Sad Descent of a King

King Saul had it all. He was a man's man. He stood taller than his own countrymen.

He was crowned king by almighty God over Israel. The people cheered him and saluted him. Then it all went south for the self-centered king.

His spiritual descent began with the sin of disobedience to God by not killing King Agag and keeping the spoils of war. We hear Samuel's reproof of him in chapter 15 of 1 Samuel. And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat rams, for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

I will stop there, friends. Keep that last thought in your minds about the comment of God of comparing rebellion to witchcraft. Then we see how the sting of jealousy bites Saul when he sees a youthful David begin his rise to success.

The people chanted, Saul is slain as thousands, and David is ten thousands. And we read in 1 Samuel how this affected this thin-skinned king as seen in chapter 8. And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him. And he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands.

And what can he have more but that kingdom? And Saul eyed David from that day and forward. Meaning, that was the beginning of David's troubles. And as I read the story of King Saul, I observe a gradual spiritual descent in this man.

Petty jealousy turns into an appetite for murder as Saul seeks to kill David. But the saddest chapter in the life of Saul plays out in chapter 28 where Saul visits the witch at Endor. Saul knew God's commands against witchcraft, yet he is now so far away from God that he literally goes to the devil.

Saul ends his pathetic life by becoming his own executioner by committing suicide. I saw a man go to the devil as well. Recently I thought about a man I haven't thought about in years.

He was an evangelist who God was using in remarkable ways. The last time I saw him, he was in the midst of a powerful revival in the south that had turned the big Baptist church upside down for God. I saw it with my own eyes, for I was there personally, and it was one of the most remarkable scenes of revival I've ever witnessed in my life.

The entire church body of 1,000 members were broken before God and weeping, and the teenagers were getting saved one after another. I saw with my own eyes I was right in the midst of them. Well, that took place 30 years ago, and I wondered what had happened to this man because he had dropped off my radar.

So I Googled this evangelist to see if he was still alive and still active in ministry, and I got the shock of my life that this man had become a ranting, raving lunatic, and had posted videos of himself that vividly showed the great apostasy he had fallen into. The great good he had done for Christ was negated by his present spiritual downfall. I don't know how that plays out at the judgment.

I don't know how God can use a man so greatly, and then that man turned so greatly away from God to do more harm to the kingdom of God than doing good. I don't know how that plays out. I don't know if God factors in grace with mental unbalance.

I'm not God. All I know is I saw with my own eyes how God uses man in remarkable ways, and I saw with my own eyes what he had turned into. When this man used to preach, he would bring me to tears because the Spirit of God was so strong upon him.

But like King Saul, he gradually went to the devil, and he, who was one of my biggest inspirations, has become one of my biggest warnings. I don't know what transpired in this man's life in the last 30 years, but he was no longer the same man. In fact, he even had changed his name.

That's why I had a hard time even finding him on the internet. He's become unrecognizable to the man he once was. My Bible issues a warning in 1 Corinthians 10-12 to each of us.

Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed, lest he fall. There's a fact about the Christian life, friends, that is undeniable, and that fact is this. If you are not continually going forward with God, then you are going backward.

There is no inertia in the Christian life. You will either become a bigger influence for God in the world, or you will become a bigger disappointment to Him.