King Saul Dies In Battle With The Philistines Series

Have you ever had a loved one in your family pass away? Can anyone relate? I think we've all probably had someone pass. And for some of us, it was someone we loved dearly. That's so incredibly hard.

Then again maybe we don't have a good relationship with our parents or with our moms. God loves you, remember that. And he is going to speak to you, I think through this message. But God bless you all today. And this is kind of a sad story, a sad part of First Samuel 31. And it's about how Saul finally came to his end.

So Saul has been persecuting David, David and his men have been fleeing from Saul for so many years now. And King Saul has been persecuting them, chasing after them trying to harm them. And David keeps refusing to harm Saul back, he very much is a man of humility and honor.

He keeps saying, "Who am I to harm the Lord's anointed?" But finally, it comes to its final point here. It says that the Philistines, this enemy nation, right near Israel, they are attacking Israel. There's there's a huge battle going on. And many were slaughtered. It says on the slopes of Mount Gilboa they fought.

Mount Gilboa, it's actually a place that a friend of mine visited. She visited Israel a few years ago and stood in that place. It's beautiful, it overlooks a city today. See when we look at the scriptures, this is real stuff. You can go to Israel and see these places, these things really happened. So there's a battle going on here between the Philistines and Israel at this Mount Gilboa.

And it says, The Philistines were defeating Israel, they're a very powerful nation, they had powerful weapons, they had more advanced weapons than Israel, they had learned advanced metallurgy. And so their weapons were more advanced.

And the Philistines are closing in on King Saul and his sons. They're in the battle themselves. And it says this, they killed three of his sons right there.

The battle is fierce. The Philistines are now basically right near Saul himself. I mean, all his men are in battle around him. He's in battle and it's growing very fierce right around Saul and he's already watched his three sons die in the battle and he must be distraught, devastated. Saul takes an arrow from archers nearby. He's hit. Saul quickly realizes it's a mortal wound. So Saul turns to his servant whose with him, and says, "Hey, take your sword and run me through before these taken Philistines run me through and humiliate me."

But the armor bearer was afraid and would not do it. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it. He kills himself right there. This is bad stuff, it's a dark moment! But he took his sword and fell on it. When his armor bearer realized that Saul was dead, he fell in his own sword too, and died beside the king.

So Saul, his armor bearer and his sons died that day. When the Israelites on the other side of the desert Valley and beyond the Jordan saw that their army had been routed, and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their towns and fled. So the Philistines moved in and occupied those cities. So the Philistines have a total victory.

Here they are, they've won this battle. The next day, when the Philistines went out to strip the dead, they found the bodies of Saul and his three sons on Mount Gilboa. So they cut off Saul's head and stripped off his armor. And they proclaimed the news of Saul's death in their pagan temples, and to the people throughout the land of Philistia.

"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." -1st Samuel 31:9-10

When the people of Jabesh-Gilead heard what the Philistines had done, their warriors traveled all night to Beth Shan and took the bodies of Saul and his sons down from the wall. They brought them to Jabesh, where they burned the bodies, and they took their remains and buried them beneath the tamarisk tree at Jabesh. And they fasted for seven days. So this is the end of Saul and his family, a very sad moment.

And then mocked by his enemies. But thankfully, a nearby people in Jabesh-Gilead brought his body and gave him a proper burial. That was good thing they did that day. Then they fasted and mourned for seven days.