I made a big mistake when I began to read and study in preparation for this sermon on 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13. I decided to go back first and read all of Chapter 15, just to see what could possibly have happened to King Saul to bring us to the tragic point in the story of Israel where we read: "Samuel grieved over Saul, and the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel." (1 Samuel 15:35)

And that was my mistake, reading Chapter 15, because I got hooked on Saul! Instead of finding Saul a tyrant, blasphemer, apostate, I found Saul to be a perfectly reasonable, understandable, common-sense sort of guy. I found Saul a person who, faced with the situation he faced, made the kind of decisions you might have made or I might have made.

The situation was this: God, through Samuel, told Saul …