1 Samuel chapter 31. This is the last chapter of the book of 1 Samuel. Just to give you a sneak preview, the plan is to take a break at least for a couple of weeks, or for a period of a couple of months, from the historical books here, and I plan to preach for the next couple of months through the Lord's Prayer. It should be cool. We are reaching the end of 1 Samuel, and in this final chapter, we see events that do not conclude the whole story of 1 and 2 Samuel. Remember that it's 1 and 2 Samuel literally because the ancient scrolls weren't big enough to contain it all in one scroll. But it does come to an important breaking point as we see the conclusion of Saul's career. Hear God's word for Samuel chapter 31 verses 1 through 13. Now the Philistines fought against Israel and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. And the Philistines overtook Saul and his sons and the Philistines struck down Jonathan and Abinadab and Malkishua, the sons of Saul. The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by the archers. Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and thrust me through and mistreat me. But his armor-bearer would not, for he feared greatly. Therefore, Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. 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. 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 Philistines came and lived in them. The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. So they cut off his head and stripped off his armor and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. They put his armor in the temple of Asherah. and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-Shan. When the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 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 Beth-Shan. And they came to Jabesh and burned them there. And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jebesh and fasted seven days." If you were here last week, you will remember the amazing rescue that the Lord effected through David, his servant. The David and his men had been forced to march north to fight against Israel. And seemingly at the last minute, God had caused concern, to say the least, in the hearts of the other Philistine lords. And they wound up sending David and his men back home. But when they returned back south to the Philistine city that they had been living in for a year and a half, they found the city burned, their wives and their children gone. But by God's direction and with God's help, they wound up rescuing all of their wives and all of their children. We saw before that the way Saul spent, it seems, his last night on earth, consulting with a medium because he had no message from God, no guidance from the Lord as to how to deal with the Philistine forces that were coming up against him in battle. And when we read these events, the things that we just read in the last chapter of First Samuel, these things are probably taking place at exactly the same time as the events of the previous chapter. So at the same moment, David and his men are returning to Ziklag and tracking down the raiders who had burned their town and taking their families, and rescuing them from the Amalekites, and distributing the spoils to all these southern Israelite settlements. In the far north of Israel, in the Valley of Jezreel, Saul and his sons are meeting their end. And the armies of Israel are being routed by the Philistines. So we see here a battle at Mount Gilboa and in the Valley of Jezreel. in the far north of Israel, the opposite end of the country from where David is. And I think the author is actually partly going to some pains to tell us where these things take place, because he wants to make it clear that after years and years of refusing to put out his hand to strike Saul, David has nothing to do with Saul's death. Even though David has an interest in this place, Do you remember the names of his two wives at this point? Abigail, who came from Carmel, same area, and Ahinoam, the Jezreelitess, she is from the same area. David is nowhere to be seen. He has nothing to do with Saul's death. So we find Saul in his last battle against the Philistines, fighting them in the valley of Jezreel. If you can get a picture of this in your minds, Jezreel is a rich, flat valley full of dark volcanic soil. It's a wonderful place for growing crops. Still is. It's farmland even today. But it's too muddy to pass over easily in the wintertime, which is why Sisera, for instance, way back in the book of Judges, was bogged down. He and his chariots were bogged down in the mud in the valley of Jezreel. And Elijah warned Ahab to cross with his army, cross the valley of Jezreel before springtime came, because it would be impossible to cross once the rains of winter and spring came. It leads from the great trade routes east or further westward along the Mediterranean Sea and the harbors of the Mediterranean Sea, which now Haifa in Israel. Westward toward the Jordan Valley, which is where most of the Israelites lived. And it was the breadbasket of the region. It was a place where much, much of the food of the region was grown. But it is also a bloody place because it is such a crossroads. It is frequently disputed, frequently fought over, and it's wide open plain became a place of battle. Not very far away is a town that you have heard of, even if you don't know it. It was called Megiddo. It was a place that had seen so many battles, that in John's vision in Revelation, the final battle between good and evil is at a place called Mount Megiddo, or in Arabic, Armageddon. And so Saul and the men of Israel, including his three sons, go up against the Philistines in the Valley of Jezreel. And they wind up getting pushed back eastward toward their own territory and fighting up the slopes of Mount Gilboa. It's a little way south of Endor where Saul had met the medium the night before. And along with Mount Carmel, it is one of the two mountains that rise steeply to the southwest of this valley. And it's a wonderful height to fight from because it's great. If you're fighting a battle, you want to be up on top. You want to be up high. Right. But it's a horrible place to be chased up. because it is so steep and stony. And so while the, when the battle fails in the plane, Saul and his army tried to escape up the slopes of Mount Gilboa, but they are caught in a trap and it is there that they die. We find Saul in a battle and a flight. And the writer tells us that Saul's sons were struck down. He doesn't go into any detail. He tells us that three of his sons, these weren't his only sons, but they were the three most important and most able in battle. Most of all, the beloved friend of David, Jonathan, the eldest, along with Abinadab and Malkishua, are struck down by the Philistines. And Saul finds himself cornered on Mount Gilboa. He's cornered by archers, right? He's fleeing uphill. He may be out of reach of the swords for the moment, but he's not out of reach of the archers. He's cornered, if not badly wounded, and he faces annihilation by the Philistines. He says he will be pierced through and mistreated. Perhaps he's worried about being captured by the Philistines, taken into captivity and mistreated much as Samson had been. And so he begs his armor bearer. We've talked about armor bearers before, right? It's the right hand man, your friend, your partner in battle. He begs his armor bearer to kill him before the uncircumcised do. Does this remind you of another speech before a giant died? That David swore that these uncircumcised Philistines would not defeat the armies of God. But his armor bearer will not kill his lord and king. And so in one of the saddest moments that we come across in the entirety of scripture, Saul falls on his sword. He falls on the short iron sword that he had carried into battle over all of these years. Now afterward, of course, the Philistines win. The king is dead. The king's sons are dead. His armor bearer, one of his chief soldiers, is dead. And all it says, all his men with him died on that day. Afterward, the people of Israel leave the valley towns to the Philistines, possibly including the town of Beth Shem, which is where Saul's and his son's bodies will wind up. Now we're going through this, this is gruesome stuff. I'm not going to get into anatomical details, but this is just, there's no way to read this. That isn't hard. Afterwards, the next day, the Philistines came to strip the slain. That's standard practice in most battles throughout most of history, including here in the ancient world. They come to find out if there's any treasure, any good armor, anything they can take from the dead Israelites, and they find the bodies of Saul and of his sons. They cut off his head, and they take his head, presumably, and his armor, and they put it in the temple of the Ashtaroth. They're false gods. They had adopted the gods of the Canaanites. Remember what had happened to the Ark way back in the beginning of 1 Samuel, when the Philistines defeated Israel. They took the Ark of the Covenant and they put it in the temple of their god, Dagon. And do you remember what had happened to the armor and the weapons of Goliath? Kids, do you remember what the Israelites did with the armor and the sword of Goliath? What happened? I think they burned it. Nope, they didn't burn it. They put it in the temple. Exactly the same thing is happening with the shoes on the other foot. The body and the bodies of his sons are hung on the walls of Beth-Shan as a public display. This is a crossroads city, a place that's perfect to display the bodies of your enemies, probably newly taken from the Israelites. And now this amazing thing happens at the end of the chapter. when the men of Jabesh Gilead come. Do you remember Jabesh Gilead at all? Other than having a cool name, do you remember anything Jabesh Gilead was important for, anything that had happened there? Well, some chapters before, in the very beginning of Saul's kingship, when he was still arguably a good man, the men of Jabesh Gilead had been oppressed by the Ammonites, who had a king named Nahash, the serpent. And he had gone up against them, and he defeated them in battle. And they said, please don't kill us. We'll give tribute to you. You can rule over us. And he said, I will accept your service on one condition, and that is that I gouge out the right eye of every man among you. So the men of Jabesh Gilead asked for seven days to see if they could get help from anyone in Israel. And when he heard it, the newly anointed king Saul brought all of Israel up to fight on behalf of Jabesh Gilead and rescued them from the Ammonites. It had come under the power of the serpent and Saul in his young days had rescued them and it freed them from the oppression of the Ammonites. And so they show him honor in return for his kindness. The bodies of Saul and his sons are being treated with disgrace and shame They're hung on display. The men of Jabesh risk their lives to honor the fallen king. They go immediately, right? They travel by night. But there's a little element here. By the way, I don't want to draw this out, and maybe this is speculative, but I think this might be important. There's a little element of hope. This is what I mean. Notice that they march by night, right? It says they go all night. Why? Now, it may be because they're afraid of getting attacked, although they're described as the valiant men of J.B.S. Gilead. But perhaps it's because they do not want or they perhaps it's because of something more. Perhaps it's because they want to save these mighty lords from disgrace. Well, yes, obviously. But is it just disgrace from men that they're worried about? Listen to Deuteronomy 21. If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he's put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance. See, the Israelites did not even treat their Gentile enemies like that. In Joshua 8, we read that Joshua hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. And at sunset, Joshua commanded and they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the gate of the city and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day. See, in all of this, the public display and disgrace and decay of the body was a testimony that even in death, the man was not at rest and that his judgment was not complete and that he was under a curse of God that lasted even beyond death. And, you know, just as there are hints and small words about heaven in the Old Testament, I think there are hints and small words about hell, about something that is worse than just death. And when the men Of Jabesh Gilead, remove Saul and his sons from the wall. Maybe we have a hint, maybe just a little hint that God's judgment on Saul has reached its conclusion and that there is hope for this tragic man. Saul. See Saul. We've been seeing Saul all the way through this book. He is a heartbreaking man and he is not a good man. One thing I want to point out to you is that we see here a giant slain. Since David appeared on the scene, he has been doing the work that Saul should have done. Specifically, David has been protecting Israel from the Philistines to the east. Most pointedly, most famously, that moment when he fought against Goliath, the Philistine giant who was killed by an Israelite youth. But he did that while the Israelite giant, Saul, remember that when he was picked to be king, it was partly because he stood head and shoulders taller than everybody else in Israel. David fought against the Philistine Goliath while the Israelite giant hid in his royal tent. And since then, Saul has tried to kill David many times, just as Goliath had, but David has not responded in kind. He chose to leave vengeance and judgment in God's hand. Well, now the Israelite giant is dead, but not by the hand of any of the uncircumcised, by his own hand. The Israelite giant is dead. His head is cut off. The Israelite giant is dead. His armor is stripped off and put in the temple of the enemy's gods. Now, these are not just stories. They're good stories, right? I mean, they're exciting stories. But they are not just stories. They are true. And they're not someone else's stories. They're our stories. They are our family history. First Corinthians 10, Paul says, Now these things, he's talking about events in the Old Testament. Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. See, we have in Saul an older brother who failed. an older brother and a king who failed to be what God called him to be. We have in Saul our own sins and our own temptations written in great big letters if we have eyes to see them. Can we see in him the same sins that easily trip us and throw us to the ground? It's all there. I want us to see ourselves here. And I'll say maybe particularly as men, and maybe particularly as people in a leadership position, or maybe it's just that I've got really, really convicted all the way through reading about Saul. But I think maybe particularly as men and maybe particularly those who are in authority of any kind. I want you to see Saul. Think about what we've seen over these many chapters. Saul, cowardly, hiding among the donkeys, hanging back in battle and letting others do the hard work. Harsh toward his people, Saul rash, threatening death to anyone that ate while they pursued his enemies. Saul, paranoid and self-pitying, whining to his men about how nobody feels bad for him and nobody helps him out and nobody cares about him. Saul, thinking of his own position as more important than the good of his people. Saul, wrathful, prone to outbursts of rage against David, against Jonathan, against the priests at Nob, against everyone. Saul, treating God as if he can be manipulated and fooled and bought into giving blessings, as if he does not see the heart. Saul, a servant of his subjects rather than a servant of God, not carrying out God's sentence against the Amalekites, and personified in so many ways by Naval, the fool, Saul, caring more about the respect of his subjects than the approval of God. Saul, a hypocrite, consulting a medium when it served him, even though he had killed mediums in the past. Saul, a breaker of promises to David and others. Saul failing to listen to the conviction of the spirit of the spirit. Saul taking refuge in his full stomach, even when he has received a sentence of death, which will come The next day, is there a route? Is there a way to condense this other than to just be like, don't be like Saul? Is there a way to look at this? I think perhaps there is. Saul is a fool. Saul is a fool. Saul is a fool. According to the biblical definition we talked about earlier from Psalm 14, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. Being a fool is a moral thing, not an intellectual thing. It is a spiritual issue, not an IQ issue. You see, in simple godlessness, in simply living as if there is no God, is the foundation of a life that destroys the godless man and those around him. And the root of all these things we have seen in Saul. That Saul clearly has moments where God seems real to him. But those moments pass, and his base understanding of the world is that he is on his own to make it by himself. Now, I want to say a couple things so that this is clear what this idea of foolishness is. First of all, once again, being a fool does not mean that you are stupid. Your car can be functioning fine as you drive down the road the wrong way, right? Your car can be functioning fine as you drive down the road the wrong way. In the same way, your mind can be functioning fine. Your faculties for logic and memorization and all of these other things can work fine as you rebel against God. But foolishness is an inner disposition of the heart, which is where you live without reference to your Creator. The second thing is that not everyone who is a fool is as bad as they can possibly be. Most of us are prevented by God from many opportunities to do evil. We may even do good things. We may be relatively powerless and the opinions and the desires and the expectations of others will certainly guide us. Saul still did go into battle, still ruled, still did many good things. But the outcome of our lives, when all is said and done, will be dust and ashes. And then thirdly, Not everyone who is a fool says there is no God with their lips. Not everyone who is a fool says there is no God with their lips. Saul certainly said there was a God. Saul certainly is never recorded as having come to the conclusion and sharing it with his friends that he doesn't believe in God anymore. The Pharisees Jesus spoke with certainly believed in God, and they oppressed others in God's name. In fact, many very religious people are fools. This is, in fact, a good definition of hypocrisy, as Jesus dealt with it among the Pharisees, only doing what is right when other people are watching. Because in your mind, there is nobody else watching. In your heart, there is nobody else you need to worry about. And so that is foolishness. living as if other people were the only audience. And there is no one who knows your thoughts and intentions living as if there is no God. The psalmist is very careful. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. But with all those caveats, all those explanations, this is still very insulting. This is still very hard on us. But please realize that foolishness and wisdom are not defined in comparison to other people. So when you are called to leave foolish godlessness and turn to the wisdom and fear of the Lord, I want to be really clear. We're not saying look around you at all of these Christians. Don't you want to be like them? Right. You are all very lovely people, but that's not the gospel. The gospel is not come and be like the people that go to church. The gospel. is we are simply saying when we call people to leave their foolishness and come to wisdom, we are saying, step out of the clamor of human voices and in the solitude of your heart, consider your ways. The hand of the creator is evident in us and all around us. These things did not happen without an author. Will you continue to make your claim to be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul? It is an appealing lie in the face of the overwhelming power and complexity of the universe. Or will you give yourself to the service of the one who made you and holds you in his hands? Okay. So we've seen a lot of what not to be right. Don't be a fool. Let's think about wisdom for a second. Proverbs 1.7 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Think about that contrast. Fools say in their heart there is no God. Wise people fear the Lord. Fearing the Lord means taking seriously the difference between you and God. You are the creature. He is the sovereign creator and ruler. You are an imperfect sinner. He is holy and righteous. Reverent fear and passionate love of God go together very well. And we understand that. You see, if we know the God of the Bible, we know that he is gracious. We know that though we are cast out of his presence by our sin, yet by the grace of Jesus Christ, we are welcomed back. And so we become no longer people who broke around in the dark looking for meaning, but people who in the right sense know their place, that we are not subservient to or less than any other person. We stand before the living God as beloved children of God and as the equals of all other human beings. So those who fear God are not afraid of what people can do to them. They're not afraid of what men can do to them. So to put it negatively, what are you going to do to me? Are you going to call me names? Are you going to fire me for serving the Lord? Are you going to not be my friend anymore? Are you going to cut my salary? Are you going to kill me? Well, guess what? I answered to the living God, and I'm way more afraid of what he can do to me than I am of what anybody else can do to me. Let me put it positively. Listen to the promise that's in every threat. Men say, if you serve me, you will have praise and success. God's promise is bigger. I love the glory that comes from God more than the glory that comes from men. Men say, if you serve me, you will have good employment and a good life. My employment is to live in service to my creator, in success and failure, in boom and bust, in recognition and obscurity, with eternal compensation ahead of me. Men say, if you serve me, you will have friends and companions. God has given me friends and family, people I would never have chosen for myself. And best of all, he has made me his child. Men say, if you serve me, you will have money to live on. God says that if I ask him, he will provide all things that I need and that unperishing wealth awaits me. Men say, if you serve me, you will live long. The promise of Christ is not merely long life, but eternal life. I answer to the living God and his promises are better than any promises men can make. See, those who fear God furthermore are not helpless to curb their emotions, as Saul was. He just seemed captive to it, didn't he? He gets in a rage and he orders the killing of innocent people multiple times. If you live as if there is no God, there is nowhere to turn in distress. Every refuge will fail you. The eating, the drugs, the video games, the shopping. And if anything goes wrong, you become a pent-up bag of anger and panic and stress. You have no reason to think that everything is going to turn out okay. So how can you help raging, whining, pitying yourself? If you live in the fear of God, you know how the story ends. That no matter what happens, you are safe in the hands of God, and so you are free. Those who fear God do not need the approval of men. Saul seemed to think that people had put him on the throne, and so when the people wanted something, he had to give it to them, or else he wasn't going to be king anymore. David knew that his anointing came from God alone. And so when people wanted him to do the wrong thing, he could say, I'm not going to. I trust my Lord. Those who fear God can persevere through hard and dangerous jobs. What is it that will keep you going when everybody's mad at you? I don't like people being mad at me. Don't be mad at me, please. How about as king? How about as a dad, or as a husband, or as a mom, or as a wife, or as a boss, or as an elder? Well, we'll keep you going. If you fear God, you will know that it is OK for you to die in the line of duty, and that a God who demands everything will not fail to care for us when we serve him. At the end, though, we are not simply called to do better, because at the end, wisdom turns out to be a person. See, the ancient book of Proverbs speaks of wisdom being the agent of God's creation of the universe, right? By me, wisdom says in the book of Proverbs, by me, the Lord created everything. But the New Testament book of Colossians that I read from earlier tells us that this wisdom is a real person. Not just a metaphor in literature. He's a real person. God's son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And further, the New Testament speaks of Jesus as not just wisdom personified, but humility personified that though he was God, he became a slave for our sake. He humbled himself for a lifetime and then died a horrible death willingly for us. because he trusted his father to lift him up and transform his humiliation into glory. And God did. This is what the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ means. It means that God took the humility that his son embraced and turned it into glory. We have something that Saul and even David did not. We have a deeper, bigger knowledge of the heart of God. Do you realize that? We know God better than David did. We know that submitting ourselves to the service of God is not a giving up. It's not throwing in the towel, but it is a reconciliation between us and the one who made us and loves us. We know that behind the creation that we see is not no God, not behind the veil is not no God or a heartless God who cares nothing for us. We know that when the veil has been removed and we see God's heart, it is a heart of love and it is a heart of patience and grace toward his creatures. Because we've seen, as Paul puts it, the glory of God in the face of his son, Jesus Christ. Let's pray to him. Lord, we are by nature fools and you call us to wisdom. We need wisdom, Lord, but not first and foremost a wisdom that consists of making better decisions and changing our own hearts. We need a wisdom that comes from the living wisdom, your very son working in our hearts. So we pray, Lord, that you will give us eyes to see where we are walking foolishly, where we are pretending that you can't see where we are living as if you are not there. We pray that you would help us to walk in the path that you've called us to. For it is good, it gives life, it is glorious, it is beautiful, it is gracious. We pray, Lord, that this would come about not through our effort, but by your work in us. We pray that you would give us hearts that are so full of your love and your grace that we long to walk in the paths you have set for us. We pray for strength, Lord. We need it. We give you thanks that you have sent your own son to give us more than strength, to give us new hearts, new life, and hope. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.