For Want Of A King

 November 20 2022

1 Samuel 8

         Since our kids are grown we don’t do much for Halloween anymore. For me, now, the best part of Halloween is the commercials that pop up during this time of year. I get a chuckle at the M&M commercial where the one M&M says to his friend, that he is glad that they had made it through another Halloween. The friend though, doesn’t yet know that he has become a ghost apparently not having as good of a Halloween as the first M&M. As they walk along, the second M&M walks through a fence and then as they walk along he begins to float upward the first M&M clueless about what has happened to his friend. Its funny but I guess you just have to see it for yourself. The other commercial that has been around awhile is the Geico ad which is the scene out of a horror movie where a group of young kids come tearing out of a field scared out of their wits, trying to figure out what they should do next. One of the kids suggests that they hide in the attic of the creepy house, the other says that they should hide in the basement. Then, someone pipes up, “Why don’t we just get in the running car?”, which is sitting conveniently near by. Her friend replies, “Are you crazy?!! Then they see a shed with a bunch of chainsaws hanging from the rafters, and the one kid, says, “Let’s hide behind those chainsaws!”, which is approved unanimously by the group. So, they run and hide behind the chainsaws and we see that there with them behind the chainsaws is a suspicious looking guy with a mask. The punchline is that in horror movies you make poor decisions that’s just what you do.

         As I go through the Old Testament it seems as if God’s people are like those kids in the horror movie, they make poor decisions, that’s just what they do. No place is this most evident than here in the eighth chapter of First Samuel where the people of Israel decide that they are in need of a king. In doing so, they have rejected God as being their king.  It is good to pause here and remember that the reason that we are going through the Old Testament is that Jesus tells us that these scriptures are about him. As we prepare our hearts for his coming, we are to listen to what is written here and discover the Jesus who jumps out from the pages of Scripture. Nowhere is it easier to find Jesus in these sacred words than right here in the rejection of God to be their king by the people of Israel. It is not hard to compare this action to what John wrote in the first chapter of his gospel where he tells us that Jesus came to his own people and his own people did not receive him, for they too rejected him as king just like their ancestors had done. Jesus, God who has taken on flesh and dwelt among us, is the God who is rejected by the very people who claim to be his own people. That’s pretty astounding when you stop and think about such an action.

         What makes this turning away from God also so unthinkable is that in the chapter just before we are told of Israel rejecting God as their king, we find that the people of Israel had entered into a time of repentance, a turning back to God. They had rid themselves of their idols and confessed their sins to God. Samuel, God’s appointed High Priest and judge, offered up offerings on their behalf and he also cried out to the Lord for the people of Israel so that they might be saved from their enemy, the Philistines. As Samuel offered up the sacrifices to God, the Philistines drew near to attack the people of Israel as they worshipped God. Suddenly, the Lord thundered with a mighty sound against the Philistines which sent them running for their lives in sheer terror. The army of Israel chased after them and easily defeated them. In response to what God had done that day, Samuel did something very unusual; he set up a stone marker which he called Ebenezer. Ebenezer is a Hebrew word which simply means stone of help and it conveys the truth that God has always been faithful to help his people when they needed it. This stone is a tool of remembrance for God’s people, something that they could see and know that thus far God had been their help in times of trouble.

         Right on the heels of such a profound statement of faith in God’s faithfulness and help we have the tragic rejection by these same people of the kingship of God. Yes, they had concerns over who would follow Samuel to provide leadership and direction for them since his sons were unworthy of the task because of their perversion of justice. Yet, instead of remembering that God had always been there to help them, and in that remembrance, turn to the God who would have assuredly provided someone to follow in the footsteps of Samuel instead they turn to the nations for their answer to their problem. Tragically we will never know what God would have done in this situation. Once again, the people of Israel make a poor decision; it’s just what they do. It was a poor decision because it would have profound consequences for the people of Israel, the decision which would be the very reason why they would end up going into exile at the hands of their enemies.

         This decision of Israel also meant that the hope of God to take these people of Israel and make out of them, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, was no longer going to be pursued. No longer would the world witness a people who knew that their God sheltered over them with his wings of glory, an Almighty God who is able to bring life out of death, to make exist that which does not exist. The world would not see a people who knew life as being a gift, a gift which called forth praise to the God who had given it. In the mindset that held life as a gift, the people of God would speak of the greatness of their God and in the light of the magnificence of their God they would live in peace and love one another, content with the life their God had given to them. Gone would be the times of blessing where any of God’s people could experience the closeness of God, knowing themselves as the people blessed by God. This kingdom of priests, a kingdom where everyone served one another, blessed people blessing one another, all of this got washed away there in that moment that the people of Israel chose to look to the nations instead of looking to the God who had always been their help.

         When the people of Israel rejected the kingship of God and chose to have a king like all of the other nations, they had to understand that having a king would have a profound effect upon their way of life. As Samuel told the people of Israel, this king would take the sons of the people of Israel and appoint them to be chariot runners. The king would take thousands more to work his ground and harvest his crops. The king would take the daughters of Israel and put them to work to be his cooks and bakers. The king would take the best of the fields, the best vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants to care for. The king would take a tenth of all that the people of Israel produced and use it to provide for all the servants needed.  Instead of a society where each person served one another in equity and justice now their whole world would be consumed with serving the king and his men. Thus, their community would be fractured into those who served the king and the king and his court who were being served. The sense of everyone being equal in the eyes of God would be quickly lost and without this sense of equity, justice and righteousness would be also lost as well. 

         It is easy then, to understand how great of a threat to God’s purposes this notion of his people having a king other than the one, true God really was. Another issue that arises from this office of the king is that this king will have a tendency to solve their problems politically which means that compromise will become rampant. Peace will be sought by establishing a web of foreign alliances which will inevitably mean that all of the idols of these neighboring countries will infiltrate the worship of God’s people. All in all, this choice of a king was one that seemed to be fraught with dangers yet even so, the people would not relent in their pursuit of having a king.

         What was also a concern when the people of Israel decided to have a king just like all of the nations is the promise that God had made to Abraham that through his descendants all of the families on earth would be blessed. This was the glorious future that God had promised was going to happen, a future which was a certainty that could be counted upon.Yet instead of living in and toward that future in the here and now, the people of Israel instead looked back, locked in to what is and what has been, not looking for that which is breaking through into the present, God’s good and glorious future. Yet all is not lost in such a dreary outcome because with the coming of the office of the king there also came the office of the prophet.  The coming of the prophets to Israel was foretold by Moses as we learn in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, where we read of how God was going to raise up out of the people of Israel one who would be like Moses. This one whom God chooses is one whom God will put his words in their mouth to speak through them all that God commands. The people were to listen to this one who comes in the name of the Lord because what this one speaks is what the Lord God requires them to do. Moses also told the people that a true prophet is one whose spoken word from God is a word which most assuredly will come true. What this is saying is that the Spirit of God is speaking through his prophets from a future vantage point, calling his people ever forward toward that future. So, against a kingship which is ever oriented toward the past, there we find that God places his prophet, the one who is speaking about a future that God has for his people. What God desires is that those who hold the office of the king know that even though the people of Israel have rejected God as their king, he nonetheless is the one, true king over all. And because this is the truth then his prophets are God’s prime minister whose authority is over any earthly king because it is the prophet who speaks for the God who is king over all. We are to make no mistake, that it is prophecy which will be the voice that will prevail in the ultimate decisions by which the future of Israel is decided. 

         The ultimate authority of God is also seen in how a king will come to reign over Israel. The king who reigns is a king only through the decision of God.  This is seen in the anointing of the king as we see in Israels first king, Saul, as told to us in the tenth chapter of First Samuel. There we read how Samuel, the High Priest, judge and prophet, pours oil upon the head of Saul. This anointing of Saul gives him and the people of Israel the assurance that Saul has been chosen by God to be king. The oil represents the Holy Spirit, the giving of God to empower Saul with the authority to act. Following the receiving of the Spirit, the king then is expected to go out and demonstrate that God’s divine power is with him. This Saul does when he led the people of Israel against the Ammonites, an enemy which threatened to destroy Israel.

         What is so amazing about our God is that he is able to take this rejection by his people and use this very idea of kingship and use it for his glory. This sequence of a king being one who is chosen by God, one who has been anointed by the Holy Spirit as a sign of God’s election and their demonstration of power became the hope of the people of Israel after the failure of their kings who ruled over them, a failure marked by compromise, corruption and idolatry. The failure of the kings of Israel led God making good on what he had promised them he would do, as we read in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, that he would take and scatter his people to the nations, sending them out in exile to Assyria and later, Babylon. Yet out of this hopeless end came the voice of the prophets, the voice of God speaking of a future to people who thought there was no future for them. This voice spoke of a new king, one who would be known as God’s servant, one whom God had surely chosen. This one would be anointed by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. This is a king who will be a king who will judge with righteousness for the poor and he will decide with equity for the meek. This is the king whose coming lay far ahead in the future yet even so, that God would hold him out as their hope was enough for God’s people. They simply knew him as Messiah, the anointed king. This anointed king’s demonstration of power was not some victory on a battlefield but it was instead a victory which would establish God’s future here in the present forever. We are told that this anointed one would know that he was a king who would bring good news to the poor; he would bind up the broken-hearted; he would proclaim liberty to the captives and open up the prisons for those who are held captive there.This king would announce that with his coming that this at last was the time of God’s favor and grace, now there would be comfort for all those who mourn. At last those under the rule of this king the people of God would know that they are priests of the Lord, people who would speak of themselves as being servants of God. God at last would once again enter into an everlasting covenant with his people and know them as being his children. The demonstration of the power of God’s anointed king is that he alone could bring God’s people to be the bearers of God’s blessing just as God had long ago had spoken to Abraham. This blessing of the nations would not come about because these people served this hoped for king, but rather this transformation would come about because this hoped for anointed king would serve them, speaking to them of good news, healing their broken hearts, releasing them from all that had held them captive for so long. This is a king who would draw close to them, speaking to them of the grace and favor of God, offering comfort to those who cried out in misery.

         You see, God can wait his people out, wait until they discover that there is no hope in looking to past solutions in order to make a new future for yourself. All that is in the past, all that has been done, will only result in what there is; there is no escaping the futility in which we are bound. The only way out of all that is past us is to be seized by the hope of the future that God holds out for us. Only as we come to the end of our future that we attempt to build out of the past will we at last be ready to take hold of the future that God desires for us to take hold of, a future ruled by a king who has come to serve not to be served.

         The long awaited anointed king, this is the one we know as Jesus. He is the one chosen by the Heavenly Father as we hear in his baptism. There as Jesus was washed in the river Jordan a voice was heard saying that this one was indeed God’s beloved with whom he was well pleased. Then the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit came and poured out upon Jesus, anointing him as the long awaited king who would restore his people so that they might be known as people upon whom the blessing of God rests. His kingdom would not come through violence and death for as he said before Pilate as found in the eighteenth chapter of the gospel of John, his kingdom is not of this world, not of the past, therefore his servants did not have to fight to bring it about. No, the kingdom of this king would come about through faith in his Heavenly Father who held safe his future. This we discovered after this king was killed upon the criminal’s cross and was laid in the tomb, a king of seemingly no future. Yet three days later, this king arose victorious, the battle won, his future secure. Alive forever more, this king reigns over all his creation and he calls us to follow him. We are to know that we have been chosen in the Messiah, God’s anointed king; we are to know that we are the ones who have been anointed by the Holy Spirit and our lives are to demonstrate that the very power of God animates our life. This is how our king has made it so that we might reign in life. I pray that you decide today to make Jesus your king so you too might be one upon whom the blessing of God is found! Amen!