Sin and its Consequences
1 Samuel 31, Remsen Bible Fellowship, 05/30/2021
Introduction:
As we come to the end of 1 Samuel, we need to recognize the ground we’ve covered. This book chronicles for us the transition of Israel from being a nation led by a series of God-appointed judges to becoming a monarchy like all the other nations. In the early pages of the book the nation is an absolute wreck with a priesthood that is corrupt, a judge who can’t rule his own sons, and the threat of the Philistines a very real and present one.
Fast-forward some 70 years, and here we are at Mount Gilboa. The situation for the people isn’t nearly as different as they had hoped. Whereas in times past there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25), now there is a king in Israel and he does what is right in his own eyes, and everyone suffers the consequences. The priesthood is no longer corrupt, because they’ve nearly all been slain. The king can’t govern his own temper, let alone anything else. And the Philistines? They’re back at the door. Let’s read 1 Samuel 31.
Now the Philistines were fighting against Israel, and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. 2 And the Philistines overtook Saul and his sons, and the Philistines struck down Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchi-shua, the sons of Saul. 3 The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by the archers. 4 Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword, and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and mistreat me.” But his armor-bearer would not, for he feared greatly. Therefore Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. 5 And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. 6 Thus Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men, on the same day together. 7 And when the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their cities and fled. And the Philistines came and lived in them.
8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 So they cut off his head and stripped off his armor and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines, to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. 10 They put his armor in the temple of Ashtaroth, and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan. 11 But when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 all the valiant men arose and went all night and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and they came to Jabesh and burned them there. 13 And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days.
I think we can organize the lessons in this chapter under four headings, the first of which is this: Sin has devastating consequences.
The Devastating Consequences of Sin
Remember from last week that the night before the battle Saul is so afraid that he sneaks behind enemy lines at night in order to access a medium in hopes of gaining guidance from the dead, namely, Samuel the prophet. However, while God does allow this medium to call the soul of Samuel back to talk to Saul, the message he brings is not one of hope, or even guidance. Samuel simply reiterates what God had told Saul already: you have been rejected from your place as king due to your disobedience. But now the prophet adds one little tidbit: Moreover, 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. Saul came looking for intel, but what he got was a simple promise: you will lose the battle, and both you and your sons will be dead.
Now, put yourself there at the scene of this battle. Saul has his men lined up in the plain at Jezreel, and the Philistines come out. The Philistines with their superior weapon technology, with their iron weapons and chariots. And they would be confident, whereas Saul has just received a message of sure doom and defeat.
So it isn’t surprising that the battle moves quickly from being in the plains to moving up a mountainside. The Israelites are being driven back, and are perhaps seeking to reach ground where the chariots can’t pursue. But here we find another advantage of the Philistines: their skillful archers. The battle is lost. The men fleece and fall slain on Mount Gilboa.
Why is this happening? Why are the Philistines feeling emboldened to attack Israel again after some of the embarrassing defeats they’ve had in recent decades? We aren’t told explicitly in the text, but I think the implication is clear: because David no longer rides with Saul. Notice how the Philistines leaders react when they see David and his men in chapter 29: they are terrified of him. But hey, if he’s not in Israel, why not attack? Saul’s sin in driving David away has put the nation in position to be subjugated.
And note who dies with Saul: his sons. Verse 2 tells us that Jonathon, Abinadab, and Malchi-shua were on slain with him there. Remember how faithful Jonathon had been to the Lord and to David. He is not dying on this mountain because he has done anything wrong. He is dying on this mountain as the result of his father’s foolishness and sin.
The author of 1 Samuel has spent most of the book detailing for us the reign of king Saul, this man who began with so much promise. He was humble, he at first seemed to have some leadership capabilities, and maybe even some spiritual sensitivity. But it all went disastrously wrong as he began to time and again choose his own way rather than God’s way. And while we, as modern individualists, want to just think about sin in terms of how it affects our personal lives, the fact of the matter is that the Bible never sees sin as being that narrow. The effect of one man’s sin (Adam) was the fall of the entire race of human beings. Saul’s sin had a profound impact upon his family, upon David, and upon the nation of Israel. And so too, your sin has consequences that reach far beyond your own life.
It’s pretty easy to look at our lives and see most of the issues as being “out there” somewhere. Cause this truth is true in reverse, right? Other people’s sin affects me! It does. But I wonder if you downplay how damaging your sins are by only thinking about how they affect you, and the rationalizing away that impact as not that bad or somehow worth it.
I want you to ponder for a moment how ugly your sin is. Think about the lustful, hateful, or condescending thoughts you’ve had this week. Were you honoring others made in the image and likeness of God? And if you weren’t honoring others in your heart, I guarantee it affected your actions. It may not have played itself out like it did in your head (it rarely does), but Jesus says that what’s going on in your heart is what God is seeing.
And let’s take a moment to actually think about those words. How many times did you speak ill of another person this week? Did you refer to someone as a fool, or an idiot? You’re in danger of hellfire (Matthew 5:22). Did you speak harshly or disrespectfully to your spouse? You’re running afoul of commands such as those found in Colossians 3:18-19. Now think about how those other image bearers were impacted by how you spoke to them. What was the consequence of your sin to their heart?
We could keep doing this. My goal here is not a guilt trip. Guilt is a lousy motivator to holiness, it leads us back to defeat every time. I’m sure Saul spent a lot of his life feeling guilty. I just want to emphasize that you and I are not unlike Saul. We are sinful human beings, and our sin is not a personal issue. It impacts everyone around us. The devastating consequences of sin are all around us, and very often it’s the consequences of our own sin that we’re seeing. But what do we do about this?
You Can’t Fix Your Situation
Saul is a man whose life, especially in later years, was marked by desperation. Desperation to maintain some sort of control over what felt to him like an out of control situation. Jealously grasping at the throne on which he sat, trying not to slip off. Desperate to maintain his image. Remember chapter 15, after Samuel tells him that God has rejected him for his sin, and Saul nonetheless begs Samuel to come with him in order that he might be honored before the people. As if to say, well, if God is through with me, can we at least insure I’m popular? He’s always out to save face.
And here in verse four, Saul is wounded badly by the archers, and so as not to experience humiliation at the hand of the Philistines, he asks his armour-bearer to finish him off. Thrust me through is his request. But because his armour bearer fears (presumably fearing God and what would happen if he killed the Lord’s anointed), Saul takes matters into his own hands. He falls upon his own sword, ending his earthly life.
I want to pause here and contemplate what Saul has done by committing suicide. Was this an acceptable route for him to take? This hits close to home for me, given that two of my dad’s siblings committed suicide, my grandpa on that side died of an OD (whether it was intentional or not we’ll never know), and I’ve had a couple of friends and a lot of aquintences end their own lives. There are people sitting here this morning who I know have seriously contemplated ending their own lives. So let’s talk about it.
The first thing to say is that categorically, suicide is always wrong. The Lord alone has the right to control life and death, and to unjustly take a human life is murder-even if it’s your own life. That’s why a name they used to use for suicide was self-murder. It’s always wrong.
Taking your own life, though, while always wrong, is not uniquely wrong. This is not a sin in some special category. Some people have taught that to end your own life is the unforgivable sin, that it means you’ve forfeited salvation, or some other such nonsense. Let me ask you: did Jesus die for those who were perfect, or for sinners? Now is suicide a sin? If suicide is a sin, and Jesus paid for that sin on the cross, how can we say that it is a sin that puts us beyond the pale? That doesn’t follow logically, and it has no biblical support. I do think it should be exceedingly rare to hear of a born-again believer falling into such a state of depression and isolation that this seems like an option to them. If you are sitting here this morning and it crosses your please please please talk to me or someone else you can trust. Your life is valuable in the eyes of God, and this is not the answer.
Which brings us back to Saul. He thinks the only out in his situation, the way to avoid being mistreated, is to take his own life. But what is the consequence of his action? His body is still desecrated. He is beheaded (v9) and according to 1 Chronicles 10:10, his head was taken and mounted in the temple of Dagon. His armour was taken and placed in the house of the goddess Ashtaroth, and then Saul and his sons have their bodies mounted on the walls of Beth-shan, a nearby Israelite city-one of the cities deserted by its inhabitants because of the military defeat.
Did Saul’s “solution” actually fix anything? No, things got worse. In fact, this sin itself also creates another man’s death, because rather than being clearly killed or captured by the Philistines, by taking his own life Saul sets up the claim of the Amalekite in the next book. While we don’t have time to turn there, that man claimed to have killed Saul and that claim cost him his life. Suicide seems like a way out, but it isn’t. It isn’t for you, because you go to face your Maker. But one of the lies people hear in the mind is that their absence will make the lives of others better, but it makes the lives of others demonstrably worse by the introduction of more pain and suffering, of forcing people to wonder if they could have done any more to help that person. Saul couldn’t fix his problem.
And you can’t fix your problems, either. Not by ending your life. But also not by trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s what Saul had been trying to do for years prior to this, was to scheme and plan his way into where he needed to be. Sin is a problem your thinking, planning, and trying can’t do anything to remedy. You can’t fix the situation sin has you in.
There’s Someone Who Can
Let’s rewind the clock on Saul. When God rejects Saul and it eventually becomes clear that the Messiah, the new anointed one, the chosen king of the future is David, what could Saul have done? He obviously chose to fear and resent David, but could he have operated differently? Sure he could have. He could have immediately abdicated his throne and turned it over to this Mighty Warrior King. He could have brought him in and just treated him as the heir apparent and tried to do all he could to prepare David for this monumental task. He could have taken some course of action which indicated, “I own up to my sin and God’s righteousness in choosing another. Lord, I repent of my sin and I submit to your plan for the salvation of this people.” Saul could have done that.
Then there were inflection points, where, having chosen not to follow that course, Saul could have changed his mind. Jonathan’s confrontation of Saul in chapter 21, or either of the times David spares Saul in chapters 24 and 26. These were opportunities for Saul to turn from his sin and submit to the Lord and his anointed king. Saul refused all of those opportunities. And he died, in shame, on the slopes of Mount Gilboa.
Friends, have you been rejecting God’s reign in your life? Are you still clinging to control over your choices, your decisions, your life? You have a mess - you are a mess - that you can never fix. The only way out of the mire and death of sin is to trust in David’s greater Son, the Son of David and the Son of God, who died for your sin. 1 Peter 2:24 tells us that, He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
The only true source of hope and meaning is not in gaining control over your life and getting things straightened out. That’s a salvation-via-middle-class-stability, and it might get you into a cul de sac, but it won’t get you into the kingdom. Hope and meaning come from knowing the One who died for you. Do you question if your life is worth living? Jesus died so that you might live. He came that you might have life and have it abundantly. God has declared, at the price of his Son, that he sees your life as valuable. If you ever are questioning your value or worth, distrust your own intuitions. Distrust the voices in your head. Trust the God who made and who will gladly save you if you trust in his Son, Jesus Christ. He knows more about your value than you do. And you are precious in his sight.
God’s Still at Work
Finally, though this seems a depressing close to the book of 1 Samuel, we do see God working still. These men of Jabesh (whom, if you remember, Saul saved in his first military campaign) hear of what has happened. And they undertake a 20 mile round trip journey at night, into what is now enemy territory, and remove these decomposing bodies from the wall at Beth-shan, and bring them back for a proper burial. Though the Israelites didn’t normally cremate, it seems these bodies are so defaced that the proper response is to burn their flesh and then bury the bones.
This is a little glimmer of hope that although this defeat suffered by Saul has been massive and devastating for the nation, God is still at work. There are still brave and faithful men who will one day rally around the new king. That glimmer of hope shines through.
But that hope is just a glimmer at this point. The king is dead, the army lays slain on the mountainside, and the men of Jabesh, brave though they are, are mourning and fasting. They are waiting for the new king to come. And so we live in this world. We know who is the rightful king over every square inch of this earth. All authority both in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus. And so we wait patiently for his return, for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And in the meantime we trust. That he is at work, in the midst of all the evil, in the mess of our sinful lives, weaving all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.
