Preparing for Sunday - 1 Samuel 28-30

This Sunday the text sets two men side by side in the same week, on the eve of the same battle, asking the same God the same kind of question. One of them gets a wall and one of them gets a promise, and the difference between them is not that one was the better man. Read 1 Samuel 28:3-30:31 before you come, and watch for the sentence the whole passage hinges on: "And the LORD answered him."

Critically Think

1. Read 28:3-6. Before the crisis even starts, the narrator sets down two facts: Samuel is dead, and Saul himself had put the mediums out of the land. Then Saul asks God and three channels go silent (28:6). Name all three. Why does the narrator want you to know Saul had already outlawed the very thing he's about to go looking for?
2. Read 28:6-7. Count the verses between Saul asking God and Saul sending servants to find a medium. How long is that gap, and what does the size of it tell you about what Saul actually wanted?
3. Read 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 alongside 1 Samuel 28:6. Chronicles says Saul "did not seek guidance from the LORD," and 1 Samuel says plainly that he inquired of the LORD. Both are true. What is Chronicles diagnosing that 1 Samuel 28:6 does not say out loud?
4. Read 28:8-20. Saul disguises himself, travels at night, and swears "as the LORD lives" (28:10) in the middle of breaking the LORD's law. When Samuel finally speaks (28:16-19), how much of it is new? Compare 28:17-18 with 1 Samuel 15. What is the only new piece of information Saul receives?
5. Read chapter 29. Four times in eleven verses the Philistines tell David to go back (29:4, 29:7, 29:11). Now look for a prayer, an ephod, or anyone inquiring of the LORD anywhere in the chapter. Who actually gets David out of that battle formation, and who is the one man in the chapter who says the name of the LORD (29:6)?
6. Read 30:1-6. Read the tally slowly: the town burned, the families taken, six hundred men weeping until they had no more strength (30:4), and David's own men picking up rocks (30:6). Then the verse turns. Notice that the sentence is not "David strengthened himself." What are the last four words, and why does everything depend on them?
7. Read 30:7-8 and think back to chapter 22. Who is holding the ephod in front of David, and why is that priest alive and in David's camp instead of Saul's? Then read God's answer in 30:8. How many times does He say it?
8. Read 30:3 and 30:19 back to back, word for word. Then read the ruling in 30:22-24. On what ground does David refuse a merit-based split of the spoil, and what does he call the men who wanted one?

Prayerfully Meditate
Saul knew the vocabulary. He enforced God's law on other people, he swore by God's name, and in 28:14 he bows his face to the ground. Every religious instinct was intact. Which of your own religious instincts is running fine while your heart has quietly gone somewhere else?
He asked God for something. He never once asked for God. When you pray this week, are you after Him, or after an outcome with His name on it?
In the dark on a cross, Jesus asked God a question and heaven was a wall (Matthew 27:45-46). He had never turned away for a second, and He got the silence anyway. He got it for what you did. What changes about your praying if the silence Saul met has already fallen somewhere else, on Someone who did not have it coming?
David did not strengthen himself. He strengthened himself in the LORD his God. Saul could no longer say "my God." David could, and he had not earned it. Where would you go, out loud, at two in the morning, if everything you had were gone by sundown?
Some of us are on the baggage detail this year, too tired or too new or too weighed down to cross the brook, and we've quietly concluded we get a smaller share of God because we contributed less. Read the ruling again in 30:23-24. What would it look like to actually believe it about yourself?

Intentionally Act

1. Read 1 Samuel 28:3-30:31 straight through before Sunday. Sixty-five verses is a lot, but the contrast only lands when you see both men in the same week.
2. Stop asking God for the answer this week and go get the Answerer. Set aside one block of time where you ask Him for nothing at all and just seek His face.
3. Decide now, before you need it, what strengthening yourself in the LORD will look like on your worst night. Pick the psalm. Pick the promise you'll preach back to yourself. Write down the name of the person you'd call.
4. Find someone on the baggage detail, someone worn out or grieving or newly here, and share with them what the LORD has given you. Time, a meal, a ride, a seat next to you on Sunday.
5. If you've been in church your whole life and have never once turned, don't wait for a better morning. Turn to Him now, and tell one believer you did.
6. Learn the songs below before we gather, so on Sunday you can sing them instead of read them.

Songs for Sunday
Firm Foundation 
In Christ Alone 
Worthy
It Is Well