Israel desires a king- 1 Samuel 8- The desire to be like the other nations

 

1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15; 

Psalm 138; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35

For the next few weeks we will be spending time in the books of Samuel. So, it might be helpful to review where we are in the history of God’s people before we look at our reading.

After Moses led the people out of slavery they had a few hiccups on their way to the Promised Land. Moses handed leadership to Joshua, who then led the people into the Promised Land. They began to take over various areas and inhabit the land according to their tribes named after the 12 sons of Israel. This began the age of the Judges. The people at this time were loosely organized tribes. They didn’t really have a centralized leadership. But when the people were in need, such as when they were dealing with hostility from another group, then a charismatic leader would arise. This person was called a Judge, and would lead the people in battle against those forces.

The 1st book of Samuel begins in this time of the Judges. Samuel’s mother was unable to bear children. This brought her great shame in her polygamous marriage where the other wife rubbed her fertility in Hanna’s face. She went to Shiloh, where the tent that housed the Ark of the Covenant was kept. And there she prayed that if God would give her a son, she would offer him back to the service of God. She did become pregnant after that, and offered her child to serve before the Ark of the Covenant with the priest Eli. The boy grew up learning to serve God as a priest. Amazingly, he heard the voice of God from the time he was a child. This is the charism of a prophet, and he became highly respected by everyone. Samuel might even be seen as the last of the Judges, since they also seemed to have a kind of charismatic leadership that came directly from God rather than through a family inheritance, or political system of choosing leadership.

This is when we come to our reading. The community elders have a concern that they bring to Samuel. It is a concern regarding succession. Samuel has been a good leader, but he is old and they are worried about what will happen after he dies. They don’t see Samuel’s gift in his children. They are nervous about trusting God to give them another judge/prophet to lead them when they need one. So, they have a plan. They have looked around at the way other nations organized themselves and they decided that they would like a king to succeed after Samuel’s leadership. They want to be like the other nations.

Samuel doesn’t like this idea. … Wanting to be like other nations is exactly what has continuously led them to serve other gods. Many of God’s laws were to precisely keep them separate and set apart from other nations. … Samuel also seems to see it as a rejection of his kind of leadership. Imagine you lead some kind of club, and the members come up to you when you are thinking about retiring and say, “you know, when you retire, we are going to run things completely differently”. It would be hard not to take that as some kind of rejection of your leadership. … So, he speaks to God about it. And we read, 

“the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them’” (1 Sam 8:7-9).

 … Samuel has taken all his cues from God. Whatever he did, it was under the direction of God, so the rejection of Samuel (as God sees it) is a rejection of God. And this (sadly) doesn’t seem to surprise God. He says, this is the way they have behaved since He rescued them from slavery in Egypt. They grumbled in the wilderness. They worshipped a golden calf at the base of Mt. Sinai. And they grumbled when they were about to go into the Promised Land. All through the book of Judges, the people are constantly turning away from God to worship other gods, following the ways of other nations.

The way we are invited to apply these stories as Christians, is to see ourselves as the people of God in this story. We are to ask, “How are we like them?” … We are the ones who are constantly tempted to turn away from God, towards some other idol, some foreign god. The Pastor Timothy Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, says that an idol is 

“anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. Anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”

 … We might not be tempted to bow down to a statue of Dagon or Ba’al as the Canaanites and the Philistines did. But we have our own gods. Keller describes some we are tempted to worship- 

 “Some people are strongly motivated by influence and power, while others are motivated by approval or appreciation. Some want emotional and physical comfort more than anything else. Others want security and the control of their environment. People with the deep idol of power, do not mind being unpopular to gain influence. People who are most motivated by approval are the opposite. They’ll gladly lose power and control as long as everyone thinks well of them. Each deep idol, power, approval, comfort or control generates a different set of fears and hopes.”

 … He explains the problem with these idols- 

“Whatever controls us is our Lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves, we are controlled by the lord of our lives.”

 So whatever Lord we choose, that will be our master and our lives will be shaped accordingly.

Amazingly, God allows us to choose to walk away from Him. God wants people who offer their love freely. Love can only exist alongside free choice. To truly love God we have to have the possibility of rejecting God. … But, rejecting God comes with consequences.

God directs Samuel to explain the consequences of what they are asking for, 

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 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’ (1 Sam 8:11-17).

 You’ve made your bed, now you have to lie in it. … Since leaving Egypt the people have often longed to return there in their grumbling. And now we see this desire to return to Egypt once again- “You shall be his slaves”.

God allows us the freedom to choose a way other than His way. As an institution, the Church can choose ways that are not God’s ways. We can choose structures that are not God’s structures. We can cry out for a king. And God will let us have our way. … But there will be consequences. There have been times when the church wedded herself to the power structures of empire, and we lost something of who we were called to be. We benefitted from the power, but we didn’t always use it the way we should. And we forgot ourselves. … Even now, we are tempted to align ourselves to various movements of society, as if that is the Gospel, but we should beware. Just as we now regret being too wedded to empire, the Christians of the future may regret our easy adoption of the movements of our own society. … There are consequences. … We may, at times, be called to choose a path that is so different from the way our society is going that people will say, ‘He has gone out of his mind’ (Mk 3:21), or maybe accuse us of being taken over by some strange power, just as some said about Jesus.

The amazing thing about this is that God lets them, and God doesn’t give up on them. Samuel doesn’t leave with a group of anti-monarch Israelites and start his own Israel. Samuel stays. God stays with them, even in their rejection. God chooses to work even through their rejection. Through their desire for a king, God will find a way to work with their king, and through Jesus, he will even become the king they didn’t know they needed.

And God does the same in our lives. He won’t leave us. He will walk near us, constantly trying to guide us, helping us to get back on the right path. That is grace. “… God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). Jesus even prayed forgiveness over those who crucified him- “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). The forgiving father in Jesus’ parable runs to the prodigal son and doesn’t even let him finish repenting before he has forgiven him. This is grace. We choose the wrong path many times, but our shepherd is always seeking us to help us return home. AMEN