One of the
greatest ironies of the Christian life is that while we’re very comfortable
trusting the Lord Jesus to take care of our souls for eternity, we struggle to
trust him to fill our stomachs tomorrow. Trusting God for our ordinary,
everyday needs is one of the most difficult lessons we have to learn. For that
reason, it can also be the area of some of our greatest temptations.
The
struggle to trust God for everyday needs set the stage for one of the most
important turning points in the history of Old Testament Israel—a turning point
that would lead directly to a shepherd boy named David becoming King David. Since
he was the king, it can be enlightening to ask, “How did there ever come to be
a king in Israel, anyway?” Israel’s earliest leaders—Moses and Joshua—had
certainly been powerful and influential, but they were never kings. So how did
the dawn of royalty in Israel come about? For that, we must turn to 1 Samuel 8.
A Crisis of Leadership
When we
step into 1 Samuel 8, we are stepping directly into a crisis of leadership in
Israel. The people with the most official power at that time were the priests.
They had spiritual leadership over the people, and they also had some authority
to collect taxes and settle some civil and criminal cases. But at the time of 1
Samuel 8, the most recent high priest’s family had been a miserable failure in
their role because they didn’t care about the Lord—they only cared about
themselves.
The other
prominent leaders at that time were the judges. Now when you hear that word,
don’t think of men in black robes and powdered wigs sitting in a courtroom. The
judges were more like the sheriffs in Wild West towns—they fought off the bad
guys and maintained some law and order in the community. And just like those
sheriffs, the judges had a limited area where they served. None of them were
ever the recognized leaders of the whole nation of Israel.
The prophet
Samuel was the last of these judges, though that really wasn’t by his design.
He had set up two of sons as judges in southern Israel, but their moral
failures would lead directly to the major turning point that we read about in 1
Samuel 8 [READ 8:1-9].
A Transfer of Trust
As the
people looked around at their leadership options here in 1 Samuel 8, nothing
looked very good. The most recent high priest’s family had been killed off
because of immorality. Samuel’s own sons were taking bribes and perverting
justice. But instead of crying out to God to deliver them from this leadership
mess, the people decided that trusting human authority was the way to go if
they could just put a new form of human authority in place.
They looked
around at the nations surrounding them and said, “You know, these other nations
have got it figured out! They have a supreme human leader – a king – who
protects them and provides for them. That’s what we need!”
Now some
statements in the Books of Genesis and Deuteronomy suggest that asking for a
king could have been an acceptable request from the people. After all, Genesis
49:10 had prophesied that a scepter and a ruler’s staff would one day reside in
the tribe of Judah, and Deuteronomy 17 had even given regulations about how any
future king of Israel should behave.
But the
Lord makes it clear that the people’s request in 1 Samuel 8 was problematic
because in their hearts they were transferring their trust from him to some
larger-than-life human figure. In verse eight, God said it was just one more
example of the people forsaking him and serving other gods. In this case, the
people wouldn’t be bowing down to some idol made of wood or stone, but rather
they would be submitting to a human to whom they would give godlike control
over their lives.
This sad
story highlights for us the danger of looking to other sources to provide
things that God has already promised to give us. If you glance ahead in this
chapter to verse 20, you’ll see that what the people wanted was a king to
“judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” God had already promised
to do those things for the people himself if they would simply obey his
commands! All the people truly needed to do was trust God to keep his word.
They would have no need at all for a human to do those things if they would
simply obey the word of the Lord.
The people
thought their problems persisted because they weren’t acting enough like all
the other nations. But ironically, their problems remained because they were
acting far too much like all the other nations. They had adopted the worship of
false gods, with all the perverse behaviors that went along with it. They
needed to repent and return to the one true God, to become his unique people
once again. But sadly, they thought it best to sacrifice their uniqueness on
the altar of human wisdom.
In a twist that should frighten all of us, we see how
difficult it becomes to hear words of truth once we have decided on a sinful
course of action.
A Stubborn Refusal to Repent
In verses
10-18, Samuel warns the people about what they are truly asking for. He
prophesies for them what life would be like under a king. Notice that he’s not
merely sharing his own opinion – verse 10 says that he will tell the people
“all the words of the Lord.” Let’s see what the Lord wanted them to know [READ
vv. 10-18].
These words
should have scared the people to their senses. “You mean we’ll be like slaves
again? That’s what our ancestors were in Egypt! That’s what God stretched out
his mighty hand to deliver us from! And you say we’ll cry out to the Lord but
he will not answer us? How could we ever live if our God would not answer our
cries for help?”
But
instead, the people dug in their heels even more [READ vv. 19-20]. No amount of
warning – and no matter how dire – would turn people around because they had
succumbed to doubts about whether God could truly be trusted to do what he
said. Once you seriously entertain a doubt like that, you have poured a casing
of concrete around your heart, and if you don’t get rid of it immediately, it
will harden and prevent the words of warning from getting through. Only
tremendous force can break through a hardened heart – an experience that we
usually call “hitting rock bottom.”
Note the
warning that the author of Hebrews gives us in Hebrews 3:12 – “Take care,
brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you
to fall away from the living God.” Now he’s not talking about becoming an
atheist or an agnostic. In the context, he draws a comparison to the children
of Israel in the wilderness. They always believed that God was real, but they
struggled to decide whether they could really trust his promises. Will he
really meet our needs out here in the wilderness? Will he really give us all
that he has promised?
For you and
me, that is our greatest danger as well. For every person in this room today,
the greatest danger to your soul is not running off into atheism but slacking
off into apathy – losing any passion or liveliness that you once had in your
faith because you’re not certain that you can trust all of the promises of God.
I know he
can save my soul for all eternity, but can he really satisfy my soul with peace
and joy right now? If I obey him, will I truly find that his yoke is easy and
his burden is light? Will he really put food on my plate and clothes on my back
if I make obedience my focus?
The author
of Hebrews calls us in 3:13 to help each other as we wrestle with these
questions: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today,
that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Sin truly is so
deceitful because it always makes us question the promises of God, yet it never
delivers on its own promises! Like the Wizard of Oz, sin doesn’t want us to
look behind the curtain that hides it, because we will discover that all of its
promises are empty and all of its accusations toward God are unfounded.
Declining to Be Different
Notice one
final emphasis behind the people’s desire for a king. In verses 5 and 20, the
people stated that part of their motivation was that “we also may be like all
the nations.” For nearly 450 years by this point, the Israelites had had
repeated strife with their neighbors, and the nations around them gained the
upper hand on them sometimes for decades at a time. It seems that the people
finally decided that the only way for them to level the playing field was to
follow the same supposed “wisdom” as all the other nations.
It’s hard
to be different, isn’t it? And sometimes we get the idea that life could be so
much easier for us if we just weren’t so different from everyone else. Whether
were talking about our personal lives or the way we do things in our church, we
face a constant pressure to just go with the flow of our culture.
Why do we
have to get so concerned about a little sin here and there? Why do we insist
that correct ideas about God really do matter? Why do we have to be so
insistent that some things really are right and some things really are wrong?
Can we just take a deep breath and relax about some of that stuff? After all,
it makes us look so intolerant!
This
episode from Israel’s history is a warning to us about the danger we put
ourselves in when we decline to be different. God’s whole intention for the
children of Israel is that they would be different and unique. We call it
“holiness!” That’s what he desired for them, and that’s what he desires for us.
We can’t
afford to do anything in our lives simply because it’s the way that everyone
else does it. We are supposed to march to the beat of a different drum, and
sometimes the rhythm of obedience will put us out of step with the world around
us. That’s okay – and rather than have a desire to be just like all the other
people around us, our highest desire must be to be just like Jesus.
In his
great kindness, the Lord would one day use kingship in Israel to be a blessing
to the people. He would give them some godly kings, like David, Hezekiah, and
Josiah. God may mercifully bring some good things out of our sinful choices,
but for our part, we must desire to avoid the sinful choices in the first
place.
So let us
determine today that we really can trust God to keep all of his promises. Let
us beware of the deceitfulness of sin so that we will not allow it to harden
our hearts. And let us be content to be different, because God has called us to
such holiness, and one day he will reward us for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment