1 Samuel Lesson 10
Background of the office of King - Deuteronomy
16-17
Turn to Deuteronomy 16; we have to go back to Deuteronomy to get some
background for the first king that will be appointed in this office. Last week we dealt with the most famous
political speech of all time, given in the ancient world, 1 Samuel 8, in which
the basic issues that have not changed since were clearly presented, were
clearly discussed, and were measured by the Word of God. And in 1 Samuel 8 Samuel reluctantly went
along with the people’s desire for a king.
The nation, by the time of Samuel the prophet, had made a human
viewpoint prayer request; a request that was in many ways parallel to Hannah’s
prayer request. Both of these human
viewpoint prayer requests had merit in one sense, in that they recognized that
the source of all answers was God, that they must rely upon God’s grace in
order to meet their situation. However,
the petition and the content of the petitions were very selfish and were
designed in a very unbiblical way. As a
result God answered the motive behind the petition, but He did not fully answer
the petition. He gave the person
actually more than they asked for.
Hannah asked for a baby so that she could have her vengeance upon the
other woman.
In both cases we have a selfish prayer request. However, God in His grace answered the
selfish requests and added to the selfish requests something wonderful. In Hannah’s case that baby that was to come
into the world just to answer to the other woman turned out to be the first of
a long line of prophets. In the second
case, in 1 Samuel 8, the people’s petition for a king set up an office which
defines the title “Christ” and which eventually will be filled by Jesus
Christ.
Now in 1 Samuel 9, which is the next chapter in this series, we will
encounter the anointing or the christening of Saul, the first incumbent of the
office. And in order that we understand
Saul and understand the pressures that are going to be brought upon this man
and on his life we have to go back to the Mosaic Law that controlled the office
of king. We have to go back to the
Mosaic Law and review all phases of the Israelite government at that time, and
their obligation, the structure of it and its obligation to Jehovah God. If you do not do this then you will not
understand why God was so hard on Saul and why Saul fails as the first
incumbent of the office of king.
Actually in the Bible Saul could be in some limited areas a type of
Satan; there’s a remarkable parallel between the holder of the office in Saul
and the holder of the kingly office of David.
Both of these men aspire to the office of Messiah or anointed.
Both Satan and Christ aspire to become Lucifer; Satan was called Lucifer
in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ is called Lucifer by Peter. Now Lucifer, usually you think of it as
having an evil connotation but actually it means nothing more than the light,
the one who bears the light. And Satan
was originally in the situation that Christ winds up in after He finishes His
work. So now we have Christ actually
persecuted by Satan, Satan is the holder of the office, Satan falls in the
office, and yet even though Satan fall he has continued in the office for a
time. During that time period, although
Jesus Christ is authorized to take the position, He has to suffer persecution
for a certain time and then He assumes the office. So similarly Saul is in the office of king
for a while and he gradually phases out, an evil spirit comes upon him, Saul
becomes demon possessed and becomes crazy at the last part of his reign due to
divine discipline. David takes over the
authority and he eventually waits out a long period, during which he wrote most
of the Psalms, and finally David takes over the office of Saul.
So there’s a remarkable analogy between the interaction of Saul and
David and Satan and Christ and the interactions between these men are analogous
in many ways; one way is the fact that Satan and Saul were both very, humanly
speaking, excellent personalities. Both
of them were admirable. In fact, if you
want to size it up on a legalistic basis, Saul would have it all over David, by
the right of any legalist. Legalists
would love Saul and couldn’t stand David.
And Saul was a man of grace all the way, and legalists have never
understood or never can understand why God rejected Saul when he didn’t commit
any immoral sin, when Saul was a man who was righteous in many, many different
ways; he was loyal, he was moral, he was an outstanding citizen, and God
rejects him and picks up a man who was a murderer, an adulterer, a man who was
a gorilla fighter, a man who was in charge of a band of hoods for years on end,
and this man is the one that is said to be acceptable to God. Now why?
It’s because Saul, in his soul, had negative volition and a –R learned
behavior pattern of self-righteousness.
You’ll see this time and time again and to give you the background I
want to take you to the Law to show you what the Law said Saul was supposed to
do, and then you’ll see what Saul actually does and then you’ll see his
tremendous self-righteousness. Samuel at
one point exposes Saul’s sin and Saul turns around and says who me, I didn’t do
that, I’m not the blame for that.
Nowhere in Saul’s life does this man ever admit that he’s wrong;
nowhere. He is a self-righteousness
proud individual and as a result he is bounced from the office.
David on the other hand, poor guy, every time he makes a sin it’s loud
and clear and everybody sees it, it’s written all over the wall and he has to
live with the thing. It’s most
interesting to watch this. Actually from
God’s point of view David is a far superior man than Saul. Saul commits a lot of horrible sins but they’re the kind of sins that are in his
mind; they’re all mental attitude sins and no one ever sees those and so from
the outward appearance Saul is a very wonderful person. David, all of his sins are overt; actually
David had few mental attitude sins. Most
of David’s sins just happened to be overt where everybody could see them so he
comes out on the losing end of the comparison whereas Saul’s sins are internal
and in the mental attitude. But both
men, obviously did not live up totally to the Law and so we have to go back to
the Mosaic Law and understand the various offices which we will encounter from
now on in 1 Samuel 9.
So let’s go back to the Mosaic Law and see how some of these offices
were designed. The first one we meet in
Deuteronomy 16:18, and this office runs down through
Those last two verses, 21-22, don’t look at all connected to verses
18-20. In verses 18-20 we’re talking
about judges. Now why, for heaven’s
sake, in verse 21 do we come and now we’re talking about planting trees. What does planting trees have to do with
running a courtroom? Well this is a
problem we have to answer and the answer is found in Old Testament
culture. Let’s look first at verse 18
and these two words, “Judges and
officers.” The word “judge” comes
from the Hebrew word shaphat, shaphatim, adding “im” makes it plural and so you have a plural noun, the shaphatim, and these are the judges. The other men, the “officers” are satarim, the satarim. Both of these replace the previous organization in the
nation Israel.
Now here’s originally the way the state was organized. Originally we had, of course, Yahweh, or
Jehovah as the king; He is always the King.
Under Him came the Law, and under the Law came Moses. Moses is always under the Law, Moses is
always responsible to the Word. Nothing
is ever held above the Word of God. Now
this is what is wrong with the charismatic movement today; experience is
elevated above the Word, and this is wrong.
I have never spoken to a person involved in the charismatic movement
that knew anything about the Old Testament.
We never study that; we study the New Testament. How do you understand the New without the Old
Testament. And this is one of the great
weaknesses of the modern movement, there’s always something that replaces the
Word; it may be somebody’s experience or something else but don’t you ever let
anybody sell your short. The only
criteria that we have is the special revelation of the canon of Scripture,
unless… one exception, unless we would have living prophets. And since there are no living prophets in the
Church Age that eliminates that option.
Therefore the canon of Scripture is held as the authority and the
absolute rule. There are no other social
customs, traditions or anything else, it’s the Word of God. You remember that because even in Moses’ day,
Moses did not have the ability to contradict the Law. And under Moses you had twelve tribes and the
elders in these twelve tribes.
Now that’s a simple original form of the government. However, that didn’t work and Moses’
father-in-law came one day and said look Moses, you’re crazy if you’re going to
have everybody and his uncle running to you to find out how to blow their nose
or how to deal with somebody at home, or to work with some other trivial
problem. You’ve got to have a staff,
you’ve got to have people under you that will solve this problem. So therefore this was changed by an addition
of a new group, the seventy. And so we
have Jehovah, we have the Law, we have Moses, and underneath Moses we now we
have with him a board; a board of seventy men.
That, by the way, was the original reason for that group called the
Sanhedrin. They claimed to be the New
Testament extension of the original board of seventy men. These men were all endued with the Holy
Spirit in a very unique way and they helped Moses with the leadership of the
nation. Then underneath Moses was have
what we call the [not sure of Hebrew word, sounds like: sarim], these are the officers, and then underneath the sarim we have various marching units
because remember they were out in the desert and so they had a paramilitary
type organization.
After this point, when we reach verse 18 God is telling them to change
the structure once again because they’re going to settle down out of a
wandering condition in a stable urban situation. And therefore the whole chain of command is
going to be changed. First of all, Moses
is going to die, and so we have Yahweh, we have the Law, Moses is no longer
there and in that place was have a supreme council. What happened to the seventy? No one really knows except it’s hard to trace
from the Old Testament after they settled down in the urban. We do know that
they had a supreme council which acted sort of as a combination cabinet, would
correspond to the cabinet today and the Supreme Court together, if you can
visualize the two. And that was the
supreme council. Under the supreme
council in every city they would break this thing down by city, so each city
would have a group and each city is called a “gate.” Each city is called a “gate” for this by
metonymy, the same reason that we call Washington D.C. the White House. We don’t mean the White House literally says
something, but you’ll read it in the paper all the time, “the White House
says….” Do you really think a white
house has lips on the front door and says something? No, it’s because the White House is a picture
of the authority, and so the word “gate” is also a metonymy for the gate of the
city where the elders of the city met together.
And so in this we have three levels of officers in each city. We’d have the judges, then we’d have the satarim and then we’d have the sarim.
These were three levels in the cities and they were made up of elders,
or the older men of the city, the heads of the various families. The large families, the grandfather or the
great-grandfather if he was alive would be on these boards. The reason they picked older men and not
young men is because the Jew had a tremendous respect for chokmah, or wisdom, and they believed that no young man had enough chokmah accumulated over time to be a
leader and they always used, therefore, the word “elder.” Now later on they had younger men who they
endued with this office and these younger men were called “elders” though they
chronologically were not old men. The
local city officials were all part-time, the only full time members of the
government were the supreme council. Now
this shows you the tremendous efficiency of the government, obviously it
wouldn’t work today in a highly urbanized situation but for them it was
sufficient. You have a fulltime group at
the supreme council.
Now in verse 18, there were in every city established “judges and
officers,” these are these men; city #1, city #2, city #4, city #4 and they
were to appoint these men and these men were primarily to do the things you see
listed in verse 18-19. And it’s very
important that we notice what they are to do in verses 18-19. The emphasis, wherever in the Word of God you
have this government discussed, which is the fourth divine institution, you
always had judicial authority stressed.
Notice this, please. The Word of
God emphasizes the judgment upon evil as the heart function of government. It does not emphasize the bringing in of a
millennium; that is Christ’s job. Now
there are certain welfare provisions provided in the Mosaic Law, yes, but the
primary thrust of government in the Bible is always judgment upon evil. Why?
Why is this priority there. You
just have to look at our present situation.
Wherever you have a government that forsakes it’s number one
responsibility, which is to judge evil, wherever you have that happen, you will
always have the government going into some sort of… first of all a social
action program and the government will go into this and at the same time it
neglects the first function. And finally
what happens? Finally what happens is
that this never works out, it’d be wonderful if once in a while some of the
programs would work but none of them ever work.
And meanwhile judicial authority is going down the drain. And finally you wind up with a tremendous
high crime rate, you have people that disrespect authority and finally you have
internal collapse. That always happens,
history has repeated itself hundreds and hundreds of times. And every time history repeats itself you
have people in high places that say why, history is not going to repeat itself,
we’re smart, we’ve learned, history is not going to repeat itself in our
generation, we’re the exceptional generation, we’ve got something different
that all men that preceded us and so we don’t have to worry about the cycle of
history repeating in our generation. And
of course that’s usually the swan song for the whole thing because it goes
right down the drain after that’s said.
So government in God’s Word is always centered upon this judgment. This does not mean there aren’t these other
functions but the central function is always judgment. Then in verse 19 the obvious prerequisites
for a fair exercise of the fourth divine institution. “You will not wrest judgment,” the reason
that you shall not wrest judgment is a theme that goes through Scripture. The word [not sure of word, sounds like: rah]
judgment refers to God’s judgment. Now
you get that, that judgment is not judgment of society. The judgment under the Old Testament economy
was God’s judgment; it was never looked upon as society’s view. Society didn’t have any inherent rights;
society doesn’t have any rights. This is
what some people can’t understand and never seem to be able to understand in
our day. We have people that try to
combine evolution and creation and they always talk about social rights. And they never wake up to the obvious; if man
evolved, he has no social rights any more than the apes do, or anybody
else. You can run breeding experiments
with monkeys, you can run breeding experiments with men. Hitler did and the communists have done and
are doing them, and there’s nothing wrong with it if evolution is correct. You have no moral defense for social rights
on an evolutionary basis.
So “the judgment” in the Old Testament always comes about because it is
God’s judgment, not societies, God’s.
And these men are always looked upon as men who are going to carry out
the dictates of God, not society. “That
which is altogether just shall you follow,” literally in the Hebrew in verse
20, “the righteousness and only righteousness shall you follow,” and this
refers to the way revealed in the Law, “that you may live and inherit the land which the LORD
thy God gives thee.” Now the last
purpose clause of verse 20 shows that the judgment can’t be society’s judgment,
it must be God’s judgment, because “that you may live” means that you may be
blessed by Jehovah and Jehovah is not going to bless you as long as you are in
rebellion against His Law.
Now right here, we Americans are very fond and proud, and in some sense
should be, of the separation of church and state but I want you to see in this
passage that the state is not logically separated from the Word of God. That is a thing that even fundamentalists
can’t get straight. They have this pious
attitude that separates the church from the effects of the state and so
Christians back off of articulating divine viewpoint in the political sphere
and as a result the state is taken over by human viewpoint and every time we
lose. But that is not the way; the Word
of God is to be applied to every area, and that means the area of politics and
the state. And it means that the Word of
God should be applied. So here, although
the separation of church and state in America is a principle in that we don’t
want any one denomination or any one view to dominate, nevertheless from the
fundamental orthodox Christian position we do not allow the state to become
autonomous. The autonomous state is a humanist dogma and it is anti-Scriptural
to the core. The state is not
autonomous, it is responsible to God, He was the one that designed it. It is the fourth divine institution.
Now in Deuteronomy 16 it’s understood that though these judges are
secular people and not priests, see they had a form of separation of church and
state too, but the judges, how did they know what is righteousness, when it
says in verse 20, “righteousness and only righteousness shalt thou
follow?” Where are the civil servants
going to obtain their standards. Their
standards can only come from the Word of God.
Look at it this way; government has three functions: legislative,
executive and judicial. Now Israel had
no legislative function, this is most interesting, you can read through the Law
from one end to the other and you can’t find any legislative function. You find an executive function, you’re
looking at it right here. You find a
judicial function; you’re looking at it right here. Where’s the legislative function? Who’s the law-maker? God is.
And therefore you see it’s very clear that law is very close to the Word
of God. And when you have a collapse of
responsibility toward law and a switch over on the part of a mass of society to
leaders, then you’re in trouble.
Not so long ago somebody ran a study in Southern California of people
that were following Bobby Kennedy and after he was assassinated they discovered
a most interesting thing; they all switched to George Wallace. Now how you can put Bobby Kennedy and George
Wallace together in the same wagon and come out with anything is beyond me, and
beyond the social investigators that worked on this thing. How could these people, regardless of what
you think of either man, at least we can agree that they both were
different. And nevertheless, they had
one thing in common and that was that both of them were controversial
personalities. And it appeared therefore
that masses, and they studied thousands of cases, thousands and thousands of
people gravitated to a man who was a controversial figure, merely because he
was a controversial figure; not because of what he stood for, not because of
the content of the man’s ideas, but simply because he was a controversial
figure. It didn’t make any difference
what he said, what he believed or what his program was going to be as long as
his hair on the right side or something this was sufficient for most
people. Now when you have a situation
where people begin to follow personality, you are in trouble and unfortunately
today you can’t get elected to the office unless you brush your teeth with
All-bright or something and appear for some commercials and until you do that
you’re not qualified for the office, regardless of what you believe. This goes on right in our own backyard.
Now in verse 21 we have to come why trees are being planted near the
courts. “Thou shalt not plant thee a
grove of any trees,” now this grove is not just something that you’d go to the
nursery and pick up because you like to see peach trees out the back
window. It’s because the grove was a
place where they worshiped idols. And
the reason for this prohibition against the grove near the courthouse is
because it would introduce idols and false gods and therefore you would have
false standards. And here you have the connection between the state and the
Word of God. And this is why right in
the context of the civil government you are not to have the groves planted
because any time you introduce something that is human viewpoint you are going
to have a whopping of the standards, always, this always works out.
In America this works out in many, many different ways. For example we have liberalism that has come
into the church. Liberalism came into
the church largely through the rationalism of Germany, it captured the great seminaries
around 1900, became something that filtered down through the pulpits through
the seminaries and so on, and so now we have a group of liberal clergymen in
control, tremendous control of vast powerful religious organizations and right
now these men are making political officials feel guilty for, say having a
strong military, or of taking a strong stand against communism, or taking a
strong stand on capital punishment of a few other things like this. And the liberal clergy have been so effective
in brainwashing the American public that the average person just almost
responds. You catch yourself responding
to this simply because you have been brainwashed by the media to think this
way. So we too have gotten away from the
God of the Bible, the God who not only loves men but the God who says I hate
iniquity. And the God who is both loving
and just, that is, the God of the Bible, has been replaced by a God who only
loves and has no standards of justice except when it comes to certain
problems. When we come to this situation
like we are in our country, we have planted groves; the grove-planting here has
been done in an ideological sense in our country. Verse 22, “Neither shall thou set thee up any
image,” that continues the discussion.
In chapter 17, why is this here?
Because again it has to do with respect for the Word. “Thou shalt not sacrifice unto the LORD thy
God any bullock, or sheep, wherein is blemish, or any defect; for that is an
abomination unto the LORD thy God.” Now
verse 1 is important to understand something Saul is going to do later on. You must understand the last two verses of
chapter 16 and the first verse of chapter 17 to get the background for what
Saul is going to be judged for. The word
“abomination unto the LORD” is a technical word and is used in the Old Testament
to refer to various acts that an individual does; they are –V, negative
volition, they’re –R, personal sins, but they are personal sins that undermine
the state. And wherever you have sins
the outworking of which undermine the state, God calls them an
abomination. They are special sins that
God isolates for emphasis in the word. And the sin mentioned here is a sin of
disrespect to the ordinances of sacrifice because obviously you’re dealing with
judicial problems. One of the judicial
problems obviously is personal sin, and here by taking a sacrifice which is
blemished they are destroying the careful typology of the Word.
The sacrifice in the Old Testament goes back to speak of the cross of
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ had to be
minus sin; Jesus Christ had to be perfect; Jesus Christ could not have a sinful
flesh. And so when the priest would
accept a sacrifice they could not accept a sacrifice that had any blemish in it
because if they did they would be teaching that the Savior does not have to be perfect. And this attacks the person of Jesus
Christ. Theologically it’s just mixed
with the same thing of a person that would say that Jesus isn’t God today, an
attack on the person of Christ. So
actually, although you don’t see the word “Christ” in verse 1, verse 1 is
talking about an abomination which denies the person of Jesus Christ, and it
was a flagrant violation of the Old Testament Law.
Now in verse 2, here is what these judges are to do. “If there be found among you within any of
thy gates which the LORD thy God gives thee, man or woman who has wrought
wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing His covenant,”
now do you notice in verse 2 the standard of law is not society. The standard
of law is the covenant of God, that is the standard. Now if you think upon this over and over and
over, it will help you in your discussions with the non-Christian, because if
you will train yourself mentally never to think of inherent rights, or social
rights, wipe all those categories completely out of your mind and talk of one,
the right that God reveals in His Word, and if you will insist there are no
rights apart from those that are given by God, then when you are in a
discussion with your non-Christian friends you can show them immediately, wait
a minute, where are you getting your standards of right and wrong? Society, is it really just society, in their
society then the Nazi’s were right. And
some of them might say yes, and of course if they say that the Nazi’s were
right and that slaughtering, genocide is fine, obviously they are people who
have never lived in the situation. It’s
easy for some little pimply faced character to say oh yeah, Hitler was right
and it’s another thing to have lived in the situation and watched his mother and
father taken off to the gas chamber or watched his sister raped by German
soldiers in front of him or something else; that would change his mind. But we
have little insolated brats who have never lived in that kind of situation and
they know not whereof they speak. But
for a person who has at least some contact with reality left, then we can talk
about this business of rights, and there aren’t any rights apart from the
rights that God gives. This is a very
important point, it comes out over and over again.
Verse 3, “And has gone and served other gods, and worshiped them, either
the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not
commanded,” you see it is not society, it is God. Verse 4, “And it be told thee, and thou hast
heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it is true, and the thing
certain,” obviously an investigation was required, there were no emotionally
based decisions. It had to be based on
the facts and no person would be charged with guilt under this system of law
unless there was a careful and thorough investigation of the facts. And it obviously means a careful and thorough
investigation that would proceed immediately.
You can’t have justice when it’s delayed. So this is quick investigation, it’s a
thorough one and “behold, it is true, and the thing certain,” notice this,
evidence beyond a doubt, “it is certain, that such an abomination is wrought in
Israel; [5] Then you shall bring forth that man or that woman, who has
committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shall
stone them with stones, till they die.”
Not a way nice way of executing but we’ll see that they used capital
punishment, not for all crimes, this was just a representative sample.
Verse 6, “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he
that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness shall
he not be put to death.” And then they
had various systems of acting as checks on witnesses; they had to have two
people and they would question these two people in isolation, and they’d look
for contradictions in the story. This is
elementary logic, elementary proof, and they would check out the consistency of
these two people; and they would ascertain truth by the consistency of the testimonies
of these people, and then to make sure that these witnesses were on the beam
and not just trying to hoax things, they had a very horrible thing that they
introduced, and it was found in verse 7, The hands of the witnesses shall be
first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people.
So thou shalt put the evil away from among you.” In other words, if you were a witness to a
capital crime you would have to pick up the first rocks and throw. Now that may not strike you as something but
when you see some cowering individual who’s been condemned by the court
standing there, who may be your best friend, and you pick up a rock and have to
throw it and smash his face with it, I would suggest that it would have some
sobering effect upon your role in the court.
So you see what they did, they involved the witnesses in the execution
of the crime. There was a reason for
it.
Then in verse 8 they had another interesting system. You remember the structure of the nation at
this time, before the king, you have Yahweh, you have the Law, and you have a
supreme council, and then you have underneath all these cities. The supreme council acted somewhat like our
Supreme Court and here’s the cases where it acted. “If there arise a matter too hard for thee in
lawsuit,” the word judgment meaning lawsuit, “between blood and blood, between
plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy
within thy gates, then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which
the LORD thy God shall choose,” that refers to the place of the
tabernacle. Where is the
tabernacle? It could be any place but it
will be the place where God shall choose.
Notice again, do you see the connection between God and law; do you see
that the law is His law, that the judgment of crime is not society’s judgment,
it is God’s judgment.
Verse 9, “And thou shalt come unto the priests, the Levites, and unto
the judge who shall be in those days, and inquire, and they shall show you the
sentence and judgment. [10] And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which
they of that place which the LORD shall choose shall show thee, and thou shalt
observe to do according to all that they inform thee; [11] According to the
sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment
which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do,” and the last part of verse 11, “you
will not decline from the sentence which they shall show thee, to the right
hand, nor to the left.” In other words,
there will be no appeals; the supreme council decrees it and that is it, no
more appeals.
And if someone wants to get frisky and violate the authority, then verse
12. “And the man who will do
presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest who stands to minister
there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die; and
thou shall put away the evil from Israel.”
Notice the refrain over and over again, “thou will put away evil from
Israel.” How? By the use of justice,
with (pardon the expression) capital punishment. [13, “And all the people shall hear, and
fear, and do no more presumptuously.”]
Then we come to verse 14, “When you are come into the land which the
LORD thy God gives thee, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and
shall say, I will make a king over me, like all the nations that are about me,”
now the king is placed after the judges because here we have the judges
augmented by this new office. This is
the office that we will see Saul try to fill…try to fill. “and shall say,
I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are about me,” God
prophesied that the nation would want a strong centralized government, and like
our God always does He very graciously provided in advance for the problem. He provided in advance even for the failure
of faith. Now stop and think about that
for a moment when you get discouraged in the Christian life. Do you realize that God, even before you became
a Christian, even before the time that you were put “in Christ.” No matter how many failures you’ve had in the
Christian life, no matter how many times you stumbled over the same old things,
no matter how discouraged you get, God has always provided grace for you in
advance, because God knew in advance exactly where you would stumble. And God knew exactly in advance what you
would need and so God provided exactly in advance everything that you could
ever ask for. And here we see God
providing for the nation, even for its lapse of faith.
So he says when this happens and you’re going to fall down and you’re
going to want central government, then I want you to do this. And beginning in verse 15 He stipulates what
the king must do. “Thou shalt surely set
him king over thee whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren
shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, who is
not thy brother.” Now that verse may not
strike you as very important but it is; the liberals have always argued that
the book of Deuteronomy was a late product, that it was written after the kings
had already come about. You can see why;
why would a liberal want to make this passage after the kings had come
about. It’s very simple if you think
about it, a liberal can’t stand to have prophecy because if there’s one prophecy
it destroys the whole liberal system.
And since he can’t he must explain this business of king here in verses
14-15 so therefore he’s got to make this book a very late book. But the fatal evidence in here against that
theory is this last verse, “thou will not set a stranger over thee.” There was never a problem in the historic
period of the kings of them having a foreigner for a king. That’s a problem they never even had. They had lots of problems but they never had
this one. And so therefore this is
evidence that this was written far before the monarchy was ever set up.
So he has to be one that “God shall choose.” Now why does God get in the process of
choosing kings? Can you see why? What is
the fourth divine institution? Whose law
is it that is to be enforced by the fourth divine institution? God’s law, and therefore isn’t God interested
in the one who’s going to carry out the enforcement of the law? Of course He is. Maybe you’ve never prayed this way before for
your government, for our government, but think about that when you start
looking in the New Testament and you read 1 Timothy 2 where you are commanded
to pray for the people in authority and power, pray this way: pray that God has
a person and a right leader for this country.
God has certain individuals that will be the best under the situation to
execute judgment; don’t pray for a so and so personality, pray for the man that
in God’s sight will execute God’s laws and will introduce God’s standards. That is the man to pray for.
But in any case, during the Old Testament God was going to choose. Now how would God choose these kings? I want to give six examples of how kings were
chosen in the Bible and in every case we have the same principle operate, it is
God who does the choosing. The office,
the people have chosen. Notice this, the
office the people have chosen, but the person or the office-holder God is the
One who chooses. Now let’s see how God
chooses.
Turn to 1 Samuel 9:16, we’ll discuss this further but here is the first
illustration of God choosing the holder of an office. By the way, historically this is one of the
justifications for democracy; this may seem a round about way of getting there,
but one of the reasons for democracy in America came out of New England
churches where you had congregationalism… we have congregationalism here at
Lubbock Bible Church in that the congregation votes on certain basic
issues. The reason for this is that
congregational government presupposes a sin nature on the part of every
believer, and it believes, congregational government, that if you have a group
of people together who prayerfully exercise their vote, then you have the
maximum chance of ascertaining the will of the Holy Spirit. There is, so to speak, safety in numbers, and
congregational government is always premised on the fact that there will be a
maximum number of people sensitive to the Spirit’s leading in a given
group.
Now congregational government also assumes something; that the people
that have the franchise to vote are going to be serious about ascertaining
God’s will to do it. What has happened
in our country? We’ve taken from this
democracy, don’t kid yourself, democracy didn’t come from the Greeks, it came
from the Puritans who were Congregationalists in New England. Democracy then moves on and says why,
democracy is such a wonderful thing, look, it gives everybody and his uncle a
right to vote. And so we have universal
suffrage, but don’t ever confuse the two; democracy and universal suffrage are
two distinct concepts. And the first occurrence of democracy in America in the Puritan congregation, do you realize
you had to pass a doctrinal exam to keep your power of vote. You would be examined annually and if you
couldn’t pass that theological exam you flunked and you lost your power to
vote. You didn’t automatically have a
franchise to exercise your stupidity in a vote.
You had to qualify for that right to vote. But today you can see how far the concept of
democracy has come, anybody that breathes has the right to vote, regardless of
whether they’re qualified or not. So
this is a very interesting commentary.
But in any case, God didn’t trust the vote system, He picked Saul.
“Tomorrow about this time I will send thee a man out of the land of Benjamin,
and thou shalt anoint him” or christen him, this is the word “messiah him,” to
be captain over My people, Israel.” So
let’s look at the first king, and then the king-maker. The first king is Saul, the king-maker is
Samuel. So it’s not by popular acclaim,
it is by God’s leading that that office holder is picked.
Turn to 1 Samuel 16:13, here you have a second king, David. “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and
anointed him” made him messiah “in the midst of his brethren; and the Spirit of
the LORD came upon David from that day onward.”
So again you have David the king; the king-maker is Samuel.
Turn to 2 Samuel 12:24, the third king, and how he was chosen. “And David comforted Bathsheba, his
wife….” By the way, for some of you who
haven’t been here too long, every once in a while I get a question about what
about a baby who dies, he’s born so he’s obviously a soul and he dies, but he
hasn’t obviously had a chance to accept Christ as Savior. The solution is in the verse just before
this, verse 23, that is the central verse on the death of infants. What is the status of babies that die before
the age of accountability? David’s baby
by Bathsheba died, and David, verse 21, “Then his servants said unto him, What
is this thing that thou hast done? You
fasted and wept for the child while it was alive; but when the baby was dead,
you rose and did eat.” In other words,
they can’t stand this, when the child is sick David is sorrowful, the child
dies and David goes out and has a big dinner.
What’s the matter with David, doesn’t he have any respect for the dead
or something. Why doesn’t he go along
with a long face. The answer that David
gives for the death of his son is the answer that has been applied down through
the ages to the death of infants. Let’s
read it carefully.
Verse 22, “And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and
wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that my
child may live? [23] But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?” and the answer
is no. “I shall to go him, but he shall
not return to me.” That is, David we
know went to the compartment of Sheol for the saved individuals, what does that
imply about his child? It was
saved. And you can’t argue that this was
a circumcised baby because he died before circumcision. So this was a child
that shows that infants, before the age of accountability, are automatically
saved. How I do not know, and
theologians have argued and argued and argued and argued to figure out how. Some way the atonement of Jesus Christ is
credited to their account until they get to the age where they can choose for
themselves, and then they’re on their own. But until that point… and when is
that age? I think the age comes after
they have a fairly good control of the language because that shows you they’re
thinking conceptually and therefore thinking can become God-conscious. That was just a footnote because we happen to
be at that place in Scripture.
“David comforted Bathsheba, his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with
her; and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon; and the LORD loved
him. [25] And he sent [word] by the hand of Nathan, the prophet; and he called
his name Jedidah, because of the LORD.”
Now later on we’ll see how this third king, Solomon, was chosen by
Nathan. David had many sons, but only one attained the throne and Nathan did
it.
Another example, this time in the northern kingdom, 1 Kings 11:29, “And
it came to pass at that time, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the
prophet, Ahijah, the Shilonite,” now Jeroboam is the first king of the northern
kingdom; he was on the outs with Solomon and he decided things got a little hot
around Jerusalem so he decided to take a long vacation down in Egypt while
things cooled off in Jerusalem. And when he was down there, finally Solomon
died and he was replaced by his idiot son by the name of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the boy, by the way, to whom the
book of Proverbs was addressed, and Rehoboam learned from the book of Proverbs about
one half of one word in verse 1; and after that Rehoboam led, to 930 BC a
revolt of the kingdom and that was the end; he was a very idiotic individual
and through his stupidity lost the kingdom.
Well, Jeroboam was cooling his heels down in Egypt with the Pharaoh and
he decided to come back up about this time because he knew Rehoboam was an
idiot, and he at least had half a brain left and he knew that in this kind of a
political struggle he’d come out on top.
So he trotted on up to Jerusalem and when he got there he was met by
this prophet, Ahijah.
Now Ahijah has good news for Jeroboam.
He “…found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment,
and they two were alone in the field.”
Notice the prophet usually gets these men along. Verse 30, “And Ahijah caught the new garment
that was on him, and tore it into twelve pieces.” Now obviously this isn’t quite the standard
procedure for a new suit of clothes but Ahijah had a point in doing this and that
was to demonstrate the king, the twelve tribes, was going to be destroyed and
that Jeroboam was going to have ten pieces.
Verse 31, “And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces,” those
represent the ten tribes, for thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, Behold, I
will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to
thee.” And so the first king of the
northern kingdom is made king by Ahijah.
Now turn to 1 Kings 19:16, here we have an interesting situation; we
have a man by the name of “Jehu, the son of Nimshi,” now Jehu was sort of like
Samson, he was a professional goon that God hired, so to speak, to clean house
and by that time certain things got messy in the northern kingdom, and they had
adultery had influenced a vast number of people in the government, and so God
needed a killer, and Jehu was a rough and tumble character out of the Israelite
army and he liked to kill; he was kind of the George Patton of his generation,
so God said I need a Jehu around here, so we’ll call him. So this verse, “Jehu, the son of Nimshi,
shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel.”
Now Jehu had the wonderful job of executing everybody and anybody; he
killed about every one of the royal family.
By the way, that’s a good illustration of the third and fourth
generation also, which we can’t get into that.
But Jehu was one of the ways that God had of applying that cut off
principle to some of the royalty to the northern kingdom. God had had it up to here with their idolatry
so He said look, I’m going to clean house and so bring General Jehu up here and
let him go to work. And he did, he went
around with his chariot and assassinated everybody. And after about five years he stabilized the
situation and was a very good leader.
Jehu was picked by Elijah. So do
you see the key, the king has to be picked by a prophet.
In 2 Kings 9:2 Elisha, this is Elijah’s successor, is to move out and to
look up Jehu, “And when thou come there, find Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the
son of Nimshi, and go in, and make him arise up from among his brethren, and
take him to an inner chamber.” Now this
is actually a dual anointing of Jehu by Elijah and also by Elisha, for reasons
which we can’t get into because of the history involved, but Jehu was anointed
in both cases by these prophets, the point being, however that in every case
the king has been anointed by somebody in the prophetic end of the line.
Now let’s turn to Matthew 3, this explains something in the New
Testament. Now this is dedicated to all
you who say we study the New Testament and we don’t bother with the Old. Now that you’ve had some background in the
Old Testament, now you’re prepared to understand the New Testament a little bit. And here in the New Testament in Matthew
3:13, “Then came Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized by
him.” Now what is John, he’s a
prophet. Jesus Christ is going to be the
king. So Jesus is going to be the King
and the King-maker is John. Jesus
Christ, just because He happens to be God, doesn’t change the principle, and
the principle was established back in the Old Testament that you cannot have a
king, even if that King is God Himself, He must be made, He must be authorized
by a prophet.
Verse 14, “But John forbade him, saying,” John realizes who has finally
come and he realizes one day when he’s out there baptizing people, he sees this
man come down and we know from the Old Testament that Jesus Christ was a very
plain looking individual, but people were always impressed by the aurora of
spiritual power that surrounded Him. It
wasn’t anything that you could pinpoint because the Gospels never speak of how
Christ looks. You can read the Gospels
from one end to the other and you’ll never find a hint about how Christ actually
looks, except in one passage, actually two passage, one tells how He looked on
the cross which was one bloody mess and the other passage in the New Testament
that says something about Christ is John 2 where it says that he was old for
His age. But apart from those two passages we have no hints, guidelines, or
anything else. So any pictures you have
of Christ in your mind, that Holman’s Hunt decided on or somebody else, forget
it, because God Word doesn’t allow any pictures of Christ, this is sheerly the
figment of the artist’s imagination. Now
when Christ walks up there’s something about Him that strikes John. Whatever it
is, whether John had heard Him preaching or talked to Him before, John
recognizes Him and he realizes who Christ is and he says look, you’re the
Messiah, you’re the One that I am preaching about. You’re the One, as he had said earlier, I
can’t even touch your foot latches, or your shoes and You expect me to baptize
You.
Now this is why Christ says in verse 15, “Jesus answering said unto him,
Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becomes us to fulfill all
righteousness.” Now why is Christ saying
“us?” He’s talking about look John,
don’t you know how a king is instituted in Israel, this goes back to the Mosaic
Law, now John, you just go right through and anoint Me as King, this is the way
it is to be done. So Jesus insists on
the letter of the Law. You would think
Jesus was a fundamentalist the way He interpreted the Old Testament so
literally. But Jesus Christ carried on
this principle that we have discovered from Deuteronomy 17.
Now if you turn back to Deuteronomy 17 we’ll finish up on the office of
King. Make no mistake about it, there’s
no escaping this, and yet today you can talk to 9 people out of 10 and not one
of them ever gets the point. Jesus
Christ believed in a literal Old Testament.
Now if Jesus Christ believed in a literal Old Testament that did, by the
way, have eleven chapters in the front, if Jesus Christ believed in that kind
of a Bible, then what are you going to do with people who like to fudge in
their interpretation on the first 11 chapters?
To be honest, there’s only one thing to do and I’m not being facetious,
I’m being very open and frank about this.
If you honestly cannot accept the eleven chapters of Genesis in the same
way you accept the rest of the Old Testament, throw out Christ, because that’s
the logical position you are in. And
there’s no amount of emotional games, tricks you can pull off with words or anything
else that’ll get you around this. Jesus
Christ believed in a literal Genesis; that commits us to believing in a literal
Genesis. The only option we have, if
Christ was wrong then He’s wrong in all the areas, at least He’s not
trustworthy in all other areas. And when
He says “love thy neighbor” we can’t trust Him there either. So you have to take the good with the bad and
take both together or not at all, but you have no right to come to the Bible
with a razor blade and cut out the things you don’t like and keep the things
you do, which is what the average person does.
One of the most honest statements about this whole thing was said,
believe it or not, by William Hamilton who happened to be one of the two
theologians that started the modern death of God theology; he said look, if we
can’t trust Jesus in His cosmology, if we can’t trust Jesus in His various
areas of history, we can’t trust Him in theology either. And Hamilton is exactly right, if you can’t
trust Christ’s view of Genesis you can’t trust Christ period; and least of all
for your salvation. At least in Genesis
you have something that you can test Jesus’ statements with. When He says listen, if you believe on Me I’m
going to forgive your sins, how do you ever check that out? You have no way of checking that out. You have no way of finding out whether your
sins are forgiven unless one thing happens, unless you trust implicitly in the
person of Jesus Christ. And if you can’t
trust in Jesus Christ with that trust you can’t trust Him at all.
Deuteronomy 17:16 and following, this is what controlled the office of a
king. Notice who controls the office of
a king? God does; society doesn’t define
the office, God defines the office and God is the one who is going to hold Saul
accountable for the office, not society.
Society wouldn’t have, society loved Saul. Verse 16, “But he shall not multiply horses
to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt,” that’s another phrase
which shows that the liberals are wrong in Deuteronomy, this was never a
problem during the historic period, “to the end that he should multiply horses;
forasmuch as the LORD has said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more
that way. [17] Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
now away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.”
Do you remember what Samuel said, 1 Samuel 8, what the king was going to
do. Samuel knew what was going to happen, just as soon a we get this office
started, you watch. In one generation
David is already multiplying wives to himself.
Now the wives here, this sounds kind of lenient against polygamy; now in
case some of you guys get your signals crossed, every once in a while we have
somebody say they allowed polygamy in the Old Testament, well that really fits
me fine, God allowed it in the Old and it’s valid in the New, and so on. Just a minute, God allowed and accommodated
to his day but if you will read the Law carefully, if the Law of Moses is
applied consistently it will always destroy polygamy. It’s a logical result, it’s not there in its
clear from but if you start applying law after law after law after law you
watch the effect it will have; its effect is to destroy polygamy.
Another thing about the Law and just a side note on social issues, the
Law, if it applied strictly, would have destroyed slavery. Now slavery was an issue, a social issue, and
God was against slavery because it’s a violation of the first divine
institution, but it’s interesting that the Mosaic Law handled the social
problem by phasing it out gradually, or it would have had people stuck with
it. It didn’t come in like a communist
revolution and then suddenly destroy the thing, but had the Law been applied
for two to three hundred years slavery would have completely disappeared. And so would polygamy.
Now the particular wives mentioned here, they were political marriages
and kings were notorious for doing this, collecting women as sort of the
signatures on treaties, and also for pride, it was a status symbol to walk
around and carry all your women around in a chariot and say look here, here’s
my wealth and here’s what I got, see what you can compare with it and so
forth. And it was a status symbol that
the kings had. So this expression, in
context, is referring to centralized government.
Verse 18, “And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom,
that he shall write him a copy of this Law in a book out of that which is
before the priests, the Levites; [19] And it shall be with him, and he shall
read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his
God, to keep all the words of this Law and these statutes, to do them. [20]
That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside
from the commandment, to right hand, or to the left; to the end that he may
prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of
Israel.”
Now do you notice the role that the Word of God had, even on the office
of the king. Now it doesn’t require too
much imagination to sort of suspect that verses 19-20 aren’t happening in too
many public offices today. Maybe
somebody might apply verse 19 and send a Bible or something to some politician
and say if you haven’t copied your copy, here’s one, it’ll save you some
trouble. But I doubt it would do any
good. The net thrust of this is simply
to say that the king is ruling in God’s office; he is going to be responsible
to God and the guidance for his office is obtained from the Word.
Next week we’ll find out how Saul does.