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On these three occasions, we have been thinking together from the letter of Paul to the Romans, and I thank you for your patient and your kind and close attention. Tonight, we shall be concluding our studies and concentrating our thoughts on a phrase from chapter eleven. But first of all, I want to read you a very ancient story, the relevance of which you will, I hope, thereafter see. First then, a very ancient story from the Old Testament, the first book of Samuel and chapter twenty eight. One Samuel twenty eight, and we shall begin to read at verse four. The Philistines assembled and came up and set up camp at Shunem, while Saul gathered all the Israelites and set up camp at Gilboa. When Saul saw, Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid. Terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord. But the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants, find me a woman who is a medium, that I may go and inquire of her. There is one in Endor, they said. So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. Consult a spirit for me, he said, and bring up for me the one I name. But the woman said to him, surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and the spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death? Saul swore to her by the Lord, as surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this. Then the woman asked, whom shall I bring up for you? Bring up Samuel, he said. 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. The king said to her, don't be afraid. What do you see? The woman said, I see a spirit coming up out of the ground. What does he look like? Saul asked. An old man wearing a robe is coming up, she said. Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. Samuel said to Saul, why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? I am in great distress, Saul said. The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has turned away from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do. Samuel said, why do you consult me, now that the Lord has turned away from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done what he predicted through me. The Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors, to David. Because you did not obey the Lord or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the Lord has done this to you today. The Lord will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord also will hand over the army of Israel to the Philistines. Then Saul immediately fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel's words. His strength was gone, for he had eaten nothing all that day and night. When the woman came to Saul and Saul saw that he was greatly shaken, she said, look, your maidservant has obeyed you. I took my life in my hands and did what you told me to do. Now please listen to your servant and let me give you some food so that you may eat and have the strength to go on your way. He refused and said, I will not eat. But his men joined the woman in urging him, and he listened to them, got up from the ground, and sat on the couch. The woman had a fattened calf at the house, which he slaughtered at once. She took some flour, kneaded it, and baked bread without yeast. Then she set it before Saul and his men. And they ate. That same night, they got up and left. Now, alongside of that very ancient story, I read to you one phrase or two from the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament and chapter eleven. The Epistle to the Romans, chapter eleven and verse seven. What then? What Israel sought so earnestly, it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, as it is written. God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they should not see, and ears so that they could not hear to this very day. And David says, may their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block, and a retribution for them. God give us good understanding of these serious parts of his word. Tonight I would like to talk to you simply about two tables. The table of the Lord on the one hand, and the table of the lost on the other. Now, when I talk to you about the table of the Lord, you will understand that I don't mean it literally. I'm not talking of some literal table with four legs, still less of any altar in a church. The term table in the Bible is here a metaphor, and a delightful metaphor it is, easily to understand. The table of the Lord, it talks to us of all those infinite delights which Jesus Christ our Lord has obtained for us by his wonderful sacrifice at Calvary. The table of the Lord, see how it groans with the very delights of God's blessing. Forgiveness of sins is there. Reconciliation and peace with God is there. Oh, what delightful gifts are they that those who eat at the table of the Lord, enjoying forgiveness of sins, till they could fare dance in their heart like old King David did when he got out his harp and harped away and sang to his heart's content, all the blessedness of the man whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquity is covered, against whom the Lord will not charge iniquity. The table of the Lord, filled with its delights, for those who know what it is to be justified and to be right with God, and to have the assurance of God in their heart that they shall never come into condemnation. They have been accepted by God, and to the remotest bounds of eternity will be accepted. The daily fellowship with Christ, the lovely and delightful companionship of God's Holy Spirit, the comfort of his holy word and its exhortation, the stimulation of the race of Christianity, and at the end, a whole eternity of God's heaven, with all the glorious schemes that God has designed with which to fill eternity to the constant delight and occupation of his people. The table of the Lord. It was a metaphor that appealed very much to Jesus Christ, our Lord. We find in the New Testament that as he was attempting to get home to people the glory of God's salvation, he frequently used this metaphor. He said, you know, being saved, entering the kingdom of God, it's like a banquet which a king made for his son, mark the term, not some dinner merely, serving life's sheer necessities, but all the wealth and excess, you might think, of a positive banquet. Not just any ordinary banquet, but a banquet which a king, with all his royal munificence, made for his son. Oh, tell me, what shall it be when the redeemed of the Lord at last get home to God's heaven, and God hangs his bunting round the universe. God isn't hard up for a few ideas as to how to make his universe gloriously wonderful. Salvation, Christ says, will be like a veritable banquet which the King of Kings, with all his infinite love and endless ingenuity, has made for his son. And all the added delight is this, the source that gives it all its piquancy is this, that though we have wandered far from God and thought God an old killjoy, ah, when we come back to Christ, then does the very Father himself not only run and put his arms around our neck to welcome us, but bids his servant get out the best robe and the fatted calf, and to stage a welcome home banquet with the veritable angels of God cheered, dancing for joy at the special joy of men and women who have once been lost, but have returned. The table of the Lord. And on the other side, the table of the lost. Who say, have they their table? They have indeed. It's not without its joys. Certainly it has its pleasures and excitements. Many of the joys are the delightful, harmless, healthy joys that God Almighty prepared for his creatures. The God who has given us all things to enjoy. Ah, but the table of the loss. Underneath it all is a sad, poignant hopelessness. Men and women who in this life neither know their savior nor their God, and for whom the tomorrow of eternity is black with unqualified disaster. Oh, I would prefer tonight to talk to you still about the table of the Lord, but honesty with my passage demands that rather tonight I talk about the table of the loss. One of the saddest things about that table is this, that its very joys become a snare, comforting the people, and delaying and blunting their perception, that they hover on the edge of an eternity without hope. So that we may grasp it the more, I ask you to think with me a while over that very ancient story about King Saul. We saw him in the chapter we read seated at a table. What a sorry table it was, in the hovel of a witch. A man in his day who had known the palace and all its luxuries and all that life could give him by way of joy and satisfaction. And this night... is to be found in disguise, seated in the home of a spirit medium, doing his best to enjoy himself. And tomorrow, in his heart he knows it, tomorrow comes disaster. You say, however did he get there? You ask, you do very well to ask. Let me try and tell you, if I may, long story though it is. How did King Saul of Judah and Israel end at last in a witch's hovel, trying to comfort himself at her table. Ah, it wasn't always so, was it? Imagine King Saul, if you can, in his youthful days. Oh, what a fellow he was, head and shoulder above everybody else. God had blessed him with a magnificent physique. He'd have been a gold medalist in anybody's Olympics. He was the idol, moreover, of the younger set in Israel because he was one of their chief heroes in single combat warfare. And the little girls, they came out when he came back from the battle with their songs and their pop records, and Saul was all the rage. No rock and roll star could equal Saul. His career was meteoric, and presently proving himself to be the biggest warrior in the land and the favorite with the people, he was elected to the throne and sat there by God's own gift and appointment. And all went well. Until, foolishly, he sinned against the God who had appointed him, and sinned deliberately, and sinned not once, but given a chance to recover himself and to go God's way, the second time he sinned worse and sinned deliberately. In his folly against God. And then it all began to happen. He began to lose his grip. Now he found he had no courage left to meet the enemy, nor power to overcome his enemy. We read how at one stage the Philistines came up with their tremendous armies, and presently, to his dismay, there stalked out into no man's land the great single combat warrior of the Philistines. His name was Goliath, and in the manner of the ancients, he challenged Israel to find a hero to come out and meet him in single combat to settle the issue between the two armies, and everybody was looking for Saul. And Saul's knees were knocking. He was in his tent, skulking in his tent. He didn't go. He had the horrible shame of all the people seeing that he couldn't face his enemy. What a poor thing is human nature at its best, isn't it? For all our many gifts, what is Saul's story but our story, and you, and I? We have enemies we can't meet, and sins that have defeated us. And at the end, the last enemy himself. Death. Making a mockery of all our attainments. Casting his gray shadow over the best of our pleasures. And how many there are this night, in their heart of hearts, skulking in their tent. They prefer not to think of funerals. They have no answer to death. They're doing their best to enjoy themselves, but underneath it all, they are without God, and therefore without hope. It's not, it's not the worst thing you can say of anybody, I suppose. It is the saddest. To live life. Why, if life has been full of pain, it's terrible, but suppose life has been full of joy, as I hope it is for you, and yet beyond it, you have seen what life could give. Now for the future, ultimately, no hope. But even as Saul hid in his tent, God didn't abandon the man, but sent a savior for him. His name was David, who came out and defeated the great old giant and cut off his head. And at first, Saul was delighted. He had a reprieve from his enemy and was going to make David, I don't know what, commander in chief or anything else he liked, and promised to give him his daughters in marriage. He felt so relieved. And then? Then he saw it. I don't know what day it was, but one day it suddenly clicked and he saw that if he owed his very life to this David, then eventually David would be king. And Saul would have to leave off being king. And he didn't like it. I don't know about you. I wasn't born in a palace, as you see, but I can well imagine that, um, it must be a very difficult thing if once you've been a king, leaving off being one, don't you think? Ah. Truth to tell, I think perhaps that's why some of us tonight are not yet saved. We don't mind singing our Christmas carols about Jesus Christ, the babe born in Bethlehem, and to come to bring us peace. And some of us have grown up big enough to have seen the point. If Jesus Christ died to be my savior and is risen again, and now is urging upon me his salvation, then it will be on these terms that I leave off being king myself, and I hand over to Jesus Christ as king. King. And frankly, Saul wasn't prepared to do it. Wasn't long after that that he determined that he must get rid of David then. David wouldn't give up his claim. Saul was not prepared to accept him as king. What? In front of everybody, leave off and admit himself a failure and come down from his throne and take off his crown. Not Saul. And when his son Jonathan did that very thing, Saul was furious. For there came a day when the crown prince that should be heir to the throne fell in love with David. It wasn't just missentiment either, it was a kind of a logic. And Jonathan, the Crown Prince, said to himself, I daren't go against the enemy, and I would be a dead man this very day if hadn't, if it had not been for David who subdued my foe. And deliberately he took off his royal belt with all the emblazon of his Crown Prince status and handed the whole thing over to David, that David should be king. And when Saul heard it, he was furious. As furious as I have known some parents to be when their children have come home, their teenage children have come home and said, Dad, tonight I gave my heart to the Savior. Dad in all his forty five hard-boiled years, is furious. Fool of a child. Giving away your freedom like that. And Saul determined to get rid of David. He commanded his officers to kill him. And Jonathan came with his logic and pleaded with his father. Papa, he said, this is nonsense, you know. Let me tell you, father, what on earth has David done against you? He put his life in his hand to save you. What have you got against him? Tried to get his daughter to betray David, and the girlie wouldn't, for the girlie had genuinely fallen in love with David, and she loved David. But she said, Dad, he's, he's my whole life and light of life. I love the man. But neither Jonathan's logic, nor Michael's love was enough, and Saul determined to remove this threat out of his life, for that's how he saw it. And he went to pursue after David, and came upon David as David was standing with Samuel the prophet. And as the king with murder in his heart came near to David, the Bible tells us God's Holy Spirit came upon him, locked him, and all that night he laid down rigid. If ever God's Holy Spirit talked to a man and rebuked him for his folly and showed him where his true benefit lay, that night it was God's Holy Spirit talking to King Saul. And in the morning, King Saul got up, went home, and determined still to destroy David. You begin to see, I suspect, in your heart how this story is going, and I suspect you already see what kind of a parable God's spirit is weaving. Oh, how many times God's Holy Spirit has come near us, has he not? In the sound and thunder of a sermon, in the quiet of your home, in the memory of a mother's prayers, God's Holy Spirit has got hold of you. And shaking you has said, man, woman, it's lunacy to resist Jesus Christ. What has he done against you? He not only put his life in his hand, he died for you at Calvary. This is your God. This is the very God of the universe talking to you. His very son died for you. What do you suppose God has got against you? It's lunacy. Not to receive the true king. And you know what I mean, you've felt it in your heart. Tell me. And you've gone on without being saved, really? Where do you suppose it will lead you. Even so, God didn't abandon Saul. Oh, how patiently God waits. Let me tell you of the last two occasions they met. Saul was now chasing David deliberately to try and get him and finally to destroy him out of his life. And Saul had come down with his army into the desert, and David had seen him coming, and David had hidden himself. So see Saul. Can you see Saul? King, crown, military uniform, medals. Oh, what a brilliant, tremendous fellow he was. And all the troops saluted as he went by. I must tell you a little thing about King Saul. Don't think any the worse for him, but for all that he was a king, he was an ordinary mortal, and one morning he found he had to go to the toilet. Well, being king, he wanted to do it with a certain decency. Couldn't do there, you know, in front of the troops. So he sort of caved, you see, to have the respectability, to hide his shame. He wasn't a nineteen eighty six shameless old thing. He had a bit of decency left, and he went into the cave to cover his shame. Unbeknown to him, David and his men were in the back of the cave. And in those humiliating moments, they saw everything. Some of the soldiers said, Your Majesty to David, let's, let's kill him. No, no, no, says David. Kill him, no. God loves the man. But then very stealthily, David went up with his knife in his hand, and Saul not knowing, cut a bit off the, off his trousers. Saul got up, adjusted his dress, crown, belt. Out he went, the troops all saluted, and then as he went by, part of the man's trousers was missing. What a fool he felt. You say, why did David do that to him? Shaming a man like that in front of the troops and making an idiot and a fool of him. Ah, well, listen to David as he went out of the cave and he held up the bit of the old trousers. Saul, he said, look here, can't you see, man? I could have killed you just now. But Saul, I love you. Where have you got it into your head from that I'm your enemy? I could have killed you. Look at your trousers in my hand. Ah, it was true. David didn't want to shame the man. But how would he bring Saul to his senses unless he made him feel his weakness, I wonder? How weak he was. Ah, David had seen things that nobody else had seen. There was the morning when Saul was in his tent and old Goliath was out there on the plain, and David had gone into Goliath, into Saul, and he'd looked into the eyes of King Saul and seen a man scared to his roots. And it's a sad thing to see a grown man afraid like that. David would have hidden it from the people. Had only Saul had the sense to give in and accept David, and let David be king. David would not only have saved him from his enemy, but he would have installed Saul as his commander in chief and covered him with glory. But how could you get it home to him? Oh friend, forgive my frankness, won't you? How shall Christ persuade you to give in to him. I don't know what skeletons you have in your cupboard. I don't know what things there are in your history or your personality that you would be ashamed for anybody to see. I know my own shame. Oh, I preach you a savior who loves you. He wants to cover that shameful past. He wants to blot it out. He wants to clothe you with the glorious garments of salvation and make a veritable prince or princess of you for eternity. Come, says he, come and buy of me white linen that you may be clothed and the shame of your nakedness not appear. That rotten old sin that has you at night times ashamed of yourself. That habit you can't kick. There's a Christ tonight who has forgiveness and covering. Thou hidden source of calm repose, thou all sufficient love divine, my help, my refuge from my foes, secure I am, if I am thine. So from sin and grief and shame, I hide me, Jesus, in thy name. Tonight Tonight he he offers us a salvation so big that accepted we know the past blotted out, our shame covered, and as another hymn writer put it, bold shall we stand in that great day of God's final judgment, for who ought to our charge shall lay sins from our guilt, absolved we are from sin's tremendous curse and care. That's all went on. And came again thereafter to make another attack on David, and sought him in the wilderness and couldn't find him, and came at last one dark evening as the night was settling in, and he hadn't found David. And being a good soldier, he prepared to bivouac for the night. He had his men draw up the wagons to mark a, make a stockade so that he could protect himself and be safe and secure inside the stockade. And as he lay down to night, he, at night, he got his spear with its little spike in the butt end and pushed it into the ground so that if the enemy attacked in the night and he woke up suddenly, he had only to grasp and there was his spear, and he was ready. By his side was his crews of water, his iron rations. For the wilderness was a dangerous place. Naturally, he wanted all the security he could get. So do you, don't you? Oh, let me talk frankly. This world is a pretty dangerous place, isn't it? I'm not talking merely about the rat race, that's bad enough. But life itself. It has a way of smashing the things that we count dear and trampling on our feelings. And beyond it, what of this vast universe around us? As one great astronomer put it, you only have to walk outdoors, and beneath your head there stretches a chasm that is immeasurable. And here we are, like our soul, tonight we shall lie down. What can we do, we weak little human creatures? We'll have to go and put ourselves on a shelf in a dark room for eight hours to get over another day. Poor little weak creatures. And you want to make the best of your life, and you're out to protect it, and you're afraid of Jesus Christ, lest he come into your life and ruin it. And you love your life, of course you do. But there's no security against Jesus Christ, I tell you. That night, as Saul lay asleep and his stockade round him, David and his men came by. And they came in the stockade, and he took the crews, and he took the spear, went off, and stood upon a hill and called to Saul. Saul, Saul, what are you doing, old boy? You're asleep, aren't you? Oblivious of your danger, Saul. Wake up, man. And Saul got up out of his sleep, and in the morning light, there he stood, and the Bible pictures it. David stood on a hill, and Saul over here, a great space being between them. This was the last time they would ever meet. And we watch that space. What will happen? Ah. It hadn't always been that. Once upon a time, David was in the court singing his psalms and playing his old guitar and making up Psalm twenty three and singing the very hymns of Zion to Saul. But now they'd come in this distance, a great space. Is that true of some of us this very night? You, sir. You, madam. Once upon a time, you were very near Jesus Christ, weren't you? You went to your Sunday school, your mother sang you the songs of the Bible. Ah, but you're a grown-up man of the world now. You're a woman of the world. Truth to tell. There's a distance, isn't there, in your heart. There's a big space between you and Christ. You're standing off tonight. What shall I tell you? You're wanting to protect your life. You're afraid Jesus Christ will come in and rule it. Oh, but friend, let me tell you first, there's no security against Jesus Christ. He is your Lord Creator. The very atoms, the very cells of your body, he holds them in his hand. The electrical circuits in your brain, he made them. There is no security against Jesus Christ. Listen to David as he pleads. Saul, he says, who on earth is it that has turned you against me? How did you get it into your head that I am your enemy? Oh, and I wonder what Jesus Christ would say to you tonight if he stood calling over the distance between him and you. Oh, my young friend, how did you get it into your head that I, Jesus Christ, am against you? When I died for you. And Saul said, I've been a fool. I've been an utter fool, said he. And we said it's going to happen now. Oh, it's going to happen. Saul has at last seen he's a fool. He's going to get up. Oh, he's going to run across that space and fling his arms around David. Oh, it's going to be wonderful. Saul said, I've been a fool. Then he turned round and he went away.