Rebellion-As the Sin of Witchcraft

 Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying, 
It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night. 
And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on,
​and gone down to Gilgal. 
And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD. 
And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears,
and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? 
And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. 
Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the LORD hath said to me this night.
And he said unto him, Say on. 
And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head
of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over Israel? 
And the LORD sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites,
and fight against them until they be consumed. 
Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but didst fly upon the spoil,
and didst evil in the sight of the LORD? 
And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the LORD, and have gone the way which the LORD sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek,
and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. 
But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been
​utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Gilgal. 
And Samuel said, Hath 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 hearken than the fat of rams. 
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD,
​he hath also rejected thee from being king. 1Sam 15:10-23
​
Saul's Second Act of Disobedience

God will not accept a partial obedience to any of His commands. There is nothing strange or unreasonable in this. If a human ruler gives a command, he will not be satisfied if the person to whom he gives it obeys it just so far as it suits his convenience or agrees with his fancy and no farther. Anything less than a whole obedience is no obedience in the estimation of a fellow-creature. If a soldier receives an order from his general to execute a certain military movement, he is not expected to consult his own wishes or his own judgment, but he must sink his own will entirely in the will of his superior, and fulfil his command to the very letter. However stern may be the work to be done, whatever sacrifice of personal feeling may be involved, anything less than an observance of the commandment in its entirety will be counted as grave a crime as the non-observance of the whole. If a father directs his son to perform a given task, and the son executes about half of that which is required of him, the father will consider that his command has been disobeyed. If this is the case with human superiors, it cannot be expected that the Holy and All-wise God, whose commands—however stern they may sometimes seem—are always perfectly just and good, will be satisfied with less than an entire obedience to His commands. He is surrounded by ten thousand faithful and mighty angelic servants, who render to him a perfect and unquestioning service, and although imperfect and sinful creatures cannot offer to Him a service equal to theirs, yet there are Divine commands which men are able to carry out to the letter, and which they must so carry out if they would not incur the penalty of disobedient servants of the Most High. Such a command was that which was here given to Saul—it was one which he could obey—one for the non-observance of which he could not plead inability—one which he did not attempt to say he was unable to perform. His partial obedience was rejected—his non-observance of all the details of the Divine command was accounted as direct an act of defiance of God’s directions as if he had taken no action whatever against the Amalekites. And so God will ever account compliance with His commands, which is measured not by His requirements but by man’s inclinations.

Where the condition is not fulfilled which is included in the Divine plan of blessing, God repents, not by changing His mind, but by changing His method in relation to the sinner. It is obvious that God cannot undergo a change of disposition or of motive. He is perfect in goodness, and therefore, in all His dealings with His creatures He must always have their welfare in view. He must always be willing to do for them that which is best for their highest interests. It is not possible for the Ruler of the world to act from any of the unworthy motives which sometimes influence men in their conduct towards each other. And being as infinite in wisdom as He is in goodness, He can have no better plans than His original plans, no second thoughts which are better than His first. When, therefore, God speaks of Himself as repenting, He speaks of a change of His dealings with a man, which are the result of a change in that man’s attitude towards Himself. Such a change is quite compatible with an unchangeable character and disposition, and is, indeed, the result of it. To men of the same character God’s attitude is the same now as it was ages ago, and it will be the same to the end of time, and when a man’s relations to God are altered it is in consequence of a change in himself, and not in the unchangeable God. There was no change in God when, in consequence of Saul’s non-compliance with the conditions of kingship, God rejected him from being king over Israel. He had been anointed by “the Lord to be captain over His inheritance” (1Sa_10:1)—in other words to be His vicegerent in Israel, and when he refused to act in that capacity God proved His own unchangeableness by changing His method of dealing with him. A purpose of blessing on the part of God towards men always includes a condition to be fulfilled on their part, and a purpose of judgment always includes a continuance on the part of the sinner of the conduct which has provoked the judgment. This is the explanation of the repentance of God in relation to the men of the old world, and in relation to the Ninevites. In the first case God sent judgment because the offenders refused to repent, and in the second instance He revoked His sentence of judgment because the men of Nineveh were willing to forsake their sins and return to Him for pardon.
(See Gen_6:5-6; Jon_3:10).

Obedience is better than the offering to God of any other sacrifice.
1. Because it is a sacrifice of far higher value. Obedience is the giving up of the will to the will of another—it is therefore the sacrifice of the whole man. When a man has given himself thus to God, he has offered to Him all that he has to offer—all his powers of soul and body as well as all his material possessions. This was the sacrifice which Adam offered to his Maker before he sinned, and this is the offering which has been for ages offered to God by His sons who have never at any time resisted His will. This is far more precious, and therefore far more acceptable to the Lord, than “thousands of rams, or ten thousand rivers of oil” (Mic_6:7), because it is a spiritual and moral sacrifice.
2. It is a sacrifice which can be offered at any time and in any place. The sacrifices of the Levitical law were required to be offered in certain places. A man who desired to sacrifice to the Lord could only do so by coming up to the place appointed, and hence his offerings could only be made at intervals. But obedience is a sacrifice which can always be rendered to God—an expression of love to Him which can be made everywhere and always.
3. It is a sacrifice which every man can offer for himself. Even in Israel there might have been men at times too poor to be able to bring the least costly material offering to the altar of the Lord; but none is ever too poor to offer his will to God—to give himself up to His guidance and submit to His commands. And this is a sacrifice in which there is no need of the intervention of a third person—an offering in which every man can be his own priest.
4. It is the sacrifice which alone can make any other sacrifice acceptable. All other offerings without this are “vain oblations,” and even “an abomination” (Isa_1:13) unto Him who owns “every beast of the forest and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Psa_50:10). To expect a Holy and Spiritual Being to be willing to accept anything less than the offering of the heart, is to expect Him to be satisfied with less than would often content a fellow-creature. Many a man would spurn a gift which was not an outcome of inward feeling, and yet God’s creatures sometimes act as if they thought their Maker could be bribed by such an offering.  (Preacher's Homiletical)

Stubborn-Obstinate Disobedience
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. 1Sam 15:23

1Sa_15:23. Literally, “Rebellion is the sin of soothsaying, and opposition is heathenism and idolatry.”
Rebellion - Disobedience to God's command. Stubbornness - Contumacy in sin, justifying it, and pleading for it. Iniquity - Or, the iniquity of idolatry. Rejected - Hath pronounced the sentence of rejection: for that he was not actually deposed by God before, plainly appears, because not only the people, but even David, after this, owned him as king. Those are unworthy to rule over men, who are not willing that God should rule over them.  (John Wesley)

Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord — Saul was either blinded by a partial and delusive self-love, or he was, in his declaration to Samuel, acting the part of a bold and artful hypocrite. He professed to have fulfilled the divine command, and that the blame of any defects in the execution lay with the people. Samuel saw the real state of the case, and in discharge of the commission he had received before setting out, proceeded to denounce his conduct as characterized by pride, rebellion, and obstinate disobedience. When Saul persisted in declaring that he had obeyed, alleging that the animals, whose bleating was heard, had been reserved for a liberal sacrifice of thanksgiving to God, his shuffling, prevaricating answer called forth a stern rebuke from the prophet. It well deserved it - for the destination of the spoil to the altar was a flimsy pretext - a gross deception, an attempt to conceal the selfishness of the original motive under the cloak of religious zeal and gratitude."  (JFB comm)
Corresponding references: ​witchcraft: Heb. divination, Exo_22:18; Lev_20:6, Lev_20:27; Deu_18:10-11; Isa_8:19, Isa_19:3; Rev_22:15
​stubbornness: 2Co_6:16; Gal_5:20; Rev_21:8
thou hast rejected: 1Sa_2:30, 1Sa_13:14, 1Sa_16:1; 2Ki_17:15-20; 1Ch_28:9

Shallow Repentance Unavailing

Samuel was deeply moved when he heard of Saul’s failure, “and he cried unto the Lord all night.” Thus he was prepared to accost the sinful king. Mr. Finney tells of a minister who was so burdened with the souls of men that he could do but little preaching, his whole time and strength being given to prayer. It is only in that spirit that men like Samuel can undertake their solemn duty.
Saul’s response was very unsatisfactory. He began by laying the blame on the people, 1Sa_15:21.
1Sa 15:21  But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Gilgal. 
He pretended that the object of sparing the cattle, etc., was to sacrifice them to God-a very hypocritical excuse, 1Sa_15:22.
1Sa 15:22  And Samuel said, Hath 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 hearken than the fat of rams. 
​Without any deep consciousness of sin, he lightly professed sorrow, and hoped to pacify Samuel by asking that they might kneel together in worship, 1Sa_15:25. When the old prophet refused to let him off so easily, the only thing that Saul cared for was that the elders should still honor him, 1Sa_15:30.
1Sa 15:30  Then he said, I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD thy God. 
​How hardened Saul had become. This was the beginning of the sin unto death.  ​(F.B. Meyer)

​Related verses: