own opinions," those opinions have been shaped by other things you've heard, other voices around you, or the culture. All things—whether you believe in science, or say, "I'm going to ground my belief system in nature and natural processes," or ground it in what the culture around me says, which changes all the time—cannot present a coherent and consistent narrative. It takes faith to believe in those things too.

Second, God ultimately has proven Himself good. Nature hasn't proven itself good and consistent—nature is kill or be killed, survival of the fittest. Our culture hasn't shown itself consistently good, and every other culture of the world of all time has never shown itself consistently good all the time. In fact, often times it spirals more and more into chaos as time goes on.

We can see though that God has proven Himself good for this reason if nothing else: He sent His Son to sacrifice and die for our sins. No other god does that. No other god acquiesces and gives of himself. The gods of all other faiths say, "You serve us. We created you, you obey the rules, and we might throw you a bone and give you heaven or nirvana at the end of the day." Only the God of the Bible says, "I love you, and you're never going to get here on your own. You're never going to be able to obey enough or do enough to measure up. So I'm going to make a way. I will be the one who sacrifices for you to make the payment." That's the goodness of God. We don't just say God is good; God has demonstrated Himself as good.

Third, even in your own life, you can see how God's grace operates—calling you and wooing you. Sometimes we think, "No, I'm a self-made person. The goodness I experience is because of my own hand." But you're not the end of yourself. You can't control where you were born. You can't control the different things that came together. Sure, even your smarts, intellect, or anything that made you successful—who gave you that? Where did that come from? Was it just yourself? Sure, you might have worked hard. But if you were born on a mountain in Tibet in the 11th century, you would be born poor, die poor, and life would be a struggle. God's sovereignty places you somewhere. God's sovereignty gives you the talents you have. God's sovereignty arranges and moves things in life to bless you and work in your life to pull you to Himself.

Ultimately, the goodness of God is operating personally and individually in our lives. We have much reason on a macro and micro level to trust that God is good. His voice is trustworthy, while the other voices of this world have never shown themselves consistent, true, and trustworthy. You can hold fast to that in your life. But will you? Or will you begin to look around like Saul, needing the affirmation of other voices?

Where Saul goes wrong

Why does this happen in Saul's life? Where does he go wrong? Ultimately, it's because Saul places his personal achievement, his kingship, and his need to keep that going above character. He places personal achievement above character.

That's one of the things Saul is driving at, because the first thing he does in verse 12 is set up a monument for himself. God sent him on the mission, God gave them the victory, but Saul is like, "Look at me, I'm great! I'm going to set up a monument for myself. Look at all I'm accomplishing, my kingdom's going great, I'm so successful."

This happens in our own lives. You get success, the grace of God operates in your life, and pretty soon you begin to believe it was all you: "Look what I've done, look who I am." The eyes begin to turn on you and not on God. You begin to listen to your own voice and reasoning.

When it all starts to land on you, you've got to maintain that image, that monument, your reputation. You've got to post on Instagram and make yourself look good, happy, and perfect, because that's what we do in our culture. We hide all of our problems behind the mask. The lawns are mowed, everything looks fine, the posts on Instagram are happy people—but inside there can be brokenness. The fear or anxiety are playing out in our lives while we try to keep up that image.

The more that we begin to trust ourselves and listen to our own voice instead of God's, the more vulnerable we feel, because we've got to keep it up. At some point in life, something hits and we recognize: you're not in control. We're always trying to hedge against that day—saving up money, trying to protect ourselves. Saul does the same thing: tries to make himself look good, tries to appease all the people so everybody loves him and his kingdom stays established. Yet at the end of the day, we learn that we're not in control. We either continue trying to set up that house of cards so it all seems okay, or the joke is up, and we bow our knee and trust in something outside of ourselves.

Because Saul is trying to keep that image going, he grows fearful and insecure, looking for the security of others. Verse 24 tells us Saul said to Samuel, "I have sinned, for I transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed (shema) their voice." He looked and said, "I'm not going to stand and be God's representative. I'm going to try to figure out how to please these people, how to listen to them. They have a reasonable argument, I need their affirmation. They're the ones that look to me as king, I need them to love me, revere me, and be happy."

He's trying to appease his constituents in this moment. He doesn't think, "God set you up as king. God is the one making you successful in battle." No—"I need these people for military victory, to sustain my kingdom, for their taxes." His eyes shift from God to his own kingdom and to the people around him, and he begins to fear them more than he fears God. He begins to listen to their voice instead of the voice of God.

Finally, this fear reveals that he doesn't ultimately trust God or fear God's voice above all other voices. He fakes a false repentance because he's trying to save face and look good in front of everybody else. In verse 30, Saul says, "I have sinned; yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may bow before the Lord your God."

He confesses his sin, but it's a false repentance. Saul is more interested in looking religious before the people than he is in what God actually thinks about him. Scholars have picked up on this: he repeatedly says to Samuel, "your God." That detail is repeated by the author to show that it's not Saul's personal God. It's Samuel's God, and Saul is just trying to appease Him to look religious.

Saul isn't a man of faith. Saul's God is not a strong God, a wise God, or a God who knows what to do. Saul thinks he knows what to do; Saul trusts himself. When you look into your own soul and say, "I've got a better plan," it makes you unstable. Someone who lacks faith is unstable in all his ways. Saul is unstable—listening to other voices, pivoting around, trying to work the momentum of the moment instead of standing true, still, and faithful, trusting the Lord.

So the question for our own lives is: what do you believe? What voice or voices are you listening to? Who is your God? What God do you have faith in? Is it the God of your own internal voice, your self-made God, trusting in circumstances? Or are you putting faith in what is unseen, listening to that voice—the only voice that has always been true?

A tragic result

Finally, we see what the result is in all of this, found in verses 26 and 28. Samuel says 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."

This is incredibly tragic because God had done so much for Saul—pulled him from the tribe of Benjamin when he was a nobody, and called him into this great role. Yet Saul all his days was faithless with God. Samuel grieves over that reality. As Samuel turned away to go, Saul seized the skirt of his robe and it tore. It's such a dramatic moment. Samuel says to him, "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you."

The house of cards is falling. Saul may look good in front of everybody, keeping up pretenses and working hard, but inside there is so much turmoil and emptiness because he's not connected to the voice of God. For the rest of Saul's life, he is going to grow more and more paranoid, inconsistent, controlling, and manipulative. He wavers all the time because he would not listen to God's voice.

Samuel leaves in verse 34 because he knows it's just a matter of time. Samuel went to Ramah, and Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death. But Samuel grieved over Saul, and the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel. These are sorrowful words. Samuel will never speak into Saul's life ever again, and Saul is left alone.

When this prophet leaves, God has chosen another man and moved on. In the next chapter, the Spirit of God departs from Saul. Saul wanted to listen to his own voice and be his own king, so God says, "There you go. Go your own way, listen to your own voice, be your own king." He's going to find that's a very vulnerable, anxious, and fearful place to live.

Charles Templeton: "I Miss Him"

Years ago, there was a famous interview that took place. A man by the name of Lee Strobel interviewed Charles Templeton. Templeton had been with Billy Graham early on in their evangelical ministry in tent revivals. At some point, Templeton began to wrestle with faith—he was a pretty new believer, and there were questions he couldn't answer. He had a famous conversation with Billy Graham, where Billy eventually said, "There are things I can't answer about life, but I'm going to trust, because ultimately God's voice is the one that's shown itself consistent. God has shown Himself good."

Templeton walked away from the faith. He rejected it and left the ministry. Near the end of his life, he began to suffer from dementia. Lee Strobel went to interview him. In the interview, Strobel asked him, "How do you assess Jesus?"

Templeton began to say: "The greatest human being that ever lived... he was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was intrinsically the wisest person that I've ever encountered in my life or readings. His commitment was total and led to his own death... What could one say about him except that it was a form of greatness?"

Strobel said, "I was taken aback. 'You sound like you really cared about him,' I said."

Templeton said, "Well, yes, he is the most important thing in my life. I..." He shuddered, searching for the right words. "I know it may sound strange, but I have to say I adore him. Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus... Just look at Jesus. He cared for the oppressed and the exploited. There's no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion of any human being in history."

Then Templeton said slowly, "In my view, he is the most important human being who ever existed." And that's when Templeton uttered the words Strobel never expected to hear from him. In a voice that began to crack, he said, "I miss him." With that, tears flooded his eyes, and he turned his head and looked downward.

This was a man that listened to another voice in his life. Near the end of his life, I think he began to realize he'd been missing Jesus, missing the voice of God, the voice of truth in his own life, because he had chosen earlier in life to listen to and believe a different voice.

God shows Himself trustworthy because He sent His Son—a Son and a King who perfectly obeyed and made a way for us to believe, obey, and trust. Will we trust His voice and His plan in our lives and in our world?

Let's pray.

Father, this story is so raw, so powerful, and such a warning to us, because like Saul, we are tempted with those same voices. Saul is no different than us. We still have these same things where we can so easily look to the voice of fear, to these other voices of false promise, and think, "If I only listen to this voice, it will give me what I want." That's the great temptation of life: to stop listening to Your voice and listen to other voices instead.

But God, how beautiful is Your voice and Your gospel that says, "I love you. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and you will find rest." Father, I pray that we would begin each day to walk in trust and relationship with the voice of God that speaks over us day by day—speaking life, promise, and hope over us and in us, and not believe the lie of this world or the enemy. Empower us by Your Spirit. We love You. In Jesus' name, Amen.