Have it Your Way!

1 Samuel 8:7-9 ESV

7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

Sometimes people will say that when someone is offered greater opportunities to grow, advance, and succeed, that that person will then be more apt to take advantage of the opportunities that are available to them.

For example, we may say that if someone has the opportunity to eat steak over bologna, that that person will most definitely choose the steak. Or that if someone is given the opportunity to obtain a promotion and a raise at work, that that person will most definitely pursue that path rather than remaining in the same old position with the same pay. Or we may say that if someone had the opportunity to live in a newer, nicer home, rather than an old, dumpy house, that that person would most definitely pack up their things and move into the new, nice house.

But that isn’t always the case. In fact, quite often, even when someone is offered an excellent opportunity to grow or advance somehow, there are times when that person will willfully and stubbornly stay put, refusing to budge a single inch. Even when they know that remaining on the course that they’re on isn’t going to get them anywhere.

Israel is an excellent example of this. You talk about a people who had every advantage in the world! As we spelled out at great length last week, Israel was a people who had been sovereignly chosen by God. For no other reason than because it was God’s good pleasure to do so, He chose Israel to be His special possession on earth.

It was not because God felt as though Israel was great and deserving of His blessings that He chose them. It was not because they had proven themselves to be obedient that He chose them. No, what is so simple, yet so amazing is that God chose Israel to be His people not because of who they were, but because that was what He wanted to do. It was His will to do so.

They were a people unlike any other people on earth, not because of anything within themselves that made them stand out, but because God dwelt among them.

Furthermore, God had consistently warned Israel of the negative effects that would follow disobedience to Him. And He also consistently reminded them of the blessings that would follow when they obeyed Him.

And they consistently experienced both of these. For a while the people would rebel against God and negative results would follow, leading them to call out to the Lord for deliverance. Then after experiencing the Lord’s favor for a while, they would start fooling around with disobedience again and then they would once more find themselves calling out to God to save them.

So, here was a people, given all the opportunity in the world, consistently knowing and experiencing what is both good and what is bad, yet in the end, they seemed to always choose what was bad for them.

And of course, it is no different for Israel in the narrative that we have been working through this month.

We’ve talked about the situation that the people of Israel found themselves in; how they were now lacking a godly leader. So, the problem was leadership. They needed godly, effective leadership.

And while they should have sought the Lord and inquired what He would have them do, they instead did what Israel was so prone to do, follow the lead of the godless nations that surrounded them; the godless nations that God commanded them to have nothing to do with.

They came to Samuel, and they said, “Appoint for us a king to rule over us like the nations that surround us.” But while Israel was all for having a king rule over them like the nations that surrounded them, Samuel was not in favor of the prospect. Therefore, unlike those who approached him, Samuel knew that he must seek the Lord in order to truly know how he should proceed forth in this situation.

Thus, Samuel sought the Lord in prayer. And here in our reading we see the counsel that God gives to Samuel in the matter.

And as we look to our reading, we see that that counsel that God gives to Samuel is to give the people what they asked for. Once again, our reading says:

1 Samuel 8:7-9 ESV

7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

God tells Samuel, “If they want a king so bad, give them a king. Go ahead, give them what they want.”

You see, what God was doing here is what a good parent would do if they saw their child consistently trying to touch the stove while it’s hot. The little child sees the hot stove and is fascinated with it, so he tries to touch it. But his mother stops him from doing so because she knows that if he does, he will burn his hand.

But the child doesn’t seem to understand that his mother is just trying to protect him from what will harm him, so he keeps trying to touch the hot stove, and every time that he tries to touch it, his mother is there to stop him from doing so.

After doing this over and over again, the child’s mother realizes that preventing her child from touching the hot stove is not causing him to learn the lesson that she is trying to teach him, so, the next time that he goes to touch the stove, she lets him follow through with what he wants.

And when he touches the stove, he realizes for himself how hot it is. And after he sees how hot it is, he doesn’t try to touch the hot stove anymore.

And that is precisely what God is doing here. God says, “I have been gracious to this people. I came to them when they were nothing, when they were utterly helpless, in bondage in Egypt and I delivered them with a strong hand. I sustained them in the wilderness for 40 years in spite of the fact that they consistently rebelled against Me. I have faithfully delivered them time and time again from their oppressors. I have marked them as My peculiar people on earth. Yet they have consistently chased after the idols, the worthless gods of the surrounding nations. Now, they say that they don’t want Me as their King any longer; they want a king like the wicked nations that surround them. You know what? Let them have it! Give them what they want!”

God tells Samuel, “It is not you who they are rejecting. It is not your judgment they are rejecting; it is the One you represent Who they are rejecting.” It was God Who the people were rejecting.

But it’s not like they felt as though they were rejecting God. They wanted to worship God, but they wanted to worship Him the way that they thought He should be worshiped.

They felt as though setting up a king like the other nations who surrounded them would be almost like doing God a favor. They thought that if they worshipped God the way that the nations who surrounded them worshipped their gods, that the God of Israel would receive an upgrade of sorts.

Israel had this tendency of doing that. We all remember when they were in the desert and Moses was on the mount with God. In fact, Moses was on the mount for so long that the people grew weary of waiting for him. And because they grew weary of waiting for him, they came to Aaron the High Priest and demanded that he make for them a god to worship, a god who was like the gods that they worshipped in Egypt.

We all know what happened next, Aaron gave in to their demands and made them an idol made out of gold in the form of a calf. Now, to Israel, they didn’t think that they were doing anything wrong. They felt as though they were worshipping the God of Israel, but now they gave Him a form, something they could see and touch.

But of course, we know that that’s not how God is truly worshipped. That is not how God commands us to worship Him. In fact, it is an affront to God to try to make a likeness of Him, for there is nothing like God in all of His creation.

And as I said, that’s what the people were doing here when they sought to have a king like the surrounding nations. Sure, they were rejecting God as He is and trying to trade Him in for something other than Him, but in their minds, they weren’t rejecting God, they were enhancing God, you know, making God a better God.

Thus, God eventually left them to their error, letting them make the reckless choice that they made and then letting them live with the consequences that followed.

But before they done that, God told Samuel to warn the people about what they were doing. God tells Samuel, “only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

God lets Israel have her way, but He tells Samuel to forewarn them concerning their decision. Yes, they are turning away from the God of heaven and earth and mimicking the ways of those whom God had separated them from, but there will assuredly come a day when they will wish that they had not.

And in that day, the Lord will tell His people, “I warned you, I protected you, I kept you from harm, and I told you that it would be this way. But you would not listen. Therefore, you must now reap what you sow!”

It utterly breaks my heart to have seen so many churches, so many denominations that were so blessed by God in the past. So blessed by the purity and holiness of their worship that they offered to God, who have now altered their understanding of God.

In times past, they had reckoned God as He truly is, God as He has made Himself manifest as holy. But in time, they turned away. They turned away from God as He truly is in favor of an understanding of God that they thought was more acceptable, more modern, more appealing.

And throughout the Scriptures, God warns against this, He tells us to worship Him as He is, He tells us to own Him as He is, and furthermore, He tells us that if we deny Him as He is, He will deny us.

And despite knowing this, so many churches, so many denominations have been adamant about watering down the Gospel. And eventually, these water the Gospel down to such an extent to where they can not even truly be considered Christian denominations anymore.

But they didn’t get to where they are overnight. It was a long process. A long process of spiritual neglect. A long process of a failure to remain acquainted with God through consistent devotion to Him until one day the idea that they had of God was nothing like the God of the Bible.

Beloved, the Lord has forewarned us. Even now through me as I stand here with this proclamation, God is forewarning us! May we never turn away from the orthodox Gospel.

The Gospel that tells us that we were dead in sins and trespasses, incapable not only of saving ourselves, but even being incapable of “letting” God save us; even that little glimmer of hope was gone.

But though we were dead, God came to us and graciously made us alive. He chose us, elected us, and predestined us, and in the fulness of time, He caused us to be born again.

And the way that He caused us to be born again was through our faith, faith in the propitiatory offering of Jesus Christ on our behalf. And the life that we now possess we possess because of the everlasting One Who raised Himself from the dead by His own power.

It is in Christ and Christ alone that we stand here today as redeemed children of God.

Beloved, may we always stand for this! May we always stand for God as He truly is!

Amen?