The Issue of Partial Obedience

Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” I Samuel 15:1-3 (New International version, NIV)

Samuel gave Saul a direct order, a command, from God. He was to destroy the Amalekites, every last one of them and all they owned.

Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. 8 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 and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed. I Samuel 15:7-9 (New International Version, NIV)

Saul only followed part of God’s order. He apparently decided that he knew better than God. And he even tried to portray his partial obedience as full obedience to God’s orders.

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.” I Samuel 15:10-23 (New International Version, NIV)

Saul did part of what he was told. However, he followed the way of other nations and kept the king and the best of the spoil. The Lord told him not to keep anything- it was all to be destroyed. And Saul even told Samuel that he had obeyed the Lord. He tried to justify his disobedience and paint it as obedience. Partial obedience is the same as disobedience. To do something only partly the way we’ve been instructed is to disobey. It reeks of compromise and mixture. It is not pure, but it is mixed with the arrogance and ideas of man; the ideas of the world. Saul thought so highly of himself that he even set up a monument in his own honor. He did not have a heart for God, but a heart for the things of man and the world.

Many Christians are following the way of Saul. They claim Jesus as their Savior and they attend church, but in the name of acceptance and tolerance, they are only obeying God partly. They do not follow Him as their Lord and Master. They have decided that they know better than God, and so they allow things to live and thrive that God wants utterly destroyed and kept out of the church. They try to justify their compromise by saying that God loves everyone and so people that embrace a lifestyle that God says is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22) are to be welcomed and made comfortable in their sin. They allow the sin in which these people are living to pervade the body of Christ and they even endorse them for positions of spiritual leadership. It is true that God loves His creation, and He wants to welcome us all with open arms. However, He does not condone sin. He expects us to be the ones who bring freedom and deliverance to those trapped in the bondage of alternative sexual lifestyles. God is pure, and He expects impure actions and lifestyles to be rejected when we turn to Christ. When the church does not address it and allows it to continue and even begins to support it, the church has allowed a horrible cancer into its midst that will spread and bring death to all.

Saul lost his position as king and, ultimately, he lost his life. Compromise is a deadly thing. When we only obey partially, we actually disobey God, and we open ourselves up to the loss of our kingdom positions as kings and priests unto God. And ultimately, we lose our eternal life, separated forever from the Lord. Compromise, partial obedience to God, will drive a wedge between us and the Lord, creating a bigger and bigger gap between our hearts and His. We must get into the Word of God to know His will and determine in our hearts that we will obey it completely, without any compromise. Only total obedience to the Word of God is obedience to God.