Sin – Punishment – Pleading – Rescue

At the end of Judges, we read this: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Judges 21:25). They’re surrounded by enemies. They have to struggle to live in the land. They have no centralized government. The Law is nearly abandoned, and the Tabernacle is almost unused.

At one point, the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant containing the Law, from it’s place in the Tabernacle at Shiloh. They take it on a journey to parade it through the five great cities of the Philistines. Of course, the presence of the Ark among the Philistines causes all of their inhabitants discomfort – they get boils and hemorrhoids – so the Philistines bring the Ark back to the people of Israel and drop it off at Kiriath-jearim, quite away off from Shiloh - they just wanted it off their hands. The Ark ended up staying there for quite a long time.

The Law is in one place, and the Tabernacle is in another – and what we see is that the people of Israel are at an all-time low. God has let them come to this place on purpose – because when you get to the end of yourself – who do you call on?

Most of us would give the politically-correct answer: “When you reach the end of yourself, you call on God.” Nope. That’s not what the Israelites do. If you are a part of the nation of Israel and are in need of help – and you’ve been calling on God, but you don’t like what He sends, who do you call? Do you call for God? No! You call for a rock star or a super hero. The people of Israel reach a point where they don’t want God to rescue them all the time through a hero who comes up when he or she is needed. They want a KING to rescue them.

Let me give you a bit more background on what’s happening: Eli is the High Priest at Shiloh. His sons are jerks – they cheat the people and are immoral. Samuel’s mother Hannah desperately wants a son and asks the Lord to give her a son; if the Lord will bless her, she will consecrate him to the Lord for His service. God gives Hannah a son, she dedicates him to the Lord, and gives him to Eli to bring up in the priesthood. As a young boy, Samuel hears the Lord audibly call him – and Samuel begins a remarkable journey to become both a prophet of God and one of the last of the Judges.

Read 1 Samuel 8:1-22.

The Philistines are giving them grief. These are the same people God told the Israelites to drive out of the land. They didn’t do what He commanded, and now they have a real problem. The Israelites face a real dilemma: be taken into slavery by the Philistines, or deal with them once and for all. The people feel like they need a king to lead them – obviously since they’ve been doing a very poor job of following God.

The first king to be anointed is Saul of the tribe of Benjamin. But I want you to pay attention to the narrative here.

Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed this to Samuel: “About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him leader over my people Israel; he will deliver my people from the hand of the Philistines. (1 Samuel 9:15-16 - NIV)

See the word “leader?” It’s not the word “king.” In fact, it’s the Hebrew word nagid which means “prince” or “vassal.” God is telling Samuel to make Saul a nagid prince or vassal or “underling” who is subject to God Himself. (The NAS and ESV and other translations render nagid as “prince.”)

Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. (1 Samuel 9:15-16 - ESV)

God allows them to have a king – but a “vassal king” under God’s control.

Samuel instructs Saul that as king, Saul should be subject to God and be His spokesman. Saul does follow those instructions and acts quite contrary to that. He dabbles in the domain of prophet and priest, he offers a sacrifice rather than having a priest do it – should be fired as king for that. He shows himself to be immoral and does not follow God’s instructions for holy war – should have been fired as king for a second time. Another time he killed all the priests of a city called Nob, and then consulted the Witch of Endor for help – so he should have been fired as king yet a third time. Under Saul’s reign, the people of Israel certainly got tired of having a king who was cruel and a bit on the crazy side, and they longed to not have a king. Too bad – so sad – they got what they asked for.

In the meantime – while Saul was still king – God was preparing a new king from the tribe of Judah. David was just a young boy while Saul was king, but God and Samuel began grooming David to be the new king when Saul was removed. It was through David’s line that the Messiah would be born – it was through David that the promise God made to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be fulfilled.

Remember – this is a brief biography of David:
• David was a shepherd boy – the youngest in his family, a son of Jesse.
• David slew the giant Philistine, Goliath of the city of Gath with only a slingshot.
• Samuel anoints David as king in place of Saul.
• David becomes best friends with Saul’s son, Jonathan.
• David marries Saul’s daughter Michal.
• Saul goes crazy and tries to have David killed – and so David becomes an outlaw – and all of this after Samuel has already told Saul that he is no longer king and anoints David as king in his place.
• David now conscripts a group of mercenaries to be his outlaw gang – and all of them are Philistines. David and his band of merry men go gallivanting around robbing people and terrorizing towns. He’s like Robin Hood and Osama bin Laden all mixed together.
• In the long run, Saul dies, and David takes the throne of Israel.
• He unifies the scattered tribes and extends the realm beyond their borders.
• David names Jerusalem the capital city of Israel and also makes Jerusalem the nation’s religious center.

Read 1 Samuel 13:14. We’re taking a few steps back in time to when Samuel was scolding Saul – but I want you to hear these words: “the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people. . .” David is the man “after God’s own heart.” What did that mean?

David has been a terrorist, a robber, a liar, he’s threatened people, extorted money, ran a “protection racket,” acquired 3-4 wives, deceived Saul and the Philistine ruler – and later in his life he commits adultery with Bathsheba and has Bathsheba’s husband killed to hide the fact that she is pregnant. So how is it that David is “a man after God’s own heart?”

We discover it almost accidentally – by reading and re-reading the narrative. No matter what brutalities David committed, the biblical narrative shows nowhere that David worshipped false gods. He established one place for the worship of God, and brought the Ark of the Covenant from Kiriath-jearim to Jerusalem. The worship of ONE GOD – that made David a man after God’s own heart.

The Philistines tried once to removed David from the throne – but in a huge battle in the Valley of Rephaim, west of Jerusalem, David dealt the Philistines such a blow that they stopped their harassment of Israel. David also led campaigns against – who else – all the other peoples the Israelites were to drive out in the first place! The Moabites, Ammonnites, Edomites, Amalekites, and Syrians, and took their land and incorporated it into his own. The change was amazing! David took the throne as a king of a bunch of disorganized tribes – and now, he and Israel are the super power in the region. It’s because of these great successes that the Jews – to this day – consider David the greatest of all kings of Israel.

Above all these other great deeds, it was David’s worship of God, and God alone – in one place, and not on the high places or altars or mounds around the country where other gods and idols were worshipped – that made David a king after God’s own heart. God blessed David reign.

Then came Solomon. All kinds of family issues came up. One of David’s sons, Ammon, was killed by another brother, Absalom, because Ammon had raped his sister. Absalom had himself crowned as king in place of David, who was still on the throne as king! Not a wise move. David gets railroaded by Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan who both talk him into proclaiming Solomon his successor. Solomon was young. David had not been a good father figure. He’d been raised in a palace where some brothers fell out of favor, some wives fell out of favor, his own mother was Bathsheba who was stolen from another man. It really was a messed up family. . . so out of them all, perhaps Solomon was the best choice, yet he was young and immature and had no idea how to rule.

Early in his reign as king, Solomon asked God for one thing: wisdom. God granted Solomon great wisdom – wisdom for ruling, but not common sense for living. God told Solomon to avoid marrying foreign wives and to stay pure from false gods and idols. Solomon – in all his wisdom – had a better plan: Solomon had over 700 wives of noble birth – as a part of establishing and maintaining peaceful relations with the rulers around him. (Remember what his father David did? He attacked them and took their lands. What did Solomon do – married their daughters and nieces.) Solomon also had 300 concubines from all kinds of nationalities. (Back in those days – a king couldn’t rule if he wasn’t manly and virile. The only wise reason Solomon would have had 300 concubines in addition to 700 wives of noble birth was to prove his manliness in the sight of the other kings of the region.)

Here’s the real rub: he allowed them all to worship their own gods and idols and even helped build shrines and temples for their gods and idols.

Read 1 Kings 11:4-6. His wives turned his heart after other gods.

About the only thing we remember Solomon for is the book of Ecclesiastes – a bit of twisted and sarcastic teachings, the Song of Solomon – a love story about Solomon and his first wife, and the beautiful temple he built for God. Even the Temple is not always recognized as something done for God’s glory, but for Solomon’s.

Read 1 Kings 6:1 and 8:1-11.

Huge, ornate, beautiful, richly adorned – and none of it dictated or approved by God. It took Solomon 7 years to build the Temple – and then it took him 13 years to build his palace. Hmmm. But – God’s presence didn’t fill the Temple like it did the Tabernacle. Only when the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant was put in place, only then did God’s presence fill the Temple. So – it might have been that the people had been without God’s presence in the Tabernacle since the Philistines had stolen the Ark from the Tabernacle back in the days of the Judges – and only in Solomon’s time were the two brought back together in the Temple.

Solomon may have built the Temple – but he failed miserably in the “staying-true-to-God” department, and when Solomon died at the end of a long life – the kingdom falls apart.

What are our “take aways” from what we learn in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings?

First – God is our king. There is no other king. We should never desire an earthly king and we should always consider ourselves God’s subjects. At creation, God created us to live in a close, intimate community of love and mutual respect. We walked away. God wanted the people of Israel to turn to Him as King – a shepherd who desired to care for His people and lead them gently. They turned instead to an earthly king. You and I have the choice again. God desires to be your King and Father – what will you choose?

Second – only God is God. To be people after God’s own heart, we can only worship Him and no other. We cannot have any other god’s or idols in our lives. Not money, not wisdom, not power, not relationships, not our job, not our vacation, not our retirement. At creation we chose knowledge of good and evil – that became our first “idol” in place of God. Throughout the years, God’s Chosen People have chosen to worship all kinds of false gods and idols. All of them have been satanic in nature – meaning that the enemy of our souls has put them in our way to trip us up. Gods like Asherah the fertility goddess, and Baal, and Molech who required child sacrifices. Our enemy puts much more pleasing idols and gods in front of us today: horoscopes, astrology and zodiac, wisdom of Buddha, Islam, Hindi, Unification Church, Unity Church, Mormonism, Scientology, growing our wealth, engaging in politics to the exclusion of nearly anything else, leisure, pleasure, drug-addiction, and more. There are to be no other gods in your life except God.

Third – God is worshipped in your heart. To be people after God’s own heart means you don’t need a big beautiful Temple gilded in gold and inlaid with marble and filled with the biggest and most beautiful artistry. God wants you to worship Him in the beauty of holiness. . . in the sanctuary of your own heart. Psalm 29:2 says: “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.”

Listen to what God actually told David at one point – when David wanted to build Him a Temple: “I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’” (2 Samuel 7:6-7)

Revelation 21:3 we read: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them” (NAS). Hebrews 10:25 teaches us: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” We worship God here – in our hearts. We’re commanded to meet together for corporate worship, but the true worship happens here, inside the sanctuary of God.

From 10,000 feet up as we fly over the biblical narrative, the entire United Kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon teach us these three things:

Only God is King.
Only God is God.
God is worshipped in our hearts.

God didn’t want us to have kings – He alone wanted to be our King, and wanted us to call upon Him and obey Him. God wanted us to worship Him and Him alone. He was to not only be our King – but our only, one, true God. God didn’t care about a building for our worship – He just wanted us to worship Him in the tabernacle of our hearts.