Hope From the Word

Bill Luebkemann: What's the foundation you're building your life upon? Next on Hope From the Word. When you're not hearing anything from God, maybe it's because you're not looking in the right place. If you want to hear from God, the first place to be looking is in the Word of God.

The second thing perhaps to be doing is to be looking where you know God has spoke to you or where you know what God told you to do. You need to have a place to start to build on a foundation, and the Word of God is the only sure foundation.

Guest (Male): Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession. Give me one glorious ambition for my life, to know and follow hard after you.

I never dreamed I would do this, ever say something like that. It might enter our minds after a great moral failure or doing something we deeply regret. Welcome to another Hope From the Word.

Pastor Bill Luebkemann has been leading a journey through the book of 1 Samuel, and on today's broadcast, we turn our attention to the 28th chapter. Feel free to follow along as we return to Pastor Bill, who continues with the story of what happened when Saul went to a medium, only to find himself face-to-face with the late Samuel.

Bill Luebkemann: 1 Samuel chapter 28. We left off here in chapter 27. David actually thinks to himself, the best thing I can do is escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel, and I will slip out of his hand.

He actually thinks to himself, the best place I can go is where the enemy is. It’s almost like I can't live in the spirit anymore, so I'm going to go live in the world. God can't take care of me here, so I'm going to take care of myself there. It's not working out. One of these days, I'm going to get killed here, so I'm going to go live with the Philistines and act like one of them.

In fact, he became almost like a roving bandit here, which we looked at the last time we were together in chapter 27. He was going around killing and plundering and taking all the plunder back for his guys. He was telling the king of the Philistines, Achish, this guy he was living with, that he was rampaging through Israel. He wasn't really doing that. He would attack an area, but he was going into the area of the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites. These were Israel's enemies, so he was still attacking their enemies.

He wiped them all out. Then he went back to the Philistines and told Achish he was rampaging through Israel, killing the Israelites. He didn't leave anybody alive when he ransacked a village because he didn't want any of them to go back and rat him out and say what he was doing. On the one hand, he was still not confused over who the enemy was. On the other hand, he was confused because he was living with them and starting to act like them in some ways.

You have David taking a backseat here for a chapter, and the camera reverts back to Saul and what's going on there. David goes over to the Philistine country. He lives there for more than a year. Saul doesn't bother going after him. Saul's dumb, but he's not that dumb. He's not going to go into the enemy territory and try to get David out of there. He doesn't want to fight the Philistines if he doesn't have to. Saul figures he’ll leave well enough alone.

As we said, a year and four months go by. The Philistines are beginning to fight against Saul. They're beginning to get their forces together. They've got their battle plans. They're getting encamped around Israel there. We begin here in chapter 28 with that scene. 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."

David said, "Then you will see for yourself what your servant can do." Achish replied, "Very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life." What's going on is the Philistines are getting ready for battle. David's been living with them for more than a year. The king, Achish, says to David, "Look, you've got to understand something here. You're here, you're on our team now. You and your men are going to come with me and fight against Israel."

You're going to be fighting against your own flesh and blood. You're going to be fighting against the Hebrews. You can't be on my side and be on their side at the same time. You left them, you came over here, now you're with us. We're going to put you to the test. We're going to let you fight with us. David really had this guy snowed under. David said, "Then you will see for yourself what your servant can do." Achish says, "I'm going to make you my bodyguard for life."

Now, this can be taken different ways. Some people say David had really lost it here. He's been living in the world for so long here with the Philistines that he just lost connection with God and he's given up on God. He said, "If I stay in Israel, I'm going to get killed. If I come over here and I'm living with these people..." Some people say he's acting like the Philistines now, that he's really into being a Philistine, that he wants to be like them, and that he really is going to serve them. If God didn't prevent him from fighting against his own people, he would have.

Other people say David never really would have fought against his own people when push came to shove. He would have found a way to back out of it. I tend to come down in that camp. You can decide whatever you want. Some people say he sunk so low here being with the Philistines, having run away from Israel, putting his trust in man instead of in God, and putting his trust in the army of the Philistines to protect him.

The one thing in my mind that tells me that's not exactly true is how he kept lying to this king of the Philistines saying he was out there raiding Israel when he really wasn't. It seems like if he wasn't raiding Israel before, I don't think he was about to start now. But that's just my opinion. Verse three. Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in his own town of Ramah. Saul had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land.

We're just reminded here that Samuel's dead. I think we're also reminded that David is not in the land right now. Saul's already dead. David's not connected with Samuel's death. Neither, in fact, is Saul connected with Samuel's death. Samuel died of old age. He died because his number came up. Israel had mourned for him. They buried him in his own town. We saw that a few chapters ago.

We also see here an interesting thing. Saul expelled the mediums and the spiritists from the land. He had gotten rid of these people who practiced sorcery or witchcraft. Some people refer to this chapter as the Witch of Endor. In case you're wondering where Endor is, it's not the forest moon in the Star Wars movie, but this may be where George Lucas got the name from. This lady that we're going to be reading about, "witch," that's really not a great word to describe it. It maybe is okay, but "medium" is a better word.

The word in Hebrew is "ob." It kind of has the meaning of a mumbling kind of a sound. Which is when you see these in a movie, they're having a seance or something, you get the idea they're mumbling and you can't quite understand what's being said. The Hebrew word for medium, the word "ob," denotes the sound or represents the sound that they might make while they're doing their thing. Whereas the English word for "medium" more denotes the fact that the medium is a medium halfway between here and there.

There is the spirit world. Here is the world of the flesh. The medium is somebody who's standing in the middle kind of bridging the gap or communicating between the two. This was strictly forbidden. I mean, the Lord had said back in Leviticus, "People who practice that, I set my face against them." This was not what God wanted people to be doing. Communicating with the dead, talking to the spirit realm was not something to be made light of. It was not something to be practiced or talked about.

The Lord didn't want anyone to have anything to do with that. Why? Some people don't believe in it. They say, "I don't believe in ghosts." Casper the Friendly Ghost, we don't believe in friendly ghosts or unhappy ghosts or happy ghosts. We don't believe in any ghosts. They don't exist. There are no spirits. But the truth of the matter is, there is a spirit realm. There are demons, there are angels. The demons are the fallen angels.

When Lucifer fell from heaven, he took some guys with him. That's the demons. So you have these beings that inhabit this spiritual realm, which is not here and not quite there. You have the good ones and the bad ones. The Lord doesn't want us communicating with them. And so we are to communicate with God by way of the Holy Spirit to communicate with the Lord, not to be doing that. If it wasn't possible to be doing it, he wouldn't have to tell you not to do it.

Saul, who was always a guy that was up and down with the Lord, away from the Lord, with the Lord, away from the Lord, here Saul expelled the mediums. So it seemed like he got something right here. He threw them out of the land. The spiritists were not permitted in there. You're going to see that that sentence is setting us up to see what happens next in verse four. The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa.

Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid and his heart trembled greatly. The Philistines are drawing the battle lines here. The Philistines are coming together. Achish has put David on notice. "You've been with me for over a year now. You're going to be my bodyguard for life. You're going to fight on my side." Saul sees the Philistines out there. His spies or lookouts are communicating back to him. The Philistines are getting set up. So Saul's getting his crew together also.

But he is very much afraid. In verse five, when Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid. Terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium so I may go and inquire of her." Look, Saul became terrified of the enemy. Now we know Saul was outside of the will of God. Saul's already been told twice at least that he was going to lose the kingdom.

The first time he was told, who knows? If he had repented, maybe it wouldn't have happened. The second time he was told, who knows? If he had repented, maybe it wouldn't have happened. Another many years have gone by. Every time he chased after David and was unsuccessful in killing David, he could have changed his mind and sought the Lord. Every time David spared his life, Saul could have changed his mind and served the Lord.

We see in Saul a life wasted time after time after time for something. He was king. Saul was king for a long time, maybe 30 or 40 years, decades he was king. When David was anointed, Saul was still king for another 20 years or so after that. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but it was a long time. This guy had a lot of chances. He could have been following the Lord, but instead he was always following himself.

When he saw this army there, he was terrified. He was afraid. It says terror filled his heart. In other words, he was scared to death. What did he do? He inquired of the Lord. What does he want the Lord to tell him? He hasn't done anything the Lord's been telling him to do for decades now. Why is he asking the Lord anything? And why is he surprised that the Lord doesn't answer? He sought the Lord in various ways. In the past perhaps he had had some dreams.

But he wasn't getting any dreams. The Lord wasn't speaking to him. The Urim and the Thummim, those were probably two rocks that they used somehow. Nobody really knows what they were, but they were something that the Jews used to discern the will of God. Some people feel they were colored rocks or something, but the Lord wasn't speaking to him. There weren't any prophets around. If they were, the prophets weren't saying anything. He was just coming up dry. He just wasn't hearing anything from God.

When you're not hearing anything from God, maybe it's because you're not looking in the right place. If you want to hear from God, the first place to be looking is in the Word of God. The second thing perhaps to be doing is to be looking where you know God has spoke to you or where you know what God told you to do. You need to have a place to start to build on a foundation, and the Word of God is the only sure foundation.

And when you want to hear from God, why not go back to God's Word? And if God already showed you something or he already taught you something, or there's some point in the past where God met you somewhere and told you something, and that's the last you heard from him, then stay on that course, whatever that is, and don't change it. The problem with Saul here is he never stayed on any course but his own.

So God was silent. I kind of feel like, well, what does he want God to say? It's kind of like when your kid asks you something for the 27th time. What do you want me to say? I'm not going to say anything different. So Saul said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium." Now you can find a whole lot of writing about why he felt it would be a woman that was doing it. The fact is, there seemed to be more cases where mediums were women.

I don't know why. I'm not going to speculate. I found all kinds of speculation. I don't know if it's right or not. But Saul also very likely in my mind just knew who the mediums were. Now it's funny, he expelled them all. But some of them are still living there somewhere. The same people he just got rid of not too long ago, now he wants one. "Find me one of them mediums." You mean the people we just all ran out of town? "Yeah, that's it, one of them. And I want to go and inquire of her."

And they said to him, "Well, there's one in Endor." So Saul disguised himself. Now here he's going to a gal who he believes to be a medium, who he believes can conjure up the dead and tell him things that no one knows. And he thinks that if he puts on a big rubber nose and those big funny glasses and a wig, they're not going to recognize who he is. The lunacy of this episode here just reigns supreme.

So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. "Consult a spirit for me," he said, "and bring up for me the one I name." Now, these two other men that went with him, his attendants, his helpers, servants, whatever, they could have done everybody a favor if they tried to talk him out of it. "Saul, you're a little bit off base here. Now this really isn't what you want to be doing. Maybe you should reconsider, maybe think about doing this some other way."

But of course, they go along with him. And they go, and he says to the woman, "I want you to bring up for me the one I name." In other words, "I want you to conjure up from the dead somebody. I want to have a seance here. I want to communicate with someone who is dead." But the woman said to him, "Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?"

She says, "I know who you are. You're undercover FBI agents and you're running a sting operation here. What do you think I am, a fool? I'm not going to fall into your sting operation." You know that what Saul did. She doesn't know she's talking to Saul at this point. But you know what he's done. He's cut them all off. I'm not... she's not admitting she's a medium. She's not admitting she's not a medium. She's not saying anything here, just saying, "Why are you trying to trap me here? Why are you trying... entrapment is what her line of defense would be to the judge."

Verse 10. Saul swore to her by the Lord, "As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this." You know, this is the last time Saul swears on the name of the Lord before he dies. The last time. And he's swearing that he's not going to kill somebody who is doing something that the Lord's against, who should have been killed to begin with, who shouldn't have been there to begin with, who shouldn't have been practicing this witchcraft medium evil art or whatever.

And he's actually swearing on the Lord that he's not going to carry out the Lord's will. Swears by the Lord he's not going to do what the Lord wants him to do. This is where this guy came from, from doing what the Lord wanted him to do, to not doing what the Lord wanted him to do, but saying he had. "Well, I killed everyone the Lord wanted me to kill, except for just a few that I left alive." He started here and went to here. Now he's actually swearing on the Lord that he won't do something that God would want him to do.

So he says, he doesn't admit that he's the king. "Look, we're not going to tell anybody. Me and my friends here, it's just going to stay in this room, just me and my friends and you. No one else is going to know anything about this. As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this." Then the woman asked, "Whom shall I bring up for you?" "Bring up Samuel," he said. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!"

The king said to her, "Don't be afraid. What do you see?" The woman said, "I see a spirit coming up out of the ground." "What does he look like?" he asked. "An old man wearing a robe is coming up," she said. Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. Look, here's a few things you've got to understand here. First of all, Saul says to the lady, "Bring up Samuel." In other words, "Communicate with her, initiate the seance."

Send out a message, however they do this. You're going to bring up this person from the dead. Look, it's not possible to bring up people from the dead. It's not possible. This woman was not doing this. This was something God was doing. And that's one of the things you need to realize here. Now, some people say this wasn't really Samuel. And I have no doubt that most of the time when mediums were conducting seances back in this day and even today, you see a seance, someone's communicating with the dead, I have no doubt they're all fakes.

They either know they're fakes and they're just trying to make a few bucks by putting on an act for you, or they think they're real, but they're really fakes. Or maybe they really are communicating with evil spirits, but they're not communicating with the dead person they think they're communicating with. They may very well be communicating with some evil spirit that may be leading them to think that he or she is posing as the dead person.

And you read cases about this from time to time where someone went to a seance and was in a trance and communicated with a loved one and found out some piece of information that only the dead person could have possibly known, so it must have been real. But no, that doesn't prove anything because the devil knows a lot of things that are not known to anyone else either.

And so some piece of information that some demon posing as some lost loved one gives to some medium to give someone in a seance really could be the correct information that was gotten by incorrect, unjust, evil means. I read about one case where some guy died and his wife couldn't find some very important document and had a seance and communicated with her husband and found out where this very important piece of paper was.

But the devil could have just as well known where that piece of paper was because one of his demons could have seen when the guy lost it because the demons can see what's going on as well. No, that doesn't prove anything. There are demons and they are evil and they are for real. And you don't have any power over them except that, of course, in the name of Jesus, they don't have any power over us.

We don't have the power necessarily to make them do what we want them to do, but we can also know that they don't have any power over us to make us do anything that the Lord does not want us to do. But they do have power. And they do know things and they are able to do things. And this case I was telling you about that I read, this person who had done this seance thing tried to conjure that person up again and it was a horrifying evil experience which eventually led that person to become a Christian when they realized what they were fooling with here was not good.

Look, my point here is not to talk about the power that we have in Jesus. We're talking about the seance here and the medium, and we're talking about communicating with the dead. And what we have to realize is we don't have any power over any of these things. If some demon is cooperating in some way in some seance, they're doing it for their own purposes, not to help you out.

And that's probably what this woman normally was used to doing. She was probably either completely a fake or else maybe she was normally used to dealing with just your run-of-the-mill, average everyday evil spirit like Screwtape. And she could see when Samuel came up, he wasn't your typical run-of-the-mill evil spirit. He didn't have fangs or horns or whatever.

But it could be that she was just pretending all these years and never saw any spirits, so now that she sees one, she is scared to death. She is not in control. And that's another thing here. Whenever she did this in the past, either she was putting on an act or if she was communicating with the demons, she felt like she was in control of it because they were cooperating with her. Well, this kind of thing here has just blown the whole lid off the whole thing.

She's just all of a sudden completely out of her element, out of control. The Lord has, for some reason, allowed Samuel to appear here. He kind of like the Lord went to Samuel and said, "Samuel, I hate to bother you now that you're here in Abraham's bosom," which is where they were before the gates of heaven were open. "Samuel, I know you spent a long time on earth. I hate to bother you, but I need you to go back just for a few minutes to have this conversation with..." This was all part of God's plan. And in a way, you can see maybe it's just like one more gracious opportunity for Saul to repent or something because he's just going to get the same answer.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of 1 Samuel. 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.

Or 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 a.m. and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7. 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 take a moment to write to 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. We'll continue our study of 1 Samuel next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

Bill Luebkemann: To know and follow hard after you. To know and follow hard after you. To grow as your disciple in your truth. To grow as your disciple. This world is empty, pale, and poor, compared to knowing you my Lord. Lead me on and I will run after you. Lead me on and I will run after you.