But if that's what it takes to praise You Jesus...

"...So I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.” 13 And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have 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 forever. 14 But now your kingdom shall not continue..."

Context: It's Israel vs Philistines and Saul is king, Samuel is the seer, or the prophet. Saul was at Gilgal and I think the Philistines were at Michmash, to the east of Beth-aven. Saul was waiting for Samuel to come and then offer the sacrifice, I think under Samuel's authority. Saul's motive for the sacrifice was to "sought out the favor of the Lord" (v. 12).

According to the above passage we see that Saul "forced" the offering of the burnt offering and according to Samuel, it was "foolish" and disobedient.

But WHY?? Why was it forced?

"...And Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you (Samuel) did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash, 12 I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the Lord.’..."

"When I saw" (Got this from my Bible's notes, The Reformation Study Bible)

Basically Saul was like, "Oh no people are leaving, ahh how are we gonna win now? I need to do something cause the Philistines are coming soon"

(The second part about what Saul said, "I have not sought the favor of the Lord,"

I honestly think that Saul said that because he was responding to Samuel and needed to find some legit excuse why he forced the offering, some legit spiritual-related or God-related excuse so that Samuel would partially say in his mind, "Oh I see, you just wanted the favor of the Lord, that's good of you." In this way, "that's good of you" the rebuke of Samuel would be less harsher and Samuel would give Saul more credit...but in his (Saul's) mind, Saul really just didn't want the people to leave. Either way, what Saul did was WRONG.)

So we can see from verse 11-12 that Saul was worried. Worried about what? That he would not be able to defeat the Philistines, or basically, that God will not deliver. He did not trust in the Lord for Israel's success, deliverance, and in some sense, salvation.

What was the result? "your kingdom shall not continue"

So what can we learn from this? Is it salvation/deliverance/God's favor by works? Based on "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you."??

I think it's the opposite.

See Saul was trying to do things on his own, instead of obeying God. I think salvation by works is similar. We are always trying to do good things to outweigh the bad as if to say, "Oh no, I am going to die, and I need to be good to go to Heaven, so I need to do good. I need to do good things so that when God sees me, He can be like, 'Oh yeah you did many good things, more good than bad, therefore, you are good.' So I need to do these things, out of my own ability, I need to FORCE these things so that I can go to Heaven" (similar to Saul).

But I think we need to RELY on God, TRUST in God, and whatever He says the plan is, let's do that, let's obey and submit and rest on that GOD WILL DELIVER. and God HAS! through His SON JESUS CHRIST, that if we have saving faith in Jesus we will be saved. Rely on God, trust God, faith in Jesus, faith in God. That's it, and our own selfish efforts (like that of Saul) are in vain and are "foolish" and disobedient.

What do you think?