Let me call your attention to 1 Samuel chapter 15, and we will read together from verse 1, which we saw last week, up to verse 9, and then today we are looking at verse 10 down to verse 12. Let me read that to you. And Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel. Now, therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go, and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. So Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 men on foot and 10,000 men of Judah. And Saul came to the city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley. Then Saul said to the Canaanites, Go, depart, go down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt. So the Canaanites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far ashore, which is east of Egypt. And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the ship and of the oxen, and of the fattened calves, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them, all that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction." And then the passage we are looking at this morning. The word of the Lord came to Samuel. I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. And Samuel was angry, and he cried to the Lord all night. And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning." We'll end our reading there. Those of you who were here last week will recall that we have begun a series of messages in 1 Samuel and chapter 15, and the series is entitled, The Nature of False Repentance. The Nature of False Repentance. And we are deliberately studying the life of Saul in order to learn these lessons. Last week, when we began, we did a quick overview of Saul himself. We noted that he was the first king of Israel. And like most individuals who become the first rulers of a people, you would expect that Saul would be the most well-known king among the Israelites. Well, as it turned out to be, it was his successor, David, who has ended up being the most well-known of all the kings of Israel. In fact, as I mentioned last week, Saul is only mentioned once in the entire New Testament. and even then it was by his namesake Saul who then later became Paul and he mentioned him in a sermon in passing. What went wrong? Well I'd like to suggest to you that it was not the fact that Saul sinned but that Saul sinned stubbornly. Saul never really repented of his sins. He was the kind of individual who pretended to repent but in actual fact did not do so. And what we are doing here is studying something of the marks of false repentance through him. Now last week we looked at the nature of sin and we saw that sin is primarily not obeying God. That's all it is. It is not obeying God and often it is not obeying God completely. In other words, we might do so partially, which is what Saul did here. He went, he fought the Amalekites, he killed many of them, but the Bible goes on to say that the king was spared. Fattened animals were spared. It was only those that were despised and worthless. Those are the ones that were devoted to destruction. Now that's disobedience as far as God is concerned. You can't say because I obey at least up to this point, even if I am living in disobedience in this other area, God should be happy. He's not. And we use the example of a chain with an egg at the bottom. It doesn't matter which link you break. The egg still falls to the ground, splits open, and its contents are spilled on the ground. So you cannot say, at least all the other links are OK. It's only this one. Well, look at the effect. God is unhappy with you. Well thankfully today we are studying something a lot more positive and the title of my sermon is the response of the godly to sin. Before we go to look at the false, let's look at the true, that which pleases God. And we see it in Samuel's response when God announced to him that there was sin in the life of the king. How did Samuel respond? We are told first of all that this is what God said to him. The word of the Lord came to Samuel, I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments. In other words, Saul has sinned. How did Samuel respond to this? Well, there were at least three responses, one after the other. And as we look at Saul's response, I want us to examine ourselves, I want us to examine ourselves as individuals and collectively as God's people and say to ourselves, is this the way we respond to the reality of sin, either in ourselves or in others? Let me suggest to you three truths that we learn from Samuel about the way the godly respond to sin. First of all, when a godly soul finds out about sin, one emotion that they show is that of righteous anger. Righteous anger. That's how the prophet Samuel reacted to the news that Saul had seen. Look with me quickly at his first response. We are told there, when the word of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I regret that I've made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments, we are told, and Samuel was angry. Samuel was angry. This is not a mere losing of one's temper to the point where if perhaps Saul was nearby, he would have received a slap or something. This is righteous anger, or what the Bible refers to as righteous indignation. And it arises not because Samuel himself was offended, not as though something was done against Samuel, but rather it is out of a jealousy for the glory of God. It is a sense of outrage. that this dignified being, God, the one who has made us, who feeds us, who looks after us in every sense, the one that we ought to give our rightful worship to, that his word, his commands, his laws are not being jealously obeyed. That sense of outrage is what causes this anger that is being spoken about. And this is nothing strange. We find it over and over and over again in the Bible. You remember When Moses was told that the children of Israel had gone into idolatry while he was up on Mount Sinai, and he came down with the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone, the moment he saw that golden calf and the people of Israel worshipping, he broke the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. He just crushed them completely. He was a person who obviously was angry at what was taking place. You also remember an individual called Phineas. There are a number of Phineases, but this one was the righteous, the godly Phineas in the days of Balaam and Balak. Balak had tried to get Balaam to curse the people of Israel so that he would defeat them. And each time Balaam tried, out of his mouth came a blessing instead of a curse. So finally, somewhere behind the sins, Belam advised Belak that the only way you can make these people sin is rather to get the curse is by making them sin against God. And the worst sin you can get them into is that of idol worship. And so that's exactly what was introduced among the Israelites. They began to live with their neighbors who were idolaters and idols were consequently brought in. They began to intermarry and so on and God's curse, a plague actually, came upon the people of Israel because of their sin and it was Phineas who took a spear and entered into the tent of one of the Israelites who was in bed with a Gentile and speared both of them to the ground through their belly. And that's how God's plague was taken away from the people of Israel. Thousands had died up to that moment. You remember Nehemiah, basically the same thing again. In the last chapter of the book of Nehemiah, the people of Israel were intermarrying. And he was so upset when he found out what was going on that, let me read the way he puts it, because these are his own words. He was praying to God about it and saying, God, please remember me. I have sorted these guys out. Remember me. And this is the way he puts it. In verse 25, he said, oh sorry, the last chapter of Nehemiah, chapter 13, verse 25, he says, and I confronted them, and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. Now that's anger. You can't describe it in any other way. He was angry with them and so he used unpalatable language. He beat them up. He pulled out their hair. Another obvious example is our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is normally known for his gentleness, gentle shepherd. But you know what happened when he entered the temple and found that they had tended into a bazaar. They were selling and buying the various animals and birds and so on. He went and put together a whip and came back in and literally whipped them out of the entire place. And the text that is quoted there is zeal for thy house has consumed me. That's what the disciples remembered. In 2 Corinthians and chapter 7, a passage I'll refer to again and again, so you may need to put your finger there, the Apostle Paul was speaking about the evidence that made him realize that the Corinthians had repented of their sin. the sin that had become commonplace among them. He says, one of the ways in which I knew that you people were with godly repentance, godly repentance, is your anger, the anger that you had. Listen to this. Chapter 7, 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 10. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness, have you seen that? What earnestness, but let's go on. this godly grief has produced, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, that is anger, what wrath, what fear, what longing, what zeal, and there it is again, what punishment. In other words, these brethren made sure that the person who had sinned felt the chastisement because of their sin. Now, this is not simply because somebody has sinned once. This is often with respect to stubborn sin and that's what happened with Saul. You remember it was in chapter 13, we looked at it last time. In chapter 13, he had already done this same kind of sin. He couldn't wait for Samuel to arrive. He offered a sacrifice which could only be done by priests. Kings were not allowed to do that. But he went ahead and did so, and he sinned against the Lord in chapter 13. And so Samuel had said to him in verse 13, you have done foolishly. You've not kept the command of the Lord your God with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel. The point is, again, he did not do God's command. Literally two chapters later, again, he is not doing God's command. It is this stubborn sin that made Samuel angry. And friends, it should be the same with us. that where we are seeing somebody stubbornly continuing in sin, there should be righteous indignation within us, especially where this sin has to do with somebody, for instance, who's a leader. In this particular case, Saul was a leader, and therefore, Samuel could not take this lying down Here is a leader of God's people. Look what he is doing Leaders mislead many and that's what's happening even in the churches today We have so-called prophets usually in their middle ages who are misleading people by their thousands. Surely, we cannot be keeping quiet. It's wrong, a thousand times wrong. They are living in obvious, well-known promiscuity. And then come Sunday, they enter the pulpit and start giving very nice stories about how people will be successful if they can only get anointing from them. That should make us angry as God's people. Because they are misleading thousands, if not millions of people across the world. Where there is true godliness, there should be righteous indignation. We cannot afford to remain politically correct. We cannot afford to remain just nice people, nice. Righteous anger should surely be exhibited by those who are truly godly, where this kind of sin is rampant. But secondly, when a godly soul finds out about sin, another emotion that they show is that of sorrow. Sorrow. That's how the prophet Samuel responded. Let's go back to our text. We are told there, and Samuel was angry and he cried to the Lord all night. He was angry and he cried. He was angry and he wept. He was angry and he mourned. That's a truly godly soul. Now you may be saying to yourself, how do you end up with these two emotions in the soul of one person? Well, the reason is quite simple. It is when Saul thought about, rather when Samuel thought about Saul and what he has done, he became angry. When he thought about God, he was broken. And that's why you read the words that he cried to the Lord. He cried to the Lord all night. He was just utterly broken in the presence of God when he realized this. And that's the way it truly is. On one hand, there is the outrage. How could he? How could she? Come on, how? And then on the other, you are before the Lord and you are saying, Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, forgive. Lord, be gracious. And you weep and weep and weep. In the Beatitudes, the Lord Jesus Christ gives the way in which people come to salvation. And the first Beatitude is blessed are the poor in spirit, referring to a recognition of our own sinfulness. But the next one is blessed are those who mourn. inevitably. When you recognize sin in your life, sin in the lives of others, the response inevitably is that of mourning. Blessed are those who mourn. And this is what the Apostle Paul, back to our text in 2 Corinthians, this is what he refers to here. Notice the godly grief, 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 10. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. Then he says, foresee what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you. And then he adds there indignation. What indignation? Both of those emotions are in the same soul. In the evening services we've been looking at the minor prophets and more recently we have been looking at Joel and it's something that Joel keeps referring to again and again. Where there is godliness and sin is present, there is weeping, there is mourning before the Lord. And it was also his exhortation to them. Joel, I'll just quickly read in chapter one, it's a statement, and then chapter two, exhortation. So chapter one of Joel, verse nine, The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn the ministers of the Lord. They mourn because of the consequences of sin. Chapter 2. Chapter 2. Verse 12. Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments. Tear your hearts, he is saying, rather than tearing your clothes. Mourn and weep. Verse 17. Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. And this is the way they will be weeping. Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, where is their God? Why should the heathen be celebrating? Lord, have mercy. Forgive. Be gracious to your people, weeping before the Lord. Is that our attitude in the presence of sin? Are we individuals who are so broken, first of all, about the sinfulness of our own hearts, our own hearts? that we, as it were, fall upon our knees, with our elbows upon our beds, and just break down and cry. Break down and cry. Is that the way we are? Sadly, earlier, instead of anger, we talked about being politically correct, being nice, And sadly, it's common to hear people joking about sin. Joking. And somebody who is a well-known wicked and evil person, they even say, chachave. Chachave. As though to say, he's a hero. A hero in sin. He's a hero. Someone who's sexually perverse, they even say, ooh, he's finished all the women. All the women, he's finished them. He's finished them. Instead of weeping before the Lord that there is such rampant wickedness among us. Let's hurry on. When a godly soul finds out about sin, they quickly want to tackle it. to secure repentance. They quickly want to tackle it to secure repentance. That's how the prophet Samuel responded to the news from God that Saul had sinned. Look at verse 12, the first part. Verse 12, the first part. The Bible reads there, And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning. He rose early. He's been praying and crying and weeping and mourning, we are told, the whole night. Then fasting in the morning. He gets his staff and heads out to go and meet Saul. Friends, this is obvious. It's obvious. If there is anger in your soul, and at the same time there's grief in your soul, tell me, are you able to do anything else? Are you able to concentrate on your work? Whether it's schoolwork or your career, are you able? Are you able to eat the rest of the day? You can't. This thing troubles you. It affects you. And consequently, it becomes the next item on your agenda. Becomes the next item on the agenda. I must go and deal with this matter. Again, if we go back to 2 Corinthians and chapter 7, notice the words that are used there, and again you can see that there was a sense of urgency, a sense of urgency. The Apostle Paul says in verse 11, foresee what earnestness, there it is, earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness, there it is, eagerness to clear yourselves. You're saying I'm going to deal with this matter now, rather than postpone the matter. doesn't just end there. He says with indignation. Rather, what indignation? What fear? What longing? And there it is another word, what zeal? What zeal? That's what we're seeing here. It is zeal in Samuel. I'm going out there to deal with this matter. No, but you haven't eaten your breakfast. Why don't you wait? This matter needs to be dealt with. And so Paul says, when he looks at the Corinthians, I know that you are godly. I know it. Because all these symptoms are showing there. I'm asking, is that us? Is that us? We are seeing a person who claims to be a Christian, beginning to exhibit signs of sinking their roots in sin. Do we make it our chief business that this matter must be dealt with? Are we so affected that we will not postpone the issue? No! We want to deal with this matter once and for all. The name of our God is being dragged in the mud. There's no way I can be sleeping on a soft pillow. I can't. This matter needs to be dealt with once and for all. Sadly, What is common today is that of postponement, postponement. And even when in cases of elders dealing with individuals, and they say to those individuals, fine, you claim that you've repented, you go and apologize to that person, that person, that person, because you have offended them. You then meet with them. a month later and say, uh-huh, well, I'm yet to do so. Why? Well, I still intend to. No, friends. Where there is genuine repentance, you can't continue eating and sleeping a whole month and I'm still intending to do so. That's not repentance. where there is true godliness. Issues of sin disturb us to the point where I must handle them and handle them now. They are not postponed. But in our text, thankfully, before we get to Saul, God gives us an example of a godly person responding to the reality of sin. So that we might begin with the positive. We might examine ourselves. We might check ourselves and say, is this our attitude? Is this our attitude? Samuel was told about Saul's sin. He became angry. He was filled with sorrow. And he took it upon himself to go and confront Saul. Does that describe you this morning? Does it? Does sin make you angry? Does sin make you grieve? Does sin make you get up off your backside and go and deal with it? That's it. Let me suggest to you that this is not natural. It's not. It's only natural when the sin is against you. When someone has insulted your mother. And everything else. Your animal instincts come to the fore. You even get... That's normal. That's natural. But when it's to do with God, it's only when the Holy Spirit is working in your heart. Only the Holy Spirit produces this. That's why it's being called godly grief, godly indignation. It's only the Holy Spirit who makes God, His honor, and His glory so real to your soul. that you don't treat sin as that little thing there, it's none of my business, you know, it's his own life, me, I've got my own life to live. Uh-uh, it doesn't do that. The Spirit of God awakens the reality of the glory of God in your soul, that to recognize that people are dragging His name in the mud, you basically rise like Phineas and pick up your spear and say I'm going to deal with this matter in the midst of your grief because God must be honored. God must be glorified. You feel the sin and you react to it. You react to it. Is the Holy Spirit in you? Is it? is in you. Friends, it bothers me that Individuals, as we're hearing in the members meeting yesterday from Elder Botha, individuals are cracking jokes with individuals who are under excommunication. Individuals who are stubbornly in sin. And they're thinking, is the person alive spiritually? Is this person alive? Is he? They are cracking jokes with a person who's living in sin. Stubbornly in sin. And that's supposed to be because, you know, it won't look nice. You know, it won't look nice. So you need to pretend. No. Let's exhibit genuine godliness. Genuine godliness. And we have an example here. As I said, if your friend has been excommunicated, the next thing you do is you write a note to that friend of yours and say, this is what it has now cost you because you've continued in sin. I warned you, I warned you, you wouldn't listen. Now there you have it. That's where our friendship ends, my friend, because I'm a friend of God. whose name you've been dragging in the mud. You speak to him yourself urgently. You don't wait until six months and then you address it. No, no, no, no, no, no. The sin is there, you address it. That's the response of a godly soul. Similarly, when the person is restored, you act quickly. You embrace them because you know that they've come back to genuine godliness. The godly respond this way to see. Is that the way we are responding? I suspect we are not because we That's why we have not known God as we ought. That's why. He's not there working actively in our souls. So we respond like the people of the world respond. That's the way we are responding as well. May God help us to respond appropriately. It will take us to Christ. for forgiveness with weeping and crying. Jesus, wash my sins away. It will also cause us to implore others who are living in sin to rush to Calvary, because that's where forgiveness is. Even for the worst of sinners, we will plead with them to go to Christ, to rush to Christ, not to waste any time because they desperately need Christ. May God help us to be those kinds of people. Amen.