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Listen to sermons from Church of the Incarnation in Atlanta, GA.
1 Samuel 8 – (before we get into the story, need to setup a few things)
Shameful Dog story - Friday night hanging with some guys (kids are gone)
Us polite southerners don’t speak about this kind of thing in public.
Us polite southern Christians don’t speak about this kind of thing in church.
(At least that is how we think!)
We might come to the Bible and read 1 Samuel, thinking it’s going to be about “spiritual things.”
But instead we find a story about politics and power and theology and violence and sex and spiritually—and how God is present in and working through all of it.
This is confusing to us modern folks because (for good reasons) we like to keep our categories separate:
-imagine going to a therapist and he starts giving you unsolicited advice about your 401K!
- I was at the orthopedist a while back—what if he started to explain why I was having pains in my leg theologically, “I’ve been reading the book of Job—and maybe this is because…”
We go to different for types of experts because of their expertise in a particular field.
And this might leave us thinking that church and the bible and God have the expertise on this small little (but important!) part of my life called spirituality.
Here’s the big idea of I Samuel 8—this morning:
“God wants to be king.”
-God wants to be king and Lord over aspect of your life
-his Word has something to say about how you do your taxes and what you do in the bedroom and how you treat that neighbor who all the neighbors have trouble getting along with and all the way up to how we organize our social and political life and respond to attacks from our enemies.
As Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformed Theologian turned Politician, famously said:
'There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!'
Our reading in 1 Samuel 8 this morning is the end of long story that began way back in Exodus.
God’s people were enslaved in Egypt.
They were oppressed by a King we only know as “Pharaoh,” but Exodus often just calls him the King.
And then Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord heard their cry.
• This pattern is the definitive hallmark of the relationship of YHWH and his people. We see these words over and over in the Story of God people.
• The people are in trouble. They are facing oppression or imminent death, they za-aq (cry out) to the Lord, the Lord shema’s (hears) and he (ana’s) he answers.
o Pattern: We cry out. The Lord hears and he answers.
• We see this king of language over and over in the Psalms.
o “We cried out to the Lord in our distress. He heard. He answered our cry and he saved us.”
God rescued his people from slavery.
He led them to the Promised Land.
God freed them the Egyptian King, so that He himself could be their King.
Like every good and powerful king in ancient times, he issues his righteous decrees and laws:
The Hebrew word for this is Torah – it means instruction.
God revealed to them his good ways of living.
It’s God’s plan to organize society.
It’s a radical vision for human flourishing—with the worship of God at the very center of life.
So, God reveals this radical plan to organize Israel life around his worship. They are to be “holy,” set apart, different from the rest of the nations, indeed they are supposed to demonstrate for the nations the loving and just ways of their God.
No more oppressive regimes!
No more human Kings forcing us to produce more so that they can have more.
No more human Kings enlisting us to fight their battles to expand their wealth and influence and power in the world. (We’re done with Pharaoh!)
God makes a Covenant with them.
It’s God’s dream of for God’s people, and this is how it sounds:
You be my people, by worshipping me alone and following my in good and loving ways,
And I will be your God, and I will provide for you and protect you (essentially, I will be your king)
No need for a human King. We have a covenant. We have the Torah.
And we do have Priestly leaders who help us to remember the Torah.
They remind us what it means to live in covenant with a God of love and justice.
And this is our story this morning in 1 Samuel 8.
Or, we might say, 1 Samuel 8 is the end of this story—or at least the end of this chapter.
The people are living in the land that God had promised them.
Their priestly ruler Samuel has been leading them in covenant relationship with God in the land he gave them. Samuel is prophet, priest and judge (this is basically a theocracy).
Things are going according to God’s plan.
And then all the elders of Israel gathered together,
and in one voice they say,
“Samuel—you’re the man. You’ve done a great job.
You’ve led us back into covenant relationship with God.
You’ve restored justice in the land. We’ve enjoyed safety and prosperity in your time.
Thank you.
But you are getting old and your sons that helping a judges—well they aren’t like you. They take bribes and they don’t administer the kind of justice that the Torah was supposed to inspire.”
{ - Can you imagine not living in a country where you aren’t happy about any of the candidates for head of state? }
This system we have just isn’t working out. After hundreds of years of doing it like this, we need to admit there has to be a better way.
Please, appoint a King for us so we can be like other nations.
The people are just being practical. They are realists.
The times are changing.
And in the face of the political and technological challenges, the people of God come to the conclusion that it would be better if they were more like the culture around them.
But the text tells us “The thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to govern us.’”
Samuel is not happy.
He has spent his life calling this people to live into the covenant with their God.
Now the people are asking for something that is obviously against the plan that God had for them.
In fact, not being like other nations is Israel’s vocation in the world.
They are to be set apart for God’s purpose, a strange and holy people.
{Our hope, is that in wearing these strange clothes every Sunday, and in censing the altar, and in elevating the chalice, and all of these other strange rituals that we do—is that you will recognize that something very different and strange and out-of-the-ordinary is happening here (you might say ‘holy.’) And hopefully that strangeness will bleed over into all of your life.
You are a strange people, set apart for God’s holy purposes. You don’t have to be like everyone in your class or at your work or on your block
You’re free!
You’re set apart.
Your job is not be relevant and look cool.
Your job is to demonstrate a different way of living in the world.
You are a holy sign of God’s beauty, goodness, and truth—pointing the world to our Savior.
The People are asking for a king.
And Samuel is discouraged. (Leading people can be discouraging. Ministry can be hard sometimes. As you serve, know you’re not alone. A lot of us are stubborn and slow on the up-take.)
He has no idea what to do.
So he prays to the Lord.
And of course, because God is the best king his people could ever have and what they are asking is what’s best for him so He isn’t going to give them what isn’t best for them, right?
God says the most surprising thing Samuel could have ever heard.
Normally, God sends prophets to win them back—to remind them of who God is and to just keep trusting in him.
Only that is not what God does here.
Instead He says, “Okay. Listen to the voice of the people. Do whatever they want you to do.
But do not think they are rejecting you.
(This is not about your ministry career or your leadership skills or lack thereof).
They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
Rejection.
It turns that rejecting God’s instruction, rejecting His Word, rejecting his spiritual leadership, is actually just rejecting God himself.
“It’s not you they are rejecting. It’s me.”
Somebody here needs to hear this word of comfort and encouragement:
You did your part to raise godly kids. You taught them the Word. You taught them how to love God and love others. But they chose a different path.
“It’s not you they are rejecting. It’s me.”
Maybe you’re a teacher and God put you in the lives of some kids for purpose and you know it, but they still went a different way.
“It’s not you they are rejecting. It’s me.”
Sometimes God gives you a ministry that fails. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your faithfulness.
Somebody here needs to hear this word of challenge:
Some of us thought that we could love God but not do what His word asks of us.
We thought we could choose God and also choose our own path.
But we have at least this story to remind us, that when we reject God’s path, when we reject God’s good plan for our life, the people he sent to show us his ways--we are actually rejecting him as our king.
God says: In choosing your own path, you actually just rejecting me.
God tells Samuel. “Look, this is nothing new. My people have been doing this ever since I brought them out Egypt. They keep turning to other gods, searching for something or someone else to save them. What’s happening to you now is simply the pattern they are stuck in.”
God wants to be our King.
But we don’t trust God to be our king.
We’re always searching for another king to save us, right?
This is not just their story, is it? It’s our story, right?
We doubt God and His Word and His ways--in the face of new technological advances, of new scientific discoveries, and in new political climates.
As if when God was laying out his vision for human flourishing---he couldn’t have anticipated the Scientific Revolution or the Sexual Revolution or the current socio-political forces that result in migration to our country….
or whatever situation you might name in which it seems to you that faithfulness to your God and His strange ways is no longer plausible given the current situation.
We are always searching for another king to save us.
God tells Samuel—Okay. Give them what they want. Only warn them of the ways in which the King will rule over them. Make sure they know what they are getting into.
{This is similar to what Paul writes about in Romans 1. The people exchanged the truth about God for the lie. They looked to other gods to save them…
Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions.
There is a warning here. When you insist on having it your way (instead of God’s way), God sometimes gives you what you ask for and gives you over to your own sinful passions.
And so Samuel reports “all the words of the Lord to people who were asking for a King.”
This is how the King is going to reign over you.
He’ll take your sons and make drive his chariots and run out ahead of his chariots.
(by the way, the iron chariot is new a technology that Israel doesn’t have. It’s the very technology they want and hope they’ll get when they get a king.
God is saying, you really want this Philistine technology? Once you get the technology the technology is going to rule you instead of you ruling it.
Instead of your sons using technology the technology is going to be using them.)
And your daughters are who are really amazing business women: perfumers and cooks and bakers---The best of all that their producing is going to go to the king.
The line “He will take” happens at least 7 times in one paragraph!!
It’s the job of a king to be a king, and to have more and to build a bigger palace than the last king, and to extend the territory further than the last king, and to make his lords richer than the last king. Everything has to always go up, the market has to always go up, the economy has to always expand, we always have to have more…
and it’s going to cost you God says. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers.
Remember the first tenth was supposed to feed the poor and those living at the margins and also to support the work of the priests.
Now, that same amount of money is going to be invested in military might and exploits until…well there is no “until,” is there? Because the human appetite for more never stops. Once we rule “from sea to shining sea” we’ll start to exercising military power over other territories and extract their resources to feed our insatiable appetites for power, security, and wealth. (And it’s not really criticism, God is saying, “This just how that system works if you want to go that route).
Thus far, this warning has showed very little restraint.
God has been warning them about what will happen to their kids and their money,
and we all know how much people care about their kids and their cash.
These are sensitive topics.
But now, the boxing gloves are really coming off.
God is about to use a word that beings with “s.” It is a word they have been taught to dread.
17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
For hundreds of years God’s people lived as slaves. The collective memory of their misery as slaves in Egypt is defining marker Israelite cultural identity.
Slaves is what they were.
Slaves is what they are no longer.
Slaves is what they never want to be again.
Now God is saying—in choosing another King besides me, a human King—you are going back to slavery.
The Israel was oppressed as slaves in Egypt, God heard the cries that they were crying out and he answered.
And now we here that relationship is over. Israel is rejecting her God and King.
v. 18 - “You will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
(Remember this what happen in Exdus {tell story quick}
God is a King who hears the cries of his people and answers.
But if you choose your own way.
If you choose your own king, the Lord will not answer on they day your cry out because you have rejected his Kingship.
We must be careful what we ask for.
Be careful not foster those desires which do not conform to his will.
God may give it to you.
God may give you over to it.
God may allow you to have your own King.
Here’s the recap of the Bible:
I. God wanted to be King for God’s people
II. We rejected his Kingship and wanted Human King
And in rejecting his Lordships we became slaves to sin and were given over to own ways.
But there is a part III. The Gospel! The Good News! God did not allow our rejection of him be the final word.
When the Fullness of Time had come,
After many more centuries of God’s people rejecting his Kingship,
God the King finally came to live among his People,
the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Jesus Christ, the King from Heaven
…emptied himself,
(unlike our kings who make us into slaves)
[this King] took the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and [unlike us] became obedient –even to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of [King] Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord and King of All,
to the glory of God the Father.
Friends hear the Good News.
Jesus is King. You wanted a human king? Jesus is fully human and fully God.
He became like you and suffered in ever way.
You are struggling with …
Temptation? He was tempted in every way.
Pain and suffering? He endured some of the worst pain imaginable.
Betrayal of friend? He’s been there.
Anxiety and stress? He beared it all in the garden of gethsemane.
The Good News is that in Jesus,
God has become our King and God has come to rescue you from your sinful desires.
God has come to rescue you from your foolish choices.
And he is inviting us today to put our trust in him as Lord of all our Life.
May God be King in ever part of my life. Amen.