Chapter 2 - The First Rejection of the King (Part 5 of 6)

 

The Sin of 1 Samuel 8

Before we get started today, read 1 Samuel 8 to help set the context in your mind. Then, come back, and we’ll proceed.

As we noted last week, the elders of Israel decided they needed an “earthly king,” using Samuel’s sons as the excuse for why God’s plan for Israel—i.e., being a theocracy—was antiquated and needed to be replaced.

Recapping 1 Samuel 8:1-5, the smart move, and the right move, on the part of the elders of Israel, as they stood before the prophet Samuel, would have been to turn to God for direction when his sons failed to live up to God’s torah. The elders couldn’t help the fact that Samuel’s offspring chose not to be set apart, which is a sidebar lesson to be learned here in the area of becoming a child of God. As a dear saint told my wife and me years ago, “God doesn’t have any grandchildren.” We can’t ride into glory on the coattails of our ancestors, regardless of how godly they were. Our decision to be qadosh, to be “set apart,” to be that “living sacrifice” mentioned in Romans 12 is an individual one. It is an act of the will, that inner drive every human being has to make decisions and to act upon his or her beliefs. It is not the legal piece of paper read after a funeral. It is a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual act to love God as He set forth in His Word (Matthew 22:37-40; cf. Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).

Or not.

Hence, the concept of free will. Free to choose. Free to accept. Free to reject. God does give us that ability. And He gave that ability to the leaders of Israel in 1 Samuel 8.

We know that if the leaders of Israel had simply asked, God would have given the Israelites a new leader. A new “Samuel,” if you will. Or at least God would have dealt with his sons and replaced them. All they had to do was ask (cf. Matthew 7:7-12). However, they didn’t ask for a godly leader who would help them learn how to be set apart again. They didn’t ask for godly judges to replace Joel and Abijah. Instead, they wanted to be like their pagan counterparts.

Why is that bad, you ask? As we have stated thus far (see last week’s blog), the act of asking for a king so that they could be like the other nations around them meant the nation Israel was rejecting God’s Law in the process. They wished for God to rethink the entire “theocracy” notion and replace it with what they believed would be better. That was the elders’ first big mistake, and as we learned, history is littered with the ravages of that particular war between the kingdom of men and the Kingdom of God.

Israel’s Second Big Mistake

However, this request by the elders in 1 Samuel 8:4-5 also carried with it another catastrophic error. In asking for an earthly king like their pagan counterparts, God’s chosen people were rejecting God as their King (vv. 7-8). (Please note where this occurred—Ramah—for this will be significant later.)

As soon as the words left their mouths, God could have wiped them out and been done with the entire “chosen people” experiment. He not only acknowledged their rejection of Him as their king (v. 7), but He also recounted how this rejection dated back to their days in Egypt and had been an ever-present desire since then (v. 8). 

However, He’s a God of Love as well. His patience is long-suffering. God had already vowed to wipe out Israel twice in Exodus 32 and Numbers 14, and this was after completely destroying everyone on Earth, except Noah and his family, during the Flood in Genesis 6. Both times, Moses prayed to God, asking Him to change His mind. God did so, although He had plans to wipe out Abraham’s descendants and start a new nation with the descendants of Moses. On the heels of these decisions by God, as well as others noted in the Old Testament leading up to 1 Samuel 8, it is truly needless to say their request for an earthly king here in Ramah was not going to be received very favorably.

One would think that this scene would have been the proverbial straw on the broken camel’s back. Yet, instead, God spoke through the prophet Samuel, giving the elders something to think about before they simply swallowed the serpent’s bait—hook, line and sinker—in 1 Samuel 8:10-18 (ASV):

“And Samuel told all the words of Jehovah unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said, ‘This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots; and he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots.

And he will take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work.

He will take the tenth of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants.

And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king whom ye shall have chosen you; and Jehovah will not answer you in that day.’”

Wow! Now, that’s something to think about...Carefully! Mull over it. Pray over it. Have constructive dialogue about the pros and cons. Decide unanimously as a whole group, either for it or against it. Maybe even go back to the Israelites and consult other respected leaders for godly counsel.

And think about it, they did.

For about two seconds.

It only took the elders of Israel the white space between verses 18 and 19 to reach their final answer! There was no call to prayer and fasting. No call of gathering the assembly of Israel together for a conference. They didn't even step off to the side and have a brief discussion. Instead, Samuel's words were met with obstinance.  Their response is found in verses 19-20: 

“But the people refused to hearken unto the voice of Samuel; and they said, ‘Nay: but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles’” (emphasis added).

Didn’t they hear anything God said through His prophet, Samuel? Yes. Did they believe it? Apparently not. Instead, they believed the Accuser, and in the process, a skewed, unrealistic, distorted view of a king and how a king was to handle himself permeated Israeli leadership.

Even today, Jewish people await the coming of the Messiah, expecting Him to be a king who will lead them, go out before them, and fight their battles, on a white horse, with sword drawn, and an army of angels behind, for the purpose of wiping out their oppressors and reestablishing Israel to her Promised Land while vanquishing all her enemies. This improper understanding of "kingship" was how they missed the Suffering Servant Messiah in Isaiah 52:13-53:12. In their minds, a king doesn’t conquer anybody by being a lamb led to slaughter.

That’s not how kings conquer.

Earthly kings, that is.

God told Israel that their “earthly king” would be sinful. He would be corrupt. He would extort. He would pillage his own people. He would rule with an iron fist. He would institute a military draft. He would take boys and make them into soldiers. Some of those boys would be cannon fodder for the king’s military pursuits and personal gains. Other boys would remain in the king’s service as they moved up the ranks, pledging their allegiance to the king, or they would be his weapons manufacturers, or his farmers, supplying everyone loyal to the king their food (vv. 11-12).

He would take their daughters and force them into a form of government-approved servitude in the king’s palace. And unfortunately, that often meant they were used for other things as well, depending on the vileness of the king (v. 13).

He would seize their property and some of their livelihood and give it to his loyal supporters (v. 14). He would exact a tax of ten percent of everything they produce and use it to build and maintain his war machine (v. 15).

He will even take the butlers and maids, employed by the common people, along with a portion of their livestock and put them all to work to help support the king’s lavish lifestyle. All the while, the common people, the middle and lower classes, if you will, will be the king’s servants (vv. 16-17).

And when the king gets too oppressive, the elders and their descendants will cry out like they did in Egypt. However, this time around, God will not answer them in that day (v. 18).

If that doesn’t describe every nation, empire, and kingdom of man throughout all of history, to include America today, I do not know what does. We, as human beings, definitely like our debauched leaders. We keep thinking it’s a better way. We keep saying our ways of government just need to be tweaked when something goes awry. So, we go from one form of government to another and back again, searching for that panacea that doesn’t exist within human means and human understanding.

However, there is one alternative. It existed in the days of the elders of Ramah. It existed before them, and it has existed long after they bit the dust.

What is that alternative? God. He is the best King. He is the only true King. And He is the only one that is to be served and worshipped (Exodus 20:1-3).

We serve a mighty King, and his Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). He even came down to this world to show us the Way back into His Kingdom (John 14:6), to reestablish His theocracy, if you will. And that’s the key point to grasp onto here. If we truly serve Christ, if we truly believe in His Name, if we truly are followers of the Almighty, then we must have our minds transformed into Kingdom of Heaven thinking. Our kingdom of men mentality just doesn’t cut it. Never has. Never will. So, why do we keep championing it, like it will save the world? Why do we devote our lives to the “causes of our earthly kings”? Yes, we must obey the authorities and pay our taxes (Mark 12:13-17; Romans 13:1-7). Those are ordered by the Lord. However, there is a difference between living a life that is God-honoring (Matthew 5:14-16) and one that is man-centered (or you could say king-centered, president-centered, nation-centered, etc.). When those of us who call ourselves disciples of Jesus get the kingdom of men confused for the Kingdom of Heaven, then we risk the same punishment as the elders of Ramah. We will cry out to God, and ask Him to bless us, bless the country we live in, and rescue us from the evils of kings with massive egos when needed, but He will not hear. He will not respond, because we have made our “leader” our king, instead of God Almighty.

For when God is your King, your view of this life changes dramatically, and the Kingdom of Heaven and its expansion become the desire of your heart, mind, soul, and strength. All other kings and kingdoms fade into the background. All the “important stuff” mankind deems necessary becomes frivolous. Even living within an oppressed society does not stand in the way of kingdom expansion.

Think about it: Jesus lived in a day when the Roman Empire was at its zenith. Nobody was more oppressed than the nation Israel at this time in human history. Yet, when the people clamored to make him take on the mantle of a human king, he refused and retreated (John 6:15). That’s because He was working at expanding His Father’s Kingdom, not earthly, human ones.

Therefore, doing our Father’s Will and expanding His Kingdom should be our desire as well.

Thought for the Week:

How clearly do you see the Kingdom of God around you? How well do you view the world around you through the eyes of the Almighty? This passage in 1 Samuel 8 is the first in a series of passages we will examine, but they all point to the same major truth: God wants us about His business, which is Kingdom building (Kingdom of Heaven, that is).

He wants us to see this life not from a sinful, tainted, worldly vantage point, but from His perspective. He wants to be our priority. He wants to be the center of our universe. He wants to be the face we see in the mirror. He wants to sit on the throne of your heart. For when that happens, life becomes full of joy. Life gets calmer. Life takes on new meaning. Life becomes exactly what He intended it to be, as much as it can be, in this sin-tainted world that groans for regeneration as much as we do (Romans 8:19-22). And when we face trials, He will be there to guide us through them.

Therefore, do the kingdoms of men blur your ability to see this life through the eyes of the Almighty at all? If so, how? And how can you change that?

NEXT WEEK:

We wrap up Chapter 2 with a bang.

Pictures courtesy of  Pixabay and the following photographers/artists:

"King" - Open Clipart-Vectors

"Field Workers" - Lueluet

"Jesus on Cross" - lbrownstone

"White House" - Pexels

"Lion and Lamb" - Jeff Jacobs

"Hands over Bible" - Godsgirl madi

"Jesus and child" - Vicki Nunn