If you go to the book shop and browse the shelves in the management area, chances are you’ll find a host of books focusing on leadership as the critical factor in the success of a business. And when you think about it, it makes sense. If the person at the top is a good leader then the organisation is likely to follow him or her to success. But let’s think about that some more. What if the person is a good leader but they get the direction wrong. I could suggest a few struggling companies in Australia at the moment who are suffering from that sort of issue: companies who have employed a good leader who didn’t understand the industry they were moving into. We’ve had a great example of this sort of thing in the AFL in WA recently where someone with good leadership skills has wasted it through a lack of discipline in his personal life.
Why am I raising this question? Because in the history of God’s people so much has depended on good leadership. But not just good leadership gifts. Good leadership gifts combined with a right focus.
Last week we looked very quickly at the leadership of Moses as he brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, - with a lot of help from God of course.
God was taking them from Egypt to Canaan, to the land that he’d promised to give to Abraham’s descendants forever. This was to be a land where God’s blessing would be experienced as the nation of Israel began to live as God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule. They were meant to be a beacon to the surrounding nations so that people would see how God provided for them and as a result would want to become part of God’s people as well.
But as we read on in the story we find a series of failures. The people constantly complain as Moses is leading them through the desert. When he goes of to get the 10 commandments they make a golden calf to worship. When they finally get to the borders of the land and send spies in to check it out, all they can see are the difficulties, the barriers. All, that is, except for Caleb and Joshua. They see God going with them and fully able to give them the land.
But as so often happens the majority win out. They rebel against Moses leadership. They refuse to enter the land. And so God gives them what they ask for. He sends them back to wander the desert for another 40 years, until every one of the adults has died, apart from Caleb and Joshua.
When their children finally get to the land and begin the task of conquest they do well for the first year or two, but then the work gets too hard for them. The inhabitants seem so strong. Days are passing and they haven’t yet established their own homes. For some, their wives and families are waiting for them to return from war. And so the effort slowly wanes until by the end of Joshua and the beginning of Judges, the people are settled in the land but are living among the local inhabitants. They’ve come to a political stalemate, a compromise, that in the end affects not only the way they relate to their neighbours but the way they relate to God.
In the last chapter of Joshua, Joshua calls the people together and tells them they need to decide who they’re going to worship from now on. Either the gods of Egypt or the gods of Mesopotamia. As for Joshua he’s decided to serve the Lord. He suggests they not consider that path because they’ll inevitably fail. They protest that they will serve the Lord, but he says they can’t do it. He knows them too well. He knows that the moment he dies they’ll go off on their own and do whatever seems right to the individual.
He’s seen their failure in not driving the inhabitants of Canaan out of the land. And he knows what will happen. And so as we read on into Judges we see the sad story of their continuing failure repeated over and over again in a cycle of disobedience, judgement, repentance and salvation, each time depending on one person to lead them to salvation. God sends them godly leaders to rescue them, to bring them back to God time and time again.
Then comes Samuel, the prophet called by God to lead his people back to faithfulness. But even he can’t do it. Finally the people cry out for a king, just like all the other nations they live amongst.
This is one of those pivotal moments in history. A moment that could result in great things or disaster. Has God led them to this point or is it just their wilfulness? Samuel thinks it’s wilfulness. But God allows it. He has a larger plan in mind.
But who will they choose? They look around for the right sort of person to lead the nation in their fight against the Philistines. Saul is the standout candidate. Head and shoulders above the rest. He looks like the sort of king they need: strong; a powerful leader; but in the end he’s flawed like everyone else. Flawed because he won’t listen to God. He won’t keep the commandments. He flaunts his authority. He makes decisions for the sake of expediency. He even consults with a witch to get advice from Samuel after he’s died. He’s a leader of men but he loses his direction as the job gets bigger and bigger. And in the end he goes too far. God takes his Holy Spirit from him and chooses another.
And here’s where we come to today’s reading. God sends Samuel to find the replacement for Saul among the sons of Jesse, of the house of Judah. Jesse lives in Bethlehem. But as Samuel inspects each of Jesse’s sons he gets a surprise. The oldest looks like the perfect choice: tall, strong, no doubt good looking. But God tells him straight out to forget him. He’s not the one. "God doesn’t see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart." Finally they have to send out to the hills for the youngest son, David. He’s too young to be invited to an occasion like this. Yet he’s the one God has chosen. God has seen into his heart and knows this is the one who not only has the gifts of leadership that’ll help them overcome their enemies, but he’ll lead his nation to follow the Lord.
Do you remember what I said about Moses leading his people out of Egypt. It wasn’t Moses’ rescue it was God’s. God won the victory over Egypt without any help from the Israelites. Many of the victories we read about in Joshua happen because God intervenes. The walls of Jericho don’t fall down because the people shout loudly enough or the priests blow their horns at just the right pitch. They fall down because God intervenes. And so it is here.
David becomes a leader because God enables him. God is going to use David mightily, so he first fills him with his Spirit. Just as Saul was enabled by God’s Spirit to lead the people so now, David become God’s leader for his people.
The only trouble is, David is an ordinary human being too, despite the filling of God’s Spirit. He’s flawed, as well as being an inspired leader. So it isn’t long after his ascent to the kingship that he falls into temptation with Bathsheba. He commits adultery with her and then to cover up that sin he commits a worse one. He murders her husband, Uriah the Hittite. Later on in his life we find him playing favourites with his sons, resulting at one stage in one of this sons staging a coup and expelling David from the city. He turns a blind eye when his general assassinates a rival. And so on.
Yet David has great success. He defeats Goliath. He becomes the nemesis of the Philistines. He forms a fighting band of 1000 men who continue to harass the Philistines and the Amalekites while evading Saul’s attempts to kill him.
Finally Saul dies. David is made king. At last the nation does what they should have done in the first place. They finally defeat the Philistines and the other nations around them. David establishes the nation of Israel as supreme in the region. The borders of the land begin to grow and it looks as though God’s plan is working.
David certainly thinks so, because he decides it’s time to build a house for the Lord. A temple where the people can come and worship together. But God has a different idea. He plans to build a house for David. Not a physical house but a family line that will continue forever. But he promises that his son will build a temple when the right time comes. But at that point the prophecy blurs a little. At first it sounds like a prophecy about Solomon building the first Temple. But then you realise that in fact he was talking about Jesus who’d come and raise a spiritual temple and establish God’s kingdom forever. John picks this up in John 2:19: "19Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Jesus is not only the promised king whose kingdom would last forever, but his own body forms the foundation of a spiritual temple where God will be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
The last thing David does before he dies is to ensure that the crown is passed to Solomon, Bathsheba’s second son. Solomon shows that he too is a man after God’s own heart when God comes to him in a dream and offers him anything he desires. And what does he ask for?
What would you ask for, if God came to you in a dream and offered you anything your heart desires? Long life? Good health? Perhaps justice for those who have wronged you? Wealth? Fame. Solomon could have asked for all of those, but instead here’s what he prayed: "now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 9Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?" (1 Ki 3:7-9 NRSV)
Solomon realised that he needed God’s wisdom if he was to choose the right direction for his people. He needed to be able to discern between good and evil. He had his priorities right. In fact God was so pleased with him that he promised to give him the things he hadn’t asked for, riches and honour. What’s more he promised: "If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life."
Now you’d think that someone who was as wise as that, as wise as Solomon showed himself to be so quickly in his reign, would hear that promise of God and work hard to keep his statutes and commandments wouldn’t you? God has promised him long life, riches, honour. All he has to do is obey God’s commandments. Yet, again, Solomon is flawed, like any human being. In fact we see the seeds of his failure even before God comes to him in a dream. At the start of 2 Kings 3 we read that Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt; he took Pharaoh’s daughter and brought her into the city of David, until he had finished building his own house and the house of the LORD and the wall around Jerusalem. This is the first of many mistakes that Solomon made. It may have been the practice of the time for kings to make strategic marriages with neighbouring countries in order to seal alliances with them, but for Solomon as king of Israel, as leader of God’s people it was a tragic and a strategic mistake. It’s often a danger for Christians to be allied with people whose standards are totally opposed to Christian moral values. The pressures to compromise can be too much to resist.
You may remember Paul’s warning in 2 Cor 6 about not being unequally yoked with unbelievers in marriage. The danger if that happens is that the unbeliever either pulls the believer away from following God or puts obstacles in the way that prevent them from following God as well as they might. So try to avoid it. If you’re already in that situation, be careful. Pray that God would break through the barriers that your spouse has put up and bring them to faith in Christ. And pray that you’d have the strength to remain faithful to God.
In the case of Solomon, his many wives, who came from a variety of religious backgrounds, ended up leading him astray. Listen to the summary of his life from 1 Kings 11:4-6: "When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David. 5For Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not completely follow the LORD, as his father David had done. 7Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their gods." Solomon began as a great leader. He built the temple. His wisdom became a byword. Rulers came from all around to pay him homage. During his reign the nation grew to it’s widest extent. But in the end his moral failure led to the whole nation failing to remain faithful to God; and that failure meant that it was doomed as a nation.
Following Solomon’s death the nation split into two. The northern tribes set up their own king, Jeroboam, while Rehoboam ruled the southern tribe of Judah. From there things went downhill fast. Jeroboam set up two golden calves for the people to worship, one in Bethel and the other in Dan, but that was just the beginning of their rebellion. As the years went by the kings of both halves of the nation, with a few notable exceptions, failed to lead their people in faithful worship of God. The expansion of their borders went into reverse. They began to be attacked by surrounding nations who became more powerful militarily. They began to worship the gods of Canaan and to give their idols the credit for the blessings they enjoyed.
The blessed world that God had set up as a model for those looking on, had failed. The number of those who remained faithful to God shrank and shrank, until they were simply referred to as the remnant, the few who were left, who stood out from the vast majority.
And so, as we’ll see next time, God’s patience finally wore out. He sent first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians to punish his people. Human leadership had failed. The sinful nature of the people of God was such that Joshua was proved right. They could never do it. Perhaps under a king like David, who remained faithful to God, despite his occasional lapses, they might be able to survive. But human kings die and their children are often a disappointment. What the nation needed was a king who’d remain faithful to God and never die. In fact they needed a king who’d enable all of his subjects to be as faithful as he was.
Well, that would have to wait another 1000 years for the coming of great David’s greater son. But more of that in a few week’s time. For now let’s remember that good leadership is more than just giftedness. It also involves faithfulness to God, a right focus and direction for God’s people. Let’s pray that through the Spirit’s guidance we would be well led by the leaders of our Parish and of the wider Church.
For more sermons from this source go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos
