To Encourage You

1 Samuel 28:3-8 “And Saul had put the mediums and the necromancers out of the land. The Philistines assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, ‘Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.’ And his servants said to him, ‘Behold, there is a medium at En-dor.’ So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments and went, he and two men with him. And they came to the woman by night.”

Are you the same person at night that you are in the daytime? Saul wasn’t, and neither are many others.

Saul was a very conflicted person, to say the least. At one moment he was prophesying by the power of the Spirit of God, and in the next moment he was trying to kill David, a man after God’s own heart. In the account above, which was near the end of Saul’s life, the Bible tells us that Saul had rid the land of all the mediums and necromancers (i.e., spiritists that talked to the dead). On the surface it seemed like he was acting to honor the Lord, for indeed, the Law of God decreed that all such people were to be banned from Israel (Deuteronomy 18:9-14). Anyone who heard of this likely viewed this as an act of a king who loved God and desired to honor him. However, this same man turned to a medium for guidance, secretly, under the darkness of night. What a hypocrite he was! To know this makes him worse than someone who had never acted to rid the land of these people in the first place. Whatever the motive behind his former actions, it was obviously not from a desire to glorify God. Perhaps he wanted to “look good.” Perhaps he was trying to salvage a reputation that was in tatters as a result of all his other ungodly actions. We don’t know, because the Bible doesn’t tell us, so we are left to scratch our heads to understand it all.

Some years ago, you may have heard on the news about how one of the world’s most famous Christian apologists was exposed for a pattern of sexual deviance that was going on at the same time he was traveling the globe speaking on behalf of the Lord. And because he went to his grave with these ugly secrets, we are left to wonder why. Who was this man, really? How could he portray himself in one way when the lights were on, while in the dark he was a completely different man? But sadly, he’s not alone. In another similar instance, one of the pastors of a famous megachurch was recently exposed for having a pattern of adultery over many years. Not long ago a well-known Christian comedian was exposed for the very same thing. It’s sickening to those who are part of the Church, and nothing more than a reason for mocking the Church by those who aren’t a part of it.

Unfortunately, things like this go on all the time. They are things that have transpired since the time of the first century church, as a careful study of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians will attest. At the very least we who call ourselves Christians should pause to ask ourselves who we really are. The Bible tells us to examine ourselves each and every time we publicly profess Christ by partaking of the Lord’s supper. Listen to Paul’s instructions and warnings from 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”

The warning is this: “examine yourself, judge yourself, for if not, you can be sure to be examined and judged by the Lord.” You see, although we may hide our sin for a time, and although we may think we can get away with “it,” if we just do “it” in the dark, remember that the Lord sees it all. As David said in Psalm 139 of the God who sees all, “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you” (Psalm 139:12). David knew this full well, for his secret sin with Bathsheba was eventually exposed so that even you and I all these many years since know all about it.

And so the Lord has commanded us, “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16). You see, there is great power in the confession of sin. There is forgiveness for those who will be honest with themselves, examine themselves, and confess and forsake that which dishonors their Lord. But if we hide it, if we think that in our sin the darkness is our friend, beware, for sooner or later the truth will be known, for as Jesus has said, “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17). And if this doesn’t happen in this lifetime, remember, it will most definitely happen when we stand before Him in the next.