If you have ever seen the movie Rocky IV, the most glorious work of art in American cinema history (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating), you will remember the training montages that make up a good portion of the movie. Rocky Balboa trains at a remote log cabin, somewhere in the snowy Russian countryside. His tools are primitive. He trains by chopping wood, pulling a sled with his brother-in-law Paulie sitting on it, and running up mountains. In between scenes of Rocky training, we see his opponent Ivan Drago training at his state-of-the-art 1980’s fitness facility, where he has a team of scientists monitoring every statistic and health measure they can follow with their advanced equipment. Rocky’s training is pure, earthy, and human. Drago’s training is artificial, even seemingly robotic. Both men are training for the same fight, but the movie cuts to different scenes between their training to highlight how different they are as characters.
A similar dynamic happens here at the end of 1 Samuel. Ever since chapter 16, where David is first introduced as a character in the story, we have seen a running contrast between King Saul and his servant David. Saul is described as an outwardly impressive man. He is tall. He is from the town of Gibeah of the tribe of Benjamin. He is chosen at the initiative of the people of Israel, who want a king to go out and fight their battles so that they don’t have to trust in the Lord to deliver them anymore. By contrast, David is the youngest of eight brothers, a shepherd boy whom no one asked for or imagined should ever be king. He is from the town of Bethlehem of the tribe of Judah. He is chosen at God’s initiative. And when he is anointed, the Spirit of God comes upon him and departs from Saul, and instead an evil spirit begins to torment Saul. From that point on Saul descends into greater and greater madness while David, who starts off as one of Saul’s greatest warriors, becomes an enemy of Saul as the deranged king grows insanely jealous and tries repeatedly to kill David.
We have surveyed the stories of David’s repeated escapes from Saul, and now we come to the last five chapters of 1 Samuel, where the author weaves together two final stories about David and Saul in order to draw out a contrast between them one more time. The author’s purpose is highlighted by the fact that these chapters are not in perfect chronological order. The story of Saul’s consultation of a medium (chapter 28) would go chronologically just before chapter 31, but the author pulls it back to its place in the text to show us his point: he is setting up two dilemmas—one for David and one for Saul—and then he shows us the different outcomes of those two dilemmas as one final demonstration of the contrast that runs between these two characters.1 Highlighting that contrast is the key to understanding what this passage means for our own lives, and we will come to that in time. Let’s first walk through the four major movements of this story, and then we will pull back and note two major points of application for us once we see what the author is telling us.
First, we see
David is weary. He has been on the run from Saul, and while the Lord has graciously delivered him every time, he has now reached the point where believes it is time to take decisive action to protect himself. In 27:1 we read, “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.” It is important for us to see that David is not acting in faith here. He is seeking to control a situation that is beyond his control. There is no mention of him inquiring of the Lord here. No, he simply has an internal dialogue that moves him to repeat the same move he had made back in chapter 21, fleeing to King Achish of the Philistine city of Gath. Yes, the Lord delivered him back on that occasion, but it wasn’t David’s brightest moment. Here he goes out off on his own again, failing to trust in the Lord to guide and protect him.
The last time David came to Gath, he was alone, and that left him vulnerable. But this time he comes with the 600 men who have gathered around him as an army, and King Achish seems to be impressed. He allows David and his men to stay in the city, thinking they have defected to him and could be valuable military assets. And we are told in verse 4 that once Saul heard the news that David had fled to the Philistines, he gave up hunting for him ever again. So far, so good. David’s plan seems to be working.
But David’s hasty, faithless act ends up putting him in a terrible dilemma. It all starts with his request of King Achish that he and his men be given a place outside the city of Gath. No doubt David wanted to get away from King Achish’s watchful eye, but he could justify this request by saying that he and his men shouldn’t be such an economic burden on the king and his city by continuing to live there. So Achish gave him the remote town of Ziklag, where David moved and lived for a year and four months. And from there David would lead raids against Canaanite people known as the Geshurites and the Girzites. And he also led raids against the Amalekites, the people whom King Saul had been commissioned to wipe out but had failed to do so. But in order to cover his tracks, David would leave no one alive during his raids. He did not want word getting back to King Achish about what he was really doing. So when he brought back spoils of war with him, King Achish would ask him where he had been, and he would claim to be raiding Philistine enemies, including his own people. Achish bought it, and as a result David gained his trust by his manipulative efforts.
It looks like David has it all worked out. Maybe he doesn’t need to rely on the Lord after all, right? Wrong. Notice 28:1-2: “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.’” At this point David is on the horns of a dilemma. If he goes into battle with Achish against his own people Israel, he will almost certainly forfeit all prospects of being king in the future. Do you think the Israelites will crown as king a man who had recently worn the enemy’s uniform in battle? On the other hand, David could refuse to go into battle against Israel and blow his cover with King Achish, putting his own life in danger from the Philistines. He is caught between a rock and a hard place. He managed to get away from Saul, but his situation at this point is really not improved. What comes next for David? The author will tell us, but not before cutting to another scene.
And that brings us to
Cutting ahead chronologically, the author brings us to the time when the Philistine forces have assembled at Shunem in preparation for a major military campaign against Israel. King Saul does not know what to do, and he needs guidance. But here’s the problem: God won’t speak to him. The prophet Samuel had died, and every time Saul tried some means to hear from God, all he got was crickets. No dreams. No prophetic words. No revelations through the priestly tool, the Urim. So Saul’s mind goes to a dark place: “I need to find someone who can contact the dead so that she can bring up Samuel for me.” This practice was strictly forbidden in the Law of Moses (Deut. 18:9-14), and at an earlier time in his reign King Saul had even driven the mediums and necromancers from the land. Nevertheless, he had his servants track down a medium who lived at En-dor, and in desperation he disguised himself and traveled through enemy-occupied territory to find her.
Not knowing it was Saul who came to her, the woman at first refused to accede to his request to contact the dead because of the danger to her life if King Saul ever found out. But Saul swore to her by the Lord (there’s some irony) that nothing would happen to her, so at his request she called up Samuel from the dead. Does this story indicate that the practice of contacting the dead is indeed possible? Can the dead really hear from the living as a normal practice? Nothing in the story suggests that. In fact, if you look at verse 12, it suggests the opposite: “When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice.” Why did she cry out? Probably because she wasn’t accustomed to actually coming into contact with the dead. Whatever her normal procedure was, this time by God’s exceptional permission, it really worked, and she screamed. And in that moment she somehow came to the realization that it was King Saul who had made this request of her.
Although God allowed Samuel to appear temporarily from the realm of the dead to communicate with Saul, he had nothing new to say to Saul that had not been said before. No guidance, no direction, no hope. Just a reiteration of God’s unwillingness to speak to Saul and a warning that judgment was coming upon him fast. In response, Saul fell full length on the ground, struck with fear. But the woman persuaded him to let her serve him a kingly meal so that he could regain his strength before he left. Then he went out into the night, a man with a Philistine army pressing down on him and no direction from the Lord about what to do. Now we see that both David and Saul had their dilemmas, and both of them were in messes of their own making. But oh, how different the outcomes are!
That brings us to
The story moves back in time to the initial mustering of the Philistine forces at Aphek in preparation for their invasion of Israel. David and his men accompanied King Achish of Gath, where the other Philistine lords noticed and raised an objection to Achish. “Don’t you know that this is Saul’s servant David? Don’t you see that if we let him go into battle with us, he will betray us at his first opportunity in order to get back into the good graces of Saul? He can’t go into battle with us.” In spite of Achish’s protests, the Philistine lords will not budge. So Achish went and delivered the bad news to David, and he and his men were excused from battle.
David had made a mess of things, but by the Lord’s providence he was delivered from his dilemma between a rock and a hard place because of the objections of the Philistine lords. Chapter 29 is an illustration of the truth of Proverbs 21:1: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.” God turned the hearts of the Philistine lords in the precise direction he wanted to ensure David’s deliverance on that occasion.
And so all is well, or so we thought. But it turns out that when David and his men arrive back at their town of Ziklag, they find that it has been raided by Amalekites, burned, and their wives and children taken into captivity. Of all the low points in David’s life, this had to be one of the lowest of lows. Nevertheless, David and his men regrouped, went off in search of the raiding party, and just so happened upon an Egyptian slave who had been discarded by his Amalekite master when he had fallen ill. They fed him and then pledged his safety if he would lead them to the Amalekites. This discarded servant became for David’s army the crucial piece in leading them to their enemies, and when they arrived, they completely overcame them and rescued their families and returned with quite the spoils. And then chapter 30 ends with a record of two actions of David that foreshadow things to come. One act is the quelling of disunity in his army when some who had gone into battle are bitter toward some who stayed with the baggage out of exhaustion. David issues a statute that the share of the spoil should be the same for both groups, and it became customary in Israel from then on. This act shows David in a kingly role. The other act is David’s sharing of the spoils of war with the elders of Judah, preparing the way for them to declare him king over the tribe of Judah. God delivered David from his dilemma in a mighty way and laid crucial groundwork for his future reign as king.
Saul’s experience was very different, and that brings us to
This chapter is rather short. Left with no direction from the Lord, Saul is an ineffective leader in battle, and the Philistine army overtake him and his sons on Mount Gilboa. There they strike down his three sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchi-shua. Then an archer’s arrow finds its way to Saul, and he realizes that he will not escape. So he pleads with his armor bearer to kill him so that he won’t fall into the hands of the Philistines, but his armor bearer won’t do it. So Saul falls on his own sword and dies, and his armor bearer follows suit. The irony of this story is that Saul became king in the first place because the elders of Israel wanted a strong man who would go out and fight their battles. Israel, behold your strong man, fallen before your enemies. Saul of Gibeah, who has been described in Hebrew as geboha, which means “tall,” here falls to the ground dead on Mount Gilboa.2
When the Philistines found his body, they stripped his armor, cut off his head, and fastened his corpse (and those of his sons) to the wall of Beth-shan to disgrace him. But the men of Jabesh-gilead, the city that Saul delivered from the Ammonites in chapter 11, in gratitude for his past deliverance rose up and went to Beth-shan at night, stole the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall, and brought them back to Jabesh, where they burned them and then buried their bones. It was not customary in Israel to burn bodies. It seems that was an emergency measure due to the amount of decomposition that had already occurred. But having burned the decomposed flesh, they gave Saul and his sons a proper burial, thwarting the Philistine attempt to disgrace their bodies. Care for the human body, especially in death, is an important biblical principle.
But the heroism of the men of Jabesh-gilead is simply a small bright spot on an otherwise very dark story that shows us how Saul’s life and reign over Israel ended. So now we have seen two stories about two dilemmas. Both David and Saul made a mess of things, and yet the outcomes for both men were very different. What was it that made the difference between them?
Here I want to draw your attention to a detail in each story that I skipped over before. First, regarding the story of David, it is interesting to note that in chapter 27, where David gets himself into such a mess, God is never mentioned once. Even in chapter 29, where the Lord providentially delivers David from this mess with the Philistines, God is only mentioned once, and then it’s on the lips of Achish (29:6). The author seems to omit references to God in these two chapters as a way of showing us that David’s actions have not taken God into account. Now let’s revisit the moment when David and his men arrived back at Ziklag to discover the disaster that awaited them in 30:3-6: “And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David’s two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters.” This had to be the rock bottom moment for David. After all he has been through fleeing from Saul and narrowly escaping the dilemma with King Achish, now he finds his family taken captive, his city plundered, and his men almost ready to stone him out of bitterness. What does a man do in this situation?
Verse 6b tells us what David did: “But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” God has scarcely been mentioned in this story to this point, but here at this crucial moment, the embers of David’s faith are kindled again into a flame. Sometimes what a fire needs most to get going again is a clearing away of what is smothering it and an exposure to oxygen. Here God has stripped away everything from David and left him nowhere else to turn, and at that moment we see that enough faith remains in David to turn to the Lord. So David acts on his rekindled faith in verses 7-8: “And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, ‘Bring me the ephod.’ So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. And David inquired of the LORD, ‘Shall I pursue after this band?’ Shall I overtake them?’ He answered him, ‘Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.” There is no record of David inquiring of the Lord in chapters 27 or 29, but here, having strengthened his faith again, he seeks the Lord again, hears from him, and obeys. David’s faith had reached a low point prior to this, but it wasn’t gone. It was still there, waiting to be rekindled. And that brings me to a point of application:
(1) True faith will never be extinguished, either by circumstances or by personal failures.
If you have faith in the promises of God held out to you in Christ, that faith is not your own doing. It is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8). Apart from the Holy Spirit, there is no spiritual life in you to produce faith. You must be born again by the Spirit of God. And if God has produced a living faith in you, he will make sure that faith is sustained, no matter how dire your situation may become.
Have you turned away from the Lord and as a result made a mess of things in your life? What should you conclude? That you will have to live in the hole you dug forever while God turns his back on you? Or do you take encouragement from this story and recognize that when you are in that hole, you are more primed than ever to strengthen yourself in the Lord your God? If there is faith in you, even if it has burned down to embers, it will become a flame again. Call out to the Lord, no matter what kind of mess you have made. Call out in faith.
Notice how different the story is for Saul. Notice the chilling exchange of words between Saul and Samuel in 28:15-16: “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 away from you and become your enemy?’” If God is against us, who can be for us? In these terrifying words we see that Saul is beyond any hope of repentance, that his fate is sealed, and the Lord has turned decisively against him. We see no subsequent words of Saul being strengthened in the Lord his God or calling out to the Lord out of sorrow for his sin. All we see is fear, as in verse 20: “Then Saul fell at once full length on the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel.” In one story we see the return of faith. In the other we see the dominance of fear. So that brings me to a second word of application:
(2) The hardening effects of sin can accumulate to a point that is beyond hope.
Saul stands as a warning to us of what can happen if we set ourselves on a trajectory of disobedience to the Lord. It started in chapter 13 with his opting to go into battle before Samuel could arrive and give him direction from the Lord. It escalated in chapter 15 with his caving in to the desires of the people in his victory of the Amalekites so that he did not eliminate all living things as he had been commanded, but let the people bring livestock back to Gilgal for a sacrifice. Then it turned into a burning jealousy against David, leading to repeated attempts to murder him. Then it led to the slaughter of the priests at Nob because he perceived them as allies to David. Then, when the Lord had refused to speak to him, Saul’s descent into sin ended with a direct and egregious violation of the law of God by seeking to call up the dead through a medium.
Not all sin is of equal weight, but all sin follows a trajectory away from the Lord, and if that trajectory is not changed by repentance and faith, all sin will in the end lead to death. The tragedy of Saul is a tragedy of a man who had followed the trajectory of sin past the point of any possible repentance.
You may assume that a little compromise with sin here or there is no big deal. After all, God is not a legalist, right? And if you get a little too far into sin, you can always repent and get your act cleaned up later, can’t you? If that is your mindset, I want to warn you to turn from it now. No sin can be taken lightly. You will never be free from sin in this life, but that doesn’t mean you can ever make peace with it. And repentance is something that, by definition, you cannot plan to do later. You are either convicted over the abominable nature of your sin, or you are not. And if you are truly convicted, repentance cannot wait. If you assume you will always have a chance to clean it up later, you are presuming on the grace of God. You are assuming he owes you a future opportunity to repent when you’re not making use of the present moment that he is giving you to repent.
If you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I hope David’s story is an encouragement to you that, no matter how much of a mess you might make of your life, you can always turn back to God in faith. If you have not professed repentance from sin and faith in Christ, or if you have but you have since then compromised with sin and let it have an unchallenged place in your life, may the story of Saul stand to you as a warning not to let yourself become hardened beyond repentance.
When Jesus was handed over to his enemies, put on trial, condemned, and crucified, two of his disciples in particular had major failures. One was Judas, who betrayed him. The other was Peter, who under pressure denied three times that he knew him. But the outcomes for each disciple were dramatically different. Judas succumbed to despair as he was overwhelmed with guilt, and he went and hanged himself. Peter wept bitterly over his failure, but he held on until he saw the risen Christ and was restored and then went on to become the apostle whose Pentecost sermon gave birth to the church in Jerusalem, when 3,000 people believed the gospel. Peter’s place as a leader in the early church was never in doubt after that.
What made the difference between Judas and Peter? When Jesus was at the last supper with his disciples, he spoke these words in Luke 22:31-32: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus never mentions a similar prayer for Judas. In fact, when he mentions Judas in prayer in John 17:12, he calls him “the son of destruction,” whose defection had happened in fulfillment of Scripture. What made all the difference between Judas and Peter was the intercession of Jesus Christ. In the end, Peter held on to Jesus because Jesus was holding on to Peter. Brothers and sisters, let us again today by faith take hold of Christ, the one who has taken hold of us and will never let go. Amen.