When the Light Goes Out - 1 Samuel 28:3-25

As I was preparing for this sermon I read the same story in two separate commentaries, about Joseph Goebbels. Joseph Goebbels was Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda. And apparently, one day, in April 1945, as the Allied Forces were closing on them from the west and the Russians were closing in from the east, Goebbels made a phone call to Adolf Hitler.

Goebbels had what he perceived to be wonderful news! He told Hitler, “It is written in the stars. The last half of April will be the turning point for us.”

He was referring to the last two horoscopes that had forecast the hardest blows for Germany during the first months of 1945, especially in the first part of April, but an overwhelming victory in the second half of the month. Unfortunately, for Goebbels's horoscopes, Hitler was dead by April 30th. (Davis, 289).”

I share that story with you because often when people are desperate, hard-pressed, and searching for answers, they will turn to the mystical, the dark, or anything that offers even a glimmer of control or comfort—no matter how dangerous or deceptive it may be. In their hunger for direction or relief, people will grasp at horoscopes, psychics, tarot cards, spiritualism, or ideologies that promise peace but ultimately lead them further from truth.

Doesn’t that describe Saul? He's a man desperate for answers, who turned to a medium, or as the woman has been popularly referred to, a witch, for answers, making it one of the most unusual stories in the entire Bible.

Most of you probably have some familiarity with it because it’s just so bizarre and dark. Why was Saul consulting a witch in En-dor?

One of the common conclusions from this passage is that you shouldn’t mess with dark things. Stay away from horoscopes, palm readers, tarot card readers, ouija boards and the like. Never dabble in those things, because we don't wrestle with flesh and blood. As Paul reminds us, we wrestle, “...against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil...”

That’s all absolutely true. But the warning for each of us this morning is clear: desperation shouldn’t lead us to walk down forbidden paths, rather, desperation should bring us to our knees.

But the more you reject and resist the light of God’s Word, the colder, the harder, the more calloused your heart will become towards His truth which will make falsehood, lies, and deception that much more appealing. If you sever yourself from spiritual light you’ll eventually find yourself groping about in spiritual darkness. That’s where you will end up if you keep pushing Jesus away. That’s exactly where Saul found himself: alone, afraid, and in the dark.

But it didn’t happen all at once. It took time for Saul to get there. First, he muted God’s Word (vv. 3–7), which, second, opened the door to other voices (8-14), but ultimately lead to despair and destruction (vv. 15-25).

If you remember where we left off last week, David is living among the Philistines who are preparing for war with Israel. And to put it simply, Saul is terrified to go to war with the Philistines. Verse 5, specifically tells us that, “When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly.”

Saul muted God’s Word (vv. 3–7)

And so, we learn early in our passage that Saul did something that he hadn’t done in a very long time: He sought the Word of the Lord. That sounds great doesn’t it? I mean we’re all at church this morning, hopefully with something similar in mind. If Saul were to ask our advice: should I seek the Word of the Lord or not, hopefully we’d all say, yes, do that.

But in verse 6 we learn there was a serious problem: “And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets.”

All the ordinary Old Testament ways that the Lord would speak to his people, dreams, the ancient device to help discern the will of God, Urim and Thummim, prophets, nothing was getting a response out of God.

And so you have to stop right here and ask why? Why is God giving Saul the silent treatment? Saul is finally desperate to hear from the Lord and now God isn’t responding? That doesn’t seem very nice.

There are actually several reasons why God was responding to Saul. The first reason is that Saul had put God on mute a very long time ago! Just like you mute someone you don’t want to listen to on the phone or on a zoom call, Saul had put God on mute.

And it’s not like God hadn’t spoken to Saul – it was that Saul had over and over again over the course of years and years ignored what he had to say. Consistently the prophet Samuel told him things from the Lord that Saul would completely dismiss or ignore.

The truth is if you ignore God long enough, he may stop speaking to you altogether!

The second reason for God’s silence is because of Saul’s attitude. Saul wasn’t interested in hearing from God so that he repent, and turn away from his sin, no he wanted to hear from God in order to extract information out of him.

He wanted a sign in order to tell him what to do, right? What was he supposed to do with the battle and impending war with the Philistines? He’s not concerned with his own spiritual condition, he’s concerned about this war with the Philistines and he needs answers from God, right now!

For Saul, God was never honored, revered, and worshiped. He was a tool to extract helpful bits of information. For Saul God is just like any other device that people use to predict the future.

It’s the, “God if I’m supposed to take this job send a shooting star across the sky right now,” sort of mentality.

The assumption is, God works for me, and is supposed to always be at my disposal, but that’s not at all how it works. God doesn’t work for you or me, it’s quite the contrary. We submit ourselves to Him.

And yet, so many people approach Christ in the same manner as Saul to this day. Jesus isn’t their Savior, He’s more like a tool to pull out of the drawer whenever you need something done. Too often we want answers, not surrender. We want comfort, not conviction.

We’d rather have Jesus on speed dial as a consultant rather than humbling ourselves before Him as our King. We must come to Him on His terms, in humility, in repentance, putting our faith in Him alone, or else we too we’ll end up like Saul: desperate, alone, and in the dark.

Muting God opens the door to other voices (8-14)

Too often, what happens is, people will say, I asked God for a sign and I didn’t get one. I tried God for a while, I tried Christianity, but it’s not for me. It doesn’t work.

That mentality suggests, God works for me doesn’t it? He’s supposed to dance when I say dance.

And it’s not like those people suddenly stop looking for answers. God didn’t work out, so I guess I’ll never know. That’s never the way it works. They always continue to look for answers, it just means that now, they’re more open to hearing other voices, and oftentimes those voices are dark, demonic, and evil.

Isn’t that exactly what happened here? Saul tried God, it didn’t work out so I’m going to get my answers from somewhere else: I’m going to get help from a medium. We of course know that’s what happened, but it’s so interesting isn’t it that we learn in verse 3, that Saul put all the mediums and necromancers out of the land.

All the people who were engaged in what we might refer to as the dark arts, like fortune tellers, sorcerers, spiritists, and witches, those who claim to be able to communicate with the dead – Saul had banned them all from Israel in obedience to God’s law.

The Old Testament explicitly forbids anyone in Israel from participating in these things.

Leviticus 19:31 - “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.”

Deuteronomy 18:10–12 - “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.”

So when Saul told his servants to “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her,” he knew it was in direct violation of God’s Word, which explains why he felt like he needed to visit her at night and wear a disguise.

He was desperate for answers and was more than willing to turn to those things that were forbidden in Israel in order to get them. He was so desperate he was willing to seek out a medium, or as the King James Version puts it, with a woman with a “familiar spirit,” which was euphemistic language for witchcraft.

That’s why she’s commonly referred to as the witch of En-dor. The level of irony and confusion in the passage is palpable isn’t it? Because Saul invokes the name of the Lord when swearing to the witch secrecy and immunity.

But of course, Saul had given up on God giving him any answers, but he knew of someone that could give him answers: the dead prophet Samuel. And so he asked the witch to call Samuel from the dead, and the most shocking part of this entire passage is that it worked!

She didn’t even know what she was looking at. At first, she thought Samuel was a god.

Again, this passage is one of the most bizarre passages in the entire Bible. How are we supposed to understand what’s going on here? Was the witch’s powers of darkness so strong that she was able to bring a man from the dead? No doubt, demon possession and the powers of Satan are real and should not be explored. Don’t go down that path. But the other thing that we must keep in mind is that the powers of darkness are limited.

One of the more interesting aspects of this passage is that the witch seemed just as surprised as everyone else that she was actually able to call Samuel from the dead! When Samuel came forth she let out a loud cry. She screamed!

Which would seem to suggest what I hope everyone here already knows: psychics, palm readers, mediums, tarot card readers, are all frauds, who prey upon people’s naivete and desperation.

And so I think the best way to understand what’s going on here is that Samuel was called forth, not by the witch’s powers of darkness, but by the command and will of God. Albeit, it was a highly unusual, extraordinary way of communicating his Word.

There are ordinary ways in which God communicates his Word, but he’s not limited to those means. In case you’re wondering, chapter 5 paragraph 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith makes this exact point!

The key reason that we should understand God spoke through, forbidden, illegitimate means, is because Samuel spoke His Word to Saul. But the fact that Saul was willing to seek out a medium in the first place is so telling, isn’t it?

It’s not like when you ignore God that you suddenly become neutral or untouched by influence. Instead, you just become vulnerable to lies, half-truths, and worldly wisdom that might sound good on the surface but ultimately leads them further away from God.

This is exactly what we see in Saul’s life. God was silent, not because He was cruel or distant, but because Saul had repeatedly hardened his heart against Him. And rather than humbling himself in repentance, Saul turns to the very things God had forbidden—seeking counsel from a medium. It’s a vivid picture of what happens when a person decides to shut out the voice of God: they inevitably open themselves to the influence of darkness.

The world has no shortage of voices offering advice—social media influencers, self-help gurus, spiritual mystics, secular therapists, political commentators—and they all promise to give you the answers that you’re searching for, but in reality they're empty substitutes.

When people stop listening to God, it doesn’t result in freedom or independence. It results in confusion, deception, and spiritual darkness.

Muting God will ultimately lead to despair and destruction (vv. 15-25)

Saul was so desperate for answers and what he ended up learning about led to his own despair and destruction.

Samuel told Saul exactly what the Lord was going to do. Look at verse 16 with me.

Samuel said to Saul:

“Why then do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy? 17 The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me, for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. 18 Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day.”

What’s so interesting about what Samuel says in these verses is that it’s nothing new. He had communicated these things to Saul when he was still alive.

In 1 Samuel 16, we’re told that the Lord had pulled his presence from Saul. In 1 Samuel 15, we’re told that God had rejected Saul as king, and would put someone else on the throne because he didn’t obey the Word of God and completely destroy the Amalekites.

Samuel had already told Saul all these things, but Saul hadn’t been listening. He had muted the Word of God in his life, which had only resulted in bad things.

And the new information that came in verse 19 was even worse: “...the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me. The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.”

Samuel told Saul of God’s impending judgment on his life.

One of, if not the most famous sermon ever preached in American history is Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

It’s the quintessential hell-fire and brimstone sermon and it was probably one of the most influential sermons in the First Great Awakening. And it's a sermon about sin and its eternal consequences if you never turn and repent.

But as I was reflecting on Saul’s life, I couldn’t help but think of a quotation from Edwards’ most famous sermon. He said,

“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.”

Such vivid imagery and the reality is, this describes Saul doesn’t it? Saul was going to die in unrepentant sin and willful rejection of the Lord.

And if you have lived in sin, wickedness, and ignored or rejected Jesus Christ – Edwards is exactly right, you're like a rock descending to hell and all the good that you’ve ever done is like a spider’s web trying to catch a rock. Totally useless.

We always think that we have more time. So many people think that they’ll get right with God later. But what if later never comes?

Getting right with God doesn’t mean you refer to God a little bit more, or try to get information out of Him, getting right with God consists of repenting and trusting in Him.

And there’s a warning for all of us this morning: delaying repentance is unrepentant. It’s like laying clay out in the sun—the longer it sits, the harder it becomes. In the same way, the longer we resist God, the harder our hearts become and the easier it is to ignore Him altogether. Apart from God’s grace, hearts don’t soften over time; they harden.

Saul's physical and spiritual destruction didn’t take place in a single moment—his downfall came from rejecting the Lord in hundreds of small moments over the course of years.

So today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.

Because muting God will ultimately end in despair and destruction. All of what we’ve read here is the result of Saul’s consistent rejection of the Lord and His truth. Look at where it’s gotten him. He’s broken. He’s so terrified he won’t even eat. Even the witch—someone who lives in perpetual darkness—feels bad for him. That’s how low he’s sunk.

Don’t miss the imagery of our passage because everything here takes place in the darkness. Saul seeks out a medium in the darkness, receives a dark message, and is forced to return in the darkness.

Which is exactly what a life apart from the Lord looks like—sad, heavy, dark, and completely avoidable.

Saul had every opportunity to turn, to repent, to seek God on God’s terms. But instead, he hardened his heart. And now, all that’s left is silence and fear. It’s a haunting picture of where unrepentant sin will lead you. The tragedy isn’t just that Saul is suffering—it’s that he chose this path, by shutting God out again and again.

Before you know it, you’ll be totally separated from God. That’s how sin works—it desensitizes, distracts, and distances you from the only One who can save. You drift slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, until suddenly you realize you’re alone in the dark. The chilling part is that you can still be doing religious things, saying the right words, yet be far from God in your heart.

Saul invoked the name of God when seeking help from a witch!

This story is a solemn warning that one of the most terrifying forms of God’s judgment is not fire from heaven—but simply letting us go. As Paul says in Romans 1, “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts.” When we repeatedly ignore God’s Word, He’ll eventually give you exactly what you want – your own way.

What’s so ironic in this passage is, Saul was desperate for answers of peace, and some sense of security, and what he was looking for could only be found in the One he consistently rejected. Jesus says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart—I have overcome the world.”

The peace Saul wanted is freely offered in Christ. But it’s never found apart from surrender. The call for us is to stop running, stop resisting, and turn to the God of mercy, grace, and peace that surpasses all understanding.

Amen. Let’s pray together.