1 Samuel 8:6 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 8:6

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At this point the lightweight modern commentators tend to start drawing a picture of Samuel as a poor old man, peeved, irritated, his pride wounded, someone who didn't like the thought that he was going to be set on one side. And some people say, ‘Poor old Samuel. He’s getting bad-tempered because they don't want him anymore.’ He is not. The letter to the Hebrews on the other hand describes him as a man of exemplary faith. We must noy rush like the moderns to pin all sorts of the dreadful attitudes on to Samuel. The request, ‘Give us a king to judge us’; that displeased Samuel because he knew his Bible, or such of it as existed at that time. He knew that this was bound to come; the Lord had said so through Moses: ‘When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; ¹⁵ Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose’ (Deuteronomy 17:14-15). The time would come when the people would be dissatisfied with the judges, the deliverers, the provision of God, and they would want a king. This would be a bad thing. It would be bad because the people would want a king for the wrong reasons. It would be bad because monarchy would be infinitely inferior to the rule of the judges. Samuel is upset because he sees through it. They don't want the government of the Lord. They don't want the government of the word. They don't want spiritual direction. They want an earthly kind of worldly church. The thing displeased Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us, and Samuel prayed unto the Lord. But the great surprise comes in verse 7: ‘And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me.’ They thought they were rejecting the system of government which existed under the judges, the old theocracy. They thought that was what they were rejecting. They were rejecting God, because it was his system; it was his voice. ‘That I should not reign over them.’ They were going back to idolatry and they didn't want the restraints of Samuel and the word. And yet God in his will would give them a king – it was in a sense the will of God – but it was a vastly inferior arrangement. God says, let them have a king. This is a pivotal point in the Old Testament and astonishing. We are now reading about the end of the period of the judges and the beginning of the monarchy, and the monarchy would go right through to the final rejection of Israel, the intertestamental period. So many generations of monarchy! But that was the generation that decided they wanted a monarchy, and God allowed them to have it. Nevertheless Samuel must solemnly protest to them, and warn them of the consequences of what they are asking for.

Application

This is one of the mysteries of spiritual matters. If you and I go wrong, even as Christians, and we follow our own pathway in some major respect and we ignore what we know to be God's right way for us and choose our own way, don't think, ‘Oh God won't let me go down that way if it is wrong. I will be prevented. Not necessarily. The will of God may be that you will go the wrong way, and take on the wrong things, and you will pay the price for it, and that is how the Lord will teach you before he restores you, or brings you back. Indeed, if you were very wilful he may leave you in a wrong way for quite some time. We learn that from these examples of the life of faith in the Old Testament. So always be careful to seek out and to pray for God's overruling will in our lives, and to obey the principles of Scripture as we learn them.

Questions

Why would God give them a monarchy if it was not his will? Partly to punish them, and that's the warning which Samuel gives them. They will have all sorts of restrictions and expenses and burdens put on them which they never had before.

Also it would cause the people to desire the true King who would come. Of the kings that they would have: the best of them would be a type of Christ, especially in the case of David and Solomon. Those kings were like the law, which was supposed to be a schoolmaster to show people their need of God's forgiving love. The king would be such a king most of the time, that made them yearn for the King of kings, for the Messiah. They would learn that no human king can ever fulfil the aspirations of God’s people, and satisfy their requirements and give them their hearts desire.

But it was also allowed to teach the church lessons. When the church age would begin after the coming of Christ at Pentecost, there would be a pattern church established. However the hearts even of Christians would be constantly drawn away from the pattern which God provided, towards something much more like that which goes on in the world. All that is written in the Old Testament is written for our learning. This passage says to us, don’t abandon the system which God gives you. You might say, ‘Independent, autonomous churches; that's not efficient. We need a denomination. We need a central HQ. With multinational companies, you get one board organising everything. Look how they grow; look how they train people; look how it all works out.’ Some also add, ‘There is no pattern church in the New Testament. This idea of independency – autonomous churches directly answerable to Christ; that’s not proper organisation.’ You be careful. The transition from the ancient theocracy under the judges to the monarchy is partly to tell us not to tamper with the Lord's provisions and the genius of his plan. Everything human wisdom thinks will work, won't work; and everything it imagines won't work, through prayer and with the Lord, will work wonderfully. This is perhaps the greatest lesson coming from transition from the judges to the monarchy.

Those who say, ‘God gave them the monarchy; therefore it was good’ are usually people justifying organised denominations – Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, whatever it might be – who see the church as a hierarchical structure, or a structure with a single eminent higher rule. God gave them a monarchy, and the old system of elders and judges, the ancient theocracy, was swept away. But God gave them a monarchy in anger, to teach them, and above all, to teach us, the New Testament church, to cleave to his ways. A few years ago there was a quite eminent Baptist and Reformed pastor. He must have been very frustrated with a disciplinary matter and he was saying, ‘Oh that we had representatives of all the churches getting together into a kind of synod to decide disciplinary things from one central authority.’ He was unconsciously showing how little he understood of the Biblical principle of church government, and local church autonomy, and responsibility, and how God rules his churches, and harking back to some centralised system. You can make a case for it. You can say, ‘Surely if we were all in a big denomination, wouldn't that be more secure? Or ‘Wouldn't we be more recognisable, and wouldn't we be more stable, and be able to help the smaller churches that are almost collapsing from our united strength, something organised from above to save them and lift them? Wouldn't it be a great advantage?’ Well you may think that, because that is how worldly organisations think. So often they say, bigger is better. Merge all the companies; make them as big as possible. And the argument over recent decades has been, make them all international. Well it may work in the world, but the government of the church of Christ is unique, and different from anything in the world. It is designed by God so that he has the government of all his churches, and their care in his hand. We only have to look back across history to see this borne out. All the denominations, one after another, collapse into theological error. At different speeds, but they all collapse. The history of Presbyterianism is staggering. The Presbyterian groups that have gone wrong, and become apostate and collapsed, and been replaced by other Presbyterian groups, which in due time have collapsed, and they’ve been replaced by others, and it happens over and over again. If you get an association of evangelical independent churches that gets too close and too organised, then the ills of that group characterise the whole group in no time at all. Fifty years ago in this country the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches was a very nice group, but now it's all culturally progressive, and entirely contemporary, and largely soft Charismatic. The worst has influenced the whole body. Which are the churches that survive? We have some very, very old independent conservative churches. How do they survive? The argument should surely go the other way. They would be safe in a big group, and a big group will care for the poor lambs that are slipping away. It won't. All round south London there are small Baptist Union churches that have collapsed, and the big group couldn't help them. It couldn't do anything to save them. When it comes to churches, God says, ‘I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath’ (Hosea 13:11).

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Purpose

Introduction

1 Samuel 8:6 Commentary and Bible Study