The Medium of Endor - 1 Samuel 28:3-25
October 9, 2011

In our text for today, the great prophet Samuel has died and the Kingdom of Israel, led by Saul, is about to be sacked by the Philistines who have made a vassal treaty with David and those who will eventually make up the kingdom of Judah.

Now, upon Samuel's death, in an attempt to portray obedience to God, Saul banishes all the mediums from Israel—men and women who have the ability to communicate with the dead.

But despite his attempt at obedience, since he knows that he will most likely be overtaken and killed, Saul becomes desperate for help and seeks out a medium outside of Israel in a Gentile and pagan land: En-dor, located in Canaan.

And the reason Saul does such a brash thing is because he uses the handful of methods God provided the Israelites to petition requests to Him and none of them provided Saul with an answer; Saul sought meaning in dreams, the Urim or Ephod (the breastplate of the high priest), and other prophets, though, to no avail as none of these methods returned an answer.

Now apart from containing a witch, this part of the story is where things get incredibly perplexing and interesting:

The use of any of these methods always returns an answer—it is either a yes, no, or wait (thus why throughout the Psalms, King David declares that he would "wait for the LORD"). So it's very likely that an answer was given, however, it simply wasn't the answer Saul wanted.

Why was it that Paul, on his way to Damascus, having witnessed the full divinity of Jesus Christ in divine splendor and transcendent majesty, questioned who Jesus was? Paul is literally witnessing a form Christ that very few people living have ever witnessed and the first thing Paul thinks to ask is, "Who are you, Lord?" with a lowercase "L." The reason being is this: As a conservatively and devoutly trained Jew, the image of the Christ and Messiah in Paul's mind was a king and a ruler, grasping a scepter in one hand and a shield or a sword in the other and with a crown upon his head; however, upon seeing Jesus, Paul saw none of that. And so, since the sight in his eyes did not fit what he expected and wanted to see, Paul couldn't see the Christ in Jesus' appearance.

So goes with Saul, here in this situation (and perhaps so goes with many of us, who often can’t see the image of God or hear the voice of God as a result of our expectations, our habits, or our sins).

Saul, like many of us, is stubbornly and arrogantly ignoring something he already knows and seeks what he wants to hear.

And we especially know this to be true because the three methods Saul attempts to use do not necessarily exist: God only speaks through dreams when there is someone to interpret it (like Daniel or Jacob) but Saul does not have a prophet capable of doing so since Samuel recently died; the Urim and ephod were actually with a priest in an entirely different location from Saul so it's impossible for Saul to seek the Urim since it is not physically there; and as for prophets, well if Samuel is dead, what prophets are there?

In other words, verse 6 exists here, in my theory, with intention from the author to reveal Saul's desperation in this situation as well as Saul's arrogant faithlessness in God for the sake of his own expectations, his own goals, and his own wants.

And as a result, Saul desperately seeks out the resources of a pagan culture in order to communicate with Samuel, the most recent prophet of God.

Now, before we discuss the witch, there is something that we need to understand about prophets: Like the ephod or dreams, prophets all gave you one answer (as we discussed) but what is interesting is that the text says that Saul used the Urim. Now this refers to the ephod, the high priest's breastplate, wherein you had two parts to it: the urim and the thummin.

The thummin would return answers that related to or entailed blessings—so if you used the ephod before battle and the answer came through the thummin, you would be victorious; however, the urim was the portion of the ephod used to deliver and administrate curses—in the same scenario, you would lose the battle if your answer came through the urim.

And the author of this text cleverly uses the word "Urim" instead of thummin or ephod because Saul is about to be cursed.

So, when he uses the witch to speak to Samuel, what does the prophet deliver? Does he deliver blessings or curses? Indeed, Samuel delivers a curse onto Saul and says that he will die that very day and, in fact, Saul, along with his army and his son, perish that very day.

Here now is our question, then: Why? Why is Saul cursed and why does he die for using the witch and seeking Samuel who is now dead? There are two reasons why.

Firstly, Saul looks to the past instead of looking to the future.

In John 11, there is a story about Lazarus, Jesus' friend, who gets extremely ill and dies. The text reads as so:

17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles[b] from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. 21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

Jesus rebukes Martha for neglecting the most important reason for the cross of Christ: the future—all of the blessings and righteousness received through Christ are actually experienced in the future (although they are applied in the present). And Martha, just like Saul in our text, forgot that the future doesn't simply belong to God but it has been and is being wonderfully crafted and created to reveal the infinite love of God and the redemption He brings through Christ.

In other words, when problems arise in your life—you lose someone close to your like Martha lost Lazarus or you feel like you're on the brink of some sort of destruction like Saul—do you immediately refer to the past and neglect the promises and hope of the future?

Do you do things and justify them by saying, "This is what I always do" or "This has worked for me before so I'm going to keep doing it" or "This worked last time so I'm going to do it again"? How often do you solve the hurts, troubles, and trials of your life today by depending on the mechanisms you've cultivated in the past?

I know of so many if not too many people who in the face of anxiety or pain, go back to the habits and rituals they practiced long ago—even before they became Christians. They still drink excessively to wash away the worry, they still do drugs to dull the pain, they try to solve relationship issues using physical means, and cope like they're still in middle school.

One reason Saul is cursed here is because he's lost his faith and, more importantly, his relocated his hope from Christ, the Savior of the soul and the creator of the world, and located his hope in himself, his goals, his wants, his expectations, and his immediate needs.

This might sound like some of you so this is my encouragement and my challenge to you: Move forward, not backward and place your hope and faith in the security of the future that has been gloriously and redemptive-ly purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ.

That's what Jesus means when he says not to worry about "tomorrow" because the future is already set and already fixed—and because it's so adamantly and so perfectly fixed and protected, you ought to place your hope in that and not in the uncertainty of yesterday.

I share this quote often but only because it possesses so much authentic and Biblical truth while summarizing this first point: In his book Future Grace, John Piper says this "My faith is not just a backward-looking belief in the death of Jesus, but a forward-looking belief in the promises of Jesus. Not's not just being sure of what he did do, but also being satisfied with what he will do" (336).

The second reason Saul is cursed is because he sought the dead over the living.

In Ephesians 2, Paul explains this idea quite profoundly:

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

In other words, as an Israelite and as a chosen person by God, Saul should be living this new life that's been made alive in God's grace, seeking the righteousness and purity and faithfulness of Christ-likeness; however, instead of living alive, like he should, Saul seeks the wisdom of the pagan and un-chosen world—a witch from En-dor—and behaves like those people that Paul claims in Ephesians are dead in transgressions.

This may sound like I've reciprocated the previous point (which I have) but being guilty of the sin of living in the past is being guilty of the sin of refusing to live in the future.

This goes to say that if you've received Jesus Christ into your life as your personal Lord and Savior and you've conviction that you are regenerate, then when the defecation hits the oscillation you should be living alive, as if Christ truly saved you from death to life and from sin to righteousness.

My immediate response to difficulties in my life used to be getting angry and taking my anger out on as many people as I could. Some called it being "shaddy" but I genuinely had an enormous amount of hatred for an enormous amount of people. But I realized that if I was truly saved by God's loving grace in Jesus Christ, especially in my turmoil, I should no longer behave as I once behaved and that I should no longer think the way I once thought and I should no longer do what I once did and I should no longer get angry about things I once got angry about and I should no longer enjoy doing things I once enjoyed—and the list goes on and on and on…

Because I have been saved by the kindness of God's loving grace in Jesus Christ… Therefore, if you, when you're stressed, when you're down, when you're offended, when you're hurt, act like you did before you were saved, you are following dangerously close to the footsteps of Saul, who was cursed and killed for his seeking the dead versus the life.

I pray and hope that when I say that, the Holy Spirit convicts those of you who've been claiming to be Christians for some time and still behave in the same manner as you once did before and even you yourselves see little to no spiritual maturity.

The reality is that the things Saul did here and the ways that Saul responded to the problems in his life are things we often do every day and ways we follow every week.

But for those of us who have truly received Christ into our lives, there is indeed hope:

In verse 7, Saul asks his servants to find a medium (not necessarily a witch) to call upon the dead for him. Now, as a women and as a Canaanite and as a medium, this individual is quite the epitome of sin; however, what you see at the end of our text is a profound role-reversal: this woman's life is utterly in the hands of the King of Israel and yet, oddly enough, in the end, it isn't the woman's life who is the king's hand, it's the king's life that is in the woman's hand.

In other words, you and I may fail to live in the security and hope of the future that has been ordained by Christ and you and I may fail to live like we've crossed over from death to life and refrain from doing things we once used to do—but even if you fail to do so, the True Medium between the world of the living and the world of the dead, Jesus Christ, feeds you and brings you back to strength.

Furthermore, on the cross, Jesus Christ partook in the greatest role reversal of all time: The King of Kings laid His life down at the hands of sinners, all the while the sinner's life is in the hands of the King of Kings.

And this truth is what reassures us to live hopefully in the future and not in ourselves and the past we've created.

And this reality is what compels us to live faithfully as those who have been saved from death and now live a new life in Jesus Christ, far from the deeds, behaviors, habits, and tendencies of our old selves.

Jesus Christ upon the cross, revealed in the wonderful Gospel, is what allows us to receive the blessings of the thummin even though we, like Saul, deserved the curses of the urim.