Not the End

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Don Filcek; 1 Samuel 31 Not the End

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Thanks for listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsex preaches from his series in 1
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Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in. I'm Don Filsex, I'm the lead pastor here, and welcome,
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I'm glad that you're here at Recast Church. And I'd like to welcome all of you to this gathering of Christ followers.
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I hope that you're here with the intention of encountering God through his written word this morning.
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You see, here at Recast Church, we believe that there are three primary reasons that God calls us together into community.
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Really three primary reasons that he wants us engaged in the local church, not just sitting at home with your pajamas on watching a podcast and listening to some
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Christian music. You see, I believe that we all need to grow in faith, and yes, you could do that by reading the Bible on your own, but we need to do that in community.
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And growing in faith is why we take in his word each week, so that our faith, our faith can be expanded.
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We also need to grow in community, that is, we cannot be all that God wants us to be in isolation.
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We need to be accountable to one another. We need encouragement from one another. We need to know that others are praying for us.
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And lastly, we all need to use the God -given talents and gifts and abilities that God has given to us to bless others, and we need to allow them to bless us with the gifts that they've been given.
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And so, really, involvement is not optional if you want all that God has available for you in your spiritual journey with him.
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You must engage with others. It is never sufficient for you. I recognize there's seasons in life where you might slide in the back, take in a message, and slide back out.
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Maybe you're hurting, maybe you're trying to rebuild, maybe you're trying to rebuild trust or growth or something like that, but at the end of the day, the most important thing that God has for you is faith, community, and service, and those things are necessary.
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I really love Recast Church, and I don't just say that because I'm up front, because I'm the pastor here, but I really love this gathering of people, and I look out and I see faces of people that I know.
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I know a lot of you, I know many of you, what's going on in your lives and where you're coming from, and I'm so glad, it's been such a privilege to have a front row seat to see
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God growing us together in faith, community, and service over the years. So this morning, we're gonna be wrapping up, as Dave said, a series in 1
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Samuel. I preached the first sermon in this series way back in February, on February 4th, 2018, was my first sermon in 1
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Samuel. So we've spent 35 weeks taking this book almost chapter by chapter, there's 31 chapters, we've spent 35 in there, a couple of them
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I broke down into two. But now we're coming to an end, and I just want to prepare you, I want you to hold on tight, because it is a gruesome end.
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It's a tragic end, it's a tragic end to the tragic king. What we're reading in 1 Samuel is, in essence, an ancient tragedy.
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And I titled this sermon series, from the beginning, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. The timely prophet being
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Samuel, who the book is written after, that God raises up the right person at the right time for the right ministry, the right work.
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But then also the tragic king, King Saul, and we've seen his spiral as primarily an example of what not to do, in contrast to David, a man who was real, just like you and I, a person who had faults and failures, but was, at the same time, had his heart given over to God.
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And so even in his failures, and even his mistakes, God is still holding him and drawing him back to himself, this massive contrast.
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And anybody who's been a student of tragedies, or even can kind of contemplate that word, knows that tragedies end in tragedy, right?
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Were you ready for that? Some of you need to wake up, but tragedies end in tragedy. And I've entitled this sermon,
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Not the End, because here at the end of this book, we are not yet at the end of what
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God is doing. Now we're going to wrap up this morning with the end of a wicked and evil reign of the dark -hearted and tragic
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King Saul. But that gruesome end also comes with echoes of the reminder that God here in this book has already appointed another man to sit on that throne.
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This end is not the end of ends. You see, God has appointed a man after his own heart, and you're going to need to carry on your own study into 2
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Samuel to see how things go with King David, and I'd encourage that. I'd encourage you to, if you don't know where David's life goes, or you're kind of, if this series has sparked it,
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I'd encourage you to launch out into your own study of 2 Samuel as we're going to move on, do a little bit in Matthew in the month of December, and then head over into the
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New Testament and take on the book of Romans, starting in January. We'll eventually get back to 2
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Samuel, but not right away. I like to really balance the Old Testament with the New Testament, and not really focus only on one testament for too long.
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But yeah, I would encourage you in your own personal study. If this series has been good to you, take what
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I've done here up front and keep going. So I would encourage that. But thinking about ends and looking forward to kings is a common theme in Scripture, and I want to point out that the entire book, not in 1
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Samuel, the entire book of the Bible, this whole book ends with the longing for the return of a king, the return of the good, righteous, and holy, and perfect king over all.
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The book ends in tragedy here for King Saul, but it is not the end.
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It is merely a reminder of the sequence of ends that compose life, and that those ends are stacked on top of one another.
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They are in our lives as well, aren't they? How many of you have experienced some beginnings and some ends in your life? And life is full of that.
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It's full of ends that stack up towards a crescendo of one ultimate and glorious and beautiful final kingdom, a kingdom that will finally never have an end.
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And so let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Samuel chapter 31, the end of the book. We have to sometimes trudge through the darkness in order to get to the light, and this tragic book ends with darkness, devastation, and even in this book, in this chapter, there will be blood.
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So 1 Samuel chapter 31, if you don't have a Bible, you can grab the Bible under the seat in front of you and navigate over to 1
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Samuel there, or grab your phone and use your app or whatever you've got there. I have to take my glasses off to read because I'm at that stage of life.
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So follow along, 1 Samuel 31, we'll read it in its entirety, recast
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God's precious word to us this morning. Now the Philistines were fighting against Israel, and the men of Israel fled before the
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Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. And the Philistines overtook
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Saul and his sons, and the Philistines struck down Jonathan and Abinadab and Malkishua, the sons of Saul.
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The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by the archers.
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And Saul said to his armor -bearer, draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through and mistreat me.
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But his armor -bearer would not, for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his own sword and fell upon it.
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And when his armor -bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. Thus Saul died, and his three sons and his armor -bearer and all his men on the same day together.
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And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their cities and fled, and the
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Philistines came and lived in them. The next day when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found
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Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. So they cut off his head and stripped off his armor and sent messengers throughout all the land of the
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Philistines to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. They put his armor in the temple of Ashtoreth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Bashan.
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But when the inhabitants of Jabesh -Gilead heard what the Philistines had done, all the valiant men arose and went all night and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bashan, and they came to Jabesh and burned them there.
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And they took their bones and burned them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that doesn't pull punches, that deals with the darkness.
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It isn't all just a feel -good message, but it highlights the natural consequences of our depravity and our sin.
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And so, Father, I pray that as we contemplate and consider what this end looks like in Scripture, we know that it is not the ultimate end, that there is a glorious and a beautiful end that outshines the darkness, that in your kingdom there will be only light.
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There'll be no need for sun and moon because the Lamb will be the light of that place, and his light will shine over all.
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And so, Father, even as we navigate the darkness of this text this morning, I pray that you would allow it to give way to the light of your grace and your mercy that shines so brightly into our hearts and our lives.
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Father, that we who live here in darkness, a dark place where there are grievous ends and real pains, and sometimes we're surrounded and sometimes the archers find us,
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Father, your grace is enough. Your mercy is sufficient to carry us through to that eternal and glorious kingdom where our hope rests.
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I pray that if anybody here has their hope placed in this world and the things of this life, Father, that maybe even this message would be used to shake them free from their allegiance to the things that can never satisfy, and Father, that you would lead all of us deeper into a relationship with Jesus Christ who gave his life for us.
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That we may now sing songs before you, Father, that you, that provide hope for our souls and echo the hope that's in our souls because you have won the battle for us.
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And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You can go ahead and get seated.
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Make sure you make yourself comfortable over the next half an hour or so. If you need more coffee or juice or donuts, feel free to get up at any time during the message.
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If you need to use the restrooms, they're out at the barn doors down the hall on the left there. So whatever it takes to kind of keep our focus on God's word,
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I'd ask that you go ahead and open your Bibles, or maybe they're already there, but to 1 Samuel chapter 31 so that you can follow along in the text as I kind of walk through it and we see what
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God has for us in those verses this morning. Just to remind you, the author of 1
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Samuel has been writing all throughout this last three or four chapters, and he's kind of been writing in a style that kind of seems to put off the inevitable.
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He's bounced back and forth between David and Saul for these past few chapters, but the accounts of chapter 28 through 31 really takes less than a week in the lives of Saul and David.
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But we've been zeroing in, we've seen a big, broad spectrum of their lives. But now we're mining into this final week.
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And we're able to determine that the events of chapter 31 happen within at least a day or two of David's conquest of the
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Amalekites in the southern deserts of Judea. So David is off conquering the Amalekites in the south, while Saul is going through what we're going to read right here.
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And the interesting note is that Saul's judgment by God primarily given by the prophet
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Samuel was that he refused to annihilate the Amalekites. He refused to honor a command that God had given him definitively, go wipe out the
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Amalekites. He didn't do it. And in his disobedience, he has had the kingdom taken from him, an unwillingness to follow
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God and the things that God has called him to do. And obviously, that in itself, that command could be really confusing to you.
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You might need to talk with me about that later. I can't get into all of that here. And I did in a previous sermon as well.
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But David, so think about this in perspective, David is doing the thing that Saul had been called to do inadvertently down in the desert while Saul is going through chapter 31.
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So the Philistines mustered for war against Israel. We had seen that in the last couple of chapters.
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David had been living among the Philistines in a period of time where he was being faithless.
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He certainly was a man after God's own heart, but he was not living a faithful life, living there among the
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Philistines, using them for protection and basically serving a wicked and pagan king during this time, trying to run from Saul who was seeking his life.
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And they began to muster, the Philistines began to muster for war against Israel. And David was going to march, the
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Philistines asked him to march to war with them against his own people. And he was dismissed from the battle, finally out of fear that he would be a fifth column, would turn against the
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Philistines and fight on behalf of the Israelites and join forces with them. And so verse 1 fast forwards into the middle of a battle that's already raging.
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We learn nothing about the start of the war. The last time that we saw these forces, they were mustering in a different location, one in the valley of Jezreel, the other one further to the west in Aphek.
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And then all of a sudden, boom, in verse 1, there's a battle raging. You see that right away. Now the Philistines were fighting against the
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Israelites. It's already happening. We don't know how the war started, we don't know how they lined up, what the forces were like, but it happens all quickly.
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And once again, I want to point out that geography matters. Sometimes you read about these places and you might occasionally glance at the maps.
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When I was a little kid, that was the primary focus during a sermon was looking at the maps. Anybody know what I'm talking about? But maybe with intention, once in a while as an adult, you actually might go back to your childhood and go back to those maps.
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But those maps are there for a reason because the geography of the area sometimes really is significant in terms of how we understand what in the world is going on.
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Did they just randomly, did the Philistines just grab a map and go, let's fight against Israel here?
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Is that how they determined it? Why in the world the Valley of Jezreel? Why are they taking all of their forces from the southern areas, moving them up north and attacking this location?
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Well, the Jezreel Valley is a very, very significant valley in Israel. It shows, the fact that the battle rages there demonstrates that it was an economically motivated battle and war that we're seeing here.
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Israel was in control of the main valley that runs from the western coastlands of the Mediterranean Sea across the central mountain range of Israel.
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It's like a big scar from west to east across a mountain range that runs north to south.
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So it's a low point in Israel. There was a significant trade route that ran through there.
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So Israel was in control of the main valley and that trade route there. And that main trade route ran up the coastal plains all the way from Egypt through the desert, up through Philistine territory on the coastal plains, and then cut a sharp right -hand turn and went across that really, you see, right and headed a little bit south.
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But it was the easiest way to get across that central mountain range and head out then towards Babylon, to head out towards Nineveh, towards Damascus, towards Assyria, towards these other powerful civilizations during this time.
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And so whoever controlled that valley, the Jezreel Valley, had control of a significant pinch point to the commerce of the day.
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This is like the Suez Canal. This is like the Panama Canal. This is significant to the trade of their day.
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Whoever controls that can shut off trade between nations, a very powerful position to hold during this time.
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So you can understand maybe a little bit more the significance of what's happening in chapter 31 here at the end of Saul's life.
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This is a significant holding for Israel to possess that trade route and that valley was very important.
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So the Philistines have every intention of taking control of that valley and taking control of the trade of the day.
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So the fact that the final battle occurs on the flanks of Mount Gilboa, Mount Gilboa is clear up against the
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Jordan Valley. It is the easternmost point of the Valley of Jezreel. So it's the easternmost point demonstrating that they had already been chased down this valley.
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The Israelites, by the time that we encounter this and the time that we actually see them taking a stand, they're taking a final stand.
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The implications of this is that this is a, the Philistine war machine is cutting through the Israelite ranks like a hot knife through butter.
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They're fading fast. They're falling back, falling back, falling back, and now they're making a last stand on the flanks of Mount Gilboa.
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And the terminology that is used here, one other thing that you need to identify is that the Philistines actually possessed chariots.
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We see that throughout the text of Scripture, that they had chariots available to them. So another reason that Israel would actually set the final battle on the flanks of Mount Gilboa is because the chariots would not be able to come to bear as well in the fight.
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They were obviously useful on flat terrain at the base and the bottom of that valley, but once you get up on the flanks of the sides, it would be a little bit harder to bring them to bear.
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So they are there taking a final stand. And the terminology in chapter 31 is dark all the way through.
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When you think about the verbs that are used in this text in regard to Israel and the
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Israelites, these are the verbs or the terms that are used for them. The Israelites flee.
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The Israelites are slain. Israelites are struck down. Israelites are pressed hard.
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Israelites are badly wounded. Israelites are thrust through. And finally, Israelite corpses are stripped bare.
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The terminology is dark. It is a dark text. It is a dire text, a desperate text in the state of the history of God's people.
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But more specifically, of course, we know, and having read this and knowing whose story we're following, the tragic king, the author is much more concerned, most concerned for the final moments of the tragic king.
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In verse 2, the Philistines overtook Saul and his three oldest sons, and the first confirmed fatality that the text tells us, there probably were many more, but the first confirmed fatality that the text names is the death of Jonathan, the crown prince.
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And I want to point out that Jonathan has only ever been spoken of in high regard by the author of 1
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Samuel, only ever elevated by a man of intense faith in his God, Yahweh, a man of nobility and honor, a man who honored his father even though his father was difficult to honor, a good example for us in terms like that.
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You see, we know from scripture, from past chapters in 1
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Samuel, that Jonathan didn't always agree with his father. As a matter of fact, sometimes he adamantly disagreed, and that's kind of a father -son relationship, right?
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There's times of disagreement in a family, and Jonathan went to his father on at least two occasions that we have recorded where he went to his dad and said,
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I don't agree with what you're doing here, and sought to correct him and sought to bring peace and be a peacemaker between David and his father,
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Saul. But he certainly did honor him as his father. He honored him as his king, and he honored him as the
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Lord's anointed. How do I know that? Because here, Jonathan dies side by side with his failed of a leader, failed of a king father, and his two brothers.
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We have in Jonathan a man who modeled a hard pathway of surrender to the will of God. I mean, even to the degree where he was made aware that another one was going to take the throne that he was in line for.
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He's second in command. He's the oldest son of King Saul. King Saul's number one dream in life was that his son
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Jonathan would sit on his throne, but God had anointed another man, a man who was better than the line of Saul, a man who was after God's own heart.
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How would this settle on Jonathan's heart? How would this settle on your heart? How quick would you be to give up your kingship for what
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God is doing in the life of another? That's Jonathan. That's who we see dying nobly in battle here.
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He dies side by side with his father. In life, he honored the
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Lord, his God, by abdicating the future throne, and verbally and symbolically gave his royal robe to David, his friend, and said,
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I know. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has called you to be the next king, not me.
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What kind of a guy was this? In death, he shows himself faithful to his father and faithful to God's people.
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I can't get too far off into the weeds, but let me suggest to you that there is something in here for those of you who have parents that are difficult to honor, and I believe that that's some of you, if not many of you.
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You see, the text doesn't express, doesn't state it clearly as an application point, but I do think that it's wise for us to all consider this relationship between Jonathan and his father
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Saul, and to think about what it means to honor our father and our mother. If the only thing left to honor is that your mother carried you for nine months, then at least honor that, or that your father was older than you, at least honor that.
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Yeah, that's pretty low. It's a low bar, but I mean, maybe that's all you got. But here is the point.
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I would encourage every single one of you to trust God with his sovereign decision to give you the father and mother that he has.
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How many of you chose your father and mother? I really want to talk with you. I don't want to sit down with you for coffee if you chose who your mother and father were going to be.
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You had no choice. I mean, how often do our parents reflect on us, and we worry about the things that they do or the decisions that they make when it has nothing to do with us, right?
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So at the end of the day, you know, we can have shame about our parents, but we didn't choose that. And so, can you trust
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God with that? We didn't choose them, so we have no option but to run with what he has given to us, and just maybe the difficulty that some of us have with our parents, maybe some of the difficulty in our family relationships, maybe some of the hardship that we have over honoring father and mother as part of the very character quality that he wants to work into our lives.
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Have you ever thought about that? Maybe you have a difficult or a strained relationship with parents, or have in the past because he wants to sharpen you through that.
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He wants you to grow through that. It was with intention that he put you in the family that he chose for you.
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So Jonathan here shines as an example of a man who honored his father to the very end, fighting side by side with his dad.
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And he struck down, along with his second and third oldest son, or oldest brothers. And the
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Israelites are melting away on the hillside, Saul and his closest cohort is targeted by the group of enemy archers.
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I cannot imagine that this phrase in ancient warfare ever is a good thing. When you hear the phrase, the archers found him, that's not a good thing.
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Like, how many of you, if you're in an ancient battle, you don't want to hear the archers found you. Like, that's not ever a good thing.
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And they found him, not just implying that they, oh, hey, it's hide and seek, and we found King Saul. Found him in terms of identifying where the king is and focusing their fire in that direction.
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They concentrated fire on Saul's location, shredded his defenses, pierced his armor, and badly wounded the king.
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Now whether they found gaps in his armor, or whether it was pierced through, doesn't matter much because he's badly wounded by the end of the archers finding him.
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So in desperation and fear, Saul commanded his armor bearer to draw his sword, and he says, run me through, finish me off.
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Saul is incapacitated, but it's important to understand, because you kind of have this image in your mind, like, injured, how, like, what is going on?
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He has no belief that he's going to die from his injuries, so he's not injured like that.
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So he's not pierced through the heart and bleeding out, or he's not got a lung shot and he's got, you know, moments to live.
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He's there and he has every expectation that he's incapacitated as far as ability to get away from the
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Philistines, but he has anticipation that they are going to take him alive. And you did not want to be taken alive by any enemy during this time.
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He fears being captured by the faithless, uncircumcised, that means uncovenanted, they've got no values of the kingdom in them is what the term uncircumcised there is implying, and he anticipates a really brutal and torturous death.
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Pagan war practices, by the way, knew nothing of the Geneva Convention, and some of the common torture practices related by historians don't look these up, but some of the things that they would do are beyond what
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I feel comfortable sharing in a context like this. They were brutal, barbaric, the word barbaric has a reason for it, and particularly the
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Philistines. There's record of the way that they would treat war criminals, and it's not pretty.
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So Saul's fear here, I just want to point out, it's important for us to understand, this is a real and legitimate fear.
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He's not being a sissy here, okay? How many of you in that context, I mean you don't know all the ins and outs of it, but how many of you want the enemy to find you and capture you?
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You don't really want that. We've seen even just in modern times, in World War II documentaries and things like that, the way that POWs were treated, and that's in modern civilized times, let alone in this barbaric era.
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So his desire to get out of this situation is desperate and very real. But tragedy here in this text is kind of multiplied in the life of King Saul, and here at the end of King Saul, because it's insult added to injury here, that he's seriously wounded, and he issues, so this king issues a final command to his right hand man, only to be denied obedience to this very last issued command of the king.
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Do you see the irony in that? Do you see that? In his very last command is completely ignored, and he who refused to obey
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God's commands, now at the end of his life, has his very own commands disobeyed.
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There's an irony in this, and the armor bearer, of course, it says in the text, feared greatly.
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Feared what? I mean, what was going to happen to him? But he did not want to face God in judgment, being the one who raised his hand to slay the
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Lord's anointed. And so Saul's final act was the most profound of faithless actions, and he fell on his own sword and died.
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The tragic king in our text, we've been following him for chapters and for weeks here in our study, he has now come to a very tragic end.
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He died by his own hand, without fanfare, without nobility, without honor.
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And what is most troubling in this account of his death is what is missing. Do you notice what's missing?
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Sometimes what's not there is the most profound thing, and we don't catch it. And I have to confess that it's a little bit of an unfair thing to throw it at you, because I didn't notice it.
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It wasn't until I did some research and looked at commentaries that I was like, duh, how come I didn't catch that?
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Like, this is very, very significant. What is not here? And it's meant to be a contrast with King David.
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It's intentionally absent and grievously absent. Completely absent from this account of the death of Saul is any cry out to the
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Lord God Almighty for deliverance. No cry to the Lord, no prayer in his desperation, no turning to him.
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You see, time after time in the Psalms, David is no less surrounded by enemies, no less in fear of being tortured, of being captured.
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So many times in the Psalms he says, my enemies surround me. They're all around me. They're going to capture me.
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They're going to drag me down to Sheol. They are going to have their way with me. They're going to abuse me. They're going to crush me. But I trust in you,
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Lord, for deliverance. My eyes are on you. I'm looking to you for deliverance. Not so,
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King Saul. His life is self -dependent to the bitter end.
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I will do it my way. Thank you very much. So Saul shows his central value here at the end of his life.
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He was in control of his own destiny from beginning to end. This is never seen as a good thing.
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We are a culture that values independence, that values self -control. Every man can make himself.
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Every woman can be whatever she wants to be. We can all just control our lives. And that's never demonstrated to be a good thing.
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Particularly here in terms of suicide. You see, suicide is the final and ultimate attempt to exercise control over that which
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God should solely control. He alone should be trusted with our very life.
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The will of the person who takes their own life cannot be simultaneously exercising faith in God and engineering their own end at the same time.
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In every instance of suicide, we see an example of faithlessness in action. You heard that right.
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In every instance of suicide, we see an example of faithlessness in action. I would even go so far as to say that suicide is the exclamation point at the end of this sentence.
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I don't trust you, God! Exclamation point. Now, I'll leave it up to God to judge rightly how to process suicide on the other side.
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How many of you are glad you're not the omniscient judge? Anybody glad for that? I am so glad that I don't have to process this.
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I don't have to work through it. And even as a pastor, I just don't, I don't feel like I'm well -equipped from the text of Scripture to say, you know,
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I mean, it's very easy in terms of Roman Catholic doctrine. You've got mortal sins and venial sins, and it's very, it would be so much easier to just say, if you commit suicide, you're going to hell and that's it, right?
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Scripture doesn't dictate that and isn't that clear and isn't that cut and dried. I truly believe that a genuine mental illness may account for many suicides, especially in our modern era.
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It's only ever a tragic thing, right? It is not always a carefully considered and thought through option.
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It is often an impulse of mental illness that cannot be rationally explained. But I think it's a little different in Saul's case here.
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He's intentionally seeking to control the end of his life.
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And I do know that in Saul's case, it is held up as the tragic end of the tragic king. He was a man who refused to let
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God lead him in life. And now he has taken his own life in a final act of fearful self -assertion.
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So in verse five, we learn that Saul's suicide served as a poor example to others as well. In further tragedy, his armor bearer also fell on his own sword following his king in death.
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The faithlessness of Saul, I just want to point this out how often this is the case. Our faith can rub off on others, right?
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Our faithlessness can rub off on others as well. The faithlessness of Saul led others into faithlessness.
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But contrast that with the bold faith of little David with the sling in his hand who emboldened a nation to rise up against the
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Philistines by slaying the giant through trust in God, really trusting God to slay the giant.
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He emboldened the nation about 10 to 15 years before these events happened that we're reading about today.
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So Saul, his three oldest sons, his armor bearer, and all of his inner security force, they were all slain that day on the slopes of Mount Gilboa.
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And both sides of the Jezreel Valley as well as those on the eastern end, even going over into across the
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Jordan, the Israelites abandoned those cities there in fear as the
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Philistines took over. And the Philistines took up residence right in the heart of Israel, taking over this trade route.
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So they now possessed control of one of the most traveled trade routes in the world during this time. They are in control of the economy of the day.
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And the next day, the Philistines were out stripping the slain for spoils when they came upon a very tall man, stood out because he was in armor.
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And from descriptions, they determined this corpse to be none other than King Saul himself. So they celebrated by cutting off his head, stripping off his armor, and sending word throughout
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Philistine territory that the God of the Israelites had failed. That's the word that they're carrying out.
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The fact that the good news of the Philistines was carried to the houses of their idols as a way of showing the religious nature and the religious assumptions of this battle.
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If Yahweh was something, we wouldn't have won. So they put Saul's armor in the temple to the goddess
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Ashtoreth. Astarte is another name for her. And she was the one who's apparently from the
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Philistines given credit for this victory. And they fastened his naked body and the body of his sons to the wall of their new city,
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Beshan, which is a newly acquired city on the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, a significant city at a major crossroads from the
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Jordan Valley to the Jezreel Valley east and west. A way of saying, ours now, and see what our goddess has done for us.
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So Saul had refused to listen to God in this life. He primarily thought of God as a good luck charm to pull out when he needed some help.
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He increased in his thought that the throne was his. Possessive pronouns dominated Saul. He grew paranoid at the thought that someone else might take the throne from him.
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Even after God said it was so, he still became all the more paranoid. Saul discovered that we only have so many hands to grip with, don't we?
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How many hands do you have to grip with? Just two, right? And with his two hands, he tightened his grip on his little earthly kingdom.
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And with two hands firmly gripping his earthly kingdom, he had no hands left to offer to the hand of the
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Almighty to lead him. Let that be a lesson to us, let that sink in. You can't grip everything in this world and still have a free hand to offer to God.
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If you're clinging, if you're grasping, if you're holding so tightly to this world and to this life and to the things that you think you want, the things that you think you need, the things that you think will satisfy, you will live a life like Saul that never was willing to let go and let
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God take your hand and lead and guide. What a terrible tragedy that at the end, he held on so tightly that he lost everything, where if he had let go of everything, he would have gained so much.
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He was happy to follow God as long as God was willing to serve him. That's why we see some significant religious behaviors of Saul.
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I still suggest to you that he was a religious man at times in his life making sacrifices and even at times leading the nation in prayer and at times even allowing the
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Spirit to guide him from time to time. But never unless it benefited him.
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The minute that God demanded anything of Saul that he didn't like, it became an option. So here is
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Saul, dishonored in death, shamed and publicly displayed in the most gruesome of ways at Bethshon.
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His faithlessness led to the mockery of Yahweh, the God of Israel, our God, all throughout the land, a mockery of Yahweh.
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But the text doesn't end there. The text ends with a glimmer of hope. I love the way that this book ends because it doesn't end on a hard stop.
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It ends on a little bit more of a rise, a little flicker of light shines in the darkness, a glimmer of hope in verses 11 through 13 that you might miss.
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It kind of looks like just part of the story, but it's there to invoke hope in us. There's still nobility and honor alive in Israel.
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It hasn't been extinguished. This is not the end. You see, when word came to the people of Jabesh -Gilead that the
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Philistines desecrated the corpse of King Saul, it says, the valiant, the bold, the brave men arose and trekked all night, a 20 -mile round trip, approximately 10 miles each way, over really rough terrain, and they traveled that distance into enemy territory in one night and stole back the bodies of Saul and his sons.
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I mean, you can kind of picture that. It's kind of a made -for -movie story. I mean, that would just be intense, what they went through that night to recover such a noble act on their part to honor their king.
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Why would the men of Jabesh -Gilead do that? What's the significance of Jabesh -Gilead? Why in the world this little out -of -the -way town on the eastern frontier of Israel?
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What would they have to do with this? What's very significant, when you go back into the life of Saul and you realize that his very first act as king, all the way back in 1
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Samuel 11, weeks and weeks ago, we went over this, Jabesh -Gilead was besieged.
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By an enemy nation called the Ammonites. Their leader, their king, was known as Nahash the Mutilator.
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He's the king of the Ammonites. He had come to besiege Jabesh -Gilead, and they had been surrounded, and they were running out of food, and they were running out of water, and then
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Nahash screams at the top, sends out his herald, and he shouts, give up, and if you give up, you'll have food and water.
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The only thing I ask of this city is that I get every man's right eye. That's all I want. All I want is every man's right eye so that he can't shoot an arrow accurately, and that'll be it.
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And you can go on your merry way, and it'll be fine. So all of the men of Jabesh -Gilead in chapter 31, where we're reading, have their right eyes because of King Saul.
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Because it says the spirit moved upon King Saul. He raised up and rallied the nation of Israel, and they came in like a wrecking ball and crushed
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Nahash the Ammonite, and saved Jabesh -Gilead. Why are they rising up to,
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I mean, what's the body even matter? Why are they going to give him, to seek to give King Saul and his sons a noble burial?
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Because they had so much that he had given to them. Do you see that? And so there's still an honor in Israel.
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There's still an honor that's going on here. And they honor the one who had delivered them, and they do that by giving him a proper burial.
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They burned his body. That was not a common Israelite occurrence, but probably because he had already been mutilated so badly that they just burned the remains, buried his bones.
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And here at the end of the text, we see them fasting in grief for the seven days. Fasting in grief.
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And the book ends with anticipation. Certainly, it's a dark text, but there's glimmers of hope.
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And no less, you know, the story in the account of Jabesh -Gilead is indeed a glimmer of hope, but even more so is the promise given to this guy who's down in the southwestern area of Judea, has just rescued his people from the
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Amalekites, David, who has been promised, been anointed by God as the next king.
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We know where this is going. There's no spoiler alert here. It's already been spoiled for you if you've been following along in 1
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Samuel. But surely, this cannot be the end.
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It is merely one here in the text of many ends and many ends that will be repeated until the end of all ends when the final king comes to do away with all endings.
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So how do we apply this dark text to our own lives? What does this have to do with Madawan? What does this have to do with where you live?
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What does this have to do with 2018? Well, let me just start off by saying what might already have been kind of crossing your mind a little bit, anytime
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I read a eulogy, anytime I read about the death of somebody else, I don't know if your mind goes, maybe I'm just a little bit macabre, a little morose, but I mean, my heart, my mind goes to my mortality.
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Anybody else, you attend a funeral, you think, oh, that's gonna be me one day. I've got a pine box waiting for me, right? Or whatever, there's crematorium waiting for me, whatever it is, but you just know.
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And so the first application, I just want you to just settle in this for just a minute. Consider the reality of your own end.
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And many of us don't want to talk about that. We don't want to think about that. That's a very un -American thing to do. We try to make funeral celebrations.
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We try to get death out of our minds and out of our thoughts. But let me just say that the
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Christian should let your mind linger there for a moment. Because the reality is, whether it's surrounded by broken glass on a highway or surrounded by loved ones in a hospital bed, the macabre but honest assessment over every single life in here is that we are all going to die.
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If you thought about, raise your hand, raise your hand if you've thought that thought before. I'm going to die someday. Is this new for some of you?
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Sorry to break the news. It's going to happen. Death is the consequence of our human rebellion against our creator.
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And everyone in this room, everyone in this room who is going to die is going to die for one primary reason. It's because we broke our relationship with our creator.
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And the looming specter of death should drive us to consider what our life is for now.
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You see, if you start to face the reality of your mortality and you start recognizing that the days shift into years and the years are marching towards an inevitable end, then what are these days for?
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What are these years for? It would be silly, it'd be goofy, it would be tragic if we would go through our lives without contemplating, considering why are we alive?
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What are we doing here? How should we spend these few years that feel like days are being granted here?
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You see, and I would suggest to you that without Christ, there is little to no room for levity or lightheartedness.
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There's very little room to celebrate. There's little room for joy or any good thing. See, without Christ, there can only be a wild -eyed desperation to milk this life for the things it can never provide for you.
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See, that's the world's way. And often it seeps into the church where we believe that this life is given to us for our pleasure, for our good things.
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It even creeps in the way of the prosperity gospel if the only thing that God ever wants is your pleasure, your joy, your wealth, your health, your good for me.
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God isn't here to serve us. We're here to serve him, to bring honor and glory to him in the dark times, in the good times, in the bad times, in all of the times.
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So let your mortality drive you deeper into your faith. Let the reality that Christ has dealt with death, let that set you free with the knowledge that this life is not all that there is.
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Why can we suffer? Why can we suffer with joy? Why can we suffer with hope?
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You see, the Christian is the only one, the one who really gets this, the one who really has a relationship with God is the only one who can suffer with joy because we know that this isn't all that there is, that suffering is like light, momentary afflictions compared to the hope of the glory of that which he has for us in the life that is to come.
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Do you see where the hope comes from? So let the reality of your mortality give way to the hope that all of these things are just little ends to a beginning that is coming for us.
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Let the knowledge that this is not all that there is lead you to be a force for joy among the desperate that are all around you.
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Consider your end, I'm asking you to do that, consider your end and let it fuel your hope that your death, the death of the
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Christian is much exaggerated. For our ends will be only glorious beginnings.
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The second thing that I want all of us to do is, yeah, certainly consider the reality of your end, but cry out to God when you're surrounded.
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When you're surrounded, you see, I mean, how many of you can relate to this next sentence? Life can turn tragic.
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Raise your hand if you've experienced a little bit of that. There are times when the archers find us and we are pierced through and confident that we must take matters into our own hands for our own security, our own safety.
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God, how could the archers find me? How could I be in this desperation? I thought you loved me, I thought you cared for me.
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But it's precisely at times like that that we see two options that the text of 1
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Samuel and really the life of David and the life of Saul contrast. We can either blame God and run from him and go do it our own way or we can lean on God and trust in him and cry out to him.
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Let me suggest that that second option is the best. Cry out to him when you're surrounded.
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See, saving faith looks like the humility to cry out to God when we finally realize that we cannot save ourselves.
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Many people like King Saul make it their life priority to save themselves. And in the end, the tragedy is that in seeking to save himself, terrible irony, in seeking to save himself, he delivers himself with his sword into the presence of final judgment.
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Self -dependence, by the way, I would suggest to you, is an American value that is in direct opposition to the dependent life that God has for you.
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Not an independent life, a dependent life. A dependence on him, what are you depending on him for?
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Depending on him for guidance, for strength, and for the results. How many of you knew that the results are not up to you?
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Did you already know that? I mean, you can work, you can train, you can study, you can work as hard as you want, but at the end of the day, the victory belongs to the
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Lord, the raise belongs to the Lord, the new position belongs to the Lord. And we like to think that we did it.
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Independence, I accomplished, I accomplished. And who gave you those muscles? Who gave you those lungs to metabolize oxygen?
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Who's given you everything that you've ever possessed? The Almighty God. So what are you leaning on for your day -to -day strength?
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Let me encourage you to cry out to God. Cry out to God when you're surrounded by the troubles of this life.
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And lastly, even in this tragic text, I would encourage us all to celebrate, lastly, celebrate the true end that all ends point to.
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When you see an end, let that end become a celebration that there's one day coming that there will be no more ends.
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You see, Jesus came once to cover sins, to cover our sins as the servant king. And He will come once again as the conquering king.
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Every end anticipates that final day. The final day when
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He will come and remove all wickedness and usher in His final kingdom, a kingdom of life, a kingdom of joy, a kingdom of peace forever without end.
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Does that excite anybody? A day where there will be no more endings. You see, we come to communion each week to remember that Jesus came the first time to die.
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He came to die as the sacrifice to cover the sins of His people, even us. And I encourage anyone who has asked
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Him to save you to come to one of the tables in the back during the next song and take up the cracker to remember
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His body that was broken for us as He commanded us to. Take the juice to remember His blood that He shed for us and His great love and mercy toward all of us.
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But do this as you reflect on the hope that can only come from Jesus. And let me just say, if you've already tuned out, tune back in for just a second because sometimes
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I fear that when I say the word communion everybody starts to kind of get ready to go. But listen to this just for a second.
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Let's go out from this place and allow your mortality to impact your journey of faith.
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Cry out independence upon God for daily strength and when you're surrounded. And lastly, celebrate that you've been set free to look forward to a final end of all ends.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the grace that we have here at the end of this book.
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I just am so glad that you have spoken to us in your word about even these tragic things and these dark things that we deal with on a regular basis.
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There's funerals, there's brokenness, there's times where we feel surrounded, there's times when we feel like the archers have found us and we're just seconds from being pierced through.
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There's times that feel like torture. Father, you are faithful in it all, leading towards a final end in a glorious kingdom where pain and suffering and hardship and tears will be done away with.
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And so Father, I just pray that you would give us all your perspective of the long term. There's such a culture, such a people who are impressed by the bright and shiny, bedazzled things of today and tomorrow.
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But Father, I pray that you would help us to lift our eyes up to see the big picture of what you're doing and to bow our knees before you in gratitude and thankfulness that you are indeed working all things for your glorious end and that we long for and look for the day when the good king, the true king, will come that will outshine
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King Saul, will outshine King David, will outshine all kings because he is the king of king and lord of lords, the one who gave his very life for his people.
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He's a good king and I pray that you would help us to honor him this week with our lives in Jesus' name, amen.