Israel, Who Rejected God and Chose Man

Chapter 8 records two occasions on which a father was rejected. In the first, Samuel’s sons turned from their father; in the second, Israel turned from God. To forsake either an earthly father or the Father of our spirits is a grievous misfortune for the one who does it. But the corruption of Eli’s sons was not the same as the corruption of Samuel’s. God rebuked Eli and held him to account, because Eli had failed to set an example of faith as a father and had loved his children more than God.

Samuel, by contrast, showed a faith he lived out day by day; it was his sons who refused to walk in their father’s ways. That is why God did not hold Samuel responsible. Samuel named his firstborn Joel, meaning “Yahweh is God,” and his second son Abijah, meaning “Yahweh is Father.” His faith shows plainly in the names he gave his sons. He had hoped they would grow up well, serving Yahweh.

But Joel and Abijah went against everything their father intended. They chased worldly gain, took bribes, perverted justice, and lost the trust of the people. The people laid the sons’ evil deeds at Samuel’s door, and from this we can see that others weigh the character of parents by the conduct of their children. God’s children have been given the name of saints. If we do not live up to that name, the world will do more than distrust us; it will not trust God. Samuel had watched Eli’s sons die, and he must have resolved to raise his own sons rightly. God knew the heart of Samuel, who had prayed for their souls with tears, and so he did not rebuke him for the fall of Joel and Abijah.

An old saying warns that parents of sons should not curse a thief, and parents of daughters should not curse a prostitute. The point, I think, is how hard it is to raise children rightly. Parents must labor to set before their children an example of faith, and even so, their children may not grow up in the faith. When that happens, we must not be so foolish as to lose heart and throw away our own faith as well. What we must keep firmly in mind is this: God never makes our earnest prayers for our children vain. Rather than rejoicing or despairing over what we can see, we need to look further ahead and live with patience.

Angered by Samuel’s sons, the people demanded a king. His sons were not upright, they said, so they had no hope left, and they wanted a man set over them as king, like the nations around them. Samuel’s heart must have ached as he watched them forsake God over his own shortcomings. He would have felt ashamed before God, as though by failing to govern his household he had handed the people a pretext to push aside the almighty God and put a man on the throne. The King of Israel is God. God in his sovereign majesty was reigning as their king, and still Israel, driven by its desire for the world, was dragging him down from his throne.

In Genesis 12:2 God blessed Abraham, saying that he would make of him a great nation, bless him, and make his name great, and that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. “I will make a great nation of you, and all the families will be blessed because of you”: this was possible only because God himself is the source of the blessing. It was God who called Abraham, God who made him a great nation, and God who gave him good things in body and soul, made his name great, and blessed his descendants; all of it came to pass because God was the one who blessed. God founded a nation through Abraham, and his promise was that he would be their King and set them apart from every other nation.

After the exodus, God destroyed many nations to bring the people of Israel into Canaan. On the very threshold of death they were kept safe, and they lived; they won battle after battle and saw God’s greatness with their own eyes. And now these same people are using Samuel’s sons as an excuse to push God off the throne, as if he had no power.

Do they not look all too much like us today? God has solved problems you never even prayed about. In a world like a battlefield, with death strewn on every side, he is guarding your life within the hedge of the Holy Spirit. But when we are in want, we call him our Father and praise his greatness; and when things do not go our way, we are quick to cast him off, telling him he is powerless and unfit to be our king. Those who have received grace in this dark world hold a right faith only if they keep that gratitude forever. Israel, loved like this, now refuses to serve God as King. They have forgotten what matters most and are dealing with God according to their feelings.

Who is the king enthroned in your heart today? Is it God? Or is it the world? Could it be that you have never once seated God on the throne? I hope you will examine yourselves, in case you think you are God’s child only because you go to church out of habit. Only if we search ourselves to see whether we are sitting on the throne with God as our attendant can we hope to recognize Christ when he comes as King on the last day.

The people had looked to Samuel, and when they saw that he had not raised his sons well, they rejected God as well. Samuel was in anguish to see the people turn away over his failure, and God comforted him: they are blaming you, he said, but in truth it is me they have rejected. God knew the real heart of the people. He knew that until then they had sought him when they needed him and cast him off when they did not. When trouble came, the people did not lay it to their own sin; they blamed a leader like Samuel, who had given everything to fulfill the charge laid on him. That was not right, and so God comforted Samuel.

Samuel was only a judge who spoke for the word of God. Whether the people received God’s help or suffered hardship depended on how they lived once they had heard the word the judge proclaimed. Anyone can hear the word, but blessing or curse comes according to who actually lives by that word of truth. Whatever their reasons, they refused to serve God as King because human greed had taken first place; like the Gentiles, they wanted a prosperity they could see. That very way of thinking is sin, and it is unbelief.

Matthew 27:29

29They braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand; and they kneeled down before him, and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!”

They did not truly recognize the King who had come to this earth to atone for their sins, and they cried out for the death of Jesus, who held none of the world’s power. Pilate knew full well that Jesus was without sin and wanted to release him, but he had no strength to withstand the fury of the crowd. When Pilate asked whether he was the King of the Jews, Jesus confessed before Pilate and the people that he was. He made that confession because he had to die at the Passover like a lamb to atone for the sins of his people. In this way Scripture bears witness that Jesus is the King of all who believe in Christ by faith.

Hebrews 8:1 records that the main point of what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Now that Christ has become the eternal King, the true Jew is not the one who is a Jew outwardly but the one who is a Jew inwardly, and true circumcision is not of the flesh but of the heart. Israel is no longer God’s chosen people as such; the true Israel, those who have received Christ, become the people God has chosen. Failing to recognize this heavenly King, the others weigh things by the standards of the world. Jesus, our King, is seated now at the right hand of God’s throne. He sits there not as a high priest who dies when his life is over, but as our high priest who will never die, and so our blessing, too, is eternal.

For more than four hundred years they had been slaves, and God rescued them; he parted the Red Sea, split the rock, and helped them conquer Canaan. Still, all they could see were the Gentiles living in luxury. God answers their troubles and leads them on the way of peace, but the moment life grows hard they ask why he does not give them an easy road like those nations, and they keep their distance from him. Such a heart is exactly what we see in those who cried out for a man to be made king.

May you stand among those who rebuke Israel as it clamors for a human king, asking how they could ever forsake God. If you warn them that to forsake God is death, they may well stop their ears because they cannot bear to hear your voice. As people threw stones at the apostle Paul, who brought them life, so the world may persecute you and do you harm when you proclaim the whole gospel. Still, you must cry out; only then can they live, and you along with them.

The world today is racing toward the fulfillment of the prophecies of Revelation. To set up the abomination in the holy place, all religions are being bound into one under the name of “love.” Under the name of “unity,” the world is steadily gathering strength to use one currency, make one law, and appoint one leader. Once the world is bound into one, religious persecution will follow. You must hold fast to your faith from now on, for that day. Events are in fact unfolding as they were revealed to John, and next will come days when Christians cannot freely live out their faith. What kind of faith will you show then?

Today we can pray freely, read the Bible, and worship with songs of praise as loudly as we like, and yet God’s people are not preparing for that day. The day of final judgment is not a day that exists only in the letters of Scripture. Christ, the Judge, will surely bring that day to pass. As Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, so a terrible catastrophe will come, and the Babylon of this world will fall. All who have faith must stand on the rock of the word for that day and, filled with the Holy Spirit, lead their neighbors to faith.

When Israel repented and fasted, God drove back the Philistines for them. For Israel to forget all that grace and turn its eyes back to the world meant that they did not believe God’s promise and would not acknowledge him as the Creator and the sovereign Lord. Let Israel be a mirror to us. Before the world proclaims a man as king, all of us must have a faith that serves God as King.

John 16:1-2

1“I have said these things to you so that you wouldn’t be caused to stumble. 2They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time comes that whoever kills you will think that he offers service to God.

Jesus said that people would put Christians out of the synagogues and kill them because they did not truly know God or Christ. Religions are gathering under the name of love and peace, yet they have no power to discern for whom that love is meant, or whether it is truly love for Christ. Just as the people of the world are bent on exalting their own names, these bear the name of God, of the church, and of ministers in name only, and are no different at all from the world. They simply serve the word as they know it, their own church, their own flock, what is theirs, themselves alone, and cannot escape the world’s way of thinking.

When I see this, I am afraid. I worry whether our own congregation knows how quickly churches are abandoning God. People drift away from the church and resent God even now, when hardship comes. If they cannot hold a faith that rises above the world when they are cast out and persecuted, they will in the end have no choice but to share in the second death. I am anxious whether our people know this. It is the fear of a pastor who answers for souls.

Paul, who killed and persecuted Christians and claimed he did it to serve God more zealously, sinned because he did not rightly understand God’s promise or the Jesus who came according to that promise, Jesus at his first coming and at his second. Going to church does not mean we rightly know God’s promise. Only when we hold on to the truth and actually live by it in daily life can we believe that covenant and be sure of it. So we must do all we can, all the more, to meet Jesus in the word.

1 Samuel 8:9

9Now therefore listen to their voice. However you shall protest solemnly to them, and shall show them the way of the king who will reign over them.”

The people of Israel had come this far under God’s unconditional love and complete protection, yet they could not give up their greed, and in the end they chose a human king. With their narrow human judgment they rejected the almighty King. Without wholehearted faith no one can acknowledge God as King. God wants us to choose him of our own free will. And to choose God as King freely, we must know what sacrifice he is making for our salvation.

Samuel labored to hold back a people who were spiritually ignorant, but God told him to choose a man from among them and make him king. Until then God had ruled them with love and grace. A worldly king, however, would rule by force, whatever the people wished. For the sake of his power the king would conscript their sons and daughters, and the people would have to spend their lives in his service. God had answered whenever they cried out in their distress; the king would ignore their suffering and rule them with the whip. Samuel told them all of this, and still they chose a man.

The system of rulers over thousands and rulers over fifties, which Moses’ father-in-law Jethro devised, had kept Israel safely led and protected. It was set up to protect Moses and to give the people rest, but the king would use it to hold on to his power. Israel had lived in honor and glory, respected as God’s children; now with their own hands they had torn down all their peace. They would not listen to God, and so God released his hold on them.

In verse 18 God said that when they suffered under the king they had chosen, he would not answer them. Can you feel the ache in God’s heart as he speaks of “your king whom you will have chosen”? It is like parents speaking to a child who has turned away from the parents who led them on the right path: leave home now, they say, and we can never help you. God had wanted to establish Israel as a people set apart, and he was utterly rejected by them.

God’s word that he would not answer when they suffered under a worldly king is itself a judgment. To rebuke us and take up the rod each time we go wrong is love. More fearful than rebuke is indifference. God is saying that he will now be indifferent to Israel’s suffering. If you are rebuked the moment you sin, give thanks, because it is a sign that God is paying attention to you. But if no rebuke comes even when you abandon your faith, it means God has forsaken you, and you must turn back to him in fear.

We still have many chances to enthrone God as our King once more. This is so because the word you have set up as the standard of your life leads you on the way of eternal blessing.

May you enjoy peace in Christ. May you always serve God as King and keep your faith to the very end. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 9:15-24

15Now Yahweh had revealed to Samuel a day before Saul came, saying, 16“Tomorrow about this time I will send you a man out of the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He will save my people out of the hand of the Philistines; for I have looked upon my people, because their cry has come to me.” 17When Samuel saw Saul, Yahweh said to him, “Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you! He will have authority over my people.” 18Then Saul approached Samuel in the gateway, and said, “Please tell me where the seer’s house is.” 19Samuel answered Saul, and said, “I am the seer. Go up before me to the high place, for you are to eat with me today. In the morning I will let you go, and will tell you all that is in your heart. 20As for your donkeys who were lost three days ago, don’t set your mind on them; for they have been found. For whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you, and for all your father’s house?” 21Saul answered, “Am I not a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? And my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then do you speak to me like this?” 22Samuel took Saul and his servant, and brought them into the guest room, and made them sit in the best place among those who were invited, who were about thirty persons. 23Samuel said to the cook, “Bring the portion which I gave you, of which I said to you, ‘Set it aside.’” 24The cook took up the thigh, and that which was on it, and set it before Saul. Samuel said, “Behold, that which has been reserved! Set it before yourself and eat; because for the appointed time has it been kept for you, for I said, ‘I have invited the people.’” So Saul ate with Samuel that day.