Kingship in Judges and 1 Samuel
1 Samuel 8
It’s amazing how quickly a classroom can turn when a teacher walks out for a moment. Paper, hats, pens, shoes, glass bottles get thrown at fans. Bags get thrown out of windows. Furniture is mysteriously re-arranged so that all students are now sitting in the back corners of the room. Two of the more interesting stories I’ve heard about were when a teacher returned to the PE change rooms to find a mentally handicapped student emerge and run around the playground completely naked, and another occasion when a particularly troublesome year eight boy lit up a cigarette, started smoking it, and then proceeded to light some of the carpet on fire. When there’s no authority in the room there’s always a possibility that all hell will break loose. There’s no one in charge so everyone does as they see fit, even if that means setting fire to the room.
Hopefully you’ll remember that phrase that is repeated about three times toward the end of judges, firstly in 17:6 – “In those days Israel had no king everyone did as he saw fit.” As a political statement it’s quite accurate – Israel had a series of leaders and prophets beginning with Moses and passing down through to the Judges. But that’s no really what this statement is all about. Israel didn’t have a king when Moses was leading them, but we don’t hear that refrain repeated throughout Leviticus or Deuteronomy.
The real question we need to answer is ‘who should their king have been?’. Gideon gives us a very clear response in Judges 8:23. If you remember, he has just led Israel to a great military victory over Midian and people are trying to install him as their king. “But Gideon told them, "I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The LORD will rule over you." Gideon knows who the real king of Israel is. He knows because the real king of Israel had just miraculously routed the entire Midianite army with three hundred men, some empty jars and a few trumpets. The LORD God is the king of Israel, and he appoints prophets and judges as his chosen instruments of rule. They are, if you like, his stewards or governors. But God is the king.
Yet, as we’ve see over the last few months as we’ve worked our way through Judges, the people of Israel seem to be conducting a systematic campaign of rejection and idolatory towards God. Abimelech, the son of Gideon doesn’t share his father’s faithfulness. He wants to be the king. He wants the power. And what happens to him? He’s killed by a woman who drops a millstone on his head. Chapters 17-21 form a sort of epilogue to the book and contain a series of stories which characterize Israel during the period of the judges. And the picture they paint is one of darkness and depravity. In case you haven’t got it yet, says the writer, here’s some events that will show you just how far Israel have fallen from the covenant of the Law established under Moses. They cast idols and worship them, they attack and plunder one another, they rape and murder their fellow Israelites – both men and women. They don’t need a foreign power to oppress them, they do a fine enough job themselves!
But most of all they are characterized by a complete rejection of God as their king. They ignore him and follow the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of the Canaanites and the Philistines. Even when they make some attempt to worship the
LORD, they do it in a perverse and heathen manner like Micah and his idol. They have rejected the LORD.
I think we can often hear of the sin of Israel and somehow think that their actions are particularly bad or especially sinful. But we as a society and we as individuals are no better. We set up our own idols of money, power, family. We have our own perversions where gangs of men rape young women, where we fantasise over internet pornography, where live for ourselves and not for God.
Now we could look at these unfortunate set of circumstances in Israel’s history and moralise about the importance of good, stable, strong government. But that’s not the real problem here. Again, look at our own society: by most standards, we have strong, stable government but we still experience drive-by shootings, sexual assault of men, women and children. The real problem is that we all reject God as our rightful king. And the consequences of that rejection are plain to see. For Israel, it is the lawlessness and depravity of Judges 17-21. In Romans 1, it’s the sexual perversion, hatred, greed, murder, slander, wickedness and evil that God hands people over to so that they can wallow in their own sin, reaping the pain of the disobedience that they sow.
Israel has no king, and the consequences are clear. We, too, reject the King and the results are just as dire.
We read in 1 Samuel 8 that, not that many years later, Israel ask for a king. They want someone to rally the people, to lead them into battle like all the other nations have. It’s a request that’s foreshadowed even way back during the time of Moses. Look for a moment at Deuteronomy 17 – God knows that there will be a time when Israel will want a king like the other nations, so he gives them clear guidelines. Let me read from vs. 17 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
18 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. 19 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 20 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.
You see, this king of Israel wasn’t to be like other kings. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to be a “king” in the worldly sense of the word, because he wasn’t going to be a law unto himself, an all-powerful ruler. He was to be very much a king under the authority of another, greater king – the LORD God almighty.
To have a king of Israel wasn’t God’s ideal – he was to be their king – but Deut 17 seems to acknowledge the reality of the situation. So what is the real problem in 1 Sam 8? Well, it all comes back to why Israel wants a king in the first place.
At first, they try to dress it up as if they are concerned about Samuel’s sons – and, granted, they were dodgy characters. But that’s not the real reason. The reason, as we see in vss. 5 and 20 is so that they can be like all the other nations. They don’t want to be the odd one out. They want to conform. The trouble is, God has chosen Israel to be his special people. He didn’t choose the Philistines or the Amalekites or the Midianites. He chose Israel, and he gave them the Law to set them apart from the other nations. The other nations were characterized by idolatory and sin, and Israel were to be a holy people. The two could not inter-mix. God warns his people clearly in Leviticus 20 - You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. Yet that is exactly what the Israelites want to do.
The desire to be like everyone else is an incredibly strong temptation for many Christians, too. We see it in the watering down of important Biblical truths about sexuality. We see it in the way young Christian men often slowly drift away from church after they are taken in by the materialism of their work collegues. We see it even with Christians in ministry. I remember one particular woman who, whenever she was in a group situation with teenagers, would swear profusely. When questioned about it, her explanation was that it somehow gained her credibility with the kids, to show that she was one of them. But it was just about conforming to the ways of the world, being like everyone else.
But, as the book of James tells us, friendship with the world is hatred toward God. We can’t be friends with both like Israel was trying to do. Ultimately, their request for a king demonstrated something far more devastatingly fundamental, something that keeps cropping up time and again in Israel’s history. It’s their rejection of God. Samuel is displeased in vs 6, but God tells him straight in vs. 7: “Listen to all 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.” There’s incredibly irony in vs. 20 when Israel tell Samuel they want a king who will go out before them and fight their battles. This coming from a people enjoying the fruits of God’s miraculously victories that secured the Promised Land which they were now inhabiting. When you think about it, their arrogance is breathtaking. We need a king, they tell Samuel, all the while rejecting the sovereign, compassionate king who led them out of Egypt and gave them a land of their very own.
It’s not kingship itself that is the problem, it’s who they want as their king. God is the king of the universe and demands total obedience. But moreover, think back to Deuteronomy 17 and the description of the sort of man who should be chosen as king. He must be an Israelite. He must be selfless, not accumulating vast wealth for himself or considering himself better than his brothers. And, above all, he must be faithful to God.
This sort of leader is hard to find. When we think of our leaders, our politicians, most cynical Australians think of people who are primarily self-serving, who are out to gain power and influence for themselves. Even the idealists who go into politics are often corrupted by the need to be manipulative and deceptive to retain their hold on leadership. Anyone who is paying much attention to the media at the moment will know that the third and final installment of the Lord of the Rings is being released very soon. As many might know, Tolkien was a committed Catholic and also a good friend of the noted Christian writer C.S. Lewis. Now the Lord of the Rings is not the same sort of direct Christian analogy as Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but there are still some comparisons that can be made and the one that is relevant to us today is the character of Aragon. Aragon is the son of the kings of Gondor but he doesn’t want to be king. He wants a quieter life with his elven princess but circumstances dictate otherwise. Yet despite his royal blood, despite his claims to power he chooses to serve as protector to the hobbit who carries the ring, risking himself constantly to ensure his survival. And he is called on to rally the human armies against the threat from the dark lord – he is called to be their king – and he does so reluctantly not out of desire for power (he’s not interested in that) but out of a desire to serve.
God promises such a king – and more. Let me read from Philippians 2
5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death--
even death on a cross!
:9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In Jesus we don’t have a worldly, earthly king. We don’t have a king who will lord his power over us. In Jesus we have a king who has more claim than anyone to the throne and yet he chooses to make himself nothing for us. In Jesus we have a king who is God but who became man for us. In Jesus we have a king who humbled himself so much that he became obedient to death on a cross for us. As Mark 10:45 says, in Jesus we have a king who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life so that we could be saved.
But in serving and dying does that mean we have a sniveling, embarrassingly week king? No – look at vss. 9-11. In Jesus we have a king whom God has declared with power to be the ruler of the universe. In Jesus we have a king whose name is above every name, to whom everyone in heaven and earth will bow. In Jesus we have a king who is both Lord and Christ.
We need a king. Whether in a classroom or over hundreds of years of Israelite history, we need a king. But we don’t just need any king – we need God’s king. Israel wanted one so they could be like everyone else, but they were still rejecting God. The question is, are we rejecting the true king in our own lives? Have we set up our own alternatives to God’s rightful rule, our own idols? Make no mistake, every knee will bow before Jesus, every tongue confess that he is Lord. But will we be people who gratefully accept the loving reign of our servant king? Or will we be people forced kicking and screaming onto our knees before he who has the power to judge us and send us to hell?
You see, friends, that is the choice. The question on the handout asks, who is the king? Well, as we’ve worked out, the king is God, and we’ve seen the consequences of rejecting him. But we’ve also seen that in Jesus we have our servant king, the king who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Let me close with the words of Isaiah 9:6-7. Owen will be preaching on this passage during the next couple of weeks and it reminds us of the king whom God promised, the king who has come in the person of Jesus Christ.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
ISA 9:7 Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.
Handout/Outline:
Sunday 14th December, 2003
Who is the King?
1 Samuel 8:1-9
1. No King
Israel (Judges 8:23, 17:6)
Us
Consequences (Judges 19-21, Romans 1)
2. We want a king! (1 Samuel 8; cf. Deuteronomy 17:14-20)
Conformity (vss. 5, 20; Leviticus 20:23)
Rejection (vss. 7-8)
3. The Servant King (Philippians 2:5-11)
Servant (vss. 5-8; Mark 10:45)
King (vss. 9-11)
