Give Us a King!

Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, "Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now make for us a king to judge us like all the nations".

1 Samuel 8:4-5

The history of the books of Samuel really divide into three separate stages in the experience of the children of Israel. The first stage of their history is a time when they had no king -- when they were governed by the judges whom God raised up to deliver them from their enemies and to defend them when they were under attack. The second period covered by these books was when they were governed by their own king -- King Saul, who is anointed king in chapter 9. The third period was one when they were governed by God's king -- by a king after God's own heart, King David.

Chapter 8 is the transition between the first and second of these periods, between the time when they had no king, when Jehovah was unashamedly their king, when he governed them through people like Samuel, to defend them and rule over them. Now there is a transition from being in that position to their choosing a king for themselves, in the person of Saul. To use the technical terms, chapter 8 marks a transition in Israel's history from being a theocracy -- a land governed by God himself -- to being a monarchy, a land governed by an earthly king.

From one point of view, one would have thought that this was not a great issue. They were now in the land of Canaan, and there was much to be done to possess the land and defend themselves against their enemies. Yet their desire to have a king is one of the things that God raises against his people. This desire represented a movement away from God and away from complete and utter dependence on him and his rule in the lives of his people. And anything that takes us away from God is not good. It doesn't matter whether it is in the state or in the church, whether it is in our own individual lives or in our corporate lives, anything that takes us away from God and his absolute rule in our lives can never be a good thing.

The essence of sin is rebellion against God, and his right to rule in our lives. Man wants to be his own ruler, to shape his own destiny, to decide for himself what is right and what is wrong, does not want to listen to God's voice speaking in the Bible, or bow under God's sovereign rule and law and commands. That was the essence of sin at the very beginning, when Satan said to Adam "Did God say that in the day you would eat you would die? You will not die". Satan comes so carefully, to draw them away from the path of righteousness and says to them that they will be better off if they rebel against God. And sin has not changed one little bit in time. It is still the essence of sin that it rebels against the God of the Bible and the God of the covenant. Christ came to deal with sin in human life, in the consciences of men and women, so that we could know once again the blessing of God ruling in our lives, instead of being in bondage to the power of sin that rebels against the God of the Word, and against the Word of God.

This, then, was a great turning-point, a defining moment in the history of the children of Israel, one marked by a rejection of Samuel and of Samuel's God. We are dealing here with the very essence of the sin problem for which the Gospel remains the only solution, and the only answer to our fundamental need. Let's look at the request for a king -- this great rebellion against the covenant God, which swept right through the tribes of Israel, through all the families and homes of the covenant; suddenly it became fashionable to have a king, so they requested a king. This great request highlights, I think, three issues:

1. The occasion on which they requested a king. The book of Samuel is very specific.

2. The reasons for which they asked a king. There were two reasons which led to them making this request.

3. The results of this request.

The Occasion

Up until this point there has been little word on the part of Israel of their having a king over them. They have been happy with the sovereign rule of God over his people. Time and again he had raised the judges -- see how the people of God had been attacked by their enemies; they could say in the words of Psalm 124 "if God had not been on their side, they would have been swallowed up..." But God WAS on their side. He delivered them, and was a faithful king to them. He defended them, and gave them help when they needed it most. He raised up a Gideon here, a Samson there, a Deborah here, a Samuel there, to govern his people. Through these people, God was a king to his Israel, acting for them in defence.

So why now ask for a king if the rule of God had been so successful in consolidating them in the land and in establishing their position. So why now?

The occasion was very simple and sad. When Samuel was old he made his sons judges. The first was called Joel, meaning "God is king". What a wonderful name to give his eldest child. The name represented the very essence of Israel's history, and of God's covenant with his people. God was their king. The name of his other son was Abiah, meaning "Jehovah is my father". You see, the names of Samuel's sons indicated the special relationship which Jehovah had to his own people. But we are told that his sons did not walk in his ways. They wanted to get as much for themselves as they possibly could; they took bribes, and perverted judgement. You could come to them with a case in law, but you would not get justice from them. They would make up their own minds, prejudicing the case and overthrowing justice. They were open to corruption.

This was the very thing God had said of his judges that they must not do. He was very clear and specific in giving rules for the way in which the judges were to govern the people. They were to govern in the fear of God, exercising perfect justice; but the sons of Samuel did not do that. For all his diligence in ruling over Israel, Samuel had neglected to rule over his own sons and his own home. The result now is that they pervert justice and judgement. The people have had enough -- they say at last "This is too much. Give us a king!"

The occasion, therefore, on which they made this request was when it was shown that the sons of Samuel were unfit to rule and to govern the tribes of Israel. There is a very solemn lesson for us here, and it is one we meet often in the Bible -- the lesson that it is possible to govern a nation, and yet not govern properly one's own home. It is possible to govern the tribes of Israel and not govern the actions of our own sons. What is the point in naming your son "God is king" if you do not bring the claims of Jehovah to bear upon the lives of your children, your family and your home? What is the point in naming your son "Jehovah is my father" unless you show to your children the debt that they owe to God, and the claim God makes on them and on their lives? Time and again in Scripture we are told that public office in the church of God does not excuse the lack of responsibility in our homes and families. God does not say to us "You can let your sons do what they like as long as you're good at ruling the church and governing the people of God". Samuel is now reaping the consequences of his own neglect of family discipline; his sons pervert justice, and the people go against the word of God as a result.

It does not matter what we are publicly before men -- the Bible calls us to be diligent in our responsibilities in private as well as public. When the New Testament lays down regulations for those who will bear office in the church of God, it begins with their lives at home -- faithful to their wives, diligent in their homes, bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; if a man cannot govern his family, the Bible says, how can he govern the church of God. It will be no excuse for me at the end of history, before God's throne -- "I had no time to look after my children because of the time I spent looking after my congregation". I cannot excuse my lack of private discipline on the grounds of my diligence as a pastor. God says to me that I must be everything that he demands of every Christian father in my home, before I ever think of being a minister of the Gospel. The Bible furnishes me with many examples of men who were good at ruling the church and judging God's people, and yet who allowed their own children to grow up without any thought of the fear of God, or the claims of God over their lives. It is a solemn and sobering thought that our lack of private discipline in our homes, marriages and families, might lead to public sin in the church.

That is what happens here. It is so clear and so obvious in the Bible. Samuel's private failings lead to the people asking for a king. We can so easily become hard, cold and judgemental when we see people sinning; but we must always ask ourselves, has the ethos of our congregation and of our own worship and testimony given the occasion for that sin? Has our own lack of diligence, privately and publicly given occasion for that sin. The church of Christ is as strong as its individual members keeping close to Christ and living for Christ and honouring Christ in all that they do.

Sometimes we wish we could do more for the church; maybe we see others giving themselves as ministers and missionaries, and doing great public service for the church of Christ, while we are just getting on with the routine things of life. Maybe you're raising children at home and wishing you could do more for the Lord. I say to you -- where God has put you, you do that for his glory; if it is working behind the scenes, where nobody notices, keep doing it, and do it for the glory of God. That is the greatest contribution you can make to the church in the world. The greatest danger we can face is that we will use our public face to mask our private sin, as Samuel did. There is a day coming when everything done in secret will be made public, and everything not done in secret will be made public too.

Here is Samuel, and his record is a dismal one; but what an example to us. He has neglected basic Christian duties, in governing his family and leading his sons in the ways of the Lord. Perhaps he excused his lack of governing his sons on the grounds of his governing the tribes of Israel. But God says that this is no excuse at all. And that is the occasion on which they asked for a king.

The Reasons

For what reasons did they request a king? Why did they want a king. There are two things that weighed heavily on the minds of the elders of Israel at this time. The first was this: they said to Samuel, "Samuel, you're getting old" (verse 4). And that is it. Samuel was getting old, and old people are no use to the church are they? The elders of Israel wanted someone who was young, dynamic, energetic, with new ideas, fresh ways of operating, someone just out of College, who can speak the right language and who can meet the needs of the age with new words, new philosophies, new attitudes. Samuel was just a relic from the past! To the modern world of the elders' day, what was needed was not a new start, but a new leader; a king, full of the zeal and vigour of youth, who would lead the people into a new generation.

Now don't get me wrong; every preacher has to start somewhere. It's all very well for vacant congregations to say "We need someone experienced"; let us not forget that experience has to have its own genesis, its own beginnings. Let's not be guilty in our churches of ignoring new ideas, and new concepts, and new ways of doing things. It is a strange phenomenon that sometimes the very people who object to all change in the church do it on the grounds that what was OK for their grandfather will be OK for them. But you do not find the same people riding a horse when their neighbour drives a car, or fetching water from a well when others have modern plumbing installed! New times do need new blood, and we could all do with new enthusiasm that youthfulness and freshness represents.

But we have to be careful. This must not be a mandate for wholesale rejection of the past. That is what the elders of Israel were coming perilously close to -- not just a statement about Samuel's age, but a statement about their whole history. We can be the same ourselves. The same voices are raised today, even in the church itself. There is a protest against history -- a desire for 'new' everything. Samuel was getting too old.

But there was also a lack of faith here, was there not? Samuel was getting old. Yet was it not Samuel himself who would say of Eliab: "God looks on the heart" (16:7). The elders were forgetting the most important consideration of all -- it was God who gave them Samuel. It was GOD who raised up the judge, and provided a deliverer at a time of crisis. Their complaint was not merely against Samuel but against GOD.

God said as much to Samuel in verse 7: "they have not rejected you; they have rejected ME!". What they were actually saying was that God's way was not good enough; that they could improve on what God had done for them up until now, but they disguised their rejection of God under the cloak of a rejection of Samuel. Samuel's age was not the problem; God's authority was their problem. What they needed more than anything was to get back to the God of Samuel, back to his message and to his covenant claims upon them.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century we too need to get back to the ways and the Word of God, back to the claims of God's truth; back to the Bible, more than anything else. Our nation has said "God's way is not best". It has delivered its verdict on Christianity, and it regards it as too old to be of any use in this modern world. Yet the world needs what the world rejects; only the God of the Bible and the God of the covenant can save. The God of the prophets, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ -- that is what we need; not a religion that improves on the Bible, but one that will bring us BACK to the Bible, and to what God has laid down in his word as the one rule to direct us in glorifying and enjoying him.

So, while churches clamour for something new, for finding the least common denominator between creeds and churches, crying for a new world faith that will amalgamate and incarnate in one all the religions of men, God says to us that we need to come back to the one great salvation of God's providing in Jesus Christ. They said to Samuel 'You're too old'; what they were really saying was 'We don't want God any more'. His ways had become too demanding. This is the essence of sin: to turn away from God to ourselves.

But there was a second reason. "Make us a king to judge us like all the nations" (verse 5, 20). They wanted to be like the rest. They all had a king, and Israel did not want to be the odd man out. The great irony was that every time they had trusted in God they had never lost a battle; now they are requesting a king, so that he would save them! What Israel forgot was that she was not like the other nations. Israel was the redeemed people of God, called to live for God's glory, not like the rest, but as God directed her and led her.

We all know the power of peer pressure. There is not a parent who does not know that pressure. How often have we argued with our children over buying some item or another; they came and said "Everyone else has one! Why can't I have one?" You don't want your child to be unlike the rest, so you give in. You know that your children don't want to be different, and you don't want your child to be different. We are all subject to that pressure. Always looking round our shoulders to see what others are doing, and what others are like. We become caught up with current fashions, and we just get swept along with the tide. It affects our children -- we don't want them to be the odd ones out; it affects ourselves -- we don't want to stand apart from the rest, or swim against the tide.

The children of Israel caught the same disease -- "give us a king, like all the other nations". There is all this pressure on Samuel not to be different, to conform; pressure on the elders, on the people -- 'don't be different'. Do you know that we would have no Gospel to preach were it not for men who were prepared to be different? I would have no Gospel if the apostles had not been prepared to stand against the tide of ignominy and persecution and shame for Jesus. They knew they were different. I would have no doctrines to preach if it were not for the great giants of the Reformation, who were prepared to stand up against the church of their day, prepared to be different, to think for themselves in the light of the truth of the Word of God, prepared to preach the doctrines of the faith, in spite of the rest. They knew the Word of God was worth preaching.

Scotland would have no religion of truth if it were not that men like Knox and Wishart -- men who graced our history and are all but forgotten now -- were prepared to stand before kings, queens, parliaments and powers and to be different from the rest because they loved the Lord.

Maybe some of our children find it difficult to embrace the faith, and to walk the Christian road because it will mean being different from the rest. Let us teach them and say to them that Christ is worth being different for! He is worth standing by; and in his name, even if it means standing alone -- it's worth it. It's all too easy to bow to prevailing ideas and pressure groups; the Bible says to us to stand for Christ, whatever the cost may be, even if it means not being like the rest.

Is that where we are? Are we saying that we will be like the others; we will carry our Christianity on our backs, wearing it very loosely, just so that we won't be too different to the rest. Jesus says to us that it is worth being different if that's what gaining everlasting life means. The argument failed Israel at this point in her history, and it fails Israel still. We want a king like the rest; Israel was prepared to sell away her heritage in order to be fashionable and for the sake of having a king.

For Israel the grass looked much greener on the other side of the fence. But Israel had forgotten that God had built the fence; and that God had said to his people that they were to remain faithful to him. It's tempting to look over the wall and see everything more attractive there; to look to other churches, or other church groups, or other ways of doing things; and to say 'That's far more attractive than what happens in my church'. But let's watch against selling away the Gospel for the sake of being like everyone else!

It's so easy to look to the world's standards, and morals, and ways of doing things, and accepted codes of behaviour, and to think that these are more attractive than what the Gospel demands. God is calling us to live by one supreme standard -- the standard of his holy and infallible word. God accused his people often of committing spiritual adultery -- of running off with another husband, instead of being faithful to the covenant God of Israel. Adultery always begins in the heart and in the mind, thinking that things are much better on another code of behaviour, and with other standards. And that is how spiritual adultery starts to. 'Give us a king like the rest'.

Let's remember that there is only one king worth following, and serving and worshipping. Israel never lost a battle while she remained faithful to him. But she rarely won a victory when she strayed from him. Yet they still wanted a king to defend them in battle. Irrespective of who opposed them, God always gave them victory when he fought with them.

Do I need to prove this from the pages of the Bible? God's way is best, even if it means not walking in the ways of others. Irrespective of the pressure, the fashion, the fact that it will leave us the odd one out -- let's bow to king Jesus, instead of wanting to be like the rest.

If you're unconverted, remember that this is what they said about Jesus -- 'we will not have this man to reign over us'. Spiritual blessing begins with being subject to him in all things, and acknowledging that the only road to blessing is the rule of God's Word in our lives, and the supremacy of Jesus in our hearts. The world is still rejecting God and his ways, still bowing to the pressures of a sinful philosophy. Do we know what it is to stand with him, not against him, to stand by him through thick and thin, whatever things may look like elsewhere, to be ruled and governed in our lives by Christ alone.

The Result

What was the result of their request? Samuel prayed to God and God said 'Listen -- they have not rejected you, they have rejected me from being over them ... listen to their voice' (verse 7); God was saying -- "Give them their king!" God asks Samuel to tell them what the king will do -- he'll make their sons his slaves; he'll take their daughters and chain them to his kitchens; he'll take their vineyards and oliveyards for his servants and they'll be his slaves. Despite that, they persisted in their request for a king.

Sometimes the Bible makes clear to us that if we have been praying for something and God grants the request, it is a wonderful thing. Perhaps you can testify to that fact -- maybe you spent weeks, or months, or even years, praying for something, and your desire accomplished was sweet to your soul (Proverbs 13:19). But there are other times when the Bible gives us what we ask; and it is a judgement on us. They asked for a king; God gave them a king, and in doing so, he judged them. In the words of the prophet Hosea, God gave them a king in his anger and in his fury (Hosea 13:11).

Maybe you have been resisting God, saying that one day you intend to bow before Jesus and acknowledge him as Lord. But not right now -- at this moment you want to be governed by other kings -- by the world, the flesh, the devil; by your own passions and interests and desires; by your own friends or philosophies or dreams. But do you know that sometimes God judges us by giving us over to the very things we ask for? He says to us 'You can have the king you want'. If you have rejected Christ, God may say 'Very well; have the king you want'.

Let me put it another way. What is the very worst thing God can do to you in this world? I'll tell you what it is -- it is to hand you over to the desires of your own sinful heart. But as long as the Gospel is preached, and the Holy Spirit is active in the world, and there is grace in Christ that saves, God will keep us from ourselves, and he will show us that there is a better way. He will draw men to him, and will show us the supreme loveliness of the Saviour. The worst thing he could do is leave us alone, and impose on us the judgement he pronounced on the ancient world: 'My Spirit shall no longer strive with man' (Genesis 6:3).

The call of the Gospel is to come to Christ, and to serve him. This is God's warning: "You will cry out in that day, because of your king you have chosen, and the Lord will not hear you that day" (verse 18). What a solemn position to be in! To have refused Jesus, and to cry to God and God to turn away because we rejected the king of his providing.

Who occupies the throne of our hearts? Who sits as sovereign over our lives. Can we truly say that God is our king? That Jesus is our Lord? Or are we saying like Israel "I want to be like the rest"? It is possible for the stream of this world's ideas and fashions to sweep us away into a lost eternity. If Jesus is not your king, bow before him now.

And if he is your king, then continue to serve him, whatever the native impulses and desires of your heart may tempt you to do. He's worth serving!

© Iain D. Campbell 2001