Saul had banned all mediums. Then he went to one in disguise.
📖Based on 1 Samuel 28:15
God had stopped answering him.
Not by prophets. Not by dreams. Not by the Urim.
Saul was surrounded by the Philistine army and the silence of heaven was complete.
He had expelled all the mediums from Israel.
He himself had done it.
But now he told his servants to find a woman who was a medium.
They said there was one at En-dor.
He disguised himself. He went at night.
He asked the woman to bring up for him the person he named.
She reminded him that Saul had cut off the mediums from the land.
He swore by the LORD that she would not be punished.
She asked who to bring up.
He said: Samuel.
The woman saw something and cried out.
She asked why he had deceived her. She had recognized him as Saul.
He told her not to fear and asked what she saw.
She said: An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.
Saul knew it was Samuel.
He bowed with his face to the ground.
Samuel said: Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?
Saul told him of his distress. God was gone. The battle was tomorrow.
Samuel said: Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has turned from you?
He told him the kingdom had been torn from him.
Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me.
Tomorrow.
Saul fell full length on the ground, terrified.
The woman brought food and urged him to eat before he left.
He ate.
He rose in the night.
He went back out into the dark toward his last battle.
Carrying only the sentence Samuel had spoken.
Scripture — 1 Samuel 28:15
"And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do."
Reflection
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Saul went looking for a word from God through the very practice he had outlawed. Desperation makes people contradict themselves.
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Samuel had nothing to offer him that God had not already said. The medium couldn't change the sentence.