A Word about the Cost of Disobedience

 Today I want to share a word about the cost of disobedience as I comment on 1 Chronicles 10.

In our last episode, David learned to be the primary leader of a group of people by leaning on God. He learned when to go together with others as well as when he needed to go alone. He also learned when to advance and when to stand fast. Most importantly, he learned to lean on God and to seek His guidance before acting.

We have observed that the stories of David and Saul were interwoven in the last chapters of 1 Samuel. We could observe one act, and then the other respond, and we could see the bad decisions both made, as well as the good decisions that David made when he turned to God, something Saul never did. These same events were covered in 1 Chronicles, which summarizes the time in Israel’s history also covered by the two books of 1 and 2 Samuel. In this lesson we will see that 1 Chronicles 10 provides the reader a concise and dispassionate summary of how Saul’s story came to its predicted ending. As we read this passage, the high cost of disobedience is clearly revealed.

Motor Ship Herald of Free Enterprise was a British roll-on and roll-off ferry that carried people and motor vehicles between England and Belgium. It was designed with ramps at both ends of the vessel for rapid loading and discharge of vehicles. Those ramps were sealed by special doors that prevented the sea from flooding the ship. They were very effective, except when they were not closed properly. When Herald of Free Enterprise departed Belgium on March 6, 1987, the crewmember responsible for securing the bow door was asleep in his cabin. The officer who was responsible for checking that the doors were closed failed to do so. The ship’s captain, who was behind schedule and in a hurry, failed to follow standing procedures and he did not verify that his ship was ready for sea before leaving port. The result is that the ship flooded and sank, and almost two hundred lives were lost. As I said above, the cost of disobedience is high.  It matters not if the disobedience is through acts of commission, or by way of omission, Let’s begin with 1 Chronicles 10:1-6

The Philistines fought against Israel, and Israel’s men fled from them. Many were killed on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines pursued Saul and his sons and killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua. When the battle intensified against Saul, the archers spotted him and severely wounded him. Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through with it, or these uncircumcised men will come and torture me.” But his armor-bearer would not do it because he was terrified. Then Saul took his sword and fell on it. When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his own sword and died. So Saul and his three sons died—his whole house died together. 

The Cost of Disobedience Includes Defeat and Death:

Humanity has perfected the art of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” So much so, that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s triumphant message after the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, “We have met the enemy and he is ours,” was transformed in the comic strip Pogo in 1970 to say, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” By this, Cartoonist Walt Kelly admitted that humanity is its own worst enemy. Sadly, the Bible agrees with him.

The Biblical litany of disobedience is almost endless. Adam and Eve disobeyed God first, of course, which laid the groundwork for Cain’s disobedience and murder of his brother, Abel. By the time that Noah was born, human disobedience was so blatant that God decided to start over by sending a flood to cleanse the world of human disobedience. Of course, what happened next was that Noah and his sons were also disobedient. This pattern continues throughout the Bible, even into the time of the New Testament church. The record of human disobedience in the Bible reminds me of a song by Robert Earl King, The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends. The title is ironic because the “party” included a barroom fight, drug dealing, murder of a police officer, running from the law, and finally a death sentence. It’s a rousing tune, let me tell you . . . but not very uplifting! The record of human disobedience is not uplifting, either.

In fact, the reason that Saul was ever made king over Israel and Judah in the first place was that God’s people found themselves addicted to sin, and they were caught up in a cycle of disobedience, calling on God for help, redemption and restoration, and then disobedience again. Paul, before Christ converted him on the road to Damascus, had experienced this same kind of defeat, which he described in Romans 7:18-24,

For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

When we disobey God and His Word, and His Will, and His Way, we will face defeat and ultimately, we will face death. We know that the wage of sin is death, including spiritual death, mental death, emotional death, and physical death. This was the cost of disobedience for Saul, which we also continue to pay today for our own disobedience. Defeat and death are not the only cost of disobedience, however. Further costs for disobedience are revealed in 1 Chronicles 10: 7-10,

When all the men of Israel in the valley saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their cities and fled. So the Philistines came and settled in them. The next day when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons dead on Mount Gilboa. They stripped Saul, cut off his head, took his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to spread the good news to their idols and the people.  Then they put his armor in the temple of their gods and hung his skull in the temple of Dagon.

The Cost of Disobedience Includes Disintegration and Disgrace:

If defeat and death are the cost of disobedience which is paid by individuals, disintegration and disgrace are part of the cost paid corporately by God’s people for disobedience. When God’s people are disobedient, nothing good happens to the congregation, and nothing good happens to the reputation of God’s name and His cause.

In truth, what happened to Saul and the Children of Israel in 1 Chronicles 10 had its roots in the very founding of Israel and Judah, because the people were disobedient and they did not completely occupy the Promised Land. Two and a half tribes stayed on the wrong side of the Jordan River, and other tribes did not completely claim their inheritance from the heathen Canaanite nations. For example, the Tribe of Dan was the second largest tribe of Israel, but they failed to drive the Amorites out of the coastal plain, Instead, they, themselves, were forced out of their inheritance and migrated to a much smaller area. This not only divided Judah from the rest of Israel, but it also resulted in the Danites becoming disgruntled with their reduced circumstances, so they turned away from God and became known for idolatry.

Sadly, the Bible also tells us that the cost of disobedience was also paid by the church in the New Testament. The church in Corinth paid the price by suing one another in secular courts over matters that should have been settled within the church. Paul also called out this church because of their sexual immorality of a type that even pagans would not tolerate, for one of their members had taken his father’s wife. It is no wonder that in 1 Peter 2:11-12 that the apostle wrote,

Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.

When the writer of Hebrews said that we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” at the beginning of Hebrews 12, we usually assume that he is referring to the saints of God listed in the Roll Call of Faith in Hebrews 11, and he probably was. It is also true, that God’s people are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses in schools, communities, and workplaces. When Christians are disobedient, their friends, neighbors, and coworkers observe their hypocrisy, and the name and cause of our God and His church are damaged.

As I wrote these lines, I was reminded of a church I know about from the time I served a local association of Baptist churches. The very first annual meeting of our association after I arrived there was held in that church’s sanctuary. It was compact, but beautiful, with fan-shaped seating for the congregation, and a well-designed and very useful balcony. It was a wonderful space for preaching the Word and worshipping God. I was chagrined to find out that the church had undergone a split just after their current pastor was installed, which was the third time that a conflict within the church had caused people to leave it. At that point they had less than twenty-five people in attendance, despite sitting at a well-travelled cross-roads in our county. I was told that everyone in that community knew the history of that church, and that was why the attendance was so low. This was only reinforced in my mind when the wife of the next pastor that the church called took a job at the only adult gift shop in the county. At that point I thought I had seen everything that could happen in a church ministry, but even today that situation still leaves me speechless. Next, let’s read 1 Chronicles 10:11-12,

When all Jabesh-gilead heard of everything the Philistines had done to Saul, all their brave men set out and retrieved the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons and brought them to Jabesh. They buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh and fasted seven days.  

The Cost of Disobedience Includes Dismay:

When a ship goes down at sea, like in the case of Herald of Free Enterprise, or when someone gets lost in the Rocky Mountains, or in the aftermath of a terrorist attack like on 9/11/2001, first responders will launch a rescue operation. Many times, these are risky and dangerous, and they pose a threat to the life of the rescuers. This is why in the US Coast Guard there is a saying, when lives are in danger, “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.” Rescuers will put themselves at risk because they have hope that they can save a life or lives.

In almost all disasters, however, no matter how big or small, no matter how public or personal, at some point all hope of finding someone alive is lost. It is then that the rescue operation becomes a recovery operation. First responders no longer take as many risks as they might have before, and the optimistic hopefulness of the rescue phase switches to a more mournful thought of, “No man left behind.” This is where God’s people were after the death of their king. All that they could do now was to bury him and grieve their loss.

First, we should acknowledge that the acts of these brave men were honorable. Their community had been saved by Saul, and they owed him a debt of honor, which they paid him. They could do nothing about the way Saul had disobeyed God, and they could do nothing about the way Saul’s remains had been abused by the Philistines, but what they could do, they did. They honored the memory of what Saul had meant to them.

The major lesson we must learn from this is not about honoring our dead. What we must realize, is that when we are disobedient and when we fall, we hurt more than just ourselves. Our sin is like a rock thrown into a pool of water, causing ripples which endure far longer than the original splash. The law of Moses warned God’s people that the consequences of the sins of the parents are felt as far as the third and fourth generation of their children. Sin can be forgiven, but the dismaying consequences of disobedience will echo down through the ages.

One other lesson we can learn from this recovery operation is more personal. We must live with the consequences of our own disobedience, and that knowledge can cast a shadow over our lives. In the movie The Patriot, Benjamin Martin, the character played by Mel Gibson, had participated in a massacre of American Indians in the time before that covered by the film. When Martin’s own son was killed in a battle in the Revolutionary War he said, “I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bear.”  We know that Saul had been driven mad by his own regrets, and also that Judas ended his life, rather than face the dismay that he would have to live with after betraying Jesus. As the hymn says, sin leaves a crimson stain, and that stain is hard to live down, and also, it is hard to live with. Finally let’s read 1 Chronicles 10:13-14,

Saul died for his unfaithfulness to the Lord because he did not keep the Lord’s word. He even consulted a medium for guidance, but he did not inquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.

The Cost of Disobedience Includes Displacement:

In many ways, Saul’s story is a parallel of the story of the nation over which he was king. Saul, like Israel, had been chosen by God to perform a great mission for Him. Saul, like Israel, had been blessed by God to enable him to carry out that mission. Saul, like Israel, had turned his back on God, and he was disobedient to Him. Saul, like Israel, had refused to repent and return to God, and so he was rejected by Him.  Saul, like Israel, had the opportunity to serve God and to have his royal line be established. Saul, like Israel, threw that opportunity away.

Our God is an intentional God, and He will pursue His Will and His Way regardless of human failure. God had David displace Saul, and Saul’s line, and the line of David was established to rule physical Israel, and to become the line that established Jesus as the Savior and Lord of spiritual Israel, who are God’s people today. 

The original role of Israel was to be God’s agents of evangelism, bringing the peoples of the world to God and bringing God to the peoples of the world. Biblical Israel forfeited that privilege by her disobedience to God. She was displaced by the church, who are laborers together with God, with the mission of making disciples of all people.

Before we in the church become proud, and dismissive of Biblical Israel, we need to see two clear truths from the New Testament. The first is that the church is the Body of Christ in the world today, empowered by the Holy Spirit. We have God living inside our lives, something Biblical Israel never had. This very fact should keep us humble.

The second truth is that although God will not displace the church before the end times, He may very well displace individual churches, if they become disobedient.  God will not displace the preaching of the Gospel, but He may very well displace some preachers of the Gospel, if they, too, become disobedient. If God’s people want to love Him and His Son, they must remember what Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Or, phrased the other way, if you love Jesus, don’t be disobedient!

Conclusion:

As we close, you might want to say to me, “Wow, pastor. This was a depressing lesson.” And you would be correct. In my defense, I did entitle this series of lessons Royal Pains, so that was a clue that we had some less than pleasant ground to cover.  Still, I would not want to leave you without hope. And there is hope.  

In Romans 7, when Paul lamented, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” this wasn’t a question that echoed down through the ages like a shout into an empty canyon. No! Paul did not leave us hanging, for he quickly provided an answer, proclaiming, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.” 

As long as there is breath there is hope because of Jesus. Just because we have been disobedient before does not mean we have to continue to be disobedient. Commenting on the story of Cain and Abel, Pastor Charles Swindoll said that one lesson Cain should have learned was, “It’s never too late to begin doing the right thing.” Swindoll went on to comment, “And don’t miss the implied benefit: ‘If you do what is right, you will be fine.’”

God stands ready today to help us begin doing the right thing and avoid the cost of disobedience. Are we willing to let Him?

Every blessing,

Dr. Otsi Corbitt