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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
Kerry Duke: Hi, I'm Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
How many times have you made a mistake and then later when you realize that you made a bad decision, you said to yourself something like this, “Why didn't I just use some common sense?” Or you may have thought, “They told me. They warned me. So why didn't I do it?” But you may have just said, “Why didn't I just listen to God to begin with?”
Now, if you can relate to those kinds of situations, then that means that you're human. Because as human beings, we want our way. And sometimes we want a thing so badly that we refuse to listen to good words of advice. We just shut out any kind of information that would dissuade us from doing what we want to do.
Now we see this mistake all the time. We see it in society around us. You might hear it at work. You hear family members talking like this. You try to give good counsel, but they won't listen. You know that they're going in the wrong direction, but they won't heed good advice. Now that good advice might come from your experience, because you've been there, you've done that.
Or, it might come straight from the Bible, and you're trying to advise them, and you're trying to warn them. But they want something else. They have an agenda, or they have a plan, or they have some kind of wish, or dream, or want, or desire, and they just don't want to listen to good advice. Now, there's a story in the Old Testament that is a powerful illustration of this, and it shows that this tendency is really thousands of years old.
Actually, it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve, because God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree, and what did they do? They knew it was wrong to eat from the tree, but they wanted it. They desired it, and they took it, even though God told them not to do it. So, in 1 Samuel, chapter 8, we find a story in the final days of the judges, and this of course centers around that last great and good judge named Samuel.
I'm going to begin reading today in 1 Samuel, chapter 8, verse 1. “Now, it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba, but his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice.”
Samuel was a good man, but he had bad children. Now, this is a lesson in and of itself, and it answers a question that sometimes people raise, and that is, well, how is that possible? Well, the simple answer is because of free will. Everyone has free will. And so Samuel chose his path, and his sons chose their path. But a good father can have children that go bad.
And a great commentary on that is Ezekiel chapter 18. But this was not because of any kind of character or spiritual flaw in Samuel. As a matter of fact, in 1 Samuel chapter 12, Samuel challenged the people to find anything in his life that he had done wrong to them and they couldn't, of course, answer that.
In Jeremiah chapter 15 verse 1, God himself placed the character of Samuel in the same category of Moses. That's Jeremiah, chapter 15, verse 1. So we have that saying, like father, like son, and in general, many times that's true, but not in every case, and here's a good example of that.
Well, the Bible says that the people wanted a change, and this is where the story really begins to unfold. In verse 4, the Bible says, “Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, ‘You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways.’ Now, make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” So these people wanted a change in the government. They were tired of the old system.
They said it's not working. And instead of saying, “Well, Samuel, you need to resign and you also need to get rid of your sons as judges. We need to get somebody in here that's a better judge.” They didn't want another judge. They didn't want somebody to take Samuel's place. They wanted a new system of government. They wanted a different kind of ruler.
And what were the reasons for their wanting a change? Well, in the first place, they said Samuel you're old. Now we have to ask a few questions here. Was Samuel unable to get around? Was he that old? No. Was it that he was not in his right mind? No. Then what was the problem?
Samuel's age was not a hindrance. It was a huge advantage if you think about it. He had the experience. He had the wisdom. He had the self-control. He had the stability that age brings. And so the mistake that these people are making is just like the mistake that the people of Israel made years after this in 1 Kings chapter 12.
Because there the Bible says that Solomon died and his son Rehoboam took the throne. Well, one of the first problems in his administration was that the people came and said that your father taxed us too heavily. And the taxation there was not taxation in money; it was taxation in levied service. In other words, there was mandatory service or servitude on the part of the people because Solomon had all of these elaborate building projects.
And so he enlisted men from all over Israel to do those works in shifts. So that was a form of taxation. Well, the people said you need to make that lighter because your father was hard on us in requiring all that service. The Bible says that Rehoboam answered in a wise way because he said you give me three days. I'll come back in three days with an answer.
The Bible says that he asked the older men what to do. And the older men said you need to speak good words to these people. You need to listen to them. And you need to heed their advice. And if you do, then things will go well in your administration. But he ignored, he turned away from the advice of the older men, and he listened to the younger men that he grew up with.
Those younger men told him that he needed to make it harder on the people instead of easier. And that's when the kingdom of Israel divided permanently. And this is what happens when people don't respect their elders and don't listen to the experience and the wisdom of age, and they let young people run things instead of listening to older people.
Now, this is happening all around us. It's happening in the society. It's happening in homes. It's happening even in churches. And this is why we have so many problems today. So, what we find here in 1 Samuel chapter 8 is an age-old lesson. They looked at age as being a detriment. Now, of course, the truth is age is an invaluable asset because of the wisdom that this experience brings.
So, their first reason to Samuel as to why they want a new kind of government is simply: Samuel, you're just too old. Reason number two: your sons are bad. Your sons are corrupt. Now, it's interesting that they didn't tell Eli this. Eli was a judge before Samuel. Eli was a wicked man himself and his sons were very corrupt. Why didn't the Israelites go to him and ask him to resign? But here's something else. If these two sons of Samuel are the problem, then why not put them out of office and get other judges. You see, the truth is these people didn't just want rid of Samuel and his sons. They wanted, as we said, a different system of government.
They want to change the whole thing. They want a different kind of leader, a king and not a judge. Now, a judge was someone who made decisions for the people at times, but he also fought. He was a deliverer. He was a champion for and of the people. Men like Samson and Elah and others judged, that is, they delivered the people of Israel out of the hands of their enemies.
Some of them were prophets. Samuel was a prophet. Deborah was a prophetess. In general, a judge was a leader of Israel in a spiritual as well as in a governmental sense. So, what do these Jews hope to gain by having a king? How is that going to be any better than the system of judges? Down in verse 20, later, they say that they want a king to “fight our battles.”
Well, that's what many of these judges had done years and years before this time. So, it's not going to be any different in that way. It's not going to be an advantage spiritually certainly because Samuel was a spiritual leader. He was a prophet as well as a king. But of course, the real reason why they wanted a change in government was something deeper.
It's in the last part of verse 5. They said, “Make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” There was the problem. They wanted to be like the world. They wanted to be like everybody else. It's the same problem that God's people have faced for thousands of years. You see it so many times in the Old Testament.
You see it in the New Testament. You find people falling away from the church in the New Testament because of the problem of worldliness. God's people oftentimes want to identify, they want to fit in and be like people in the world. Exodus 23 verse 2 is where God warned don't follow a multitude to do evil.
That's exactly what's taking place here in 1 Samuel chapter 8. It's not because they thought this thing through and said, “Well, now here is the system of the judges and here is a new arrangement of having a king. And here are the advantages of having a king over against the system of the judges.” They didn't approach it like that at all, really.
What they simply said was: we want to do it because we want to be like the other nations. And this ought to be a warning for us today. So many times we just feel isolated as Christians. We feel like that we're shut out. We feel the pressure. We feel people staring at us and talking about us and shutting us out.
And we feel isolated in that sense. And so sometimes we just want to reach out and fit in. And that's where the danger comes in. This is why the Bible says in Romans 12 verse 2, “Do not be conformed to this world.” This is why the Bible says in James chapter 4 verse 4, “Whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
Here in the Old Testament, we're finding a story where God's people made a bad decision because they wanted to be like everybody else. And it wasn't just that in so doing they rejected Samuel the prophet and the judge. They rejected God.
Let's read verses 6 through 8. “But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ So Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Heed the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them; according to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day, with which they have forsaken me and served other gods, so they are doing to you now also.”
What God says in these verses is interesting. I know that many of you have dealt with children before, and I know that you have said something similar to what I'm about to share with you. Sometimes when you're raising a child, a child is intent to do things his way. Sometimes you have to deny him. But there are times where it's not necessarily a bad or a wrong thing that he's doing. It's just not wise. And he's going to suffer the consequences of that in some way. It's just not a good thing to do, but it's not a sin. It's not wrong. And because that child is intent on doing things his way, sometimes you say to the child, “I've warned you and I've told you, but if you're going to do it, you go right ahead and see what happens.”
Sometimes parents do that with teenagers as well as younger children. Now that is basically what God is doing with the people of Israel here. He has taught them. He has loved them. He has shown them the good and the right way. They know better than this. But they've got a desire in their heart. They've got a passion for this, and they're upset.
They're not satisfied with the administration and with the government that they have, and they want a change and they want it now. They're not even thinking about the future. And we could say that they're about to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or we might say it this way: they don't realize that they're about to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.
Now they're about to put their trust in a man more than in God Himself. That's what God is saying. God says they've rejected me; not just you, Samuel—they have actually rebelled against Me. They want a mere man to govern them and to deliver them. And was there any real need or threat to the country at that time? Was anything lacking? The answer again is no. They just wanted to be like everybody else.
Now, another amazing thing about this is that God knew hundreds of years before this happened that it would occur. If you go back and read Deuteronomy 17, verses 14 through 20, you will find that God warned about this.
He said that this would happen, and so God knew that this was coming. And He knew what was about to happen. He knew that they were making a big mistake here. But because of their stubbornness, God let them have what they wanted to teach them that it was not what they needed. So let's read beginning in verse 9.
The Bible says that God told Samuel, “Now, therefore, heed their voice”—give them what they've asked for. “However, you shall solemnly forewarn them and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them. In other words, God is saying to Samuel: Tell them that God is going to give you what you want. You want a king, you've asked for a king, and God is going to give you a king. But Samuel is saying to the people of Israel: I'm going to warn you, I'm going to tell you what that king will do to you, because it's not going to be a bed of roses like you think.
So, beginning in verse 10, the Bible says, “So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who ask him for a king.” And here's what he said, beginning in verse 11. Now, pay particular attention to what he says here and the warnings that he gives to these people about what is in store for them once they get this king that they think they have to have.
“This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots.” It's all going to be about him. In verse 12: “He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.”
Now, this will be the power of the king. This is the difference between a king and a judge. A judge didn't have that kind of power. He didn't have that kind of interest. But a king has such power that it's almost, as we would say as human beings, absolute power in terms of human power, earthly power. It's almost unlimited. He can do what he wants to do. A judge was not that way.
The Bible says in verse 13, “He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers, and he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants.” Now, notice the wording again in verse 16: “And he will take your male servants.” He'll take them. He doesn't have to ask you. He doesn't have to ask anybody. That's the kind of authority that a king will have. And so in this section, what Samuel is doing is trying to get these Israelites to consider the choice they're about to make. He's trying to get them to look ahead.
He's trying to get them to understand what the consequences of their decision will be, but they don't care. He goes on to say in verse 16—He say—“He will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men your donkeys and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep and you will be his servants.” It will all be about him. It will all be centered on the king. He will have to have not just the attention and the glory and the money, but whatever he wants to out of the nation. Is that what you want? That's basically what Samuel is saying to these people. Is that the kind of leader that you want?
The Bible says in verse 18, “And you will cry out in that day.” In other words, you will regret this. You will wish that you had never asked for a king, but it's going to be too late. “You will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day” because God already tried to warn you.
This is what lies in store for you. If you want to know what your future is going to be like, here's what it is. So, consider what He's saying to these people. Look at the warnings he's giving to them. He's saying this is what your life is going to be like if you get a king.
And first of all, he's telling them you're not going to be as free as you are now. You're going to lose some of your freedom if you get a king. Because he's going to have the authority to override your personal freedom. Is that what you want?
Secondly, he's saying that if you get a king, if that's the kind of system of government that you want, you're going to suffer financially. You're not going to be better off. You're going to lose. The economy won't be what it is right now. It's going to be worse. If you think that things are bad now in the government, if you go down this road, Samuel says, it's going to be much, much worse for you.
And the final warning that Samuel the prophet gave to these people was, if you do this, if you go down this road, you will regret this decision.
“You will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.” The story of the human race is the same. God warns, man does it anyway, and then man comes crying to God. If you go back and look at the 450-year period of the judges, especially in the Book of Judges, you will find that cycle taking place over and over again. People shut their eyes to the long term consequences of sin if they can get what they want today.
So what was their answer? Samuel laid it out before them. He told them what was going to happen if they got this new system of government. And he told it in no uncertain terms, and he made plain to them the fact that their lives were not going to be better if they got a different form of government.
Their lives would be worse. And their answer in verse 19 is this. “Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, ‘No.’ They just plainly, flat out said no. We don't care what you say. So there was no reasoning with these people. They had their mind made up. They were absolutely determined to have a new system of government.
No is their answer. “But we will have”—we want what we want and we're going to have it. We will have a king over us. And they went back to the reason they gave earlier, because they said again in verse 20 that they wanted a king, and they were going to have a king, that “we also may be like all the nations,” like everybody else, and that “our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
So they wanted a king, a high profile leader. They wanted somebody the people could admire and emulate. They wanted a ruler who could compete, compete with kings of other nations in terms of money and power, intelligence, accomplishments and fame and so forth. They wanted a leader who might leave behind a legacy of building projects and other accomplishments.
So God told Samuel in verse 22: Let them have it. In verse 21: “Samuel heard all the words of the people and he repeated them in the hearing of the Lord.” So in verse 22 the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed their voice and make them a king.” Now it's interesting that God told Samuel this three times. In verse 7, n verse 9 and in verse 22, God told Samuel, listen to them, listen to them, listen to them, give them what they want.
And God may have told Samuel this three times because this was going to be a difficult thing for Samuel to do. Samuel knew that what they had decided was not for the best. He knew that this situation would not be good for them. He knew that their future would bring a lot of problems. And perhaps he needs some encouragement.
Perhaps he needs some incentive here. And so God keeps telling him, Now listen to them. Go ahead and do this. They want a king, and my decision is I'm going to give them a king to teach them a lesson here.
Sometimes today it's hard to let a thing go when you know somebody is wrong, especially if that person is a loved one and you're trying to teach and warn that individual and yet that person is bound and determined to do what he wants to do or what she wants to do.
Sometimes you just have to let them make their own decisions. Now I'm not saying not to warn them, not to teach them, not to try to give them advice. But sometimes after you've said everything that you can possibly say, after you've shared with them everything from the Bible that you know, still, it's obvious they're going to do what they want to do, and they're going to have to learn from experience if they learn it from that.
Now, that's what God did several times with the people of Israel back in the Old Testament. And so this is a lesson that God not only teaches individuals in a sense, but he also teaches a nation. The Bible says that “the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” [Psa. 9:17]. When a nation forgets God, that nation will suffer the consequences. They will pay the price.
In Proverbs 14, verse 34, the Bible says that righteousness exalts a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people. So, the decisions that people make have long-term consequences. And the only way that some people will listen is for God to allow them to suffer the consequences of their decisions.
So, it would be an understatement to say that these people took a wrong turn here. When you read the rest of the book of 1 Samuel, then you read 2 Samuel, then you read 1 Kings and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles, you see king after king who abused his power.
There were exceptions. There were some good kings. Josiah was a great king. Hezekiah was a great king. Jehoshaphat was a great king. But the majority of these kings were selfish. They were egotistical. They were wicked and sinful in ways that we cannot even imagine unless we read the Bible. So it was a terrible mistake. And these people in 1 Samuel chapter 8, even after they're warned, have no clue about what they're about to get into.
Now again, I say to you, does this remind you of people today? Let's take it on a level of a teenager. You try to counsel a teenager. You try to tell him to be careful about the friends that he hangs out with, to avoid alcohol, to avoid sex outside of marriage, and you try to warn him about obeying the laws and making sure that he drives a safe speed.
There are many things that you try to counsel a teenager about. But many times a teenager will refuse to listen because he just knows what he wants right now. She just knows what she wants today. And so they suffer the consequences of those decisions. And I'm talking to a lot of people right now who are beyond the teenage years, who made bad decisions and didn't listen to their parents, and you know by experience what I'm talking about.
Now, God tells young people how to avoid all that trouble. In Ephesians 6, beginning in verse 1, the Bible says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth.”
So God says it starts in the home. It starts with your attitude. And if you develop the attitude that you're going to do what you're told in the home, that you're going to submit to, you're going to respect and you're going to obey your parents, that attitude will become a pattern and it will stay with you the rest of your life because life is about submitting to people. We can't get around that. We have to submit to the government. We have to submit to police officers. We have to submit to teachers at school. We have to submit to the boss on the job. We have to submit to elders in the church according to Hebrews 13, verse 17.
Life is about submission. We have to submit to the people that God has put in roles of authority. But if we don't learn that in the home, it's going to be very hard to learn it after, but if we learn and make it a habit of mind, a pattern of thought to have a submissive attitude in the home, then that will stay with us for the rest of our lives and we will avoid trouble. We will avoid dangerous situations and dangerous people. And in that way, the Bible says we will live longer on the earth as a general principle. Of course, there are exceptions to that. That is a general promise that's being made there. But it will be well with us, and we will live long on the earth.
Young people that are blessed enough and fortunate enough to have godly Christian parents will avoid a lot of trouble, and they will have a much better life if they learn to listen to them and obey them. That's what the Bible promises here. But there's another application, of course, of 1 Samuel chapter 8 to our society today.
And I'm sure that you've been thinking about this. And that is, we have a lot of dissatisfaction today. We have a lot of discontent, a lot of unrest in our society today. And a lot of that has been aimed at the government for over 60 years. I've seen all kinds of protests. You have as well. We've heard all kinds of speeches.
There's just a lot of anger and a lot of discontent in this country about the government and about our nation. But one thing we can't do is turn our back on God. If we try to throw God out the window and say, “We don't need Him, we need an entirely different way of looking at things because the old Christian way doesn't work—believing in God and following His moral principles and laws—it doesn't really work anymore,” we're making a huge mistake. And of course, the broader application of the general lesson that we're looking at here is not just about physical consequences of bad decisions in this life, but it's eternal consequences due to sinful decisions.
The Bible says that judgment day is coming. The Bible says that there will be a day in which we will give an account to God for how that we have lived. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he has done, whether it be good or evil” [Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10]. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes chapter 12 verse 13, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil” [Ecclesiastes 12: 13, and 14].
The Bible says in 2 Peter 3, verse 10: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
Isn't it tragic that many people are warned about this and pay it absolutely no attention? This happened during the days of the flood. Noah preached to the people and warned them about the flood and yet they paid no attention.
The Bible says that Lot tried to warn his sons-in-law that Sodom would be destroyed and the Bible says in Genesis 19, verse 14, “But he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law.” In other words, they thought he was just joking. It was just a hilarious joke to these people. That's how hardened and blinded by sin they were.
And this is what people are doing today, except in a far worse way because the Bible says that Jesus is coming again. The Bible says the dead will be raised, they will be judged by Him, and then there will be only Heaven and Hell and everybody will go to one of those two places. And yet, what do most people do? They just enjoy their life here. They are, as Jesus says, “choked with the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this life” [Luke chapter 8, verse 13]. They're so involved in worldly affairs that they've closed their eyes to eternity.
1 Samuel chapter 8 shows that these people made a terrible mistake by not looking ahead and heeding the warnings about their future. We don't need to make that same mistake. We need to look to God for the salvation of our souls today and listen to Jesus’ words: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”
Thank you for listening to My God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Study at your level. Aim higher and get in touch with us today.