Elevate - The Story Pt 13 - Give Us a King

Our behavior as Christians has an impact on others. People are watching us and our actions may turn them away from God. Israel wanted a human king instead of acknowledging God as their king. Samuel's children's bad behavior caused them to reject God as king. Our behavior as Christians should reflect who God is and not turn people away from Him. Our behavior as Christians has an impact on the people around us. People are watching you. If you claim Jesus, if He's on your lips and they know what you stand for, they are watching you. And your actions may just turn them away from choosing God as their King, simply because His servants and His representatives were a poor reflection of who He is. Welcome to Elevate, from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama, with Pastor John DiQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message, and welcome to Elevate. Well, we are back into the storybook. Today, we're continuing in chapter 10, and we're still in the period of the Judges. We're out of the book of Judges. We went through the book of Judges, and we went through the book of Ruth, and now we're in 1 Samuel, but we're still in the same period of the Judges, where God raised up men and women of God to be His voice to the people and to help turn their hearts toward Him when they would stray. But at the very, very end of the book of Judges, this is the very last verse that you read. It is Judges 21, verse 25. It says this, "'In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.'" Now at first glance, this might look like a cause-and-effect type of statement. Because there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. But that's not what this is saying, because God never intended for Israel to have a king, at least not a human king. You see, when God called Abraham and when God led His descendants out of Egypt, He was a nation for Himself to rule. He was going to rule Israel. It was going to be a nation that would display His glory among the earth, that would represent Him among the nations. And God would rule this particular nation with love and with righteousness, and in all of the giving of the law through Moses, He never mentions a king. He never tells them, and this is how you're going to act once a king is established. But what He does is He establishes laws that will be willingly followed by the people and governed by the priests, and the priests were not earthly kings, but they were mouthpieces for God. Right? They were ones that helped people to worship and helped them to be the people of God. And so, He intended that this would be a nation that would look to Him as their king. They would love Him. They would obey Him, and not because He had an iron fist, but because of His love and because of all of the power and the miracles that He displayed among them. He rescued them from Egypt. He fought battles for them. He gave them a land to call home and to thrive and to grow, and He is the ultimate benevolent king. And that's what He intended. He always intended, God Himself always intended to be the king of Israel. We call that a theocracy. A theocracy simply means governed by God. Right? We live in a democracy, which means governed by the people. Or maybe you've heard of an aristocracy, right, as governed by a small elite ruling class. Right? But Israel was meant to have a theocracy to be governed by God. God was Israel's king, and He was always meant to be Israel's king. So when we read that Scripture that we just read that says there was no king in Israel... Well, right, there was no human king. But here lies the problem. They also did not acknowledge God as their king, either. Now God intended to be their king and to rule over them, but they would not acknowledge that God was their king, which is why they continually, when we read through the book of Judges, why they continually found themselves in trouble, because they refused to acknowledge God as their king and obey Him wholeheartedly. And so because they had no earthly king and they had no king from heaven, they refused to acknowledge God as their king. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. They were not obeying what God had instructed them to obey. And so everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Well, that almost sounds like today, doesn't it? I mean, it's crazy. Everybody's got their version of truth, right? And they do what is right in their own eyes. Can I tell you, truth does not change because you have an opinion. If you're listening to this on the radio or from home, let me just repeat that. Truth does not change because you have an opinion. I'll let you fill in the blank as far as exactly what particular hot topics are out there right now. Two weeks ago, we talked about Samuel, and we learned how Samuel was raised in the temple under the high priest Eli. Do you remember reading about that? He was given by his mother, who was barren, but then God gave her a child and as she promised, when he was old enough, she brought him to the temple and he was raised in the temple doing the service of God under the high priest Eli. And he was a priest. He became a priest and judge in Israel that the people really, really loved. They really liked Samuel. They were willing to follow him. And Samuel always led the people towards the Lord. He always led them towards the things of God. But his children, who were to follow in his footsteps, who he had appointed in positions of leadership among the people, they were not like Samuel. Look what it says in 1 Samuel chapter 8, beginning in verse 1. It says, When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second was Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and they perverted justice. Now, I don't know if Samuel just struggled to be a good father or what. We know that he was raised in the temple by the high priest Eli, but we also know that Eli's children were train wrecks, and Eli's children took bribes, and Eli's children perverted justice, and they disregarded the sacrificial system, and they ate the meat of the sacrifices that did not belong to them, and they slept with the women who served in the temple. And now Samuel's children were doing the same thing. Now let me just make an aside here. This is not the point of my message, but this kind of garbage of the priests or those that have been called by God to lead people that pervert justice and use it for their own gain, it happens today, and it gives the church a black eye every single time. People aspire to positions of ministry leadership. I don't know what looks so glamorous about what it is that I do, but I know that there are people that see that and go, ooh, I want to do that. And so they aspire to these positions of ministry leadership, but their character is so poor that they can't handle the authority that they have. And so we hear about church leaders embezzling money and running away with their secretaries or engaging in some sort of sexual abuse or sin. So let me just say this. If you're in the room today or you're watching from home this morning or watching this on a rewatch of Facebook or if you're listening to this on the radio and you aspire to a position of ministry, the first thing that you need to build is your character. Not your ministry chops, not your sermon capabilities, not your musicianship, not your fashion sense. There are many, many talented ministers in pulpits and places of ministry who have poor character. Don't be one of them. If you aspire to be in that place of leadership among God's people, work on your character first. Amen? So for Israel, the fact that Samuel's sons are such a mess creates a huge problem. They love Samuel, but he's getting old and his kids are a nightmare. And there's no way that they want Samuel's kids to stand as judges over them once Samuel passes on. And so the people come up with a plan. We find it in 1 Samuel 8, beginning in verse 4. It says, Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. So their solution to this problem was to ask God for a king. Now remember, God never intended for them to have any other king besides Him. But here they are asking for a human king rather than acknowledging God as their king. And so let me just make one more aside. Your behavior as a Christian has an impact on the believers around you. So for Israel, Samuel's children's behavior, because they were in positions of leadership among them, their behavior caused them to reject God as king and ask God for a human king. And so our behavior as Christians has an impact on the people around us. People are watching you. If you claim Jesus, if He's on your lips and they know what you stand for, they are watching you and your actions may just turn them away from choosing God as their king, simply because His servants and His representatives were a poor reflection of who He is. So don't you dare leave a gospel tract on the table after you just berated the waitress and not leave a tip. Your gospel tract and your invitation card is not a tip. I don't care how much you can justify it by saying, but this is eternal riches in Christ Jesus, if they just give their hearts to...you know what they need? They need five bucks! So give them five bucks. Don't be the racist one in your group of friends, right? Deal with that garbage. Get rid of it. Don't have a Jesus fish on your car and the name of your church on a sticker and a really clever bumper sticker if you're going to flip people off in traffic. And if a visitor comes into this church and dares to sit in the seat that you like to sit in, let me tell you, you come in there and you walk up to that seat and you shake their hand and you welcome them to the church and you love on them and you tell them how much you're grateful that they're here and don't ask them to move. And for Pete's sake, listen to me, I'm about to get on a soapbox right here, but I'm not going to stop talking about this one. Get off Facebook! If all you're going to do is trash the President, the Speaker of the House, the LGBTQ community or anybody that you disagree with, then get off Facebook. You don't need to be on there. Are you allowed to express your thoughts and your political stances? Of course you are. But not tear people down and call people names, right? That's not love. That's not the character of God. You aren't changing anybody's mind. Like no one's changed my mind by posting about their political beliefs. Never once has my mind been changed. But what you are is a reflection of the one that you represent. So if your wall is filled with Scriptures and pictures of you at church and little devotional images and all those kinds of things, and then the next post that you make is all about how terrible our President is and Sleepy Joe and what an idiot that he is, right? And if you do stuff like that, I'm promising you, you're representing your king wrongly. For Israel, Samuel's kids' poor character and behavior had them looking elsewhere for leadership and not at the house of God. So let's read further. So they asked for a king, and in verse 6 they say this, But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice, only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them. Now God is not one to force Himself on people. You either choose Him or you don't. Now He'll tell you, and He'll show you, and He'll write thousands of pages of instruction, but He is not going to force Himself on you. You either choose Him or you don't, and He helps in the Scripture. We see that He's helping Samuel to see that it's not Samuel, it's not you that the people are rejecting, it's me. And their track record speaks for itself, ever since from the day that I rescued them from Egypt and I showed them my powerful hand, all the way up to this very moment, these people have continually rejected God and have served other gods. So God tells them, He's like, go ahead, go ahead, give Him a king. That's what they want? Give Him a king, but let them know that it won't be everything they think it's going to be. Now we'll get to that in a minute, but we're going to back up just a few more verses here because, you know, when we reject God as king, when we do this and we refuse to live under His rule and His lordship, we've usually got plenty of excuses why, right? We can come up with a thousand of them, and Israel had their excuses as well. So we're going to look at Israel's excuses. They had three excuses. Number one, Samuel, you're too old. The second excuse was, we don't trust your kids. And the third one was, we want to be like all of the other nations around us. Those were their three reasons for asking for a king. And so we'll go back here. We'll read it. This is where it is. In verse five, it says this, behold, you are old, excuse number one, and your sons do not walk in your ways, excuse number two. Now point for us a king to judge us like all the nations, excuse number three. So let's talk about these three excuses. Number one, Samuel is too old. Ouch! Poor Samuel! I mean, come on, this dude was a great leader, and they're just going to stick it to him like this? Come on, don't do Samuel like that. Samuel, you're just too old. Get out of the way. Now they obviously never read the book, How to Make Friends and Influence People. But how many times have we rejected God's kingship because we thought His ways were too old-fashioned? Surely God didn't realize what things would be like in 2023. Surely God could not have meant that. In all of my infinite wisdom, surely we're misinterpreting clear Scripture. Listen, if you ever try to interpret Scripture through the lens of current culture, you are on dangerous ground. If your stance on marriage, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, if it is based on the things that are written in this Word, okay, don't apologize. Do not apologize. They are going to call you transphobic, homophobic. They're going to call you racist. They're going to call you all kinds of things. You know what? They call Jesus worse things. So don't be trying to reinterpret Scripture through the lens of what current culture is trying to tell us is right. Because when we do that, what we say is that God is not unchanging, that He can change. We're saying that He is not all-knowing because somehow He was not able to look into His little crystal ball and see what things would be like in 2023. And we're saying that He's not perfect, that He somehow made a mistake when He gave us this Word. God's Word doesn't change. Our culture only shows how far we've gotten from the truth. It hasn't redefined truth. Do you hear me? It does not redefine truth. And so don't reject God as King because you think He's too old. You hear me? Culture is only going to keep moving in the direction that it's moving, which is farther and farther away from this book. So you just hitch your wagon to this book, all right? Hitch your wagon to this book because there's going to be a lot more things you're going to have to be dealing with than what you're dealing with right now. If it's in here, it's truth. All right. So that's the first thing. Samuel, you're too old, so we reject you. The second excuse is your sons do not walk in your ways. Okay, that still must have hurt Samuel, but he also didn't deny it. He knew that his sons were a mess. So this one is quasi-legit. It's based in some truth, but it's still ultimately a lame excuse. And I hear excuses like this all the time. I don't serve God because so-and-so did this. Because I went to this church and somebody said something mean to me. I went to this place and this pastor, the way that he preached, I didn't like it. And I thought he was mean. And I thought he was judgmental. And I didn't think he was anywhere near as good looking as my current pastor that I have right now. The example that others set as God's representatives, yeah, they're going to mess up. They're human. They fail. But our behavior will influence people that way. We talked about it a minute ago, right? I don't want to be the one where somebody stops serving God and says, it's because of that guy. None of us should ever want to be that person. We do need to represent God's will. We need to represent God well. However, if you've been given the truth and you know the truth, you are still without excuse. And so if you're in this room today, or you're listening on the radio, or you're watching at home right now, and you are somebody that is a believer, don't let somebody else's boneheaded actions cause you to turn your back on God's kingship in your life. It is a lame excuse. It's real. People feel those emotions. I get it. Church hurt really hurts. However, it's lame. Alright. And finally, the real reason that they rejected God as their king is this. They wanted to be like the other nations. Somehow they thought that they were missing out because they didn't have a king like all the other nations. Like those nations really had it just going on with their kings. And this is the biggest reason why we reject God as king in our lives. Because we see everybody else all around us and we want to be just like them. And you know who their king is? Themselves. Me myself and I. They have chosen for themselves a king and it is them. And when we see people living however they want, doing whatever they want, having whatever they want, and we think, oh, they've got the sweet life because they can do this and they can go here and they can do that. I want some of that for me. When we do that, we want to rule ourselves is what we're saying. We're saying, God, I reject you as king and I instead have placed myself as the king in my own life. And here's the thing. A king rules in a king's domain. A king's domain is called a kingdom. And you decide how big God's kingdom will be in your life. You decide that. His kingdom in your life is equal to the amount of your heart that you have allowed Him to rule. You decide how much of you God is going to rule. Because this is not a question of salvation today. This is a question of lordship. You know, Israel, in all of their misdeeds, they didn't close up the temple. They didn't shoot the priests and burn the Torah. They didn't do that. They still acknowledged elements of their relationship with God. They still went through the motions. They still did the rituals. They still made the sacrifices. There was always a priest in the temple. But they weren't willing to give Him complete rule and reign in their hearts, in their lives, in their nation. So they turned after every other God, just like the other nations. And so now they're saying, all right, listen, this theocracy stuff, this rule, God's rule overall, this is old. This is tired. We want to be just like the other nations because they have it going on. Samuel, give us a king. We want a king. And so like we just read, we see that God doesn't stop them. He's like, fine, you want a king? Is that what you want? All right. But I want you to know what you're getting into. I want you to know what you're getting into when you say, we want a king like the other nations. So what were they getting into? Well, I'm going to tell you. It's in the Bible, beginning in verse 10 of 1 Samuel 8. It says this, so Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, these will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. You see, God was willing to concede them having a king if that's what they really, really wanted. But he warned them. All right, here's the consequences. I'll take it. He'll take your sons to be his assistant. He'll take your daughters to be a servant. He'll take their your land for himself. He'll take a tenth of all the food that you grow, and he's going to use all that stuff to build his kingdom in Israel. Forced labor, hard work, all for the benefit of the king, because that's what kings did. They conscripted labor of the people to build palaces and monuments to themselves. Do you see this? The irony of this, they came out of Egypt just a couple hundred years before. They were slaves in Egypt. Nothing was theirs. They owned nothing. They were forced to build the king's cities and temples and mansions. They were slaves in bondage, and by asking for a king, God's saying, you're going right back to Egypt. Is that what you want? It's for freedom that Christ has set us free, so don't walk back into the bondage of slavery and sin. You see, God wants to be the king of your life completely, but what's the other alternative? If we don't allow the Lord to have kingship and we allow ourselves to be the king over our own life, the result is bondage. Bondage to your sin, bondage to the culture, bondage to your wants and your desires and your feelings. Listen, you want to be like everybody else? Everybody else is miserable. I have never seen more people so upset about so many stupid things in my life. People getting triggered over this and that. Everybody's hurt, and everybody's offended, and everybody is a victim. Is that who you want to be, like the nation? Like everybody else? Choose God as king. He wants to be the king of your heart. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website, AuthenticLife.tv, for more information about Authentic Life Church, to find out what we have going on, or to make a donation. You can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DeQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening, and God bless you.