Introduction
The Bible works as a mirror showing us who we really are. James calls it "the perfect law of liberty." We often think of the Bible as telling us about God, but it is also the best source of knowledge about ourselves. The very first line of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion reads as follows, "Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." Then, he goes on to assert that the sure place to gain the knowledge of God and knowledge of self is the Bible. Thus, we open the Bible and we look at it as into a mirror that is able to penetrate beyond facades and veneers and lay our hearts open. As a mirror, the Bible helps us see blind spots about ourselves that we would otherwise never see.
This mirror property that the Bible has is true even of a narrative chapter like 1 Samuel 8, which we are about to consider. This chapter is ostensibly about the elders of Israel wanting a king other than Yahweh, but it also works as a mirror to help us see our passion for substitutes, our aversion to holiness, our immunity to wisdom, and our need of Christ.
I. Samuel Was Old, 8:1-3.
A. In the first 12 or so chapters of 1 Samuel, time flies by very quickly and without much warning of its passing, 1.
1. Chapter 7 leaves us with the impression that Samuel was in the prime of his life.
2. Chapter 8 describes him as old and having adult sons who are at least old enough to be judges themselves.
3. Also, enough time had elapsed from the battle of Ebenezer for the house of Israel to forget that Yahweh had delivered them even though they didn't have a king like the other nations.
4. One commentator reasonably suggests that 30 years elapsed between chpts. 7 and 8.
5. Samuel may likely have been in his 70's by now.
B. Samuel had wicked sons, 2-3.
1. His sons served at Beersheba, about 57 miles from where Samuel lived and ministered.
2. It is possible that Samuel didn't know what his sons were doing (unlike Eli).
a. There doesn't seem to be any indication in the text or in the book as a whole that Samuel was complicit with his sons.
b. Ironically, the oldest son was named The Lord Is God (Joel) and the youngest My Father Is the Lord (Abijah).
3. In 1-2 Samuel, the only major figure who had a faithful son was Saul (Jonathan).
C. The elders saw in Samuel's age and his sons' misuse of their office a justification to ask for a king who would substitute Yahweh, 4-5.
II. First Mirror Image of Ourselves: Our Passion for Substitutes, 8:4-9.
A. The elders' request for a king at first glance seems plausible, 4-5.
1. Samuel was old and his sons were not fit to succeed him.
2. Nahash, king of the Ammonites, was terrorizing the nations around Israel.
1 Sam. 12:12 – And when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, "No, but a king shall reign over us…."
3. Everybody else had a king.
4. God himself had made provisions for a king at some point in Israel's history.
Gen. 49:8-10 – Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's children shall bow down before you. Judah isa lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.
Dt. 17:14-20 – When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,' you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, 'You shall not return that way again.' Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself. Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment tothe right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel.
5. So their request for a new government doesn't seem outrageous.
B. God saw their request for what t really was: a demand for a substitute, 7-8.
1. The new king is not just a substitute for Samuel – it is an attempt to sideline Yahweh like they had done throughout their history, 8.
2. This is confirmed by what Samuel says in chpt. 12.
a. Israel was in Egypt in slavery; they cried out to Yahweh; Yahweh sent Moses and Aaron as deliverers, 12:8.
b. Israel forget Yahweh, who subjects them to various oppressors in the time of the judges; Israel cried out to Yahweh, confessing sin and pleading for deliverance; Yahweh sent Gideon and the rest to deliver them, 12:9-11.
c. Now Israel see Nahash the Ammonite flexing his military muscle against them; no one cries to the Lord; instead they demand a king, 12:12.
3. So here is the problem: in the current emergency, there was no crying out to God for deliverance but a demand for a king.
a. Their help now was not in the strong name of Yahweh but in a new form of government.
b. It is not monarchy but trust in monarchy that is the ugly sin.
Ps. 118:8-9 – It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It isbetter to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.
Ps. 146:3 – Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.
C. Do you see the contrast between chpts. 7 and 8 and the parallel between 4 and 8?
1. In chpt. 7, there was no king, just God – Israel cried out God delivered.
2. Chpts. 4 and 8, there is a formidable adversary but no crying out to the Lord, just trust in a box and trust in a king – both with disastrous consequences.
D. Mirror time: Israel's situation is full of instruction for us.
1. The elders of Israel figured that the solution for their problem was a change in government not repentance.
a. We have a tendency to assess our problem mechanically, rather than spiritually.
b. Our first reaction is that there is a problem with the system that needs to change, not a look at our heart.
2. Instead of looking to God for help we are more interested in prescribing what form God's help must take.
a. Our attention is not on God's deliverance in our troubles but on specifying the method by which he must bring that deliverance.
b. We are not content with seeking a saving God, but desire to direct how and when he will save.
3. The Lord will sometimes give us our request to our own peril.
a. God's granting our request may not be a sign of his favor but of our stubbornness.
b. Sometimes God's greatest kindness is in not answering our prayers exactly as we desire.
Ps. 106:15 – And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.
4. Our proposals and solutions can appear to be completely reasonable, clearly logical, obviously plausible, and utterly godless like asking for a king.
III. Second Mirror Image of Ourselves: Our Aversion to Holiness, 8:5, 19-20.
A. Israel wanted to be like every other nation around them – even though God uses this type of language in Dt. 17 when describing the office of the king, the actual description of the king is nothing like the kings of the other nations, 5.
B. But for Israel the desire to be like the other nations became a passion – they wanted to be just like them including not having Yahweh as their God.
1. Samuel solemnly warned them with words directly from the Lord about the peril of having the type of kind they wanted.
2. Yet, they said, "we don't care. We want what we want. With a king, we will fit, we will belong, we will at last get up to speed. After all, this is the Iron Age, and we must have structures compatible with the demands of a new ear," 19-20.
C. Yet, Israel was unique by definition – Israel was made to be different (holy).
Dt. 4:32-40 – For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard. Did anypeople ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of anothernation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord Himself is God; there is none other besides Him. Out of heaven He let you hear His voice, that He might instruct you; on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire. And because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence, with His mighty power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day. Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the Lord Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time.
1. When, since the beginning of time, had any nation ever heard God speaking real verbs and adjectives and imperatives out of the middle of fire and still come away alive?
2. Has there ever been a god who took his own nation out of the clutches of another nation by bludgeoning its hard-headed, hard-hearted oppressors into submission by raw power and sheer terror?
3. To put in terms that we might be able to relate better:
a. Is there another people who have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son whom God loves?
b. Who else has the Son of God as their Savior who died in their place and came back to life in order to bring them back to spiritual life now and one day perfect physical life?
D. We, the Church, we Christians, are by definition different, set up apart, holy.
E. But Israel and the rest of us often prefer to keep step with our culture and fit into the molds of our society.
1. Who wants to stand out in the middle of a crooked and perverse generation? Jesus does!
2. Why should the church or Christians have a different definition of success? Because Jesus does – servant!
3. Why there should be a winsome purity in our conversation, faithfulness in our marriages, and chastity before it?
4. Why a passion for worship over entertainment?
5. Because we stand as set apart with Jesus.
Heb. 11:24-26 – By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.
Heb. 13:10-14 – We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.
F. The Mirror of the Word shows us that we have a general aversion to God-defined holiness.
G. Being made aware of that enables us to look to God in Christ for grace to stand with him outside the gate.
IV. Third Mirror Image of Ourselves: Our Immunity to Wisdom, 8:10-18, 21-22.
A. God through Samuel told them what the consequences of their choice were going to be, 8:9-18.
1. The king will not be all that you think he will be.
2. Not because he is going to be the most wicked king ever, but because he will be a king and that's how kings in the nations behave.
B. But Israel will not allow wisdom to lure them away from the folly they so eagerly want to commit, 8:19-22.
C. Israel's hard-headedness works as mirror for us.
1. Knowledge or information or truth does not in itself change or empower.
a. Some people think that all the problems of the world can be solved through education alone.
b. Though it is a good thing to educate people, education is not the ultimate need of the world.
c. Have you ever made a decision contrary to the information you had for whatever other reasons?
2. Israel hears God's wisdom but does not submit to it.
3. We should cry out to be the anti-Israel; we should cry out for the Lord to give us soft hearts, for teachable spirits, for us to be preserved from the arrogance of our own stupidity.
4. We only become receptive to wisdom from God when we receive it through Jesus Christ.
Jn. 8:31-32, 36 – Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free…. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."
V. Fourth Mirror Image of Ourselves: Our Need of Christ.
A. We look at the mirror of 1 Samuel 8 and we see that we are a lot like Israel.
1. We have a passion for substitutes.
2. We have an aversion for holiness.
3. We are immune to wisdom.
B. The image we see is so discouraging and if we continue looking at it as is, we will be driven to despair.
C. So when we look at ourselves in the mirror of God's Word, we need to see all our blind spots, all our sins, all our ugliness.
D. But we need to see something else.
1. We need to see Jesus standing with us as well.
2. That's the only way that seeing our sins in the mirror will help us – if it drives us to see Jesus as well.
3. We have been united with him by faith.
a. So when we look at the mirror we see our sins to be sure.
b. But we also see his righteousness that has been declared to be ours by virtue of our faith in him.
4. So we see ugliness and beauty at the same time – the ugliness of our own sin and the beauty of Christ – and that is THE CROSS!
"My conscience felt and owned the guilt And plunged me in despair
I saw my sins his blood had spilt
And helped to nail him there
But with a second look he said 'I freely all forgive
This blood is for your ransom paid
I died that you might live.'" John Newton
Conclusion
Look deeply into the mirror of the Word of God. See yourself and your sin in all the ugliness of sin. But see Jesus as well, the one who stands in your place.
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