The People Choose

Bible Passage: 1 Samuel 8

Ever since God rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, they had been led by him directly. Individuals like Moses, Joshua and the judges were raised up, and would seek God’s voice for guidance and rely on God’s intervention in battle. The role of the prophet was crucial in helping the people understand what to do. By the time of 1 Samuel 8, however, the people were growing tired of this way of doing things. In particular, they rejected the idea of being lead by a God who they can’t control and instead wanted to be led by a human king, just like all the nations around them have.

We Want a King: There should be no doubt about it that this passage shows the people making a choice. On the one hand is God, who has a track record of leading them in kindness and grace, has brought them into a good land, and has made promises that they will flourish and be blessed. But this God is outside their control. They cannot look with their eyes and see anything to hang their future security on, and so continuing in this choice would mean living by faith, and approaching the challenges of life in a way that would seem baffling to those around them. On the other hand is a human monarchy. The issue isn’t primarily about the merits of having a king or not (books like Judges are actually very pro-monarchy), but in this case the request for a king represented the desire to break free of the need to rely on God and give them something more tangible, and more akin to the nations around them to rely on instead. The same issue lies at stake in many of the decisions we make in life as well. Will we live by faith, even when this is different to how the world around us lives, or will we instead trust in what we can see for our future and security and seek to accumulate money, power, status or whatever else makes us feel like the future will be okay?

What a King Will Take: On hearing their request, Samuel warns the people about the consequences of choosing a king. Instead of trusting God for deliverance and victory they would find that an army would be drafted and forced labour would be instituted, and it would be their children who would be conscripted into these things. Lands would be seized, finance would be taken and people would be enslaved. In short, they would suffer from kings and powerful people doing what kings do. Instead of the kind and gracious leadership under God that marked the people as distinct from the nations, they would experience something much more harsh and costly. As the narrative goes on, we see exactly this happen under the reigns of Saul, David (especially towards the end) and Solomon (to the extreme), as well as under the kings that followed. The cautionary tale here is that whenever we look to something other than God for our flourishing and security then we will find the thing we are looking for takes more of us than it gives. We end up serving that idol, chasing more and more and suffering as a result.

God Gives Them What They Want: The tragic end to this story is God going along with the people’s request. He knows that the implication is that they have rejected him, but God does not choose to force his rule upon these people whose hearts have turned elsewhere, but to allow them to make their own choice (v22). Through the Bible we see this pattern. Lots of people came to give Jesus a hearing, but many of them turned back when they heard the call to discipleship and Jesus let them make this choice. In Romans 1, Paul explains there is a ‘giving over’ involved in God’s judgement. Sometimes the response of God when people reject him is that he simply allows us to make that choice and experience the consequences of our own decision. This marks a sober moment in the sermon to challenge people about our own choices in life. Before us is a life of blessing in relationship with God, or a life chasing other things that will ultimately harm and destroy. The choice is a real one, and is one that each of us is called upon to make.

Potential Applications:

• This is an opportunity to invite people to make the big decision of life – will they follow Jesus as their king or trust in their own way instead?
• Seeing the warning about how a king would treat the people should make us cautious about trusting earthly power, whether that is building it for ourselves or relying on the power of others.