1 Samuel 15:11

“It grieveth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night.”

-- Jubilee Bible

I never considered I could hurt God.

I am a Taurus. Admitting that is kinda sinful. We were never supposed to be taught about the horoscope. But I digress...

I am and always have been stubborn. If I was told to use caution, I exercised wanton disregard. If I was advised to relax, I tensed up. That is who I always have been. In this lesson, I learned that using the excuse "I did the best I could" when I knew I hadn't, I was damaging the myself. Convincing myself that I can't do it before I try is not just lazy, it is an affront to God. Because that is what Sauld did. He was told by God himself exactly what to do. The task was manageable and perfectly achievable. That said, it was messy. Not something easy or inconsequential. His order was to eliminate a race of peoples. Genocide. Regardless of what our culture tells us today, the point is not that the man could not grasp the good in the act. Had that been Saul's motivation to defy God, perhaps he would been forgiven. Perhaps not.

King Saul disobeyed because of greed. He killed everyone and every thing except that which was coveted by him and those he commanded.

I don't think Saul's defiance is what broke God's heart, it was the reason for Saul's defiance. Consider the contrast:

"No, God, I failed to follow your instructions because I could not stomach killing those children..."

Or,

"No, God, I failed to follow your instructions because that cow looked so tasty."

Interpretation: I killed the children, but the tomatoes I spared.

I think that is what broke God's heart. The funny thing though, is not the why but the how. I would have bet money that God's omnipotence would protect him from suffering from painful emotions. I admit, now, I was was very wrong.

Version Study & Takeaway

I regret that
It grieveth me
Nacham

What a difference a word makes. To me, I regret when I buy a product that goes on sale the next week. I regret I bought it to soon.

I grieve when I lose a friend. When my mother died. When a friend is found dead form an overdose.

Nacham is the hebrew word that "regret" and "Grieveth" came from originally.

Nacham is what I would feel if I had a wife and three children who died in a plane crash that took 200 souls with them.

The Takeaway:

It would seem that our defiance doesn't lead to God brushing it off and moving on. He doesn't get "butt-hurt". We injure Him deeply. I have no choice but to try not to hurt Him that way, no matter what kind of shallow inconvenience I might have to suffer as a result.

As the guilt of my yesteryear melts away, day after day, I am left staring at the one sin that grieves me most. Did I break God's heart? How do I restore myself from that?

Prayer.

The Cost of Forgetting

I will always carry a quiet sorrow knowing that my defiance did not bounce harmlessly off an unfeeling void, but wounded the very heart of God. That epiphany cannot—and should not—be erased.

But that sorrow is not a stumbling block. It is not an excuse to sit in the dirt and mourn endlessly over the fields the locusts devoured. It is a guardrail.

The moment we stop caring that we can inflict pain—on God, on our neighbors, or on ourselves—is the moment the soul begins to rot from the inside out. Carrying the memory of God’s grief is the only thing that protects our capacity for empathy. It keeps the heart soft enough to obey, honest enough to admit failure, and grounded enough to spend our remaining days limiting the damage we cause.

1 Samuel 15:7-25

Can a stubborn man break God's heart?

Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt.

He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. 9

But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel:

“I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the Lord all that night.

Early in the morning Samuel got up and went to meet Saul, but he was told, “Saul has gone to Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honor and has turned and gone on down to Gilgal.”

When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord’s instructions.”

But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”

Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”

“Enough!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”

“Tell me,” Saul replied.

Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel.

And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’

Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”

“But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king.

The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”

But Samuel replied:

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?

To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is like the sin of divination,and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”

Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them.

Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord.”