Sunday School | David - 1 Samuel 28

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. You guys doing well? Yeah. Hope so. Anybody combine strawberries with those little chocolate muffin things? That's the play right there. Chocolate and strawberries goes well.

Hey, we're gonna be studying 1 Samuel 28 today. I guess this probably means it's our twenty-eighth. No, we didn't start in chapter one. So we've been studying the life of David for several months now. Today is going to be a little bit of a divergence because it's not about David. We'll see how it connects in a minute, or by the end of the day, we'll see how it connects. You want to turn in your Bible to 1 Samuel 28, that'll get you where we're going.

And before we jump into the text, just want to mention to you all—I think overwhelmingly most of you know that Kelly and I run a program called Blue Ridge Fellows. Every year, we invite recent college grads to move to Roanoke and to spend a year with us, and we love this. It's so incredibly fun. We have our full class coming for next year. We run Labor Day to Memorial Day. So next Labor Day, in September, we'll have a new batch of fellows moving into town, and they're all going to need homes.

And one of the—there's a thousand ways the Church of the Holy Spirit serves the fellows and a thousand ways that the fellows serve the church, but maybe the most significant need that we have every year is for families that have an empty bedroom to invite a fellow to live with them. And on the one hand, it's kind of an extraordinary thing to invite a total stranger to live into your house, but on the other hand, it is, over and over and over again, it's just a huge blessing for the families that do it, and it's an enormous blessing to Kelly and me and to the fellows.

And so I'd love to just kind of plant a seed in your mind that you could, if you have an empty bedroom, you could invite a fellow to live with you. We've had fellow after fellow after fellow. I don't even know where we're at, Kelly. Maybe eighty? Not eighty. How many fellows? Fifty fellows, maybe, that have lived with you guys and have loved you and become friends, and I would just love you to begin to imagine what would it look like to have a godly twenty-two, twenty-three year old living in your home? Maybe if you've got children, they'd be like a big brother, big sister to your kids, or if your kids are all gone—you're an empty nester—then they could be highly blessed at a pretty low cost if you've got an empty room. So I'd love you to consider that. I'll give you more details as we go, but start thinking, what would it look like if we invited a fellow to live in our home?

1 Samuel 28 — David and Achish

1 Samuel 28. There's a tag in the beginning of this, and we'll read through it, but then it's a new story. Listen to this.

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." And David said, "Then you will see for yourself what your servant can do." And Achish replied, "Very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life." — 1 Samuel 28:1-2

This is kind of a connector. In the previous chapter, we saw all this information about David fleeing here and hiding with Achish, and we're going to see more. There's more to the Achish story later on. But this is just this little kind of bridge and connector.

So just a couple quick observations here, and it's not really pertinent to the heart of what we're going to do. What do you think David meant when he said, verse two, "Then you will see for yourself what your servant can do"? What do you think that meant? What did David mean? Yeah, John?

So pause one second, because I can barely hear you. Is there a door that we can close over there? Or a screaming child that we can silence or something? Is there a door? I don't know. It's ambient here. Those are shut. Okay, all we can do is silence the screaming children, and that's gonna be hard. Okay, say it again, John.

Yep. David is tens of thousands. Yes. I think so. David is using ambiguous language. You're gonna see that kind of be true of conversation with Achish—is that David is being pretty sneaky here. When he says, "You will see what your servant can do," is that you're gonna see how much I fight for you or you're gonna see how much I fight against you. And David is—remember, he's in this situation where he has got to be really tricky, and he is. I think in this instance, sometimes I think he's just outright deceptive. Here, he is speaking in ambiguous language to prepare his way, but you're gonna see it again later on when we come back to the whole thing—it's chapter 29, I think—we're gonna see more of this Achish thing. David is gonna speak with ambiguous language that the king doesn't realize is ambiguous. He thinks he's fighting for him, but in fact David is fighting for Yahweh. He's fighting against the Philistines. We'll watch it as it plays out.

We're just beginning to see that David's words are gonna be a little bit tricky, okay? That'll set us up for when we get to chapter 29. But the main event of this chapter is super, super weird, and depending on some of your presuppositions, is up there in the, "Wait a minute, what is the Bible actually saying here?" So we'll just take it as it comes.

Take a look at chapter 28, verse three.

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 the spiritists from the land. The Philistines assembled and came and set up camp at Shennam, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa. 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 prophets. Saul said to his attendants, "Find me a woman who is a medium so I may go and inquire of her." "There is one in Endor," they said. — 1 Samuel 28:3-7

This is gonna set up one of the darkest moments in Saul's life. He's got a couple of really low points. I don't know if this is number one or number two, but this is a very low point in Saul's life.

As we go into it, the narrator sees fit to remind us of a couple of different factors. The narrator's not always going to do this. Sometimes he's going to just expect you to remember something has happened before. He's going to help you catch the foreshadowing of the building. But sometimes he's just going to make an assignment: "Hey, remember that thing that happened? Relevant here."

So what are the reminders that he gives? What is he pointing back to from previous things in this whole storyline that he wants us to know? Samuel is dead. We're gonna see why that's relevant in a couple minutes, but in case you think he's not—no, no, no. He's dead, cold, buried. What else is he reminding us of? Saul had driven out all the mediums and the spiritists.

The Practice of Mediums and Spiritists

Let's talk about the mediums and the spiritists. What does that language mean? What is a medium? What is a spiritist? And why did Saul drive them out?

First of all, what are they? They're like fortune tellers. They speak to the dead—necromancers, right? The key element here, and it's all of this—you'll see the tarot card readings, whatever you get today. The Bible takes an incredibly dim view against such things.

If you claim that you can hold a séance, Harry Houdini was all about the séances. Did you know that? It was a huge thing in his life. He deeply believed or wanted to believe in séances. He was intensely curious: could anybody bridge the gap? I think the story is that his wife died prior to him, and they had a secret word. They had a secret code. Like, one of us dies, let's find out if it's true. So if I go to a séance and they start banging on the table, this is the word. He never found anyone that could actually contact them. Nobody knew the password, essentially.

Actually, it was Houdini himself who died first. The story reversed.

Now, the Bible talks about this fairly often. Listen to this. Go to Leviticus 20, verse 6 if you want to see this. It's the Lord speaking:

I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people. — Leviticus 20:6

Do you know what that language—"I will cut him off from his people"—means? Death. That's capital punishment. God treats that as a big deal. Or how about this? You can go to Isaiah chapter 8, verse 19:

When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam throughout the land. And when they are famished, they will become enraged, and looking upward will curse their king and their god. Then they will look toward earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness. — Isaiah 8:19

It's a big deal. God is super opposed to this whole practice of consulting the witches, the mediums, and the spiritists. That's why I think this is a super low point in Saul's life. In fact, we'll get here eventually. Well, I'll tell you now: when Saul dies, when the final judgment comes for Saul—not yet, it's coming. It's coming sooner than he might like.

This is part of the condemnation here. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:

Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance and did not inquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned over the kingdom to David the son of Jesse. — 1 Corinthians 10

It's a big deal. So we could read this and be like, "Well, I don't know. I mean, it's like a fortune reading or it's a 1-900 number and it's not that big of a deal." The Bible treats it like it's a really big deal. We've seen Saul's kind of decay, decay, decay, but this is a big deal.

Okay, Zach. What significance is there of verse five and twenty-eight? Not five, six—when he inquired of the Lord first before he asked for the meeting.

Yeah, is there any significance that he only went to the medium because he didn't get anything?

Yes. Okay, that's great. So that's an excellent question. So Zach is saying, "But he does inquire of the Lord, and then he doesn't get anything, and then he pulls this other strategy." That's true. So let's come back to that in a minute, but it's an excellent observation. Good catch in the text. We'll unpack it as we go and we'll see what he does and why he does it and how the Lord responds to him. But for now, just recognize—pay attention. This stuff matters. This is important to the Lord.

The Setup

So the reminders are: Samuel's dead. The reminders are that Saul had already kicked all the mediums out. So what does it mean if Saul kicked all the mediums out? What does that tell us about Saul's knowledge set here? He shouldn't—he doesn't get to claim ignorance. It's like saying, "I didn't know the speed limit," but you put up the speed limit sign. He knows exactly what it is.

What Happens at a Séance?

Let's start here. What do you think happens if you go to a séance? Do you think that it's tricks and smoke and mirrors and ghosty sounds, or do you think the dead speak to these people? Just get an early sense. Maybe you don't know, but are you inclined to think that going to see a medium or a spiritist is likely to result in trickery, deception, fraud, or a genuine connection to the other world?

Who thinks it's all fraud and deception? Pretty overwhelmingly. You think it could be? Okay, who thinks it's real or it could be real? A couple, handful. Okay, and Kat, you're saying both. Tell me what you mean.

I had an experience once. I wasn't personally there, but I was told about a group of my friends who went to somebody's house for a party, and this lady had some kind of supernatural powers, and so they were doing something like that, and she predicted the death in a car crash of a friend. It actually did happen.

Yeah. So there's a lot of stories of things that seem to maybe cast credibility to it. So we generally think it's deception. There's some here that think that maybe it could be.

All right, so let's see. Knowing some of your presuppositions, let's just see how the text plays out.

Why Saul Turns to a Medium

So where have we already gotten? We've already gotten through verse seven, right? So let's back up. What's Saul's context? Why does he consult a medium? What's going on that sends him down this path?

He wants to talk to Samuel. He's afraid, right? So take a look at it. It says:

When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid. Terror filled his heart. — 1 Samuel 28

Fear is a powerful motivator. When we're afraid, we do things we might not otherwise do or things that we know we ought not do. But he was really filled with dread. And we can see his fear not only because the text explicitly says so, but also in that he knows he's gonna be facing this. In order to go get to this spiritist, to this medium—you're gonna see this in the next couple of verses—he's gonna travel. He's gonna sneak past the Philistine army. It would not be obvious from reading the text, but if you looked at a map, he is in a state of desperation. And sometimes when you're desperate, you do dumb things, right? And Saul has a record of doing pretty dumb things when he's in that place of desperation.

Jennifer?

I mean, fear marks his life, right, all the time. He's afraid of David. He's struck in spirits. He's afraid of Jonathan.

He's absolutely afraid, and that gives us some indication of how powerful fear is, right? Not just in Saul's life, but in my life.

Kelly?

Plus, he's fully aware that God's pronounced that he's passing him from the kingdom, that he's passing it on to David. And his whole pursuit of David is because he's like, threatened by the future of his ministry.

Yes. And now God won't answer his prayers. He won't respond to the dreams. The Urim and Thummim—probably a second-class Urim and Thummim because David has the real one—isn't responding.

Yep. Yep.

So he's afraid of the Philistines, but more than that, he knows God has left him. And he's desperately trying to find ways of keeping as much as he can. When your old strategies don't work and you begin to flail and try the next strategy, you just start pulling any lever that you can. Saul's in a pretty rough place.

He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him. Verse six specifically says:

He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or by Urim or by prophets. — 1 Samuel 28:6

So why is God not responding? Why is God completely silent? God has expressly, unambiguously removed himself from Saul. Saul's disobedience, Saul's love of himself over all things compels God to remove his hand, and he's not going to get it back. That's really the great difficulty.

He could submit. He could accept the new terms, and I would not be shocked if God brought mercy. God is endlessly gracious. There's record after record after record of people in deep rebellion, and God brings punishment to their lives, and they cry out to him in humility, and God relents and shows mercy. But that's not Saul's instinct. He doesn't cry out and abase himself and confess and acknowledge his wrongdoing.

You see it happen in Jonah. You see it in the book of Judges. You even see it with Manasseh, who was the worst king that Israel ever had. He burned his sons in the fire. God sends in a foreign army to put a hook in his nose and to drag him away. Manasseh, in his misery, cries out to the Lord, and God was moved by his entreaty and restored him. But Saul employs none of those approaches. He never humbles himself and says, "Lord, I miss you. I wish you would come back to me." Instead, he just keeps pulling levers. For those of us that are more given to be strategists than surrenderers, it's a telling error. Strategists can't stop, accept, acknowledge, and repent. He's going to try something else, try something else, try something else, and it's going to go really badly for him.

Saul is just trying to control things. There's no humility, no surrender. God is not going to give him a prophetic word, but Saul is determined to control it no matter what it costs. And so he goes and finds this witch of Endor.

Saul Disguises Himself

Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and the two men went to the woman. "Consult a spirit for me," he said, "and bring up for me the one I name." — 1 Samuel 28:8

The narrator describes things that just happened without comment. This is literal, but very often these normal things have a layer of significance, a layer of meaning. When Saul disguised himself by putting on other clothes, that's what he did—he didn't want anybody to know who he was. But in Samuel's narrative, what does clothing represent? Identity. And in particular, for Saul's case, his kingship. Remember how David cuts off the hem of Saul's garment because he's not really worthy to be king? The narrator wants us to see: Man, Saul doesn't look like much of a king, does he? Because he's not. The author constantly gives us, "This is what happened," but look at what it means. It's a statement of judgment that Saul is blowing it again.

The Witch of Endor

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?" And Saul swore to her by the Lord, "As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this." And then the woman asked, "Whom shall I bring up for you?" "Bring up Samuel," he said. — 1 Samuel 28:9-11

Obviously, he's desperate.

This is where you see that he's gonna sneak by all the Philistine army to get there because he's so desperate. And then he makes an oath. What is his oath that he makes? Swears to God. What's that? Swears to God. Yes, right. Isn't it strange to swear on the name of Yahweh, who is forbidding this thing and under whose judgment you stand? It's just a hopelessly contradictory oath. What he means to say is, I'm really, really not going to kill you, but he kind of makes the wrong invocation when he does so. And the woman accepts it. Good enough. As long as you're quiet enough. If you just don't tell anybody, as long as you don't do this, as long as I'm not going to get in trouble, then fine. But she still doesn't know that it's Saul. She just thinks that she's going to get away with this and everything will be fine.

And then, in verse 12:

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. — 1 Samuel 28:12

This, I think, is one of the most interesting verses for this question of can mediums and spiritists summon the dead? Those of you that are in the camp that would say that they can, you might like this verse. So who thinks that Samuel is actually being invoked here? You guys think it's really Samuel? Really, really Samuel? Who thinks it's not Samuel? Okay. All right, so let's just have a quick debate. If you think it is, what is your case that the real Samuel is really being raised here? Not raised, but summoned speaking.

Can Mediums Really Summon the Dead?

One argument I hear is that he uses the name the Lord seven times and adds the true prophecy that Saul and his sons will die. And it says an evil spirit will not deliver a true prophecy or true words to Saul as Samuel does here. And then at the end, it says, whatever the limits on a medium's power normally were, they were really overcome here.

So hang on, save that part for the moment. The first question is, do we think it's Samuel? You're saying the evidence that it could be Samuel is that he's saying things that are true, right? Not only about what's going to happen to Saul, but he also seems to have knowledge of previous conversations that Samuel and Saul had had, and the text says it's Samuel. It identifies Samuel as the speaker of these words. So there's that.

What if you're on the side that says, No, no, no, it's not? What is the basis of your case that it's not really Samuel? There must be something wrong. Something wrong meaning immoral or inaccurate? For sure. Right. So God's warning us against doing it for good reasons. Is this really Samuel? I don't know for certain if it really is. I think the primary reason that I would be inclined to say that it's not is because I don't think that's possible. I've already come to the text and I'm like, Well, it can't be real because it's not real. And that's actually not as unsound of a thought as you might think.

It could be the Lord really is doing something. I would say, in general, I think the best data we have is that this is Samuel, that it's actually really genuinely true that this guy gets summoned and can speak and is gonna have a real conversation with Saul through this woman. There are some reasons to question it, like, for instance, as it turns out, Saul can't see Samuel. Look at how it plays out. Look what it says:

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. And the king said to her, don't be afraid. What do you see? — 1 Samuel 28:12

Which suggests that Samuel is not seeing anything. Right? It's all coming through the medium of this medium, right? And the woman says:

I see a spirit coming up out of the ground

And then Saul says, What does he look like? And she says:

An old man wearing a robe is coming up

To which I say, Okay, could you please be any more generic? Right? And then:

Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. — 1 Samuel 28:14

So all of that, and it's like, I think it is, but there's some questions in the text that I would not be dogmatic about that conclusion. But there is a kicker that I think finally pushes me over the line.

Saul wants to defeat Sam. He does. The rest of it saying Samuel said it might be just written from his perspective. It could be. It could be that it's not really Samuel, but it's like Samuel in scare quotes says, you know, da da da da da. I don't think that's the case, but it could be the case.

Here's what I find most convincing. I think this woman is a fraud. I think she's a huckster.

She's got chains and bells and smoke and whistles and all kinds of stuff, and when she starts banging on her thing and pulling on her chain, Samuel actually shows up, and she is more surprised than anybody. If you look at her response, when the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said, "Saul, why have you deceived me? You are Saul." I think the best explanation for that is that she did not expect anything to happen because she's an absolute fraud. And yet, God's like, "All right, you want to dance? Let's dance." That's, I think, the best explanation for this. These guys are generally fake. This woman was fake, but God decided to move through it. I don't say that dogmatically. I wasn't there. I don't know. But I think that makes the best sense of the text.

Audience discussion

Tommy: I thought it was interesting though that Saul had started out seeking what God wanted him to do through dreams, through the prophets, through the Urim, and then what does God do? He reveals a prophet to him. The prophet was here that you could have been consulted. God still answered him through the prophet, and in a way that's going to be—we're about to see this. Saul gets what he wants, which was access to Samuel, and he is not going to like it at all. From this point on, it's going to go very, very badly for him.

Zach: Couldn't it be entirely possible that when the verses say that Saul wore other clothing, it could be like me hiding behind a thin tree and trying to call myself hiding? Since Saul is a public figure, he may still show his face. She could have picked up that he was already Saul?

Tim: So you're saying that it could be that the witch of Endor did not learn Saul's identity supernaturally, but just because she recognized him—she's like, "Wait a minute, I recognize you." Is that what you're saying?

Zach: That could be. Mediums or even psychics today are very in tune to perception. It could be that everything that's happening here is natural, and not supernatural.

Tim: So again, this is one of those things. I'm altogether too happy to not be dogmatic when the scriptures are clear. But this has some iffy, maybe stuff to it.

Lily: I feel like it says that she cried out at the top of her voice, and it seems to me that the reason she was yelling was because she realized it was Saul, not because she was shocked that something appeared. I mean, they must have heard some story with veracity, so I think that God would fill in the details on that because it is super outside of our realm of experience.

Tim: It's very much outside of our experience, and that could all be true.

Catherine: I agree with Lily. I think if it was a demon or way, God would have said in the Bible—He would've said, "This is somebody of evil spirit," or something like that, instead of Samuel. The narrator seems to suggest that it really is Samuel.

Tim: God can do whatever He wants to do. Unlikely to be a huge issue in your life, so we can kind of move on. It seems to me that God can do whatever He wants to do.

Samuel's Message to Saul

Let's go to 1 Samuel 28:15. Samuel says to Saul:

"Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? I'm in great distress."

Saul said, "The Philistines are fighting against me and God has turned away from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or dreams. So I've called on you to tell me what to do."

Underline that. That's what Saul is looking for. What do I do? Everything's a wreck. And Samuel says, "Well, why do you consult me now that the Lord has turned away from you and become your enemy?"

"The Lord has done what he predicted through me. The Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors, to David. Because you did not obey the Lord or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the Lord has done this to you today."

And then he switches from past to future. Verse 19:

"The Lord will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me."

What does that mean? Dead. The Lord will also hand over the army of Israel to the Philistines.

He desperately wanted a conversation with Saul and with Samuel, and he got it. He wanted to be told what to do, and he didn't get that. Instead, he got a reminder of his failings and a prediction of his death. Closed curtain. It's a rough day for Saul.

Yeah, Chris. That first special greeting the first time was loud to me because of just the curious tone of my voice, especially when I was a non-believer of what does it mean to walk with the Lord and have him working in your life and then going to heaven and being with the Lord in the presence of him. He mentions here, he's no longer with him on earth. I'm gonna speak to you through this weird necromancy, Samuel. But at the same time, you're gonna be with me in heaven. What does that mean? You're gonna be near me but not quite with me, or are you gonna be at my table?

Okay, great. So Chris is pointing out, when Samuel says, you'll be with me, what we've identified is with me as meaning dead, but does it mean with me in heaven? How particular is that? And the Old Testament has a very undeveloped vision of what we would call the intermediate state.

The Biblical Vision of the Afterlife

There's a pretty pervasive error we've talked about this in this room that we have a tendency to think there's this world, and then there is the world to come, and the world to come is somewhere else. We live on Earth, and then when we die, we go to Heaven and live happily ever after. That is simply not the Biblical narrative.

The Biblical narrative is there is life in this world, and there will be life right here in this world again, not after you die, but after you're raised from the dead at the return of Christ. This is where we're gonna be. We live here, we die, and then we're raised from the dead.

And the Old Testament really just glosses over, But what's gonna happen between death and resurrection? It basically says, Yeah, I know you're gonna die, but don't worry, you'll be raised. This interval here between death and resurrection, where we're so eager to go be with Jesus in paradise, not only does the Bible not really teach that as an eternal state, but it teaches it in the Old Testament, at the very least, as a very insignificant state.

We are not looking forward to going to heaven when we die, although if you're hidden in Christ, you will. What we are looking forward to is being raised from the dead when Jesus returns to this earth.

So I think that if we try to impose on this passage, what are you saying about the intermediate state? What are you saying about that window between death and resurrection? It's not really saying anything about that, because it's not very interested in that. I don't think that Samuel is saying, You will be with me in heaven, or You will be with me in hell, or You will be with me in whatever. He's saying that you're gonna die.

The Old Testament spends precious little time concerning itself with that witness. It's not trying to be any more distinct than you're going to die. That make sense?

So we have one word. Sheol is the word for grave, like the physical hole in the ground. It's the word for the state of death for both the righteous and the wicked. It's the word for the state of the dead, for the wicked, they're lost. And it just doesn't seem to care very much about that little window of time. I wouldn't press it too far either way. Does that freak anybody out? Can you live with that?

Saul's Final Hours

Okay, keep going. Let's see what he's going to do. Verse 20:

Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel's words. His strength was gone, for he had eaten nothing all that day and night.

Saul loves a bad fast. Have you noticed that? Does this with his army. Likes to people, when his army is fighting a war, he's like, Nobody eat. This is so dumb.

Verse 21:

When the woman came to Saul and saw that he was greatly shaken, she said, "Look, your maidservant has obeyed you. I took my life in my hands and I did what you told me to do. Now, please listen to your servant. Let me give you some food so you may eat and have strength to go on your way." He refused. "I will not eat because he's stupid." But his men joined the woman in urging him, and he listened to them. He got up from the ground and sat on the couch, and the woman had a fattened calf at the house, which she butchered at once. She took some flour, kneaded it, and baked bread without yeast. Then she set it before Saul and his men, and they ate. And the same night, they got up and left.

That's a funny little way to end this story. A lot of detail on this meal. And so whenever you see a narrator give an undue amount of attention to something that's of no significance, you should probably be curious, Why is this significant?

So why is this significant? What is the narrator doing here to focus on this woman preparing this meal to provide for Saul? I'll give you a hint.

It's pointing back to something else that's happened, which is gonna help us bring this whole thing full circle. On the night of the original Passover, before the exodus, they killed a fatted calf, and they ate it, and the next day they left. And Saul the next day is gonna leave this earth.

So the idea of this meal with a fattened calf—this is a big deal. This is not a world that eats a lot of meat. We're not living on meat, and if we do, maybe we're gonna be living on gamey, captured food. Not fattened calves, not cultivated meat. You're going back to this event of the Passover where there is this significant meal and then an exodus. In the same way here, you're gonna have a big deal. This meal is lavish. It's a very significant thing, and then Saul is gonna die.

How about within Samuel's narrative? Does this remind you of anything? Can you think of any other woman providing a lavish meal for someone who purports to be the king of Israel? As a contrast, who are the women that have fed David? Abigail.

I think what we're supposed to see here is it reminds us of Abigail. The author is trying to do this whole time—our study is the life of David. Samuel is about the life of David, but this whole chapter's about Saul. And Saul serves as the foil for David.

In the same way that we are peering into David's life because we're trying to learn things about the Messiah—David is the archetype of who the Messiah will be. He gets so many things right that foreshadow what Messiah is going to be and do. He gets a handful of things wrong, which serve as his counterpoint to what the Messiah will be—even greater than David is. But Saul is the anti-type. He's the anti-Christ-ish kind of character. Whatever he's doing, he keeps doing badly the things that David is going to do well.

So the medium is treating Saul as her priest. She's making an offering of a sacrifice to him. Her primary vantage point is she's afraid that Saul is gonna kill her, so she's trying to ingratiate herself to him. It may be that she's trying to ingratiate herself to him by invoking these kind of patterns—this is how we appease the angry god. That's really interesting.

This meal is like food sacrificed to an idol, with Saul being the idol. Still under this heading of appeasing him. I think it's totally legit that he's lost his appetite. I don't think that this is a fast. He's afraid. He's got a lot going on. He has good reason to be fearful.

Whatever the motives are of the woman, however much she's trying to appease Saul, what I want you to see is that the author of the book is including these details and dedicating time to it to remind us of David. There's always a compare and contrast game. There's a similarity here between Saul and David, but my goodness, the vastness of the difference.

Saul is willing to pull any lever, employ any strategy to overtly disobey the Lord in order to secure his kingdom. And David is the exact opposite. David is the guy that is willing to suffer anything to be—up till now, he's going to fail, but he's doing things right. He is deeply interested in being in sync with the Father. He's called a man after God's own heart because he's actually pursuing God.

David and Jesus as Types

This is about as Messianic a theme as you're gonna find. The whole time we're watching David's life, we're looking for the hints, we're looking for the things that remind us how does David resemble, how does David anticipate, how does he point us to what Jesus will really be like when he comes? And in a similar way, we're looking at how does Saul invert the picture? How is Saul refusing to do what Jesus would do?

The reason that the kingdom is stripped away from Saul is because he doesn't fulfill the sacrifice. He's going to consult the mediums and spiritists, but ultimately and really it's because he's just such a terrible type. He doesn't point to the Messiah. He bears none of the qualities. He's tall, that's good, but in every other way, he's just a crummy king. He does not bend the knee. He does not genuinely seek the Lord.

When Jesus comes, what he will do is so much more like what David has done. Of course, he's gonna not only fulfill it, but he's gonna overfill it. Listen to this collection of statements about Jesus' subordination to the Father.

Jesus' Perfect Submission to the Father

Listen to how utterly unlike Saul any of these things are. There's a million of these, and I'm just gonna read through it, then we'll be done. I'm gonna pull them all out of John because John's Gospel loves this theme, and this is just a subset. There's three or four times as many as I'm gonna read to you.

The Son can do nothing by Himself. He can only do what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the son does also. — John 5:19

He's entirely in sync with his father.

Then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. — John 8:28

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. What's he talking about? His life. His life. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father. — John 10:18

Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. — John 10:37

For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that this command leads to eternal life, so whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. — John 12:49

Don't you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own, rather it is the Father living in me who is doing his work. — John 14:10

He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own, They belong to the Father who sent me. — John 14:24

But the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what the Father has commanded me. — John 14:31

Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. — John 17:21

He sees this absolute intertwinedness. And then we'll stop here. Well, two more.

Put your sword away. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? — John 18:11

And in the very last thing:

Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. — John 21:20–21

That whole giant list. He's like, Whatever the Father says to say, I say. Whatever the Father says to do, I do. Whatever He wants, whatever He commands, I obey. There is this absolute perfect match between the Father and between me.

For Saul, there is just a giant cavernous gap. For David, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. David seeks to obey. He wants to know. He leans in to know. And then when Jesus shows up, it's like perfect and flawless all the day.

Three Patterns of Obedience

We're invited to conform our lives to Jesus just like Jesus conformed His life to the Father. So we have these patterns, these types before. We've got the Saul version, like, "I know what you want me to do, and I've thought about it, and no. I'm just going to go over here and do this thing." Then you've got the David pattern that says, "I've heard what you want me to do, and I'm going to lean in and try to do it, and then I'm going to fail miserably because I can't." Then you've got Jesus who says, "You know what? I know what you want me to do, and I will do it to the most bitter degree because I love you more than I love myself."

He comes to us and he says, Follow me. Right? And in that, as we do, and we find that there's a little bit of Saul in us, maybe on a good day there's some David, right? We have the opportunity to not just become a moralistic people that are just constantly afraid we're gonna get hit, but people who know what it is to be radically loved and deeply cared for, radically forgiven, who can then use that to empower our own lives into submission to the one who says, Follow me.

That's what we're ultimately here for. We can debate what's going on with the Witch of Endor. I mean, it's interesting. I don't know. It's weird stuff. But at the end of the day, the picture is this: Do I want to disregard what God has called me to do, or do I want to let the love of Christ so radically empower and change me that I become, by degrees, increasingly over my life, more and more submitted to the one who gave himself for me?

That's where we want to take this. Cool? Alright. Chapter 29 next week. Read ahead. We'll talk then. See you, Jeffrey.