15:10,11
The word of the Lord came to Samuel. The Lord knows everything that we do. “I regret ...” This does not mean that God made a mistake. In Gen 6:6 it says that God regretted making mankind, yet God’s plans are all focused on mankind, and our salvation. What it does mean is that God cares. We might think that because God is absolutely sovereign then nothing really matters because it is all predetermined. This is not the Biblical picture of the sovereignty of God. The failure of Saul was not just something that God knew would happen, was even part of His plan (which it was), Saul’s failure was real. Likewise, the suffering that Jesus endured before and on the cross was absolutely real, even though He knew He would be raised again.
Saul had disobeyed God, and was not inclined towards God. Samuel also cared, for he cried out to the Lord all night, he was also angry.
15:12
Samuel went to meet Saul, but Saul had gone to Carmel to “set up a monument in his own honour”. Then he went on to Gilgal. Saul was not an outright evil leader in the sense that the Stalins and Hitlers were, or the Mugabes or Putins. He was more like many of the leaders in democratic countries. Leaders who are not God-fearing, they don;t deliberately set out to do evil, but because of the weakness of the unregenerate human spirit end up doing evil, and are essentially self-centred.
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