OPEN: A woman went to the local psychic in hopes of contacting her dearly departed grandmother. The psychic’s eyelids began to fluttering and she began to moan and eventually, a voice came, saying, "Granddaughter? Are you there?"
The granddaughter, wide-eyed responded, "Grandma? Is that you?"
"Yes granddaughter, it’s me."
"It’s really you, Grandma?" the woman repeats.
"Yes, it’s really me, granddaughter."
The woman pauses a moment, "Grandma, I have just one question for you."
"Anything, my child."
"When did you learn to speak English?"
APPLY: Here in I Samuel 28 we have the unusual story of King Saul consulting a psychic. And what’s so unusual about it is that - not too long before consulting her – he had decreed that all those who practiced divination should be put to death. In making that decree, King Saul had merely followed the command of God which declared:
"A man or woman who is a medium or Spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads." Leviticus 20:27
You see - God has always hated the occult.
Over and over again, God condemns the practices of…
• fortune-telling (trying to tell the future by palm reading, horoscopes, etc)
• divination (appealing to the spirit world by Ouija boards, tea leaves and the like)
• and consulting the dead (séances and visiting mediums or “channelers”)
In Deuteronomy 18:10-12 God declares:
“Let no one be found among you who… practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.”
And in Leviticus 20:6 God declared
“I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.”
Even in the New Testament God tell us He hasn’t changed His mind,
"…those who practice magic arts …their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur… the second death" Revelation 21:8 (NIV).
ILLUS: Ben Alexander was one of the best known ex-spiritualists of our brotherhood. He had engaged in many of the black arts when he was younger, but when he became a Christian he would go about giving lectures on the dangers of Christians dabbling in these things.
One of his most famous sayings was “The spirit world IS real!” He’d seen it, he’d experienced it, and he knew that it wasn’t ALL smoke and mirrors, but the Spirit world had nothing to do with talking with the dead. It had everything to do with demonic activity.
One of the things he’d do is engage in debates with Spiritists. One time – in Portland Oregon – he rec’d a call from Lee Tabor, the host of a Sunday program on KOIN television. Alexander agreed to the on the condition that the Bible was to be the final authority in the discussion. Because many spiritists say they use the Scriptures in their activities, the spirit medium agreed to this. As the time neared for the TV interview, Alexander enlisted hundreds of Christians to pray for the program and for him to deal properly with this medium.
Throughout the debate, Alexander would quote from the Spiritualist manual and show where the Bible refuted their doctrines. But toward the end of the debate, he laid a trap for the Medium.
He said he came into the final round with an admission, saying that he realized that séances were held in the Old Testament times. King Saul (for example) went to a spirit medium at Endor and asked the witch to call up Samuel from the dead.
He said "My opponent took the bait & said, ‘That proves that the Bible condones spiritualism.’
But his joy and exuberance were short-lived.
Alexander smiled and then said "But King Saul died because he went to a spirit medium."
"Not in my Bible," the medium said.
Then the moderator asked the medium for his Bible, but he did not have one with him.
So Alexander declared: "It’s in my Bible," and as he was about to quote I Chronicles 10:13, the moderator snatched the Bible out of his hands and said, "Let me read it,"
And this is what he read,
"So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the Lord because of the word of the Lord which he did not keep and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry of it
The moderator then turned to the spirit medium and said, "Look, it is true. God says those who go to mediums will die." (from the book “Out Of Darkness” by Ben Alexander)
Part of the reason King Saul was condemned was because he consulted a medium.
(pause)
Now, one of the other odd things about this story in I Samuel 28 is the fact that the witch at Endor seems a bit surprised to see Samuel. Verse12 says “When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, ‘Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!’”
She was shocked!
Why would she be shocked?
Because she was a fake. She’d never actually talked to the dead before.
ILLUS: When Houdini was alive, he often visited with Spirit Mediums in the hopes of talking to those he loved who’d died. But time after time he’d see through their trickery and expose them as frauds.
The Witch at Endor had never talked to the dead before - and she couldn’t have done so anyway because the Bible repeatedly tells us that once a person dies… they don’t come back.
Isaiah 26:14 for example, says,
“They are now dead, they live no more; those departed spirits do not rise….”
In the New Testament, Hebrew 9:27 we’re told
“…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”
There’s no floating around visiting with the ones they’ve left behind
Jesus told the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31. Both of these men die. Lazarus was escorted to Paradise and the rich man to hell. As you man remember, hell was such a terrible place that the rich man called out to Abraham “Father Abraham, I beg of you, send Lazarus to my five brothers who are living. Warn them not to come here!”
And Abraham denies his request and amongst the reason he refused was “… between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you CANNOT, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.” Luke 16:26
The dead are not allowed to return.
In fact, God makes a little fun of those who try to contact the dead.
In Isaiah 8:19 God says
“When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter.
Should not a people inquire of their God?
Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?”
Don’t do that! God says
But now, why should God be so upset about this?
• What’s the problem with using a Ouija boards for a party?
• Why would God be upset with horoscopes and palm readings?
• Where’s the harm in an innocent visit to a medium?
Well, first (and most important) God says He hates that kind of thing.
In Deut. 18:12 He says:
“Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.”
And that not only would He cut those who practiced these things off from Israel, but that in the final judgment, these folks will go to hell!
“… their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur… the second death" Revelation 21:8
That’s enough to keep me from doing that.
But why is it such a bad habit to fall into?
Well, the problem with Ouija boards, divination, horoscopes and the like is that Satan can use them to gain control your affections and to manipulate your decisions.
As Ben Alexander once said “The Spirit World Is REAL!”
Satan uses these tools of divination (being able to see into the future) to get us roped in.
ILLUS: Back when I was younger, I knew my Zodiac pretty well. I knew I was a “Libra”, and I intently studied what the horoscopes said about my character. And I believed it all. I mean, how could you argue with something that seemed to be so “right on”?
Now, I hadn’t quite gotten into studying my daily predictions… but I wasn’t far off.
My affection for horoscopes had gone a long way towards
• shaping my view of myself
• and my future.
ILLUS: Ouija Boards are marketed by Mattel and their sales have surpassed Monopoly as the top selling board game on the market. But I’ve listened to friends who’ve told me how eerily accurate the “messages” are that they’ve received when they played their games. And they found that the Board would make predictions that would eventually
• shape how they viewed themselves
• and their future.
ILLUS: Then, of course, there are the palm readers and fortune tellers. My dad went to visit one before I was born. The lady told dad that he’d
1. live near water (he bought a resort on Silver Lake),
2. that he and mom would have 4 children – two girls and two boys (they did)
3. and then she told him WHEN he would die (a prediction that often comes up when dealing with the occult)
Until the day she predicted his death, dad always kept that date in his mind. It dominated his thinking. And it
• shaped his view of himself
• and of his future.
You see… that’s the danger of the occult… it makes predictions.
And those predictions tend to shape your view of yourself and your future
But God says “I’m a jealous God”
I’m the one who wants to shape your view of yourself and your future!
God wants to be the master of your life.
Jesus said you can’t serve two masters – you’ll either love the one and hate the other or vise versa. You’ll either look to God for your answers to the future… or you’ll look to the occult.
God tells us He won’t share you in this matter!
That’s what happened with King Saul.
He had always tried to serve two masters.
He tried serving God, but when things got a little uncomfortable and he felt threatened, he’d leave God on the shelf and try something else. Now, this incident in I Samuel 28 was the first time he’d appealed to the occult… but his attitude had always been bent this way.
In fact, when King Saul disobeyed God the last time God told him “rebellion is like the sin of divination…” I Samuel 15:23
At its heart – both rebellion and divination are rejections of God’s authority in our lives.
So, one of the big reasons God hates the occult is that those who accept it reject Him
The 2nd reason God hates the occult is because of the damage Satan can do in our lives thru it.
ILLUS: A Christian speaker named Bill Gothard told of the time he noticed a young couple having trouble with their youngest of their 3 daughters. This youngest child had an eerie habit of screaming horrendously and then smiling in a deathly calm way, scream and then smile - but only when they entered a church building.
He says he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself.
They approached him because they had heard him in one of his seminars and hoped that he could help. Asking if there had been any involvement with fortune telling or other items of that sort, the wife related that before she was married, her mother had taken her to a restaurant where an old woman asked if her mother would like the daughter’s fortune read for a dollar.
Her mother, thinking it to be a lark, fished out a dollar from her purse and let the old woman read tea leaves for her daughter.
1. The fortune teller told the daughter that she would marry a tall dark man in a uniform
2. And that they would have 3 children - all boys.
And, when she grew up she did fall in love with a tall man with a dark complexion who was in the military. They married and when she became pregnant... she thoroughly expected to give birth to a boy. She was disappointed - not once, not twice, but three times and she found herself particularly disappointed with this third child.
Gothard then explained to them that one of the dangers of fortune telling is
3. that it is often 90% right
4. but its the 10% that Satan can use against us.
Whether it was direct demonic influence or simply the result of personal disappointment the tea reading had led to the odd behavior of this third child.
That night, the couple went home and prayed over their youngest daughter as she lay in her bed and asked forgiveness for the sins of the past and thanked God for giving them this beautiful child. From that day forward, the odd screaming and weird smile never reoccurred.
