Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Ever heard someone say, "I prayed, and it didn't get an answer?" King Saul prayed and God didn't answer. Why? Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann with some helpful insights.

Bill Luebkemann: He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. He couldn't get an answer from God. Well, hello, you've been turning away from him for so long. God's tired of giving you answers. You never follow his advice. You never do what he tells you to do.

By the way, God just doesn't give you advice. You've heard the old saying, "If God is in the copilot seat, then you're in the wrong seat." And so, he hadn't been doing what the Lord had wanted him to do, and this time the Lord's just going to leave him to his own devices. Okay, you want to do things your own way? Here you are. You're all set. You can do them your own way.

Guest (Male): Sometimes our prayers should be, "Lord, why aren't you answering my prayer? Is it because I'm not listening? Is God saying no?" That's an answer too. We would rejoice in God's no's if we wanted what he wants. That was a lesson King Saul never learned, to his peril.

Hello and welcome to Hope From the Word with Bill Luebkemann. Bill is the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. We've come in our study through the Bible to 1 Chronicles. Pastor Bill will give us a brief review of King Saul's life, Israel's first king. We're in chapter 10 which describes Saul's tragic end.

Bill Luebkemann: 1 Chronicles, there are a lot of reasons why those names are there, and we looked at that. But I also pointed out that the chronicler here seemed to want to get up to the kingdom of David. So a lot of background information was given. We saw Adam and Eve, but right away he got up to Noah. And then we saw a little bit about the different sons of Noah, but we focused in on the line that went down to Abraham.

We looked at Isaac and Jacob, but also mentioned Ishmael and Esau. But we focused in on Jacob, of course, and Israel and the tribe of Judah and down to King Saul and then King David and the entire line of kings even. So it is kind of like starting at the beginning and following that tree as it branched on down to the point where Saul takes his life here in chapter 10. Just a token really about Saul, not much to say about him here.

He was unsuccessful. He was the king that maybe shouldn't have been king. He was the king that was after their own heart, the heart of the people of Israel. David was a guy that was after God's own heart. Saul was a guy that was after the people of Israel's own heart. They wanted a guy that was tall, handsome, dark-looking dude that they could look up to. They wanted a king like the other nations had a king.

They got what they wanted, and it was not a pretty sight. And so often in our own lives, we get what we wanted and then we find out later that this really wasn't a good idea and it really wasn't maybe what God wanted. We should have listened to him or listened to our Christian friends or listened to whoever was trying to counsel us. And that's what happened with Saul.

He was a guy that was a little humble in the beginning. When they said, "Where is he?" he was hiding in one scene, hiding behind some boxes or something. He's in the UPS warehouse, and they had to get him out. But that humility quickly was replaced by pride and ego. And when David came along, he couldn't handle it. He couldn't handle David. And David wanted to serve him and help him and be a servant under him. David didn't want to necessarily take the kingdom away from Saul.

He didn't want to do that at all. He just wanted to serve his role. But Saul was upset when the people started singing, "Well, Saul's killed his thousands, but David killed his tens of thousands." It was pride and ego. Ultimately, it didn't get him anywhere. And we covered this in 1 and 2 Samuel, but just briefly here, the chronicler again wanting to get us up to David, which happens in chapter 11.

Chapter 10 is the end of Saul. He's just worthy enough to have a small chapter here, 14 verses about how this guy ended his life. Nothing else really about what he did. Now, the Philistines fought against Israel. The Israelites fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines pressed hard after Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua. The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him.

Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and abuse me." But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died. So Saul and his three sons died, and all his house died together.

When all the Israelites in the valley saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their towns and fled, and the Philistines came and occupied them. Look, the Philistines were not even native to this land. They came from an island called Crete. They knew how to build ships and sail around the place and trade with other places. And so there was some migration. They were really immigrants to this area.

They really showed up on the scene around the same time that Israel came out of Egypt and took over the promised land, which was about 400 years prior to the events that we're reading about here. So while the Israelites came out of Egypt to conquer the promised land, the Philistines came over from Crete at about the same time. Archaeologists today tell us that they were really good at the use of iron.

Because they had ships and sailed the seas and traded with other places, they had tools and weapons that a lot of people didn't have. They had helmets and coats of mail, and they were a better-equipped army, high-tech for the time. The Israelites had a harder time dealing with them because of that. Incidentally, the archaeologists also tell us they were heavy drinkers, the Philistines. They had about five major cities in that area.

They fought against Israel. And as we're going to see as we go through this chapter, they fought against them because the Lord had stepped away from Saul. The Lord, in effect, had turned his back on Saul. This was all the poor guy's own doing. We'll get to that. So the Philistines fought against Israel. The Israelites fled before them, and they were getting slain all over the place.

Now, we already looked at, in 1 Samuel some time ago, a little bit more about how this attack happened. But there's a few more details to be had over in 1 Samuel 28, starting in verse 1 of 1 Samuel 28. Maybe you want to turn there just for a moment. In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces to fight against Israel. Achish said to David, "You must understand that you and your men will accompany me in the army."

Remember for a time David was living with the Philistines and pretending to be one of them. He was providing some protection from King Saul. He didn't actually fight on their side. And if we skip down here, we see that Samuel was dead in verse 3 and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him, and Saul had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land. Well, he did one good thing there, but it didn't last for long. He's going to be consulting one shortly.

Verse 4, the Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa. So they were like a football team. They're lining up, the Philistines on this side, the Israelites on this side. But a problem here. Saul saw the Philistine army. Saul saw the Philistine army. And what happened? He was afraid of them. In fact, he was terrified of them.

When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid. Terror filled his heart. In other words, he was scared to death. He was terrified. He wasn't trusting in the Lord. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. He couldn't get an answer from God. Well, hello, you've been turning away from him for so long. God's tired of giving you answers. You never follow his advice. You never do what he tells you to do.

By the way, God just doesn't give you advice. You've heard the old saying, "If God is in the copilot seat, then you're in the wrong seat." And so he hadn't been doing what the Lord had wanted him to do, and this time the Lord's just going to leave him to his own devices. Okay, you want to do things your own way? Here you are. You're all set. You can do them your own way.

And he couldn't get an answer from the Lord here. Tried everything. So he said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium so I may go and inquire of her." And we're not going to read the whole story. We read it before. But he went off and found this medium, this witch, if you will, this spiritist and asked her to conjure up the spirit of Samuel who was dead and ask Samuel, "What should I do? God won't answer me. What should I do?"

And of course, Samuel says, "What are you talking about? Asking me? But don't worry about it because a day from now you'll be here with me, because you're going to lose the battle." Not a good sign. And the guy was actually consulting mediums, spiritists, witch, whatever, consulting someone who was in touch with the spirit world, something that God expressly forbids.

That's how far he had fallen from a guy that was chosen by God to be the king. He was petrified and terrified, and he saw that witch, and she didn't give him anything good. She conjured up the image of Samuel, and there's a lot of debate about that. But I think it really was Samuel. I think God allowed Samuel to appear there to talk to Saul. Perhaps it was just one more little bit of graciousness on the part of the Lord to allow that to happen.

And who knows? I think Saul could have still sought the Lord properly, repented at this point, and maybe the outcome would have been different. But he didn't. And Samuel said, "You're going to be here with me tomorrow at the same time," I think is roughly what he said. Won't be long now. So the battle started. The Philistines fought against Israel, and what did the Israelites do? They fled, and they fell, and they were killed.

And the fighting grew fierce around Saul. First they killed his three sons. This was not his only three sons. He had others. But this is the three that were fighting with him that day. And then finally, Saul himself got shot with one or more arrows here, wounded, seriously wounded. He knew he was going to die, or if he didn't die, he knew the Philistines were going to catch up with him, and then they were going to torture him and kill him.

So he asked his armor-bearer to kill him. But his armor-bearer wouldn't do it. He said, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised guys are going to come and abuse me." But his armor-bearer was also terrified, and he wasn't going to do it. And so Saul fell on his own sword. I don't exactly know how you do that. They're kind of long. How do you fall on it? But anyway, I'm sure there's a way.

Maybe he propped it up on some rocks or something. Somehow he fell on the sword, sliced himself up, and that was the end of Saul taking his own life. Interesting because if you look back in the first chapter of 2 Samuel, there's another guy that takes credit for killing Saul. This is the guy who was the Amalekite. After the death of Saul, David returned from defeating the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days.

On the third day, a man arrived from Saul's camp with his clothes torn and with dust on his head. When he came to David, he fell to the ground to pay him homage. "Where have you come from?" David asked him. He answered, "I have escaped from the Israelite camp." "What happened?" David asked. "Tell me." He said, "The men fled from the battle. Many of them fell and died, and Saul and his son Jonathan are dead."

Then David said to the young man who brought him the report, "How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?" "I happened to be on Mount Gilboa," the young man said, "and there was Saul leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him. When he turned around and saw me, he called out to me, and I said, 'What can I do?' He asked me, 'Who are you?' 'An Amalekite,' I answered."

"Then he said to me, 'Stand over me and kill me. I am in the throes of death, but I'm still alive.' So I stood over him and killed him because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive. And I took the crown that was on his head and the band on his arm and have brought them here to my lord." This guy thought he was doing David a favor by helping Saul die. And I don't even know. Many people even question whether this guy was lying or not.

Looking at the end back in 1 Samuel chapter 31, it says Saul took his sword and fell on it. 1 Samuel 31 agrees with 1 Chronicles 10 that Saul fell on his own sword. But here we have this Amalekite guy, who by the way David executed, who may have just been trying to look pretty. He might have just been trying to show off. "I killed the king, brought the crown to him." Maybe he thought he was helping David.

"Hey, David will probably give me a job, maybe an important job because, hey, I'm giving him Saul's crown, it's what he wanted all along." And David said to him, "Why were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed?" Then David called one of his men and said, "Go strike him down." So he struck him down, and he died. For David had said to him, "Your blood be on your own head. Your own mouth testified against you when you said, 'I killed the Lord's anointed.'"

Remember David wouldn't touch Saul, wouldn't strike him, wouldn't kill him, even though Saul was attempting to kill David. David wouldn't touch him. And I think a lot of people feel that that guy made that up, that he really didn't do it. And certainly, it's not a conflict in the Scriptures because in two places the Scripture says Saul fell on his own sword. In this other place, the Scripture says that this guy claimed that he had done it.

There are lots of people in the Bible that lied, and he could just be added to that list, perhaps. So his armor-bearer was terrified. He wouldn't do it. The armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, so Saul fell on his own sword. The armor-bearer did the same thing. So Saul and his three sons died that day, and his whole house died together. They all died there, that is all of them that were in the battle at that time.

And the Israelites, Jesus said, "If you strike the shepherd, the sheep will be scattered." And you kind of see that's what happened here. Here Saul, when the Philistines were coming in, they saw, "Let's get the king. We don't care about any of these other people. We just want to get the king because then the whole thing will just fall apart. We'll get the king. We'll kill him."

And what does everybody do? They fled. They abandoned their towns. They didn't even just flee the mountain. They fled their towns. They abandoned the whole area. The Philistines came and lived in their towns, occupied their land over this large area because they ran away. What a shame that it had to come to that. The next day, verse 8, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.

Maybe they didn't even know that he was dead at this point. They had shot some arrows in him, but remember he fell on his own sword. And in the confusion of the battle, the Philistines may not have realized it till the next day. And here he is. Wow, the king, he's dead, his son, he's dead. Somehow they recognized him. I don't know if he still had his royal robes on or what have you. What'd they do?

Verse 9, they stripped him and took his head and his armor and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news among their idols and their people. They put his armor in the temple of their gods and hung up his head in the temple of Dagon. So here Saul, his disobedience now has resulted in this drastic loss to the nation of Israel. Many lives lost, towns lost, people abandoning the area.

And now ultimately here, God himself is taken a bad rap here. The idols are getting credit for winning this war. Now, of course, the Lord allowed it because of what Saul's attitude was. It wasn't God's fault. It was Saul's fault for turning away from God and always wanting to do things his own way. And in a way, it goes back to the people's fault because they wanted a king and they wanted a king who was after their own heart really, who was just like them.

They wanted a king just like the other nations have a king. They didn't want a godly king. I don't think the Lord even wanted them to have a king. They were in rebellion against God when they said, "We want to have a king like everybody else." It wasn't good enough that they would just trust in the Lord. And now ultimately this has ended in disgrace for the nation of Israel and also for the Lord because they're all going around giving their idols the credit.

"Look what the idols did. Look what Dagon did. Here we have the guy's head." Having your body cut up and paraded around like this, it was felt at this time that that was something that was even worse than death. It's bad enough you're going to die, but to have your head hung up for everybody to look at, that was considered to be even worse. I don't know why. Once you're dead, who cares what they do with your parts? But they felt like this was an even worse travesty, insulting, perhaps.

When all the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead heard of everything the Philistines had done to Saul, all their valiant men went and took the bodies of Saul and his sons and brought them to Jabesh. Then they buried their bones under the great tree in Jabesh and they fasted seven days. Look, these guys did a really good thing, and it says all the valiant men of this place.

And just to remind you who this town is, Jabesh Gilead, there was something significant that happened in 1 Samuel chapter 11 with regard to this town. It says in verse 1 of chapter 11 of 1 Samuel, Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead. And all the men of Jabesh said to him, "Make a treaty with us and we will be subject to you." This town, this Jabesh Gilead, was under attack. This was some time before, quite some time before.

But Nahash the Ammonite replied Now, they said, "We give up. Fly the white flag, we give up. We'll be your servants. Make a treaty with us. Don't kill us." But Nahash the Ammonite replied, "I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you and so bring disgrace on all Israel." Man, ouch! Gouge out the right eye. "I will make a treaty with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of you."

The elders of Jabesh said to him, "Give us seven days so we can send messengers throughout Israel. If no one comes to rescue us, we will surrender to you." That's an odd way to do things. "Give us seven days." I would have said, "Hey, no, we're attacking you now." But anyway, we're not going to read the whole chapter here. That will be your homework assignment.

But look, what happened was Saul, who had been anointed king but was not quite known real publicly yet, Saul got wind of this. They sent for help and Saul showed up with the army, the infantry here. In fact, if you skip on down, Saul heard the words and the Spirit of God came upon him in power and he burned with anger.

And he took a pair of oxen, cut them into pieces and sent the pieces by messengers throughout Israel saying, "This is what will be done to the oxen of anyone who does not follow Saul and Samuel." And they told their messengers from Jabesh Gilead, "By the time the sun is hot tomorrow you will be delivered." When the messengers went and reported this to the men of Jabesh, they were elated.

They said to the Ammonites, "Tomorrow we will surrender to you and you can do to us whatever seems good to you." The Ammonites should have known something was up, right? But Saul shows up and whips the Ammonites and saves this city. So I just wanted to point that out to you because these guys, I think, owed Saul. He had done them a great favor in rescuing them from the Ammonites.

And even David in 2 Samuel chapter 2 commends this city on what they did here by coming and taking the body of Saul. So I think these people were valiant people and they went out and took the bodies there. They felt some kind of respect for Saul and his sons, and it was a good thing to do and they were commended of it by David as well.

And he said that he was going to treat them well because of what they had done. And they buried their bones, the great men, the valiant men of Jabesh Gilead retrieved the bodies of Saul and his sons and buried their bones. Now, verse 13, Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance and did not inquire of the Lord.

So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David, son of Jesse. So here make no mistake about it, Saul did not die because he failed in the course at the War College on planning a military campaign. He didn't die for that reason. He didn't die because he made some error in judgment. He didn't die because he didn't have enough troops or they didn't have enough training or because they were outnumbered or because the Philistines had more advanced military techniques, weapons, and equipment. He died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. Unfaithful.

Guest (Male): Pastor Bill Luebkemann on the importance of faithfulness. Yet Saul was unfaithful. How so? Well, stay with us because Pastor Bill Luebkemann will be right back to answer that here on Hope From the Word. You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet.

If you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope From the Word wherever you find your podcasts. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m. and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org.

And if you'd take a moment to write Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. With more on the unfaithfulness of Saul, here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: How was he unfaithful? He didn't keep the word of the Lord. You remember the one time Samuel said, "Go in and kill everything." And when Samuel came to see him later, Saul said, "We did what we were told. We killed everything." Well, Samuel said, "What is the bleating of sheep that I hear?" "Well, we just kept a few of the best things. You know, maybe we'll make an offering to God with them."

Just somebody who just didn't quite get it. Didn't quite want to do it God's way. Just had their own way, a better way. It doesn't matter, I'm going to do it my way. He didn't keep the word of the Lord. That's his whole life story here. We couldn't begin to go through all the times he did. And even consulted a medium for guidance. The way that's worded, it's bad enough that he didn't keep the word of the Lord.

Not only didn't do what the Lord told him to do, but when he needed advice, he didn't even go to the Lord. He went to some medium to conjure up some spirit of Samuel so he could try to get some advice that way and did not inquire of the Lord. He didn't keep the word of the Lord. Saul was an example you don't want to follow.

Instead, may you be faithful so on that day you'll hear the Lord say to you, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord." We'll get back into 1 Chronicles tomorrow. Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.