CALL TO CONFESSION

Matthew 6:9, 12, 14-15

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Gracious and forgiving Father, how often we fail to show the same grace and forgiveness to others that you have given to us! We find it desperately hard to show forgiveness and we hold tight to the wrongs committed against us by our loved ones. We keep bitter records of offenses and we are swift to anger and slow to forgive. 

Yet you are not like us. Even though we have committed far worse sins against you, you do not keep a record of our wrongs; instead you separate our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. You are a holy and good God who loved us even when we were your enemies, freely forgiving our daily rebellion through Jesus Christ.

Help us today to taste afresh your grace to us in the gospel, and to see anew the depths of our sin that you have forgiven. Transform us by your grace, so that we may become people who readily forgive others, just as you have already forgiven us. May we truly learn to forgive those who sin against us, from the depths of our hearts. We pray in Jesus's name, amen.

“Take a few moments to personally confess your sins to the Lord.”

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“Hear these words of comfort and assurance.” 

Colossians 2:13-15

13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him

• Charles Spurgeon once preached about a fiery arrow the enemy loves to shoot at God’s people. It’s a temptation designed to convince the Christian that God has completely forsaken them.  Satan whispers his dark lies into the believer’s ear: “The heavens have turned to brass. God will never answer you again. You might as well cry out to the empty ocean because God’s ear is shut.” 
• Most of us have been in a place where we felt like our prayers were bouncing off the ceiling, and heaven seemed completely silent.  The danger in those moments is the temptation to go looking for a word anywhere else we can find one. 
• That is the trap King Saul falls into in the passage before us today. 

• Think back to where we started this series in 1 Samuel. We opened the book to find Israel stuck in a dark, three-hundred-year leadership crisis. 
• They desperately needed someone to speak for God, someone to intercede before God, and someone to rule under God's holy authority.
• So God raised up Samuel as prophet and priest to bring the Word of the Lord in a time when that Word was rare.
• But the people demanded an earthly king instead. God told Samuel to give them what they asked for, but Samuel warned them in Chapter 8: "In that day you will cry out because of your king…but the Lord will not answer you in that day."

• In chapters 28 and 29, we are brought face-to-face with two men in deep distress.
• On one side, we have David, trapped in a mess of his own making through a foolish compromise in enemy territory.
• On the other side, we have Saul, a man completely abandoned to his own wicked rebellion.
• The author intentionally weaves these two stories together so we see these two men side by side. 
• In David, we see a man drifting toward compromise, but caught by sovereign grace. 
• In Saul, we see a man persistently rejecting God, drifting straight toward judgment.

• Here is our main focus today: Self-reliance leads to silent heavens, but sovereign grace rescues straying saints. 

DAVID’S PREDICAMENT - 1 Samuel 28:1-2

• The Philistines gather for a major offensive against Israel. 
• David, who has been living in Philistine territory for over a year, is in an impossible trap.  
• Achish tells David, “You and your men are marching out with me against your own people.” 
• David gives a vague and diplomatic answer, continuing to play the part of a loyal servant.
• Achish takes it at face value and makes David his personal bodyguard for life.

• If David fights with them, he commits treason against Israel, fights his dear friend Jonathan, and violates his future kingship. 
• If he refuses to fight, Achish will execute him. 
• David’s foolish reliance on his own cleverness brought him right to the brink of disaster. 

GOD’S DELIVERANCE

• Chapter 29 gives us the resolution to David’s predicament. 
• As the Philistine armies gather at Aphek, the commanders inspect their troops. They are shocked to discover that coming up at the rear with Achish is David and his six hundred Hebrew warriors. 
• They are furious. “What are these Hebrews doing here?” 
• Achish defends David but the Philistine commanders don’t trust David.
• They tell Achish to send him back believing that David will turn on them in battle.
• Achish pulls David aside and with great regret, the pagan king tells David that he has to go home. 
• David even puts up a brief show of protest in verse 8, “What have I done wrong that I can’t go out and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?”
• 1 Samuel 29:9-11 And Achish answered David and said, “I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God. Nevertheless, the commanders of the Philistines have said, ‘He shall not go up with us to the battle.’ 10 Now then rise early in the morning with the servants of your lord who came with you, and start early in the morning, and depart as soon as you have light.” 11 So David set out with his men early in the morning to return to the land of the Philistines. But the Philistines went up to Jezreel.

• In chapter 27, David made a compromised choice out of fear and self-reliance. He put himself in a terrible position where he almost ended up fighting against God’s own people. 
• How did David escape this trap? Not through more cleverness and deception. 
• David was saved because God sovereignly moved in the hearts of the pagan Philistine commanders. God used the natural suspicion of unbelievers to protect his servant David and pull him out of the mess he made for himself. 
• His rescue was not because he had earned it. It was the intervening grace of God restraining David from a foolish path.

• Praise God for his intervening grace in our own lives when we make decisions based on fear rather than faith and God slams those doors shut.
• Praise God that in his mercy he blocked you from taking a step that would have ruined your life, your family, or your testimony. 
• Our straying never outruns God’s ability to rescue us from the mess of our own making. 

SAUL’S FEAR - 1 Samuel 28:3-5

• Two vital pieces of information help set the scene. 
• First, Samuel is dead, and all Israel mourned him. The spiritual anchor of the nation is gone.
• Second, at some point earlier in Saul’s reign, he carried out a reform, expelling the mediums and necromancers from Israel.  This was a genuine obedience to a clear command from God’s law in Deuteronomy 18. But as we’re about to read, past obedience is no guarantee of future faithfulness. 

• Now, while David is being mercifully dismissed by the Philistines, Saul is facing an absolute nightmare scenario.
• The Philistines had encamped at Shunem and Saul gathered Israel’s army across the Jezreel valley on Mount Gilboa. 
• The Jezreel Valley is open, flat terrain that favored the Philistines’ chariots and iron weapons over Israel’s largely foot-soldier army. 
• Saul looks across the valley at the Philistine war machine and his heart trembles in fear.
• This was the man who had rallied Israel and delivered the town of Jabesh-gilead with courage and decisiveness. He had beaten the Philistines before. 
• But this is a different man now. Years of disobedience, jealousy, expending all his energy hunting David through the wilderness instead of leading his nation. 
• He is staring at an enemy he knows he cannot beat with no hope for the future.  
• And he desperately needs a word from God. 

THE LORD’S SILENCE - 1 Samuel 28:6

And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets.

• Saul seems to try every legitimate channel God had established for guidance for his people. 
• And the Lord does not answer him! The heavens were as brass. 
• Why was God silent?
• God did not answer Saul because Saul had spent years ignoring and disobeying the explicit Word of God.
• When God did not answer, Saul should have fallen on his face in genuine repentance.
• But he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t want God’s holiness; he only wants God’s help. 
• God will not be used. There comes a time when persistent rebellion results in the horror of divine silence. 

• God had not abandoned Saul when Saul needed him most. Saul abandoned God. 
• He abandoned every means of grace God gave him. And now, at the exact moment he wants it most, he discovers that God doesn’t speak or perform at our command. 

• We cannot ignore the ordinary means of grace--Scripture, prayer, the fellowship and counsel of the saints--and expect God to act like a vending machine the moment we are desperate.
• Saul had spent his whole reign treating God’s Word as an inconvenience whenever it challenged his own will.  And now the Word he despised for so long is nowhere to be found when he goes looking for it. 

THE SIN OF DESPERATION - 1 Samuel 28:7-10

• With every channel of guidance closed off to him, Saul doubles down on rebellion. He had expelled mediums from the land and now he wants to pay one a visit. 
• This is what a desperate person does. Saul knew this was a forbidden practice.
• But when his own comfort and control are finally on the line, he has no problem playing the hypocrite and bending the rules he had put in place for others.

• En-dor was several miles behind Philistine lines from where Saul’s army was camped at Gilboa.
• He disguises himself so that no one would notice the king of Israel sneaking off to consult a witch. 

• When he arrives, the woman is naturally hesitant. She knows what Saul had done. 
• But Saul swears an oath to her “by the Lord,” He uses the covenant name of God promising that no harm will come to her. 
• Persistent sinful compromise brings you to this place where you begin to think that God’s law can be bent and God will understand and give you a pass. 

THE APPARITION FROM BEYOND - 1 Samuel 28:11-14

• So she asks who he wants her to summon. Saul answers, “Bring up Samuel for me.” 
• And something unexpected happens. The woman sees Samuel and she panics and screams. She suddenly realizes the stranger in front of her is Saul.  
• Saul asks her to describe what she sees, “It’s a god coming up from the ground; an old man wrapped in a robe.”
• Samuel’s robe was the symbol of Saul’s lost kingdom. Saul bows to the ground paying homage to Samuel. 

• Did this woman really summon Samuel from the dead? No. 
• She was terrified because she had no real power to do so. Her reaction tells us she was genuinely shocked and terrified. 
• Some have suggested this was a demonic counterfeit designed to deceive Saul. We know there are real spiritual forces of darkness and there is real demonic deception that takes place with dark occult practices. 
• This is exactly what the text says it is, the Lord sending Samuel to Saul. God, in his sovereign freedom, is bringing Samuel back.  
• Not because the witch had any power to summon him from the dead, but because God himself sovereignly determined to use even this wicked, forbidden practice to pronounce final judgment on a king who had rejected God and refused to listen while there was still time to repent. 
• Samuel delivers a precise, accurate word of judgment, consistent with everything that Samuel had already told Saul earlier. 

• Nothing in this passage validates occult practices, psychics, séances, tarot cards, or any attempt to gain hidden knowledge or contact with the dead. Saul’s story is not a pass to dabble in any of these things.
• When people open doors to forbidden spiritual practices, they are not engaging in some harmless, innocent fun. They are inviting spiritual deception and darkness into their lives. 

• This is the last recorded act of Saul’s life before his death, and it stands in Scripture as the clearest picture we have of a man completely cut off from God, trying to get a word from God through the one door God had explicitly prohibited. 
• Never look for answers in forbidden places. God has given us his complete, sufficient Word. We do not need secret knowledge from the dark. We have the light of Jesus Christ. 

SAMUEL’S MESSAGE TO SAUL - 1 Samuel 28:15-19

• Samuel’s words to Saul are devastating. 
• Samuel asks why he has been disturbed from his rest.  Saul answers that he is in great distress. “I’ve called you up to tell me what to do.” 
• He needs to hear from God and God will not answer him by any means.

• Saul went to En-dor looking for comfort, for guidance. But there’s no comfort given. 
• What he found was the unyielding truth of God’s judgment. 
• Samuel delivers three crushing blows to Saul:
• The Lord has become your enemy. 
• The Lord has torn the kingdom from you and given it to David. 
• Tomorrow, you and your sons will die in battle, and Israel will be defeated. 

SAUL’S FINAL MEAL - 1 Samuel 28:20-25

• Saul has a physical reaction to the prophetic word. 
• The mighty king of Israel, once described as standing head and shoulders above every man in the nation, is laid flat in the dirt on the floor of a witch’s house, completely overcome by terror and physically and spiritually spent. 

• The medium and Saul’s servants gather around this broken and shattered man, and they plead with him to eat something to regain his strength. Saul doesn’t want to eat but she persuades him. 
• The woman slaughters a fattened calf, and sets a meal before him. 
• Saul eats his final meal in the dark house of a witch of En-dor. 
• Then he gets up and walks out into the night, knowing tomorrow is the last day of his life. 

• What a tragic end for a man who had so much promise. 
• He was anointed by the Lord’s prophet. He was entrusted with the mantle of leadership.
• But he lacked a heart that was surrendered to God. 
• He wanted the blessings of God’s kingdom without submitting to the King. 

CONCLUSION

• As we consider these two chapters together, the contrast could not be clearer. 
• David made foolish, sinful mistakes. He put himself in a terrible situation. But David was a child of God. He was a man after God’s own heart. When he stumbled, God’s sovereign grace intervened and pulled him back from the edge. 
• Saul, on the other hand, persisted in hard-hearted rebellion. He was a king cut off from every source of God’s revelation. When God was silent, Saul did not repent, and walked right into judgment. 

• Here’s the good news this text points us toward.
• The writer of Hebrews opens his letter by telling us that long ago, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets in many ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. (Hebrews 1:1-2)
• Jesus Christ is our greater Prophet. He is the final and complete Word of God. 
• We don’t need secret insights, horoscopes, tarot cards, or forbidden practices to find direction, because Jesus has spoken clearly and permanently in the Scriptures. 
• Jesus is our great High Priest. We don’t need an ephod or casting lots to figure out if God hears us. Christ has entered the heavenly holy place and intercedes for us right now. We don’t have to sneak around in the dark in a disguise to reach God. We can draw near to the throne of grace with bold confidence, because our Priest has opened the way by his own blood. 
• And Jesus Christ is our eternal King. He will never be cut off from his Father’s presence and his kingdom will never be torn away from him, like Saul’s kingdom was. 

• Saul stood on the hillside of Gilboa alone, with every means of grace gone completely silent. 
• But that is not where you stand today if you belong to Christ.
• The silence Saul experienced was a silence of divine judgment. 
• On the cross, Jesus took that ultimate silence for us. He cried out in the darkness, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” so that you and I would never have to know what it is to be abandoned by God. 

• So how do we respond to a God of such sovereign grace? 
• First, stop looking for answers in the broken wells of this world. If you have been tempted to flirt with spiritual shortcuts, whether that’s modern occult trends, or simply trusting your own self-reliance instead of God’s Word, turn away from them today. You hold the sufficient, holy Word of God in your hands. Read it. Trust it. Lean on it. 
• Second, take comfort when your faith stumbles. Some of you came here today feeling the weight of your own foolish choices, wondering if you’ve gone too far. Look at David in chapter 29. Your straying cannot outrun the covenant grace of God. If you are his, he will hedge you in, he will close dangerous doors, and he will hold you fast. 
• And finally, if you’re running from God today, do not harden your heart like Saul. Don’t wait for a crisis to realize that self-reliance leads to a dead end. Turn to Jesus Christ right now. Confess your need, step out of the dark, and throw yourself onto his endless mercy. 

• In Christ, heaven is not silent. The Father’s ear is open. His arms are stretched out, and his grace is sufficient for you today. 

APPLICATION AND REFLECTION

In light of today's message....

• What did I learn about the gospel?
• How can I apply what I learned about the gospel to my life?
• With whom can I share the gospel this week?