signs of life

Does it ever happen to you that a similar theme keeps recurring throughout the day? I notice this often, especially on Sundays. It happened again yesterday.

We stayed home from church in the morning because we’re still on ushering duty in the third (evening) service. As a result, Ernie channel-surfed, and found one of our favorite Sunday speakers, Charles Price (pastor of the People’s Church - Toronto). He’s doing a series from the Old Testament - the life of Saul. Yesterday he spoke on the event of Saul, sparing the Amalekite king Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle after God had expressly commanded him to destroy everything (1 Samuel 15).

In his interesting way, CP showed how Saul’s sin was one we easily commit ourselves, i.e., the sin of partial obedience. Saul destroyed most of what he was supposed to destroy. But his obedience was selective. In his judgement, some of this was too good, too useful to kill and burn, and so he kept the best of the sheep and cattle, supposedly to offer them to God, though these things were cursed, and marked by God for destruction. (My thoughts - I don’t think Saul was really planning to sacrifice these things at all. I think his excuse, that he’d spared them to sacrifice was something he had in his back pocket, just in case he got found out. I think his real intent was to add this livestock to his own herd.) And he spared the king Agag - perhaps for strategic and political reasons - who knows?

Anyway, God was not fooled. Samuel came to Saul and confronted him: "What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?" (1 Samuel 15:14).

"He was hearing," Dr. Price said, "signs of life, when there should not be any life left at all."

What sounds of life issue from our lives, he went on to ask. What things (habits, relationships, tangible objects) have we spared, and allowed to live on in our lives, when God has expressly told us, they must be destroyed? They may not be bad things in themselves. There is, after all, nothing inherently wrong with sheep and cattle. But God knows the hold the particular things he has asked us to destroy have on us and where our line of temptation lies. If He has told us to destroy something, no matter how good or legitimate it may appear, we are wise to obey fully.

He went on to show how Saul’s sparing of these Amalekites came back to haunt history. It was an Amalekite who may have completely finished off Saul (2 Samuel 1:1-15), and both Haman’s and Herod’s lineage can be traced to Amalekite roots.

In the evening service, our pastor also spoke of "signs of life." However, the signs of life he referred to were of the life of Christ he saw as he has traveled in the last two weeks from Israel, to Russia, to Turkey to Kazakhstan. Some of the things he observed were hospitality, genuine love, confession of sin and wrong in community, generosity (the Kazakhstan church took up an offering for our church in Canada!), sacrifice for Jesus, biblical values, and standing firm under persecution.

And so today, as I weave together the strands of yesterday, I ask myself, what ‘signs of life’ issue from me? Am I characterized by hospitality, love, admission and confession of sin, generosity, sacrifice for Jesus, biblical values, and a willingness to undergo persecution? Or is there also the "bleating of sheep...lowing of cattle" where there should be silence?