Samuel’s Speech
Samuel
gives a phenomenal speech to the Hebrew people as his time as judge comes to an
end. Note that he isn’t saying goodbye
to the Hebrew people. Remember that he
will be there to anoint David as king!
Samuel is simply saying farewell to the Hebrew people as their judge.
Accountability Begins with “I”
First,
notice that Samuel stands before the Lord and calls for judgment upon
himself. He asks if he has done any
wrong to anyone. He asks if he has
stolen anything or acquired anything falsely.
The people find him innocent.
That frees him up to now pronounce truth upon the people. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone but God, so
he proclaims the truth that God would have him proclaim.
This is
actually a really neat thought. Samuel
doesn’t owe anything to anyone but God.
Samuel is free to proclaim the truth because his interests aren’t tied
up with anyone else. His livelihood isn’t
coming from the people over whom he has been a judge. He’s not depending on anyone for
anything. So he is free to speak the
truth.
Follow the Lord
I love the
first truth that Samuel desires to get across.
We get a build-up of this truth the whole way up to verse 14. “If both you and the king who reigns over you
follow the Lord, it will be well for you.”
Do you see how a nigh impossible situation has been made even more
impossible as the people fall out of God’s ways? That’s the way it is with sin, folks!
Let me
state what Samuel is saying really plainly.
Samuel says this:
Before you had a king,
it was impossible for generation after generation to follow God. Now that you have asked for a king, God is
still going to hold you accountable for following God. However, not only do you have to follow God,
but so does your king!
Without trying
to be a specter of doom, let me ask a simple question. How many people who have power, wealth, and
authority have an easy time humbling themselves to follow God? Not many, that’s for sure. Yes, occasionally we do have someone come
along who is righteous in God’s eyes.
But not often, and we’ll see proof of that as we hear the story of
David, Solomon, and all the kings that follow once the kingdom splits in half. The reality is that the list of kings who
follow the Lord is very short. David,
Josiah, and Hezekiah are the main ones.
There are a few others, but not many.
And the people are now yoked with the king’s behavior.
Because
these Hebrew people wanted a king and rejected God, it has now gotten harder
for them to fall under God’s blessing. Not
only must they stay faithful, now so must their king! Sin has that effect on us. The more we want things apart from God’s
ways, the more things we have to keep in balance with God. That just doesn’t work. The only thing that works is a complete and
total humbling of oneself to God and an acceptance of God as king.
Forgiveness
I said I
would not be a specter of doom, and up until now that is exactly what I have
been. So let me prove why this blog post
is not a specter of doom. If we continue
to read in this chapter we hear Samuel tell the people that although they have
committed this great evil and rejected God as their king, what we see is Samuel
pronouncing forgiveness. Notice that the
people confess before Samuel and before the Lord. Confession and contrition are a significant
step in forgiveness. But the point is
that even after the act of a great evil, forgiveness can follow. There is hope for us even if we at some point
reject God as king in our life.
That does
not mean we should sin and reject God at will.
We should not sin so grace may about all the more! Rather, we should be freed of living in fear
of sin. We should live in fear of God,
not in fear of sin! God is not fooled
like we are. God knows the sinner that
lies deep within us, God knows that sinner better than we know that sinner
ourselves! We try to fool ourselves and
think that “we’ve gotten right with Jesus and now we’ll be better.” No, we are still sinner; God is not
fooled. If we were not still sinner, we
would not have to struggle so much against ourselves. Any true follower of Christ will confess that
the struggle against sin rages hard even after accepting God as King and Lord.
Honesty Before Forgiveness
We must be
honest with ourselves. We are
sinners. We are fallen. We need God.
We will sin until God casts aside this creation and reforms us. We should not fear doing something because
there is a possibility it might involve sinning. {Although we shouldn’t do things that
definitely involve sinning!} What we
should do is go forth, follow God, and repent when we fall into sin even while
confessing that we were trying to follow God.
You Can’t Stop Love
Then there
is a neat little third lesson that we can get out of Samuel’s speech. Notice that Samuel tells the people that he
cannot stop praying for them. Even
though they have shown their propensity for rejecting God and rejecting the
leader that God has chosen (Samuel), Samuel cannot stop loving them. Samuel is like Moses who argued with God to
not smite that wicked generation and start all over with Moses. Samuel is a true spiritual leader. Samuel doesn’t stand only with the
righteous. Samuel stands with the
righteous, prays for the unrighteous, and loves them both. He is a leader to be admired, because he was
a leader who followed God’s ways.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment