Scripture: 1 Samuel 28:3-25
Sermon Series: 1 Samuel: God of Reversals – Sermon 29
In a 2017 Slate Magazine article entitled, Why the Witch Is the Pop-Culture Heroine We Need Right Now, Kathryn VanArendonk (picture) wrote:
“Over the last several decades, witch stories [like] The Witches of Eastwick have reclaimed the witch as a powerful, admirable, and appealing figure…It’s Wicked, which turns The Wizard of Oz into a fable about power, othering, and female friendship. It’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch using magic as a metaphor for teen girl awkwardness and teen girl power. Even Bewitched, a show that looks like it’s about a witch trying to fly under the radar as a 1950s housewife, is actually about Samantha Stephens flouting her dumb husband’s anti-witchcraft prejudices…It’s witchiness as selfhood, focused less on witchcraft as a practice and more on the witch as a feminist identity.”
Today if you connect brooms (broom) and pointed hats with witches, you’re out of touch. Being a witch and witchcraft is culturally acceptable. There are 1.5 million Wiccans in the U.S. But this morning is not a Halloween sermon, yet a main character in our text is a witch or a medium.
1 Samuel 28 (p. 250) is one of the strangest and saddest chapters in the Bible. We see things here that don’t happen anywhere else. This account of King Saul and the medium of En-Dor interrupts the narrative about David.
In chapter 27 the writer is in the middle of giving us an account of God’s dealings with David and suddenly Saul is the center of attention. When last we met, David was being asked to join the battle against Israel by the Philistine king. He’s being severely tested. Just when we want to see how it will be resolved, the story breaks off to this crisis in Saul’s life. This account of The Witch and the King, this tragic episode in Saul’s lifehas powerful lessons for us. If you’re taking notes.
1.There is grave danger in shutting God out of your life, vs. 3-7. Is it possible to be extremely active in God’s church and not really know the Lord at all? For some, this kind of question makes no sense. It may not even seem worth asking. How could a person not know God if they’re active in His church? But consider this – Is it possible to be married to someone for 20 or 30 years and not really love them? Absolutely. Could you raise a child and not really like them? Yes. Just being in the vicinity of where God is at work is no guarantee of intimacy with Him.
The Bible repeatedly demonstrates that it’s often the very religious active who find it the most difficult to truly know God. Some of the most self-deluded are those who are active in our churches. This passage in front of us gives us graphic details of that kind of self-deception and the tragic end of such a life.
The passage repeats again that Samuel had died. Saul hadn’t had significant contact with Samuel since the prophet announced that the Lord had rejected Saul from being king. But now, with a crisis on the forefront, the irreparable break with the death of Samuel, became unbearable for Saul. The writer then adds an important piece of information that’s vital for this account. “And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land” (vs. 1).
Without God, without God’s man, Samuel – Saul is suffering from the silence of God. He’s at a place that’s the darkest of all human experiences. He’s utterly hopeless and there’s no prospect of things improving in the future. Hopelessness, when it overcomes someone, strips away motivation for living. That’s Saul. He’s at the bottom of the bottom in his life.
The occult was part of Canaanite paganism. It’s another reason why God instructed Israel to destroy the Canaanites. While Saul might have driven the occult out of the land, he’d never driven the dark side out of his own heart.
Without God people are terrified. Apparently, Saul had been so busy chasing David that he’d ignored the real threat to Israel – the Philistines. The battle lines are drawn in the Valley of Jezreel (map), which we’ll know in future as Armageddon. The presence of the Philistine army so far north shows Saul’s vulnerability. The Philistines are attempting to drive a wedge between Saul and the northern tribes. They’ve situated themselves on flat ground where their chariots can maneuver giving them the advantage.
It all paralyzes Saul with terror. “When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly” (vs. 5). The only other time this phrasing of being overwhelmed with fear was used was of Eli when he was terrified about what might happen to the Ark.
Fear pummeled this leader. The big guy of Israel is a shaking shell. But Saul is hardly alone. Fear is a defining characteristics of someone living without God. “Fear that does not take you to God, will take you away from God.” And it’s worse, if you’re already away from God, as Saul was.
Without God we’re fearful of the future, financial ruin, possible health problems, others’ opinions of us and even our own impending death. When life is going poorly, we fear that it will always be that way. When it’s going well, we fear it won’t last. Persistence of fear is an indication of the absence of God in our lives and a relationship with Him. Saul’s number one problem isn’t the Philistines. It’s that he faced life alone without God.
Disobedience silences God. Just as a child’s deliberate disobedience grieves a parent, our sin grieves God. The psalmist wrote, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Psalm 66:18). You can’t knowingly live in sin and love God.
Proverbs 28:9 states this truth in a different way: “If one turns away his ear from hearing [God’s] law, even his prayer is an abomination.” Saul chose to cherish sin and rebelled against God. Many in the Church do the same.
It happens so often. Someone ignores God and then complains that God is ignoring them. If you want God to leave you alone, be aware. God may give you what you want. He may leave you alone as He did Saul. God is silent because Saul silenced Him.
The problem is not that God hasn’t spoken to us, it’s that we really don’t want to hear what God has to say. We’re like the kid who puts his fingers in his ears. We don’t want to admit our need for God, submit or obey Him. We want His blessings without His commands or demands. It won’t work.
For decades Saul was content to live without God’s voice. Now that he’s facing a crisis, he’s desperate to hear from God. It’s a foxhole prayer but the heavens are silent. He’s afraid of the Philistines and now that God is silent, it increases his fear. If his first problem was the Philistine invasion, his second is that God has refused to answer him when he called: “And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets” (vs. 6). These were the three ways God typically communicated in those days but none was available to Saul.
Most noteworthy is the Urim which required a high priest. We have more questions than answers about how the Urim actually worked. It doesn’t matter though because Saul in a conspiratorial rage executed all the priests. He’d been earlier rebuked by Samuel for disobedience which he never repented of. Samuel is dead, so he has no prophet. God gives Saul the silent treatment.
When God speaks over and over again, but we won’t listen, we won’t obey, we need to be warned. God may choose to stop speaking and it will be too late on that day when we really need Him. It was for Saul. Saul can hear the shouts of the enemy but he can’t hear the voice of God. “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 13:17).
We find a tragic glimpse of this in the New Testament in Romans 1. People turned away from God though He’d spoken to them through His creation. They began to worship the creation so God abandoned them. Romans 1:26, “For this reason God gave them up…”
In light of Saul’s sin-darkened plight, Dale Ralph Davis (picture) urges Christians to reflect on the blessings of their own situation: “You may be exhausted from work. In fact, your employer may be giving you a raw deal…You have lost your health or family troubles are now cropping up. The text says there is something far worse. Do you realize what a solace it is in the face of all your failure to have access to the throne of grace and smiling face of God in prayer? Do you realize that all that you have suffered is not nearly so tragic as someone moaning, ‘God has turned away from me’.”
As there is no greater misery than to be abandoned by God in the hour of need, there is no greater comfort than to remember God’s gracious help for those who call on Him in faith. We can confidently say, “He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me’?” (Hebrews 13:5-6).
If we tune God out, we seek God-substitutes. Mark Twain (picture) said, “Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them.”
When we tune out God, we’ll look for God-substitutes. Instead of seeking God, Saul looks for a medium, a witch, who could contact the dead, something that God had strictly forbidden.
Saul asked His advisers where he might find a medium and they immediately reply, “There is a medium at En-Dor.” Wow! Saul had cleared the land of mediums and they knew exactly where to find one. How did they know that? Presumably because the Canaanite practices were still so embedded amongst the people. It would have been a far healthier situation if he’d said, “Go find a witch” and they said, “Well, we’ll get back to you maybe in a month or two. We haven’t had anything like that around here for a long time.” But they were able to immediately reply. I wish they could have said, “Nobody fits that description around here, King!”
En-Dor is six miles from his position, on the other side of the enemy camp. Saul is so desperate to get any light on the future that he’s willing to go behind enemy lines. Anytime you accept a God-substitute, you’re stepping behind enemy lines. The Law commanded Saul to stay away from these types of activities. God’s Word tells us today to do the same. Saul seeks to replace the voice of the living God with words from the dead, dark side.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Intelligent people don’t believe in that stuff.” Really? Do you remember the name Joan Quigley (picture)? When he was President, Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, made many decisions after consulting not an all-powerful, all-knowing God, but messages hidden in the stars. After the assassination attempt on Reagan, Nancy cleared nearly every major move and decision in advance with Joan Quigley who drew up horoscopes to make certain the planets were in favorable alignment.
Horoscopes, tarot cards, crystals aren’t of God. As western civilization moves further from a biblical worldview, there’s an increase in these activities. Shops selling crystals and metaphysical tools are growing. If you turn from God, you won’t live in a vacuum. You’ll look for a god-substitute.
Well-meaning Christians are practicing Yoga. Yoga is rooted in Hinduism. It’s based on idolatrous thinking that says you’re no longer the creation but that everything is God. It’s pantheism. With yoga you try to be one with God instead of submitting to Him as the Creator-God. Yoga also teaches adherents to clear their minds. There’s no such thing as an empty mind. It’s why Scripture exhorts us to fill our minds with God’s truth.
One of the curiosities of our age is the way it acts toward people who dabble in the supernatural. It’s passed off as being hip and cool. The Bible teaches that it’s dangerous.
C.S. Lewis (picture) said the reason we don’t expel mediums and such in our day is because our society is convinced that mediums are harmless. If the public was convinced that mediums and necromancers were threats to our children, there would be laws passed to deal with them. But we think they’re harmless, and so we do nothing, and we show our own foolishness.
Saul, at one time, knew better. He knew the danger, but as his distance from God increased, his moral standards devolved and went darker.
Alistair Begg (picture) shared of talking with someone about the nature of revival. When revival came to parts of Scotland or to Wales or other places in the world, this person made this significant observation. They said, “You know, when revival comes, all the horoscope shops go.”
Saul hardens his heart. Rather than repenting, he goes over to the dark side. Friend, if you’ve been dabbling with dark side stuff, please stop. It’s spiritually deadly.
Yet it doesn’t have to be a medium or an astrologer. It’s always tempting to try to replace God. It’s when we want some extra message and God and His Word are not enough for us.
2. God speaks even when we think we’ve silenced Him, vs. 8-19. The telephone rang down in the Fuhrerbunker. It was for Hitler (picture). Joseph Goebbels (picture), Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich, was on the line. He was ecstatic. The reason? Franklin D. Roosevelt (picture) was dead. It was April 12, 1945. Germany was losing. The Allies were pressing from the west, the Russians from the east; soon Berlin itself would crumble. None of that mattered to Goebbels. He told Hitler: “It is written in the stars. The last half of April will be a turning point for us.” He was referring to two previous astrological predictions that had forecast the hardest blows for Germany during the first months of 1945, especially in the first part of April, but an overwhelming victory in the second half of the month.
Unfortunately for Goebbel’s horoscopes, Hitler committed suicide on April 30th. But Goebbels foolishness is not unusual. Facing ruin, individuals who want nothing to do with God will turn in desperation to any sources that they think will give them some hope, some direction. That’s King Saul.
The passage tells us that Saul disguised himself. In a real sense though, Saul was revealing himself. The darkness in his soul was coming out. To get from Gilboa to En-dor, Saul had to travel near the Philistine camp. He risked his life making that trip but he was desperate.
In the Bible darkness is a picture of sin. “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). But Satan is the prince of darkness. When Saul and his two companions left for En-Dor, it was under the cover of darkness. Saul began his kingship in the light, but ended it in darkness. Why? Because he rebelled against the will of God.
Even when we cut off God, we’re still willing to use God. You learn a lot about people by observing what they do and where they turn in times of trouble. David runs to Samuel and Jonathan. Saul goes to see a witch. His darkest hour represents his final departure from faith in God. A severe crisis reveals what one really believes.
When the Medium accuses Saul of setting her up and baiting a trap, notice his response. “But Saul swore to her by the Lord, ‘As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing’” (vs. 10). Saul reassures her—invoking God’s name twice—that God’s judgement is nothing to worry about. In the act of violating God’s Law, Saul invokes God’s name. He not only violated God’s Law he encourages her to violate it. He asks her to get in contact with Samuel, the man he wouldn’t listen to when he was alive but now wants to hear from now that he’s dead.
How ironic. Saul won’t obey or listen to God, yet swears by God’s name. What spiritual dullness. His fear drives him blindly forward.
The Midrash, in the Jewish writings, captures this incongruity when they write, “Whom did Saul resemble at [this] moment? A woman who is with her lover and swears by the life of her husband.” Saul is desperate. He requests for himself what he has prohibited for others.
Too often the Church of Jesus Christ is filled with modern-day Sauls: those who speak in God’s name but live lives in opposition to His will. The saddest part is that like Saul they’re oblivious to their hypocrisy, blind to their sin.
Saul wants to talk to his former mentor – the prophet Samuel who’d anointed him decades earlier. These verses produce more questions than we have answers. Taking the plain meaning of the passage it seems clear that Samuel actually appears to Saul. The Medium’s shock indicates his appearance though is totally unexpected. Maybe she normally talked to a demon who imitated the dead or the witch could have used some clever charade to make it appear that the dead spoke. The actual sight of Samuel causes her to realize her client is the king and she’s terrified.
How can we explain why this séance worked? The only answer is by the power and permission of God. For His own reasons God permitted Samuel to return and to speak to Saul.
Saul assumes Samuel will forget the past and present. It’s like, “Please ignore the witch standing here. Don’t think about the evil manner in which I contacted you. Forget your past judgments about my sin, lack of character and how I recklessly tried to murder David, while neglecting Israel all these years. Those things don’t really matter, please tell me what to do.”
So what does Samuel say? (Vs. 15-19.) Samuel doesn’t address the illicit use of the witch. He plunges into a condemnation of Saul and his reign. A dead Samuel’s words are the same as were the living Samuel’s – only judgment awaits the king. Saul wants to hear from God but it’s a message he doesn’t want to hear. His kingdom is over; his dynasty gone. He and his sons will be dead within 24 hours.
Samuel rehearses to Saul why God is silent. He goes back to chapter 15 when the king directly disobeyed God’s command. Saul changed God’s Word to his own liking. It was rebellion. God deserted Saul because Saul had first deserted God. Saul thought that he knew better than God what was best.
We have Christians, churches and even pastors today who think they know best how to obey God’s commands and clear instructions and they negate them. Saul’s condemnation is a warning of how dangerous that is.
When we sin, we never only hurt ourselves. “Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines” (vs. 19).
Saul had tried to kill David by the hand of the Philistines, Now the Lord will deliver Saul into the hand of the Philistines. The inclusion of Saul’s sons in this judgement announcement signals the end of his dynasty. Saul’s entire reign, estimated to be between 33 to 40 years, had been lived ignoring God’s Word. His judgement cost not only him, but it cost his family.
One of the stupidest things that I’ve heard individuals say about sin is: “the only one I’m hurting is myself.” When you sin, when I sin, others suffer. For Saul’s sin, his sons would be killed. Even his godly son Jonathan would die because of his sin. And many in Israel would be killed as God allowed the Philistines to conquer their forces.
We live in an individualistic culture where we don’t like it when other people’s decisions affect our lives, but they do. When a leader makes a decision, those under the leader are either blessed by the decision or suffer for it. The decisions our leaders make impact us either positively or negatively. It’s why church leadership matters. Good leaders are a blessing. Bad ones bring pain and suffering. Godly parents are a blessing to their children. Bad ones bring suffering to their children.
Saul’s sins will not just culminate with the end of his life, but suffering in the lives of many others, including many godly ones like his son Jonathan.
3. God’s judgement is terrifying, vs. 20-25. Hearing these words from Samuel, Saul goes into a state of shock. He’s probably fasted – a common requirement prior to a séance. Now the Medium urges him to eat. She prepares a meal for Saul to help him regain his strength. It’s his last meal. It’s a banquet fit for a king, but it’s for one who isn’t fit to be king and won’t be the king much longer.
It reminds us of another “last supper.” John 13:30, “So after receiving the morsel of bread, Judas immediately went out. And it was night.” Like Judas, Saul goes out into spiritual darkness.
It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around this. Saul began with such promise. Everyone thought that he was the best. Now look at him, sitting on her bed like a shriveled mess, waiting on this lady to prepare this last supper.
“He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land,” he’s “making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” It echoes the worldview of our day. What’s the overwhelming worldview of our day? Hopelessness.
Remember the description Paul gives of the Ephesians, which is true of all of us by nature: that we are without God and without hope in the world?
In the introduction to the book, Light of the World, George Weigel (picture) who wrote the foreword describes our world as one that’s “lost its story: a world in which the progress [that was] promised [over] the last three centuries is now gravely threatened” by an understanding of our humanity that reduces it to just “cosmic chemical accidents”—that ours is “a humanity with no intentional origin, no noble destiny…no path to take through history.” That’s Saul – lost with no path to take through history.
Conclusion: Saintly British preacher, Dr. F.B. Meyer (picture), said at the close of his life, “I don’t want my life to end in a swamp.” But that’s where Saul’s ends. So what are the lessons for us? What are our take-home truths?
Disobedience to God can cut off communication with God. That’s what happened to Saul. Disobedience to God’s Word resulted in him no longer able to hear God’s voice. The same principle is true for us. If, like Saul, we cherish sin in our hearts, the result can be a loss of communication with God
Little compromises often lead to bigger ones. In 1 Samuel 15, when God told Saul to destroy the Amalekites, Saul chose to spare the king and the livestock. It seemed like a little compromise. Samuel knew that a little compromise would lead to a bigger one in Saul’s life. It’s why Samuel rebuked him with: “For rebellion is as the sin of divination…Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king” (1 Samuel 15:23).
Saul’s intentional rebellion against God in little things early on in his life led to intentional rebellion against God in big things later in his life. He stops seeking guidance from God and ends up seeking guidance from a witch.
The same principle holds true for us. If we tolerate rebellion against God in little things, it will lead to rebellion against God in much bigger things.
When we turn to Jesus, we do not need to be afraid of our future! One of the dominant themes in this chapter is Saul’s fear. He’s afraid of the Philistines. He’s afraid of what will happen to him. He’s afraid of what will happen to his sons. Fear permeates this chapter.
Saul’s life without God led him to fear. Saul’s involvement with the demonic led him to fear. Saul’s life of sin led him to fear. He’s on a one way road to terror.
The good news is we don’t need to face the future like Saul. Those who fear the future are those caught in their sin or living a life without God. Through Jesus, we can be forgiven of our sin and brought near to God.
As Christians, we have nothing to fear. God loves us. Jesus died for us. We are the most blessed beings in the universe. This world is as bad as life will ever get. What do we have to fear? “In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?” Psalm 56:11 “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” 1 John 4:18.
God loves us perfectly and completely. He forgives us perfectly and completely. We do not need to fear. “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” 2 Timothy 1:7.
That’s a verse I memorized years ago and I’ve repeated it to myself thousands of times. Maybe today you’re like Saul. Your life is filled with fear about the future. You don’t need to live that way. God doesn’t give us the spirit of fear and He doesn’t want us to live in fear.
This week, may we not be dominated by fear because of distance from God and sin in our lives. Instead may we be people of peace, courage and joy because we’ve been brought near to Jesus. We’re trusting Him. We’re trusting His cross. We know we’re completely forgiven and loved by Him.
Are you living in fear this morning? Is it because you really don’t know the Lord? You’ve never committed your life to Him?
God doesn’t want you to be a Saul. He wants you to live by faith and have His peace. Will you commit your life to Him today?