I think we're learning a lesson in 2021 from the previous year: God will not share His people with anyone or anything else. Consider all of the things and institutions we, who say we follow Jesus, place our hope in: politics, sports, social media, popular speakers and leaders, media personalities, and so many other things beside. We have watched God systematically, as He did in Egypt, dismantle the gods we have set up for ourselves. This has been our problem from the beginning: we decide what is right in our own eyes instead of following God and His definitions of what is right and what is not. We keep setting up for ourselves gods that celebrate our own pride and arrogance, we set up monuments to our own selfishness and call it righteous, and we get surprised, angered and shocked when our gods turn out not to be anything at all. We need to drop to our knees and beg His forgiveness! We need to humbly approach the throne, and cast our crowns at His feet. We have not submitted to His will, instead, we have designed something that we think is like his will (confusing statement, but think about it), and submitted to our own design instead. God will not share you with anything else. He will not accept our worship while we set up monuments and idols to ourselves. As Saul was removed as King, so we too will be removed if we continue in our disobedience. It's time to humble ourselves and pray, and trust that God, who has always been the God of justice, is still on the throne, that He will remain there, and that We are to look to Him, not our own devices, for our salvation. It is God alone that saves, not our works, not our intentions, not our righteousness. He will not share us, so let us seek Him only. 1 Samuel 15:10-23 10 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. And it was told Samuel, “Saul came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument for himself and turned and passed on and went down to Gilgal.” And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.” Then Samuel said to Saul, “Stop! I will tell you what the Lord said to me this night.” And he said to him, “Speak.”
And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And the Lord sent you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?” And Saul said to Samuel, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me. I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.” And Samuel said,
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has also rejected you from being king.”
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