"A sorry end"

This has been automatically generated, and therefore may contain some unintended inaccuracies.

Now the Philistines fought against Israel. The Israelites fled before them, and many fell dead on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines were in hot pursuit of Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons, Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malkeshua. The fighting grew fierce around Saul. And when the archers overtook them him, they wounded him critically.

Saul said to his armor bearer, draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me. But his armor bearer was terrified and would not do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When the armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him. So Saul and his three sons and his armor bearer and all his men died together that same day.

When the Israelites along the valley and those across the Jordan saw that the Israelite army had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their towns and fled. And the Philistines came and occupied them. The next day when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. They cut off his head and stripped off his armor, and they sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news in the temple of their idols and among their people. They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and fastened his body to the Wall Of Beth Shan.

When the people of when the people of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, all their valiant men marched through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh where they burned them. Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days. Thank you, Anne, for reading that for us. So as always, please, would you keep the passage in front of you?

Page 303. If you've shut your bibles, please open them up again. And let me just pray for us. Heavenly father, as we have already prayed and heard, your word is a sword and a lamp and is sweeter than honey. And so, please, would you help us to listen carefully to your word this morning, work in our hearts.

May it be a lamp to us. May it be sweet to us, and may it be a sword. Working our hearts, we pray. Amen. So we come to the end of the book, the end of the book of one Samuel.

That's where we are today. We've been in a series off and on for the last year. How does the book end? Well, it ends tragically. It's a sad end.

The king of Israel, Saul, killed. Now the over imaginative amongst us might see a parallel with our church life that the old leader departs and there's a new one ready in the wings. You may see a parallel, but that would be an over imagination. I hope that the parallels are not very precise. After all, the old leader here was unfaithful and killed and then the new one just takes over in a few chapters.

Don't push it. But it is a tragic end to the book as we come to it. Today, we are in the last chapter of one Samuel. Next week, Ben's gonna be preaching in the book of Romans for us, and then we're gonna start a series in the book of John, that we're gonna be heading into for most of the rest of the term. But today, we're at this tragic end and we have been waiting in a sense in the book of one Samuel for this moment because for almost half the book, we have heard that Saul has been a bad king, he's been unfaithful, and we've been looking forward in a sense to the day when he would stop being king and David would take over.

And yet now that we come to this moment, there is no triumph at the end of the book. There is no rejoicing here and although it's uncomfortable, we mustn't brush over how tragic this is rather like a doctor inspecting an infection to see how bad it is, so we too need to look at this and stare in a sense at it to see how bad things are here. But we do so not merely to know about history, not merely to know what happened. No. The book of Romans tells us this, for everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.

So this is written to teach you and me that we might learn and in the end that we might have hope and we will get there, but we have got to look at how bad this is and be warned, it does get nasty. And the first thing that we see is death, verses one to six, death. The battle, which we've been anticipating for a few chapters, the battle of the Philistines versus the Israelites is summed up in one verse. Have a look at it. Verse one, now the Philistines fought against Israel, the Israelites fled before them, and many fell dead on Mount Gilboa.

That is the summary of the battle. Brief summary, but it is sad, it is tragic. Israel lose to the Philistines and many die. It's brief but terrible. And then verse two, we read about Saul's sons, Saul the king of Israel, his sons.

Verse two, the Philistines were in hot pursuit of Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons, Jonathan, Abinadab and Melkishuer. And that first name should sort of stick in our throats, shouldn't it? Because we know about Jonathan. He's been a significant figure in one Samuel. He had for some time recognized his father's shortcomings as king.

He'd taken in the past the initiative against the Philistines. Do remember him attacking with his armor bearer, an attack which looked ridiculous, but yet he trusted in the Lord and went and succeeded? He was faithful to the Lord and faithful to David. He was the first to recognize that David would become king, a position which he himself might have assumed would be his as son of the king, but he saw David was the one who was gonna be king and he'd willingly committed himself to David and was loyal to him. He took David's side in the conflict between David and Saul.

He risked his own life testifying to Saul about David's innocence, and he had expected to play a key role in the kingdom when David became king. In chapter 23 verse 17, he declared to David, you shall be king over Israel and I will be second to you. But he died, killed in this battle. And as one of the commentators says at this point, Jonathan's death comes as a bit of a shock to us, a tragic end. Jonathan along with two of his brothers are killed, and then the scene turns to Saul who is critically wounded by one of the Philistine archers, And there is the scene with Saul and his armor bearer, Saul's death scene.

Throughout it, Saul, interestingly, doesn't cry out to the Lord at all. There's no prayer here, no crying out to God, but rather he commands his armor bearer to finish him off, and the armor bearer refuses. Does that remind you of someone? It should. David, who's going to be the next king of Israel, he was originally Saul's armor bearer, and at different points through one Samuel, we've seen David said he would not lay a hand on Saul, would not attack him even though he could have done.

One Samuel 26 verse nine, David said, who can lay a hand on the Lord's anointed and remain guiltless? And it seems this armor bearer has the same attitude. He's not gonna finish off Saul. He wouldn't lay a hand on him. And so Saul falls on his own sword, and the armor bearer does so too.

Why he follows suit? I'm not sure. Maybe it's because of the tragedy before his eyes of this battle lost and Saul dead. Maybe it's because it was his responsibility to look after the king and to guard his life and Saul is dead and therefore he dies too. The summary for us is verse six, so Saul and his three sons and his armor bearer and all his men died together that same day.

It's a sad moment, a tragic end, but it must make us reflect of course. Every death is a tragedy. Every death is terrible. It's right to confront the truth that our culture tries to deny, tries to just brush over which is that death just is terrible. In our culture, we try to minimize it.

We say things like, well, you know, death, it's just a part of life and if the person was older, we say, well, they had a good innings, but the reality is death is a hideous monster. It rampages around the world, it takes any and in the end takes all. Every death is a tragedy and there's nothing natural about death. The Bible doesn't say that death is is just a part of life. It it doesn't say it's just a part of the way the world is.

No. Death was not there originally. It's not the way God made the world, which is why I think cemeteries and crematoriums and those kind of places are just such weird, strange, horrible places because they are not natural. And why when we're at them, we just feel they shouldn't be there. The Bible says, that's right, they shouldn't.

Death came as a result of mankind's rebellion against God. It's part of the curse on the world and it is a horrible curse, a heavy curse, and every crematorium and cemetery shouts of that curse. And we're under that curse because we've rebelled against God who gives life. And Saul's death is an even greater tragedy because he was the Lord's chosen king, the one who was anointed to rule over God's people, and he'd been equipped by God's spirit to go and defeat the Lord's enemy, and yet he'd failed spectacularly. There's a parallel actually between this chapter and chapter four.

In chapter four, before Saul became king, there was another battle between Israel and the Philistines, and Israel had also fled, and the leader of Israel at the time and his sons, Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, all died. The ark was captured, and at one point late in the chapter, the situation is summed up there where it says the glory had departed Israel, and that's what had sparked Israel saying, we want a king, a king who can lead us into battle. Maybe that king will be someone who can be victorious for us and then we've gone through Saul as being that king and now we get to the end of his life and we're almost in exactly the same position, Israel fleeing from the Philistines, and the leader and his sons all dying. Where have we got to over that period? The answer is nowhere, which is just a little warning again that when we rely on human leadership, it is a false hope.

The leaders of the world, politicians can promise the world, promise to deal with all our problems, but they won't succeed. They just don't have the power. They can't do it. So we're confronted with a tragedy and the tragedy of death. Now, if you are hoping for an uplifting sermon this morning, well, you've not got it yet and it gets worse.

I'm sorry to say, it does get worse. There's not only death, there's dishonor. With the death of Son and his soul, if the Israelites living in the nearby area flee, the Philistines move in, and the next day as they're stripping the dead, I mean, that that's a grim scene to think of in itself, isn't it? As they're stripping the dead, verse eight, says, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. And they cut off Saul's head, strip him, take his armor away and they send the message throughout the land proclaiming the news.

By the way, that proclaiming the news, that's a gospel they're sending out. We tend to use the word gospel to mean the core message of the Christian faith, but it just means that an announcement of good news, and so the Philistines are sending out their gospel, their good news. It's terrible for Israel, but it's good for them. They think, here's the great news and it is taken out and it is proclaimed and it may be, commentators say, it may be they took Saul's head with them as they went round and they proclaimed the message it says, in the temple of the idols and among the people. They put Saul's armor in the temple of the Ashtoreth, fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan and the message is very clear.

Not only is Israel defeated, their king killed, but far bigger, the idols have won. That's their message. That's why it's proclaimed in their temples. It's saying their gods have defeated the God of Israel. How they must have cheered?

How they must have laughed and celebrated because the God of Israel had humiliated their gods before. Do you remember back in one Samuel, there was the point where the ark was captured and taken, and you've got the comic scene when it was put in the temple of Dagon, their god, and it it seems, it was almost like Yahweh had smashed up their idol. Dagon, he'd been smashed head and hands, broken off and was on their temple floor. It's like God had humiliated Dagon, and now they can have the last laugh, they think, that Yahweh, the God of Israel has been defeated. That's their gospel and isn't there something of this in our world as well, this dishonoring of God?

That people only use the name of Jesus? Well, as a swear word. I heard someone recently say people use it when they tread in dog poo. There's no honor or respect. And this is how the book ends.

It's tragic. And yet, as the book comes to an end, there is a small comfort. Let's have a small comfort at the end. The men of Jabesh Gilead come, having heard what happened to Saul, and they are a people who owe Saul a lot. Saul, you see, his first act as king, one of his first acts was to rescue the people of Jabesh Gilead in one Samuel 11.

So the valiant men, it says, came, verse 12, they marched through the night to Bethshan, take his body and of his sons. We didn't know his sons were there as well. His sons were attached to the wall, they take them, bring them home, burn them, bury the bones and fast for seven days. The small comfort there is that there is a rightness to that. It feels right that they take time to mourn for Saul and it is fitting that they don't leave the body there in humiliation but they take it down and deal with it properly.

Now it may not be the most cheerful of topics but there is something right here about respect for those who died and for the bodies of those who died. It is no small thing to treat well and with respect those who died. I've said before, it's part of a mark of our culture that we try to push death away and part of that is actually I think that we do now have a tendency not to respect the bodies of those who've died. I've mentioned it before about the sharp rise in direct cremations that there is. It's just interesting.

The way a culture deals with those who've died is very significant I think. Our culture, we are going more and more towards these direct cremations which is that the bodies go straight from wherever they're kept, the morgue or the hospital, straight to the crematorium with nobody there, no family present, no one mourning. They're just taken straight there, straight to the crematorium, not even through the front doors, straight round the back and you may have had a funeral like that for someone, but I think it's noticeable that when I talked to a chapel attendant at a crematorium fairly recently, he said he didn't feel that they were respectful, direct cremations. They're just brought in in vans, more than one coffin at a time brought in and they're brought in and like he said, there's no one there, there's no ceremony. He said he talks to them because he feels they need respect and you can.

I looked on the website of a funeral directors, you can get the the disc. They will say they will they will give you send you the disc which has the number on it of the person in the coffin. There's no name on there, just a number or he said sometimes it's just a barcode, not a name. You get well that's what it when do we give people just numbers not names? It's in prisons, isn't it?

Or those kinds things, when we're dehumanizing someone. What are we doing with those who've died? Why do we do that? Why do we treat the dead like that? It's because we don't wanna go near death.

We don't want the pain of it. It's cheaper to do this, but we don't want to be confronted with it because death is painful. Service at the crematorium is just we've had them over the last year as a family. They are painful and people don't want that. We just want to have celebrations of someone's life.

We don't want to mourn alone for seven days. So there is a rightness here of the people of Jabesh Gilead treating Saul's body with respect and and mourning for him. It's a small comfort, but it is a little comfort. And this is where the book of one Samuel ends. I told you it wasn't cheerful.

Alastair Begg in his sermon on this passage, he said it made him think of the Christian song which you may know, See What a Morning, but he turned it round. He said it's like the inverse of that at the end of one Samuel. He changed the words, he said, see what an evening horribly dark with a triumph of death in Gilboa, naked the king hangs, sons nailed beside him. As the message sounds out to the nation, love is dead, death has won, hell has conquered. Well, we said at the start that this is written for our instruction so that we might have hope.

Where's the hope? Well, the hope is this. We asked at the beginning, how does the book end? Wonderfully. This isn't the end of the book.

If you turn the page, you see two Samuel, and originally, and two Samuel were one book. They weren't two books. They were one book. So actually, it's not the end of the book, and so we need to make sure that we put one Samuel 31 in in its context, both of what has come and what's going to happen. We're So gonna take just a few minutes just to think a little bit more bigger picture.

We need to remember that before one Samuel 31, sorry, you don't need to stay on two Samuel, Before one Samuel 31, a couple of chapters before, God had said, this is what's going to happen. Now again, that should give us some comfort that God has said that Saul was gonna die, and his sons were gonna die, and that the the battle was gonna be lost, and that at least tells you and me, God is not out of control here. It is not that the idols have won. Everything is happening according to God's plan and purpose. The idols have not won.

God is in control. But more than that, as you go on after one Samuel, yes, this is a tragic end of Saul, but David does come in as king. He comes in as king and becomes the greatest king that Israel had in its Old Testament history. He makes Jerusalem the capital city, he brings the ark of God to Jerusalem and makes plans for the temple to be built. There is, you see, hope.

You may not see it on Mount Gilboa, but you see it in what comes after. The humiliation does not last long. Though the idols seem to have won, they are not greater than the Lord. And yet and yet, even two Samuel ends, well, not with a great kingdom. Even David, great David failed.

He committed adultery and murder and David threw two Samuel and we may see it if we do a sermon series in two Samuel, which I'd like to do at some point but not straight. But what we see there is David has to face up to his failures and the consequences of it through a lot of two Samuel. So the book of Samuel as a whole still doesn't end on a totally positive note, but we need to remember, how does the book end? Not just Samuel, but the book end, the whole book. We need to go further beyond the end of one one Samuel, two Samuel to about a thousand years later when we come to Jesus who was born in the line of David, in the line of the kings of Israel, called the Christ, anointed one, king, and yet he too died, and there are parallels between Jesus' death and Saul's death.

Jesus too died a humiliating death, his body left to hang as an object of horror and disgust. He was nailed to a cross and he too had someone come and take down his body at the risk at risk, you know, to take down the body and put it in a tomb to give it a proper burial, but of course, there are big differences between Saul and Jesus. Saul died because of his failure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully, whereas Jesus died as the righteous and faithful one in obedience to his father, he went to his death, and more significantly, Jesus' story does not end with the burial. All of the gospels have more chapters because Jesus did not stay in the tomb but rose from the grave and because he died and rose again, Jesus defeated the monster that is death. He won victory over death and promises to all who will put their hope in him that they can have forgiveness and can have a life forever.

How does the book end? The Bible ends with Jesus, the risen reigning king with his people in a new creation where there is no death. That monster won't be allowed in. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain and until we get to that death, we haven't reached the end of the book. There will still be tragedies along the way.

We will still experience grief. We will mourn, but we look forward to where the bible ends. And of course, where the bible ends isn't really an ending, is it? C. S.

Lewis expressed it in the book, The Last Battle in the Narnia series. He said, now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before. That's what we look forward to if we're trusting in Christ. Yes. One Samuel 31 is tragic, and we will experience tragedy, but it isn't the end.

Gloriously, wonderfully through Christ, for those who've put their trust in him, it is not the end. And death, even death, won't be victorious. And we will see the greatness and glory of God and see that no one and nothing else is greater than him. He is totally victorious. And so one Samuel ends.

We finish one Samuel and it drives us forward to Jesus and to the new creation. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we praise you for the hope that we have in Jesus. Thank you that one Samuel 31 is not the end of the bible. It doesn't come close to it.

That though there is tragedy, though there is death and dishonor, that is not the end. And we praise you as we look forward in the bible to Jesus, his death, his dishonor, and yet his death and dishonor achieved what no other death could, victory over death and sin. And we pray you would help each one of us to hold on to Jesus in a world where we are surrounded by death, to hold on to him and trust him and the future that he promises and that new creation. Help us to look forward and to long for that day and so to hold on to Christ. Amen.