We have taken a little detour from our journey through the Bible over the last couple of weeks as we celebrated Easter Sunday. Actually, it’s not so much a detour as a way of peeking toward the end of the book and seeing all the action leading up to the climactic moment through the lens of the cross and resurrection. Easter is where the whole Bible is leading us toward, so keeping that in mind periodically is a good thing.
I know that many of you have been reading along through this series so far (we’re in week 15), but some have told me that you’ve gotten behind. Others have joined us somewhere along the way and may want to jump in and start reading along with us. Wherever you find yourself in reading through the Bible I want to encourage you to pick up with us here as we move into one of the more interesting and important parts of Scripture—the story of the monarchy. It is the typology of kingship in these historical books of the Old Testament that pave the way for us to understand the kind of King that Jesus becomes in the New Testament. The books of 1 and 2 Samuel are a treasure trove of stories about the kind of leader God desires for God’s people and yield a lot of lessons for those of us who are leaders in our homes, our workplaces, and our community.
But before we dive in there I want to take a few minutes to review where we’ve been. When I was at Asbury a couple of weeks ago I picked up a book by Dr. Sandy Richter, who teaches Old Testament at the seminary, entitled The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament. If you’re looking for a book that puts the Old Testament into an easily manageable framework, this is it. There are some great charts in the book, one of which is a timeline of the Old Testament (I emailed her and she gladly shared an electronic copy with me). On this chart you can see where we’ve been.
One of the ways in which Dr. Richter frames the Old Testament is through the understanding of covenant—a general law or organizing principle that holds all the stories together. The Old Testament or Old Covenant is thus organized around five central figures, four of whom we have already met. Those five are Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and, as we’ll see over the next several weeks, David. The whole theology of the Hebrew Bible is found in God’s interaction with these important figures.
In this chart, which is also provided by Dr. Richter, we see how the covenant has come forward thus far—the original covenant with all of humanity, represented by Adam, was broken by humanity, who chose to reject God’s protection and provision as the more powerful and benevolent partner in the relationship. The result was a break in the relationship between God and humanity, a relationship broken by sin. God decides to begin all over again with one man, Noah, who survives the purging flood with God’s help. God promises to be faithful to humanity, even though God knows that the ways of humanity are rebellious and sinful. With Abraham, God thus begins a covenant designed to repair the divine-human relationship. It is through his family that the world would come to know God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of the whole world. From that one family, a nation is born called Israel. God makes a covenant with this nation, much like larger empires made treaties with their client states in the ancient Near East. God promises them protection, provision and purpose if they will stay faithful. If they do not, there will be consequences, which come in the form of invasion and dominance by foreign pagan nations. The covenant God makes at Mount Sinai with Moses is a binding contract. Richter writes that the reason Moses gets two tablets from God is not that there are 5 commandments on each…rather, the two tablets each contain the whole covenant but there were two copies: one for Israel and one for God. They were to carry the tablets with them in the Ark of the Covenant, which was the representative of God’s presence with them. Both God and Israel could thus continually review the covenant.
We’ve seen already, though, that Israel has a hard time keeping their end of the covenant. They invade Canaan and establish themselves there, but they are still under the constant threat of foreign domination. The Book of Judges reveals a constant cycle of apostasy. The Israelites fall away from God and pursue relationships with other pagan gods in the form of idols. They are threatened with destruction by a pagan power. God raises up a leader from among the people, empowers that leader and fights for him or her and the nation. Israel is saved, the people vow allegiance to God. But then the leader dies and the people go back to flirting with other gods and betraying the covenant.
The conflict here is really about who is in control. God is the one who has kept Israel intact, preserved the nation, protected it in the desert and in Canaan. God has even fought for Israel, as we have seen. And yet, Israel constantly continues to look at its pagan neighbors and want to be like them, worshipping gods of convenience and sexuality. The Israelites didn’t fully abandon worship of Yahweh, their one God, but simply added on to that worship a deeper affection for the Canaanite gods, particularly Baal and Asherah. Baal was the storm god and Asherah his female consort. The Canaanites believed that rain, so vital to that drought-prone area, was the result of a sexual union between Baal and Asherah, so the rituals of Baal worship were sexual in nature and, thus, very attractive to the Israelites as well. As one commentator I read this week put it: “[The Israelites] had one God for crises and another for everyday life.” They ran back to Yahweh when they were in trouble, but otherwise they were preoccupied with the sexual delights of Baal worship.
This was, of course, unacceptable to Yahweh. The division of loyalty was destructive and threatened to derail Israel’s mission as the chosen people. The constant call of God/Yahweh was to choose. Choose God and see your mission and purpose in life fulfilled or choose the false god Baal and face the consequences of life apart from God.
That choice would also be couched in political terms. Who was going to lead Israel? Would it be God, the one who had preserved them all along, or would the people continue to reject God and pick their own kind of leader? That’s the crisis we encounter at the beginning of 1 Samuel.
The end of the Book of Judges is very clear about the problem in Israel. “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Judges 21:25). I like how Dr. Richter describes the situation: “Rather than allowing the covenant to set the parameters of their behavior, these people (who claimed to belong to the covenant) were creating their own morality. And their self-centered lifestyles (influenced by the ideals of their culture) were resulting in a ‘people of God’ who looked and acted just like…the Canaanites…Interestingly, from the perspective of the Israelites, the problem was foreign oppression. They thought that what they needed was a better army. What they did not see was that the role of foreign oppression in their covenant was disciplinary—its purpose was to bring Israel back into right relationship with Yahweh. Hence, the solution to the problem was not a more effective military; it was adherence to the covenant.”
So, as the writer of 1 Samuel tells us, the Israelite solution was to get a king. Notice their request of the prophet Samuel, the last of the judges: “Appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:5).
Now, it wasn’t as though having a king was a bad thing altogether. Even God had anticipated the need for leadership in Israel all the way back in Deuteronomy. Look at Deuteronomy 17:14-20. God anticipates that Israel will have a king someday, but that the king should meet specific criteria: 1) He should be someone chosen specifically by God, 2) he should be a native Israelite, 3) he must not spend his ambition acquiring horses (military power through chariotry), or wives (which were taken to form international alliances) or money (which corrupts) and 4) that he should “write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll” and read it every day of his life” (v. 18-19). The King, in other words, must be fully submissive to God in his leadership of the people and not rely on his own wealth, power, or military prowess to overshadow his relationship with God.
But when we come to 1 Samuel, we see how God’s idea of kingship has been distorted. The people want a king who is very much like the kings of the Canaanites. Notice what they ask for in 8:19-20: “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
Problem was that up until this point, God was the one who had ruled Israel and fought its battles, often miraculously intervening to preserve the nation in the face of impossible odds. The people’s typology of kingship was not God’s, but reflected their own fascination with the Canaanite religion and practice. They wanted a king who would solve their problem with foreign oppression, but hadn’t God told them all along that the problem with foreign oppression wasn’t a military problem but a problem of their covenant unfaithfulness? A king would no better solve that problem than the Judges had before him as long as the people continued to live outside the covenant.
So God saw their desire for a king to be what it was and told the prophet Samuel, “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; 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 what the king who will reign over them will do” (8:7-9).
Samuel explains to the people who a king in the Canaanite mold will draft their sons for battle and their daughters for forced labor, how the king will exact heavy taxes from them and take some of the best of their produce. But the people are persistent and impatient. And so God says to Samuel, “Listen to them and give them a king” (v. 21).
I’ve said it many times, but often God’s best way of disciplining his people is to give them exactly what they want. Be careful what you ask for.
So the Israelites get a king—one who fit their profile exactly. We see a description of Saul in 1 Samuel 9:1-2: “Now there was a son of Benjamin whose name was Kish…He had a son whose name was Saul, a choice and handsome man, there was not a more handsome person than he among the sons of Israel; from his shoulders up he was taller than any of the people.”
Saul is the matinee idol, the dashing king, the military hero type. So God instructs Samuel to anoint him with oil, the traditional sign of kingship. Interestingly the Hebrew verb for anoint is masah, the origin of the word “Messiah.” The people thus get their king.
Saul takes over as leader of a tribal confederacy that occupies the central hill country of Canaan. The flatter and more fertile land on the coast is still occupied by the Canaanites, but from their hillside stronghold the Israelites gradually begin to expand their control.
That is, until they run into a buzzsaw. See, here on the coast are a race of people known as the Philistines, who were immigrant sea-faring people of Greek origin who had fled the collapse of the Mycenean civilization in Greece that happened around the same time. The Philistines were heavily armed and skilled as warriors, thus now you have two peoples fighting for their lives pushing toward one another in the confines of a small strip of land.
Saul doesn’t fare well against the Philistines, which is a very bad sign. We also see that Saul himself is not following the prescription of kingship laid out in Deuteronomy. Two incidences show his failure. In chapter 13, Saul is about to engage in battle with the Philistines but needs the prophet Samuel to offer the proper sacrifice to God in order for the Israelites to have any hope of success. Samuel is delayed and Saul becomes impatient and performs the sacrifice himself, usurping God’s command and procedure.
Then, in chapter 15, Saul engages in battle with the Amalekites, another Canaanite people, and fails to carry out God’s instructions, keeping all the spoils of war (namely sheep and cattle) for himself instead of dedicating them to God by slaughtering them. In one of the most interesting exchanges in the Bible, Saul sees the prophet Samuel approaching after the battle and says to him, “See, I have carried out the Lord’s instructions.” But, Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
Saul’s confession reveals the major problem with his leadership. Look at verse 24—“I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the people and so I gave in to them.” And later, Saul keeps begging but with a self-serving tone. “I have sinned,” he says in verse 30, “But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel…” Saul reveals that his career and his success is ultimately more important to him than God’s Kingdom.
Saul’s reign would end in disaster. Instead of triumphant victories, Saul will ultimately die on the battlefield, falling on his own sword. The Philistines would take his body and hang it from the walls of Beth Shan as a sign of their own victory and, once again, Israel’s failure. Before that, though, God would reveal a new kind of king—one after his own heart. David would replace Saul as king even before Saul was dead. We’ll begin our look at the David story next week.
There are a couple of important lessons for us to draw from these chapters. One has to do with our own faithfulness to God. Are we looking exclusively to God in our life of faith, or do we, like the Israelites, syncretize our belief in God with the values of the surrounding culture? Other pretender gods and goddesses are paraded in front of us every day on our TV and computer screens, which sit like altars in our homes and offices. They lure us with the promise of sexual gratification, with the promise of wealth and the promise of pleasure. We believe in God, we may even go to church, but the pull of these other gods is strong. They deliver an instant high, whereas Yahweh is in our lives for the long haul.
When we choose God, when we choose to follow him and give our obedience to him, even when it isn’t culturally popular, we see purpose, preservation, and provision for our lives. That’s no promise that life will be easy. In fact, it’s clearly harder to serve God. But the outcome is favorable for the long term—a life that means something. If we choose the gods of the culture, however, we begin down a road toward destruction. The breakdown of community and family are the inevitable result of a failure to follow God and look to our own self-gratification instead. The story of Israel is a cautionary tale for all time. Who are you going to serve? You can’t serve both God and the gods of this world.
Secondly, we learn a lot here about godly leadership. If we’ve been chosen by God to lead, be it in our families or our businesses or our community, then we must continually guard our hearts and minds against the temptation to be the kind of leader that can be used by others or use others for their own purposes. It’s important that we not use leadership to build our own kingdoms, but rather to see everything we do as being subject to the vision of the Kingdom of God. How do we do that? Remember the prescription God gives back there in Deuteronomy—to read the Scriptures every day and follow it carefully, not to consider yourself better than anyone else, but stay on a faithful track with the vision of God’s Kingdom ever before you. That’s God’s secret to effective leadership!
I want to encourage you to read through these texts with an eye toward your own life situation. Where are you compromising your faith in God by chasing after the lure of other gods? Are you constantly checking your faithfulness and obedience by spending time daily in God’s Word, in prayer and in reflection?
Faithfulness to God doesn’t just happen. It takes work and diligence. The Israelites were looking for someone to bail them out, even though God had been doing that all along. May we put our full trust in God and find our way to life!
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