“The True Lord Of Our Lives” Nov. 17, 2013 Sermon for Condell Hospital's Preaching series: Beyond Sufficient as Our King

Let us Pray:

(Psalm 19: 14) ¹⁴Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be Holy and acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen

Before I read the passage from 1 Samuel, I wanted to share this quote. Why this statement applies or was the first one I spiritually heard come from reflecting about the place of those perhaps NOT seeking an earthly king as well as having a lot to do with our will over the will of God.  “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” ― Martin Luther. Keep this quote in the back of your mind while I read from 1 Samuel.   Is it fair to say that when seeking a judge or ruler to be “just like everyone else;” we will over look the truly righteous Lord of our lives rejecting him in favor of our worldly desires, sins?

A reading from the 1^st book of the Prophet Samuel from ‘The Voice:’

Narrator: ¹ When Samuel was old, he named his sons judges of Israel to rule over the people and be their deliverers. ² His first son, Joel, and his second son, Abijah, were judges in Beersheba, ³ but they were not like Samuel. They profited from dishonesty, took bribes, and fostered injustice. ⁴So the elders of Israel gathered and came to Ramah to tell Samuel.

The Elders: ⁵ You have grown old, Samuel, and your sons do not administer justice the way that you did. Before things worsen, appoint a king to rule us, as other nations have.

Narrator: ⁶ This request—“appoint a king to rule us”—bothered Samuel, so he prayed to the Eternal One ⁷ and received an answer.

The Eternal One (to Samuel): Listen to what the people are asking you to do. It is not a rejection of you—it is a rejection of My rule over them. ⁸ It is what they have always done, from the day I brought them out of Egypt until today, rejecting Me and serving other gods. Now they are just doing it to you. ⁹ So listen to what they are asking you to do, but make it plain to them what they are asking. Warn them about what will happen if a king is appointed to rule them.

Narrator: ¹⁰ So Samuel told the people who were asking for a king what the Eternal One had said.

Samuel: ¹¹ If a king rules over you, things will be different from now on. He will make your sons drive his chariots, be his horsemen, and go into battle ahead of his chariots. ¹² Your king will select commanders over 1,000 and commanders over 50. He will make some of you to plow his fields and collect his harvest; some of you will be the blacksmiths forging his shields and swords for battle and outfitting his chariots. ¹³ He will force your daughters to make perfumes, to cook his meals, and to bake his bread. ¹⁴ He will seize the choicest of your fields, vineyards, and olive orchards to give to his courtiers, ¹⁵ and a tenth of your grain and your vineyards to give to his court eunuchs and servants. ¹⁶ This king, you ask for will take your slaves, male and female, as his own and put the choicest of your donkeys and your young men to do his work. ¹⁷ He will take a tenth of your flocks. You, will essentially become his slaves. ¹⁸ One day you will cry for mercy from the Eternal One to save you from this king, you have chosen for yourselves, but be assured, He will not hear you on that day.

The People of Israel (ignoring Samuel): ¹⁹ We have decided that we will have a king who will rule over us ²⁰ so that we will be like all other nations and will have someone to judge us and to lead us into battle.

Narrator: ²¹ After Samuel had heard their demands, he told the Eternal One what they had said.

The Eternal One (to Samuel): ²² Do as they have asked. Give them a king.

Narrator:  So Samuel told the people of Israel to go back to their cities until he would call them together to anoint them a king.  

The Voice translation lays out the passage much like a play script which in some senses IS a lot like how we experience the ancient Israelites in their journey to both finding themselves and becoming truthfully obedient to God.  We are still seeking today which winds up being the battle or bondage of the will: Our will or God’s? That is the question.

                This segment from 1^st Samuel only introduces us to the conversations and scenes between the elders and Samuel and the conversation between God and Samuel.  He does give a speech or warning to the people after consulting YHWH but we don’t hear from people who may have expressed another opinion.  For example, what if there was an imaginary character who turned out to be the wife of the lead elder who was sent with the group of elders to complain and demand that Samuel finds them a ruler and her name is Jessica? 

Earlier that week she asks her husband Micah and says:  “Micah, we all know how terrible Samuel’s sons were in supposedly ruling over our people…  why on earth do you and your friends still feel another ‘cookie cutter’ king is going to be the solution to all of our problems?  Are you really thinking in terms of what YHWH wants or your own?” Micah Says to his wife:  “Jessica, we need a slick politician to be tough on foreign policy and if need be show his muscle over our enemies… That’s what a king is supposed to be, to do.  Don’t you remember how much we suffered? How could you say we are dishonoring God as well as not understand what is needed for our survival?!”  But Jessica said: “Micah, why do we assume to know what we need?  God knows what we need and it is not swindling, war mongering and more death!  We are spiritually indenturing ourselves to the ways of the world not what God desires for us at all!”  Micah however stormed out and refused to even ruminate upon his wife’s words since all he ever saw his people experience was slavery, oppression and genuine suffering.  He could not hear God calling to him that his attitude would not work out in the long scheme of things.  He assumed the facts, Samuel is just an old man and his sons were corrupt… It was only logical to demand a king who would be the perfect bureaucrat, card player to the world.

                We are never given any such dialogue or indication that there may have been anyone who felt like Micah’s wife, Jessica… BUT as we see in chapters to follow this text, the Israelites do get kings and great ones at that but the irony is that only 1,000 something years later, they receive the real king of righteousness—Christ Jesus the Messiah; only to reject Him and put him to death upon the Cross because he was not the warrior-king Messiah they expected.

Going back to the poignant Words from Samuel to the self-concerned people: (QUOTE) “¹⁶ This king, you ask for will take your things, making them his own …¹⁷ You will essentially become his slaves.  (Is this what you really want?) ¹⁸ One day you will cry for mercy from the Eternal One (whom you blatantly rejected…) to save you from “this king,” you have chosen for yourselves… but be assured, He will not hear you on that day. (Especially since you refused to listen to me and God’s warnings…)”

Requesting a king to lead is tantamount to a rejection of Samuel’s godly judgeship and ministry of prophecy.  The peoples’ motivation reveals their profound dissatisfaction with who they are as a people.  They complained about receiving manna in the wilderness… though they were begin rescued for all intents and purposes by God with this heavenly food… BUT they chose to complain!  Getting back to Samuel, we hear their dissatisfaction in verses 19 & 20: “¹⁹…Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, No! We will have a king over us, ²⁰ That we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” Basically they don’t want a righteous judge or a ruler that will pursue justice… they just want a slick politician, a bureaucrat!

The meaning of the kingship of God, however, according to the Bible, IS the denial to humankind of the concentration and permanence of power.  The power of God by the time of Jesus, as we know, will have a completely different purpose and understanding.  The power of God through Christ Jesus the Messiah is transformation.  As we hear from St. Paul who understands the Lordship of Christ: (Romans 4: 24-25; Romans 5:1-5 ) “²⁴…It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. ¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

To demand otherwise is to wrest power away from God.  The ancient Israelites were too wound up in coming to understand their place in the scheme of things.  They barely listened to Moses as it was, and held a narrow view of who their leaders should be, yet alone listen to God’s commands through the Prophets… This leads me back to that quote I heard when I began developing this sermon from Luther. Let’s heard it again in light of Samuel’s dilemma with the people of God: “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” ― Martin Luther. 

Let’s take this apart sentence by sentence: “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness.”  At the time of the Book of Samuel, there was a political shift in both power and in the people’s sense of justice.  They were not accustomed to experience much justice and had little structure governmentally.  They lived spiritually and otherwise as a tribal people.  So perhaps they may have thought about their lives not being truthfully righteous but needed to grow in obedience to YHWH to be truly righteous. 

Accountability is a universal theme—by whose authority do your hearts bend to?  By the time of St. Paul evangelism for Christ Jesus, whom he knew deeply in his heart that he was the true King and Messiah the people of God needed… He would essentially pen the very first creed: (Philippians 2: 9-11) “⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  As we may recall, Ceasar was the Roman ruler and oppressor over Judea at the time and like most Roman rulers considered himself a “God…”  Would the Israelites of Samuel’s time appreciate this guy even over and above YHWH?!  I think they would come to greatly regret their demand upon Samuel for an earthly king.

Getting back to the sentences within Martin Luther’s quote: “We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road...”  Here is another universal verse that highlights the Israelites consternation about seeking an “earthly” king.  Martin Luther picks up upon our very human need to think in terms of our sense of time and not God’s sense of time or better put, ‘rule’ over time.  As children of God, we are always in the process of transformation to as Christians, grow into the life of GRACE.  Growing into the life of GRACE is lead by the sovereignty of a completely contradictory king—one beyond our earthly standards of judgment.  A sovereign that is the true Lord of our lives—Christ Jesus, Beyond sufficient as our king!

When coming to both reflect on an Old Testament text solely as well as the theme— “Beyond Sufficient as Our King;” who are we to understand yet alone measure God’s sufficiency? The first semester of my seminary studies at a very liberal school, challenged all of us to see Jesus as merely the rejected prophet… over and above Christus Victor which illumines the TRUTH and core of GRACE:  Christ Jesus defeated Sin, Death and the Devil by the Cross and the Resurrection.  This is our Christian creed of our more than sufficient sovereign—Jesus.   But as we know of human nature, people don’t want to have a divine King yet alone be held accountable to the lifestyle of GRACE.  We want the control, we want for ourselves a sufficient “transactional” reign over the world and other people.  The world was not made to be unto itself but to bear transforming New fruit.  We were created to bear fruit through loving obedience and accountability to God in relationship and neighbor with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength.  The greatest commandment was spoken by the divine, eternal one to rule over our hearts and the fruit of our lives together upon the earth!

How little did the ancient Israelites know about where their future would lie?  Would seeing into the future have changed their lot, truthfully and honestly?  How little WE know what IS good for us and where the future will lead us especially since we cannot bring ourselves to understand and accept the power of God exampled to us in Christ Jesus?  We could probably share with the ancient Israelites, the very human problem of accepting God’s power over and above our own.  The chapters to follow in the 1^st book of Samuel introduce the rise of Saul. 

Chapter 12 in particular examples the beginning of the long and winding road to the Israelites finding themselves and struggling with their relationship to God:  (Samuel tells the people) “¹³See, here is the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; see, the Lord has set a king over you. ¹⁴If you will fear the Lord and serve him and heed his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well; ¹⁵but if you will not heed the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king. ¹⁹All the people said to Samuel, “Pray to the Lord your God for your servants, so that we may not die; for we have added to all our sins the evil of demanding a king for ourselves.” ²⁰And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart; ²¹and do not turn aside after useless things that cannot profit or save, for they are useless. ²²For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. ²³Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in the good and the right way.²⁴Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you.”

As children of Grace who have accepted Christ Jesus as both the ultimate sovereign and Messiah—do we allow Him to be the Lord of our lives and grow in obedience to His will not ours?  We see in the following chapters in 1^st Samuel, the ancient Israelites struggled with obedience and faithfulness to YHWH.  They are just beginning in their steps of transition spiritually…  As we know, John the Baptist represented a transitional figure from the Old Testament to the New, for he Baptized Jesus and was compelled to be his herald in the wilderness… But when he saw what kind of Messiah Jesus was, he sent his disciples to ask: ^3b…“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ⁴Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” ⁷As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. ⁹What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. ¹⁰This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’

Jesus, the true king had to tell the people John’s purpose to herald his coming… but as we will see, the people still refused to listen and Jesus would be crucified!  (John 19) “¹⁹Pilate had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” ²⁰Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. ²¹Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” ²²Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” Pilate was a bureaucrat or more or less a functionary to Rome…  The scribes and the Pharisees knew how to politically manipulate functionaries such as Pilate.  They used their earthly understanding of power against someone who proved a great threat to them and their “rule.”

How many more times throughout our lives together here; will we instinctually pursue worldly power?  Will it be to the breaking of the world to Christ and Satan’s final battle? Or as children of the New Covenant— can we build upon our lives, a New life in GRACE that the true sovereign over our lives IS Christ Jesus… and he is beyond sufficient to rule our hearts!

AMEN

Condell Hospital Preaching Series—“Beyond Sufficient as Our King”                                    

November 17^th, 2013

1 Samuel 8                                                                                                                             Nicole A.M. Collins