From the time of Joshua until the time of Samuel Israel existed as a confederation of the 12 tribes. They were loosely bound to each other by a common faith and common law; however, no one tribe was lord over the others. Moreover, no one man was over the others. The Israelites experienced unprecedented individual liberties because of this system.

Did this system work? Just look at the judges God raised up to lead Israel: Deborah, Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, etc. A look at these leaders shows you that the system definitely was successful. This set of judges alone should have convinced Israel not to tamper with the system God had set up.

Yet one thing plagued the Israelites. After the judge died, Israel would basically be leaderless. They were always uncertain as to who the next judge would be. This system naturally led to times of instability and insecurity in Israel whenever the judge passed away. The Israelites were always wondering where the next ruler would come from. From a human standpoint this did not seem good.

The beauty of this set-up was that Israel was not restricted as to who would be her ruler. God would move upon one family to raise up one judge and then move upon another family for the next judge. The son of a judge did not necessarily become the next judge. In fact in NO instance did the son of a judge become Israel's next judge. This was because although the judge himself might have been a godly man, there was no guarantee that his sons would be godly also. (Samuel and Eli are perfect examples of this.) God's system basically assured that whatever judge God raised up would be a great and worthy leader for Israel. The conflict then occurred between quality and freedom versus stability and security. Israel is going to opt for stability and security.

The ironic thing about this conflict is that it occurred during the judgeship of Samuel. As we shall see, Samuel is going to turn out to be the greatest of Israel's judges. It might have been one thing to have rejected this set-up during the days of Samson; it is quite another though to reject it during the days of Samuel. It shows that after all this was not the problem; something else was driving the Israelites to ask for a king.

(Technically this section should fall under the category of the kings; however, because Samuel continues to play a significant role in this story, we are going to list it under the category of the Judges.)

Israel Rejects the Judges (1 Sam. 8:1-22)

Samuel had judged Israel for close to 40 years. Yet towards the end of his life Samuel had the same problem with his sons that Eli had with his--they were living wayward lives (8:1-3). (If nothing changed, God would have discarded Samuel's sons and replaced them with someone else to be the next judges of Israel. He had done it with Eli; He would have done it with Samuel also. But who would that judge be?

The elders of Israel did not want to wait and find out who the next ruler was going to be. They were tired of the system of judges with all its insecurity. They approach Samuel and ask him to present to them a king to rule over them (8:4-5). Now some well-meaning Christians claim that a board of elders is the only way to govern a church successfully. Well, this board of elders shows that it is not always the most successful form of government.

Samuel is grieved over this request (8:6). He takes it personally, thinking that the people have rejected him. Yet God informs Samuel that they are not rejecting him. Samuel was not the one who had set up the system of judges. God had raised up a lot of judges before Samuel came on the scene. No, the elders were actually rejecting the One who had set up the system; they were rejecting God Himself (8:7). They had always rejected God; by rejecting Him now they were just acting like they had always acted (8:8).

God wants the Israelites to know exactly what they are getting into. They are going to make a decision right now which will affect them permanently. They are not going to choose to have a king right now and 30 years later change their minds and form a new kind of government. They are at a critical moment in their existence as a nation. Their choice is going to affect them permanently.

The same kind of situation confronts us from time to time. We are confronted with choices which will affect us a long time in the future. We don't lose our salvation because of these choices. As Aslan the Lion in The Chronicles of Narnia says: "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia"; however, our choices can have lasting effects. Ask the young man and lady who go too far on a date; they have to move up their marriage date by several years and have to raise a baby at a time in their lives when they should be having tons of fun. Ask the man or woman who decides to indulge in drugs. They overdose, and they die physically, even though they are a king or queen of Narnia. Ask the business man who breaks the law and discovers he now has a blot on his record until the day he dies. Ask the minister who stubbornly makes a bad decision for the church and finds himself unemployed. God does forgive us; however, there are consequences. Knowing that consequences do follow our actions should encourage us to make right decisions; however, even if they do not motivate us enough to make right decisions, the consequences do follow.

One of the reasons the Israelites wanted kings was that they might become like the nations surrounding them (1 Sam. 8:20)). How sad that they wanted to be like the other nations. God had originally created them to be a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6). What a letdown. They want to go from being a royal kingdom of priests to a kingdom of slaves. God had created them to be free. The "judge" form of government basically gave autonomy to the 12 different tribes and to the men who made up those tribes. They were all lords of their homes, their castles. They couldn't handle this freedom; therefore, they gave it up for slavery.

God's then issues specific warnings to the Israelites about the dangers of having a king. First, he is going to draft their young men and establish a standing army. (This is going to drain the agricultural area of needed man power.) Not only will the people lose valuable manpower, they will have to take much of their produce to support this army (8:11-12).

Second, God warns the people that if they persist in having a king, they will have to put up with a royal court. Their sons and daughter will be taken from their homes to serve the king as maids, courtiers, launderers, cooks, etc. (8:13-14). Third, the king is going to have to maintain his army and his court by imposing heavy taxes upon the people (8:15-17). The king is not going to come cheap. Even though the people have been duly warned, they persist in their demand for a king. God gives into their request. (Be careful what you pray for. Sometimes God just might give it to you, sometimes to teach you a lesson.) Now begins 500 years of disaster for the Israelite people.

The Reign of Saul

The people did not care what God wanted for them. They had their own vision of what kind of rulers they needed, and now God is going to provide them the kind of ruler they asked for. They have rejected His kind of ruler; He's now going to let them experience the kind of ruler they asked for. Look at the description of Saul, Israel's first king (1 Sam. 9:2): "a choice and handsome man, and there was not a more handsome person than the among the sons of Israel, from his shoulders and up he was taller than any of the people." (Notice that this passge does NOT emphasize any of his personality characteristics; they all focus on his physical prowess and beauty. If looks matter, Israel is in for a great time; if character matters, Israel is in trouble.)

Early on we see that Saul is not going to make it. Samuel is going to anoint Saul as king over Israel in a private ceremony. Later when it comes time to present Saul publicly to Israel, the people cannot find Saul. Why? Instead of confidently stepping up to the plate and assuming the role God has assigned to him, Saul is in hiding with the baggage (1 Sam. 10:21-22).

On the surface it looks like Saul is a humble person; yet notice that this occurred AFTER Samuel had already informed Saul he was chosen to be Israel's next king. When God calls us to a high position of importance, the humble thing to do is accept it. For example, recently Milton and I were talking about how little we deserve all that God has done for us. Then we said, "Yeah, but we're gonna take it as long as the taking is good." Saul's hiding among the baggage is actually an example of false pride. This incident alone should have telegraphed to everybody that something was radically wrong with Saul.

Although Saul will reign for 30 years, his reign will be a disaster. Two incidents spelled doom for Saul and his household. The first incident occurred as Saul and the Israelites were about the engage the Philistines in battle. Samuel has given Saul specific instructions not to go into battle until he has arrived and offered sacrifice for the army. Saul knows that the sacrifice is going to be critical for his army's success. When Samuel takes a long time in arriving, what does Saul jumps ahead and offers the sacrifice himself. Samuel is furious with Saul. When Samuel confronts Saul, Saul does not repent. Rather he excuses his disobedience. Samuel informs him that his disobedience has cost him his kingdom (1 Sam. 13:8-14).

The next incident involved God's judgment upon the Amalekites. Because the Amalekites had harassed Israel when she passed through the territory of the Amalekites during the days of Moses, God sends Saul to destroy utterly the Amalekite nation, including women, children, and animals. Nothing is to be spared. This is God's judgment. Saul though refuses to kill the best of the cattle and even goes so far as to spare Agag, the king of the Amalekites. When Samuel approaches Saul, he asks Saul why all Agag the king and the cattle have been spared. Once more Saul excuses his disobedience. When Samuel walks away in disgust, Saul reaches out and grabs Samuel's robe. He ends up tearing Samuel's robe. Samuel informs him that God now has torn Saul's kingdom away from him and his sons (15:13-29).

Saul lost it all because of TWO LITTLE ACTS of disobedience. He simply started church 30 minutes too early and then didn't kill a bunch of cattle. And then David goes around, commits adultery, and commits murder, and what happens to him? He becomes the ancestor of Jesus. Doesn't make sense, does it? First, look though at the different ways Saul responds to Samuel's rebuke and the way David responds to Nathan's rebuke. Saul excuses his behavior when he sins, whereas David repents when he sins. Second, don't be deluded into thinking that Saul only committed TWO LITTLE ACTS of disobedience. Disobedience is disobedience, whether it is starting church 30 minutes early or killing somebody's husband.

Although Saul has rebelled against God, Samuel grieves for Saul. God tells Samuel that he has grieved enough; now He wants Samuel to anoint another to be the next king of Israel. This time God wants Samuel to anoint a certain kind of man to be king, a man after God's own heart (13:14).

THROUGH THE EYES OF THE APOSTLES

According to Exodus 19 God had made the Israelites to be a kingdom of priests, royal priests. In the same way God created us, Christians, to be a kingdom of priests (1 Pet. 2:2:9; Rev. 1:6). He created us to have unprecedented freedom in life and in our relationship with Him. Jesus and no other should dictate our lives.

Freedom can be terrible responsibility. It can easily degenerate into license, doing whatever I want to do no matter the consequences or who I hurt. God warns against this: "Do not use your freedom as a covering [excuse] for evil but use it as bondslaves of God" (1 Pet. 2:16). True freedom is not doing whatever I want to do; it is doing whatever God wants me to do.

Paul claims that when it is all said and done that we are slaves. The question is who we are slaves to, slaves to Satan and bondage, or slaves to Jesus and freedom (Rom. 6:16-23). We are slaves; it's just that if Satan is our master, then we are under bondage; if we are slaves to Jesus, then we are free men indeed. Slavery to Jesus leaves to spiritual freedom.

(Too often we misunderstand freedom as being license. It is not license. True biblical freedom elevates people into being sons and daughters of God with the same dignity Jesus Himself possesses.)

When we cannot handle freedom, we either degenerate into licentiousness or into slavery. The U.S. has definitely mishandled the freedom God has given her. It started in the 60's with its rejection of authority. Many things coming out of Hollywood today and other western cultural sources are an abuse of the freedom God has given us. When it is misused, people will eventually turn to slavery. It is little wonder then that the fastest growing religion in the West today is Islam which basically enslaves men and especially women. Freedom is a wonderful privilege; it is also a tremendous responsibility.