1 Samuel 8
What you and I believe about God affects everything we
do. It affects our outlook on life. It affects our parenting. It affects our financial decisions. Knowing God is not about accumulating facts
that you can intellectually digest. One
of my weaknesses is that I put my nose to the grind to work hard ...to the
detriment of relationship with God.
Working hard is a very good and godly thing. But sometimes I’ll forget to remember
Jesus. I’m busy getting the job done,
whatever it is, and my mind is focused on how to do the next thing, and there
are some things that I’ve forgotten about God.
Reading 1 Samuel 8 was a good reminder for me.
If God is sovereign, does that mean that He always
gets what He wants? If He is the Creator,
does that mean that there are some things that do not belong to Him? Let’s read through 1 Samuel 8 and through
some other passages to see if you come to the same conclusion I did.
How many times have each of us missed the heart behind
what God has been telling us? Jesus said
of the Pharisees, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are
far from me.” (Matthew 15:8) Many times
I would leave the kids in the evening to go to campus for a small group meeting
or to meet up with a student. I would
give them carefully worded and exact instructions for what to do when I
leave. Often, Miriam isn’t feeling well,
so I need them to be helpful. I would
tell Sarah, “Don’t say things that will upset your brother. Please remove all the food, plates,
silverware and cups off the table. Get
your clothes ready for school tomorrow.
Pack your lunch for tomorrow.
Don’t be screaming and running around because mommy’s head hurts.”
I look to Max and say something like, “I’m going to
campus in a few minutes. Please don’t
hit Sarah, or throw something at her, or stick her with something, or kick her,
or jump on her or hurt her in any way.
Understood?” I usually get a
glazed over look with a nod. I’ll have
him repeat what I said, then I can move on to the next order of rules. Knowing I only have a few nanoseconds left in
his attention span I continue as fast and clearly as I can, “Max, clean up your
plate, cup, napkin and fork. Please hold
the plate with both hands. Don’t throw
the plate away and don’t throw it in the sink like a basketball. Mommy needs you to pick up your shoes and put
them in the shoe rack.” I’ll have him
repeat the non-negotiable treaty before I exit the premises.” Everything seems
to be in order and understood.
But before I leave I tell both of them one more thing,
“I just gave you a bunch of rules to obey.
All afternoon and evening I’ve had to talk with you about fighting with
each other. You’re making your mom’s
head feel worse because of all your arguing.
Let me make things simple for you.
If you can’t remember all of the rules that I’ve talked about then I
just want you to remember three words.
If you remember these three words then you will be able to do everything
I want when I’m gone.” By this time they’re
both locked in and paying attention.
“Are you ready for me to tell you what the three words are?” I ask as if
I have accomplished a milestone in parenting.
I receive an enthusiastic “Yes!”
These three words get at the heart of what I’m trying to tell them with
all the rules. The people of Israel had
missed the heart behind the rules as we’ll see in 1 Samuel 8. But, before I share what those three words
are, let me share a few thoughts from our chapter this morning.
When Samuel
grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn
was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But
his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and
accepted bribes and perverted justice. –1 Samuel 8:1-3
Even a prophet can have trouble raising kids. That problem is not delegated to us “normal”
humans. I don’t know if Samuel’s sons
turned out bad because of his poor parenting, or because of his sons’ choices
by themselves, or a combination of both.
It was easier for me to be judgmental about someone else’s parenting
before I got married or had children of my own.
I’m not sure what the story is here exactly. Instead of being “PKs” (“Preacher’s Kids”),
as they’re sometimes called, I guess they were “PKs” (“Prophets Kids”). I can imagine someone thinking, “Boy, I bet
Samuel has it easy as a parent. His kids
probably always obey him.” Little do
they know about the conversation Joel had with Abijah. “Joel!” Abijah might have exclaimed
nervously. “Stop doing that. If we get caught we’ll be in deep
trouble. You know we can’t lie to dad
either. The last time we lied to him he
told us everything we did. And he was 20
miles away when we did it!”
Can you imagine how perceptive Samuel’s wife must have
been? The wife is almost always more
perceptive than the husband. Miriam and
I will be sitting in the living room with the T.V. going, the dishwasher
running, the fan in the kid’s bathroom spinning and the dryer going too. Max will be tucked away in his room in the
very back corner of the closet. “Max,”
Miriam will yell, “you better put that down!”
“Put what down mommy?” asks Max.
“Whatever is in your hand.” comes the reply. When I make my way into the bedroom, I find
him in the closet...with something dangerous in his hand. How does she do it? So, Max and I stand there at the entrance of
the closet, both with stunned looks on our face? I feel sorry for Joel and Abijah. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been
like to be the sons of a prophet’s wife.
If Samuel could know the future and do other amazing things, his wife
probably surpassed him. But no matter
how much God used Samuel to prophesy, something didn’t translate to his
sons. Maybe they missed the heart behind
what God wanted. Maybe there was
something else. I don’t know.
So all the
elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to
him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king
to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” –1 Samuel 8:4-5
As we’ll see in just a minute, I think that Samuel’s
sons weren’t the real problem. It looks
like they were just an excuse the people of Israel used in order to cover up
the real reason for wanting a king.
But when they
said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the
LORD. And the LORD told him: “Listen to
all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but
they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought
them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so
they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them
know what the king who will reign over them will do.” –1 Samuel 8:6-9
I’m not sure how much failure Samuel faced as a
prophet doing ministry, or how much failure he faced just in life in
general. But this must have been a hard
one to take. It’s a really sobering
passage especially in light of it being Father’s day today. If I were to stop working as the college
minister someone could replace me. If I
stopped having a business that took care of people’s lawns another business
would step in and take over. As a man,
you may feel indispensable at your job.
You may think that you’re the only one who could do the job, or do it as
well as you do it. It makes a man feel
good to know that he is needed and looked to for his expertise. The reality is,
we’re all dispensable at our place of employment, but your children only have one
of you. In that realm, I am
irreplaceable. I mean who else could
replace me as the hook-bearing, fire-breathing pirate dragon?
Samuel told
all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He
said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your
sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in
front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and
commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and
still others to make weapons of war and equipment for 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 groves and give them to his attendants. He
will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his
officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of
your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your
flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you
will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not
answer you in that day.” –1 Samuel 8:10-18
So, God warns the people what it will be like if they
have a king. It seems like a pretty
stark list of cons. What in the world
would outweigh all of these negatives?
What would be worth giving up their own kids to be servants? You think it would have caused the people of
Israel to second-guess their decision to have a king. Maybe it would have been a wake-up-call. But it wasn’t.
But the
people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then
we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before
us and fight our battles.”
When Samuel
heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD
answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”
Then Samuel
said to the men of Israel, “Everyone go back to his town.” –1 Samuel 8:19-22
The one thing that the people of Israel wanted, the
one thing they were willing to give up their children for...was
protection. They were afraid of the
nations around them. They said, “Then we
will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before
us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:20).
But God wanted to be their king.
God showed that He wanted to fight for them. Moses sang a song about how God fought for
them and rescued them from the hands of the Egyptians, “The Lord is a warrior;
the Lord is his name.” (Exodus 15:3).
God showed that He wanted to be their king. Isaiah said, “For the Lord is our judge, the
Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; it is he who will save us.” (Isaiah
33:22). God showed that He wanted to be
their provider: “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you
with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man
does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the
Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these
forty years.” (Deuteronomy 8:3-4).
But someone could say that God was ok with them having
a king when we read Deuteronomy 17:14-20 which says,
When you
enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it
and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the
nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God
chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over
you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire
great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get
more of them, for the Lord has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way
again.’ He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must
not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. When he takes the throne of
his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken
from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to
read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his
God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and
not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the
right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over
his kingdom in Israel.—Deuteronomy 17:14-20
Or you could see it as God letting them have what they
want (or what He knew they would want later on in the story of 1 Samuel
8). There are times that God will allow
people to have what they want even though it may be contradictory to what He
desires for us, for our own good. Carl
mentioned this idea a few weeks ago. But
it’s more than just an idea. It’s an
understanding of how God does things. “In
the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland they put God to the
test. So he gave them what they asked
for, but sent a wasting disease upon them.” (Psalm 106:14-15). If there was no choice to worship God or not,
then there would be no worship. You
can’t force someone to love you and God won’t force us to love Him either.
God has existed from eternity past. He’s had a plan for you and me from eternity
past. God knew what we would do before
we were ever born. He knew how we would
treat Him before we ever breathed our first breath. He’s the all-knowing, all-powerful creator
that is sovereign over all. Let me go
back to the questions I asked at the beginning.
If God is sovereign, does that mean that He always gets what He
wants? In other words, is there any part
of His will that can go unfulfilled? If
He is the creator, does that mean that there are some things that do not belong
to Him?
In talking about the destruction of the Assyrians,
Isaiah prophesied, “This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is
the hand stretched out over all nations.
For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn
it back?” (Isaiah 14:26-27). God had
made a decision about a particular group of people and His will was not going
to be left undone. It was going to
happen. There are other things the Bible
talks about when it comes to His will that can’t be “thwarted”. One example, is the unfolding of the end of time
that we see in Revelation. These things
will happen. And God will do what He
said He will do. There’s prophecy in the
Old Testament about the Messiah. God’s
will was going to be done. Jesus was
going to come into the world and die for us.
But there are some things that God desires and yet He
doesn’t get them. What did God want from
the people of Israel in 1 Samuel 8? I
don’t think the main issue was whether or not Israel had a human king. In Deuteronomy 17 He gave guidelines for an
earthly king but in 1 Samuel 12:17 He said, “And you will realize what an evil
thing you did in the eyes of the Lord when you asked for a king.” Where’s the disconnect? Why would God give guidelines for having an
earthly king and yet say that when they asked for a king it was “an evil
thing”? I think that there was something
that God wanted, but the people darted around the issue, avoiding it. They were refusing to give God what He wanted
at the deepest, most foundational part of their beings.
When you strip away all the rules in Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy I think you’ll find this one thing. When you read all the stories from Genesis
1:1 to 1 Samuel 8 I think you’ll see this one thing that God wants. God wanted their hearts. He wanted them. Do you think somehow that God needs us to
keep a bunch of rules? Do you think it
would help His self-esteem somehow? I
believe (and this is my own personal opinion) that there are certain things God
will do and we can’t stop it. And, yet,
there are some things He wants and will not get it because He refuses to take
it by force. He wanted their
hearts. It may have been a perfectly
fine thing for them to have an earthly king.
But it was their motives that were evil.
God wanted to fight for them but they didn’t trust Him. They wanted a king who could organize the
young men for their own national protection.
In Proverbs 23:26, when a father is giving instruction
to his son, what does he ask for? The
father says, “My son, give me your heart…” Fathers, this is what you and I are aiming
for. And it’s the same thing that God is
aiming for in us. I like both of my
part-time jobs and I enjoy bringing home money from hard work. There’s a godly satisfaction for men in this
area. It’s a good thing. But, we’ve got to be careful. We can’t let those things be THE target. We’re aiming for our kids hearts. Think about this:
If you're going somewhere and you're off course by
just one degree, after one foot, you'll miss your target by 0.2 inches.
Trivial, right? But what about as you get farther out? After 100 yards, you'll
be off by 5.2 feet. Not huge, but noticeable. After a mile, you'll be off by
92.2 feet. One degree is starting to make a difference. After traveling from
San Francisco to L.A., you'll be off by 6 miles. If you were trying to get from
San Francisco to Washington, D.C., you'd end up on the other side of Baltimore,
42.6 miles away. Traveling around the globe from Washington, DC, you'd miss by
435 miles and end up in Boston. In a rocket going to the moon, you'd be 4,169
miles off (nearly twice the diameter of the moon). Going to the sun, you'd miss
by over 1.6 million miles (nearly twice the diameter of the sun). https://whitehatcrew.com/blog/a-mere-one-degree-difference/
So, what were the three words that I told my
kids? After all the rule-giving and
instruction, what was at the heart? I
told them, “Make mommy happy.” If they
stop arguing it would make mommy happy.
If they would clean up their mess on the table it would make mommy
happy. If they obeyed her quickly,
without complaining it would make mommy happy.
If they miraculously offered to help, without her asking, it would make
mommy happy. As a father, I’ve spent
lots of time, energy and prayer trying to aim my kids’ hearts in the right
direction. In the end, the fruit will be
peace and a glad heart for me. There’s a
lot of young children that are making their parents feel like giving up on
parenting. Some of the issue goes back
to their not being a father to give steady, loving discipline to their
kids. Our kids argue with each other and
get on our nerves sometimes. But steady,
loving discipline is peaceful. When I am
consistent the kids are less likely to test the boundaries to see what they can
get away with. When a father comes home
from a hard day at work one of the last things he wants to deal with is
chaos. It’s mentally, physically and
emotionally draining. In Proverbs it
says, “Discipline your children, and they will give you peace of mind and will
make your heart glad.” (Proverbs 29:17) NLT.
This verse gave me the idea of telling our children to “make mommy
happy”. God wants our children to give
us joy and not to be a grief.
I think 1 Samuel 8 is a pivotal point in the Old
Testament. The Israelites had rejected
God as the king and wanted to replace him with an earthly king. But, the good news is that God didn’t give
up. He still wanted their hearts and He
still wanted to be their king, "’The days are coming,’ declares the Lord,
‘when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely
and do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called:
The Lord Our Righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).
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