First Samuel chapter number 8.
God's Word says, "And it came about when
Samuel was old that he appointed his son's
judges over Israel.
Now the name of his firstborn was Joel. In the
name of his second, Abijah, they were judging
in
Beersheba. His sons, however, did not walk in
his ways, but turned aside after dishonest
gain
and took bribes and perverted justice. Then
all the elders of Israel gathered together and
came
to Samuel at Ramah. And they said to him, 'Be
hold, you have grown old, and your sons do not
walk in
your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge
us like all the nations.' But the thing was
displeasing
in the sight of Samuel when they said, 'Give
us a king to judge us.' And Samuel prayed to
the Lord.
The Lord said to Samuel, 'Listen to the voice
of the people in regard to all they say to you
, for
they have not rejected you, but they have
rejected me from being king over them. Like
all the deeds
which they have done since the day that I
brought them up from Egypt even to this day,
and that they
have forsaken me and served other gods, so
they are doing to you also. Now then, listen
to their
voice, however you shall solemnly warn them
and tell them of the procedure of the king who
will
reign over them.' So Samuel spoke all the
words of the Lord to the people who had asked
of him a
king. He said, 'This will be the procedure of
the king who will reign over you. He will take
your sons
and place them for himself in his chariots,
and among his horsemen and they will run
before his
chariots. He will appoint for himself
commanders of thousands and of fifties, and
some to do his
plowing, to reap his harvest, and to make his
weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
He will also take your daughters for perfumers
and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of
your
fields and your vineyards and your olive
gardens and give them to his servants. He will
take a
tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and
give to his officers and to his servants. He
will also
take your male servants and your female
servants and your best young men and your don
keys and use
them for his work. He will take a tenth of
your flocks and you yourselves will become his
servants.
Then you will cry out in the day because of
your king whom you have chosen for yourselves,
but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
Nevertheless, the people refuse to listen to
the voice of Samuel and they said, 'No, but
there shall be a king over us, that we also
may be like
all the nations, that our king may judge us
and go out before us and fight our battles.'
Now after Samuel had heard all the words of
the people, he repeated them in the Lord's
hearing.
The Lord said to Samuel, 'Listen to their
voice and appoint them a king.' So Samuel said
to the men
of Israel, 'Go every man to his city.' Let's
pray. Hey Father, we love you and thank you
for your word.
Just what a great time we've already had this
morning. We're just thinking about all that
you've
done and we get to see how you work out in
your word, your will for your people and we
praise you
for that. I pray that you bless the message
and inspire the messenger. Open our eyes and
our mind
to your truth and your word and may we turn
all of it into glory for you in Christ's name.
Amen.
So last month we were in the poetic books and
now as we go back through we're going to be in
the
historical section and the Old Testament is so
interesting. If you have any inkling of liking
history, it explains all kinds of historical
details and again it's an amazing story that
goes from Genesis all the way to the New
Testament building and building and building
and one of the main reasons that it does that
is so now we, looking back on the Old
Testament,
on God's people in the Old Testament, can
learn from them and it's not all learning
about what to
do. Sometimes when you learn from other people
's examples you learn what not to do. The best
thing
would be not to follow them and in many cases
God's people, the Jews, the Hebrew people,
the example, the lesson that we're supposed to
learn is what not to do, how not to live a
life
before God. And so this particular passage in
the history of the Jewish people is a
transitional
moment for the Hebrew people from the period
of the judges of Israel to the period of the
kings,
to the Jewish monarchy in Israel. And so we
have been steadily building as we go back and
forth through the Old Testament our
understanding of this history of God's people
and how it's
working out and building on itself through
time, even going back and forth as we look at
different things we can see that all this
stuff kind of works together and it really is
an amazing
thing. So we had gone back in the past in
Genesis 15 and learned how God called Abraham
this nobody
from the Ur of the Chaldeans to out and just
because of God's grace, because of God's will
and no
other reason picked Abraham to be the father
of many descendants and just this nation that
God
was going to create just through Abraham and
his family. And then after Abraham we have a
couple
generations. We have Isaac, we have Jacob and
Esau and then we have Jacob's children ending
up in
Egypt after a while. And so when they get to
Egypt they grow and grow in numbers. They
became a multitude where the Pharaoh gets
worried that the many Hebrew people that are
in his country
are going to kind of revolt and take over. So
he enslaves them in Egypt and then we get the
story
of Exodus how God chooses Moses to lead his
people out of this slavery. So Moses becomes
kind of
the government of Israel, the leader of the
people. And in that God gives Moses the laws.
And so he
writes the Pentateuch, the first five books.
And in those he gives them ten commandments.
He gives
them the ceremonial laws, how they're supposed
to worship God and the tabernacle and then in
the
temple and in their families. And then he
gives them the national law, the code of
Israel that
they're supposed to live by to have justice
with, to protect them from, just like we have
our
laws in our land. And so that law described
how the Jewish people were to govern
themselves.
And then after Moses they get into the land
and they start to conquer it and they become
under
the leadership of a man named Joshua, which we
looked at that as well when Joshua was at the
end
of his life after they had conquered the land
and how he made them to swear the covenant
again
before God and how quickly they were to break
that covenant with God anyway.
And so how they're governed up until this
point of Joshua and then the judges is what
many people
would call a theocracy, how God directly led
the people through his man in their nation.
All the laws were given by God, the system of
laws were given by him to lead this nation
and the prosperity to be the example to the
rest of the world of who God's people were.
But he didn't tell every single person
something to do and say, well, don't do that
and do this.
So this isn't right. He gave them the laws and
then he gave them a federated system there,
kind of like the United States is a nation of
individual states. The Hebrew nation,
the nation of Israel, was a federated system
of tribes. And so the Israel was a nation
consistent in 12 different tribes. And those
tribes were split up again into clans and then
those clans were split up into families and
all the way up and down, God gave rules for
how the
families were to be led, how the clans were to
be run, how the tribes were to be run. And
then
he would have this kind of supreme governor in
what was called a judge. And so the elders
would
make the general decisions for their tribes,
their clans and the families. But if there was
any
bigger issues, if there was any bigger
problems that they couldn't deal with or they
needed special
direction, they would go to the judge and the
judge would seek God's will through his
revealed law,
that Moses gave and then sometimes, like in
the case of Samuel, who was a prophet by
direct
conversation and revelation from God. And so
the judge would preside over these major
decisions.
And so now we come to the point where Samuel,
the prophet Samuel, is that judge for the
nation.
And if you look back in 1 Samuel 7 in verses
15 and there's 17, we see that this is exactly
the
case. Verse 15 says, "Now Samuel judged Israel
all the days of his life, and he used to go
annually
on circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mispah,
and he judged Israel in all these places. Then
his
return was to Ramah, for his house was there,
and there he judged Israel and he built there
an altar
to the Lord." So God called Samuel at an early
age, and if you haven't read that story at the
very
beginning of Samuel, how God called him is a
really a great story there. He worked through
Hannah,
who was barren, and gave her this son, and she
gave him back to the Lord. And God called
Samuel
from a very early age to be his prophet. He
heard the voice of God at a very early age.
And during
this time as a prophet, he would lead the
people as a judge, and he would lead them into
battle,
into success, and he would lead them through
several hard times. The Ark of the Covenant
got stolen and then came back, and he was
their leader during all of this. And he was a
great
leader. He not only loved God and God's Word
and listened to God, but he had a heart for
his people.
He loved the Hebrew people, and it broke his
heart when they turned from God, and he rejo
iced
when they did the right things and praised God
. So now, when they come to him in chapter 8,
they're going to break his heart again. They
're going to hurt him because they have
rejected
God as their king, and the system that he set
up, verse 5 of chapter 8, is now a point of
king for
us to judge us like all the nations. But the
thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel
when they
said, "Give us a king to judge us." And Samuel
prayed to the Lord. And the reason that they
asked for
a king is kind of the basis for what we're
going to look at today. They asked for a king
because
they wanted to be like all of the nations.
They mentioned this twice when they came to
Samuel,
that this was the reasoning behind wanting a
king. Verse number 20 says that we also may be
like all the nations. They asked twice for a
king because they wanted to be like everyone
else
around them. They want to conform to the
standards of the world and the nations around
them. And
then look, if you've had children, you may
recognize the sentiment. Well, all my friends
are
doing it. We may not say it like that, but we
're very influenced by that same sentiment
ourselves.
And so that's that God gave us these stories
and these historical books from his people so
that we
can look at them and learn from them because
there's many times when we have that same
rebellious heart that they do. And we need to
learn from Samuel and from the story that the
best thing for us is that each of us, we
conform our wills, conform our desires, shape
what we want
in our lives, what we want and what we believe
to the will of God and not to the world around
us.
And so we're going to go through this story
and then apply it to our lives in the end. So
the
first part of the story and the first five
verses is that we don't conform. We learn from
this and
we don't conform ourselves to the world. We
conform ourselves to God's wisdom, first of
all,
because the wisdom of the world is foolish. I
wonder if it came about when Samuel was old,
that he appointed his son's judges over Israel
. Now, the name of the firstborn was Joel. In
the
name of the second, Abijah, they were judging
in Beersheba. His sons, however, did not walk
in his
ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain
and took bribes and perverted justice. Then
all the
elders of Israel gathered together and came to
Samuel at Rama. And they said to him, "Behold,
you have grown old and your sons do not walk
in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to
judge us
like all the nations." And as we saw when we
looked in chapter seven, what Samuel would do
is he would ride a circuit through different
cities in Israel and it would be closer to
some
of the tribes. And when they had issues, they
would come to the city at the appointed time
and he would hear the cases like a Supreme
Court justice and make decisions on those
cases.
And he was faithful to do this. He would go on
an annual report or annual circuit and do this
.
And he loved the people and he was known for
his wisdom and his righteousness and how he
made the
decisions, how they were blessed because of
his wisdom and his righteousness. But as the
way of
life is, the longer you live, the older you
get. And so Samuel started to get old and so
in part
of a succession plan and then part of him not
being up to the task anymore of making those
journeys,
he put his two sons into a Beersheba, which
was to the south. So the cities that he
visited
were to the north. So he let his two sons go
down to Beersheba and judge cases. And so they
would
stay there and the people would come to them
and then they would judge there. And so they
would get
experience for hearing the cases and making
the judgments. But they acted foolishly. They
didn't
take their position seriously. They used their
position to take bribes and to make money. And
the Bible says that they perverted justice. In
other words, that they were not seeking for
the
good of the people or the glory of God in
their judgment. And this was a major problem.
And this
was a direct violation to the law of God. Deut
eronomy 16-19 says, "You shall not distort
justice."
"You shall not be partial and you shall not
take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes, the
wise,
and perverts the words of the righteous.
Justice and only justice you shall pursue,
that you may live and possess the land which
the Lord your God is giving you." So the
people saw
that they were perverting justice, that they
didn't care about the truth. They didn't care
about the law of God. They cared about lining
their pockets at the expense of their own
countrymen. But when the people saw this, this
wasn't the first time that the people of
Israel
had seen their leaders' sons pervert justice
and screw up. When Samuel was a boy, he was
given to
the care of the high priest Eli. And Eli had
two sons who were priests, and they did the
same thing.
In 1 Samuel 2-12, it says, "Now the sons of
Eli were worthless men. They did not know the
Lord."
Now, I don't know if I had the opportunity to
be described in God's word. If the description
of me
would be worthless men, I wouldn't be too
pleased with that. I'd start to really think
about
myself and how I was acting. But that's what
the Bible calls the sons of Eli. And what they
would do
is they were priests, and so the people would
come with their offerings. And there was a
certain
process of what they were supposed to do. They
were supposed to trim this and trim that,
prepare
it, and put it on the altar to be burnt. And
then after that, as a way of providing for the
priests,
there were certain parts of it they were able
to take. And that was their food. That was how
they
ate. How they had their sustenance was through
the sacrifices that were brought. But the sons
of
Eli would take it. And when you cut off the
fat, well, that was the good part. And so they
would
take the meat from the people, bring the
sacrifices, and say, "Hey, I'll take it from
here.
Don't worry about cutting all that off." And
they would go and they would eat it themselves
.
And that really wasn't the worst of it,
although that was bad enough to be called
a worthless man. In the 22nd verse of chapter
2, it says, "Now Eli was very old, and he
heard all
that his sons were doing to all Israel, and
how they lay with the women who served at the
doorway
of the tent of meeting." Now we hear about
pastors and sexual sin and all kinds of stuff.
And I just
don't understand how you can think that you're
going to stand before God one day and be
guilty
of all that. And these men saw prophetic
miracles happen in the time of Israel. And yet
they still
treated the ministry that God had given them
as priests for their own gain and to burn in
their
desire. So the people of the time knew Eli's
sons, and now they see Samuel's sons acting
in a very similar worthless way. And they said
, "Oh, you know, Samuel, you're getting old. It
's
going to be soon. And now these guys are going
to take over as judges, and we don't want to
do that."
So they came to Samuel, but they didn't come
for him looking for a godly solution for him
to judge
in a way that would please God. That would
have been the proper way for them to come and
say,
"Here's our issue. What does the law of God
say? Go to God and see what he says." They
came to him
and said, "Look, we've got our own solution."
And really at the end of the day, them
complaining
about his sons was just an excuse for their
own rebellious hearts. They looked around them
at
the other nations. And then if you go into
your history books, not just Christian history
, but
all history, you can see that man progressed
with technology. So we had the Stone Age and
the Bronze
Age and then the Iron Age. We'd go through.
And one of the things that transitioned the
cultures
was they went from a nomadic kind of a tribal-
based government system to a monarchy. And then
also
they had the emperors and stuff like that. So
they're looking around and saying, "Hey,
we need to get with Europe. Look, Europe has
all this free stuff. They give all this free
stuff to
everybody. Everyone else has universal
healthcare. Same idea. Everyone else has a
king. So we need
to have a king as well." But this was an
outlet of their rebelliousness, an outlet of
their hard
and wicked hearts. Not just that they were
worried about Samuel's son. They were looking
at the lenses
through the lenses of their own rationale and
through the nations around them. We will never
forget the truth that Proverbs 14-12 says, "
There is a way which seems right to a man,
but its end is the way of death." And then
there's so many things that we have around us
that to the eyes and to the mind and to the
heart, the rebellious man or the rebellious
woman
seems right. But at the end of the day, it is
just foolishness in the eyes of the only one
who
matters, God. There's drugs. There's fornic
ation. There's theft. There's false religion.
There's
government worship on the left and on the
right side as well. There's idolization of
science.
I'm talking about things in our culture that I
see. There's the molecules, the man evolution,
the two weeks to flatten the curve. All things
that seemed like wisdom at the time,
but they weren't, they were just foolishness,
feminism and racism and communism. All these
ideas pervade our culture and pervade our
world, but they're all full of the foolishness
of the
fallen mind and really the Hebrew people, no
matter what they saw and they're coming out of
Egypt and the giving of the Word of God and
the Ten Commandments, they were no different
than we are
as a people. They were rebellious and their
mind fallen from sin. So over and over and
over again,
they were given the benefit of all these
things that God gave them, all these miracles
and yet
they were given the benefit of him as their
ultimate ruler, being able to go as a nation
directly to God and see what he wants them to
do. But they said, no, we don't want that. We
want to be
like everybody else. And so they use this
excuse about Samuel's age and about his two
sons being
wicked, but it wasn't really plausible because
if you think about it, they didn't have to be
judges. Samuel wasn't the son of the previous
judge, but if you get a king and his son is
defaulted to be on the throne, so this excuse
that they gave wasn't very plausible. It all
came
from their rebelliousness and their sinful
hearts. And that brings us to the second part,
that the
wisdom of the world is foolishness and we
shouldn't conform to it. And also in verses
six through nine,
we shouldn't conform to the way of the world
because sometimes God actually gives us
what we ask for. Verse number six, "But the
thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel
when they
said, 'Give us a king to judge us.' And Samuel
prayed to the Lord. The Lord said to Samuel,
'Listen to the voice of the people in regard
to all that they say to you, for they have not
rejected
you, but they have rejected me from being king
over them, like all the deeds which they have
done
since the day that I brought them up from
Egypt even to this day, in that they have fors
aken me
and served other gods, so they are doing to
you also. Now then, listen to their voice.
However, you shall solemnly warn them and tell
them of the procedure of the king who will
reign
over them." The procedure of the king, another
word that could be used to translate that
would be the
justice. And it's kind of like a little satire
. You're going to see what their justice is
like
if they don't like my justice. So what the
people were asking were breaking Samuel's
heart. He hated
it for them because he loved them and he knew
what the end would be. He knew what a king
would do.
And so he felt they were rejecting his
leadership that he had failed, but he did his
duty faithfully.
And so he prayed and God made it clear that no
, they're not rejecting you as king. They're
rejecting
me as king. And this has been the struggle
since the very beginning. This was the
original sin
that Adam and Eve committed in the garden. We
will not follow what God has told us to.
We're going to listen to the wisdom of this
serpent and we're going to eat the fruit and
sin
against God. And over and over and over again,
God's people or people in general reject the
wisdom of God and chase after their own fallen
wisdom. And the Hebrew people on their way
back
from Egypt did that. That's what he said in
verse number eight, "All the deeds which they
have done
since the day that I brought them up from
Egypt, even to this day." If you think back,
and if you
haven't read the book of Exodus, if you've
seen the movie with Charles and Hesse, and I
recommend
the book, the book's better than the movie,
but you know that they were a rebellious
people even
from the start. And again, they saw the
miracles of the plague. They walked through
the Red Sea
as on dry ground. And almost immediately after
that, they started whining and complaining
about
there being no water. They created a golden
calf to worship in place of God because Moses
was taking
too long. They complained about no water. God
gave him water out of the rock. They
complained
about no food. He gave them manna. They
complained about the manna. It was the same
thing every day.
Can't we have a little variety? We had variety
in Egypt. They cried and whined and complained
and rebelled all the way from God's rescue in
them, from slavery in Egypt, all the way
through the
judges, all the way through Samuel's time. And
this time was no different. But the thing to
remember
is that this is hundreds of years of God
putting up with their stuff. How patient is
God with his
people? How patient is he with me? How patient
is he with you? It really is an amazing thing,
and that's why it's written down for us to
learn. So they complain and whine on their way
back from
Egypt, and then God brings them Joshua. So if
Moses dies and now they're going to conquer
the land that God had promised them, and they
rebelled against God from the very beginning
of
that, and then after Joshua had completely
conquered the land, and they go and live in
the
promised land, then we have the Book of Judges
. And if you've ever read the Book of Judges,
they continue to be rebellious all the way to
the end to where they send in very similar
manners to the men of Sodom and Gomorrah that
God destroyed with Hellfire and Bremstone from
the
sky. But God was patient with his people. He
knew what the end would be like, and he was
working
through all of their rebellion. So now when
they rebel against him, God is not surprised.
Samuel
is taken back, but God isn't taken back. He's
going to let them have their way, but they're
not going
to like it. And another sign of the patience
and grace of God is that he does let us know.
Like he tells us the end of our rebellion. It
shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that if they
live a life of rebellion against God, what the
outcomes will be. We have the temporal,
present problems that God explains through the
wisdom literature, through Proverbs and Eccles
iastes,
and a lot of the epistles that God tells us, "
Hey, if you do this, and generally this is
going to be the outcome. If you don't follow
me, then you're not going to be happy in this
way and
that way. If you do follow me and you go
through suffering, you have hope and you have
me to sit
in." And then he also tells every single one
of us that if we don't bow the knee to God in
saving
faith and in biblical repentance, as described
in Scripture, as we went over this morning in
very great detail, there is no reason for
anyone to be surprised at the outcome at the
end of their
life when they have not bent the knee to the
Lord and Savior of all of the earth. He is
gracious to
us and he tells us the outcome and he tells
the Hebrew people, "Here, you want a king? You
can
have it, but here's what's going to happen."
God has revealed his warnings to us. That's
what he
does in the next part of our passage in verses
10 through 18. So Samuel spoke all the words
of the
Lord to the people who had asked of him a king
. He said, "This will be the procedure, the
justice
of the king who will reign over you. He will
take your sons and place them for himself."
Verse 12,
"He will appoint for himself commanders of the
thousands and some to do his plowing and to
reap
his harvest." Verse 13, "He will also take
your daughters." Verse 14, "He will take the
best of
your fields and your vineyards and your olive
groves and give them to his servants." Verse
15,
"He will take a tenth of your seed." Verse 16,
"He will also take your male servants and your
female
servants and your best young men and your don
keys and use them for his work." Verse 17, "He
will
take a tenth of your flocks and you yourselves
will become his servants. Then you will cry
out in
that day because of your king whom you have
chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not
answer you
in that day." Is this what you really want?
Well, now you're going to get it. Lock, stock,
and barrel, the whole shebang. Here's what's
going to happen. You look around at these
nations and
say, "Hey man, that modern monarchy, they're
really with it. Their philosophy is really
high. They've
got a leader. He leads them into battles and
he judges them and tells them what to do. Then
they're
great. But what's going to happen is now when
he leads you into battles, he's going to cons
cript.
He's going to draft your sons into battle on
his own whims. Maybe he didn't have a personal
grudge
against this guy's prince or whatever. He's
going to take your sons. He's going to take
your land
and use them for his own servants. He's going
to add taxes to you. But at this time, there
was a very
big level of freedom. I mean, you live with
your family and you lived under your clan. You
lived
under your tribe. You barely had to do
anything with the federal government of Israel
unless
there was a big deal. And there was no taxes.
You gave 10% to the temple in the form of
sacrifices
and grains for the support of the worship of
God, but they had no taxes. Well, God told
Santa
to say, "Hey, look, he's going to take 10% of
your produce and 10% of your money. You're
going to
have taxes for the first time." And I've never
voted for taxes. Who votes for their own taxes
?
Besides the people in Livingston. But it
turned out exactly as God had warned them. You
can also
look in the future history as you keep going
through the Old Testament and look at Saul as
king
and look even at David as king and then
Solomon and Rehoboam. You can see these
promises, these
warnings that God had given his people work
out in real time in their lives. Solomon put
the people under a heavy burden. He made the
kingdom great. It was the envy of all the
nations
around them. He was the wisest king ever, but
he had some building projects and he put them
under
his thumb to get those building projects done.
So when he passed away, his son named Rehoboam
became king. And so Rehoboam gathered all the
people and said, "Look, I'm going to be the
king.
You know, will you accept me as the king?" And
the people in First Kings 12.4 said, "Your
father
made our yoke hard. Now therefore, lighten the
hard service of your father and his heavy yoke
,
which he put on us, and we will serve you." So
Rehoboam takes this in and he goes to Solomon
's
old counselors and they say, "Yes, lighten the
load and then they'll accept you. Then they'll
follow you into battle and do what you need to
be done." But then he goes to his young,
unwise, foolish friends and they said, "No."
This is what they tell him to say in verse
number 10
of First Kings 12. "My little finger is
thicker than my father's loins. Whereas my
father loaded
you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke
. My father disciplined you with whips,
but I will discipline you with scorpions." And
so to what God had warned them about having
this
type of king is exactly coming to fruition.
And so after this, the people rebelled against
Rehoboam
and the kingdoms fled into two. And then they
would eventually lead them into exile, into
foreign
lands, into slavery, into the destruction of
the nation of Israel. So God has given us so
much wisdom
in His Word and is there for us to see, to
heed the things that were to do with our lives
that lead
to His glory and our ultimate happiness and
the things that we can do in our lives that
lead to
our misery and our sin. He's given us those
warnings. So God gave them this warnings and
then
He would give them the king in Saul. Saul
would become the first king. And Saul looked
like everything
was going to be great. He was a man that
looked like a king. He stood head and
shoulders above
everyone else. He was a big, strong, mighty
man. And so he would go and right at the
beginning,
he starts to prophesy with the prophets.
Everything's working out great. He starts to
lead them in battle and they start to win
battles. But eventually in his kingdom and his
time as king,
he becomes a proud man and God would take him
off the throne and God would kill Saul and his
sons
in battle so that his heirs wouldn't be able
to take the throne. So after Saul and his he
irs are
killed, then God gives us David, the new king.
And then we have that history, which we'll get
to
in a second. But God warns all these people,
these Hebrew people, about what kings would do
when they
took the throne and it happened. This led to
much pain and heartache for the people. So all
of us,
we should seek to adjust our hearts and our
minds and the things that we think, the things
that we
believe in to line up with what God has showed
us in his scripture. He's revealed his truth
to us and
we conform our minds and our hearts to that
truth, not to the truth that we see in the
world around
us, not to the thinking that we see. To the
last part of this passage, we're going to see
how the
people respond to these warnings that Samuel
gives them about a king. Verse 19 says, "Never
theless,
the people refuse to listen to the voice of
Samuel and they said, 'No, but there shall be
a king
over us, that we also may be like all the
nations, that our king may judge us and go out
before us
and fight our battles.'" Now after Samuel had
heard all the words of the people, he repeated
them in
the Lord's hearing. The Lord said to Samuel, "
Listen to their voice and appoint them a king."
So Samuel
said to the men of Israel, "Go every man to
his city." God instructs him to listen to the
foolishness
and to the rebelliousness of the people, the
will of the people, even though it comes from
this place
of rebelliousness in their hearts. He is very
patient, but the amazing thing is this is
actually
showing another way that God is gracious, that
God is patient, and that he is sovereign and
works
through his providence even in the rebellious
ness and sinfulness of his people. He's going
to take
this wicked, evil decision from the Israelites
, the Hebrew people, for a king against the
will of
God and turn it into their own salvation. So
they're going to transition from this this
theocracy where God leads into this monarchy.
And even though it was done for the wrong
reasons,
God is going to take this monarchy. And when
he gets a king in David, he's going to make a
promise
to David that through this monarchy one day,
one of David's sons will sit on the throne
forever.
And we know who that son is. That son is Jesus
Christ, our Lord and our king.
God used that rebelliousness in his providence
to work out the greatest act of his grace and
the
greatest act of his mercy for his own glory
and for our good. And look, he can do that in
in our
lives. Look how Paul describes it in Ephesians
119. He says, "And what is the surpassing
greatness of
his power toward us who believe? These are in
accordance with the working of the strength of
his might, what he brought about in Christ
when he raised him from the dead and seated
him at his
right hand in the heavenly places, far above
all rule and authority and power and dominion
and every name that is named, not only in this
age, but also in the one to come. And he put
all
things in subjection under his feet and gave
him his head over all things to the church,
which is his body, the fullness of him who
fills all in all." So he took this this act of
rebellion
and turned it into the way that he would bring
this king where Christ would now
subject everything under his rule once and for
all as king of the whole universe.
So what does this have to do with us now? So
we know that as we look at these examples of
the
Hebrew people, we can find our rebelliousness
in our hearts, the things that we've done in
our
lives and we can use that as our example. Now
we're not looking for a king, we would fight
that,
but there's other ways, other things that we
were rebellious against and also we also look
at those around us. We look at the the culture
that we have and we're influenced greatly by
our
culture. Do we cringe sometimes when we hear
how some of the theology that Paul gives? Does
that
... oh man, I don't know if I can get on the
end of 1st Timothy 2 or Romans 13 when Paul
tells us
to pay taxes even to the wicked emperor of
Rome or Ephesians 5 when Paul describes the
biblical
role of men as husbands and the biblical role
of women as wives and then as children and
slaves
and masters or employees and employers. So we
have all these ideas that we're just
surrounded by.
It's in the air that we breathe in our culture
and we see these things in Scripture and what
we
need to do is to not be rebellious, to conform
ourselves to these truths and not conform
ourselves
to those around us. The second thing that we
can learn is that God works even in rebellious
people.
How many of us have someone that we know has a
rebellious heart that hasn't bent the knee
to Christ as king, as savior? Well, the fact
is that God can take the rebelliousness and we
can
all relate to this and turn it into a heart
that seeks him, a heart that bends the knee to
him.
He can at last use all that for his glory and
our goodness in some way. There's always a
reason to
hope while our loved ones or our friends or
family are still alive and we can pray that
they would bow the knee to God as king. So let
us all have willing hearts to follow God and
his
wisdom, ready to change our minds and our
hearts to conform ourselves to his ideas that
he's revealed
in Scripture for us, not like the Hebrews that
came before us, but like those Paul
are talking to in Romans 12 verse 2. "Do not
be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind, so that you may
prove what the will of God is, that which is
good
and acceptable and perfect." Let that be our
desire and our heart. And let's take these
old rebellious Hebrews as our example of what
not to do and how not to be. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your
word. Lord, it is a blessing to have the
revelation
that you have given us in Christ expounded it
to us all throughout history in your word. And
I pray
that I have somewhat been helpful. I pray that
your word goes forth and blesses your people
for your glory in Christ's name. Amen.
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