We Want a King!
The Long Road Home - Part 3
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Judges 21:25, 1 Samuel 8:1-22, Psalm 146:3-9
“… we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
1 Samuel 8:19-20
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
In our so-called "more civilized age", we have moved beyond the harsh dictatorship of kings and into various forms of government for and by the people... most notably our own Republic, or Democratic system of rule. We no longer cry out for a King... but we are still crying for our leaders to fight our battles for us.
We expect our politicians and our military leaders to protect us from other nations, to protect our jobs, our bank accounts, and our wallets, to keep us healthy and well-fed and educated, to maintain a comfortable infrastructure of roads and schools and public servants, etc., and to uphold a particular moral and ethical code for society to function freely.
Though we all have different ideas about how our leaders should go about meeting these needs, how they should fund their projects, and how involved they should be in our everyday life... we are all ultimately asking for... or voting for the same thing.... We want leaders who will make us strong and competitive like "other nations" and who will "fight our battles for us".... whether our battles against foreign governments, against poverty, against sickness, against crime... against anything that may disrupt our comfortable lives.
Yet in our "more civilized age", perhaps we have reverted to a way of life before God ever established a King in Israel...
In Israel's day, their rejection of God was to have a King like other nations which had ultimate authority over them to protect them as he saw fit, just like other kings did...
But our leaders are not so powerful... there are limits... checks and balances built into the system... and we view our "kings" as representative of our interests, no matter how diverse and even incompatible those interests may be.
By expecting our leaders to represent us and rule based on what "we the people" deem right and wrong, have we reverted to the period of the Judges?
Is it possible that a government "for the people, by the people" is just another way of saying that "each person does what is right in their own eyes..." and that we merely legitimize it by seeking out political representation to make law reflective of what "is right in our eyes".
And if this is indeed the case, is it not even more likely that both our pride and our failures in the American experiment of "self-government" is simply the result of our original sin.... the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and our innate desire to decide for ourselves.... above any king or ruler.... and even above God himself, what is good and evil... and what is right and wrong for us?
And so we find ourselves at a crossroads.
We are living in crisis much like the children of Israel and we have a choice to make...
Will we continue to cry out for a King... whether absolute or merely representative of our own opinions and desires...
Or will we accept that we have had the perfect King all along... that His covenant with us still stands... that He has invited us to become citizens of His Kingdom which is not of this world.... and that our very lives depend not on who is in charge of the laws on earth, but rather on how well we obey the laws of Heaven!
Let us pray:
Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done... on earth as it is in Heaven. Amen
Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them — he remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
- Psalm 146:3-9