1 SAMUEL 28 - THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE LORD
1 Samuel 28
Deuteronomy 29:29 tells us that
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
This includes the future. Unless God has revealed the future to us, it is one of the secret things that belongs to the Lord. And God strictly warns against pursuing such knowledge apart from Him.
Throughout the old testament and the new we are warned:
“Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:31
While wizards make for great and entertaining story telling in books and movies, the bible makes it clear that the pursuit to possess spiritual powers apart from God is always demonic. And yet Saul, bereft of God’s Spirit and more importantly the comfort of God’s fellowship, will do that which God has forbidden, and Saul, during more promising times, had outlawed.
Why do people pursue after mediums, fortune tellers and the “dark arts”? For the same reason that man denies the existence of God. Saul had already been warned about this by Samuel back in 1 Samuel 15:23:
For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
At the heart of man’s desire to know the future and to have dominion over the spirit world, is man’s rebellion against God’s sovereignty and divine order. Man pursues the powers he sees in God, because ultimately man’s desire is to be God (the original sin). And when God refused to answer Saul’s questions, upon Saul’s summons; Saul pursued other means.
Chapter 28 offers as many questions as answers. How is Saul able to commune with Samuel. Is the power of the medium real? Can man commune with the dead? God chooses not to answer these questions here. Rather, he leaves us with a warning. Having learned of his fate, Saul remains powerless to change it. As Jesus warned in Matthew 6:27
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
No, the future belongs to the Lord. And our futures are secured when we put our trust in Him, even when he chooses not to answer us.
We too may be tempted to look for power apart from God that can appease our fears, answer our questions (truthfully we will never know), and be summonsed at our command. But that is not the sovereign Lord.
God will not be summonsed at our command. What God offers us is His faith, hope and love.
Perfect love, which the bible tells us drives out all fears. A living hope of an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept for us in heaven. And the faith to overcome the world. As John 5:4-5 tells us:
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?