Nothing Moves Without God Knowing

Nothing Moves Without God Knowing

12/5/18

One of the most baffling experiences we can imagine is when we accomplish a feat and believe that what has been done is of a good result only to find out later that through the victory the leadership or one of the team members has done something incorrectly and the result ends up costing the participants a great deal.  Many times we play this type of compromising game with God, when God says for us to complete something we do it but not at the pace and the thoroughness that God expects or with the pure heart that He expects.  God is always going to accomplish all of His activities in a holy and complete manner, that is His definition and He cannot waver from such tone; however, He expects the same effort from us and at the end of the day it is our responsibility to have led our lives in such a manner that God is fulfilled in all aspects of our movements and motions for if we have not then God has every authority to take away the existence as He has given in order to ensure His Ways are finished in by His Word.  Our record in such completion has not been very well liked by God but loved by the world, this should tell us something about the authority we have and how we use it and who we use it for as well, a position that we are currently not in good standing with God.

Most of you know that I am a huge soccer fan and I harbor so much love for the game that I call it my heart sport.  I have followed this beautiful game for most of my life and enjoy every local, national, and international match, rivalry and tournament, but during the time that the soccer season is in full swing American football is ongoing as well and this sport is another beloved matchmaking game that I follow regularly also but in this instance I stop at the college level.  My old high school football team was not very good and really did not change its style of play until after I left the area.  The competitiveness between the schools is unprecedented and in my opinion, should be experienced by every American in this country, it demonstrates a young heart doing its best to compete against fellow hearts that want to defend and make new a record that shall stand for quite some time.  However, when rules are broken no matter how slight or great they may be, the issues need to be set straight and corrected so that all wrongs are back in order.

As this high school football season peaked and now comes rapidly to a close a story broke concerning my old high schools rival that if true could have a severe impact on the league standings.  The result had nothing to do with my old school but it involved our rival and another school.  It was alleged that one of the press box coaches from our rival school had used a PDA device while the game was in progress.  It may not seem too much of an issue but if any exterior help of communication from others to this device was used, it could be deemed as information helping one side and not the other, or in layman’s terms, it would be considered cheating.  The coaches of the accused school admitted to the fact that a PDA or similar device was present in front of one of the coaches in the press box but was not turned on at the time the game was being played.  Nevertheless, that through this admission it was deemed as a rules violation and the remaining coaches voted on the issue and the game had to be forfeited by our rival school for such a violation.  Now, it would not have been so bad if our rival school had lost the game but the boys had won the game and had no clue about what had transpired in the press box, no one is even for sure who reported the incident and how the information was leaked in the first place.  No matter what, the result was final and the stats in the standings were changed and the game results turned around.  This goes to show that it does not matter if one side of the issue performs flawlessly and the other does not, the entire program becomes entangled when any part does not fulfill the required goals set by the convening authority.

What looked like a hard fought win turned out to be a total disaster from the top echelon down because someone did not obey the rules, a rule that had been in place for years and should have been known by all staff, without question.  It does not matter on which level one operates, the rules of the processions must be followed and maintained at all times in order for the result to be completed fully.  If a rule is violated it must be called out and dealt with appropriately, which brings us to the passage and topic at hand for this article for when God directs an order He expects that spoken order to be fulfilled in full and in the time that He gives for its completion.  We have just learned about the battle that Saul completed in the previous article and how it was a tremendous victory for the nation of Israel, but we also learned that Saul did not complete the victory as God had directed him.  So now we come to the part where God must address the disobedient portion of the victory and deal with the heart of Saul at the same time for the commitment of Saul’s heart was not on the same expectation level as God’s heart and that caused a huge problem.  The passage that we will use is 1 Samuel 15:10-11 and it contains a vital piece of information about the consistency of God and how He views us according to our ways of living by obedience or disobedience according to the commands He gives us, we also have an interesting comparison to this event as well which should have served as a direct remembrance for Saul.

One of the questions some people may have about this topic, passage, and events is why does God still have a say in what Israel does since they elected a physical king instead of keeping in line with God being the ultimate ruler over them?  When God establishes anything He cannot change the order by which He creates it, He must follow the same pattern of Creation as He did when the subject was created and in this case it is Israel.  Up until 1 Samuel 8, Israel had no physical king to say what, when, how, and where people lived for the placed their entire existence in the hands of their Creator but after this chapter, they became as other nations.  However, according to the Creative status of Israel God was still in charge of whom they chose to become king, this process would eventually become an aristocratic process but for now continued to be under the supervision of God for even though God may have been rejected by the people He did not leave them because of their elections.  Saul was the first king of Israel and was a popular chap because of his physical qualities but it was his heart and commitment to God that deemed his future as king and presence of Israel. 

As we saw in Genesis when mankind is allowed to just overtake all possessions of life disaster can only follow hence the single reason why God had to call upon Noah to save his family and the creatures from being totally wiped off the face of the earth.  So, this brings us to the events that occurred in 1 Samuel 15:1-9 where Saul did what God told him to do on the battlefield but did not do when it came time to finish the job where the enemy’s life and existence were at hand.  God had already determined the heart of Saul by the time this passage of verses 10-11 had occurred and thus conveyed His disappointment and relegation of Saul’s kingship.  When God spoke to Samuel and told him how He had lost all confidence in Saul’s ability to lead according to His anointing, Samuel understood what it meant for the people of Israel and what they were about to encounter.  Not only did we see Saul disobey the command of God but he allowed the people to override the authority that had been divinely given to him as well.  It did not and does not matter if one decides to listen to the people or to our friends if we already have higher orders from God concerning anything about our lives.

When verse 11 opens, it begins with God stating that He repented of having anointed and allowed Saul to be king because he had turned his back on God and His commands.  This is a choice matter and one that Saul should have understood completely without complications because this portion of the verse makes a huge statement that Saul also should have remembered how God does not like disobedience.  God uses the word “repentance” in the opening phrase of this verse and it is the exact word God uses to describe His heart and beliefs about the entire world right before He gave Noah the command to build the ark.  Genesis 6:6 says that God’s heartfelt pain and was totally hurt that He had made man to walk the earth and came to the conclusion that He had no choice but to establish His Covenant with a new generation.  God did the exact same thing here in this passage or was about to complete it after the formalities had been completed on the human level.  The king of Israel had formally been deposed from the highest authority possible and the anointing and protection that God had placed over Saul were now taken away.

Many countries around the world have a procedure that legislative portions of said government take in order to either secure or decline the position of the leader of the overall government.  This process has occurred many times over the past in the British Commonwealth nations along with a good portion of the countries scattered throughout Europe.  Of course, the results vary, present a tense and terse time period with unsecured confidence being thrown in and out of the voting circles.  While there have been plenty of leaders who have survived such voting procedures there has been a good number who have fallen so far out of favor that has not survived these procedures and thus threw their entire political party into chaos.  The resulting defeating vote leads to a new person elected to be the leader of the majority party and sometimes requiring an additional special election that involves a greater range of people included.  While this type of activity cannot be accurately and adequately compared to what God has said here it does provide us with a glimpse of what has transpired in God’s mind and heart concerning Saul and his actions.  It is bad enough to fall out of favor within your group of friends, but to be out of favor with the eternal Almighty God, there is no comparison to this placement.

God had every amount of holy authority to detail to Samuel His actions of disappointment in Saul, for God saw what was inside of Saul’s heart and found that he had no inkling of repentance at all and that he approved and allowed the actions of his people to disobey God’s command.  When such an attitude exists within a person’s heart they cannot honestly and confidently say that it was a genuine mistake, it was a direct violation of such command and thus placing it as a dereliction of duty automatically incorporating the disobedience of rebellion.  All positive and admiration from God towards Saul is stopped and God gives instructions to Samuel to tell Saul about God’s decision and what the results and consequences of his alliances and actions have done.  As stated above, this message from God to Samuel grieved him dearly so much that he was up all night pleading with God to change His mind or at least hand down a reprieve concerning Saul and the kingship.  This should not come as any surprise with what Samuel asked, but it also should not come as any surprise how God responded either.  It is never a good idea to test God on just how far our deliberate disobedience of His Ways takes us.  It is this action of Saul that places him into the dire category of being chased by God and no longer in favor with Him.

Again, we see that the condition of the heart comes into play when it comes to making choices (elections) for God or against God.  We also see that one cannot play the fence with God and that our hearts are either for Him or they are against Him.  Samuel could not help but grieve for Saul and for the people of Israel through all of their actions, and since it had not been too far back that they chose to have a worldly king instead of God Samuel understood just how far all of them had fallen even in a short amount of time.  Recently, I saw an article in one of the popular magazines that showed two pastors holding hands along with others, holding a sign that said “Pro-Faith Pro-Family Pro-Choice” and vowed to say continual prayers for Planned Parenthood and their quest for completion of their daily actions.  According to most people who do not attend church or know God this belief is okay but interestingly enough the number of people who consider themselves Christians are adopting this belief as a truth instead of a death sentence.  It is this fall that gives us another example of how hearts can become if they are allowed to be fooled by Satan.

A point of order here to make is as follows: back in 1 Samuel 8, we saw where the people solemnly swore their allegiance to the world to be as other nations, rejecting God and everything that had occurred in their lives before.  Here we have the tables turned where in this passage we see that God has turned His back on the leader that the people had chosen a while back, which brings up a few details about God’s presence that we will deal with at another time, but the important issue we must know here is that when we reach a point in our lives where we believe we no longer need God to be a part of our existence we are automatically giving Him the authority to put the kybosh on any issue of our lives afterward.  Today, it has become an issue about who can say what and how in order to be popular or correct and circular culture demands that these words that are spoken comply with the current trends of the “moral” majority.  It will always be difficult for the human mind and heart to predict what will occur when we go against God’s Ways and commands, but this example should give us a pretty good reason to stop and think about why God says for us to do things, sometimes even unpopular things.

The Church has fallen into this deadly game of taunting God with accepting the world and its standards within her doctrines.  It can no longer be ignored that the Church institutionalized this type of idolatry graciously without any hesitation at hand.  We are ignoring the question that God has given us to examine throughout His Word about disobedience and how much is tolerable before He must do something drastic to grab our attention.  The question still remains today about how much more are we going to push God in our idiotic and selfish worldly beliefs that lie within our hearts and serve as our master?  Have we thumbed our noses at His blessings long enough that He now must begin the removal of such blessings He gave us so that we could counter the world’s message to all corners of the globe?  How long can we believe that our actions and the blackened condition of our hearts are missed by God, or that He passes on them because of the status we hold within His eyes?  God removed Saul from his kingship due to the gross disobedience that had infiltrated his heart and just as the title of this article states, nothing gets passed God and at some point if we do not stop our sinful behavior and change our hearts He will have no choice than to begin to peel away each layer of our lives that surround our decaying hearts.

DLB