“Under the Tamarisk Tree”

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The following message by Alistair Begg is  made available by Truth For Life  for   more information visit  us online at truthforlife.org. Our Scripture reading is from  the final chapter of 1 Samuel,   1 Samuel 31, which in the ESV bears the heading  “The Death of Saul.” And I read from verse 1:  “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 Malchi-shua, 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 Ashtaroth, and  they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan.   But 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.”  Amen. Our gracious God, we pray now that   as we turn to the sweet consolation of your Word,  that the very words that we have sung together   and have found echoes in our hearts may  in a very tangible way become our own   by the power of the Holy Spirit. Help us now as  we look to the Bible. For Christ’s sake. Amen.  Well, if like me—and I know some of  you are like me—you read obituaries,   you know that the best of them are like  minibiographies. And I learn a tremendous   amount—and so do you if you read them—about people  in relatively short order. The saddest of them   give to us the account of an individual whose life  was brimful of promise and potential in the early   days, and then, as we read on, we discover that  that potential was never realized, in certain   cases it was actually squandered, and in the  end, the record is one of desperate sadness.  Now, the life of Saul, I think, actually fits  that description. It’s quite a while since   we were introduced to him. Perhaps  you’ll remember back in chapter 9,   when we pondered for a moment just the way in  which he’s introduced: “There was a man of … Kish”   who had this son, and his name was Saul. He  was “a handsome young man,” no one more so,   and “from his shoulders upward he was taller  than any of the people.” So, a tremendous start.   He received an anointing. He received a divine  commission, and his divine commission was to save   Israel from the hand of the Philistines. And we  have to understand that he did want to do that.  But along the way, it has all gone terribly  wrong. And by the time we reach this final chapter   in 1 Samuel—and incidentally, 1 Samuel and  2 Samuel form one book, so we keep going   until we get to the end. But now we find him very  different from standing head and shoulders above,   but rather dying on the battlefield before  those whom he was asked to go and vanquish.  I had just two pictures in my mind, and triggered  because of this reference to the tamarisk tree   in verse [13]. You will perhaps remember that one  of the pictures not so long ago, in chapter 22,   was of him sitting under the tamarisk  tree with his spear in his hand and   surrounded by his servants —so, still with  potential, still with a measure of authority,   still heading forward. So there he sits under  the tamarisk tree, and now, with his body burned,   his bones are buried under the tamarisk tree. It’s a fairly short chapter compared to many of   them, and so we work our way through it. In verse  1 we have a summary of the Philistine victory.   You will have noticed that as we’ve gone through  this, the writer often does this; he tells us what   has happened by way of summary, and then we get,  later on, the details of how that has unfolded.   So without rehearsing the timeline that goes back  a long way through these chapters, let’s just   understand this: that while this is happening  in chapter 31, the events that we have seen in   chapter 30 were happening simultaneously. If you  doubt that, you’re just going to have to reread.   So while David is securing a great  victory in chapter 30, Saul is now   suffering defeat at the hands of the enemy. Now, one of the things that I’ll say a lot   this morning is “Do you remember…” or “I hope  you remember…” And it’s because now we have   the benefit of hindsight, at least in  going back through the book. So I wonder,   do you remember that Samuel had informed Saul  of what awaited him on the field of battle?   You remember back in chapter 28, where the battle  lines are drawn there in 28:4: “The Philistines   assembled and came and encamped at Shunem. And  Saul gathered all [of] Israel.” And you remember   in that context, David is trapped there at  that point because he is serving with Achish.   And then, before we understand what happens on  that battlefield, we are then told that Saul,   who has been absolutely terrified at the prospect  of the battle, has gone looking for answers. He   went looking for answers in his distress.  And you remember he went to the medium in   En-dor, and in the context of that—and we  can’t go back through it all—down in 28:19,   he had heard from this, as it were, resurrected  Samuel, “The LORD will give Israel also with you   into the hand of the Philistines, … tomorrow  you and your sons…” So that verdict had been   sounded in his ears, and now  here he is on that battlefield.  One of the benefits of having gone through all  of this is that it triggers little things in   our minds. It’s a long time since we thought  of the end of the affair back in chapter 4,   when, once again, you have all of Israel  fleeing. The context then is Eli and his sons,   and their death, and the capture of the  ark. And so we’ve gone from Eli to Samuel,   and from Samuel to Saul. And as we’ve gone  through it, the whole story is crying out   for a better leader than any of these. Because  remember, those were the circumstances—the fact   that they were vanquished—that caused the people  to say, “We need a king like all the rest of these   people. If we could only get a king the way other  people have, then we could sort all of this.”   Well, of course, we know the rest of the story. So the summary is in verse 1, and then,   in verses 2 through to verse 7, we have, if you  like, the tragedy that describes Israel’s loss.   So the summary of the Philistines’  victory is there, just in a verse—there   they were scattered, vanquished, slain on the  mountain—and now here we have it: the details.  Now, I think ten points should be given to the  three sons, and perhaps particularly to Jonathan,   for rallying alongside their father in this  battle—especially when you think of Jonathan.   The last time that we saw him was in chapter  23, where he’s seeking to strengthen the hand of   David, you will remember. And he says to him, “Do  not fear …. You shall be [the] king …, and I shall   be [with] you” —or, “I’ll be at your right hand to  help you.” But, of course, that was not to be. And   so here he dies alongside his brothers, as we see. Jonathan, Abinadab, Malchi-shua, the sons of Saul,   are gone. The battle is pressing hard  against Saul. You’ve got the picture of   him fleeing. He’s not gonna be reached by foot  soldiers, but he can be reached by the archers.   They’re firing at him. He takes a number of these  arrows to himself, and now he is badly wounded.   And with the life, as it were, ebbing  from him, he’s still giving out orders:   he orders his armor-bearer to draw  his sword and kill him with it.   And the armor-bearer, as you see  from the text, refuses to do so.  If this was a class, I would ask the class,  “And do you remember who was Saul’s first   armor-bearer?” And some bright girl in the  class would say, “Yes, David was his first   armor-bearer.” And then I would say, “And how  did the first armor-bearer deal with Saul? Would   he have taken Saul’s life?” And then another  bright button in the group would say, “No, no,   no, we saw that. We saw it in Engedi, and then  we saw it at Ziph, when the armor-bearer—namely,   David—had the opportunity to take Saul out in that  circumstance.” And what did he say? Well, he said   that it would be absolutely wrong: “The  LORD forbid that I should do this thing   to … the LORD’s anointed.” “I would not put  out my hand against the Lord’s anointed.”  And so this armor-bearer, I think that explains  his fear. Others have different perspectives. I   don’t know. But Saul is now seeking to preserve  his dignity, to save himself from mistreatment.   And so, the armor-bearer refusing to do this,  “Saul took his own sword and fell upon it.”   You remember way back in chapter 17, and Saul  kits David out with his stuff: “You should wear   my armor. You should take my sword.” So the sword  that David refused against Goliath, Saul now uses   to take his own life. And his armor-bearer follows  suit: “And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was   dead, he … fell upon his sword and died with him.” And then just in three words—look at those three   words at the beginning of 6: “Thus Saul died.”  “Thus Saul died.” It doesn’t actually say “Then   Saul died.” “Thus…” In other words, as we read  this, we’re supposed to pause and say, “Really?”   Yes! Along with him, his three sons, the men in  his entourage—he dragged them all down with him.  Now, as tragic as this is, it does not take us  by surprise, because we’ve been reading 1 Samuel   together. And Samuel in his farewell address had  warned the people—warned them—that wickedness,   that wickedness on their part, would be the cause  of their being swept away: he says, “You [will] be   swept away, both you and your king”—12:25. And  the words of the prophet are brought to bear,   and so we stand in awe of this. If this is not a  catastrophe, if this is not a tragedy, what is?   The young man who begins head and shoulders  above everybody else—the talk of the town,   the high school quarterback, the obvious  choice, the one who could lead, the one who   could vanquish the enemy, the one with so much  going for him—lies dead on the mountainside.  Now, I think it is only right that  we pause for a moment on this—let   the picture sink into our minds, not  out of a kind of morbid curiosity,   like onlookers at the scene of a car crash,  but as mortals. We’re not supposed to be able   to pass over scenes of death unwittingly and  unfeelingly, because we ourselves are mortal.   Death is the destiny of every man, and  the living should take this to heart.   Because the tragedy of death in the Bible  is a reminder that every death is a tragedy.  Now, we need to think this out—and we won’t delay  on it, but I want to say a word or two. Because   it is perfectly common to hear the view espoused  in our day that death is simply the end of life.   It’s just what happens. It is the cessation  of existence. It is a natural part of things.   Many who are well-meaning in end-of-life affairs  are constantly telling people in the final embers   of their day simply to breathe in and embrace it. Now, the Bible challenges this in its entirety.   Humanism—which is really another name for  a form of atheism—is very clear in standing   full square against the instruction of the Bible:  human beings are simply another part of nature,   and death is nature’s way of cleansing;  through death we clear the way for new life;   the deceased live only in the  memories of loved ones left behind.  Now, understand as you ponder  these things—as you say, “Well,   what do we… You know, we’re studying this ancient  book as twenty-first century dwellers.” Remember   a verse that we haven’t quoted in a while:  that the things that happened in the past   were written down so that “through endurance and  … the encouragement of the Scriptures we might   have hope.” So when we come to a scene like this,  it would be crazy if we didn’t stop for a moment.   Because the Bible says that death is not the  cessation of existence. In fact, the very reverse   is the case. Jesus, 12 of Luke: “I tell you my  friends, do not fear those who kill the body,   and after that have nothing more that they  can do. But I will warn you whom to fear:   fear him who, after he has killed, has authority  to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”  The Bible knows nothing of death as the cessation  of existence. In the Bible you will find no   indication that death is inherent in creation,  that it is part of creation’s grand design.   No. Genesis chapter 2 makes it clear. God speaks  to Adam and Eve in the garden, and he tells them,   “In the day that you disobey me—in the day that  you do what I’m telling you not to do—you shall   surely die.” People say, “Well, you know, that’s  that stuff at the beginning of Genesis.” Well,   I’ll leave that comment aside. But when Paul, who  is a mighty intellect and a man of God, reflects   on that, he gives it to us in Romans 5:12, and  this is what he says: “Just as sin came into the   world through one man, and death through sin, … so  death spread to all men because all [men] sinned.”  So, to quote Jim Packer, and I’ll move on: Packer,  wonderfully helpful in a little book—you can find   it, it’s called 18 Words… 18 Words. He deals  with crucial words. This is what he writes:  In the deepest sense, all death is unnatural. …  It is a dissolving of the union between spirit   and body. … It is sometimes said that the dead  look peaceful, but [that] is hardly correct.   What is true is that corpses look vacant. It is  their evident emptiness that we find unnerving—the   sense that the person whose body  and face this was has simply gone.  So all this stuff—you know, “Don’t worry, I’m  just in the next room”—which is an attempt   to make us feel better as we show  video clips of them when they were,   you know, robust and running at the beach in  Delaware or something—which we understand!   But it’s the great disguise.  It is the great escape.  Oh the games people play now, Every night and every day now,  Never [thinking] what they say now, Never saying what they mean. And they while away the hours In their ivory towers  Till they’re covered up in flowers In the back of a black limousine,  when it is too late to deal  with the one eventuality that   every human being faces—namely, death. It was Robert Frost who wrote—what, in the   ’30s?—“Stopping by Woods on a  Snowy Evening.” It’s a great poem.   If I could write poetry, I’d write a poem called  “Stopping by Graves on a Routine Tuesday.”   America has given much to the world, but it has  done a masterful job at sequestering death, hiding   it, putting it away somewhere, so that we never  have to face what we face here in this story.  Now back to the text. We’re told that the impact  of death on the men on the other side of the   valley, there beyond the Jordan, it brought them  down as well. They said, “Well, if Saul’s gone,   his sons are gone, we might as well be gone.” And  so we’re told that they abandoned their cities.   And as had been the case before in the  story, they became occupied territory.  And “thus Saul died.” Disobedience.  Downfall. Death. Disgrace. But you know,   credit where credit is due: he died in  the context where he was trying to be   the king. “You will be the one that vanquishes  the Philistines.” He tried. He failed.  Now, in verse 8 we see—and 9 and, what, 10?—you  see the brutality of the Philistine army.   The brutality of these people.  The mopping-up operation begins,   and in the process they come on Saul and they  find his sons. What a prize! The head of Saul!   The very same Saul who had  called for the head of Goliath.   And in the pictures that we sometimes see, of  war movies, the victors moving across the scene   where the battle has ensued, and they’re  picking up bits and pieces, weapons—and   there the picture is so graphic that scattered  across the hillside are those who had lined up   alongside Saul and his sons, and their uniforms  are removed, and their weapons are taken away, and   they’re stripped down in the ignominy of it all. We don’t have time to go back through this,   but there are a number of ways in which this  picture unfolds. For example, when you think   of Saul at the very beginning, you think of Saul  disrobing, taking off his stuff and putting it on   David. Doesn’t work. We saw him in chapter  28, when he takes off his royal emblems   in order that he might disguise  himself in going in before the witch.   Before the prophets in chapter  19, when they all started their   crazy stuff, you remember you have that picture  at the end of 19 where he has stripped himself   naked, and it’s hard to figure out  what’s going on with this character.  Well, now we see him, decapitated,  disgraced, disfigured, and displayed. It’s   payback time for the Philistines: “So they cut  off his head and [they] stripped off his armor.”   In Chronicles, where you have parallel passages to  this, it actually says in 1 Chronicles 10:10, “And   they put his armor in the temple of their gods  and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.”   Think about that for just a moment.  They’re still smarting from the Dagon   incident back in chapter 5—you remember, where  Dagon falls down and he smashes in pieces. And   now they said, “Yeah, you might have been able to  topple our Dagon, but we have toppled your king,   and we have put his head in there to testify  to the fact that we have won, that the God of   Israel is vanquished.” You see, this is not about  the defeat of Saul. This is about the enemies of   Israel saying, “We know how to run life; we  know how to win.” And that’s the picture:   “A toppled idol is nothing  compared to your toppled king.”  And you can see that in this  humiliation and degradation,   there is a total disregard for  not only life but also for death.   There is a right way to deal with death and dead  bodies. This is not time for the discussion,   but I’m telling you, these are  the forerunners of the people who,   in magazines that are easily found when you’re  flying or sitting in the doctor’s office, who   are suggesting that the wonderful way to think of  dealing with Grandpa is to turn him into compost.   The enemies of God have no concern for life  in its origins and life in its endings. It   is a distinctive of biblical Christianity.  It is not mirrored in Hinduism or in Islam,   anywhere at all. It is absolutely unique. And this testimony remains in Scripture   to their brutality. And their brutality, the  actual physicality of it, is only matched by   their message. They have a message, and they’re  gonna get the message out as loud as they can:   They “sent messengers throughout the land of  the Philistines, to carry” the gospel. Do you   see that? “To carry the good news.” You  see, the enemies of God have a gospel.   They have their own good news. They had  a message to proclaim. There’s no shame   there. It’s the Philistine gospel. They’re  carrying it to the house of their idols.   They’re bearing it so that  the people may celebrate it.  Now, as I said, I’m not a poet, and I surely can’t  write songs, but as I was studying this week,   I said, “This is the absolute opposite of  ‘See what a morning, gloriously bright.’”   And I just wrote down, See what an evening, horribly dark,  With a triumph of death in Gilboa. Naked the king hangs, sons nailed beside him,  As the message sounds out to the nation, “Love is dead, death has won, hell has conquered.”  That’s what they’re saying. And loved  ones, that is what the world outside   of Christ is essentially saying. It is  the conflict between light and darkness.   John Woodhouse captures it wonderfully in just a  sentence or two. He says, “Every mockery of God   and his people, every expression of scorn  toward the Lord Jesus and his followers,   is a version of the Philistine gospel.” Well, that puts it in context, doesn’t it? “We do   not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against  the rulers [and] authorities, against the cosmic   powers over this present darkness, against the  spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  So the summary in verse 1, and then the  tragedy in 2–7, and the brutality in 8–10.   And then the finality in the context of kindness:  “But when the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead heard…”   The inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead  had reason to be thankful for Saul,   because back in chapter 11, by Saul’s  intervention, they had been rescued.   And so now a number of them must have  said to one another, “You know what?   The best thing we could do in this circumstance is  go and rescue him. We could repay his kindness.”   And it is in this context that we realize that  the brutality of these men in relationship to   the body of Saul had extended to the  bodies of his sons: they not only   nailed Saul up against the wall in Beth-shan,  but they nailed up the three boys beside him.  And so they come. I don’t know how they pulled it  off, but they did it. They must have been valiant:   “all the valiant men.” Well, wonderful, isn’t  it? “And they came to Jabesh and burned them   there.” That is so incongruous. Because  this is distinctive. I can only assume   that the dissolution of the body  had set in so significantly, that   the putrefaction of the body was such, that the  only right thing for them to do in the interest   of health and everything else would be to do  something that wasn’t normal for them to do.   But you will notice that there’s no compost-  making here. They do not burn it down to nothing.   No: “They took their bones and buried them  under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh,” and   as a mark of respect, they observed  shiva, and they “fasted [for] seven days.”  When the people had asked  for a king back in chapter 8,   they could never have imagined that  things could possibly turn out like this.   You remember that on that occasion, when  Samuel was disappointed with their request,   God says to Samuel, “Samuel, it’s not you that  they’re referring to. It’s not you that they’re   rejecting. It’s me that they’re rejecting.” Now,  if you think about that, as I’m sure you do,   you realize that their folly was in placing  their hopes in someone other than the living God.   And so they said, “No, we know that you’re the  God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but if we could   just get the right man, if we could get the right  person, then we’d be able to take care of this.”  Our time is virtually gone, but we dare not miss  the folly of placing our hopes in human power,   whether they’re pastors or prophets  or priests or presidents or kings.   Look at the scene. The burial site does not signal  the failure of God’s purpose. Eli is gone. Samuel   is gone. Saul now is gone. “Well,” the people  are able to say, “we have David up next.”   But wait! He’s gonna be gone too. Why? Because the  whole of the Old Testament in its unfolding story,   whether it is in the picture of the prophet as  in Samuel, or the priest as in Eli, or the king   as in Saul, or even in David, is longing for  the fulfillment, for someone who will come.  I remember 1972, in Dallas, at Explo ’72 with  Campus Crusade, just feeling so stirred as some   musical band played up on that football field, and  they would sing out into the evening. There were—I   don’t know how many—a hundred thousand  people there, and they used to sing out,   “Jesus is the answer for the world today. Above  him there’s no other, [because] Jesus is the way.”   I remember thinking as a twenty-year-old, “You  know, that is the message.” And here I am, what,   forty-eight years later? I’m saying the  same thing. Because it’s what the Bible   says. In the face of political chaos, social  disintegration, the inevitability of death,   we need to take ourselves by the hand. We need  to consider what the Scriptures have to say.  And I want to end as I ended last time,  giving Peter the stage, in his sermon   on the day of Pentecost. And as he  speaks about the plan and purpose of God,   he reaches the person of David. And in Acts 2:25,  he’s talking about the fact of the resurrection   of Jesus. It wasn’t possible for death to hold  Jesus, because Jesus triumphed over death—“Behold   the sinless savior dies,” and so on. And then  he says, “For David says, concerning him…”   This is what David says concerning Jesus.  And then he quotes David in the Sixteenth   Psalm. And then Peter picks it up, and he says,  “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about   the patriarch David that he both died and was  buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.   Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God  had sworn with an oath to him that he would set   one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw  and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ.”  Now, what does he mean by  that? He means Psalm 16:11:   “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at  your right hand [there is pleasure] forevermore.”   “He will not abandon my soul to Hades. You will  not let your holy one see corruption.” That’s   what, says Peter, he is talking about. “This  Jesus God raised up, and of that,” says Peter,  we[’re] all … witnesses. Being therefore exalted  at the right hand of God, and having received   from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit,  he has poured out this that you yourselves are   seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend  into the heavens, but he himself [declared],   “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right  hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’”   Let all the house of Israel therefore know for   certain that God has made him both Lord  and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.  What a great Advent hymn it is. We’re not going  to sing it. It isn’t Advent, as it were, yet.  Come, thou long expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free;  From our fears and sins release us, Let us find our rest in thee.  Israel’s strength and consolation, Hope of all the earth thou art;  Dear desire of every nation, Joy of every longing heart.  You know the phraseology “The King is dead, long  live the King!” And if you know the source of   that, then it is simply the transition that  is recognized in the British monarchy—was,   in Elizabeth’s line, of course, “The  King is dead, long live the Queen!”   But we can say that today: “The king  is dead, Saul. Long live the King,   Jesus.” Are you in his army? Is  he your hope and your consolation?  Father, thank you that Jesus is our Prophet,  Priest, and King. Thank you that when   we are confronted by the tragedy of  life, often the very brutality of death,   the chaos of political structures, the  disintegration of social structures,   “when all around [our] soul gives way,  he then is all [our] hope and stay.”  Lord, write these things on our hearts, we pray,  those who believe and profess to believe. And   draw to yourself, we pray, those who are  without God and without hope in the world,   for your glory, we pray. In Christ’s name. Amen. This message was brought to you from Truth  For Life where the learning is for living   to learn more about truth for life with Alistair  Begg visit us online at truthforlife.org
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Channel: Alistair Begg
Views: 7,297
Rating: 4.8809524 out of 5
Keywords: Biblical Figures, Death, Jesus as King, Providence of God
Id: tJUIuIGO0WE
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Length: 38min 24sec (2304 seconds)
Published: Thu Sep 17 2020
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