1. "David's trials dragged on and they started to drag down his faith. Saul's physical war against David was also a spiritual war of attrition. Over time, David's grip on God's promises weakened. After so many victories of faith, this time he failed."

2. "God's providence in David's life was like a wild horse bucking and bouncing all over the place. And David's faith in God's promise had let him hang on and hang on and keep hanging on, but finally he gets bucked off."

3. "Desperation can drive you to seek allies among God's enemies. And if you do that, what will you likely have to start doing next? Deception."

4. "Sometimes desperate acts get you what you want. The cost comes later."

5. "Sin craves secrecy. It doesn't want to come to light, doesn't want to be discovered, doesn't want to be exposed."

6. "It is possible to pronounce God's name even as you are setting your whole life against him."

7. "Saul's problem is that he misread God's signals or didn't bother even to try to read them. All those silences were warnings. All those refusals to answer were meant to prompt Saul to repent."

8. "Trying to get what you want from God is not faith. Faith is unconditional trust that leads to unconditional surrender."

9. "No spiritual experience can cover for disobedience. No religious appearance and habit and practice can make up for failing to obey God. No warm, fuzzy feelings about God count for anything unless they lead to and follow from obedience to God's Word."

10. "The right solution to a wrong desperation is a right desperation. Desperately seeking the only God who can save you."

Observation Questions

1. According to 1 Samuel 27:1, what did David say "in his heart" about his situation, and what conclusion did he reach about escaping to the land of the Philistines?

2. In 1 Samuel 27:8-12, what peoples did David actually raid, and what did he tell Achish when asked where he had made his raids?

3. According to 1 Samuel 28:5-6, how did Saul respond when he saw the Philistine army, and what happened when he inquired of the Lord through dreams, Urim, and prophets?

4. In 1 Samuel 28:8-10, what steps did Saul take to conceal his identity when visiting the medium, and what oath did he swear to her?

5. What specific reasons does Samuel give in 1 Samuel 28:17-18 for why the Lord has torn the kingdom from Saul and given it to David?

6. According to 1 Samuel 28:19, what does Samuel prophesy will happen to Saul, his sons, and the army of Israel the following day?

Interpretation Questions

1. David had received God's personal promise that he would become king of Israel. How does his statement in 1 Samuel 27:1 ("Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul") reveal a failure of faith, and what does this teach us about the relationship between prolonged trials and trust in God's promises?

2. Why is it significant that David "said in his heart" (27:1) rather than inquiring of the Lord through the priest and ephod as he had done previously? What does this contrast reveal about the source of his unbelieving conclusions?

3. In 1 Samuel 28:6, God refused to answer Saul through any legitimate means. According to the sermon and the text, what was God communicating through this silence, and why did Saul fail to understand it?

4. How does Saul's act of swearing "by the Lord" (28:10) while seeking a medium illustrate the danger of external religious language divorced from genuine obedience and heart devotion to God?

5. Samuel tells Saul in 28:16 that "the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy." How does this statement connect to Saul's pattern of disobedience throughout 1 Samuel, and what does it reveal about the ultimate consequence of persistent rebellion against God?

Application Questions

1. David's doubt arose when he stopped inquiring of God and instead talked only to himself. When you face prolonged difficulties or feel desperate, what specific practices can you put in place to ensure you are turning to God in prayer and to other believers for counsel rather than relying solely on your own reasoning?

2. The sermon noted that David's sin of fleeing to the Philistines led to further sins of deception and eventually trapped him in an impossible dilemma. Is there an area of your life where a compromise or shortcut is creating pressure for additional compromises? What would it look like to confess this and seek a different path?

3. Saul treated God like "a genie in a bottle"—only calling on Him when he wanted something. In what ways might you be tempted to approach God primarily for what you can get from Him rather than in unconditional surrender and obedience? How can you cultivate a relationship with God that values Him for who He is?

4. The sermon emphasized that God's silence to Saul was meant to prompt repentance, but Saul never asked "why" God wasn't answering. When you experience seasons where God seems silent or distant, how do you typically respond? What would it look like to use such seasons as an opportunity for honest self-examination and repentance?

5. The sermon concluded by contrasting "ungodly desperation" (seeking selfish gain through disobedience) with "godly desperation" (clinging to God even when circumstances seem hopeless). What current circumstance in your life requires you to exercise godly desperation, and what concrete step can you take this week to cling to God's promises rather than take matters into your own hands?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Deuteronomy 18:9-14 — This passage contains God's explicit prohibition against mediums and necromancers, providing the background for why Saul's actions in seeking the medium at Endor were a direct violation of God's command.

2. 1 Samuel 15:1-23 — This earlier chapter records Saul's disobedience regarding the Amalekites, which Samuel references in 28:18 as the reason the kingdom was torn from Saul, showing the long-term consequences of partial obedience.

3. Psalm 42:1-11 — This psalm models godly desperation, where the psalmist honestly expresses his distress to God while repeatedly choosing to hope in God, providing a contrast to David and Saul's responses in 1 Samuel 27-28.

4. Deuteronomy 20:1-4 — Referenced in the sermon, this passage promises God's presence with Israel in battle against enemies with horses and chariots, revealing that Saul's fear of the Philistines was a failure to trust God's word.

5. Matthew 27:45-46 — This passage records Jesus crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" on the cross, showing how Christ experienced God-forsakenness for our sins so that those who trust in Him need never be ultimately forsaken.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Where Do You Turn When You Have Nowhere Left to Turn?

II. Doubt: David's Faith Falters (1 Samuel 27:1)

III. Defection: David Abandons Commitments (1 Samuel 27:2-7)

IV. Deception: David's Continual Lying (1 Samuel 27:8-12)

V. Dilemma: David Trapped Between Two Kings (1 Samuel 28:1-2)

VI. Disobedience: Saul Seeks a Medium (1 Samuel 28:3-14)

VII. Devastation: Samuel's Pronouncement of Doom (1 Samuel 28:15-25)

VIII. The Gospel Solution: Godly Desperation as Faith

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Where do you turn when you have nowhere left to turn?

In August of 2005, I was back in Los Angeles before the beginning of my sophomore year of college. I'd come down early for a leadership retreat for the campus ministry that I was a part of. My wife, Kristin, who at that point was not yet my wife, was also headed down to the Southern California area before the beginning of her school year because she was going to help freshmen move in. We both grew up in a San Francisco suburb. It's about a five or six hour drive from there to Southern California.

At that point, our relationship was not the strongest that it had ever been. We had endured some complications and conflicts. It's not that we were just friends. It's that at that point, we weren't even friends.

One week prior, Kristen had informed me that she intended never to speak to me again.

In any case, the quickest route from the Bay Area to Los Angeles involves driving over the Grapevine, which is a steep section of freeway that climbs 4,000 feet to get up and over the mountains and into the LA basin. When Kristen was driving south, In August, up the mountain, in the afternoon, her car broke down and she was stranded. She called her parents, but they were too far away to do anything. Her mom asked her, Does she know anybody in all of Southern California who's there and has a car? The answer was no, no one.

Either they weren't back for school yet or they didn't have a car. No one that is except me.

Kristen's mom urged her to call me. Kristen said, Mom, you don't understand. I just told him last week, I never want to talk to him again.

Her mom said, if you don't call him, I will.

So Kristen did in fact call me.

Having nowhere left to turn, she turned to me.

Desperate times, desperate measures. So a friend and I got in my van, drove up to the grapevine, picked up Kristen, drove for a couple hours through the middle of the night to her campus about an hour south of where we were. That may have been a turning point in our relationship.

What do you do when you're desperate? What do you do when you run out of options? Where do you turn when you have nowhere left to turn?

This morning we continue our series in 1 Samuel with chapters 27 and 28. Our passage starts on page 249. In these chapters, both David and Saul are desperate. They each feel they've run out of options. In terms of plot, these two chapters are the setup for the climactic conflict that's going to come at the end of the book that will see Saul removed from his kingship by death, and thereby the way made for David to be king.

But these two chapters are just the wind-up. They're just the backswing to set us up for what happens next. And in terms of characters, the two main characters, Saul and David, neither one covers himself in glory in these two chapters. The ways in which both David and Saul respond to desperation, are examples for us, but they're examples of the bad kind, examples you look at as a warning and then go in the opposite direction and do the other thing. Yet even through the cloud of both men's sins, God's faithfulness and wisdom shine through.

Chapter 27 verse 1 through chapter 28 verse 2 focuses on David. And then from verse 3 through the end of chapter 28, the camera cuts to Saul. And it's even kind of a flash forward as we'll see. Our passage is warning for us can be summed up in this question: Where can desperation lead you? Where can desperation lead you?

We'll see six answers as we walk through the text. The first four will come from David, the last two from Saul. Point one, doubt. Where can desperation lead you? Doubt.

That's the surprising turn David's story takes in chapter 27 verse 1.

Then David said in his heart, 'Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand. Here we see David's faith falter and fail. Back in chapter 26 verses 9 through 11, David prohibited his men from hurting Saul and he himself refused to to harm Saul in any way on the grounds that one day God would remove Saul from kingship.

God has promised Saul's kingship will end and God will see to it. Maybe Saul will die in battle. Maybe his day will come. The Lord will take care of him. Remember, God had personally promised David that one day he would be king of Israel.

He'd given David the kind of direct, specific revelation about the future that many of us crave, but that God doesn't really promise on a regular basis. But God had done that for David. David, you will be king. Which means one day Saul won't be. Which means David is not going to die before that happens.

He has God's own word for it. God has pledged this. God has promised this. God's own faithfulness and reputation and character are riding on the fact of David living long enough to become king.

No matter how desperate David's circumstances are. No matter how impossible his life looks, David must keep trusting that God will fulfill his promise. But here, he doesn't. He lets unbelieving reason lead him to the conclusion that he has to look out for himself because apparently God has stopped doing that.

David draws conclusions from the flesh. Not from faith. When he looks around with eyes of flesh, all he sees is danger and death.

David, what happened? David's trials dragged on and they started to drag down his faith. Saul's physical war against David was also a spiritual war of attrition. Over time, David's grip on God's promises weakened.

After so many victories of faith, this time he failed. God's providence in David's life was like a wild horse bucking and bouncing all over the place. And David's faith in God's promise had let him hang on and hang on and keep hanging on, but finally he gets bucked off. Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, what in your life could be driving you toward desperation? And is there anything in your life pushing you from desperation toward doubt?

When you're running out of resources and you're getting desperate, where do you turn? In our passage, David turned only to himself. Look again at the verse. Then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day. David had the priest and the ephod, which were a means of God communicating with him directly.

He could have asked God and gotten a direct answer like he had in the past, but he didn't. Instead, David talked only to himself, and he listened only to himself. When you're desperate, who do you talk to? And who do you listen to? Before you have nowhere left to turn, turn to God in prayer.

Before you have nowhere left to turn, turn to other believers and ask for help. If you're creeping toward burnout, get help. If you feel your fingers slipping from the cliff edge of God's promise, ask someone to reach down and grab hold of you. If you're not a believer in Jesus, have you ever been worn down by a long hardship? Have you ever given up on something important to you because suffering just stubbornly sat on you long enough that you gave up?

That's what happened to David. Defection.

Where can desperation lead you? Defection. Meaning, you abandoned commitments you made because they weren't getting you what you wanted and you start to make friends with God's enemies. We see David's defection in verses 2 to 7. So David arose and went over, he and the 600 men who were with him, to Achish the son of Maok, king of Gath.

And David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow. And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him. Then David said to Achish, if I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns. That I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?

So that day Eakish gave him Ziklag. Therefore, Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

The Philistines are the enemies of God's people Israel. They are constantly trying to invade them and destroy them.

So when David seeks refuge with the Philistines and he lives in their royal city, this is not a politically neutral act. He is pledging loyalty to the enemies of God and God's people. Now, on the surface, David's ploy works. It gets him what he wants. Once he departs to the Philistines, seemingly for good, Saul stops hunting him down.

At what cost, though? Sometimes desperate acts get you what you want. The cost comes later. Back in chapter 21, when David sought refuge in Akisha's court, the first time he was all alone. He was just one puny individual on the run, although he had a large reputation.

But now he brings his army with him, 600 men, plus their wives and families. So in order to avoid crowding a quiche and probably to get some privacy, David asks for and is given a city in which to dwell, and it becomes his permanent possession. It's like Israel, when they were sojourning in Egypt, they were given the land of Goshen to live in. David, God's anointed, is in exile in a foreign land, like Israel in Egypt. There's a sense in which he's responsible for his exile, but in another sense, he was forced out.

And even despite David's sin, God is caring for him. God is providing for him. His men and all their families now have a settled place to live. They can sleep easier at night. They know where their next meal is coming from.

God is caring for them. So we see evidence of God's kindness and faithfulness to David despite David's faithlessness. But that doesn't remove David's guilt. He has gone and made himself the servant, maybe even a sort of vassal, of the king of his enemies. David sought protection from Achish, that he should have sought only from God.

How does he expect to get out of this one? Desperation can drive you to seek allies among God's enemies. And if you do that, What will you likely have to start doing next? Point number three, deception. Where can desperation lead you?

To deception.

That's the next level David sinks down to in verses 8 to 12.

Now David and his men went up and made raids against the Geshurites, the Gerzites and the Amalekites, for these were the inhabitants of the land from of old, as far as Shur, to the land of Egypt. And David would strike the land and would leave neither man nor woman alive, but would take away the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and come back to Achish. When Achish asked, Where have you made a raid today? David would say, against the Negev of Judah, or against the Negev of the Jeremielites, or against the Negev of the Kenites. And David would leave neither man nor woman alive to bring news to Gath, thinking, 'Lest they should tell about us and say so David has done.' Such was his custom all the while he lived in the country of the Philistines.

And Achish trusted David.

Thinking. He has made himself an utter stench to his people Israel. Therefore he shall always be my servant.

The key point here is that the places David raids are not the places he tells Achish that he raids. The Geshurites, Girzites, and Amalekites were all enemies of Israel. There were inhabitants in the land from before they got there that God had said to to drive out, to attack and get rid of. So it seems that David's attacks on them are justified. But that doesn't mean that every single thing David did in those attacks was justified.

And I certainly don't think it justifies David's continual lying to Achish. Not only that, but it was David's quest for secrecy that no report of what he did would get back to Akeisha. That drove him to kill everyone: man and woman, combatant and non-combatant. Deception drove David to butchery. David is a guest in Akeisha's country.

He's effectively pledged his loyalty to Akeisha, and Akeisha has given him a city to live in. David is now a welcome refugee who brings military experience and his own fighting force. There's no sense in which David is fighting a just war either against Achish or for Achish. He is not a spy gathering intelligence on Achish on behalf of Israel. Instead, he's an ungrateful guest and a treacherous friend.

All this time, Akish thinks David is repeatedly attacking his own people. Only somebody who is totally estranged and has no plans to return would do that. So Akish is led to put confidence in David. Akish thinks David is going to serve him permanently. But instead, David was strengthening his own future position by scoring victories against Israel's enemies, and he was enriching himself and his men in the process.

David lied continually, not toward the end of noble service, but for self-seeking political maneuvering.

When are you tempted to lie? Has desperation ever driven you to deception? When you're tempted to lie, what are you trying to gain or keep from losing? Lying looks like it can solve problems for you. Escape consequences, keep people in the dark, keep your options open.

But lies have a tendency to come back around. And when they do, they call in the debt you've accrued, which is exactly what happened to David. Point number four, dilemma. Where can desperation lead you? It can lead you into a dilemma.

Look at chapter 28, verses 1 to 2.

In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces for war to fight against Israel. And Achish said to David, Understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army. David said to Achish, Very well, you shall know what your servant can do. And Achish said to David, Very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life. The Philistines are now going to fight against Israel.

We are not surprised. This is what they do. We've seen them battle against Israel again and again and again throughout 1 Samuel. Now, Achish cashes in on all his generosity to David. Of course, his latest acquisition is going to join his forces and march out with him.

So Achish requires David and all his army to join the Philistine army and fight against Israel. Now David's back is against the wall. He has wedged himself between a rock and a hard place. Think about it. David can't go fight against his own people.

That would be insane. That would be unfaithful. Not to mention it would be political suicide. But also, how can David not go out and fight against his own people? He's built up this whole persona with Akish, the permanently disaffected warlord, this gun for hire.

If David doesn't fight for Akish, his whole act will be exposed. Achish will reevaluate David as a traitor. And it doesn't take much imagination to think about what ancient Near Eastern kings who have been crossed will do to a traitor. And so in verse 2, David gives this cagey, evasive response: Very well, you shall know what your servant can do.

He doesn't refuse Akisha's instructions, but he does not verbally endorse them. He seems to be somehow trying to buy time. David is stuck between two kings, two lands, two armies. Nowhere is safe for David. And while Saul is responsible for making Israel unsafe for him, for this Philistine half of the story, David only has himself to blame.

Kids in the congregation, notice the very simple point that David's sin made his life worse.

Now, the message of Christianity is not that if you trust in Jesus and obey God, your life will always be happy and successful and prosperous. Remember Mark's sermons on Job. Very often righteous people suffer. Through no wrong of their own. But here's the thing: Though obedience doesn't always bring prosperity, it is a general rule that sin makes your life worse.

Sin might seem to solve problems now, but it's storing them up for later.

Lately, our family has had some repeat car trouble with our somewhat beloved 2011 Honda Odyssey. Engine problems have led us to bring the car into the shop twice in two weeks. My favorite. But what if I had said to myself, I know. I'll save some money and I'll just handle this one myself.

I would have compounded the problem. I would have only made the eventual solution more costly. And more complicated. That's exactly what David does throughout this whole chapter. He's in a big problem, and then he compounds the problem.

His unbelieving response to his trials makes them worse. When it comes to the twists and turns of your life, your hopes and disappointments, you are not the expert. Only God is. If it seems like the engine of your life is spluttering and stuttering and shaking and making weird noises, don't try to fix it yourself. Entrust it to God.

He's the only one who knows how all the parts of your life fit together. He's the only one who knows how every part is meant to work properly. So ask him to repair your life and trust that in his own time he will.

So when we leave David here, at chapter 28 verse 2, he's trapped between Saul and Akish. He's trapped between the consequences of other people's sin and the consequences of his own sin. He thought he was out of options before. Now he's really out of options. But God is never out of options.

Unfortunately, though, we need to leave David right there at a little bit of a cliffhanger. We're not going to see the resolution till next sermon on this text several weeks from now. Now, the story pivots to Saul, and it actually skips ahead in time to when the Philistines aren't just gathering for war, but they've actually begun to march out on Israel and sort of set up their battle ranks in Israel's territory. So, point five: Disobedience. Where can desperation lead you?

Disobedience. We see this in verses 3 to 14 of chapter 28. Look first at verses 3 to 7.

Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in Ramah. His own city. And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land. The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel 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 prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, 'Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.' and his servant said to him, 'Behold, there is a medium at Endor.' In verse 3, the two terms mediums and necromancers seem to refer to the same thing. These are people who communicated with the spirits of dead people. Saul had banned them from the land, we don't know exactly when, but he did this in obedience to God's words. Which prohibits any of God's people from having anything to do with mediums, spiritists, necromancers.

We read about that in Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 18. But Saul's actions here show that his obedience was merely external. Right law, wrong heart.

And so in his desperation, Saul seeks out a medium. The first big force driving this desperation was fear. Verse 5 double underlines Saul's fear at the Philistine force massing against them. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid and his heart trembled greatly. Now, it's natural to be afraid of an enemy army, right?

What if they have more troops than you or better technology? As far as we know, the Philistines had both. We know that they had chariots and Israel didn't. And the path the Philistines took to set up their battle was on flat level ground, where they would have a tactical advantage over those with no chariots. So Israel is seemingly outgunned.

It would have been reasonable, right? For Saul to be scared may be reasonable, but not faithful. If Saul had trusted in God's word, he would not have been afraid. That's a very specific reason why. Listen to Deuteronomy 20:1, which sounds as if it was written as a preview of this very scene.

When you go out to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Just like David doubted God's personal promise to him, Saul doubted this promise to God's people. He doubted God's word. Saul's fear was evidence of a failure of faith. Saul was afraid because he was acting as if Philistine chariots are bigger and stronger than the God of the universe.

What fear could drive you to desperation? Fear of what? Fear of whom? Fear of what harm or what loss? Saul's fear led him to seek divine guidance first from every permitted source.

He wonders, what should I do? How can I win this battle? How am I supposed to get out of this one? Verse 6 says, He inquired of the Lord through dreams, prophets, and the priestly Urim, but God was silent. No word in response.

Nothing on the other end of the line.

So, not getting the answer he wants from God, Saul decides he'll turn to whoever will give him an answer. He has his men find him a medium, despite the fact that he himself had banned them from the land. Somehow they turn one up easily enough, perhaps a gap between the law and its enforcement, verses 8 to 10.

So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments and went, he and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night, and he said, 'Divine for me by a spirit and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you. The woman said to him, Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the necromancers from the land. Why then are you laying a trap for my life to bring about my death? But Saul swore to her by the Lord, 'As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.' Sin craves secrecy.

It doesn't want to come to light, doesn't want to be discovered, doesn't want to be exposed. So Saul conceals himself. He is not acting like a king, so he doesn't want to be recognized as the king, so one last time he takes off his kingly garments and dresses like a commoner. Saul's desperation leads him not only to disobedience, but to duplicity. There's such a dark irony here.

Saul's sin splits his soul in half. Desperation can set you against yourself, against your better self. Saul the king banned mediums. Saul the fearful, terrified commander goes looking for one.

She replies effectively, But haven't you heard what Saul did to mediums? He says, Don't worry about that. You'll be fine. I promise.

What are you most tempted to hide from other believers? What are you tempted to do that if anyone else heard it was you doing that, they'd be surprised? In verse 10, like he's done before, Saul again takes the Lord's name in vain. He assures this medium by swearing in the Lord's name that no harm will come to her. He swears by the Lord in the very act of forsaking the Lord.

It is possible to pronounce God's name even as you are setting your whole life against him. Now for verses 11 to 14: Then the woman said, 'Whom shall I bring up for you?' He said, 'Bring up Samuel for me.' When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice, and the woman said to Saul, 'Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!' the king said to her, 'Do not be afraid. What do you see?' and the woman said to Saul, I see a god coming up out of the earth. He said to her, what is his appearance?

And she said, An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe. And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage. People often take the medium's loud cry to indicate surprise. Like, she didn't really think this was gonna happen because she's a fraud and necromancy is impossible anyways, right? I think that is an overly pious reading.

I also think it's a reading that's influenced by a late modern Western attitude of being uncomfortable with the existence of a spiritual realm. Instead, I think the woman cries out because when she sees and recognizes Samuel, it dawns on her that the only person who'd possibly be asking for him is Saul. That's why she turns on Saul right after she discerns that, because she thinks she's in mortal danger. God's word doesn't forbid contacts with mediums and spiritists because what they do is impossible, but because what they do is immoral. God has fixed a gulf between the dead and the living, and we have no authority to try to cross that gap.

The Bible's point is not that all such efforts could never possibly work, but that if they ever do work, the work they do is evil. So have nothing to do with such practices. Don't cave in to any kind of desire for a seemingly more immediate contact with the spiritual realm. Don't cave in to the desire for contact with a departed loved one. Or an attempt to know the future.

All you truly need in the spiritual realm you can get from God and only from God. Now, why does the medium describe Samuel as a god? I don't think that's evidence that she's a kind of pagan polytheist. I think she just means a spiritual being. The Hebrew word for God, Elohim, can refer to spiritual beings, including angels.

And so I think she's kind of associating Samuel's spirit with other spiritual beings. I think that's all that's going on here. Incidentally, I do think this passage is some evidence for Old Testament belief in post-mortem existence. That is, death is not extinction, but people continue to exist in spiritual form. There's more questions we could ask about that, more we could say, but there are enough tricky parts of this passage that we have to keep moving on.

Can't go more into that now, thank you so much. As Mark pointed out to me in a text this week, a medium and a ghost in one passage. When do you get a witch and a ghost in the same place in the Bible?

We'll talk more about Samuel's spirit and his message in the next point. But for now, I just want to focus on one key thing we see in this section. Look at verse 6. This is really the driver of Saul's actions here.

When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by prophets.

God didn't answer Saul by any legal means, so he turned to illegal means. What does Saul think his problem is? Apparently, Saul thinks his problem is merely a technical one. Even a technological one. God didn't return his text, so he tried calling.

God didn't pick up the call, so he left a voicemail. Didn't respond to the voicemail, so he tried email. Saul is so fearful, so self-absorbed, so careless of God's commands, that he thinks his biggest problem is just finding the right technique to get the answer he wants. But the problem is not technological, but a user error. The problem is the person.

Saul's biggest problem is God, and his second biggest problem is his own unrepentant heart. Saul never bothers to stop and ask, Why? Why is God silent? Why is he not answering him? Why has the line gone cold?

Why?

Why has God forsaken him? That's the question Saul wasn't asking. That's the question Saul should have been asking. And the answer to that question is what he's about to find out. Point six, devastation.

Where can desperation lead you to devastation? This covers verses 15 through 25.

And we're going to be a bit longer here. In verses 15 to 19, we hear what the spirit of the prophet Samuel said to Saul. Look first at verses 15 to 16.

Then Samuel said to Saul, 'Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?' Saul answered, 'I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams. Therefore, I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do. And Samuel said, why then do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy?

Here's the heart of the whole passage. Saul's problem is that he misread God's signals or didn't bother even to try to read them. All those silences were warnings. All those refusals to answer were meant to prompt Saul to repent. When he didn't hear from God again and again and again, that should have brought him to his knees, crying out to God in repentance.

All those silences declared that God himself is Saul's. Enemy. And Saul is not going to get what he most needs. Who cares about what he wants? He's not going to get what he most needs until somehow that can change.

Hey Saul, here's your real problem. God is your enemy. All throughout 1 Samuel, Saul has treated Saul like a genie in a bottle. Whenever things get desperate enough, he'll try to find some way to call on God and try to see if God can help him out of a pinch. But Saul only calls on God to get what he wants from God.

Trying to get what you want from God is not faith. Faith is unconditional trust that leads to unconditional surrender.

Saul didn't care about God. He only cared about what he could get from God. True faith clings to God even when God is not giving you anything that you want. If you're not a believer in Jesus or you're beginning to engage with and kind of explore Christianity, I do hope you'll see ways that following Jesus will change your life for the better. But there's an important lesson in this passage for you.

Jesus is no genie in a bottle. He is not here to grant all your pre-existing wishes and satisfy them. When Jesus comes into a person's life, he overthrows the old regime and sets up a new rule. The only terms that Jesus will accept are your unconditional surrender to him. The only true relationship with God begins in unconditional surrender and continues in unconditional obedience.

In order to live with Jesus, you have to die to yourself first. And that's Saul's biggest problem. He never died to himself. What's the proof of that? It's in verses 17 and 18.

Samuel continues, the Lord has done to you 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, and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek. Therefore the Lord has done this thing to you. This day. Again, this is a key to the whole passage and a key to the whole book of 1 Samuel, verse 18, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord. Way back in chapter 15, Saul did not listen to God's instructions.

Saul didn't listen to God's commands. So why should God listen to Saul's requests? Saul was the first one not to listen. The most revealing test of your relationship with God is whether you listen to his word and do what it says. No spiritual experience can cover for disobedience.

No religious appearance and habit and practice can make up for failing to obey God. No warm, fuzzy feelings about God count for anything unless they lead to and follow from obedience to God's Word. What do you do to expose yourself to God's Word? And when you do come into contact with God's Word, and God's Word exposes something in you that you don't like, who wins? God's Word or your old self?

When God's Word challenges you to start doing something you don't want to do, or stop doing something you want to keep doing, who wins?

The time to repent is now. The time to listen is now. The time to obey is now. There will come a time for all of us, like the time came for Saul, when God will hear no more requests, no more excuses, no more please. There will come a time when God will no longer listen.

There will come a time when there is no time left to repent.

So here in verses 15 to 18, Samuel simply repeats the message that he declared while he was still living. Saul lost his kingship by his disobedience and now God's going to give that kingship to David. And then comes the kicker. And verse 19, Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines; and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.

Saul is going to lose this battle he's so desperate to win. And in the battle, both he and his sons will lose their lives.

Given that necromancy is immoral and it's explicitly against God's word, why does God permit it to work in this instance? I think the content of Samuel's speech makes that clear. The only reason God lets this work is so that Samuel will come up and pronounce Saul's doom. Okay, Saul, you want a word from me? You want to know for sure what's going to happen?

You want your fate secured? Here's a secure fate: tomorrow you'll be dead.

There's a divine irony and poetic justice at work here. The message that Saul was willing to forsake the Lord in order to hear turns out to be this: The Lord has forsaken you.

We see the personal consequences of this devastating God forsakenness start to appear in the following verses, the last paragraph of the passage from verse 20 to 25.

Then Saul fell at once full length on the ground, filled with fear, because of the words of Samuel. And there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night. And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified, she said to him, 'Behold, your servant has obeyed you. I have taken my life in my hand and have listened to what you have said to me. Now therefore you also obey your servant.

Let me set a morsel of bread before you and eat. That you may have strength when you go on your way. He refused and said, I will not eat. But his servants, together with the woman, urged him, and he listened to their words. So he arose from the earth and sat on the bed.

Now the woman had a fattened calf in the house, and she quickly killed it, and she took flour and kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread of it, and she put it before Saul and his servants, and they ate. Then they rose and went away that night. I think the main thrust of this last section is that we're witnessing Saul's undoing taking place in real time. It's kind of like how by removing his kingly robes when he goes to the medium, he's divesting himself of Here, Saul's weak, he's prostrate, he's helpless. This woman has to basically pick him up off the floor to get him to sit up and eat.

We're watching the life drain out of Saul before God takes his life. It's a preview of coming devastations.

So the main point here is to highlight Saul's weakness and powerlessness. He falls on the ground, he's frail from fasting, he refuses to eat. I think the medium, by serving him this big meal, is probably just trying to get him off her hands. She doesn't want him to die on her then and there. He's got to go on a journey, he's got to get back to camp, let's feed him up, get him out, lest it be shown that the king died in my living room.

This is a meal fit for a king? But the king is no longer fit for service. Saul forsook the Lord, so the Lord forsook Saul, and now Saul is beginning to experience what it means to have God forsake you. He's starting to feel that abandonment deep in his bones. The tragedy of this whole book is that Saul abandoned God, but we'd miss One of the main lessons this book has for us if we just thought, oh, what a horrible guy.

What a waste of a leader. What a strange and sad example that couldn't possibly have anything to do with me. Saul's sin is grievous, it's obvious, it's in bright and bold strokes. Part of the point of that is to make it easier to recognize how we also have abandoned God. How we also have forsaken God.

How we also have refused to listen to God. Have you ever treated God like a genie in a bottle who's just there to get rubbed into life whenever you need something and then to put him safely back on the shelf when you're done? All of us, in various ways, have abandoned God, have forsaken God, have refused to listen to God. And so all that we deserve from God is for him to forsake us. All that we deserve from God is for heaven to turn brass above us like it did to Saul.

All that we deserve is to be punished eternally, which is what God promises. It's what he swears to do to everyone who persists in rebelling against him and forsaking him. But God is also richly merciful. God is also abounding in grace. God sent his son into the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, to take on flesh for us, to obey God perfectly for us, and in his death on the cross, to suffer God forsakenness for us.

On the cross, Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Saul was forsaken by God for his own sins. Christ was forsaken by God for our sins. He suffered. Estrangement from God, alienation from God, the wrath of God poured out on him in his very flesh, all to pay for the sins of everyone who had turned from sin and trust in him.

When Saul walked out into that dark night, he was abandoned and forsaken by God. He left this kind of parody last supper that he had been served and walked out alone. When Jesus died on the cross all alone for us, the very sky turned dark to witness that he was being forsaken by God, not because of anything in himself, but because of what's in us and what he was doing to redeem us. And then, of course, that's not the end of the story. Saul's story ends in tragedy, but the resurrection turns Jesus' tragedy into the hope of new life.

The resurrection means death didn't get the upper hand. The resurrection means death won't get the upper hand for anyone who trusts in him. If you are not a believer in Jesus, you're wondering what it means to follow Jesus, recognize that you've forsaken God and that there are immense eternal consequences for forsaking God and that Jesus has done everything needed for you to return to God, be welcomed by God, and be embraced by God. All you have to do is trust in him. All you have to do is rely on him to save you.

The only way to enter a right relationship with God is to learn how desperate your spiritual condition is. A right relationship with God begins by becoming desperate to have God. Desperate because you have no one to turn to, not yourself, not your own morality, not any earthly spiritual authority, not any religious institution. The only one who can reconcile you to God is God himself. The right solution to a wrong desperation is a right desperation.

Desperately seeking the only God who can save you. In this passage, God puts both David and Saul into desperate situations. Part of his purpose was to test them and in different ways, in varying degrees, they both failed. But part of God's purpose in putting both David and Saul into desperate situations is to create a situation, at least for David, where only God could deliver and he will. That's a picture of God's work in the life of every single person that he saves.

God brings you to the end of yourself. He puts you into a desperate situation. He gives you nowhere else to turn so that you have to turn to him.

Ungodly desperation looks for some immediate gain, some selfish gain, some this-worldly gain. Ungodly desperation is willing to get rid of God if you can get what you want. Unungodly desperation is willing to disobey, to compromise, to lie, to split your soul in half in order to get the thing you want. On the other hand, godly desperation is desperate for God. Godly desperation is gritty dependence on God.

Godly desperation is clinging to God when you have no one else to cling to.

Godly desperation is bringing all your problems to God in prayer even when it seems like God is your problem. That's the lesson of so many of the Psalms. They sound so desperate. They sound like they're mad at God. They don't even sound like they believe in him.

But oh, wait a minute. They're telling all those things to God. The very fact that they're saying this stuff to God is evidence of their faith and that their desperation is leading them to be desperate in a Godward direction.

Godly desperation keeps talking to God, even when it seems like God won't answer. In a word, godly desperation is faith.

What can keep you clinging to God when it seems like you have no good reason to? What can keep you turning to God? When it seems like God has turned against you. Only the conviction that the God of the Gospel will fulfill every promise he's made to you. Only the confidence that God's power is made perfect in your weakness.

The night is dark, but I am not forsaken. For by my side, the Savior, He will stay. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray that in whatever desperate circumstances you put us, whether inward trials, afflictions, persecution, Poverty, oppression, we pray that we would rely on you early and often. We pray that we would rely on you fully. We would know from experience that you are true to your word, true to your promises, that you are a perfect and sufficient refuge for us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.