Hocus Pocus. Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Harry Potter. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Wizard of Oz. Game of Thrones. Sleeping Beauty. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Little Mermaid. Bewitched.
Mankind has had a fascination with witchcraft, witches and wizards, for a very long time. I think it stems from our fascination with the superhuman. Superheroes have been very popular for a very long time, going back at least to Hercules in the ancient Greek epic, the Odyssey. In the Bible, of course, we have a “superhero” in the person of Samson and his legendary strength.
Today, we’re going to study the one account of witches recorded in the Bible: 1 Samuel 28, in view of the upcoming “holiday” Halloween…
The Consultation – 28:8-14:
Notice in verse 10 that Saul swears an oath; he swears by the God of heaven (!) in doing something that was sinful by its very act that nothing will happen to this woman. It’s almost as if he is swearing an oath, “By God I will sin against God!”
Notice verse 12. Why did the woman cry out? Was it because she was not expecting Samuel to appear? If that is the case, then the woman was a fraud. Or, did she cry out because, once she saw Samuel the prophet, then she knew her client was King Saul and she was afraid of being killed for practicing something illegally? We do not know; the text does not say.
The Conversation – 28:15-19:
Samuel wants to know why King Saul has disturbed him from his rest in sheol, the unseen world (vs 15). Saul responds with two reasons:
1. Saul is “greatly distressed” because the Philistines are waging war against Saul.
2. Saul wants Samuel to “make known to me what I should do.”
In verse 16, Samuel responds and it is not what King Saul wants to hear. If you do something that is sinful, that God has forbidden, you simply cannot expect it to end well. Saul is sinning in his very act here. Does he really think it is going to end well for him? No, it will not. It does not. It never will. Sin always ends horribly, if not in this life, then in the life to come because sin is what separates us from God!
In verse 17, Samuel tells Saul that God is, in fact, fulfilling what He had promised and predicted many years before, in 15:28. Are we going to get to the end of our lives and look back and say, “Wow! I should have lived my life differently! I should have focused more on my relationship with God instead of my relationship with my boss at work.”
In verse 19, Samuel predicts that Israel will lose the forthcoming battle with the Philistines and King Saul himself will fall into the hands of the Philistines. Did King Saul think that he could get a divine message, a godly message from an ungodly source? The witch was sinning in what she practiced and King Saul thought she was going to give him good news? You do not go to an ungodly source to get a godly message, a message of blessing!!!
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King Saul (vs 19) is going to be killed. It’s because of the threat of the Philistines that the Israelites wanted a king in the first place (1 Sam. 7-8)! At the end of his life, Saul is going to fail to save Israel from the Philistines! All because of disobedience to God, a lifetime of disobedience, that culminated with this visit to the witch at En-dor.
The Consequences – 28:20-25:
It was fear (vs 20) that drove Saul to visit this ungodly source of knowledge. The witch, verse 21, observed that Saul was afraid (another reference to Saul’s fear!) and begged him to eat something. Before the next day was over, he would be in the place of the dead, having left this world without a relationship with the Judge of all the earth.
Let’s briefly summarize the important points we have learned:
1. God is not obligated to hear our prayers if we are not trying to live right.
2. We should only trust what is written in God’s word, for spiritual, religious, and ethical questions.
3. We should focus on what helps us in our relationship with God more than anything else and not get distracted with the “immediate” but less important things.
4. Sin always ends horribly.
5. We can live in a way that makes God our enemy.
6. You cannot force God to change His will.
7. You cannot get a godly message from an ungodly source.
Paul Holland
