We're in 1 Samuel chapter 28,
and we're going to read the whole chapter together. And it's another
one of these occasions when the chapter is quite long, but it's
a story, it's a narrative that flows. I think really without
too much need for explanation. So that gives us a little bit
more time to read the passage together, think about what it's
saying as it's being read, and also to make a few applications
from it without feeling too rushed. So let us read together 1 Samuel
chapter 28 and verse one. And it came to pass in those
days that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare,
to fight with Israel. And Ashish said unto David, Know
thou assuredly that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou
and thy men. And David said unto Ashish, Surely
thou shalt know what thy servant can do. And Ashish said to David,
Therefore I will make thee keeper of mine head for ever. Now Samuel was dead, and all
Israel had lamented him and buried him in Ramah, even in his own
city. and Saul had put away those that
had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land. And
the Philistines gathered themselves together and came and pitched
in Shushunim and Saul gathered all Israel together and they
pitched in Gilboa. And when Saul saw the host of
the Philistines, he was afraid and his heart greatly trembled. And when Saul inquired of the
LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim,
nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants,
Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her
and inquire of her. And his servants said to him,
Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. And Saul disguised himself, and
put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and
they came to the woman by night. And he said, I pray thee, divine
unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall
name unto thee. And the woman said unto him,
Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off
those that have familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land. Wherefore then layest thou a
snare for my life, to cause me to die? And Saul sware to her
by the Lord, saying, As the Lord liveth, there shall no punishment
happen to thee for this thing. Then said the woman, Whom shall
I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel. And when the woman saw Samuel,
she cried with a loud voice. And the woman spake to Saul,
saying, Why hast thou deceived me? For thou art Saul. And the
king said unto her, Be not afraid, for what sawest thou? And the
woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth, And
he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man
cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived
that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground and
bowed himself. And Samuel said to Saul, Why
hast thou disquieted me to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am
sore distressed, for the Philistines make war against me, and God
is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets
nor by dreams. Therefore I have called thee,
that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. Then said
Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is
departed from thee, and is become thine enemy? And the Lord hath
done to him as he spake by me. For the Lord hath rent the kingdom
out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to
David. Because thou obeyest not the
voice of the Lord, nor executest his fierce wrath upon Amalek,
therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover, the Lord will also
deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines,
and tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me, and the Lord
also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines. Then Saul fell straightway all
along on the earth and was sore afraid, because of the words
of Samuel. And there was no strength in
him, for he had eaten no bread all the day nor all the night.
And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled,
and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice,
and I have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto
thy words which thou spakest unto me. Now therefore, I pray
thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid,
and let me set a morsel of bread before thee, and eat, that thou
mayest have strength when thou goest on thy way.' But he refused,
and said, I will not eat. But his servants, together with
the woman, compelled him, and he hearkened unto their voice.
So he arose from the earth and sat upon the bed. and the woman
had a fat calf in the house and she hasted and killed it and
took flour and kneaded it and did bake unleavened bread thereof. And she brought it before Saul
and before his servants and they did eat. Then they rose up and
went away that night. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. This chapter begins with a great
dilemma for David. We left him before, on a previous
occasion, living amongst the Philistines, pretending to be
loyal to them, but deceiving them by conducting raids on neighbouring
nations and letting it be thought that he was attacking Israel. In that way he endeared himself
to this king, Ashish, this king of Gath. Now, however, there
was to be a full-scale battle between Israel and the Philistines,
and that would be all the lords of the Philistines and all the
different cities. It does appear that this was
going to be a major battle between the Philistines and the children
of Israel. And David, living amongst the
Philistines as he was, with a group of armed men, was expected to
help out on the Philistine side. Now I don't know why at this
particular time the battle was going to be fought. Perhaps it
was because of the death of Samuel. Perhaps it was because Saul had
got increasingly mad and instead of being about the business of
defending the kingdom, had been running around the countryside
trying to capture David. or perhaps it was a widespread
godlessness amongst the people of Israel. And the Philistines
believed that this was a good opportunity to confront Israel
in battle and perhaps defeat them. You know, enemies take
advantage of weakness and instability and this is what was happening
here as far as Israel was concerned. Ashish, in fact, may have been
in charge of this combined force of the Philistine Kingdom. And he calls David and his men
to fight on the side of the Philistines against their fellow countrymen.
And David didn't know what to do. More of this another day because
we're going to come back to this in the next chapter. But the
lesson is surely this. That David thought that he was
being clever. But in fact he was now trapped
in a compromised situation. We spent some time last week
thinking about how unwise David had been to go down to the Philistines
in the first place and make his home amongst them. Well, he was caught between the
devil and the deep blue sea, or a rock in a hard place, as
the Americans might say. He was in a compromised situation. And this is what happens when
we spend time in the wrong place with the wrong people. We think
that we can be clever. We think that we can be fast
on our feet. appear as though we are one of
the gang, one of the crowd. But sooner or later we will be
expected to do something we know is wrong and we don't know how
to escape. Well, like all good dramas, we're
going to have to wait until the next time to discover what happens
with David. But let us be aware that we might
learn from the lesson of the trouble that he now finds himself
in. The rest of the chapter presents
to us three main characters. Saul, who is in a terrible state
of fear, a woman with a familiar spirit, nowadays we would call
her a witch or a spiritualist, who pretended that she could
communicate with the dead, and this apparition, and I'm going
to say here feigning or pretending to be the ghost of Samuel, and
we'll come on to that a little bit later. So having read the
story, I don't intend to repeat it, but we shall, I hope, be
able to make some suitable applications from this rather dark account
that we find in the remaining verses of this chapter. And the
first person I want to look at here is Saul. So we'll look at
Saul, we'll look at this witch. She's called the Witch of Endor,
although she's not actually called a witch in the passage, but that's
usually the name that she's known by. And then a few references
to this apparition that arose before Saul. But first, to think
about Saul. Look at the terrible state that
Saul was in. Look at the terrible place that
he had descended to in his life. In fact, we're coming very close
to the end of Saul's reign and to the end of his life. But what
a sad and miserable man he had become. We remember how the young
Saul had been anointed King by Samuel. He had been blessed with
victories and he had prospered under the direction of the Lord. And yet he never truly trusted
the Lord. He was not a man that was a true
follower of the Lord and he never had a renewed heart He was plagued
by an evil spirit and he proved to be self-serving, he proved
to be envious, murderous and a hypocrite. He made a pretense
of serving God by outward acts. that would be expected in his
country, in his nation, because of the history and the legacy,
because of the testimony of Samuel and the prophets that had gone
before. He made a pretense of serving God by these outward
acts, but inwardly, he was fighting against the Lord. Inwardly, he
was fighting against the Lord's people, David, the Lord's anointed. Saul's life was a downward spiral
and in his final days he found himself abandoned by God, bereft
of Samuel's wise counsel because the old prophet was now dead
and without any faithful priests because he had killed them at
the city of Nob. and no word from the Lord when
he now faced this great army of the Philistines. And he trembled
in his own soul. In this barren state, in this
barren condition, Saul, what did he do? He turned to spiritism
and he turned to superstition. He had rejected God and the Lord
rejected him. And sin brought this once brave,
bold and confident man to creep through the streets in disguise,
on the eve of a battle, in the dark, looking for a forbidden
witch to give him some hope. But outside of Christ, there
is no hope. Without the Lord, where can a
boy or a girl or a man or a woman turn? Saul was king, he was rich,
he was famous. Anyone would say that he had
the very best life could give. But he was without Christ in
his soul and his heart was eaten up with guilt and fear and dread. Despite having Samuel as a mentor
and David as a friend, Saul was lost. And let me say this, especially
to you who are young, stay close to the Lord. He has said, my
spirit shall not always strive with man. There comes a time
in the lives of men and women when they shall never hear the
gospel again. And they are lost, as Saul was
lost. You who are young, take the opportunity
the Lord gives when he says, seek ye the Lord while he may
be found, call ye upon him while he is near. The next person I want to draw
your attention to is this woman with a familiar spirit. She pretended
to speak to the spirits of dead people on behalf of people willing
to pay. And that is still a fraud that
is practised even today. Now that's not to say that the
devil and his angels are not able to exploit and manipulate
impressionable people who want to believe in such nonsense. But again, there's a lesson here
for us. We too must beware because there
is in this world, there is in our towns, in our cities, in
our communities, maybe even amongst our friends, people who harbour
these kind of thoughts and practise these kind of activities. And
we will open ourselves to dangers that we know little about if
we mess with the occultish things and the things that are of the
power of darkness in this world. Whether we do it seriously or
whether just for fun. So again, I say to you all, and
I say especially to the young people, don't do sciences. Don't do Ouija boards. Don't
mess with fortune telling. Don't imagine that witchcraft
is just the exciting entertainment of the movies or the books. It carries the risk of opening
doors to darker forces that Christians should be careful to avoid. The Lord's people have been delivered
from the power of darkness and we are unwise to have anything
to do with it. If you play with fire, you'll
get burned. If you juggle with sharp knives,
you'll get cut. And if you mess around with witchcraft
and spiritism, you risk being caught up in activities inconsistent
with the Christian faith. Here's another thing that we
learn from this chapter. The spirit that was called up
from the ground by this woman caused her to cry out. And I wonder why she did that. I wonder if she realised in that
moment that she was engaging with a more powerful entity,
energy, than she could control. No doubt she had done this many
times before. She had a reputation. Saul's
servants knew who she was and where they could find her. But
she cried out on this occasion. I am sure that this was not the
spirit of Samuel, but an evil spirit impersonating the prophet
in order to aggravate Saul's condition and drive him deeper
into despair. This spirit came up from the
ground, not down from heaven. This spirit asked, why hast thou
disquieted me to bring me up? Well, that just doesn't make
sense as far as one of the Lord's people is concerned, which Samuel
certainly was. Nothing can disquiet a soul in
heaven. Nothing can compel that soul
to return to earth. Samuel was indeed dead. His body
was in Ramah and his soul rested in the Lord's presence. No witch
or wizard could summon him, and not even a king could demand
his presence. He was in the company of King
Jesus, the King of Kings, and this apparition was a lying spirit. It spoke for Samuel, but was
not Samuel. It pretended to use Samuel's
voice, perhaps, but it was not the prophet. Someone might say, well, didn't
it say what would happen? I have to accept that. It was
accurate in some predictions. It was accurate in recounting
some facts, but then that's the way that lies work. They use
a little bit of truth in order to convey a deeper and more insidious
lie. This truth that the Spirit spoke
was no better than deduction and guesswork and it was wrong
in other ways which the Lord never is. Saul got no help and
he received no hope from this imposter. Had Samuel really come
to Saul that night? Samuel would have implored him
to repent of his sins and ask God for forgiveness. We have
a saying, it goes something like this, where there is life, there
is hope. But this evil spirit gave Saul
no hope. He wasn't yet dead, he soon would
be, but he wasn't yet dead. and he went to his grave without
any hope. Samuel would not have let that
happen. Whether we are young or whether
we are listening today and we are older, we have the opportunity
right now of asking the Lord to forgive our sins and to cleanse
our conscience. What did Saul not have here? He had no one pointing him to
Christ. He had servants who could find
him a witch. He had a woman who conjured up
a lie, a false spirit, who merely cemented Saul in despair and
confirmed his condemnation. but that isn't you. This is still
the day of grace because the Lord Jesus Christ is still being
set forth. The Lord is still showing us
Jesus Christ crucified and he is showing it to you and to me
today in the gospel. Christ is set before you as the
only way of spiritual life, the only eternal rest because he
has died to take away sin. You are not hopeless and you
need not despair. No matter what you've done, no
matter where you've been, no matter what your circumstances
are, no matter how grievous you feel you have sinned against
the Lord, you are not in a hopeless condition because this is still
the Gospel day and Jesus Christ is still being set before you. you need not despair. The Lord
Jesus Christ says, suffer, that is allow little children and
forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the kingdom
of heaven. Oh Lord, make us all like little
children that we might come to Jesus Christ for forgiveness
of our sins and cleansing in his blood, that he might give
us that hope that we require. The Lord says in Matthew 11,
verse 28, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. He says, now is the accepted
time, behold now is the day of salvation. May the Lord give
us the grace that Saul never found and may he bless us today
with an open door whereby we may enter in to the experience
of his love and his mercy and a knowledge of sins forgiven.
Amen.