Old Testament Archives - Page 122 of 143

The David Chronicles 30: The God of Brinksmanship

Joe Harby on January 8, 2012

Introduction

The set-up for the battle of Mt. Gilboa had provoked Saul to seek out the witch of Endor. With that episode done, we come now to a fork in the road. Chapter 30 describes David’s victorious battle against the Amalekites, and chapter 31 describes Saul’s disastrous defeat at the hands of the Philistines. The book of 1 Samuel ends with that marked contrast.

The Text

“Now the Philistines gathered together all their armies to Aphek: and the Israelites pitched by a fountain which is in Jezreel . . ..” (1 Sam. 29:1-11).

Summary of the Text

The Philistines gathered together for war at Aphek (v. 1), the same place where they had captured the ark of the covenant earlier in this book, many years before. The lords of the Philistines were the kings of each of their five major cities. Achish was the last of them to arrive at the muster, and David came with him (v. 2). The Philistine leaders were dubious about the presence of Hebrew soldiers as they prepared for a great battle with the Hebrew nation (v. 3). Achish, with perhaps a lack of appropriate diplomacy, said, “Oh, that’s actually David” (v. 3). The Philistine leaders, with more insight than Achish had, were angry with Achish and demanded that David be sent back to wherever Achish was keeping him (v. 4). They knew that David could force a reconciliation with Saul by turning on them in the midst of the battle (v. 4), and they even knew the song that had turned Saul against David in the first place (v. 5). Achish summons David, and swears to him in the name of YHWH (v. 6). This indicates he was perhaps a convert, and assures David that he had found no fault with him at all . . . but the Philistine lords were of a different mind (v. 6). So Achish asks David to go quietly, lest trouble flare up with the Philistine lords on the spot (v. 7). David’s reply is filled with possible ironies. Why can he not go out and fight against the enemies of “my lord the king” (v. 8)? This is how David had spoken about Saul on various occasions (1 Sam. 24:8, 10; 1 Sam. 26:17-18). Achish says that David had been an “angel of God” in his sight, but the other guys don’t think so. They were afraid he would turn and become an adversary to them. Their word for adversary (v. 4) is satan. He asks David to get up and depart at the break of the new day (v. 10), which, as it turns out, was the break of Israel’s new day. So David returned home to Ziklag (v.11), and the Philistines advanced toward the death of Saul (v. 11).

Irony and Loyalty

David had been true to Saul, and yet Saul was treacherous toward him. David had been (understandably) false with Achish, and yet Achish was true toward him. Saul attacked David multiple times; Achish defended David multiple times. Achish had made David his bodyguard for life (1 Sam. 28:2), while Saul had chased David out of his service. The Gentile king swore by YHWH and declared an innocent man innocent. The Israelite king swore by YHWH and declared an innocent man guilty. David is in a truly tight spot.

Setting the State for the Final Contrast

Given how tight the chronology is here, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that David was fighting the Amalekites in chapter 30 at the same time Saul was fighting the Philistines in 31. David fights and is victorious, while Saul fights and is utterly defeated. David fights with the Amalekites—and it was Saul’s disastrous disobedience with his Amalekite victory that set his disintegration in motion. The prospect for Saul’s battle looked very bad, and it was bad. The prospect for David’s battle looked very bad, and it was good.

Cliffhanger Sanctification

You have heard before that God loves cliffhangers. He loves them because He loves what happens to us when we learn to trust Him in the tight spot. Trust learned there is a lesson long remembered. On the mount of the Lord it will be provided (Gen. 22:14). The Red Sea was not divided until the last possible moment, when the Israelite multitude had water lapping at their toes, and an Egyptian army at their back (Ex. 14:10). Trust God one day at a time (Matt. 6:34), and this of course includes those days when there is no apparent means of deliverance. And then here is this instance. David was penned in, and it looked as though he was going to have to choose between treachery toward a king who had been treacherous toward him and treachery toward a king who had been very kind to him.

We can be sure of two things here. One is that if it had come to the point, David would have behaved as the Philistine lords predicted he would. The second is that David was trusting God that it would not come to that point, and God honored his trust. God did this by using the anger of the Philistine lords, and He uses all things, to His glory. As He tells His great story, the holy God is not contaminated by unholy instruments, any more Tolkien was contaminated by Gollum.

Book Learning

We all want to learn godly steadfastness, which is good, but our problem is that we want to learn all of it from books. We can and should learn “the plan” from books. After all, God wrote a book for us. The problem does not lie in the possession of a book, or in the reading of it, or in the study of it. All such things are good. The problem occurs when we come to think that studying the playbook that the coach gave you is the same thing as showing up for the game. Some Christians show up for the game without knowing the playbook at all, and sure, they have their problems. Other Christians (let us call them “Reformed”), write massive tomes showing the greatness and wisdom of the playbook, and they provide us with detailed commentaries on the playbook. They find which plays are arranged as a chiasm. Since a football team has eleven players, everything is some kind of chiasm.

Why is this so easy to do? Scripture says that a man deceives himself in three ways, and all of them seem appropriate here. He deceives himself when he hears the word without doing it (Jas. 1:22), he deceives himself while claiming religion with an unbridled tongue (Jas. 1:26), and he deceives himself when he thinks he is something when he is nothing (Gal. 6:3). Why do we not take the field in order to run the plays? Well, there appears to be another team out there.

State of the Church 2012

Joe Harby on January 1, 2012

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Introduction

Our duties toward God and man are concrete duties. All of our duties are attached to names, and faces, and places. We have no duties in isolation; all duties occur in the context of relationships. But in order to love as we ought in each particular instance of a relationship we need to understand how important abstract generalizations are. God gives us generalities, not so that we might hide in them, but so that we will know what to do when the particular time comes (as it always does). The proof is in the pudding, which is particular and concrete. But the recipe for the pudding need not be particular—in fact it really shouldn’t be.

The Text

“Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another. And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour. Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD” (Lev. 19:11-18 ).

Summary of the Text

This passage contains the commandment that Jesus identified as the second greatest commandment in all of Scripture (Matt. 22:39 ). I began at verse 11 because it is important for us to see what kind of neighborhood this commandment lives in. When we discover that the greatest commandment comes from a passage on covenant education of children, we gain a great deal (Dt. 6:4-9 ). So also we see here what love for our neighbor is supposed to look like.

Reject every form of fraud and ungodly deceit (v. 11). Honor the name of God (v. 12). Stop it with the sharp-edged business practices (v. 13). Do not abuse the handicapped (v. 14). Judge every case on the merits; pay no attention whatever to the wealth or poverty of the disputants (v. 15). Don’t be a tale-bearer; don’t jeopardize your neighbor’s life (v. 16). Don’t hate your brother by refusing to tell him what he clearly needs to hear (v. 17). Don’t take vengeance; don’t bear a grudge. So love your neighbor as yourself (v. 18).

Abstractions

If I were to ask you all to think about the idea of dog, all of you could summon up that idea up in your mind. And if you found yourself imagining your own pet, I could ask you to make it more general and nebulous. You could do that as well, and the result would be no dog in particular, but still recognizably canine.

If the house next door to you sells, before the new owner moves in, you can do the same thing to your new “neighbor.” You can know your neighbor before you know him. This ability to think in abstractions is a gift of God. In the passage from Leviticus, a number of general principles are stated, without any local color added. Blind man is more specific than man, but we are not yet talking about an individual.

Neighborism

If you think like a Christian about culture and society, it will not be long before you are accused of holding to some sort of “individualism,” and with that abstraction dismissed with a sneer. But the Christian form of this is not individualism at all. If we must label it, let us call it neighborism. We must be committed to the rights of our neighbor, and we must be committed to them before we know his name, before we know his identity. If a collectivist taunts us with being dedicated to the bloodless abstraction called “the rights of the individual,” and we don’t even know his name, let us answer by saying that we are actually motivated by “love of our neighbor,” even though we might not know his name either. When the scribe asked Jesus for the name of his neighbor, he was trying to justify himself.

What Love Looks Like

The law of God gives shape to love. The law of God teaches us what love is supposed to look like before we get into the details. The law of God cuts up the pie for us before we know which piece we are going to get. And when we let God define love for us, we are frequently surprised . . . but not always.

In this passage, we see that love means not tripping a blind man. We like to think we would have guessed that. But we also see that we must decide against that same blind man in a dispute if the facts demand it. We might not have guessed that. And paying a 30-day note after 60 days is out, even if it is industry standard. And to refuse to speak frankly to your brother about his fault is a way of hating him (Gal. 6:1 ).

Moving Constantly Back and Forth

If you live in the particular only, you remember Smith, but you don’t remember “your neighbor.” You have become narrow and provincial. But if you live in the abstraction, you fall prey to the observation that Linus once made—that he loved mankind; it was people he couldn’t stand. The obedient life moves constantly back and forth. The adept cook moves back and forth between the recipe and the pudding.

Life Together

As you consider our culture, our nation, our society, and all the lunatic follies that beset us in it, it is tempting to despair, thinking that there is nothing really that we can do. You find yourself asking, “Where are we going, and why are we in this hand-basket?” In that situation, what sort of resolutions should you make for 2012?

The resolution should in fact be this: live in koinonia-community. Love one another. Love the neighbors you know, and love the neighbor whose van is not yet unloaded. Talk about our community—it is not bragging. We didn’t do anything except get in the way. Ask God to have His Spirit get us out of the way. If we want reformation-fire to spread, it doesn’t much matter where it first ignites. Why not here?

A Brief History of Christmas

Joe Harby on December 11, 2011

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Introduction

We celebrate the birth of Christ, and we are able to do this because we have seen what His rule has accomplished in the world. Jesus told Thomas once that there was a blessing for those who would believe without having seen the risen Christ, as Thomas had (John 20:29). On this principle, our place in history gives us access to a greater blessing because we have not seen Christ with our eyes. But it goes the other way also. Those at the time of Christ had not yet seen what His rule would do in history (as we have). And so they are more greatly blessed looking toward the future—the same way that we will be blessed by looking forward to what Christ has yet to do (1 Cor. 2:9).

The Text

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Is. 9:6-7).

Summary of the Text

There are many lessons that can be drawn from a rich text like this, but our task this morning will be to consider just two of them. The first is the Christmas element—the fact that a child is born unto us, and that a son is given unto us (v. 6).The second has to do with this child’s relationship to what is here called “government.”We are told that this child was born in order to rule, for the government will be upon his shoulder. And the second thing we are told about His government is that it will continually increase (v. 7). He will bear the government upon His shoulder, and it will be a continually increasing government. This increase—unlike the growth of secular governments—will be a blessing, and not a pestilence.

Territory and Time

The fact that Jesus was born into this world (unto us, it says) tells us that He is Lord of all things. He is the Lord of the earth. Further than this, after He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, He was given rule and authority over all things in Heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18-20). And the fact that we are told that His government will steadily increase, without ever stopping, tells us that He is the Lord of time, the Lord of all history. He is Lord of the entire process. This includes those earlier times in the process when “the increase of His government” was not yet as obvious as it is now. This means that celebrations of His rule will contain corruptions that need to be weeded out. The kingdom grows gradually, and problems are addressed gradually. But patience is a virtue. Jesus is the Lord of it all.

A Brief History of Christmas

The early church celebrated what we call Easter (and others, Pascha) right away. This included the weekly “Easter” of the Lord’s Day (Heb. 4:10; Rev. 1:10). One of the biggest controversies of the second century concerned how the date of this annual Easter was to be calculated. So the early church celebrated the Lord’s resurrection (His being firstborn from the dead) from the very beginning. They were a bit slower with celebrating His birth. But given the amount of space the gospel writers gave to accounts of His birth, it is not surprising that this celebration came eventually.

· The birth of the Lord began to be commemorated (on an annual basis) somewhere in the third or fourth centuries, A.D.
· It is commonly argued that this was a “takeover” of a pagan holiday, celebrating the winter solstice. But it just as likely, in my view, that this was actually the other way around. Sol Invictus was established as a holiday by Aurelian in 274 A.D., when the Christians were already a major force. So who was copying whom? And Saturnalia, another popular candidate for being an “ancestor” of Christmas, actually occurred on December 17.
· St. Nicolas, who was later morphed into Santa Claus, was a godly man, known for his generosity to children. He attended the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), and at least one urban legend has him punching out Arius the heretic. Let us hope so.
· In the medieval period, the holiday became known by its current name (Christmas) in the 11th century. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives us the first use, recording something that happened in 1038. A.D. An archbishop died, “and a little after, Ethelric, bishop in Sussex, and then before Christmas, Briteagus. Bishop in Worcestshire.” Some may object to the fact that the suffix -mass is still in the name. But the objectionable doctrine of transubstantiation was not codified by the Roman church until the 13th century (1215) at the Fourth Lateran Council. The word mass originally came from the fact that in the ancient church catechumens were dismissed from the service before the Lord’s Supper was observed. “Ite, missa est,” which roughly translated means that “you may go now.” We see it still in our word dismissed. The vestigial reference to the Mass in this name should not be a trouble; Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to celebrate Christmas at all, and they deny the deity of Christ.
· By the time of the Reformation, the ship of the church was absolutely covered with barnacles—saints’ days and whatnot. The Reformers scraped virtually all of them off, keeping only what they called the “five evangelical feast days”—Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. All five are related to things that Jesus did, and we are not distracted by the Feast of St. Bartholomew’s Finger Bone.
· Much of what we identify as “Christmas-y” is no more than a century or two old—our idea of a “traditional” Christmas is basically Victorian. This is not bad, although it can be bad if you are not paying attention to your heart, and wind up judging your neighbor. I refer to Christmas cards, snow, silver bells, electric lights for your house, and a Saturday Evening Post Santa with a Coke.

Looking Forward

We expect the government of the Lord Jesus to grow, and this means that what we do will look quite different from what was done 500 or 1,000 years ago. We may hope that 500 years from now, it will be even more mature. In the meantime, we walk by faith in the one who is carrying all of human history on His shoulders—taking us home like an errant lamb.

Celebrating Christmas like a Puritan

Joe Harby on December 4, 2011

Introduction

Socrates once famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In a similar vein, the unexamined holiday is not worth celebrating. Whenever we do anything on autopilot, it is not surprising that at some point we forget where we are going, or what we were supposed to be doing. And wmhen we are just cruising in a mindless tradition, it is a short time before sin takes over.

The Text

“And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it” (Is. 25:6-8).

Summary of the Text

As the prophet Isaiah prophesies the coming of the new covenant, he does so with the image of a glorious feast. The feast is prepared by the Lord of hosts Himself (v. 6). What kind of feast is it? He prepares a feast of fat things, he prepares a feast with aged wines, of meat full of marrow fat, and then some more aged wines. This is the picture we are given of the gospel—not a glass of room temperature water and a cracker. Right alongside this feast, in conjunction with it, He will remove the covering that kept us all in darkness for all those centuries. He will take away the veil over the nations (v. 7). The resurrection will come—and we have the down payment of that in the resurrection of Jesus—and death will be swallowed up in victory. The Lord will wipe away every tear, and all things will be put right (v. 8). As those who have accepted this gospel, we have accepted that all of this has now been established in principle, and as we live it out in true evangelical faith, we proclaim this good news. But there must be continuity between what we are saying and how we are living. And by this, I mean much more than that our words should be true and our behavior good. I mean that our words should sound like good news and our lives should smell like good news.

Like a Puritan?

Some of you have heard that the Puritans hated Christmas, that they were the original scrooges and grinches. But this, as is often the case, is grossly unfair to them. One of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, George Gillespie, a staunch opponent of the church year being used to bind the conscience, said this: “The keeping of some festival days is set up instead of the thankful commemoration of God’s inestimable benefits, howbeit the festivity of Christmas has hitherto served more to Bachanalian lasciviousness than to the remembrance of the birth of Christ.” In other words, a person might object to pepper spraying fellow shoppers without rejecting the blessing of Thanksgiving. He can object to a Mardi Gras orgy without objecting to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. He can turn away from a drunken office party without denying the Incarnation. And there was, for the Puritans, the matter of compulsion also.

Remember the words of C.S. Lewis here: “There is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and specially in their view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party; if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries” (Selected Literary Essays, p. 116).

Preparing Hearts

This period of Advent is one of preparation for Christmas. If we want to celebrate Christmas like Puritans (for that is actually what we are), this means that we should prepare for it in the same way. Look at the whole thing sideways, like Chesterton would. Here are some key principles.

· Do not treat this as a time of introspective penitence. To the extent you must clean up, do it with the attitude of someone showering and changing clothes, getting ready for the best banquet you have ever been to. This does not include three weeks of meditating on how you are not worthy to go to banquets. Of course you are not. Haven’t you heard of grace?

· Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through 30 days of Advent Gnosticism.

· At the same time, remembering your Puritan fathers, you must hate the sin while loving the stuff. Sin is not resident in the stuff. Sin is found in the human heart—in the hearts of both true gluttons and true scrooges— both those who drink much wine and those who drink much prune juice. If you are called up to the front of the class, and you get the problem all wrong, it would be bad form to blame the blackboard. That is just where you registered your error. In the same way, we register our sin on the stuff. But—because Jesus was born in this material world, that is where we register our piety as well. If your godliness won’t imprint on fudge, then it is not true godliness.

· Remember that the architecture of our celebrations matter. In the medieval church they used to have a long, narrow nave for the people, then you came to a rood screen (as they called it) that would hide the “action” of the actual worship. When the Reformation happened, and Protestants inherited these churches, some oddities resulted —like a turtle trying to live in a conch shell. The wrong kind of penitential seasons are like a long nave that we have to look down in order to see the “happy stuff ” at the other end. At some point we must have a Puritan remodel.

Going Overboard

Some may be disturbed by this. It seems a little out of control, as though I am urging you to “go overboard.” But of course I am urging you to go overboard. Think about it—when this world was “in sin and error pining,” did God give us a teaspoon of grace to make our dungeon a tad pleasanter? No. He went overboard.

The David Chronicles 29: The Witch of Endor

Joe Harby on November 27, 2011

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Introduction

The miserable King Saul is now approaching the very end of his life, and he is terrified. In that terror, he casts about for a word of certainty, but what he is given provides no comfort for him.

The Text

“And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men . . .” (1 Sam. 28:1-25).

Summary of the Text

The chapter begins with a Philistine determination to go to war with Israel (v. 1). Achish invites David to go, and David agrees. Achish then says that David will be his personal bodyguard (v. 2). We are then reminded that Samuel had died, and was buried. Further, Saul had suppressed the mediums and the necromancers (v. 3). The Philistines mustered their forces, and Saul gathered all his troops on Mt. Gilboa (v. 4). When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was terrified (v. 5). Saul then inquired of the Lord, but did not hear back—neither by dreams, nor by the Urim, nor by prophets (v. 6). So Saul asks his servants to find him a medium, and he is told that there is one at Endor (v. 7). So Saul took off his royal robe, disguised himself, and came to her and asked for her services (v. 8). The woman suspects a trap (v. 9). So Saul swore in the name of the Lord that she would be safe (v. 10). So she asked who she should summon, and Saul replies that Samuel should be brought up (v. 11). When the woman saw Samuel, she realized that her client was Saul (v. 12). Saul reassures her, and asks what she had seen. She replies she had seen a judge (lit. gods) coming up from Sheol (v. 13). When she describes him and his robe, Saul prostrates himself (v. 14). Samuel asks why he has been disturbed, and Saul tells him his dilemma (v. 15). “Why ask me?” Samuel asks (v. 16). The Lord is going to do what He spoke through me before (v. 17), only this time David is mentioned by name (v. 18). This all goes back to Amalek (v. 18). Within the next day, Israel will be defeated, and Saul and his sons will be with Samuel (v. 19). Saul collapsed at this information (v. 20). The witch appeals to him, asking him to eat (vv. 21-22). Saul initially refuses, but she and his servants prevail upon him (v. 23). She prepared a meal for them, they ate, and then departed (vv. 24-25).

Some Background

David is being set up—and it looks as though he might be in a really bad jam. But he is nevertheless trusting in the Lord. Saul is also in a dilemma. He tries to get help from the Lord, on his own terms, but when that fails, he turns away. The Lord did not speak to him by kingly means (dreams), or by priestly means (the Urim), or by prophets. These were lawful means of getting guidance and direction. Throughout Scripture, God gave Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Solomon dreams—but for Saul nothing. And Saul had no access to the ephod, which was with David in Ziklag, and he had murdered all the priests of Nob. He used to have a prophet, Samuel, but would not do what Samuel said. Saul takes off his kingly robe in order to meet a dead Samuel, dressed in his prophetic robe. Samuel tells him that his kingly robe will be removed for good within a day.

The Bible and Magic

Saul had rightly suppressed the practice of witchcraft in the land (v. 9). But there was still a demand for their services—they were still around. The law clearly forbade this kind of thing (Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deut. 18:10-12; 1 Sam. 15:23). But what kind of thing was it? Mediums consulted the dead, and necromancers spoke on behalf of the dead. The two went together (Is. 8:19). There was a great deal of spookaloo special effects involved— Isaiah speaks of wizards who “chirp and mutter.” So the indications are that the “familiar spirit” that this woman had was simply a demon who impersonated the dead. When she got the real deal Samuel, she was astonished.

But Samuel here was a prophet—one who foretold the future when he was alive and when he was dead. He was identified by his robe, the robe that Saul had torn as a sign that he was going to have the kingdom torn from him.

In our rejection of this prohibited wizardry (which must be a robust rejection), we must not make the deadly mistake of thinking that it is a choice between occult miracles on the one hand and the natural laws of Jeffersonian Deism on the other. Moses split the Red Sea. Moses had a staff that turned into a snake that could eat other staves turned serpents. Elijah made meal and oil last way past their natural limits (1 King 17:16). Jesus turned water to wine, walked on water, and raised the dead. What should we call that? Certainly not magic in one sense—but certainly magical in another.

What is the distinction? The basic distinction is between autonomy, rebellion, disobedience and manipulation on the one hand, and obedience and wisdom on the other.

Point of No Return

Earlier in this series we considered the possibility that Saul was saved. He certainly wrecked his life and his reign through his disobedience, and he got to the point where he could not hold things together. He was a tyrant, and he never escaped the consequences of his sins. But there is another hint here—Samuel tells him that within a day, he and his sons will be with Samuel (v. 19). This could simply mean that he will be dead like Samuel. But Samuel came up out of the earth, indicating he was from Sheol (Hades). If Samuel was in “Abraham’s bosom,” then there is a possibility that Saul would join him there among the forgiven.

Saul ended his life trying to “hear” from Samuel, and then he partook of a table of demons. His attempts to manipulate and control came to a sorry end. He took an oath “as the Lord lives,” telling a medium that he would not obey the law of God in her instance. The result should not be surprising. Thus always to compromisers.