Serve Yahweh with All Your Heart

1 Samuel 12:13-25

13Now therefore see the king whom you have chosen, and whom you have asked for. Behold, Yahweh has set a king over you. 14If you will fear Yahweh, and serve him, and listen to his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of Yahweh, then both you and also the king who reigns over you are followers of Yahweh your God. 15But if you will not listen to Yahweh’s voice, but rebel against the commandment of Yahweh, then Yahweh’s hand will be against you, as it was against your fathers. 16“Now therefore stand still and see this great thing, which Yahweh will do before your eyes. 17Isn’t it wheat harvest today? I will call to Yahweh, that he may send thunder and rain; and you will know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in Yahweh’s sight, in asking for a king.” 18So Samuel called to Yahweh; and Yahweh sent thunder and rain that day. Then all the people greatly feared Yahweh and Samuel. 19All the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to Yahweh your God, that we not die; for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for a king.” 20Samuel said to the people, “Don’t be afraid. You have indeed done all this evil; yet don’t turn away from following Yahweh, but serve Yahweh with all your heart. 21Don’t turn away to go after vain things which can’t profit or deliver, for they are vain. 22For Yahweh will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased Yahweh to make you a people for himself. 23Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against Yahweh in ceasing to pray for you: but I will instruct you in the good and the right way. 24Only fear Yahweh, and serve him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. 25But if you keep doing evil, you will be consumed, both you and your king.”

Give cool water to someone who has nothing to drink, and at first they will be truly thankful just to be able to drink. But after a little while they will complain, asking how anyone can live on water alone. Once food is taken care of they will want a life of ease, and then they will try to become king of the world by strength and power. Such is the evil nature of human beings.

The human heart is formless and empty, and darkness is on it. The human heart is the one thing nothing can fill. What are you praying to God for so earnestly now? If God granted just that one wish, could you really live content? A faith that knows how to be content in God is right faith.

In 1 Samuel 11:14 Samuel told the people that they should now go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom there. There was a clear reason Samuel took the trouble to bring the people to Gilgal to set up the kingdom anew. ‘Gilgal’ means ‘the reproach of Egypt rolled away’: God had taken away the shame they had suffered for four hundred years in Egypt. With the conquest of Canaan before them, Joshua and the people of Israel crossed the Jordan, and at Gilgal he set up twelve stones as a memorial. So Gilgal is a special place for the people of Israel.

And there, with war against Canaan ahead of them, the people were circumcised at the risk of their lives. Being circumcised with the enemy at hand leaves a people defenseless, so it is impossible without relying wholly on God. By having the people of Israel circumcised at Gilgal, God taught them that they could not live unless God protected their lives. As the name Gilgal says, the shame God’s chosen people had borne as slaves, the mockery, disgrace and contempt, had now all rolled away and vanished. From then on they had only to dwell in grace as God’s people.

Samuel meant to bring the people back to the place where their ancestors had entrusted their lives to God and been circumcised, and to make them realize again who their king was. They gathered at Gilgal to look back once more on the faith of their ancestors, who trusted God enough to entrust their lives to him, and to recover their faith.

The God who protected the ancestors of faith and the God who was protecting them now do not differ, for with him a thousand years are as one day. Yet Israel could not rely on God. Even then God was protecting them and holding off every attack, but they were not satisfied with that and wanted to live better in the world. What they wanted was the world’s visible fruit. They wanted leadership stronger than any worldly king’s, so as to live better than the Gentiles, but God did not satisfy their greed. It is the same as when we see worldly people living well today and think the power comes not from God but from money.

But the world is a pilgrim road we travel for only a little while. That is why God, the eternal King, wanted believers to enjoy the blessing of eternal life. Believers think God is not helping them, but God has always helped them and shielded them before trouble came, and that is why they have not yet realized what they have to be thankful for.

When life goes on comfortably, without trouble, what do you think?

Since nothing good or bad is happening, you will probably feel as if God is not with you and you are not being blessed. In God’s sight that feeling is truly evil. Life is a road of thorns from the start. Have you never thought that you can walk an easy road because the Lord went ahead of you on that thorny road and broke off the sharp thorns? If you are discontented with a dull daily life in which nothing happens, look down at the road you are walking. The Lord’s bloodstains will be there, marks left where he broke off the thorns, and you will see that all this time you have been walking on the Lord’s precious blood. If a person gives thanks for their healthy days only after falling ill, and realizes God’s grace only after suffering, that person will never know in all their life what happiness is.

Those who know how to be thankful never choose a worldly king. These were people who had rejected the almighty King and wanted a king of the world, so Samuel sought to build up their faith again at Gilgal.

1 Samuel 12:15-16

15But if you will not listen to Yahweh’s voice, but rebel against the commandment of Yahweh, then Yahweh’s hand will be against you, as it was against your fathers. 16“Now therefore stand still and see this great thing, which Yahweh will do before your eyes.

Samuel began to rebuke the unbelief of the people who had rejected God. The people, of course, made the excuse that they no longer wanted judges because Samuel’s sons had become corrupt, but Samuel shows, one point at a time, that this was not justified. Whenever a judge fell into corruption and the people suffered, God raised up a new judge and saved them from all their troubles. So the corruption of Samuel’s sons could be no reason to reject God. For the judge of Israel was not his sons but Samuel. With Samuel right there, proclaiming God’s word faithfully, they worried about their future and rejected not only Samuel but even God. Their honest heart was an unbelief that trusted God even less than it trusted Samuel.

In verse 3 Samuel asked the people whether he had done anything wrong as judge that would give them cause to reject God. He asked whose ox or whose donkey he had taken, whom he had defrauded, and from whom he had taken a bribe to judge unfairly; and the people answered that there had been no such thing, because he had ruled with an honest faith. So the people were admitting that they were rejecting God and Samuel for the sake of their own cravings. The things Samuel asked them about, taking the oxen and donkeys used for farming, taking bribes and bending judgment, and oppressing people by force, were exactly what a worldly king would later do to them. A people that did not grasp this was asking for a worldly king.

Every time the people of Israel fall away, the Bible reminds them of the exodus. That is how much the exodus was, for the people of Israel, a fact that left them no choice but to acknowledge that God is king. To remind them that God alone could part the Red Sea and give manna and quail from heaven, he sent thunder and rain at the wheat harvest, in verse 17. The wheat harvest usually runs from the third week of April to the second week of June. Because it was harvest time, people took it for granted that no rain would fall. God said beforehand that he would pour down thunder and rain in this dry season, and then sent thunder and rain just as he had said, and so he made known that all of it was his work.

Through this event and through Samuel, did you see God begging the people, telling them that he is their king? God, grieved over a people walking toward death, is helping them, and yet they choose the world over the Word; you must be able to see those foolish people. For if you see neither God begging to give eternal life nor the people of Israel betraying God, you too could end up sitting in their place.

Matthew 27:28-29

28They stripped him, and put a scarlet robe on him. 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!”

Here sinners are mocking the King of kings, saying he is not fit to be king. If the sinners mocking Jesus had believed that he had set aside his throne and come into the world, they would never have done such an evil thing. Suppose the head of a large business group is sitting in the chair of the head office. Even if that person is wearing a shabby jacket, no one would treat them carelessly. But if you ran into that same head of the group in shabby clothes on the street, you might have taken them for a beggar and avoided them. If you had talked down to them and treated them rudely, taking them for a powerless old person, and then found out at a company interview that this was the head of the group, what do you think would have happened?

The Father judges no one, but he has given all judgment to the Son. This is the Father’s love, so that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father. Jesus said that anyone who does not honor him, not knowing that the Jesus who came in a body with no beauty that we should desire him is God the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him. The people who pushed God off the throne and set up Saul and the Roman soldiers who mocked Jesus are sinners alike. Sin has no degrees, so in God’s sight all are sinners.

Revelation 22:3-4

3There will be no curse any more. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will serve him. 4They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

Just as the rich man could see Lazarus at Abraham’s bosom, if those who have fallen into the fire of hell saw the throne of God and of the Lamb in heaven, the very sight would be torment. What the eye cannot see is not therefore absent, and what the eye can see is not everything. What human eyes can see has its limits.

God is the one who created with more care for what is unseen than for what is seen. If we do not know this, we will commit the sin of driving God from the throne in order to hold on to what is seen. Samuel knew this, and he told the people in advance that God would send thunder and rain. When God shows a miracle before the people now, he is fighting the unbelief in their hearts. While God was working to drive out the unbelief in their hearts, the people needed to repent quickly.

Satan walks around like a roaring lion looking for someone to bring down, making people busy and anxious and planting in them an urgent feeling that they must not stay still. We feel that while we keep still, someone else will get ahead of us and take everything, and in the end we are shaken. Before the Red Sea was parted, Moses too told the people not to be afraid, but to stand still and see the salvation of Yahweh, which he would work for them that day. If they entrusted everything to God, even their fear of the Egyptian soldiers chasing behind them, and stood still and saw the salvation God worked, they could share in an astonishing miracle.

Samuel, like Moses, told them to stand still and see this great thing, which Yahweh would do before their eyes. Being told to stand still does not mean it is fine to be lazy. It means to watch the miracle, drive out the unbelief that has settled inside us, and serve God wholly as king. The faith the people had to keep was to serve as king, with all their heart, the ‘invisible God’ who works above the ‘visible King Saul.’

Samuel worked a miracle before the people, but his heart must have been heavy. He promised that, for the people’s true understanding, he would never commit the sin of ceasing to pray for them, and that he would instruct them in the good and the right way. For even if Saul reigned on the throne as the kings of the Gentiles did, they could be blessed only if they knew that the true king is God and feared and served God alone. People think that they can be happy only if they have the world’s power, and that they will survive only if they go deep into the world, but in the end that is the road on which everyone dies. For the unseen kingdom of God, unlike the world we see, is eternal.

If you do not live in the fear of God, everything you serve as king will be destroyed. This is not a threat from me; it is God’s word. And just as the Word says, all who did not serve God were destroyed. Refusing to serve God as king and putting wealth, children, power and your own righteousness on the throne instead is evil. So God, who attacks sin, will allow suffering for the sake of your blessing.

As Samuel pleaded with the people, I too make an earnest request of you. Serve God alone, live by the word of Christ, and obey the leading of the Holy Spirit. Then, more than any visible fruit, you will see the miracle of seeing with your own eyes and touching with your own hands the fruit of blessing that had been unseen. This is the blessing God gives to his children who have faith. When you enjoy unseen blessing as if you could see it, that is proof that God’s grace has come fully upon you. So the blessing you have received from God will never be taken from you.

If you set God on the throne and serve him in spirit and truth, God will bring heaven and earth to help you and will walk with you forever. May you always love what is unseen more than what is seen. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 13:8-15

8He stayed seven days, according to the time set by Samuel; but Samuel didn’t come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. 9Saul said, “Bring the burnt offering to me here, and the peace offerings.” He offered the burnt offering. 10It came to pass that as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might greet him. 11Samuel said, “What have you done?” Saul said, “Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that you didn’t come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines assembled themselves together at Michmash; 12therefore I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down on me to Gilgal, and I haven’t entreated the favor of Yahweh.’ I forced myself therefore, and offered the burnt offering.” 13Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of Yahweh your God, which he commanded you; for now Yahweh would have established your kingdom on Israel forever. 14But now your kingdom will not continue. Yahweh has sought for himself a man after his own heart, and Yahweh has appointed him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept that which Yahweh commanded you.” 15Samuel arose, and went from Gilgal to Gibeah of Benjamin. Saul counted the people who were present with him, about six hundred men.