Sermon Tone Analysis

When Kendall was 8 years old, her father showed up to her private elementary school and said to the teacher, “I’m here to pick up my daughter.”

As Kendall naturally began gathering her belongings, she noticed that her classmate was doing the same.

“I saw his girlfriend’s daughter gather her things,” Kendall remembers.

“[My father] told her to come on and they left the classroom.”

Kendall had been left behind.

That unforgettable act brought a wave of emotions she can clearly recall now so many years later.

“I felt so small.

I felt lonely, I felt embarrassed, I felt replaced,” Kendall says, “It made me feel ‘less than.’”

As an adult, Kendall still can’t let go of those powerful feelings.

“I believe I have a fear of being abandoned.

I feel like even when people are nice to me, it’s not really how they really feel,” Kendall says as her voice cracks and eyes well up.

“I’m always waiting for the way they really feel to come out and for them to decide they don’t want to have anything to do with me.”

Abandonment is an extremely intense fear for many.

Difficult for many to handle or even imagine.

Abandonment is one of the most feared things for children.

It is found through psychological study that the fear of abandon is the culprit for many of the behavior anomalies.

It was found from a child’s point of view, “you can abuse me, humiliate me, exploit me, and not even believe me, but by far the worst is if you don’t even want me.”

It was also found that parent found the threat of abandonment potent.

Threatening children with abandonment was a powerful way they found to immobilize and control their children.

Even as adults we are paralyzed in fear with the idea of being abandoned.

Daniel Sulmasy (then head of the Bioethics Institute of New York Medical College) made an interesting discovery while observing dying patients in a hospital.

Sulmasy said that patients who are terminally ill list isolation and abandonment as their biggest fears.

Today we face an even bigger problem when it comes to this thing called abandonment.

There is nothing worse that could happen to a person then to be abandoned by God.

Sure we could handle abandonment from all things in this world as long as we knew that God was still with us.

Or maybe that is why, abandonment by others today is so devastating… we feel like we have been abandoned by God already.

The problem is… the truth is… we all deserve to be abandoned by God.

And deep down inside, Christian or non-Christian, we all know it to be true.

But we do not need to wallow in the despair of hopeless abandonment, because God did indeed forsake, but he did not forsake His children… we have hope today and we will find out why in our passage today.

Last week we witnessed David’s failure in his unbelief.

Saul showed his false repentance by continuing to pursue David and David decided to find refuge in the land of the Philistines.

There we witnessed the deceit of David and all that he did in defiance to the king and ultimately to God.

And now we come to one of the saddest chapters in all of Scripture, because there is nothing worse than being abandoned by God.

We are reminded that Samuel had died and all the people had mourned him.

We are then told that Saul had done something good, by banning all witchcraft and necromancers (consult sprits of the dead).

Now if you remember the Philistines were mounting an army to attack Israel and when Saul saw how vast it was he became fearful.

He asked the Lord what he should do, but the Lord did not answer, neither by dreams, or the Urim (the stones like lots) the priests (How could he, he killed them all), neither did he hear from the prophets.

This is horribly sad, to be abandoned by the Lord.

Saul then asked his men to go find him a medium or witch to find out what he should do.

The medium of Endor.

Saul went with two of his men to ask the whoo hoo witchy woman see how high she fly ah ies.

Saul in disguise asked the woman if she would call up a dead person for him.

Because of the ban by Saul, she thought they were trying to get her killed, you know that Saul outlawed this stuff.

Is this a trap?

Saul swore by the Lord that nothing bad would happen to her.

She asked who he wanted and he said Samuel.

At the sight of Samuel, because she probably did not think he would come, screamed!!

And she new that it had to be Saul that Samuel would actually come.

He came and Saul fell to the ground.

Samuel asked Saul why he disturbed him… I am in deep trouble he said.

The Philistines are coming and God is not talking to me, I need to ask you what I should do.

Why are you asking me Saul?

The Lord said that he was going to leave you and become your enemy.

He has torn the kingdom away from you and has given it to David.

You did not obey the Lord when He tells you to follow Him.

This is what He said was going to happen, and you want to know what else…Tomorrow the war will begin and you and your sons will join me in death and the entire army of Israel will be defeated because of what you have done here.

Saul fell to his face in despair weak because he had not eaten.

The medium offered Saul something to eat and ate a last supper that was fit for a king.

Before dawn they left.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.

Rebellion is as Witchcraft

Abandoned by God

Forsaken by the Father

The first thing we will look at is the rebellion of Saul as he practices witchcraft and how we also have the propensity to do that which the Bible forbids.

The second thing we will explore is one of the worst things that could ever happen to a person… to be abandoned by God.

Finally, we will marvel at how we are not forsaken by the Father, because the Father forsook the Son.

Thesis: In our times of desperation, we tend to succumb to misguided desperation where we fall into sins of the worst kind deserving to be abandoned by God, but we see that our Lord has suffered this darkness for us so that we will never face the wrath and rejection of God proven with His agonizing words… my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

I. Misguided Desperation

- People, even ancient Israel or contemporary church, regularly do what Scripture prohibits.

A. Did you notice that the author did not finish the story with David, but kept us hanging?

It is like when you are watching something on tv and the news comes in to give us breaking news.

This is the same thing.

This is something important.

B. Saul actually did something good here… he obeyed the Word of the Lord by banning witches, mediums, and necromancers (consulting with the dead).

C. Now the medium was also to be afraid...

Leviticus 20:

This is the word of the Lord against psychic hotlines, palm and tarot card readers, altered state of consciousness drug dealing and use, wiccans, Satanism, even pantheism, Daoism, polytheism, channeling, god and goddess worship, rituals, some forms of chanting, some forms of visualization, trances, spell casting, sex magic, voodoo, incantations, astrology, astral projections, a combination of all of these, and, let me throw this in, flat out rebellion against God is as the sin of witchcraft.

D.

Here we have a prime example of misguided desperation.

Saul had followed the Word of the Lord when he banned mediums, but in his desperation, he goes against the Word of the Lord by seeking a medium to talk to the dead for him.

And it worked!

E. But seriously Shane, is this stuff real.

Well in accordance to this story.

Yes.

Now the Scriptures do not give details of the specifics of divination and necromancy.

So if you are a budding necromancer, there is no direction of how to do this.

The woman screamed, some will say that she was surprised that it worked… I just think she was surprised that Samuel actually came which caused her to know that it was Saul.

Fear.

F. It was also expressly forbidden in the Scriptures, which tells me that to some extent this stuff is real.

There is a supernatural and preternatural realm.

As a pastor over the years I witnessed stuff that made the hair in the back of my neck stand up.

Simon was a sorcerer in Acts, the lady here was a medium, altered states of consciousness happen, demon possessions, and talking to the dead at least happened here.

God probably allowed it and there really is no reason to think that this was just some kind of illusion.

The Lord allowed Samuel to talk to Saul.

G.

But we need to understand something here… the reason why God forbids this stuff is not because it isn’t real… But because it is WICKED!!! Do not mess around with this stuff.

You know I am not the kind of pastor to search for demons of ghosts under every rock, but the Scriptures make it very clear that there are powers and principalities in the preternatural world and they will come after you and bust you up if you invite them into your life.

Stop the Ouijas boards, the amulets, the magic charms, the empowerment meditations, the altered state of consciousness drugs like LSD, PCP, Cocaine, Heroin, and stop talking to your dead relatives when a big moth is flying around you.

H.

But because of sin in us, in our desperation, we become misguided just like Saul.