Good morning. Would you turn with me to 1 Samuel
chapter 31, the last chapter in 1 Samuel? This is about the death of King
Saul. Now, the Philistines fought against
Israel And the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines
and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa. And the Philistines followed
hard upon Saul and upon his sons. And the Philistines slew Jonathan
and Abinadab and Malchashua, Saul's sons. Saul witnessed this. And the battle went sore against
Saul and the archers hit him And he was sore wounded of the
archers. Then said Saul unto his armor bearer, draw thy sword
and thrust me through therewith. Lest these uncircumcised come
and thrust me through and abuse me. But his armor bear would
not for he was sore afraid. Therefore, Saul took a sword
and fell upon it. Suicide. And when his armor-bearer
saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword and died
with him. So Saul died, and his three sons,
and his armor-bearer, and all his men the same day together.
And when the men of Israel that were on the other side of the
valley, and they that were on the other side of Jordan, saw
that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were
dead, they forsook the cities and fled. And the Philistines
came and dwelt in them. And it came to pass on the morrow
when the Philistines came to strip the slain. Yeah, it's a
gruesome thing to think about it, isn't it? They just come
in to the dead people and take everything they can. And his
three sons, and they found Saul and his three sons fallen in
Mount Gilboa. And they cut off his head, stripped
off his armor. and sent into the land of the
Philistines round about to publish it in the house of their idols
and among the people, and they put his armor in the house of
Ashtoroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshem."
They nailed his body to a wall. And when the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead
heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul, and I don't
know if you remember this, but this was the one good thing Saul
did. Remember that king that said
he was going to put the eye out of all the children of Israel? And Saul came and delivered him
and rescued him. This was the one thing Saul did.
And they remembered it. I think that's interesting. They
remembered it. And when the inhabitants of Jabesh, Gilead heard of that
which the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men
arose and went all night and took the body of Saul and the
bodies of his sons from the wall of Beshon and came to Jabesh
and burnt them there. And they took their bones and
buried them under a tree at Jay Bash and fasted seven days. Everybody's wondering what in
the world is he going to say about this? Well, we'll see. Let's pray together. Our merciful heavenly father,
we come into your presence in Christ's name. And we ask that
you would be pleased to meet with us and to speak by your
spirit and power to our hearts. Oh, Lord, that your gospel would
be preached. Lord, we don't want to hear anything
else but your word. Lord, we confess our sins. We
pray for forgiveness and cleansing. We pray for your blessing and
your great grace to be upon us for the Lord's sake. We ask that
you would give us grace to love you more, to love one another
more. Lord, give us the grace to serve you and to serve one
another in serving you. Lord, we wait on thee. In Christ's
name we pray, amen. Now here we read of this gruesome
death of Saul. And the day before this took
place, God said it would take place. You remember how that
Saul went in to the witch and Samuel being raised, look back
in chapter 28, beginning in verse 15. And Samuel said to Saul, this
is after he had been raised up from the dead. And Samuel said
to Saul, why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up? And Saul answered,
I'm sore distressed, for the Philistines make war against
me, and God has departed from me, and answers me no more, neither
by prophets nor by dreams. Therefore have I called thee,
that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. He went to
a witch. He used the occult to try to raise Samuel up from the
dead. Now, I don't know what to say
all about that. I know that the witch didn't do it, God did it.
And he used the witch to do this, to give Saul this information
from Samuel. Verse 16, then said Samuel, wherefore
then dost thou ask me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee
and has become thine enemy? Well, you're in bad shape when
the Lord becomes your enemy. And he became the enemy of Saul. And the Lord hath done to him
as he spake by me, for the Lord hath rent the kingdom out of
thy hand, and given it to thy neighbor, even to David. Because
thou obeyest not the voice of the Lord, nor executes this 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 hands of the Philistines,
and tomorrow shall thou and thy sons be with me." You're going
to die tomorrow. Now can you imagine how frightened
Saul must have been when he went in to this battle and the Lord
said, you're going to die tomorrow. You're not going to make it through
this. Now, we considered a few weeks
ago about his sparing of the Amalekites. But I'd like for
us to go back to the beginning of Saul and see what we can learn,
what happened to Saul that the Lord actually became his enemy.
Turn to 1 Samuel chapter 8. This is where Saul comes into
the picture chapter eight, verse one. And it came to pass when
Samuel was old, that he made his son's judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn
was Joel, and the name of his second, Abiah. They were judges
in Beersheba. And his sons walked not in his
ways, but turned aside after Lucre, and took bribes and perverted
judgment. Now the Israelites knew, these
are going to be our leaders. Would you want somebody like
that to be your leader? Of course you wouldn't. They thought, we
want a change of the guard. We want something different.
And I understand them thinking this way. You can too. Verse
4. Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together
and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou
art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways. Now make us a king
to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel
when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed
unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel,
Hearken unto the voice of the people and all that they say
unto thee, for they have not rejected thee. Samuel felt rejected,
but he said, this is not you. They have rejected me that I
should not reign over them. They were rejecting the reign
of God. They said, we want a king like
all the other nations. And they were rejecting the reign
of God. Verse 8, according to all the
works which they have done, since the day I brought them up out
of Egypt, even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken
me and served other gods, so do they also now to thee. Now
therefore hearken unto the voice, albeit yet protest solemnly unto
them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign
over them. Now, I want you to listen real
carefully as we read this description of Saul. And I want you to see
what the main word regarding his character is. Verse 10. And
Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that
asked him for a king. And he said, this will be the
manner of the king that shall reign over you. And he's going
to describe Saul. He will take your sons and appoint
them for himself. for his chariots and to be his
horsemen. And some shall run before his
chariots and he will appoint him captains over thousands and
captains over fifties and will set them to ear his ground and
to reap his harvest and to make his instruments of war and instruments
of his chariots and he will take your daughters to be confectionaries,
and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields,
and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of
them, and give them to his servants, his servants. And he will take
the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his
officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants,
and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your
asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your
sheep, and you shall be his servants. And you shall cry out in that
day because of your king, which you have chosen, and the Lord
will not hear you in that day." Now, what is the word that describes
this man? I know you got it. He will take. He will take. He will take."
I think it's seven times it says, He will take. Now, Saul represents
man's choice. Remember how God said to Samuel,
give them what they want. This is their choice. Give them
what they want. Now, who would you rather have?
I want you to answer this as honestly as you're able to. I
want to ask myself this question. Who would you rather have? Your
choice or God's choice? Well, they wanted their choice.
And God gave them what they wanted. And the way this man could best
be described is a taker. That's all he did was take. He
felt a sense of entitlement. where he could take that which
belonged to everybody else. And he had no compunction about
it. He was a taker. He would take,
he would take, he would take. Now, what kind of character is
that? Someone who really doesn't care about anybody else. All
he does is take. And this is man's choice. Saul was a taker, not a giver,
but a taker. And that says so much about his
character. He'll take what is yours and
appoint it to himself. And this is the kind of man he
will be. And notice verse 19 after. Samuel gave this warning. Nevertheless,
in spite of all this warning, according to what kind of person
Saul would be, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel.
And they said, nay, but we will have a king over us that we may
also be like all the nations. We wouldn't be like everybody
else. And that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight
our battles. And Samuel heard all the words
of the people and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.
And the Lord said to Samuel, hearken unto their voice and
make them a king. And Samuel said unto the men
of Israel, go ye every man to his city. Now here's where we're
introduced to this man, Saul. Now there was a man of Benjamin
whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the
son of Bekoreth, the son of Uthiah, a Benjamite, a mighty man of
power, a very wealthy man. This was probably in the tribe
of Benjamin about the most powerful man there. And he had a son whose
name was Saul. Now listen to this description
of him. A choice young man and goodly. He was very good looking
and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than
he. He was the best looking man in Israel. Now, that's what would
appeal to everybody, isn't it? Go on reading. From his shoulders
and upward, he was higher than any of the people. Everybody
just came to his shoulders. He stood ahead above everybody
and everybody was impressed with this young man, Saul. You'd look
at him and you'd think, this is the fellow I want leading
us into our big, strong, good-looking, and from a wealthy family, and
he had all the tools that the flesh would say, this is who
we want to be our king. Now, this was Saul. Now, even after warning, this
is the man they wanted. And if you go on reading about
the history of Saul, in chapter 10, he delivered,
the one good thing he did is he delivered the people from
the children of Ammon. Nehash who wanted to put everybody's
eye out, he got all the children of Israel together and delivered
them. But after that, that was his first good act as a king.
After that, everything he did was wrong. You go into chapter
13, and he exposed the state of his heart when he thought
he could offer up a sacrifice. And he bypassed the priest. He'd
been waiting on Samuel. Samuel didn't come when he said
he did. And he thought, well, I need to go ahead and offer up a sacrifice.
And so he came into God's presence thinking that God could accept
what he did. And he showed his self-righteousness.
He showed his lack of need of Christ. He thought he could come
into God's presence. Do you think you can come into God's presence
without Christ? Oh, if you think that you're sorely mistaken,
you can't. The only way God can be approached is through the
Lord Jesus Christ. He can't be approached any other
way. But he felt confident, I can offer up this sacrifice. And
God rejected him because of that. And then in chapter 14, We read
where he said, I wanna get vengeance on all my enemies, so I'm gonna
make this curse. Anybody of all my army that eats
or drinks is gonna be put to death until I get vengeance on
my enemies. And you remember how Jonathan
ate, didn't know anything about the curse, and he was gonna go
ahead and put his own son to death. And the children of Israel
delivered Jonathan because of what a fine man he had been to
the children of Israel, but curse him, curse him. And then in chapter
15, He spares the Amalekites. He spares Ahag. God said kill
them all, but he spared the decision maker, the king, King Ahag, and
all the best of the sheep and so on. And he demonstrated at
this time what a covetous man he was. He was in everything
for himself. He was a taker. He took the best sheep for himself.
He spared the Amalekites. He didn't pay any attention to
what God said as far as obeying him. And then the rest of his
life, is spent in jealousy of David. After the Lord used David
in chapter 16 and 17 to defeat Goliath, and he heard the songs
of the women, Saul's killed his thousands, but David has killed
his tens of thousands, he became consumed with jealousy over David. And he spent the next many years
seeking to kill David. And David was always on the run
away from this man. And then his final act, when
he saw that God had rejected him, and God did reject him,
God had become his enemy. And what do you have to be to
have God to become your enemy? God became his enemy. And so
he actually goes to the occult. He goes to a witch to try to
get direction. You know, I don't have any question
that if he would have asked God for mercy, if he would have come,
save me for Christ's sake, God would have done it, but he wouldn't
do that. He went to a witch to find out what to do. And that's
when Samuel was raised up and told him, tomorrow about this
time, you're going to be with me. Turn with me to chapter 15
for a moment. I think this lets us know something
about Saul. This is after he refused to obey
God. Verse 14. And Samuel said, what
meaneth the bleeding of this sheep in mine ears, and the lowing
of the oxen, which I hear? That's in response to Saul saying
in verse 13, and Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said unto him,
blessed be thou of the Lord. I have performed the commandment
of the Lord. He did not. He did not. He's lying. Lying
to himself, lying to Samuel. And that's when Saul said, well,
if you did, how come I hear the cattle? How come I hear this?
Verse 16, then Samuel said unto Saul, stay and I'll tell thee
what the Lord has said to me this night. And he said unto
him, say on. And Samuel said, when thou was
little in thine own sight. He's not that way anymore. All
of a sudden he was big in his own sight. He had a high opinion
of himself. Now that is death. to have a
high opinion of yourself. May the Lord deliver us from
that. May the Lord cause us to have a low opinion of ourself
and a high view of the Lord Jesus Christ. These two things go together.
A low view of yourself means you have a high view. Christ
is all you have. If you have a low view of yourself,
all you have is the Lord Jesus Christ. It's everything in salvation.
But if you have a high opinion of yourself, that means you're
gonna have a lower opinion of him who deserves all the praise.
Now, Saul begins to have a high opinion of himself. Now let's
go on reading. And Samuel said, when thou wast little in thine
own sight, Was not thou made the head of the tribes of Israel,
and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel? And the Lord sent
thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners,
the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed.
Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but
didst fly upon the spoil? and ditched evil in the sight
of the Lord. And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the
voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me,
and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed
the Amalekites." Now we've seen this in the past. Agag was the
decision maker. That's who he spared. And isn't
that what religion spares? They don't utterly destroy the
flesh. They spare the decision-maker. They give credit to the will
of man, the decision-maker. Oh, man's sinful, but we're sparing
his will. And that's what this represents.
Him sparing Agag, the decision-maker. Verse 21, but the people, now
notice he blames the people. This is what is so interesting
about this man. He won't take responsibility for anything.
The people, the people. May God give me the grace to
come into his presence taking full responsibility of
my sin. It's all my fault. And you know, it's only when
you and I take full responsibility for our sin that we're going
to cry out for mercy. That's the only person who cries
for mercy. Somebody when their sin is all their fault, that
person needs the mercy of God, doesn't he? They need the mercy
of God. But Saul proves that he never
would take responsibility for his sin. But the people took
of the spoiled sheep and oxen, the chief of the things, which
should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy
God in Gilgal. And Samuel said, Hath the Lord
as great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying
the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than
sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. Now listen real
carefully. Obeying the gospel really believing
on Christ and trusting and resting in Him and knowing that who He
is and what He did is all that's needed to make you perfect before
God and resting in that is better than any sacrifice you bring.
It's better than anything you do. To obey And this is talking
about obedience to the gospel. You know, I was in a hotel yesterday
where we were in Kingsport at the Bible conference, and somebody
behind me, I can't, it was some kind of religious gathering,
and this lady was speaking to this other lady, said, how you
doing? She goes, well, I'm just trying to be obedient. I wish I would
have turned around, but I thought, how you doing there? How you
doing there? You know, it, My obedience, my obedience is the obedience
of Jesus Christ the Lord. And I look to his obedience and
I rest in his obedience as all my salvation, all of it, all
of it. To obey, and this is talking
about obedience to the gospel. To obey is better than any sacrifice
you can bring. And to hearken, to listen. You
know the word for obedience and hearing is the same thing? To
hear what God says is better than the fat of rams. Well, all
that to get back to this last chapter. We see something about
Saul. And you know one of the things
that troubles me about Saul is I see so much of myself in him.
And I believe everybody could say the same thing. if the Lord
gives us grace to see what we are by nature. Saul, what a weak,
sinful man. Now this is exactly, remember
the day before, God said this would take place. Now, there's
three things I think that Saul represents. Number one, he represents
man's choice. And he was the children of Israel's
choice. He represents man's choice. Secondly,
He represents a failure to kill the Amalekites. And remember,
there's so much typical significance in the Amalekites. The Amalekites
represent the flesh. They represent the flesh. We've
gone over that several times. I'm going to take the time to
do it now. But he wouldn't kill the flesh. He had mercy on the
flesh. He spared Agag. Man spares man's
free will. He won't put to death all the
flesh and look to Christ only. He mixes grace and works. Saul
did that. And thirdly, Saul was a taker. That is his character. All he
was was a taker, not a giver. but a taker, and he felt a sense
of entitlement to everything that the children of Israel had.
He would take everything to himself. So we see what kind of man this
man was, and God became his enemy. He had everything going for him
from a fleshly point of view, big, good-looking man, everybody
was wanting him, but God became his enemy. And so here we read
of his end. As a matter of fact, When we
get into the first chapter next week of 2 Samuel, you're going
to find out that it was an Amalekite who ended up killing him. He
refused to kill all the Amalekites, and look who killed him, an Amalekite. 1 Samuel 31 verse 1, Now the
Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled from
before the Philistines and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa. Without God's protection, they're
gonna be defeated every time. You know, before Saul came along,
the Lord fought Israel's battles for him. What a glorious leader
he was, but we want the king and look where this king gets
them. They fall down slain. Verse two, and the Philistines
followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons. And the Philistines
slew Jonathan, and Aminadab, and Malchashua, Saul's sons. And I have no doubt that Saul
witnessed this. How was he feeling at this time? Remember God said,
all this is gonna take place. He heard that through Samuel
when he was raised from the dead, just the day before. And he sees
all this. And the battle went sore against
Saul, and the archers hit him, and he was sore wounded of the
archers." How many arrows did he have in him? I don't know,
but he was sore wounded, knew he was going to die. Then said
Saul unto his armor bearer, draw thy sword and thrust me through
therewith, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through and
abuse me. He knew what was going to happen. And I can really understand
him asking the armor bearer to do this. You can understand that.
Yet did he not fear God's wrath? Did he not fear what was going
to happen to him after this? Evidently not. All he could think
about was the today. And I can understand that too.
Would you want the Philistines coming and abusing you and torturing
you and making fun of you and mocking you and so on? He knew
that was what was going to take place. So he asked his men, kill
me, thrust me through with a sword so I don't have to deal with
this. But his armor bearer would not, for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword and
fell upon it. He killed himself. He killed
himself. You know, suicide. I've heard people say suicide
is the unpardonable sin. Well, that's ridiculous. That's
ridiculous. Samson killed himself. And who was Samson? He's listed
in the Hall of Faith, isn't he? Men of great faith. So don't
think anything like that. Somebody kills himself. Still, it's horrible. It's sinful
to kill yourself. It's a bad thing. I mean, what
do you think about others? What do you think about your
family? Is it unpardonable sin? No. No. But what a horrible thing
it is to do. And he did it. He did it. And
like I said, in some respects, I can understand why he did it.
You know, I have been I've experienced a depression before when I was
taking a certain medication that made me so depressed that all
I could think about was killing myself. So I understand somebody killing
themselves. If you get so down and depressed and so on, you
can do that. And he did it. He did it. So Saul died, verse 6, and his
three sons and his armor bearer and all his men the same day
together, just like God said it would happen. and when the
men of Israel that were on the other side of the valley and
they that were on the other side of Jordan saw that the men of
Israel fled and that Saul and his sons were dead they forsook
the cities and fled and the Philistines came and dwelt in them. I mean
Israel was in disarray they were all hiding out in the woods and
it came to pass on the morrow when the Philistines came to
strip the slain and that's a gruesome thing to think about all these
people laying dead and them coming to take uh... whatever they had
of value and take it to themselves, that they found Saul and his
three sons fallen in Mount Gilboa, that's a mountain in Israel.
And they cut off his head, they stripped off his armor, and sent
him to the land of the Philistines round about to publish it in
the house of their idols and among their people. And they
put his armor in the house of Astaroth, their pagan god, and
they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. They nailed
his body to a wall. And that word Bethshin, you know
Beth is house, it means the house of ease. The house of ease. And that would describe Saul.
He always took the easy way. He always took the path of least
resistance. He never sought to obey God in
anything. He was always taking the easy
way. And here he is nailed to the
wall. And when the inhabitants of Jabesh
Gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul,
and remember this is the one good thing that's recorded to
Saul as far as what he did. It's when I think it was Nahash
or whatever the king's name was. He was at the Ammonites. He said,
I'm going to kill you all unless you surrender. And if you surrender,
I'm going to put out the right eye of every one of you. And
they were scared to death. I would be scared too. And that's
when Saul came to their deliverance. He got all the children miserable
and they defeated the Ammonites. And this was the one good thing
he did. I'm thankful for that. And these fellows remembered
that. So notice what it says. And when the inhabitants of Jabez
Gilead heard of that, which the Philistines had done to Saul,
all the valiant men arose and went all night and took the body
of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bethshem,
the house of ease and easiness, and came to Jabesh and burnt
them there. And they took their bones and
buried them under a tree in Jabeth and fasted seven days. And so
we have the end of Saul. But the end of Saul ushers in
the beginning of David the king. This was the king of God's choice,
David. And we're going to look at David's
reign beginning next week when he's made king of Judah at this
time. He'd been running for his life.
And then he'd spent the last 14 months, no, 16 months in the
land of Philistines with Ashotroth and keeping his mouth shut and
so on. And you remember what we looked at a couple of weeks
ago, how he got back into the favor of Israel, but now he is
going to be king. Now, with regard to Saul, what
a tragic life, what a sad end. Know this. I'm not any different than Saul.
Neither are you. And the only thing that makes
anybody to differ is the grace of God. Who makes you to differ
from another? And what do you have that you
didn't receive? Let Saul be a warning to all
of us. That would so easily be me or
you if God doesn't prevent it. Amen.