Year 2 Day 247

Year 2 Day 247


Pray (ACts)


Read - 1 Samuel 8:4-9


Message - Alan Burke 
In short, where we are is that Samuel’s sons whom Samuel had made judges (1) were using their position for their own benefit (3), the whole thing was a mess and the elders of the people came to Samuel to complain and they want a king to lead them (4-5). What they say is true, we might even think that they are justified in their desire for a king, but it was just a pretext for becoming like the nations around them. 


Think about it, they were saying Samuel’s sons were the issue, well Samuel could have sacked his sons, but your not going to get that with a king. Kingship is hereditary, if Samuel’s sons were bad and he was a godly leader of the people, what would it not be like if the King’s son/sons were hellions, who was to say that the son or grandson of the king that they wanted wouldn’t just be a shambles. 


Clearly what they had in mind was more than a change of leaders, what they wanted was a change of institution, they wanted a king because they wanted to be like everyone else. They were God’s covenant people, but this request is saying that they are unhappy with the way things work, the way God works, they wanted to be like everyone else. They had lived surrounded by the nations for two centuries and now they wanted to be like them, no longer were they happy to be different, to be set apart by God they just wanted to be like everyone else, but the problem is they in their desire they don’t want to do it God’s way, to live as God’s people they wanted to live like everyone else. As Samuel goes to the Lord it clear that they have not rejected Samuel but they have rejected God. 


The bible not only reveal Lord God to us and our need for him, but also reveals how the human heart works and how we are. This is God’s people wanting a substitute for God, they had done it before when they served their Ashtaroths and Baals (7:3-4), they had substituted him for something else and that was false gods, now they want to substitute God for a king.


The human heart wants to take God and put something else, anything else in his place, our rebellious sinful hearts think that ‘thing’ what ever that thing is, is better! It can be any number of things, and it is what we need, we want it, we make ourselves think that we need it, we long for it, we even wished for it. But those things never satisfy, those things will always disappoint, they have consequences that we often never imagined at the time as the Israelites would find out. Instead what they needed as a people and what we need as a people is to have God at the centre of everything through Jesus Christ, knowing that a relationship with him is what we need, it is better than anything else that we can have and if he is our Lord then we will do what he says, it will be seen in our lives (Lk 6:46-49)


Pray (acTS)


Sing

WSC
Q14 What is sin?
Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God. (1 John 3:4)
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