Heart Matters

There is a saying in the English language that says “Don’t judge a book by its cover” which means that we shouldn’t judge the value or the worth of something or someone by its appearance. We have that saying because we realize that appearances do not give us the full story. But the truth is that we humans do judge books by their covers all the time. Research has shown that human society gives significant advantages to good looking people. For example, good-looking people get called back for job interviews more often, they make more money at work, they are more likely to get elected to political office, and they are more sought after as romantic partners.ⁱ

Why is this important? Because this tendency to judge human beings by their appearance is not only “out there” in the world around us, it is also “in here” deep within us and it influences how regard others and ourselves. If you have won the genetic lottery and are reaping the benefits of good looks, you may be full of confidence in yourself, but disregard those whom our culture considers less appealing than you. If your outward appearance doesn’t match what you see on magazine covers in the grocery store checkout line, you may see yourself as “less than”, and avoid stepping into opportunities that are set before you—whether that is in work, school, sports, or romance—because you don’t want to be disappointed. On the one hand, your view of yourself is too high and your ultimate trust is in your looks, which will eventually fade away. On the other hand, your view of yourself is too low and you are impeding your ability to develop, grow and live a fruitful, rewarding life. So how do we shift our perspective so that we see ourselves and others as we should? That’s what we are thinking about today and to help us as we do that, we are going to be reflecting on passages from 1 Samuel, chapters 15 and 16. If you have a Bible or a Bible app with you, I invite you to turn to chapter 15 now.

Saul’s Disobedience & God’s Rejection

Right away, we encounter a situation that is difficult for us to understand with our twenty-first century western minds and may even cause us some distress. Through the prophet, Samuel, God has told Saul, the first king of Israel, to attack the Amalekites and totally destroy them and all that belongs to them. Why did God do this? There are times when a people or possessions are so closely associated with evil and are so persistent in opposing God and his purposes in this world, that the best thing to do, and God only did this rarely, was to devote the entire lot to God and destroy them.

There are similar things that happen in our world today. Last week, there was an armed standoff in Calgary that began when police officers went to a home to execute a search warrant and someone within the home began shooting at the police. Police had to close down the area and advise people to shelter in place. Several people in the residence who were not involved in the shooting were safely removed. Police sent in a robot with a cell phone to try to negotiate with the man inside, but that man never answered the phone when they called. After 30 hours, the standoff escalated, which forced the Calgary police tactical team and the RCMP emergency response team to fire their weapons, and the shooter was killed.

In December 2017, billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman were murdered in their Toronto mansion. After police had completed their investigation in the family home, the home was demolished in May 2019, and the land was sold in August 2020.

It may seem harsh to want to remove something or someone from the face of the earth, but if you are a parent and someone or something was persistently harming your child, you would wish it was within your power to do that very thing.

Saul was commanded by God to carry out the destruction of the Amalekites, but Saul thought he knew better than God, so he modified the instructions and had his army save the king of the Amalekites, Agag, and all the best and fattest of the livestock, but everyone else and all the weak and scrawny livestock were killed. And God said to Samuel, “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.”  (1 Samuel 15:11) Samuel confronted Saul about what he had done saying, 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.” (1 Samuel 15:19-21) Do you see what is happening here? Saul is trying to justify himself. He has been caught red-handed with evidence of his disobedience, but he insists that he did the right thing, it was the soldiers who did the wrong thing, and yet it is okay because it’s all going to God anyway. It’s like saying, “Yeah, I made $10,000 selling cocaine yesterday, but I am going to put a $1000 of it in the offering plate at church this Sunday, so it’s okay.” No, it’s not. And Samuel makes that clear when he responds to Saul:

“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.” (1 Samuel 15:22-23)

Why were the Consequences for Saul’s Actions so Serious?

So what is going on here? Why are the consequences for Saul’s actions so serious? The reason that God rejected Saul as king is because Saul’s actions indicated that there was something wrong in his heart. Our actions always, always, always reveal what we truly believe to be true, and what we trust in above all else. Saul’s actions indicated that he believed that his wisdom was better than God’s and that he trusted in himself to do the right thing more than he trusted in God to guide him in doing the right thing.

And God says, “To obey is better than sacrifice” because anyone can give a sacrifice to God, even the most hardened criminal can do that. It’s especially easy to do when you are giving a sacrifice from something that you stole from someone else. But to obey means that you are giving your life, your will, your resources, and your future over to God, because all those things are involved whenever we make a decision to act. And all of our decisions flow out of our heart. That’s why God tells us in Proverbs 4:23, Above all else, guard your heart,  for everything you do flows from it. (Proverbs 4:23) Saul’s actions indicated that his heart was not aligned with God, and thus he disqualified himself as a leader of God’s people and God rejected him as king. Saul was tall, handsome, and a great warrior, but his heart was not fully given over to God.

God then instructs Samuel to go to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem and anoint one of his sons as the new king. Samuel knew that the mission God was sending him on had the potential of being deadly because, if Saul found out, he would consider Samuel’s actions to be treasonous. But Samuel obeyed God in spite of the danger.

When Samuel arrived at Jesse’s home and saw his son, Eliab, he was certain that Eliab was the son that God wanted to be king of Israel.  But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) Seven of Jesse’s sons were home at the time and each one was brought before Samuel one at a time, but the Lord rejected all of them. Samuel asked Jesse if he had anymore sons and Jesse said he had one more, his youngest son, who was out taking care of the sheep. Samuel told Jesse to send for him. And when David was brought before Samuel, the Lord told Samuel that this was the one.

What Lessons Can We Apply to Our Lives?

So what lessons can we draw from this and apply to our lives? First, it is very, very important for us to recognize that both Saul and David were sinners who failed to perfectly obey God. Saul didn’t kill all the livestock of the Amalekites, but later on David had an affair with Bathsheba and arranged to have her husband killed so he could take her as his wife. So why was Saul rejected as king by God, but David wasn’t? Why was David promised by God to have a descendant who would be king forever, but Saul wasn’t? Throughout the Bible, we see these pairs of people where one person received special favor and blessing from God and the other didn’t. There is Abel and Cain, and Jacob and Esau, are examples of such pairs. And as we head into Holy Week, the days leading up to Good Friday and Easter, another pair that will loom large in the biblical events of those days are Peter and Judas. Both turned their back on Jesus in his time of greatest need. Why was did the life of Judas end in humiliation and shame and Peter was elevated to be the leader of the apostles after Jesus ascended into heaven?

To answer this question, I invite you to think about sunflowers. How many of you have ever noticed how sunflowers turn toward the sun and follow it as it tracks across the sky? Then, during the night, sunflowers reset their position toward the east so that they are ready to greet the sun when it rises in the morning. Mushrooms, on the other hand, do not track the sun. They prefer to grow in darkness in beds of straw and horse manure. Both sunflowers and mushrooms are both things that grow and produce tasty food, but they each have a very different relationship with the sun.

There is an orientation to the human heart. It is always focused on and tracking something. The default setting of the human heart is for us to be focused on ourselves and tracking our position relative to the world around us. “Am I keeping up with the Jones’s?” people used to ask themselves. Now we wonder if we are keeping up with the people we see on our social media feeds. Our default settings need to be changed because a self-focused heart always fills up with envy over the success of others, and anger over the lot we have been given in life, and discouragement over the human measurements where we always seem to fall short.

Jesus’ Heart is Full of Love For Us

But God is inviting us to bring our sinful hearts to him and trust in his goodness, his greatness, and his grace. David repented of his sin with Bathsheba and their son, Solomon, became the next king. Peter repented of his denial of Jesus, and our Lord restored him to leadership after his resurrection. But there is another aspect to both David’s and Peter’s actions that I think is at least as significant as their repentance. They stayed with the Lord. You have to really trust in God’s grace to be caught red-handed with all the evidence of your sin, guilt and shame, and yet stay in the light of God’s presence and continue to have faith in him. Our human tendency is always to run away from God and hide under the cloak of our self-justification. It takes a lot of courage for us to stay in the light with all our sins exposed.

We can only do that because of Jesus. Writing centuries before his coming, Isaiah described Jesus this way: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (Isaiah 53:2-3)

Yet this plain-looking human was also the Son of God who rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to be the Savior of the world. Those who got to know Jesus through his teaching, his miracles, or his presence as he spent time with them, saw through his plain human exterior to his heart and knew that it was filled with unconditional love for them. And they responded with praise and adoration of Jesus, shouting,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the king of Israel!” (John 12:13)

There were other people in Jerusalem who refused to humble their hearts and direct their focus away from worldly things and toward Jesus. So they did not see the heart of love that he had for them, and later in the week, they would shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” when Pilate brought Jesus before them. Their wishes were fulfilled and Jesus was flogged, then taken to a cross outside the city walls where he nailed to suffer and die. But it was for your sins and mine, and for the sins of the whole world, that Jesus suffered, not his own. By taking our place on our cross, Jesus paid the full cost of forgiveness for our sins, so we could have the glory of life with him forever.

Today’s Challenge

It’s Jesus that gives us the courage to stay still with all our brokenness, frailty, weakness, and our sin, guilt and shame exposed.

And so, Today’s Challenge is to have courageous faith in the greatness of Jesus’ grace for you. Then, with that courageous faith, stay still and receive the love that Jesus has for you, the grace that he has for you, and the forgiveness that he has for you. Let him re-orientate your heart toward him again and again each day, and you will be able to see yourself and others as they really are because you will be viewing yourself and others through the love of Jesus. Amen.