We Want a King!
October 6, 2024
Judges 21:25, 1 Samuel 8:1-22 (especially v. 5, 19-20)
In those days there was no king in Israel; each person did what they thought to be right.
Judges 21:25
But the people refused to listen to Samuel and said, “No! There must be a king over us so we can be like all the other nations. Our king will judge us and lead us and fight our battles.”
1 Samuel 8:19-20
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We no longer cry out for a King, but we are still crying for our leaders to fight our battles for us. We expect our politicians and our military leaders to protect us from other nations, to protect our jobs and our bank accounts, to keep us healthy and well-fed and educated, to maintain a comfortable infrastructure of roads and schools and public servants, etc., and to uphold a particular moral and ethical code for society to function freely.
Though we all have different ideas about how our leaders should go about meeting these needs, how they should fund their projects, and how involved they should be in our everyday life... we are all ultimately asking for... or voting for the same thing.... We want leaders who will make us strong and competitive like "other nations" and who will "fight our battles for us".... whether our battles against foreign governments, against poverty, against sickness, against crime... against anything that may disrupt our comfortable lives.
Israel’s rejection of God was to have a King like other nations which had ultimate authority over them to protect them as he saw fit, just like other kings did. Our leaders are not so powerful... there are limits... checks and balances built into the system... and we view our "kings" as representative of our interests, no matter how diverse and even incompatible those interests may be.
By expecting our leaders to represent us and rule based on what "we the people" deem right and wrong, have we actually reverted to the period of the Judges?
Is it possible that a government "for the people, by the people" is just another way of saying that "each person does what is right in their own eyes..." and that we legitimize it by seeking political representation to make law reflective of what "is right in our eyes".
If this is indeed the case, might our pride and our failures in the American experiment of "self-government" simply be the result of our original sin.... the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and our innate desire to decide for ourselves.... above any king or ruler.... and even above God himself, what is good and evil... and what is right and wrong for us?
And so we find ourselves at a crossroads. We are living in crisis much like the children of Israel and we have a choice to make. Will we continue to cry out for a King... whether absolute or merely representative of our own opinions and desires or will we accept that we have had the perfect King all along... that God’s covenant with us still stands... that God has invited us to become citizens of a Divine Kingdom which is not of this world.... and that our very lives depend not on who is in charge of the laws on earth, but rather on how well we obey the laws of Heaven!
Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done... on earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.