To the book of 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 31. In 1 Samuel 31, we'll begin reading at verse 1 and read the entire chapter. Now, the Philistines were fighting against Israel. And the men of Israel fled before the Philistines and fell slain on Mount Gilboa. And the Philistines overtook Saul and his sons, and the Philistines struck down Jonathan and Abinadab and Melchishua, the sons of Saul. The battle pressed hard against Saul, and the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by the archers. 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. And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. Thus Saul died, and his three sons, and his armor-bearer, and all his men, on the same day, together. 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. The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 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. They put his armor in the temple of Ashtoreth, and they fashioned his body to the wall of Bethshan. When the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 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. And they took their bones and buried them under the Tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days. Thanks be to God for His Word. We've been in the book of 1 Samuel for the better part of a year now, ever since the first Sunday of January. And if you read 1 Samuel beginning to end, you might be struck by the fact that nothing really seems to have changed. A prophet has arisen, a prophet has died. A king has arisen, a king has died. And not much seems to have changed. You remember how in 1 Samuel 1, we encounter the mother of Samuel, Hannah, the wife of Elkanah. Hannah, a woman who would not eat because of her grief. We come to the end of 1 Samuel 31, and we once again encounter an entire city full of people who will not eat because of their grief. You remember how in the early chapters of 1 Samuel, the Philistines had been oppressing Israel, how they had invaded the land of Israel, how they had taken captive the most precious possession of Israel, how they had sent Israel's armies to flight. And here we are again in 1 Samuel 31, the Philistines have invaded, Israel has been demolished, their king's dignity has been stripped from him, and the glory of Israel has once again been stolen from her. It's a dark way to end a book of the Bible. To be honest, it's tempting to begin 2 Samuel right away, but we'll wait a while for that. It is one of the darkest, one of the most miserable spots in the entire Old Testament, the death of Israel's first king, the death of God's anointed. But this is not a passage without gospel. This is not a passage without good news, not just the good news that the Philistines proclaim in the temples of their gods, but good news to us as well. Because in the death of Saul, the death of Saul, we are reminded and we are taught also about the death of the true King of Israel. But how that will develop, I'll come to later. We begin together in the first verses of 1 Samuel 31, And you see how the author works in these concentric circles, the wider circle to the narrower circle. He begins with all the men of Israel. The Philistines were fighting against Israel, and all the men of Israel fled before the Philistines. You remember how in earlier chapters we had read about how the Philistines were getting ready for this war and the Israelites were getting ready for this war, how the Philistines were amassing their forces, how their armies had marched out of their five cities up the coast of the Mediterranean to this valley, this valley that has been the site and would be the site of so many battles in Israel's history, the Valley of Jezreel. The Philistines entered from the west side, and Saul, with all the forces of Israel, entered from the east side. And these two armies faced each other across this valley, one on this side, one on the other. And the author has been putting this battle off. He's been showing us how Saul's last days were spent. He's been showing us how David was spared from this battle. But now, finally, the two sides engage. and it's a wholesale slaughter. The army of Israel breaks before the Philistines, and their men are slain on Mount Gilboa. But not just the men of Israel in general, verse two kind of zooms in on Saul's own household. And the Philistines overtook Saul and his sons, so not only is the entire army fleeing, but Saul, the king, and his sons, they're not standing and fighting, they're fleeing. From the Philistines, they're trying to save their own lives. But the Philistines overtook them. And the Philistines first strike down Jonathan and Abinadab and Melchishua, the sons of Saul. And one of the last things that Saul sees is his sons falling in battle. And then the Philistines surround Saul. And instead of engaging him in hand-to-hand combat, they fire their arrows at him. And he's badly wounded by the archers. And not only is Saul's body beginning to fail because of his wounds, but his spirit is beginning to weaken as well. And Saul, afraid that the Philistines are going to come and humiliate him and steal his dignity, says to his armor-bearer, you do it, you do it, don't let them do it. Don't let any Philistines say that he's the one that struck down Israel's king. You do it. But his armor-bearer, with the same restraining fear that David had perhaps, refuses to strike down the Lord's anointed, and so Saul takes his own sword, props it up on the ground, and falls upon it. When his armor-bearer sees that his king has done this, he does the same thing. And so the author of 1 Samuel says in verse 6, giving a conclusion to the end of the life of Saul, thus Saul died. and his three sons, and his armor bearer, and all his men on the same day together. It's bleak. It's dark. It's frightening. It should make you weep. The glory of Israel, David will sing, lies fallen on the hills, lies fallen on the mountains. David will sing in 2 Samuel chapter 1, your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places. How the mighty have fallen. David mourns. David mourns, and it is a sad thing. It is a sad thing that the Bible warns us never to rejoice in the death of the wicked. That's not our place. That's not our place. But this is not an event that was outside of the providence of God. If you go to the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 10, all the same information is provided for you with some slight differences, but the chronicler adds this at the end of the story. Yes, the men of Jabesh-Gilead buried the bones of Saul and his sons under the oak in Jabesh and fasted seven days, but this conclusion is tacked on to the end in verses 13 and 14. So Saul died. Not because of his weakness as a general, not because of his weakness as a warrior, not because of some tactical misstep, not because the Philistines were simply the superior army, the superior civilization, but Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord and also, at the end of his life, consulted a medium. seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore, the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David, the son of Jesse. This is not a meaningless death. No, this death is a judgment. God had told Saul that he would remove him, and David had confessed that he also knew that God would one day either take Saul's life or send Saul into a battle where his life would be taken from him. And we see here in the death of Saul the same thing that we saw in the death of the priest at Nob, the same thing that we saw in the death of Eli, the same thing that we saw in the death of Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli. That God is the one who deals with his servants. That God will punish, that God will depose those who rebel against Him, those who lead His possession, His flock away from Him. Here we see the judgment of God on King Saul. Saul had consistently grieved the Holy Spirit. He had consistently rebelled against the commands of God. He had consistently ignored the repeated warnings of God's prophets. And when you do that, when you consistently rebel against the Spirit, when you consistently rebel against the Word of God, this is going to happen. Perhaps not in such dramatic fashion, but rebelling against God always results, always results in misery. But I would warn you not to take this impeachment, not to take this removal of Saul from office to be any kind of commentary on the eternal state of his soul. I know there are some who say that death by suicide is an unforgivable sin. And there are others who will say, well, no, 1 Samuel tells us that the Spirit gave Saul a new heart, and Samuel's own words were that Saul and his sons would join him. There are two judgments that people will give on King Saul, but really it's not our business. It's not our business. Ours is to listen to the warnings that God gives us. Our responsibility is to walk in faith and love, not to speculate over the eternal judgments, the eternal realities of others. But Saul's kingship has certainly ended in the most horrific way. And we see in the verses that follow, in verse 7 and then also in verses 8 through 10, the reversal of everything that Saul had done during his kingship. You'll remember that in one of the summation passages of Saul's kingship, the author of 1 Samuel says that Saul drove Israel's enemies out of the land. so that Israel enjoyed some measure of peace. He had established Israel as a nation. He had restored Israel as a sort of unified power. He had brought the 12 tribes together and he had driven out their enemies. But what happens in verse 7? Saul falls, Israel flees. The men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley, that is those who were on the north side of the valley of Jezreel, and those who were beyond the Jordan, so in the eastern part of the promised land, saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead. They abandoned their cities and they fled. And the Philistines came and lived in them. The land is vacated by the Israelites and is settled by the Philistines. And as if that wasn't enough, the reversal of Saul's successes is followed by the removal of Saul's dignity, even in death. Saul had taken his own life so that the Philistines would not be able to humiliate him, to mistreat him. But the Philistines, they find his body, and they do just that. The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. And they do to Saul what you'll remember David had done to Goliath. They cut off his head. And they stripped off his armor. And they sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the house of their idols and to the people. Saul's armor, Saul's weapons are taken from him. And they're placed in the temples of the Philistine gods, and 1 Chronicles tells us that Saul's head also was taken to Philistine territory, and it was put into the temple of Dagon. When they fasten the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons to the walls of Bethshan, a city that lays at an important crossroads, a city that everyone would have been able to pass by. The bodies of Saul and his sons are put up there for everyone to see, for the birds to pick at, for the beasts of the field to devour. And it seems, doesn't it, it seems like the humiliation of Israel and the humiliation of Saul is now complete. But the author of 1 Samuel is not going to leave us there. The author of 1 Samuel is not going to let this section of the book of Samuel or this, he's not going to let this book end. in this way because he knows better. He knows better. He knows not only that another king is going to arise after Saul, a king who will lead Israel in victory, who will lead Israel in some measure of faithfulness, but he also knows that this is not how God leaves his people. And so he tells us in verse 11 that the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, they hear what the Philistines have done to Saul. They hear how his armor has been sent into Philistine territory, and they hear how his body and the bodies of his sons have been plastered on the wall of Beth-shan. And the valiant men, the brave men, the strong men of Jabesh Gilead, the men with mighty hearts, they run all night to Beth-shan. And they take the body of Saul down. They take the bodies of his sons down from the wall, and they carry them back to Jabesh. And there they burn them and bury them. We see a great act of valiance here, a great act of bravery, a great desire, and a great work to honor King Saul. And we might think, why? Why this honor for this man? Well, it's because the men of Jabesh remembered. They remembered what many of us might have forgotten. I wonder how many of us remember the significance of Jabesh-Gilead in the book of 1 Samuel. Jabesh-Gilead was the place where Saul had first become Israel's king. not only in name but also in deed. Soon after Saul had been anointed by Samuel to be Israel's king, Jabesh Gilead had been attacked by one of the kings of the nations around. And that king had said that he was going to pluck out the right eye of every single man in Jabesh Gilead. He was going to humiliate them, and he was going to humiliate their God. And so the citizens of Jabesh Gilead, they had sent messengers throughout Israel, and Saul had answered, and Saul had come with the armies of Israel, and Saul had smashed their enemies and had saved the city. And the men of Jabesh Gilead remembered. They remembered the one time in the reign of Saul when he was the man that God had called him to be. David, at the end of 2 Samuel, says this, he says, when one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth. The men of Jabesh Gilead remembered how Saul had saved them in their desperation. How Saul had been like that just ruler, dawning on them like the morning light. How Saul had once been a good king, the king he was supposed to be. And it's in the memories of the men of Jabesh Gilead that we find the gospel in this passage. Because the man they knew, the Saul they knew, the Saul they remembered was God's chosen king, God's anointed king, God's king who fought and destroyed God's enemies and set God's people free from fear and from tyranny. And this is why the author brings us, at the end of Saul's reign, back to the place where it began. As if to say to us, now think, now think, what if all of Saul's reign had been characterized by that kind of obedience, that kind of bravery, courage, valiance? What kind of place would Israel have been? If God's King would have ruled God's people in God's place. in obedience to God's law, what a kingdom that would have been. And the author of 1 Samuel says, well, okay, Saul was a man characterized by disobedience, but there at the beginning of his reign, he had a flash of obedience. He had a brief flash of faithfulness, of submission to God even. And you know, in David, if we get to 2 Samuel, and you can read this yourself in 2 Samuel, in David we'll get more glimpses, more flashes of this kind of righteousness, of this kind of holiness and faithfulness. But in David's reign, as in Saul's reign, the glimpses, the glimpses of what the Lord's anointed is supposed to be will so often be obscured by all the other things that David does that God's anointed is not supposed to do. David will save Israel from their enemies. He will make Israel into a mighty nation, a force to be reckoned with. But when God gives him peace and prosperity, David will turn at times into a tyrant that God's people need to be saved from. We'll realize again and again that the best of men Even the best of men in the best of their times are men at best, that another kind of king altogether is needed. And I think that's where the author of 1 Samuel is bringing us. He's saying Saul wasn't it. But, you know, David, the sweet singer of Israel, the man after God's own heart, he's not it either. You don't need a king like Saul who will, for the sake of his own dignity, for the sake of his own pride, take his own life. You need someone who will strip himself of his power, who will become undignified, who will be humiliated, who will be stripped and posted there outside a city, who will be hung there for the world to mock, the world to gawk at. A king who will not take his own life, but a king who will give up his own life. What the author of 1 Samuel tells us at the end of chapter 31 is that we need Jesus. We need Jesus. We need a man anointed by God, appointed by God, empowered by God to keep the law of God, to rule over the people of God and the kingdom of God. We need a King who will not take for Himself, but a King who will give to His people, who will give even His life to His people. That's the crying need at the end of 1 Samuel 31. That's the crying need that is answered in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. who came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. And that, beloved, that is exactly what we celebrate, what we remember, what we commemorate in the Lord's Supper, that our Lord Jesus' body was broken for the complete forgiveness of all our sins, that His blood was poured out Again, so that all of our sins might be taken from us, that we might be made right, that we might be refreshed by the provision that He gives us, that we might be kept from despair because of the sweetness of His death, so that even in the horror of the death of God's good King, we might see the glimmer. the glimmer of the gospel shining through the goodness and the kindness of God. Let's pray.