Samuel, Saul and David

1 Samuel 8: You can reject the rule of God – but you must live with the consequences

The big news yesterday was that Prince William and Kate Middleton have split up. Despite all manner of press speculation, their reasons are their own, and rightly so... but it reminded me that sometimes men and women view the issue of commitment to one another differently, as illustrated in this little story: <read story>

If I read from 1 Sam 8 today, we Gods people abandoning their commitment to God, rejecting the rule of God and being warned of the consequences of their choices. 1 and 2 Samuel contain pivotal narratives in the old testament. They contain the stories of Israel’s first king, Saul; and Israel’s greatest king, David. Yet the books are not named after either of these powerful and important men. Instead they are named after the man called Samuel – who considered in terms of page count is almost a bit player in these books!

What is it about Samuel, that these books bear his name? I think it is probably because this was one of the biggest turning points for the nation of Israel, and Samuel was the pivot around which this part of history turned; the time when Israel chose to reject God and wanted to live like the nations around them. They would discover that:

You can reject the rule of God – but you must live with the consequences.

Felicity was discussing party games with me the other day, and it brought to mind one of my very favourite party games from a long time ago. You probably remember it well – everyone sat in a circle and had a little slip of paper, and you wrote down something and passed it on to the next person around. First there was a boy’s name, then there was a girl’s name, then the place where they met. He said to her, she said to him and the consequence was. As the final step, they all got unfolded and read out, with hilarious, uh, consequences.

But I’m getting ahead of myself... let’s go back to the beginning.

The last of the judges

Israel is in the promised land, surrounded by enemies. The book of Joshua ends with the nation taking a stand for God, ready to experience all the blessings of the promised land – but they soon started to fall away... they refused to eliminate their enemies, and that led to intermarriage and idolatry, and everyone doing what seemed right in their own eyes.

Time and time again the people ended up in a desperate situation, and called out to God and God responded by raising up a judge to deliver his people and bring peace. The book of Judges tells of 12 of these heroes raised up by God over a period of three and a quarter centuries.

Now we come to the last and greatest of the judges – but what a simple beginning.

It is unusual for the bible to tell us anything about the birth and childhood of its principle characters; it is difficult to think of any examples outside Moses, Samuel and the Lord Jesus. The fact that we have this information seems significant. Samuel was born as a result of heartfelt prayer. Hannah was childless, and although her husband Elkanah loved her dearly, his other wife taunted her mercilessly over her lack of children. She prays, and is so desperate that she offers to give up to God the very thing that she is praying for – a child.

God blesses Hannah, and Samuel is born. True to her word, once he is weaned she takes him along and leaves him at the temple, in the care of the priest Eli. As Samuel grows, he assists Eli, and served before the LORD. Hannah saw him once a year when she came with Elkanah for the sacrifice, and she brought him a new linen tunic each time, like the priests would wear. 2v26 says that he “‘continued to grow in stature and in favour with the LORD and with men”. This line appears to be borrowed by Luke as he describes the childhood of Jesus in Luke 2v52.

This is in marked contrast with the sons of Eli who were wicked men, with no regard for the LORD (2v12). They were selfish and wayward, out for themselves and not for the LORD. God warns Eli (2v27ff) that he is going to raise up a new faithful priest, who will do Gods will and not his own.

You can reject the rule of God – but you must live with the consequences.

Then in chapter 3 we see God famously calling the young Samuel in the middle of the night and revealing himself to him, giving him the same warning about Eli’s future. The chapter ends with all Israel recognising Samuel as a prophet of YHWH, a man whose words do not ‘fall to the ground’.

1 Samuel continues with the Israelites battling against the Philistines – but noticeably doing it without God (they try to use the ark of the covenant as a magic talisman, and end up losing it to the philistines – and then we see God himself demonstrating his power against the philistines in such a way that the ark comes back to Israel. It would be great to look at that in more detail, but we must speed on.

Even when the ark was back in Israel, 20 years were to pass before Israel were finally able to make peace with God, and Samuel leads them in their repentance in 7v2-4. The Israelites put away their foreign gods and idols, confessed their sin and dedicated themselves to God once more. In the midst of this the philistines attack, Samuel cries out to YHWH and the people are rescued.

Rejecting him, they are rejecting God

Samuel performs as priest, as prophet and as judge/leader over Israel for many more years, and he appoints his sons as successors – although they don’t have his good character and pervert justice for money.
And then suddenly the turning point is upon us. 8v4, the elders gathered together and say “you are old, your sons do not walk in your ways: now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have”. Notice that they didn’t say ‘appoint different people as judges, godly people’. They had a different idea in mind. They were looking at all the nations around them, and said ‘why can’t we have what they have?’, rather than recognising that they were supposed to be Gods chosen people, a light to the world around them. It was supposed to be the other way around, with the surrounding nations saying ‘we want to be like Israel’ – not the other way around!

Samuel feels rejected, and he prays about it. God makes this telling statement in 8v7-9 “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.”

You can reject the rule of God – but you must live with the consequences.

Samuel explains the consequences of having a king just like the nations all around them, but the people refuse to listen to Samuel. No! They say. Give us a king. So YHWH says to Samuel ‘listen to them and give them a king’.

Now, God has already made provision in his law for the day when the people of Israel want to reject him and have a king over them – you can read it in Deut 17. The kings of Israel were not to be absolute rulers like the surrounding nations; they were still to be under the authority of God and we will see this in later weeks as we look at Saul’s kingship, and specifically how he lost his throne.

Still, this was a huge change in the constitution of Gods people. Up until now God had been their king, but from now on they were to have a man as their king.

Once again we see Gods determination to allow people free will – even free will to choose a bad path. It is still the same today – whether it is allowing Christians the free will to turn away from God and make bad decisions if they wish, or allowing non-Christians to keep on the road to hell by rejecting Jesus again and again.

You can reject the rule of God – but you must live with the consequences.

Conclusion

How should we relate Samuel to our own lives? I don’t think we can draw a line directly from Samuel to ourselves, because he was an outstanding, unique person in a unique time. I’ve mentioned that his remarkable childhood foreshadows Jesus Christ, and while Samuel presided over the change of Gods people from a theocracy to a monarchy, Jesus presides over the central pivot point of the universe – the cross of Christ has rightly been called the centre of two eternities – one looking forward towards the cross, one looking back at it.
As Samuel was the person through whom Gods people experienced their direction and support from God in those days, so Jesus is now the person who represents God to us – he is ‘the express image of the invisible God’ (Heb 1v3). There is a lovely little story about the Sunday school teacher who is watching a young girl industriously drawing away. ‘what are you drawing’ the teacher asks. ‘God’ replies the girl. ‘But nobody knows what God looks like’ says the teacher. The girl replies ‘they will in a minute’… In actual fact, if we want to know what God looks like we just have to look at Jesus. In John 14v9 Jesus says “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

How often, I wonder, do Gods people today, the church, turn to Gods representative, Jesus, and say “I don’t want you. I want to be like my neighbours. I’m tired of living with God as my king, I want to have the nice house, the cool gadgets, the free time that my neighbours have. I want to be like them”? Oh, I don’t suppose that many people would come out and say it like that! But they do say that actions speak louder than words, don’t they?

How easy is it for us to pay lip service to having God as our king, but in our actions, the way we spend our time, the way we set our priorities... deny that we are his subjects after all?

Pavel Poloz, a Russian Christian exiled in 1987 said “In Russia, Christians are tested by hardship, but in America you are tested by freedom. And testing by freedom is much harder. Nobody pressures you about your religion. So you relax and are not so concentrated on Christ, on His teaching, how He wants you to live.”

You can reject the rule of God – but you must live with the consequences.

If you are not a Christian – you have never confessed your sins to God and asked for forgiveness, trusting Jesus to be your Lord and saviour – then you are rejecting the rule of God and the bible says that the consequence of that is eternity in hell, so please think carefully about your decisions.

For those of us who are already Christians – what are the consequences for us if we reject the rule of God in our lives and do as we please? We lose the opportunity to please God, we lose our joy in the journey, we miss out on opportunities to see God at work and participate in his work too. And on that final day before the judgement seat of Christ we will see all those things that distract us burnt up like ‘wood, hay and stubble’; saved, but embarrassed to have nothing to show for it. 

Alex White