Transcript
First Samuel chapter 28, verses 3 through 25.
Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had lamented for him and buried him in Ramah, in his own city. And Saul had put the mediums and the spiritists out of the land.
Then the Philistines gathered together, and came and encamped at Shunem. So Saul gathered all Israel together, and they encamped at Gilboa.
When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly.
And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by the prophets.
Then Saul said to his servants, ‘Find me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.’ And his servants said to him, ‘In fact, there is a woman who is a medium at En-dor.’
So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes, and he went, and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night. And he said, ‘Please conduct a séance for me, and bring up for me the one I shall name to you.’
Then the woman said to him, ‘Look, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the spiritists from the land. Why then do you lay a snare for my life, to cause me to die?’
And Saul swore to her by the Lord, saying, ‘As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.’
Then the woman said, ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ And he said, ‘Bring up Samuel for me.’
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman spoke to Saul, saying, ‘Why have you deceived me? For you are Saul.’
And the king said to her, ‘Do not be afraid. What did you see?’ And the woman said to Saul, ‘I saw a spirit ascending out of the earth.’
So he said to her, ‘What is his form?’ And she said, ‘An old man is coming up, and he is covered with a mantle.’ And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed down.
Now Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’ And Saul answered, ‘I am deeply distressed, for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams. Therefore I have called you, that you may reveal to me what I should do.’
Then Samuel said, ‘So why do you ask me, seeing the Lord has departed from you and has become your enemy? And the Lord has done for Himself as He spoke by me. For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord nor execute His fierce wrath upon Amalek. Therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day.
Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with you into the hand of the Philistines. And tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord will also deliver the army of Israel into the hand of the Philistines.’
That is the very tragic life of King Saul. Please keep in mind that very early in the career of Saul we saw that Saul was basically born again. So that we are talking here about a man who was saved in the sense in which we use that word today. And yet his life was a severe tragedy almost from the beginning, and it went steadily downhill.
What we have seen in Saul thus far, I hope as a result of our study in First Samuel, is that fundamentally Saul was a very insecure individual. You remember that at his coronation service they couldn’t find him because he was hiding in the baggage. And they pulled him out. And of course he was head and shoulders taller than anybody else. He was the tallest man in Israel apparently. But very insecure.
And he never was able to compensate for his insecurity by trusting God. Obviously all of us have certain levels of insecurity. And the solution to our insecurity is always to find security in God. Unfortunately Saul was a man who never was able to do that.
On top therefore of his insecurity he added rebellion. And when God announced that He was going to take the kingdom away from Saul, and when Saul began to suspect that the man to whom God was going to give the kingdom was David, he pursued David repeatedly as you know and tried to kill David.
And so his life was not only a model of insecurity and an inability to trust God but rebellion against the purpose of God and a refusal to repent.
Now Saul is faced with a crisis in this chapter. The Philistines had gathered their armies together. And Saul knows when he sees the Philistine force that there’s very little likelihood that Israel can win the battle. And his insecurity comes to the surface right away. And he’s frightened. And he feels he needs to get some kind of direction from God.
But God is not answering him in any of the ways in which he expected to be answered by God. No prophet comes to speak to him. He apparently approaches the priest who used the mysterious Urim and Thummim to discern the will of God. And God gives no answer there.
And Saul in his insecurity is so desperate to get advice that he takes a remarkable and a disastrous step. He decided to consult a spiritist medium.
Now the irony of this is that of course as we saw in the Book of Leviticus God had forbidden this type of activity to go on in Israel. If anyone consulted a spiritist medium they would be cut off from God’s people. And that could involve death. And the spiritist medium whether it was a man or a woman was subject to the death penalty as well.
And Saul through his edict had tried to wipe out of the land of Israel all the spiritist mediums. But now in his insecurity and in his inability to turn to God and in his lack of repentance he decides he wants to consult a spiritist medium.
What a tragic outcome. Remember that at any point in this whole story Saul could have turned to God and said, “God, I know I’ve been rebelling against You. I know I’ve been failing to trust You and to do what You want me to do. Now I turn to You. Do whatever You want to do. But give me whatever help and mercy You can.”
But instead of repenting and turning to God for His mercy he decided to go a path that is clearly forbidden by God. That he knew was forbidden by God because he himself had tried to wipe out the spiritist mediums from the land.
And apparently it was not very difficult for his soldiers to find one. And so they tell him, “There is a woman like that who is at En-dor.”
And so Saul goes down. And they hold a séance.
Now let me pause here in the story to discuss this whole question of a spiritist medium and a séance. What is really happening in this story?
I want to make three points that I think will help us to get the story into our mind’s vision here.
Number one, it’s very clear that we have a real appearance by Samuel. Or rather a real communication by Samuel to Saul. Because obviously Samuel is speaking the words of God to Saul. And he simply repeats to Saul what he had told Saul on other occasions.
It is clear that Samuel comes up from the heart of the earth. This along with many other scriptures supports the conclusion that the place that the ancient Hebrews called Sheol, the abode of those who die, is a place that is located in the heart of the earth.
And apparently before the crucifixion of Christ both saved and unsaved people went to Sheol. In fact Jesus apparently spoke of this when He said, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
That was not fulfilled by being buried in a mountainside cave. To the thief on the cross Jesus said, “Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.”
We get our one clear glimpse of this underworld, this place called Sheol, in a story told by the Lord in Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus. It hasn’t been too many months since I preached on this story. And you may remember that Lazarus was a saved person and the rich man was an unsaved person.
They both woke up in the place called Sheol, called Hades, or sometimes the word is translated hell. And the rich man sees Lazarus a long way off. They’re separated by a great gulf. And there is communication across the gulf between the rich man and Abraham.
I told you when I gave you that message that scientists have now come up with the proposition that the core of the earth is not, as previously thought, simply a ball of molten metal or molten lava. But using very sensitive scientific instruments the theory is now propounded, with apparently good reason, that the heart of the earth contains what we might call an upside-down world, a mirror image of the world in which we live.
And the way it is described scientifically is that there are actual continents in the heart of the earth, upside down from our point of view. And that they are floating on a sea of molten whatever the substance really is in the heart of the earth.
That these continents have high mountains, mountains comparable to Mount Everest. They have deep valleys, valleys as great or greater than the Grand Canyon. In other words there is a kind of a world that exists in the interior of our world.
And prior to the cross the spirits or souls of unsaved people went through that world. The rich man who was unsaved went to a portion of the world where there was torment. Lazarus who was a saved person went to the part of the world where there was comfort and where there was peace.
And Samuel we must notice is apparently in that world. And when he comes, when the medium sees him, she sees him coming up out of the earth. Which is in accordance with all the other scriptures that we’re thinking about here. Exactly where we would expect him to come from.
So first of all I think we may say there’s a real encounter with Samuel by Saul. Whose soul or spirit rises temporarily from Sheol in order to address King Saul.
A second thing that I think we may say about this is that the woman I think was not responsible for this. Nor was Satan. I say this because it seems to me that it is inconceivable that Satan, let’s take the woman for a moment as an instrument of Satan.
It seems inconceivable to me that Satan has the power, whenever a séance is held, to reach down into the world of the lost or even of the saved and to bring people up. Particularly of the saved.
Now I think I should add here that based on the New Testament we would say that when people die today they don’t go to Sheol as Samuel did. They go into the presence of the Lord. There are some scriptures that indicate that. So right now we would say the saved are in the presence of the Lord. The lost are still in Sheol.
But it seems inconceivable that this woman or even Satan would have the power to reach down and bring Samuel, a man of God and servant of God and prophet of God, up to communicate with Saul.
In fact it has been suggested that when the text says here, “And when she saw Samuel she cried out with a loud voice,” one explanation of the loud voice is that she was shocked to see it. That she herself was surprised by the appearance of Samuel.
So I think we may say first of all Samuel really was in Sheol. He really did communicate with Saul. And that this was not in fact the result of the woman’s power. Still this wasn’t the result of Satan’s power.
We might then ask the question, what kind of power if any did this woman have? Which is the sixty-four-dollar question.
Now if you look closely at the story it’s not hard to see what the séance was like. It’s not unlike séances that you may have seen in movies or on television.
And evidently the woman and Saul sit down. In all probability the woman goes into some kind of a trance state. And she sees something. Of course Saul doesn’t see it. He says, “What did you see?” And she’s the only one seeing it.
But apparently the normal expectation was that the medium, the spiritist medium, would expect to say, “I see such and such a thing.” And then the person who was attending the séance would hear the voice that resulted from the contact between the medium and the person that was being summoned.
How would we explain a séance like this? One explanation we might give to it is that it was a total fraud. I think all of us realize in the modern age that it would be possible to fake something like this very, very cleverly.
Those of you who heard the tape we listened to several weeks ago, we remember that they exposed some tricks performed by preachers on platforms who were being fed information through an earphone from somebody who was out in the audience.
And so there are lots of ways. And there is such a thing as ventriloquism, throwing a voice so it seems to come from some other direction. That might be an explanation. But I doubt it. I doubt if that is the explanation for at least a large number of the so-called mediums or spiritists.
It is clear that God regards this practice as very seriously wrong. And it is probable that He regards it as wrong because it involves some genuine contact with the spirit world of Satan.
Let me talk about this for just a little bit. It should be clear to us from the Bible that Satan is able to introduce thoughts into the human mind and thus to influence what we say and what we do.
The classic case of this of course is Job’s wife where she says to Job, “Do you still hold on to your integrity? Curse God and die.” We know from the immediately preceding context that’s exactly what Satan wanted Job to do.
Very likely this woman got the idea of saying this directly from Satan. She puts into verbal words the thought that Satan wanted to confront Job with.
Do you remember the occasion where Jesus was talking about His approaching death on the cross? And Peter says, “Oh no, no, no. This be far from You, Lord. Not this.” And Jesus turned to Peter and says, “Get thee behind Me, Satan.”
He recognized that the words that Peter was speaking were words that actually came from Satan.
Another example is the case of Ananias and Sapphira. I remember that they were members of the early church. They pretended to sell property for so much money. But they only gave that much and they kept back the portion of the price for themselves.
And when Peter confronts Ananias about this he says to Ananias, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?” The idea that you had comes from Satan. Satan is the one who nurtured this idea within you.
So the first thing I want to say is I think that the Bible makes clear that Satan is capable of making, well we would almost describe as telepathic suggestions. He is able to give us ideas. And these ideas lead to words or actions which are in accordance with Satan’s purpose rather than God’s purpose.
We’ll come back to this very serious issue a little bit later in the talk. But for now I think we can say that that I think that’s pretty well established from Scripture.
Now almost ever since the beginning of time there have been people who have tried to communicate with the world of the spirits. One of the ways of doing this is of course to try to fall into a kind of intense state of meditation or even a trance where the world around the individual is largely blotted out. And the person opens themselves up to whatever is out there to communicate with them.
In our own day there are things like yoga and Transcendental Meditation where there’s an effort to block out the surrounding world and to open oneself up to whatever powers there are in the universe.
And there’s little reason to doubt that particularly when a person is pursuing that kind of activity they may be successful. And they may in fact find themselves in touch with some of the spirits of Satan.
The New Age movement, it is not uncommon for New Age people to talk about spirit guides. Shirley MacLaine is one who claims to have some weird spirit guide that communicates with her. Whether she actually gets any communication from anything but her own mind I have no way of knowing.
What I am suggesting however is that given the power of Satan to introduce thoughts into our minds a person who deliberately opens himself up to this kind of intrusion by Satan may indeed find themselves involved with satanic activity.
It would probably not be past the ability of Satan therefore to utilize the vocal cords of a person and even to implant images on their mind. We don’t know the full extent of satanic power here.
But under this kind of conception we could conceive of a séance which really did involve the activity of a satanic spirit. So the medium goes into a trance. And in this trance state he or she gets a vision, an image that is implanted on her mind by a satanic spirit. And she can talk about what she sees. And the spirit gives her information or speaks through her or whatever it is.
So there can be, it seems to me, an old probability this type of activity relating to Satan. That would certainly help us to understand why God dealt with this very severely. A person who went to an individual like this could be cut off from their people. And a person who did engage in this kind of activity could be executed. This was a capital offense in Israel. And that suggests the extreme seriousness of that offense.
And therefore we see one of the serious steps Saul has taken, knowing full well the evil of this practice but unable to repent and turn to God, unwilling to repent and turn to God. He decides to try to get God’s advice through a satanic medium.
The irony of it is powerful.
What really happens here I think however in this séance is that God intervenes. And that Satan is not at work here. And that God permits Samuel to communicate one last time with Saul.
This leads me to the bottom line of my talking tonight and the point that I want to conclude my discussion with. One of the things that we need to be aware of is that our major battle with Satan, so far as we can tell from Scripture, is in our minds. And I repeat that. The major battle that we have with Satan is in our minds.
I think the evidence of the Scriptures is very overwhelming in that regard.
Saul is a man who was under satanic attack almost from his earliest years as king. And it is as we trace the history of Saul hard to see some of the instruments that Satan used.
One of the things that Satan used was suspicion. Saul probably already had a suspicious nature. Shortly after the hitting of Goliath by David he became suspicious of David. And he never gave up that suspicion.
And we may be sure that Satan fed it and fed it and fed it until eventually he saw the suspicion was more people than David. He becomes suspicious remember of his own son Jonathan. He says to Jonathan, “I know you’ve chosen the son of Jesse to the shame of your mother.”
He becomes suspicious of his own men. And he says to them, “Is David going to give you all fields and farm lands? Why is it that you’re not on my side?”
He became suspicious of the priests of Nob. And remember he had them executed.
Satan has clearly filled this man’s mind with suspicion. This is a work of Satan.
And Saul we also see the work of Satan in the production of mental illness. This is a penalty that God permitted to come upon Saul because of his disobedience. But remember that an evil spirit troubled Saul.
And we were looking at Saul’s life from the standpoint of clinical psychology. We would say he probably suffered from manic depressive psychosis. He goes into deep periods of depression followed by manic activity.
And we’re not saying that all such experiences are satanically induced. And the modern science has shown that many mental illnesses are due to chemical imbalances in the brain. So we’re not saying that mental illness any more than physical illness is always the result of Satan.
But we are saying that Satan has the power to play on these things and to make them worse than they might otherwise be.
Finally after having worked on Saul’s mind this way Satan is moving him in the direction of spiritism.
May I suggest that spiritism when people turn to it usually fills a void in a heart that is empty of God. Saul has lost contact with God even though he’s a saved person. And he realized that God is not communicating with him anymore.
Instead of repenting and reopening communications with God he seeks to fill this void by going to a spiritist.
Now what would have happened if God had allowed the medium to carry on her usual séance? There was a possibility that Saul could have gotten hooked on spiritism because God wasn’t talking to him anymore. Maybe now the way he wanted to go would be to consult mediums. Particularly if they had suggested the course that rescued him from the fix he was in.
If this had been true then he might have reintroduced spiritism and the activity of mediums into Israel.
In other words Saul is down at the bottom of a long slide here folks. And he is now dabbling in one of those serious sins that he could dabble in. And that could have had very severe consequences for Israel.
What does God do? God does two things it seems to me.
God judges Saul but with mercy. Notice that this is the point at which Saul’s life comes to an end quite appropriately because the Leviticus said that if a person turns to this sort of thing they should be cut off from God’s people. And that’s exactly what happens to Saul as a result.
But on the other hand it was a mercy that God intervenes here. It doesn’t allow Saul apparently to have a real experience with the satanic world. Instead he is always confronted for the last time by the word of God through Samuel.
His death, Saul’s death, prevents a further decline into sin. In fact even the events of the séance end with mercy do they not? Aren’t you surprised at the conclusion of this?
The medium gets up and fixes a fattened calf. She feels sorry for Saul. And so do his servants. And they insist that he, because he’s got to go out and fight a battle, “Come on, he does.” It’s the last battle of his life. But he needed the food.
So at one and the same time when God is judging Saul He is also extending mercy to Saul. And it is a mercy of God that follows him right here.
Let me just say this. There are times, and I think probably all of us know of some actual cases of this, there are times when a Christian gets so far away from God that God visits that Christian with death.
That is a judgment. But I suspect it is also almost always a mercy. Because it prevents the Christian from going further than they otherwise would. Prevents them from going further. Keeps them back from things they otherwise might have done.
So this is a tragic conclusion. And yet it is tempered with the mercy of God.
Let me wrap it up by application. Saul is a believer who lost the battle of his mind to Satan. Satan was a victor right from the beginning to the end. And we have to recognize the fact. So that’s where our battle is likely to be fought.
However we have a tendency to take a very naïve view of this. If I were to ask you, “What is Satan likely to tempt you to do?” you might say to me, “Satan will probably tempt me to go out and get drunk. Or maybe Satan will tempt me to go out and steal or commit immorality.”
Do you notice that really none of these things happened in Saul’s case? Saul was not a drunkard as far as we know. He was not immoral as far as we know.
Where is the battleground that you are most likely to have to fight Satan on?
May I suggest that you take just a minute to think of the person in your life with whom you have the most difficulty getting along. Would you think of that person? That person is likely to be the battleground between you and Satan. Very, very likely to be.
Did you notice that Saul’s whole life is wrapped up in his inability to get along with David? He cannot accept the fact that David may replace him. He has got to get rid of David.
And even though he has brief moments where he’s clear and he realizes that God is going to make David king no matter what he does, he falls back into his pattern of trying to prevent it.
His whole life is obsessed with one person. And Satan plays on Saul like he was playing on a stringed instrument. He plays the changes on it and drags Saul through all of these horrible things that Saul does till we find Saul ending up with the spiritist medium.
So let me emphasize this. The chances are good that your main battle with Satan will take place in the area of your interpersonal relationships with other people. And the people with whom you find it difficult to get along are probably the people that Satan is working on you so that you won’t get along with them. And so that you will be driven to acts and words that are displeasing to God.
We have to be able to recognize the activity of Satan in our lives. How do we do that? Well the basic way of doing it is through the Word of God.
It has often been said that the temptations of the Lord Jesus Christ would hardly have been perceived as temptations by an ordinary person. Here Jesus is out in the desert for forty days and forty nights. And Satan says, “You’re the Son of God. Why don’t You turn a stone into bread?”
What’s wrong with that? I mean is that a great crime, turning stone into bread? You could do it couldn’t He? But Jesus has enough knowledge of the Word of God. He quotes the Word of God back to Satan. And He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.”
I’m a man who depends on God. I’m a person who doesn’t use His own power apart from the provision of God.
The only way that we can recognize the thoughts that Satan puts into our minds as thoughts that are contrary to God is to know the Word of God. Will you let me repeat that? The only way we can recognize satanic thoughts for what they are is to know the Word of God.
The less you know of the Word of God the more likely it is you are going to be influenced by satanic ideas that seem perfectly good to you. And they even seem to be things that you will do that will please God.
Remember Jesus said to His disciples one time, “The day will come when he who kills you will think that he does God service.” People will persecute you and put you to death and think they’re serving God when they do it.
I remember there was a doctor in the student body down at seminary many years ago. And he became persuaded that when the Bible forbids divorce that it forbids divorce between two people who have experienced spiritual marriage, not just physical marriage. So he divorced his wife with whom he said he had never had a spiritual marriage. And married another woman. That’s how he rationalizes it.
The idea that Satan put into his head were contrary to the clear Scriptures.
I remember another young man that I had had in my classes. And after he had been out of school for a couple of years he came back to me and he said, “Thanks to your teaching, I was very appreciative of this.” He said, “Thanks to your teaching I have realized that no Christian group really is doing things right. And therefore I’ve stopped going to church.”
I let him know that that was not my teaching. And he was in clear violation of the Scriptures which says, “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is.” But he was sure that he was spiritual enough that he didn’t need any group.
Do you know that there are people in churches who have done and said things that have ripped churches apart? And they’ve been convinced they were serving God even though they were disobeying the Word of God.
The capacity that we have for deception by Satan is enormous unless we are governed and guided and controlled by the Word of God. You may be surprised at some of the things that Satan wants you to do. And thank you may not even recognize them as satanic ideas until you meet something in the Word of God that says, “Hey that’s wrong. That’s wrong.”
I’m encouraged however by the words of James. In James chapter 4 he says, “He giveth more grace. Therefore He says, ‘God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves unto God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.’”
Can you get that? God gives more grace. If I’m a proud person I’m not going to get it. And Satan who is nothing if he’s not proud will find me a very good instrument in his hands.
But if I’m willing to submit myself unto God then I can resist the devil using the Word of God. And the devil runs away from that.
That’s what Saul should have done. He should have submitted himself to God and recognized that David was God’s man. He should have humbled himself and said, “God if You want David as king make him king. Just help me to do the right thing.”
And Saul could have been a victorious Christian rather than a defeated Christian.
And we all have the choice. We were here this morning about choice. We can choose either to be victorious by submitting ourselves unto God and resisting the devil using the Word of God. Or we can open ourselves up in our pride and self-will to manipulation, to deception and to defeat.
That’s our choice. And by the grace of God we can be victorious.
Okay let’s have questions or comments.