The Kenites represent the merely natural and earthly things which are blessings to those who receive them in faith, but curses and hindrances to the unbelieving, and used by the god of this world to blind their thoughts, but which are not to be confounded with that which the Lord has devoted to eternal wrath and destruction.
Saul smote the Amalekites throughout the length and breadth of their land, just as the Jewish system swept away everything that was opposed to the law and the holy place, but as while apparently exterminating the foe, he and the people spared all that was good, utterly destroying that only which was vile and refuse. So the Jewish system while pretending to a great zeal for God, suppressing with a stern hand everything that opposed itself to the authorized worship, yet spared everything that commended itself to fleshly religiousness, incorporating with itself and using for its own glory and advancement the very things which formed the mainstay and pride of the false worship and idolatry which surrounded them, namely, fear and sensuality.
From Matt. 14 commences the final trial, failure, and consequent rejection of the politico-religious system, first as to its political aspect and character. John (of whom Samuel is a type, both, the spiritual link between the old and the new, and the real witness for God of which the fleshly manifest thing was but a shadow, yet having a connection with and responsibility towards it) comes to Herod as one under responsibility to obey the law of God as King over His inheritance, and commands him to put away his brother's wife, to slay the pleasant sine. This, Herod refuses to do, and sparing the sin he slays the witness, and is himself cut off from any part in the kingdom to come. (Ver. 13. Compare 1 Sam. 15:1-29.)
Jesus, while showing His deep and utter abhorrence of all fleshly lusts by withdrawing Himself to a desert place apart yet at the smile time makes known His complete sympathy with all the needs of man's nature no matter how common or apparently trivial. He was moved with compassion about them and healed their infirm, and when the disciples would have dismissed the crowd to buy food for themselves, Jesus sympathizes with their hunger, saying, “They have no need to go; give ye them to eat.”
In the case of Herod is seen the high-handed disobedience to the revealed will of God, disobedience to a positive distinct command for and disregard of His warning voice.
From Matthew 14:13-34 the faithful Jews as represented in Peter—who is the characteristic of the Israelite under the Jewish system—are found also failing to enter into the full blessing and power of the work of God. God commands man to exercise faith and obey His word upon the ground of what He has done in the past, and of what He is in the present, as in the case of Saul. Here also the Lord first feeds five thousand men—representing the faithful ones in Israel, with five loaves and two fishes, and when all had eaten and were filled, causes to be gathered up twelve hand-baskets full of fragments, showing that there had been enough and to spare for all Israel—the whole twelve tribes had all had faith to partake thereof. By this work He proves His ability to supply every need; indeed making His disciples the hand by which He distributed His bounty, so that they could not have failed to be aware of the fullness of His power and grace, and with this plain lesson upon their minds He immediately compels them to go alone on board ship in order that He may test their faith and bring it into exercise. Yet having come to them walking on the sea and saying to them, “Take courage; it is I: be not afraid,” and then commanding Peter upon his own solicitation to come to Him upon the waters, expecting him to exercise faith and the power of obedience upon the ground of what He had done in the past, and of what He was as then and there present; yet Peter, though at first walking in the success of faith, fails, seeing the wind strong and fearing, and is compelled to take the place of a helpless, lost one, for beginning to sink he cries out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus acknowledges the cry of faith, catches hold of him in his extremity; points out the cause of his failure in his walk, and, having gone up into the ship, makes the wind to drop, and brings thereby the others to the perfect confession of faith, “Truly thou art God's Son.”
In chapter 15 is displayed the willful high-handed disobedience to the command of God of the politico-religious system in its spiritual aspect and character, the cause and method of the disobedience is declared, and consequent rejection indicated. Our Lord is attacked by the Scribes and Pharisees in His character as servant of the circumcision (Jesus-Jonathan) on the ground that He had broken the commands of the ancients. He replies as the sent One, the messenger of God, charging them with transgressing the commandment of God, showing that the cause of their failure both as to worship and service was that their heart was far away from God though they honored Him with their lips (Matt. 15:8, 9), and that it was not what a man put into his mouth that brought him into judgment (compare Matt. 15:11; 1 Sam. 14:43), but what, coming out, was in his heart, rebellion, disobedience, and departing from the living God (compare Matt. 14:18; 1 Sam. 15:11, 22, 23); that lip-worship and man's teaching were alike abominable to God, and that only the honoring Him with the heart and obeying His commands, were acceptable in His eight, and the Pharisees thus refusing to root up out of the things of God that which the Father had not planted, but sparing the religious things of flesh, though honorable and good, the best and fattest that could be found and bringing them to sacrifice unto the Lord, should be themselves rooted out-blind leaders of the blind would both fall into the ditch.
Matt. 15:21-28 points to the period of transition wherein the grace and salvation which was the promised portion of the Jews upon their refusal of it goes out to the outcast woman of Canaan, pleading, as to the Lord's mind about it for the whole Gentile world, which she typically represented, so that our Lord's apparent reluctance to grant her the desired blessing, was not only that her faith might be fully drawn out by causing her to see her right place, which it assuredly was, but it was also to Him, doubtless, a foretaste and commencement of the casting away of the Jew and the bringing in of the Gentile, the making of the first last and the last first, which to Him as Israel's Messiah, the One of whom John was the voice, was a sad and terrible trial and perhaps formed the subject of His prayer in the mountain, even as at another time when the rejection was completed, the measure of iniquity being full, He wept bitter tears over Jerusalem.
So Samuel also was grieved at the sin and rejection of Saul, and cried unto the Lord all night. Samuel's words to Saul about his sin have a progressive character. When the word of the Lord comes to him saying, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king,” he cries unto the Lord all night, doubtless in intercession, that Saul might even then find a place for repentance; and had Saul taken his right place in confession, pardon would surely have been his, but instead he meets Samuel with a conscious lie— “I have performed.” Samuel does not lose hope and, still endeavoring to touch his conscience and bring him to confession, asks, “What then this bleating.... and lowing?” But instead of humbling Saul, this home-thrust only forces proud flesh to take a further step in sin, from rebellion he proceeds to stubbornness, actually pretending that his guilty act was meritorious and offering to return to God as a favor part of what he had stolen from Him as though he would make Him a participator in his crime.
This has always been the way with flesh after sin had entered. So Adam first makes a false excuse to cover his rebellion, and then—evading the direct question of God, refusing to confess his sin, which if he had done would perhaps have brought him into the results immediately of grace, showing that he was still rolling it as a sweet morsel under his tongue—he charges God with being the real cause of it, since it was He who had given the woman to be with him. So also Cain; confession coming too late, after judgment is pronounced.