Reflections on 1 Samuel 28
In desperate times, people often turn to desperate measures.
It was April 1945, near the end of the Second World War. The Allied forces were pressing in from the West, the Russians were advancing from the East, and Berlin was about to fall.
Inside Adolf Hitler’s bunker, the telephone rang. It was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. And Goebbels was ecstatic. Despite everything that was happening around them, he believed there was reason for hope. The stars, he said, had foretold that the second half of April would be better than the first. There would be a turning point.
But there wasn’t.
Hitler committed suicide on 30 April, and Germany surrendered. Goebbels briefly succeeded Hitler as Chancellor, but the following day he and his wife poisoned their six children before taking their own lives.
When people face great trials—even the possibility of complete ruin—they will often turn to almost anything that promises hope.
Goebbels turned to the stars.
King Saul turned to a medium.
Who do you turn to when you are desperate?
1. The deafening silence
By 1 Samuel 28, Saul’s life has been spiralling downward for years.
Saul had been chosen as Israel’s first king. There was something wonderful about having a king, because God had always intended to rule his people through a king. But there was also something deeply dangerous about Israel’s desire for a king: they were tempted to trust the king instead of God, the true King.
Saul proved to be a disastrous king.
Again and again, he refused to listen to God’s Word. In chapter 13, he disobeyed God’s instructions by offering an unlawful sacrifice rather than waiting for Samuel. In chapter 15, he again rejected God’s Word by failing to completely destroy the Amalekites.
Saul rejected God by rejecting God’s Word. And because Saul rejected God, God rejected Saul.
Samuel was dead. Saul no longer had access to the prophet and therefore no longer access to God’s Word.
Now we arrive at chapter 28.
The Philistines have gathered their army to fight Israel. Saul sees their enormous army and is terrified. His heart trembles. And Saul does what many people do when life falls apart: he seeks guidance from God.
There was just one problem. God doesn’t answer him. Saul inquires of the LORD, but God does not answer him through dreams, the Urim or the prophets. Saul has rejected God for years. He has repeatedly ignored God’s Word. And now, when he desperately wants God’s guidance, heaven is silent.
But Saul doesn’t stop there.
2. The desperate séance
Saul tells his servants to find him a medium and this is staggering.
Earlier, Saul had removed the mediums and necromancers from Israel because this practice was forbidden by God. Deuteronomy 18 explicitly condemns divination, witchcraft, mediums and those who inquire of the dead.
Why?
Because consulting these things is ultimately a declaration that we don’t trust God with our lives or our future.
The Bible teaches that there is a supernatural realm. There is God and his angels, and there is Satan and his demons. Satan’s great purpose is to deceive and destroy through lies, temptation and false promises. That is why Scripture warns us so strongly against occult practices.
Saul had begun his reign by compromising God’s Word. He ends his reign by consulting a medium. There is actually a frightening connection between the two.
Back in chapter 15, Samuel told Saul:
“For rebellion is as the sin of divination.”
In other words, rebellion against God and occultism are not as far apart as we might think. Both reject God’s authority.
Saul disguises himself and goes to the medium at Endor. The woman calls for Samuel, and Samuel actually appears.
The passage doesn’t explain exactly how this happens, but it is clear that this is not simply another ordinary séance. The woman herself is shocked by what she sees.
How can this happen?
Normally, Scripture teaches that the dead do not simply cross back into this world whenever people summon them. But God is sovereign. If God chooses to allow something extraordinary to happen, he can do so.
The appearance of Samuel here is the exception, not the norm. And there is a great irony in what Saul does next. Saul bows down before Samuel, the prophet of God.
Here is a man showing respect to the very prophet who speaks God’s Word—while he is simultaneously engaged in an activity that God’s Word forbids.
How far Saul has fallen.
3. The damning sentence
Saul explains his desperate situation to Samuel. The Philistines are coming. He is in great distress. God has stopped answering him. He wants Samuel to tell him what he should do.
But notice what Samuel does.
He doesn’t give Saul a new strategy or tell him how to defeat the Philistines. Instead, Samuel addresses Saul’s greatest problem.
Saul thinks his biggest problem is the Philistine army. But his biggest problem is actually that God has become his enemy.
Samuel says:
“Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has turned from you and become your enemy?”
That’s the heart of the passage. Saul had turned away from God, and now God had turned away from Saul.
Samuel reminds him exactly why.
God had already spoke and already told Saul what to do.
God had already warned him about the consequences of his disobedience.
Saul didn’t need new information. He needed to have listened to the information God had already given him.
That is one of the great lessons of this chapter:
God’s silence does not mean we need to find another source of revelation. Sometimes we desperately want God to tell us something new when we haven’t obeyed what he has already told us.
The message from Samuel was devastating: Saul’s kingdom would be taken from him, Israel would be handed over to the Philistines, and Saul and his sons would die the following day.
The clock was now ticking. The tragedy is that Saul’s greatest crisis wasn’t the Philistine army outside him. It was the rebellion inside him.
4. The disastrous supper
The chapter ends on a deeply tragic note.
Saul collapses to the ground, terrified by Samuel’s words. He has not eaten all day. He is exhausted, frightened and desperate. The medium offers him food. And at first Saul refuses. But eventually he gives in and accepts the hospitality of the very woman whose services he had sought in rebellion against God.
There is a terrible irony here.
Saul repeatedly refused to listen to God’s Word, but now he listens to the words of a witch. The king of Israel, who had been appointed to lead God’s people, is now sitting down for his last supper in the home of a medium.
How far can a person fall?
The chapter ends with these ominous words:
“Then they rose and went away that night.”
Darkness in the Bible is a picture in the Bible of God’s judgment.
The next chapter records what happens the following day. The Philistines attack. Saul’s three sons are killed. And Saul takes his own life.
Saul’s story is the story of a man who continually rejected God’s Word until he eventually experienced the terrifying consequences of that rejection.
5. The disordered priorities
Why does the writer put this story about Saul right in the middle of the story about David? To show just how bad Saul’s situation is.
At the beginning of chapter 28, David is among the enemies of God’s people—the Philistines. His situation is certainly difficult.
But then chapter 29 will resolve David’s dilemma.
David is among the enemies of God. But Saul has become an enemy of God (v16). And there is nothing worse than that.
That’s the warning we need to hear. We can become so focused on our immediate problems that we forget our greatest problem.
Maybe your biggest concern is your finances, or marriage, or children. Maybe it is your job, your health or maybe something happening in our country or in the world.
These things matter. But there is something far more important:
Are you right with Almighty God?
Have you submitted to God’s Word?
Have you trusted in his King?
Because there is nothing worse than being an enemy of God.
There is another King
This is where the gospel shines into the darkness of 1 Samuel 28.
Saul was a king who rejected God’s Word. But there was another King. King Jesus.
Saul disobeyed God and was justly abandoned by God. Jesus perfectly obeyed his Father and completely submitted himself to God’s will. And yet Jesus experienced the darkness of God’s judgment.
Mark Ch. 15 tells us that darkness covered the land from midday until three in the afternoon. And then Jesus cried out:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Why? Because Jesus was taking upon himself our disobedience. Our rejection of God, rebellion and sin. The judgment we deserved.
Saul experienced God’s abandonment because of his own rebellion. Jesus experienced God’s abandonment for ours. Jesus entered the darkness so that those who trust in him can live in the light.
Saul spiritually degenerated until he died under God’s judgment. But Jesus, the greater King, always obeyed his Father—and yet willingly endured the judgment we deserved. That is the hope of the gospel.
Who will you turn to?
You will one day face your own desperate situation.
A great trial. Potential ruin. An impending disaster. A moment when you reach the end of yourself and don’t know where to turn.
When that happens, who will you turn to?
Don’t be like Saul.
Don’t look for hope in the occult, superstition, horoscopes, fortune-telling or other spiritual alternatives.
And don’t assume that because God isn’t giving you the answer you want, you need to find another source of guidance.
Turn towards God. Not to demand that he give you the answers you want, but to submit yourself to his purposes – which Saul refused to do.
Turn back to the Bible.
God still speaks through what he has already said. We don’t need to go looking for new revelation when God has given us his Word. God still says what he has said. And, ultimately, God’s Word points us to Jesus.
So when you’re at your wits’ end, don’t run away from God. Run towards him.
Desperate times don’t require desperate measures. They require us to trust the God who has already spoken.