1 Sam 13:9, So Saul said, "Bring to me the burnt offering and the peace offerings." And he offered the burnt offering.
	This morning, in our reading, we are brought face to face with an element of our human nature which requires the absolute focus of our hearts and minds. As with King Saul, we have those times in the course of our walk with the Lord in which we must make the conscious decision to wait to see the Lord work, or try to do it on our own, with our own meager and feeble abilities. 
	It seems, as with the course of our reading, that this is something which the Lord is emphasizing for us to consider and to take to heart. We are again brought to the point of choosing to do as the Lord directs, which oft times is to wait until He moves, or to try to do it on our own. The heart of the issue is that definite and that defined! Is our heart set on God and His way or on us and our way, doing what is right in our own eyes?
	This brings us back to the point of the Children of Israel as they were faced with this choice. God laid out exactly what was required of them and what they would enjoy if they made the decision to follow after Him rather than after their own way. 
Please open once more to Deut 12:5-9. Here Moses put the choice before the people in terms that they would easily understand. There was no way for them to argue that they didn’t know what they had to do. They could neither add to nor negotiate nor minimize. It was the matter of God’s way which led to joy and refreshment and contentment, or their own means of doing what was right in their own eyes. This choice led to fear and anxiety and trembling and starvation and enslavement to the power of this age. 
Deut 12:5-9, But you shall seek the Lord at the place which the Lord your God shall choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come. And there you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the contribution of your hand, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the first-born of your herd and of your flock. There also you and your households shall eat before the Lord your God, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you. You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you. 
	They had the choice to wait on the Lord and to follow as He directed, or to try to make it on their own in the futility of human imagination filled with the lies and the deceits of this realm. That was what was before Saul in the course of the chapter of our reading. He knew what he was supposed to do in waiting for the Lord to go before him. It meant that he would wait until the Prophet Samuel arrived to offer the sacrifices which would honor and please the Lord. This was the way that the Lord had directed and which the Lord had so honored previously with all the victories over the forces arrayed against the nation of Israel.
The other option was to try to take the matter into his own hands and do the best that he could under the pressure of what he saw before him. As Saul was watching the army dissolving, he struggled with how he could hold things together. He wanted to keep his forces from becoming so small that they would, in Saul’s mind, have no way to defeat the Philistines. Therefore, as he waited through those seven days, without any word from Samuel, he pondered the means of how he could do what was necessary under the mounting pressure of the circumstances arrayed against him and the dissolving of his army. 
Seeing no other humanly possible option for the preservation of the numbers of his soldiers, Saul did that which was not right before the Lord. He was not given the privilege to offer the sacrifice unto the Lord as king. He was supposed to wait and to be acquiescent in his power of decision-making before the Lord through the means of the prophet of God. That was the way God would show that Jehovah was the True Sovereign of this people. That was really the entire point of the matter before us. 
Saul was taking upon himself all the power of the leadership of this nation. He was setting aside the righteous order of honor unto God. Basically, Saul was telling God that he, Saul, was the one to decide how the people operated and went into battle and faced the challenges of all the forces arrayed against them. Saul was usurping, not just the priestly place of offering the sacrifice, but the place of complete sovereignty over the people. He was making himself the absolute monarch of the nation, setting aside the righteous consideration of Jehovah, Yahweh, as the true Sovereign. 
By this seemingly simple act, Saul was thumbing his nose at God and declaring that he knew better than God how to deal with the issues that faced this nation. Saul was declaring himself to now be not just the political sovereign, but the social and the spiritual entity to whom the people should look for guidance and for protection and for order. 
	Notice how innocuous Saul tried to make this whole episode when confronted with what he had done. Let us reread verses 11+12 of this morning’s chapter. 
1 Sam 13:11+12, But Samuel said, "What have you done?" And Saul said, "Because I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the appointed days, and that the Philistines were assembling at Michmash, therefore I said, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not asked the favor of the Lord.' So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering." 
	We have Saul putting forth all the excuses that so many of us are guilty of setting before the Lord as we are brought face to face with our decisions of selfhood versus complete obedience and reliance upon the Lord. … Because I saw that the people were scattering… Saul firsts pointed to the circumstances of the army dissolving because they are tired of waiting. Fear was starting to grip their hearts and they no longer wanted to place their lives on the line without some assurance that God was going before them. 
	In his meager attempts to appease the people, trying to win their allegiance to his cause and to his banner of leadership before them, Saul offered the sacrifice. He placed himself above the priestly defined order of operation and usurped that divinely ordained right of offering the sacrifice before the Lord.
	Then we hear Saul as he put the blame on Samuel. This is so reminiscent of Adam trying to shift the blame upon Eve in the Garden. … and that you did not come within the appointed days… It was because you did not come in the time that I thought you should. I waited as long as I could to try to stem the dissolution of my army. It is your fault that I had to take this action to try to keep the men from deserting. 
In response to this accusation, we can almost hear Samuel bring the history of the great victory of Gideon unto Saul’s remembrance. Samuel could very readily relate how the Lord so resplendently intervened against even greater odds at that time. It was the Lord Who gave just 300 soldiers complete triumph over the countless army of the Midianites. 
But Saul rather, in his panic, took upon himself the mantel of religion and offered the sacrifice, not as the means of pleasing the Lord, but as the way to bring the army back together. His was an attempt to create the illusion that all was now right with God and that God was going before them as He had in all the victories that He had gained for His people. 
	And, then, we have the ultimate defense of humanity in the face of our futility before God, So I forced myself and offered the burnt offering. I knew that I shouldn’t do it. I knew that it was wrong. I knew that the Lord would not be pleased. I knew it was not my place. However, when I saw all the Philistines assembling together and the way my army was falling apart I had to do something. My mind told me that I had to try to fix things. 
Even though it was not right …I forced myself and offered the burnt offering. I thought it would make things better. I thought there would be a resolution to the difficulties. I thought it would work this time, even though it has never worked in the past every time I tried to make it happen the way I wanted it to be.
	This was not the only time that Saul chose these types of argumentative excuses for the way in which he did not obey the Lord. Again it shows the mind of a man who is setting himself above the place that the Lord has bestowed upon him. He was reaching and reacting because he was more interested in doing what was right in his own eyes rather than what was right in obedience to God. 
Please open to 1 Sam 15:20-23, where we once more find Saul in the midst of his disobedient argumentation with the Lord through the Prophet Samuel. Here again we see the human nature which tries to justify or then shift the blame onto someone else. We fail to take into our hearts the admission and confession that we did not follow the direct commandment of the Lord. Rather, we always proffer the reason that we chose to disobey the most Holy and Omniscient Lord God Almighty, as if that will somehow placate God with our self-justification for our defiant disobedience.
1 Sam 15:20-23, Then Saul said to Samuel, "I did obey the voice of the Lord, and went on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God at Gilgal." And Samuel said, "Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. "For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king." 
Saul reflects the every manner of our being obstinate and defiant before God. We will say that we started out doing that which the Lord required of us. Then, as we look at the tawdry treasures of this age, our eyes are removed from that which is Holy before God unto that which we argue is good for us. Rather than hating all the elements and the things and the gaudy trinkets of this age, we allow ourselves to indulge here and there. This is without the understanding that we are setting aside the value of God in our hearts and in our minds. We are exchanging the eternal for the temporary. We are choosing the paltry delights of this age, which so very quickly dissipate into dust as opposed to the tried and true and tested eternal glory of the most High God. 
We argue that others made us choose the lesser elements of this world because we would not fit in if we stayed true to the Lord. The lies and the deceit of the worthless penetrate and infiltrate our conscious awareness because we allow them to have that place within us. It may begin with just the tiniest indiscretion which soon balloons into the majority measure of our time and effort and energy. Rather than wholeheartedly serving the Lord, we find ourselves serving the course of our selfishness and our slavery to sin and shame. This is all without any regard to how our testimony of God has become torn and tattered and besmirched by the filth of this age.
The Psalmist concludes this morning with the tried and true encouragement of Ps 37:1-9. This is one of those passages we need to mark and highlight and consider over and over again as we watch the rapid course of the decline of this age. While our eyes behold all the terrible actions and cynicism and despondency and refuse of this current social climate, we can turn to this Word of the Lord, again and again with the realization that all is not as it seems.
The cruelty and the selfishness and the brazen and horrific swirling madhouse of this age will not stand! The truth of the Sovereignty of Lord will never be overthrown! God will not be mocked! Those who practice idolatry, even on the most massive and egregious scale, calling it right and proper, will have to stand before the Lord God Almighty and face the certain and defined consequences of their choices. 
At the same time, those who hold true to the Lord, those who stand for God in the midst of the chaos and the destructive and disheveled defiance of this age will see the Hand of God in full operation. There will be that tested and tried knowledge that God is in charge of all that He has created. Those who oppose and snub their noses at Him will receive His righteous and just sentence to their eternal doom. What they gain for a moment now, will be the weight that will drag their necks into the sure and final dungeon of their cursed and pitiful eternity. 
We are not to be at all envious as they seem to prosper in this day. Rather, we are to hold them in prayer and ask the Lord to make Himself both their Savior and their Lord. They have no true understanding of what awaits them for eternity while they wallow in the pitiful exuberance of their current, fleeting, and lamentable earthly idolatry. 
Ps 37:1-9, Do not fret because of evildoers, Be not envious toward wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass, And fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; Do not fret, it leads only to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. 
	The evildoers of today will use the same arguments as did Saul, with the very same result. The Lord will deal with them in the perfection of His Holy Judgment. Therefore, we need to be extremely diligent not to engage with them in their folly. We are not to be envious of their temporary pleasure in the seeming delights of this age, which will bring only despair and grief. Rather, we need to honor the Lord and obey and wait for Him to show His path to us in the manner of our walk on this earth. Our time here is for the sake of our development into ever increasing trust and obedience unto Him. We need to learn to wait for The Lord to do His great and perfect and awesome work as we find our eternal delight in Him, Alone! So be it and amen!

This morning’s benediction is Ps 19:14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.