by Grover Gunn
pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church
Jackson, Tennessee
The subject of today's sermon is politics, and I need to be careful. There is a delicate balance here. On the one hand, I should preach the occasional sermon on politics because the Bible does speak to this issue. There are moral guidelines in the Bible for every area of life, for every conceivable human activity, and that includes politics. Also, Jesus is not only the Head of the church but also the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He has been given all authority, not only in heaven but also on earth. And our nation belongs to Jesus. Yes, the United States of America belongs to Jesus Christ. Every nation on earth does. In the second Psalm, here is what God the Father says when He addresses the Messiah after enthroning Him upon His holy hill:
Ask of Me, and I will give you the nations for Your inheritance,Jesus the Messiah has been enthroned upon God's holy hill, the heavenly Mount Zion. Jesus has been resurrected and glorified; He has ascended into heaven and has been seated at the right hand of God the Father, the position of all authority not only in heaven but also on earth. Thus, all the nations of the earth belong to Jesus. That is why Jesus has commanded His church to disciple the nations and to teach them to observe all that He has taught.
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.So, on the one hand, we should examine what the Bible has to teach us about politics and civil government. But on the other hand, we must be careful not to go too far. Jesus is the King of kings, but the church itself has no authority over the state. The church, which should be a place of worship, must not be reduced to a rallying point for some particular political party or candidate. The church has no more right to dictate who gets elected to political office than the state has a right to tell the church who its pastor should be. The church and the state are two separate and distinct institutions, but here is what they have in common: they both answer to the same Lord. Jesus is the Head of the church, and Jesus is the King of kings.
Here is what the church can and should do. The church should teach all that Jesus has to say about political ethics and about moral issues which have become subjects of political debate. The church should prophetically rebuke the state when it clearly sins against the rule of Jesus as revealed in the Bible. But I believe that is where to draw the line. The church should not endorse candidates nor give politicians their pulpits for political purposes nor align themselves with any political party.
I don't intend to cross that line this Lord's Day, but I do believe our passage speaks to some political issues. It gives us some guidelines to remember when we exercise our political right and duty to vote. When you go into a voting booth, you are not standing upon some neutral ground where Jesus is not Lord, where Jesus does not rule. Jesus is the Lord of all of life, and we will one day have to give account before Jesus as to whether we exercised our duty to vote and as to how we voted when we did.
In our passage for today, the nation Israel in a sense goes into the voting booth, and they make a tragic mistake. What we are going to do this Lord's Day is to see if we can learn from their mistake.
The People's Request
Now the first thing we see in 1 Samuel chapter 8 is the people's request. The elders, the people's representatives, come to Samuel the prophet. They have a request that is based upon a complaint. Their complaint was legitimate. Samuel in his old age had set up his sons as judges in Israel, and they had proven to be corrupt judges. They had turned aside after dishonest gain, had taken brides and had perverted justice. This turn of events was very regrettable, their complaint was legitimate, but their reaction was not proper. They came asking for a king to judge them like all the other nations round about them.
Here is where we have to be careful, and here is where this passage can be a little confusing. When they say that they want a king like the other nations, they are practically quoting Scripture. In Deuteronomy 17, God made provision for Israel's having a king after they were established in the land of Canaan:
The passage says that when Israel comes into possession of the land of Canaan, then is the time for them to say, "I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me." Is that not what Israel is doing here in 1 Samuel chapter 8? Here is where we have to be careful. Here is where we have to learn to read between the lines, so to speak. People can quote the verbatim words of Scripture and yet use them to mean something entirely different from their intended meaning. People can twist and distort Scriptures, taking them out of context, ignoring the basic rules of sound interpretation, and forcing upon them meanings that are totally foreign to the text. The devil himself did this when he tempted our Lord in the wilderness as recorded in Matthew chapter 4. He quoted Scripture, but he took the words out of context and misused them. When anyone quotes Scripture to us to prove a point, whether that person be a politician or a preacher, we need to have the Berean spirit which we read about in Acts 17:11. There we read that the noble Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to find out if what Paul had preached to them was indeed what Scripture taught.
14 "When you come to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,' 15 "you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Deuternomy 17:14-15 The people here in 1 Samuel 8 were misusing Scripture. What God meant when He said that the nation Israel could one day have a king like the other nations, was that they could have a king just as the other nations had kings. What they meant by these words was that they wanted a king who would have the same status and function as the kings in the pagan cultures around them. In the pagan cultures, the king's word was law. In Israel, God's word is law, and even the king must submit to it. Thus, they were using the words "We want a king like the nations around us" to mean a rejection of God's rule. This is how God interpreted their request. In 1 Samuel 8:7, God told Samuel, "... they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them" (cf. 1 Samuel 10:17-19). We can see that the people were misusing the language of Deuteronomy 17 if we will but read a little further into the passage:
The king described in Deuteronomy 17 is a king who rules in accordance with the Word of God, a king through whom God rules the land as God's agent and instrument. The people had taken the phraseology of one verse in Deuteronomy 17 and had interpreted it in a way that contradicts the clear teaching of later verses in Deuteronomy 17. And the most basic rule of sound interpretation is that we must allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. We must never interpret one verse of Scripture so as to contradict the clear teachings of other verses. And what is so clearly taught in these later verses in Deuteronomy 17 is the concept of constitutional government with the constitution rooted in the moral law of God. The constitution is a binding statement of law which is above the will of the king and also above the will of the people at any given moment. Thus a constitutional republic so defined is to be preferred to an absolute monarchy or also to a pure democracy. And such a constitutional republic is what the people were rejecting in their request for a king here in 1 Samuel chapter 8.
18 "Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. 19 "And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, 20 "that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel. Deuteronomy 17:18-20 We can illustrate the issue at stake here in the title of a very influential book written by the old Puritan Samuel Rutherford. Rutherford's book was banned in his day, and his opponents tried to martyr him, but he died of natural causes before they could. The name of his book was Lex Rex. That is Latin, and it means "the law is king," as opposed to "Rex Lex," which means, "the king is law." Lex Rex, the law of God is king, the final authority in the land. The law of God is a higher law above any king and any earthly law code, and the civil government should submit to the moral law found in the Word of God. This is the most important principle of good government. I would even go so far as to say that a constitutional monarchy, government by a king who submits to the moral law of God, is far better than a democracy based on the principle that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Such a democracy, where the whim of the majority at any given moment is the ultimate law of the land and where demagogues can rise in power by swaying the masses, is not far removed from mob rule.
Constitutional government rooted in the law of God puts a real limitation on the powers of civil government. It is dangerous when civil government chafes at this restraint and seeks unbridled power. Those in power and their supporters may argue about all the good civil government could do if only the people would trust it with greater powers beyond those prescribed for it in the Bible. There may indeed appear to be some short term benefits to empowering the government to solve all the problems of society. In the long run, however, such statism always proves to be disastrous.
I am reminded of an event which occurred in July 1996 near the White River in Arkansas. Two men were returning home late at night in an old pick-up truck from a frog gigging trip. On the trip home, the truck's headlights stopped working, and the two men determined that the problem was a burnt out fuse. They didn't have a replacement, but the passenger discovered that a bullet from his .22 pistol fit perfectly in the fuse box located next to the truck's steering column. The headlights now worked, and they continued on their way home. After traveling about 20 miles and just before reaching the bridge across the White River, the bullet overheated and discharged, striking the driver. The truck sharply veered off the road and struck a tree. Both men were put into the hospital and listed in serious condition. According to the newspaper article, when the driver's wife was notified about the wreck, she asked how many frogs the boys had caught and whether anyone had gotten the frogs out of the truck.
This is an amusing little story about the misuse of a bullet documented in a newspaper article. But what does this have to do with our sermon? Well, I think one can make an allegory out of this. A fuse is an instrument of restraint, a safety device that imposes limitations. And a bullet is an instrument of coercive force. A constitution is a governmental fuse of sorts; it puts limits on what the government can do. And a bullet is a good symbol for the coercive powers of government. This coercive power behind the government's authority is the government's main distinction from all other spheres of life. There is a proper place and use for a bullet, just as there is a proper place and use for the coercive powers of civil government, but we must be careful. You should always remember that when someone asks, "Should the government do this?" and "Should the government do that?", what he is really asking is, "Should anyone who refuses to help pay for this or help pay for that be put in jail?" When you invite civil government to be a player in any game in life, you are inviting the one player who brings with him the power of the sword. There is no real danger here as long as the civil government respects the restraints put on it by the moral law of God. When any nation removes or ignores this moral restraint as expressed in its constitution and thus grants the government unbridled powers, that nation is doing something much more foolish than replacing a fuse with a .22 bullet. This arrangement may appear to solve the crisis of the moment. Everything may work fine for a time. But in the long run, people are going to get hurt, the truck is going to veer off the road, and there will be a wreck. What the people are saying in 1 Samuel 8 is: The current system is not working. We want to remove the fuse of God's law with all its restraints. We want to replace it with a .22 caliber bullet, a king with the raw power needed to solve all our problems.
God's Answer
Going back to our text, we find that God responded to the people's request by giving them exactly what they asked for. Here is an interesting lesson in answered prayer. Sometimes the harshest judgment God can mete out to us is to give us what we have prayed for. The Lord gave them for their king Saul, the son of Kish. He was the very sort of man they wanted, a king to be proud of when judged by worldly standards. Saul was
.. a choice and handsome young man. There was not a more handsome person than he among the children of Israel. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people (1 Samuel 9:2; cf. 10:23-24).Outwardly, Saul was impressive, which is what the people wanted. We cannot help but contrast Saul with David, the next king of Israel. When God sent Samuel to anoint David as king, He told the prophet:
"Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature ... For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).In contrast to Saul, David was a man after God's own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). There are subtle hints in the 1 Samuel narrative that Saul was not a man who had lived close to God. Even though Samuel was then a prophet and judge in Israel, Saul appeared to be unfamiliar with him (1 Samuel 9:5-8, 18). When the Spirit of God came upon Saul and he began praising God with a group of prophets, the people said in astonishment: "What is this that has come upon the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?" (1 Samuel 10:11) After Saul's early victory over the Philistines, he built an altar for the worship of God, and we read that this was the first altar that Saul had ever built for the worship of Jehovah God (1 Samuel 14:35). Saul was outwardly impressive, but inwardly he was not a man of character who had lived close to God. He was not a man of God, a man of worship, a man of the Word. In contrast to David, he was not a man after God's own heart.The Consequences
What we next want to look at are the consequences of the people's getting what they asked for. We can see these consequences first in the warning which God gives to the people in 1 Samuel 8, and then later in the actual events subsequent to Saul's becoming king.
First, we have God's warning. This divine warning found in 1 Samuel 8:11-17 sounds like a prophetic description of all the abuses so common in modern governments. God warns the people that if they desire a king who does not respect the principle of Lex Rex, if they desire a king who views himself as the ultimate authority, then their king will abuse that authority for his own profit and purposes. This will be his behavior. He will use his unbridled power not for the service and benefit of the people but for the enhancement of his own power and prestige and wealth. To accomplish this, he will conscript their finest young men and women, confiscate their lands and possessions, and raise their taxes to unheard of levels. He will scandalously tax at a level of ten percent and thus put himself on a level with God who claims a tithe. To oversee this personal empire, he will appoint his "officers and servants," one bloated bureaucracy to oversee the military and another to oversee domestic affairs. The curse upon them will be government as we know it today.
Second, we see the disastrous consequences of the people's request in subsequent events. The people did not heed God's warning because they wanted a king to judge them and to fight their battles (8:20). We see the kind of administrative judgment that results when the king is not a man after God's own heart. In 1 Samuel 14, Saul makes a rash and foolish vow, and then does not follow through with it when pressured by the people. Later, Saul outlaws the professional psychics of his day, the mediums and the spiritists, and then consults one himself at En Dor (1 Samuel 28). Saul's administrative judgment as illustrated by his rash vow was arbitrary and unpredictable. As illustrated by his visit to the medium, it was also hypocritical. This is the sort of administrative judgment which plagues a nation when the king has little respect for God's moral law.
The people also wanted a king to go out before them and to fight their battles for them. Saul seemed ideally suited for this, being a head taller than everybody else. If that is one's basis for choosing a king, the problem is that an enemy is going to eventually rise up who is even taller. Who ends up challenging King Saul militarily? It is the giant named Goliath whose height was six cubits and a span (1 Samuel 17:4). Goliath is challenged and defeated not by the lofty Saul but by short little David whose trust was not in his height but in the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.
I don't have time to go into detail, but Saul ends up directly disobeying God, then blaming others for his disobedience and repenting superficially and not from the heart. The culmination of it all is a disaster. The truck veers off the road and hits a tree. The Philistines finally overwhelm Saul and his army. That is what happens when you choose a ruler who has ability but no character, a ruler who looks impressive but is not a man after God's own heart. It is dangerous to choose a ruler who rejects the principle of Lex Rex, who does not accept the moral law of God as the law of the land and who does not view himself as God's humble servant.
Conclusion
God gave the people Saul for their king because Saul was the sort of king they wanted. More often than not, people get the government they deserve. More often than not, a nation's government reflects the heart and character of that nation's people. This is why any lasting change for the better in our land cannot come initially through politics. Such reformation, if it is to last, must be preceded by genuine revival. The Spirit of God must be poured out upon the church in revival fullness. When that fullness of spiritual life overflows, when the church again becomes the light of the world and the salt of the earth, when the church again rises to the task of being a discipler of nations, then there will be lasting change.
Don't get me wrong. If we want good government, we should vote and we should be involved in the political process. But we should also realize that lasting change for the better will not come until God blesses us with it. For that reason, we need to be involved not only in the political process but also in the church. The kingdom of God, not politics, is the cutting edge of social change. As goes the church, so goes the nation. Just as we look to Jesus for the salvation of our souls, we should also look to Him for the salvation of our nation and its political life. We should pray for Jesus to deliver our nation from its hardened heart and to give our nation a heart of flesh with His law written upon it. First must come revival, and then there will be true reformation in the land. Then there will be change that is deep and significant, enduring and lasting. After such a revival, then when the government reflects the people, we will have godly government. That is our only real hope.