1 Samuel Lesson 46
Background and Demonic indwelling of Saul – 1
Samuel 28:1-6
Tonight we begin a new section, chapter 28. This section of Samuel is devoted to the
glorification phase of David’s life. You
can’t help but notice David’s life has a remarkable parallel to the Lord Jesus
Christ’s life. And in chapter 28-2
Samuel 1 we find the phase when he is finally released from persecution and
he’s placed on the throne, and these sections have much to do with the final
climax of Saul’s decline and David’s increase.
We left at the end of chapter 27 and we found that certain things were
about to happen. We found David in a mess, first of all because he failed to
inquire of the Lord, again, and he went to Ziglag under a political deal with
Achish. A question was handed in last
week: was David out of fellowship the whole 16 months he lived with the
Philistines? If so, wouldn’t this be
compound carnality? What happened to his
sensitive conscience during this time?
Well, like so often in these situations for 16 months, David would make
a raid, then he’d kind of stop, then he’d make another one, and so forth. So these activities characterized his life
from God’s point of view. It doesn’t
mean he continually did this activity, there were breaks in between, he was
just in and out pretty much during that period of time. He never made a decisive break. Now lest this offend some of you who are hep
on justice, let me remind you that if God didn’t work that way in your life
that you’d be in a bad way. God, many
times in a believer’s life, will stick with you when you’re geographically out
of it. You’ve made a decision and it was
wrong and God just doesn’t abandon you because you made one wrong decision. In
fact God doesn’t abandon you because you make 10,000 bad decisions. God is continually there, and as long as
David has not done what Saul did, and that is make a deep resentful overthrow
of God’s authority. Apparently during
this time he was in and out of fellowship, he certainly didn’t grow spiritually
during this time, but we can’t say that we see signs in his life, as reported
in Scripture, of the extreme carnality we see in Saul’s life. The Bible doesn’t tell us the details, all we
can do is guess in this area and we guess that David was in and out of
fellowship, but not over a prolonged series of weeks, he’d be in and out during
this whole time period.
The second thing to notice about this is that David was deceiving Achish
during these raids. He would falsify
military reports saying that the raid occurred south of the border when it
didn’t, it occurred north of the border.
Now he’s in trouble. In 28:1-2
Achish and the Philistines are planning a tremendous raid against
Turn to 29:1 you’ll see where they hit; it’s called Aphek, but it’s not
the same Aphek as in 1 Samuel 4. “ Now the Philistines gathered together all
their armies to Aphek; and the Israelites encamped by a fountain which is in
Jezreel. Aphek is right about in here,
near the modern place of
In this connection you might be aware that knowledge of modern geography
will help you understand not only the Bible but also some of the modern things
that we’re seeing before our eyes. Just
kind of a footnote here, it’s interesting to notice some of the master strategy
that’s going on in the battle between
We’re going to see some strategy tonight with the Philistines coming
down this corridor and they’re going to start their penetration. Now the penetration in 29:1 is just started;
they’ve established their beachhead but something is peculiar because when you
turn back to 28:4 you find they are already camped at a place called
Shunem. Shunem is almost all the way to
their goal; the
So chapter 28 is not in contradiction, however, chronologically it moves
this way, chronologically, chapter
27, and actually the back part of chapter 29, 29:1 is where they have gathered
together, and then chapter 31. That’s
the way it moves chronologically, from chapter 27, with a note in chapter 29,
to chapter 31. The intervening chapters,
chapter 28, part of chapter 29 and chapter 30 are all put in to explain why
chapter 31 is there. So instead of
taking you chronologically from chapter 27-31, the way it would normally flow
narrating the events, the author or authors of 1 Samuel didn’t do that. They put these chapters in. Why?
These chapters are not placed in their chronological order even. Why? Because you have here spiritual cause
and effect and these chapters are put in here to explain certain causes, as to
why chapter 31 events occur the way they occur.
So we’re going to begin what seems to be a parenthesis. David’s in a jam in chapter 27, he doesn’t
really get out of it until chapter 31.
Now why all this intervening material.
To give us a clue as to how God moved in history. So again we peel back the surface layers to
study the mechanisms involved in history itself, and I might say that this is a
rather difficult chapter to teach, we’re only going to teach part of it tonight
and demands close attention, because this cause/effect is tricky, because it’s
out of chronological order and you’re going to lose the point if you don’t see
it; it is out of chronological order! In
other words, what we’re talking about is: in chapter 27 David’s in a mess; in
chapter 29 you find the Philistines already moving down the
This shouldn’t seem to hard to understand for eternal omniscient
sovereign God. After all, when did Jesus
Christ agree to go to the cross? Before
or after the fall of man? Doesn’t 1
Peter say “before the foundation of the world” Christ was crucified. Doesn’t
that indicate that before man fell God was already initiating the processes of
judgment in salvation. Of course. Application: doesn’t it mean that tonight God
is working in your life to prepare you for things that you know not of, things
that are future, that you have no understanding of. And this is why, if you understand this
principle, it is fallacious for a believer to say, well, they’re studying such
and such a book at Lubbock Bible Church, that’s not interesting to me so I
won’t listen. Now I can tell you as a
pastor, it’s been my experience repeatedly of teaching verse by verse, going
from book to book and amazingly enough we cover just the kinds of material that
people need, and amazingly oftentimes just on the day they need it. More than once a person has come and said how
did you know that I was facing this particular problem, and I would say I
didn’t, no idea. I just teach the Word
verse by verse.
Now here is a most interesting thing to speculate about, don’t you think
that God worked up the Scriptures, here’s the inerrant Word, think of all the
things that God had to do, so to speak, in history to bring the Scriptures
about so they’re written in just this order; just this order. Okay, He works out the Scriptures so they
follow this perfectly. Now when He wrote
the Scriptures centuries and centuries and centuries ago, do you possibly think
He might have had you in mind when He wrote them? Is that too much for an omniscient God, to be
personally thinking of you for eternity.
And the fact that some day there would be a believer in Lubbock, Texas,
who would be taught by this method and therefore would need the truth in that
order at that particular time. This is
some of the things to think about when you start working on God’s attributes,
as we’re studying in the family training program. You learn these attributes and then you can
do all sorts of things with them, they’re the key. And if we don’t learn anything else,
everybody in that program is going to know those divine attributes.
Now let’s go back to David. David
is now in a jam for not listening to God, but we’re going to see in this
chapter Saul is in a jam for not listening to God. And I want to take you on a little tour to
summarize where we’ve come with Saul because we’re going to meet up with him
again. So turn back to 1 Samuel 13:14,
let’s study Saul’s compound carnality and watch how it comes about. “But now
thy kingdom” Samuel says to Saul, “shall not continue. The LORD has sought Him a man after His own
heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be captain over his people, because
you have not kept that which the LORD commanded you.” In other words, negative volition toward God’s
Word. And you remember the context, it
was a panic situation; Saul panicked. In
the face of pressure Saul panicked. He
did so because he was in rebellion against God.
He would not assume his position under a merciful sovereign God and
therefore he tried to do it himself, he was overwhelmed and he panicked.
Now in 14:24 we find him cursing, “And the men of Israel were distressed
that day; for Saul had solemnly charged the people, saying, Cursed be the man
who eats any food until evening, that I may be avenged on my enemies.” And it was this curse that apparently, we
can’t be sure, but apparently it was
this curse that was honored by God to the death of Jonathan, his own son.
In 15:23, the final rejection comes when not only does Samuel condemn
him for no dynasty, in other words there’s going to be no dynasty, but in 15:23
you have Samuel make an announcement and this was because Saul did not kill
properly. This is guaranteed to please
all who are squeamish about war. But the
thing that God hacked off the most at Saul was that he wasn’t a big enough
killer. His job was to go and utterly
annihilate the city of the Amalekites.
Don’t shed tears for the Amalekites; there are races and groups of
people in history that have to be eliminated.
The reason is not because they are racially inferior, it is because
spiritually as a group they are inferior through their own rebellion against
God. And it doesn’t mean the people who
do the judging are any better. It just
means that in the course of history, like cancer, certain parts of the human
race have to be physically removed. And
you can thank God for the destruction of these kinds of people; you can thank
God for the destruction of the Canaanites because if the Canaanites would not
have been destroyed, you would not be her tonight. You have your freedom because the Canaanites
were destroyed, just like you have your freedom because American soldiers have
destroyed the enemies of this country, for the same reasons, the same
principle.
Now Saul does not destroy when he is supposed to destroy. Verse 23, Samuel lays into him on a certain
point, which we are going to see as very, very interesting background material
for tonight’s passage. Samuel says,
“Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as [iniquity and]
idolatry.” Now let’s look at
something. Rebellion—stubbornness. Idolatry—witchcraft. Now what do you think self-righteous Saul
would immediately recognize as a sin?
Obviously the idolatry and the witchcraft. Those were obvious, any nitwit knew they were
sins. And so Saul said well, I don’t traffic with demon possessed people, I
don’t touch any of that. And so he was
very proud, and we’ll see just how proud he was. He completely destroyed this kind of thing in
Israel, it was part of his legalism campaign.
Now was it wrong for Saul to destroy the witchcraft and idolatry? No; was it done with the proper motive? No. Was it therefore a sin in a way? Yes.
Saul sinned in carrying out the Word of God because these things were to
be eliminated but Saul eliminated them out of self-righteous motives.
But then Samuel says… look at this, look what’s in your heart, rebellion
and stubbornness. And he’s telling Saul
this and saying Saul, you just demonstrated it, when you asserted your
autonomous will against the sovereign God; who are you to autonomously dictate
to God who, what and where. God gives
the orders, that’s what sovereignty means.
Nobody gives orders to God, God gives all the orders. He is the order-giver. And Saul should have said “yes Sir” and
carried out the order. That’s submitting
to authority. And he did not, and so
he’s accused of having a sin as great as the thing that was worse. See, Samuel learned a lot about Saul. Samuel watched Saul perform; he just sat and
watched this guy carry out all these policies.
So he decided, listen, when I come to talk to Saul, do you know what I’m
going to say? I’m going to pick out the
sin that bugged him the most, I’m going to pick out the sin that he just wouldn’t
be caught in, and I’m going to say Saul, that sin that you are so uppity about,
your sin of rebellion is just like it… just like it! Now you can apply that, you can apply that in
a lot of Christian circles to the little pet sins and Samuel would say to you,
your stubbornness, all of course coated with “righteousness,” etc. put it in
quotes, and all of this is just as bad as that which you condemn.
Furthermore we find another trend; after this announcement is made Saul
has had it positionally, but in 16:14 we find the next step. After David is anointed, “But the Spirit of
the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD terrified him,”
the word is “terrified.” And it means he
had mental psychiatric, psychological assaults caused by demons working under
the Lord. See it says “from the Lord,”
they are under the Lord’s sovereignty.
And Saul was terrified. The demons are the means by which God in His
sovereignty carries out his sentences against believers.
1 Samuel 23:17, now we know something more, slowly the noose is
beginning to tighten, we find first that with the anointing of David, unknown
by the way, Saul doesn’t know David has been anointed, but the Word of God says
just when that happened (quote) “it just happened” that Saul became
tremendously upset psychologically, it just “happened” to occur right when this
young teenager boy was anointed as the future king. It just “happened” that way. Now in 23:17 we find Jonathan saying, “Fear
not; for the hand of Saul, my father, shall not find thee; and you will be king
over Israel.” This is an admission by
the crown prince, Jonathan, that his father is going to be removed and David is
going to be the next king; it doesn’t say how, it just says it’s going to
happen.
1 Samuel 24:20, here is where Saul himself mentions this. “And now, behold, I know well that thou shalt
surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in thine
hand. [21] Swear no, therefore, unto me by the LORD, that thou wilt not cut off
my seed after me, and that thou will not destroy my name out of my father’s
house.” So Saul, besides the crown
prince, is aware of the sentence of impending doom that hangs like a dark cloud
over his administration. And Saul is
going to be destroyed in this, he knows it, he has all this premonition of it.
1 Samuel 26:10, the only question that remains is how; this believer has
been in compound carnality for so long that he is about to hit the sin unto
death, and in 26:10 David speculates, he says, there’s three possibilities, “As
the LORD liveth, the LORD shall smite him,” that would be a miraculous
supernatural death, “or his day shall come to die,” that’s sickness, accident,
normal type death, “or he shall descend into battle, and perish,” that’s
military death, military casualty. One
of these three mechanisms David says, they’re all used, and I’m just standing
by until he dies.
Now turn to chapter 28:3. Once again we are reminded of Samuel’s
death. This is a repeat of 25:1 but it
is to remind us that there is no prophet in the government administration at
this time. “Samuel was dead, and all
Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city.” Period, that is one sentence of historical
background to lead you into an understanding of what is going to follow. Second
sentence, the second sentence is also background material so you will
understand what is to follow; the two sentences are not separate, they actually
speak of the same thing, and we’re going to show you why. First, let’s look at the next sentence. “And Saul had put away those who had familiar
spirits [were mediums], and the wizards out of the land.” These people are demon possessed people, and
Saul had them destroyed. He had them
destroyed out of the land. Now what is
the connection between Samuel and those with familiar spirits? To see this we have to go back to Deuteronomy
18:9-19, you must understand this because this is the setting of our
story. Chapter 28 cannot be understood
apart from Deuteronomy 18:9ff. Verse 9,
“When you have come into the land which the LORD thy God gives you, you will
not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.” So after they establish a national entity
they are to avoid something. The word
“abominations” refers to the most despicable kind of sins in God’s sight, and
the reason that these sins are despicable is because they are a result of the
restraint removal, that is God restrains sin in the world through common
grace.
Now under prolonged negative volition, such as the principle in Romans
1, God, who holds sin in, begins to relax His grip and say all right, you want
to sin, fine, go ahead. And so He
relaxes grip and you have grace backed off.
And there is a literal “giving over” described in Romans 1 toward the
unbeliever and described in other portions of Scripture toward the
believer. So you have a partial removal,
though not wholly, but a partial removal of divine grace, so that the natural
process, sin to chaos to death takes over.
That’s the curse operating from Genesis 3. And God says okay, you want to experience a
curse, fine, go ahead, and He lets you go.
See, this is why there’s no such thing as neutrality. You can walk in, you can hear Bible teaching,
and you can have this attitude, well someday if I think about it I might get
around to applying it. Huh-un, God
doesn’t work that way; He holds you responsible from the time you hear it. If you’re certain that what is taught is the
truth and you have the attitude, well, I’ll do it tomorrow, that is carnality,
that is rebellion. There is no Scripture
that can be listened to neutrally; you either are listening and rejecting or
you’re listening and accepting, but you cannot be neutral. You go one way or you go the other.
Verse 10, there’s a list here of things that God wanted to clean out of
the kingdom. “There shall not be found
among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through fire,” now
that shows you that it’s an advanced form of sinning; can you imagine heating
up some big bonfire and then letting your child walk through it. If you can imagine that kind of thing going
on that tells you how bad off you have to be before you get involved in this
kind of activity. That’s why these are
abominable sins, because these are sins that demonstrate prolonged carnality
and/or in the case of unbelievers, this is an obvious case rejection of
God-consciousness. So it has gone on and
on and on until the conscience has been so calloused that mothers can watch
their young children burn to death.
That’s how far carnality can go in a believer and that is how far the
rebellion of God-consciousness can go in an unbeliever. People can become this way in history.
If you don’t believe it stand by because we are going to have a group of
people doing research on how the doctrine of evolution was used by the Nazi
party to justify its atrocities and we’re going to learn about some of the
atrocities because young people know nothing about the background of World War
II, and think that you can believe in evolution or anything else. We’ll find out just where evolution
leads. There was one man in the 20th
century that had honesty, Adolph Hitler, and he took evolution to the logical
conclusion. You’ll hear him from his own
writings declare that that is what he’s doing; he does it with full knowledge
that this is where evolution leads. It’s
all through his writings, and this group has carefully researched it; a very,
very interesting study. You’ll see how
somebody can take things, knowingly, intelligently and consistently to their
logical conclusion. People that believe
in evolution are hypocrites unless they do what Hitler did.
So you find the first kind of situation is a person who makes his son or
his daughter pass through the fire. That
was a sign of divination. So the first
four things are divination: four systems of divinations. The first one is you send a little child
through a fire; if he gets through the fire that’s yes; if he doesn’t, he burns
up, that’s no. The fire ordeal, that was
used in the ancient world in connection with the worship of Molech and other
deities. So this is one way of
divination.
The second one, “or he that uses divination,” the King James says, but
the word in the Hebrew means drawing lots.
This is divination of the future by… actually most of the time it was
used, they would take a quiver and they would put arrows in, they wouldn’t
bother with putting the head on the arrows, they’d leave the heads off the
arrow but they would inscribe on he end of the arrow answers. For example, when
Nebuchadnezzar in Ezekiel 21:21 is going to attack to the west he has to
decide, he comes to a fork in the road, so he has to decide which way am I
going to go, to the north or to the south.
And so he has his soldiers put these headless arrows in a quiver and
then they start slinging the quiver around and the first arrow out is the one
that determines where they go, and that was the arrow that was used to bring
Nebuchadnezzar toward Jerusalem in 586.
So that is divining what ought to be by means of chance. And it doesn’t require too much imagination
to see just exactly where this is prevalent in our own society today.
The third kind of thing mentioned here is “an observer of times,” and
actually it should be the “enchanter” first in the Hebrew, and then it’s the
observer of times. The next one means
the observer of times. In the Hebrew
it’s “the enchanter” or literally the soothsayer. It means one who speaks in a trance. Two examples today would be Edgar Casey and
Jeanne Dixon. This would fall in this
category; these people would be killed if they lived in Israel in the Old
Testament times. The trance, people that
seek in a trance.
Then the fourth system which in the King James is translated “enchanter”
but should be “observer of times,” literally means an observer of omens. And the observer of omens means that they see
a certain pattern in various material objects, and this pattern in the material
objects conveys the future. Can you
think of how this occurs today? What
about palm reading? [tape turns]
…”a witch, [11] or a charmer.”
These are two types of black magic.
Today the black magic is mainly in the Caribbean and in Asia, though
it’s coming into this country. So you
have black magic. The first one, the
“witch,” she’s not somebody that parks her broom on the outside and crawls out
of a pumpkin or something every Halloween.
This is very interesting to watch, how the public schools play Halloween
up. We can’t teach the Word of God in
the public schools but they can bring all this garbage in. The first word, “witch” is one form of this
type of black magic and it implies, it’s a very difficult word, we don’t know
too much about it except in Micah 5:12 it’s used for something that’s held in
the hand. In other words, it says get
the witchcraft out of your hands. Now
what is it that would be in the hands?
That’s one hint we’ve got.
Another hint is the way the Greek translates it, pharmakeia, from which
we get pharmaceutical, and it means drugs.
And this would be the use of drugs apparently in connection with black
magic, produce spells and so forth. It
would also involve such things as in the Caribbean, the voodoo dolls and so
on. That’s a fifth category but the
first one under black magic.
The next one, “the charmer,” this is the word that means the one who
casts spells, or the one who makes incantations. And this would be such things as some of the
incantations in the satanic bible or the sixth book of Moses or the other
sources of incantations that are currently available. These are systems of
black magic and these were also an abomination to God and would not be
tolerated in any way, shape or form.
Finally, the third category, and these are the most interesting, the
next one are three demonic, the others are demonic, but this is a demonic
indwelling phenomenon. This is where the
demon powers actually are in cahoots with a person’s soul. The first word is a “consulter with familiar
spirits, or a wizard,” now the consulter goes with both of those, the first two
are kind of grouped together, but let’s look at this word for a moment. Let’s study it carefully, the first word is aob, the “be” is pronounced like a “v”
and the “a” is very quiet, so it really it’s pronounced ob. Now what about aob, what is this? A
consulter of aob, this is a consulter
of aobs, now what are aobs?
We’ve got to find out what aobs
are, so turn to Leviticus 20:27, talking about people that should be ejected,
it’s parallel to Deuteronomy 18 and it says, “A man also, or a woman that has
an aob, but in the Hebrew it’s even
stronger, literally it reads, “whenever there is one in whom there is an aob,” … “one in whom there is an aob,” so this is demon indwelling, and
obviously the aob is a demon. And it’s plural, that is a wizard “shall
surely be put to death.”
Now let’s see what they do with the demons. Turn to Isaiah 29:4, this describes what they
do, a particular kind of demon. Isaiah
is talking to Israel and he’s pronouncing doom upon the nation and in verse 4
he says, “Thou shalt be brought down and shall speak out of the ground, and thy
speech shall be low out of the dust, and they voice shall be as one that has an aob.”
“… thy voice shall be as one that has an aob, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper of the
dust.” Now the Greek Jews translated
this by a word, engastrimuthos,
meaning ventriloquist demons. And what these people would do is they would
impersonate the dead. Now the dead in
the ancient world were visualized very concretely, not like we do; somewhere
dark some place. Sheol was the ground,
and so therefore when these people would speak, the demon power would project
his voice as though it came from the ground.
So you’d be standing there in your séance and talking to this person, and
all of a sudden his voice would come up out of the ground. People would really believe that they were
talking to the dead, because after all, they heard this voice and it’s not
every day you hear a voice coming out of the ground. So therefore they deduced that they were
talking to the dead. Of course, it
wasn’t the dead, it was a demon, and the Bible teaches that the demon was
actually in the person. So here’s the
person conducting the séance, here’s the person that came to inquire; the demon
is actually indwelling this person but its voice seems to come from the
ground. So this is the aob, and that was their function in the
ancient world, to impersonate the dead.
They would give empirical evidence, the voice out of the ground, that’s
empirical evidence. You can’t trust
empirical evidence apart from the Word of God; here’s where the empirical
evidence will get you in trouble.
Back to Deuteronomy 18, the second, first “a consulter of aobs,” or a consulter with demon powers
who mimics the dead. Now the second one,
“a wizard” it’s translated, is actually very close and this is a word, “a
consulter of knowers,” that’s what the Hebrew means, “a consulter of
knowers.” Now what is a knower, this
word means one who is acquainted, one who is a close acquaintance, and this
would be very synonymous with the first word, it means that the person has his
own demon, and he has a name for it and so on.
An example Biblically is Acts 16:16 where this girl chased Paul around,
she said thou art a minister of the most high God, thou art the minister of the
most high God, thou art the minister of the most high God, and one day Paul
said oh shut up, and cast the demon out.
So this would be the case of a knower, or this would be the a familiar
spirit. Socrates was supposed to have
his own spirit and he bragged; he bragged that he got most of his inspiration
from his spirit, and I’m sure he did, but it was a spirit like Socrates
thought, it was a demon power. This
also, by the way, tells certain implications for the fountainhead of western
philosophy. The consulter of the aob and the knower, these people were
not permitted.
And finally “a necromancer,” the necromancer was one who sought messages
from the dead. In other words, he didn’t
just use them, he would just try to contact the dead, he wanted to talk to
great grandmother and find out where she left her money, she’d go to one of
these people and they’d tell you. And
incidentally often times they’d tell you the truth; see this would just give
more empirical evidence to people who don’t like the Word of God. God allows people to be blinded, and here’s
how He does it. You have negative
volition toward the Word, you drop the Word and then what God does, He gives
you lots of empirical evidence to substantiate your delusion. And so these people were just getting
empirical evidence you couldn’t believe.
People would talk out of the ground, you’d ask where grandmother dumper
her gold and they’d say it was 50 meters out in the back yard just left of the
outhouse. So you’d go out there and dig
down and find it. Now there’s a
technical problem here; how is it that the demonic powers can understand this
knowledge. They apparently have the ability
to ransack human minds, we don’t know how this is done but they evidently can
tap in in certain ways; don’t ask me how but the empirical evidence would
suggest that.
Now drop down to Deuteronomy 18:15, here’s God’s answer to the whole
thing. Why would people go to these
consulters of familiar spirits. You say
how can anybody be so stupid. People did
it then for the same reason they do it now; do you know why? because they’ve
rejected the Word, that’s why. The Word
of God isn’t good enough, the Word of God that gives prophecy, that tells
exactly the principles of history, that predicts all sorts of things about the
nation Israel, that isn’t good enough because I, autonomous pride-filled
rebellious man do not want to bow my knee to an omniscient God; I prefer to
consult with deities that are more on my level. They sure are.
Verse 15, “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the
midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him you shall hearken.” Now this is God’s answer, the nabiim; the nabiim were the line of prophets that began, theoretically with Moses,
though obviously the Bible says in Hebrews that Abel was a prophet, but the
line of prophets were Moses, and then it seemed to break and the next one on
down the line was Samuel; very important for chapter 28. Moses, Samuel and then from Samuel on you
have these prophets.
Now let’s examine certain things about the prophet. First, notice “the LORD thy God will raise”
him up. So the first thing about a
prophet is that you have to be grace oriented to wait for him. The people of the nation were forced to rely
upon God’s mercy, they were forced to wait until God raised up a prophet, at
this time. They couldn’t just go out and
consult anything anytime anywhere, they had to wait patiently for God to raise
up a prophet. That’s the first thing;
prophets were raised up by God’s sovereign initiative, not by human effort.
Second, verse 16, another thing we learn, that prophet will do
“According to all that thou desired of the LORD thy God in Horeb in the day of
the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God,”
what’s that got to do with a prophet?
Remember what happened at Sinai, people were down at the base of the
mountain, God spoke the Ten Commandments, out from that mountain, they were all
assembled down below and they heard it; they heard God speak those Ten
Commandments and that was all they wanted of God’s voice. Now you think of it, I’ve often thought of
how I would have reacted to this, I’ve often thought wouldn’t it be kind of
neat to hear God speak, to actually hear His voice speak so you could put it on
a tape recorder.
Now, we know every time this has occurred in history, everybody has
backed away from it. John did in
Revelation, in Moses day the people did.
Now what is going on, why?
Because when God speaks the very words He speaks themselves carry purity
and power with them. We’re studying this
in eh Hebrews study, and it was for this reason the people backed away and they
didn’t want to see God and hear his voice directly, so they said look, Moses,
you go up and be our delegate. So that
was the rise of the office or prophet, you have the people, you have the
prophet, and then you have God.
Historically the reason for the prophet is that he is a mediator. He is one who stands between God’s awesome
holy voice and a sinful people. He’s the
one who takes the holy voice, not because he’s so holy, but because God picks
him out and gives His words to him, and he gives it to the people.
One of the prominent liberals of our century said this about the office
of the prophet, it’s kind of an interesting admission. This is S. R. Driver, who is known for his
introduction to the Old Testament, usually used in college religions courses,
in their neutral approach to the Old Testament.
Dr. Driver makes this quote: “The existence of such an order in Israel,
forming a permanent channel of revelation was a signal mark of distinction
between Israel and all other nations of antiquity.” Now he doesn’t believe what the prophets say,
but he just observes as a good historian the other nations didn’t have this
peculiar sovereignly initiated line of prophets. They had people called prophets, but they
didn’t function like these.
Now notice, our conclusion of Deuteronomy 18, after He raises them up he
talks; what is his point, verse 19, “And it shall come pass, that whosoever
will not hearken unto My words which he shall speak in My name, I will require
it of him.” Okay, now let’s put it
together. Here we have Saul; Saul has
listened to Samuel; Samuel has told Saul time and time and time and time again
the Word of God. The Word of God has
been heard, and Saul has consistently time and time and time and time and time
again rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected and rejected. And what
does God say? “I will require it of him.” Now watch what happens.
Turn back to 1 Samuel 28. Saul
had put away all the demon powers. Now
here’s the irony of chapter 28; here is the ultimate humiliation, the ultimate
humiliation for Saul. The last sin that
the self-righteous, proud Saul does is the very sin that he looked down his
long spiritual nose at everybody else.
How ironic. All of the humor
we’ve seen, now the utter horror of it.
What is the last sin that this self-righteous man does. Engage in demonic communication; the very thing
that he had a campaign against. Let’s
see how it happens.
Verse 4, “And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and
encamped in Shunem; and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they encamped in
Gilboa. [5] And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and
his heart greatly trembled.” He has
reason to be afraid. Why? What did I say as we began the lesson
tonight? Time after time after time
after time after time after time, you can hear them marching, the fact that now
God’s noose is tightening on Saul. Saul
knows he’s going to be removed, he knows he’s committed the sin unto death, and
now he begins to get this awful quaking feeling that now is going to be the
time, now is when God is going to lower the boom. And so he’s afraid; he has great reason to
be.
Verse 6, “And when Saul inquired of the LORD; and the LORD answered him
not,” look at that. neither by dreams,
nor by Urim, nor by prophets.” Let’s go
through this, three systems. God didn’t
answer him by dreams. Why? What attitude do you have to have in your
heart before spoke in the Old Testament through dreams. The attitude of Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:3,
remember the boy Samuel, what he did when he was growing up, he was just a young
kid, where did he sleep every night. He
brought his sleeping bag and parked it right by the ark; do you know why? He wanted to be there in case God spoke
during the night, he just wanted to be right there. Now that’s the eagerness to hear the Word, the
freshness, the spiritual vitality of Samuel.
He was always there and God did speak; it wasn’t even in a dream. But we know from the custom that that’s what
Samuel expected, because you used to go to the temple of your God, hoping he’d
give you a dream there. The first thing,
God did not speak to Saul by dreams because his attitude wasn’t right. He didn’t have the heart of Samuel; 1 Samuel
3:3 would be a reference.
The second one, he didn’t speak to him by Urim. That’s easy to explain because in 1 Samuel 22
what did he do to the priest? He killed
them all; the one priest that was left, Abiathar, where’s he? With David.
So now look what’s happened, isn’t this interesting. See the birds come home to roost; no
Urim. No access to divine guidance now. Whose fault is it, God’s? Huh-un, he should have thought of that when
he zapped Nob.
The third point, God didn’t answer him by prophets. Why?
Samuel was dead. Now I’m making
all this point about these three things because in our final analysis, we’re
going to stop with verse 6 and I’m going to take you to another passage of
Scripture. Now watch the line of logic
here. Notice, I want you to get what
Saul’s view is first. Let’s look at the
way Saul probably thought about this thing.
And then I’m going to show you the way God thought about it. From Saul’s point of view, here’s what
happened. I had no word from God, I
tried, but I had no word from God. He
sought it, at this point in his life he did seek it. He did try to get dreams, he sought a priest,
he apparently sought for a prophet. And
when he expected to hear the Word, silence; nothing, absolutely nothing, no
prophet, no priest, not even an Abigail, nothing.
Now turn to 1 Chronicles 10:13 for God’s view and it’s exactly opposite,
and again this passage is used to say oh-oh, contradiction in God’s Word. This is the divine viewpoint of the
situation. Look what it says about Saul. “So Saul died for his transgression which he
committed against the LORD,” and then it explains the transgression, he’s going
to die but this is looking forward to it, “even against the word of the LORD,”
notice what it is again, is it against people?
No, it’s against the Word of God, “which he kept not, and also for asking
counsel of one that had a familiar spirit [a medium], to inquire of her, [14]
And inquired not of the LORD,” now doesn’t it appear that the last part of
verse 13 and verse 14 conflict with what we’ve just read from the actual
situation itself. Doesn’t Saul say look,
I didn’t have a word from God so I had
to consult the witch; this is the witch of Endor, I had to consult her, I tried
and God didn’t answer; I prayed and God didn’t answer, I asked for a priest and
God didn’t answer. And so I had to go to
the witch of Endor. That’s Saul’s defense.
What is God’s answer? You never
inquired of Me. Never inquired of
You??? You never inquired of Me. You never inquired of Me, you went ahead to
the witch. I never inquired, how can
that be? What does Deuteronomy 18 say,
that was the Word of God, and when you went to the witch he wasn’t inquiring of
God’s Word; he had already turned his back on God’s Word. Why didn’t he… this, in other words, was not
a true seeking. It appears that his soul
was so damaged by sin that this poor guy at this point was actually sincere in
thinking he was trying to do something.
He actually thought he was trying to do something. God says nuh-uh, no, that wasn’t seeking Me. Saul, you’ve rejected, rejected, rejected,
come off it. The reason why you sought
for me was to get a band aid for your personal problems. You didn’t seek Me so that I could totally
change your life. That wasn’t your
motive in asking for a priest; if you had really wanted a priest Saul, if you
had really wanted someone to come to you, I know there were no priests, I know
there’s no prophet, but David was in the same jam and how did God talk to
David? Through a woman, Abigail. God always has somebody around to give His
Word at the right time and the right place.
So God could have brought someone to Saul.
So Saul did not seek the Lord; he thought he did, but actually he
didn’t. Now this shows us something
else; this shows us a very interesting problem about sin. I’m going to summarize this principle. When you are on negative volition for an
extended period of time, you develop what we call compound carnality, you can
get involved in a situation, I’m going to use alcoholism as an illustration,
not to pick on alcoholics so relax, my point is it’s just easier to look at.
Let’s look at alcoholism for a moment.
The first drink is a responsible sin, but suppose in the process
afterwards, in the course of getting drunk, you murder, etc. etc. etc. Now are you responsible for the sin
afterwards, or does God hold you only responsible for the first one. It would appear from this passage that God
holds you responsible for these too. God
holds Saul responsible for the sin of not consulting him, even when there were,
no means around, even when it appeared he halfway sincerely did it. God still held him responsible.
Just like, for example, God holds all of us responsible in spite of the
fact that we’ve fallen, in spite of the fact that in Genesis we’re all under
the curse and we can’t bring forth any righteousness in and of ourselves; in
spite of the fact that we are damned collectively as humans, we are damned
under His curse. Not one of us, not one of us of ourselves can even choose
anything good. That is how total the
fall was. In spite of that Romans 1 says
we’re responsible. You say how can God
hold me responsible if I’m a fallen creature and I can’t do anything but
sin. God holds you responsible. Just like God held Saul responsible. Saul is held responsible for these things,
even though it appears tough on him.
Why? How did he get into it? What was the situation that led to it. How do we all get involved in a mess? By our identification with Adam. Adam did not have to sin, but he was our
representative before God and we’re with him.
And that is the way sin operates; it’s a very, very powerful thing, a
type of situation which is not at all conducive to flippancy.
I want to close by turning to Psalm 139:23. This is the answer for people who may be
depressed after hearing all this. Don’t
worry if you’re depressed it’s probably a sign the Holy Spirit is working. People that don’t give a damn are the ones
that are in trouble. In Psalm 139:23-24,
this is what God demands. And if this is
there, God is going to answer. Don’t say
well I’m a Saul; if you’re a Saul and you know it and you’ve heard the Word of
God, there is still an escape to you. Do
you know why we know that? You’re still
breathing. What does Jeremiah say? His mercies are renewed every morning. And the fact that God kept your heart beating
last night, kept you breathing, the fact that you got up and walked around, the
fact that you managed to make it here tonight, is a sign that He’s not through
with you, and while He’s not through with you you’ve still got a chance. So don’t prematurely conclude that you’re going
to go the way of Saul.
I hope some of you who may have a problem, I don’t know your heart, but
the point is that if you are, if you feel you are in the category of Saul, you
can’t blame God even for not giving you a chance right now, because Psalm 139
says: “Search me, O God, know my heart.”
That has to be there, because if you’re in Saul’s place you don’t know
the first thing about your own heart.
You are so blinded by years and years and years of rebellion there is no
way you can analyze your problem, no way apart from the Word of God. That can be the only standard that you can
apply. And the only thing you can pray
is that God be merciful to you tonight to open your eyes to where the issue is
in your life. The fact that there’s some
issue, some point of rebellion that has caused all this stuff over the years to
accumulate. That can be removed. God is merciful, but He is not going to dump
His mercy continually upon people who reject it, over and over and over and
over and over.
Psalm 139:23 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my
thoughts; [24] and see if there be any wicked” or hurtful “way in me and leave
me, and lead me in the way of everlasting.”
Shall we bow for a word of prayer.