The People Want A King
Today, we start our Advent series, where we wait and look with longing for our promised king. To start off this series I want you to join me in an imagined situation. Imagine you are experiencing intense tyranny or slavery. Maybe you would think back to Israel enslaved in Egypt, or the slave trade throughout much of human history, or Nazi occupied France, or Apartheid in South Africa, or what many workers experience in modern day Korea or China. Whatever the situation, you are struggling with little hope in sight. All that is left is for you to cry out to a God you barely know - a God whispered about that your ancestors used to worship.
So, that’s what you do. You fall asleep praying with tears in your eyes. As you feel the weight being piled upon your shoulders, you let out silent cries for help. As you watch your children and family struggle, you ask anyone you can think of to pray with you.
Suddenly, someone rises up. You don’t know them, but they start to empower you and the people you know to make a difference. Things beyond your imagination start happening. Yet, it doesn’t seem to make the difference, at first. You don’t know if you can trust the work of another that has so much potential for failure and yet is the only hope you have. It gets worse before it gets better, but it does get better. With this stranger's help, leadership and power, you overthrow the tyranny that otherwise consumed your life.
Only now, there are new worries. The void that tyranny left and the struggle leading up to its overthrow has left a barren land, a barren city, a barren life. What will be do without the institutions that provided food and order. It is hard to trust this stranger, but working with him, he provides just enough for each day. And every day we have to trust that there will be enough for the next day. At first it is worrying, but as the days pass, you are amazed that there is always enough.
This stranger then starts to set up a wholly new government, unlike any other. There are some similarities, but massive differences. The rules seem stricter in some ways and they demand a righteousness you have never seen anyone able to perform. Yet, the rules also protect and care for people unlike any other, making sure that everyone, even slaves and animals get to rest. That even murderers have a place of protection, so that justice can be done. That widows, orphans and foreigners are protected, as they too are called to follow these rules.
Finally, this stranger brings your home, your community, your city into such bounty and riches that this could not have been the work of your hands. Now, there is more than you need, even if you still need to work, even if you still need to learn how to live in this new law and order. Yet, almost immediately you throw off this stranger and his rules and you seek other easier things you can control. This stranger led you to what you wanted, now we can handle it yourself.
Well, for the next little while, you struggle with control. You take control, you follow someone else, to turn away, and every time you do this things seem to go back to the old way. The old tyranny, the old lack, the old hurt seems to come back - it is like you fall into a pit. So again, with little hope, you cry out and the stranger sends someone to pull you out, he shows you how to throw off the tyranny, he shows you the way to live, and for a time things seem good again. But yet again you take control and turn away and the cycle repeats itself.
Finally, you get tired of this seemingly endless cycle. You just want someone to take control. You see other people with their good jobs and they always seem to have enough. You see other nations with better economies or more safety. So you say, we want a boss, we want a king. We want someone to solve our problems.
You have forgotten two fundamental things. 1st) You have forgotten that it was these other nations, these other bosses and even you yourselves that created the tyranny that you had escaped and now desperately need to escape again. 2nd) You have forgotten that this stranger had already delivered you again and again and He had led you to more than you need or deserve. You had forgotten that he empowered you, your family and friends to be more. How easy it can be to forget the one we actually need.
Does this sound familiar? Many of you will have noticed that I was retelling the story of Israel as they were delivered out of Egypt, fed and equipped in the desert, found themselves in the promised land and story of God lifting up judges and prophets to guide them out of their own pride and blindness. Yet, just as this cycle of tyranny repeated itself in the book of judges, it repeated itself throughout history, it repeated itself in Jesus’ life and it repeats itself throughout our lives.
We so easily forget our God who has delivered and set us free. For many in the world, we keep God at an arms reach, treating him as the stranger we don’t know who is demanding too much from us. Not realizing that he is giving us more than we deserve and leading us into the promised world we long for that is only possible with him.
Even for us that know him. We can so often forget the one who led us and empowered us. We can trust more in ourselves or the things around us. We can see something in the world, like the Israelites seeing other Kingdoms and think, “Oh I want that”. If only I was more popular. If only I had more political influence. If only I had more time, more money, that relationship, that job, and we could go on. At any moment, it is easy to put God to the side and look for something else. I can barely count the number of times I have been lost, or lonely, or sad, or overburdened because I forgot to, or even refused to pray and trust God as I moved forward.
Yet, in this strange demand, in this strange cycle of tyranny and prayer, we actually see our hope. God may refuse to give us what we want, because he knows that our demands aren’t good for us (even if in another context that thing might have been good). In this he leads us and makes the decisions we can’t. On the other side, God will often give us what we want and two things will happen. 1st) God will give us what we are asking for, but at the same time show us how none of those things actually give us what we need. The things we ask for almost never give us what we think they promise. So, as Mary said, in God’s giving people what they want, the proud are trapped in the imagination of their heart and the rich are sent empty away. 2nd) God gives us what we want, but at the same time uses it to point us to him and our need for him. The emptiness in wealth (and even fear in wealth) should point people to the fact that no physical thing in this world can give us peace, or fill our longings. The prison of pride, should help us to see how our belief in ourselves, even our belief in what we deserve, has led us to a lonely and devoid life. I have seen many times where people see this second step and many where people refuse it.
Today, we get an amazing example of God’s gracious response to our blind, forgetful and too often arrogant demands. Israel asks for a king, we ask for someone to solve our problems, all while forgetting that it is God we are rejecting. We are failing to recognize his kingship, how he has already led us, how he has already empowered us. We are failing to trust his sovereignty and power over all things and we trust more in the institutions, the economy, because we turn to them first, even if we don’t really trust these things.
God hears our requests and where we should have been obedient, he is obedient. He says to Samuel, “Obey their request”. God warns them about what this will mean. Basically saying, look at what you are asking for and look at what you already have in me. Yet still, God obeys, and gives them a king. Exactly what God says happens. Yet, God gives them more than what they ask for. In King David, he finds a man of his own heart, who gives the people a taste of what God’s Kingdom can look like. It gives them a taste of what it would mean if the people truly made God their king. Even while David’s kingship was broken in many ways, it is such a pertinent taste of the potential in God’s Kingdom that the memory of it forms into such a promise and hope that people hold onto it for more than a thousand years.
Think about that, even one broken king that had the heart of God, and only reigned for 40 years, was enough to give people hope through the worst things any human has ever endured, over a thousand years. Yet again, this only pointed the way. It is like God had the subtext, “Yes, I will obey. I will give you a human king, but just wait for it. I will come down and I will be your God and King, I will create a kingdom, a people, a hope and love unlike any other in just three years. And that’s what Jesus did. In just three years, he established in us a hope and potential that continues to speak that continues to create his Kingdom and make it known. We live in the reality of this Kingdom. We know what a difference three years of Jesus’ life has made. We know the difference that the Holy Spirit’s reign over our heart and lives. So, we wait with longing and expectation for when Jesus shall come again and establish his reign over the world.
