"Good is Always the Enemy of the Best" Youth Bible Study on 1 Samuel 13 and 15

Brief: Obeying God is always a better idea than doing what makes sense to us.

Intro Question

How do you decide what is right and what is wrong?

If you have an idea to do something, how do you decide if it’s a good idea or a bad idea?

 

Recap

We read last time about how the people of Israel wanted a king. We’re going to read today about a couple of things this new king did.

 

Scripture: 1 Samuel 13:1-14; 15:1-23; Proverbs 3:5

 

Read 1 Samuel 13:1-14

Samuel says that King Saul broke God’s command. What command did Saul break? (Saul broke the rule that only priests were allowed to sacrifice animals.)

Why did Saul break the rule? (Samuel the priest hadn’t come to do it, so Saul thought it would be a good idea for him to do it.)

Saul’s reason is good. He had a good idea. But it wasn’t the best idea. He should have known that the best idea was not to break God’s rule, no matter what. If you have an idea, always ask yourself, what does God say about what I’m thinking? What does God think about what I’m about to do? If the idea doesn’t involve breaking any of God’s rules, maybe it is a good idea. But you know that if the idea somehow goes against God’s rules, then it’s not the best idea you could come up with.

 

Read 1 Samuel 15:1-23

What did Saul do wrong this time? (He decided to sacrifice the animals instead of killing them like God had told him to do.)

Would it normally have been a good idea to sacrifice the animals to God? (Yes.)

Except God told him to do something different. It was a good idea to sacrifice the animals, but the best idea is to listen to God.

Why do you think God wanted Saul to kill the animals instead of bringing them back to sacrifice?

The truth is I don’t know why God didn’t want Saul to sacrifice the animals. But we don’t always have to understand why God wants us to do something, do we? We simply need to have to listen to Him. We need to listen to God and have faith that God knows what it is right, even when we don’t understand why He says something.

 

Read Proverbs 3:5

This verse is telling us that we need to trust God and listen to Him. We need to trust Him and do what He says instead of what we might think is a good idea, and we need to trust Him and do what He says even when we don’t understand why He wants us to do something. We simply need to trust that God is smarter than we are and that He knows what’s best.