To Encourage You

1 Samuel 28:21-23 “And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified, she said to him, ‘Behold, your servant has obeyed you. I have taken my life in my hand and have listened to what you have said to me. Now therefore, you also obey your servant. Let me set a morsel of bread before you; and eat, that you may have strength when you go on your way.’ He refused and said, ‘I will not eat.’ But his servants, together with the woman, urged him, and he listened to their words.” 

Whose voices are you listening to as you go through life?  Whose words do you obey?  Those words may come from many sources but they can be categorized in a very simple way: are you listening to the voice of the Lord or are you listening to the world and those who are a part of it?  It’s one of the most important questions you can ask yourself, for the answer will make all the difference as to how you live – and how you die. 

In the account above from 1 Samuel 28 we have an example of this. Here we have Saul, who would die the very next day, in a conversation with a medium and his servants who attended him.  Saul had spent his entire adult life with a certain deafness when it came to the Word of the Lord. Though he had opportunity to lead a life of obedience to God, Who spoke to him regularly through the words of the prophet Samuel, Saul refused to listen.  He continually went his own way. When he was told to wait for Samuel to offer sacrifices and give him further instruction before confronting the Philistines, he paid attention to his own ideas and obeyed himself instead. When he was told to bring judgment on the Amalekites, he listened to the people and obeyed them rather than God. Then, when God no longer spoke to him, Saul sought the advice of a medium and endeavored to consult the dead although he knew it was a clear violation of the Law of God.  It all led to his own destruction, this life of refusing to heed the Word of the Lord. 

And so we are brought to the conversation above.  Saul has just been told by the spirit of Samuel that, because of his life of disobedience, he would die the very next day.  He is terrified as a result and his appetite left him. It’s such a common symptom of anxiety – an inability to eat.  But then his servants and the medium urged him to eat so that he’d have strength.  But strength for what?  To die a healthy man?!  At first Saul doesn’t want to listen. He has no appetite for their words. But they persist, and we are told that Saul then “listened to their words.”  As a result, the medium prepares a feast by killing a fattened calf and baking a loaf of unleavened bread.  It was as if the foolish words that the Bible warns us of were very literally coming true in Saul’s life, i.e., “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13).  Those were the words of foolish Israel, reflecting their attitude as they blindly headed toward the judgment of God in Isaiah’s time.  It’s the language of the world: grab all the gusto, live it up, life is good.  We hear it every day.  It’s the language of living for the moment with no thought for what the future may hold.  It’s the language of the serpent who says, “go ahead and take of the fruit and eat it, for you will not surely die.”  It’s a message we even hear from the pulpit, i.e., the message of “your best life now.”

You see, just like Saul, our death could come tomorrow.  We have no control over the time or the place.  But are we living as if that’s the case?  Who are we listening to as we look toward that day?  Are we living like Saul, deaf to the Word of God, the Word that gives saving faith to those who will heed it? Are we listening to the talking heads on TV who are taking no thought for eternity as they give us their nonsensical advice on how to live?  Is eating and drinking our focus?  Or are we listening to the Word of the Lord, which is of so much greater worth than our necessary food (Job 23:12)? 

May God help us to not be those who only live for the day, whose “god is (our) belly . . . with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).  That was the mindset of Saul’s counselors.  And sadly, it’s the only word that Saul would heed.