Destroy it all

Today we will be looking at the fruit of disobedience, based on the stories of Saul and Agag, and Haman, Mordecai and Esther. You may not know this (and I didn’t for a long time) but these stories are actually linked. You know I always bring the tea people! So let’s get started.

In the book of 1 Samuel chapter 15, God gave Saul a simple command: ‘go and attack Amalek and COMPLETELY destroy EVERYTHING they have.’ To the obedient heart, there are no loopholes here, ‘everything’ is pretty clear and I would like to believe that Saul went into that mission ready to destroy everything, that was until he saw the nice and desirable things, the opportunities, the cattle and other livestock. Even if you have not read the story, you can probably infer that Saul did not do what God had asked him. What he did and what we often do, was to partially obey – which by definition is still disobedience. Saul destroyed all the worthless and despised things (which is easy to do) but kept the nice things and even kept King Agag of the Amalekites alive. Saul then had the cheek to say he wanted to offer the animals as a sacrifice to God – yeah right!

Now, I’ll stop here and dissect how this applies to us. When we get saved and on our journey as Christians, it is easy to reject murder and stealing (for example) because those are societally agreed wrongs. But then there are those other things (which we persist in and seldom repent from) that we some how think God can’t see or ignores: lying, gossiping, fornicating etc. The other side to this is: God tells us to do something (or not do something) and we pick and choose the aspects that make sense to us and perhaps fit with our limited understanding of God – this is still disobedience. Just as obedience bares fruit, so does disobedience and the fruit of Saul’s disobedience here is found in the book of Esther chapter 3.

Agag being kept alive probably meant that others were able to escape too as Saul was neither zealous nor thorough in carrying out God’s instruction. This act of disobedience led to the birth of Haman, some few hundred years later. Haman was given a position of honour by King Xerxes which meant that people had to bow and pay him homage – essentially worship him. However there was one man who refused – Mordecai. His disobedience, I must add, was not sinful because it went against his beliefs as a Jew. Mordecai was also a product of a seed sown in generations past. In 2 Samuel 16:5-13, King David is cursed by a man called Shimei, this leads to his advisors telling him to kill the man but David showed mercy. Because of this act of humility (read the story if you haven’t, for further context) generations later, Mordecai – a noble man – was born.

Because of Mordecai’s act of disobedience, Haman received demonic inspiration to not just kill Mordecai but annihilate all Jews in the Kingdom of Xerxes. Could it have been that Haman grew up hearing tales of how these people had killed his ancestors in the past and this led to deep-seated hatred? We will never know. What we do know however, is that Saul’s disobedience almost led to the genocide of Jews in that land. But God, as always, had a plan and put things and people in place so that it ended up being Haman and his ten sons who were killed and Mordecai exalted by the king.

I hope this illustration – although extreme – shows clearly the consequences of disobedience not just for us now but even for our families in the future. I hope it also shows that God always has a plan, He preserves, saves and causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him. Esther and Mordecai were clearly raised to be God-fearing, selfless people and because of this, God was able to use them in a situation that could have ended a lot differently. I pray we are spurred on to be more obedient when it doesn’t seem comfortable as well as when it does.