In the early days of our Republic pastors would set aside the Sunday before election day to preach a sermon about the coming vote. In those days they would name names and tell the congregation who to vote for. Now, thanks to a 1954 law, churches can no longer speak out in the same way. If they do they could be visited by thugs from the IRS who would take away their nonprofit status and make sure they repaid all those uncollected taxes that they were previously exempt from.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to endorse or condemn a candidate. I’m not even going to tell you what criteria to use when you vote. Heck, I don’t even care if you vote. I’m going to stand by my pessimistic sermon title. No matter who wins, you’re going to lose. Why? We have elevated our political leaders, particularly presidents, to semi-divine status. They have become a combination of sugar-daddy and warlord. We’ve increasingly given our federal government unchecked power to take care of us and relieve us of personal responsibility. The politicians who rise to the top today are the ones with the prettiest picture and the most appealing promises.
But no matter who wins in this election you and I are going to lose. Why? Demigods disappoint and enslave. They cannot deliver the blessings of God that we seek. But they try and in the process they rob us of our freedom.
As a nation we are less free now that at any time in our history. Here’s just one example: The 850 billion dollar bailout passed by Congress a few weeks ago, went through against the wishes of over 90% of the population. Where’s that money going to come from? Your paycheck. And your children’s paycheck. And perhaps your grandchildren’s paycheck. If the taxation rate feels too steep the Federal Reserve will simply print the money that’s needed, increasing inflation, and reducing the value of your savings. That’s economic enslavement and it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
We can’t blame our leaders. They’re only doing what the people have mandated they do – take the place of God in our lives. Provide for us, protect us, give us hope for the future. At the very least they’re demigods. Demigods disappoint and enslave.
We are very much like the Israelites who demanded a king. Samuel had been a faithful leader for them, but then he became old (and we know that old people shouldn’t lead). His sons were corrupt and the Israelites feared national disaster. This had happened before when Eli the priest put his corrupt sons in charge a nearly a generation earlier. The Israelites were decimated in a battle with the Philistines and actually lost the Ark of the Covenant for a brief period of time. Seeing Samuel’s old age and the corruption of his sons produced an insecurity that led to the call for a king. They were unsatisfied with God’s method of leading them to repentance during times of distress and then raising up a powerful leader to rescue them from the oppressor.
Please understand that asking for a king was not a sin in and of itself. The Law of Moses, written before Samuel’s time, contained God’s promise of a future king. The problem was that the Israelites asked for a king with bad motives and a bad vision of what their monarchy should look like.
The Wrong Criteria for Choosing a Leader
1. Craving the prosperity of other people
Here’s the first explicit reason the elders gave Samuel for desiring new leadership:
“Appoint a king to lead us such as all the other nations have.” 1 Samuel 8:5
The Israelites looked around and noticed the seeming prosperity of the Canaanite and Philistine people groups surrounding them. They seemed secure, strong, and comfortable. The only difference they could discern was government. The nations had a king and all they had was God. Look how far that had gotten them … 3 centuries with no political unity or cultural advancement. They were tired of waiting for God to save them. They knew that He required revival and repentance in the land. The Lord demanded that the Israelites take personal responsibility for their sins before He would act on their behalf. Why not rather have a king, a human being do for them what God refused unless they had a change of heart?
Forget the fact that God had called them to be His unique community. Never mind the fact that He’d promised to dump blessings into their laps for simple obedience to His covenant. Who cares that He’d wanted them to be a light to the nations? They wanted the seeming good life of their neighbors without having to take personal responsibility for themselves and their lives before a holy God. It was easier to adopt the customs of the other nations and reap the same benefits.
2. The desire for personal security
The second time the Israelites gave a reason for appointing a king they gave this answer:
“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.” 1 Samuel 8:19, 20
They wanted a unified nation with a strong military leader and a huge standing army. This, they believed, would at last bring them personal security. They were tired of personally repenting of national sins and waiting for God to raise up and empower a deliverer. Why not rather copy the successful military behavior of the pagan nations.
Do you see the big picture here? There was no sin in establishing a monarchy. But there was a sin in the kind of king they wanted. They wanted a king like other nations who, at best was an intermediary between themselves and God and at worst took the place of God Himself. They wanted to shift personal responsibility onto government. That way, rather than blame themselves for national disaster and then repenting of their sins, they could blame it on the government and continue living how they pleased.
Did you notice the flaw in their argument for a king? It’s what they didn’t ask for that’s revealing. The elders were concerned about the corruption of Samuel’s sons. But did they ask for a king so that people could receive justice? Did they desire a king to lead them back to God and His law? Absolutely not!
The replaced the loving leadership of God with the tyrannical rule of a demigod. And they would soon find out that demigods disappoint and enslave.
We certainly cannot laugh at the Israelites. We choose our political leaders with the same criteria: prosperity and personal safety. George W. Bush won the presidency in 2004 largely because a majority of the population was convinced we’re engage in a war against terror. Now that our fears have subsided and the death toll mounts, though most Americans are personally untouched by the war, we’re ready for a change. When we thought our personal security was at risk we voted the warlord into office. Now we’re rather bored with it all.
Right now prosperity is our primary criteria. We live under the delusion that the government can actually plan us into greater economic prosperity. Erroneously believing that the republicans brought on our current economic woes by not regulating the economy more, we are about to turn them out of office. We’re going to hand our economic freedom over to a democratic supermajority who, despite their protests to the contrary, will lead us into the enslavement of socialism. Socialism is when government takes over business, private property, and spreads around the wealth whether you’ve earned it or not, as one candidate has promised to do.
Watch the political ads, if you can still stomach them, and you’ll see that they all build on either your fear of terrorism and the economy or your desire for a better economy and the defeat of terrorism. We’re going to choose a demigod, not a president. Demigods disappoint and enslave.
Samuel told the Israelites in no uncertain terms what they were in for. The kind of king they desired would disappoint by not being able to deliver on their hope and through the inevitable oppression he would bring in his attempt to take the place of God. In the end his ambition would enslave them.
I’m going to share with you the results Samuel said would occur after the institution of the demigod king. As we walk through this I want you to see that our nation has followed the same course because we elect leaders who promise us the prosperity that others enjoy and to provide us personal security without the need for God.
- A nation devoted to militarism was one of the consequences they could expect to endure. Before the institution of kings, Israel relied on a volunteer army in times of national crisis. But the demigod king would bring a large standing army of professional soldiers and a massive defense budget. It happened in Israel with the coronation of the first king, Saul. The kings maintained this practice until they were finally conquered by the Assyrians in 732 BC and the Babylonians in 586 BC.
They trusted their large armies more than God. They placed their hope in technology and the number of fighting men. They also began to build political alliances of mutual protection with some of the surrounding pagan nations. They trusted a combination of power, strategy, and good fortune rather than God. The Israelites completely dismissed the warning of the prophets:
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD! Isaiah 31:1
We’ve followed the same path multiplied by about 100. As a nation we certainly don’t trust the Lord, but we do trust our military. Defense spending per year is estimated at somewhere between $500 and $700 billion. We spend more than 12 billion on the Iraq war each month alone. America has 850,000 military personnel stationed at more than 700 bases in 130 countries throughout the world. Defense spending accounts for nearly half of the federal budget. In a few years our elected official will have to decide on whether to slash Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare benefits or military because we’re spending our nation into bankruptcy. Wonder which one they’ll choose?
- Samuel also promised that the new king would institute conscription. That means the king would draft men and women to serve in his administration and army. As a demigod, taking God’s place, he had to build an immense bureaucracy to run the government and military complex to enforce his policies. The Israelites would lose their personal freedom through conscription of the king.
Our situation is a little bit different, but follows the same pattern. Do you realize that until the Civil War there was no such thing as a military draft in this country? Lincoln, the most tyrannical president in US history, instituted it to bring the south back into the union. From time to time Congress has re-instituted the draft. We would probably have a draft right now to supply more personnel for the Iraq war, but our cowardly leaders know that there would be a public outcry and a massive protest movement such as those during the Vietnam era if they instituted it.
Most of us take the draft as a given. We see it as patriotic. But look at what the draft really says about us. It says that we are the property of the United States government to use our bodies as they please. Our Founding Fathers never envisioned a standing army or the draft. Conscription has been implemented as we’ve voted demigod leaders into office.
Aside from this, we have a bloated federal bureaucracy today. The demigods need people to run the massive government for them. Our first president, George Washington enlisted 5 additional people to serve as his cabinet and help run the government. What does it take today? It’s estimated that there are around 3 million people serving in the federal bureaucracy. They’re not drafted against their will to serve, but your tax money is. We are forced to pay for these 3 million unelected people who help run the government. But that’s what happens when you vote demigods into office.
- Samuel also predicted that the demigod kings would confiscate property. They would take the best of fields and vineyards. They would require 10% of the first fruits of all crops just like God. They’d argue that they had to have it to maintain the army and keep the population happy. They never mentioned that it’d also feed their appetites. It was your civic duty to give and if you didn’t the king had the power to take your stuff by force. In some cases, people were killed for resisting this confiscation of property.
We live under the same type of confiscatory government because we’ve voted in the demigods to keep us prosperous and secure. Do you realize that the average American has to work from January until May to pay all of the local, state, and federal taxes piled upon them? Just check out your itemized mobile phone bill and you’ll see taxes slapped all over it. Get the big picture in mind here too. If you don’t pay your “fair” share the government can fine you. The IRS calls it a penalty if you make a mistake, but just a minor clerical error if they do it. If you don’t pay your property tax the local government could eventually take your house and land. Don’t file your federal income tax form and you could easily serve 10 years in prison. You could even lose your life if the government comes to take you to jail for not paying taxes and you resist.
Our Founding Fathers never envisioned this situation. The Constitution did not originally allow for an income tax. The federal government gained income through import taxes. The 16th Amendment legalized income taxes. They sold it by telling Americans that only the richest of the rich would be taxed and that it’d never be more than about 2%. They also promised that we’d be able to reduce import taxes to help out farmers who were hurt by it. But guess what happened? A few years after ratification of the 16th Amendment the import tax went right back up to its previous level and the government far exceeded that 2% tax rate they promised and spread the burden to more income levels. That’s the price you pay when government has replaced God.
Samuel told the people of his day that a demigod government would result in erosion of liberties. He said that eventually they’d cry out to God for deliverance from the very government they sought to implement. But then it’d be too late. It took mass bloodshed to dethrone the demigod kings. The result was the extinction of Israel and near destruction of Judah. They completely lost their political power and influence in the world.
We’re on the same course. I’m not worked up about the election on Tuesday because there’s little difference in either candidate. They both appeal to our desire for prosperity and personal security. They’d never say it this way, but they’re both proposing to be demigods, assuming responsibility for us and usurping the role of God in our lives. No matter who wins, we will lose. Demigods disappoint and enslave.
There’s really only one solution and it’s not political. It is spiritual. America is in desperate need of revival. We must, as a nation, return to the Lord in repentance and genuine faith. There must be a revival or the best we can hope for is further oppression interrupted occasionally by bloody revolution. My hope and my prayer is changed hearts first and then changed leadership.
