Lesson 36
A Righteous King – 17:14-20
We are reminded of the pattern that we have seen develop in this book, a
pattern that’s very important because this particular book is written in the
format of a treaty of the ancient Near East.
In other words, it is a legal document.
It has a format, it has the introduction, it has the content and it has
the sequence of presentation that a treaty would have. In other words, this treaty locks God into a
legal relationship with the nation. The
important thing to remember is chapters 5-11 deal with the inner mental
attitude, or the heart requirement, how to “love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart.” Chapters 12-23, how to love the
Lord thy God amidst the details of life.
And in connection with this we found that chapter 12-16 form a logical
unit. The last part of chapter 16 on
down to chapter 21 form another logical unit.
This first unit had to do with the unity of the nation and chapters
12-16 all concentrated on hammering home a certain truth. And the truth was that the nation
This is why we said in the United States we have thrown out the only
hope we have ever had for a true unity and that was when the threw out our
Christian heritage, for when we throw this out then we are left with a bunch of
what we call polycentric different ideas, we have some idea here, something
over here, something over there, a little of this and a little of that, and
that’s all we have. And then we wonder
what’s happened to the nation? Well,
there’s no set agreement on what is right and what is wrong any more and so we
have relativism and humanism. We also
showed that since we are operating in a disunity, a state of disunity, the
fracture of the
In chapters 16-21 Moses begins to apply these principles to civil
government and we started with Deut. 17:1 and in that verse we dealt with the
problem of judges, and we showed that a judge in the Old Testament carried
through both executive and judicial functions of the government. He would be kind of a president and court
judge together in our own culture.
Tonight we come to something that always happens in the history of man;
has always happened to every great nation, it’s happened to the
Now here’s the problem. It is not
in God’s declared will for
Verse 14, this is the proposal that comes from the people and not from
God and therefore we conclude that it is in God’s permissive will; it is not in
His declared will. If it was in His
declared will it would be like the other passages in this section, when you get
there then you set up this thing. But
it’s not saying that. The proposal for
the setting up of the king doesn’t come from Moses; doesn’t come from God, it’s
going to come from the people and God knows this. God’s policy is always to provide for your
need ahead of time. In fact the Lord
said praying for our daily bread doesn’t mean you pray for the bread today, you
pray for tomorrow’s bread and it means “give us this day tomorrow’s bread,” and
that’s the way that phrase should read because God is to provide ahead of time
for your needs.
Verse 15, “Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee,” now here we
have the King James translating this infinitive absolute again, we’ve had this
construction a number of times, you take what is known as the infinitive
absolute verb and add it to the verb in Hebrew and you always increase the
emphasis on the mood. The mood of the
verb here is permissive; if you are going to do this then I’ll let you do this
and so the mood of permissiveness is emphasized here. If you’re going to do this,
So the nation here in verse 15 is taking up plan B. It is not God’s plan to have a king but He
will accommodate Himself if and when they do this. He says all right, okay, I’ll let you have a
king but there are certain stipulations about this king, and these are the
stipulations. First, he must be a person
whom God will choose. Now this is
important and you will see this down through the Old Testament that no king had
the right to a throne unless he was first chosen by God. It wasn’t a case of a king suddenly getting
enough troops together and pulling off a coup
d’etat, it was a case where the king was chosen by a prophet of God. They had king-makers in their day; it is a
nasty word in American politics but in that day it was a legitimate word; they
had king-makers. And the king-makers
were the prophets of
You have Jehovah or Yahweh; He is ruling. He rules through His Law. You have the twelve tribes down here. When
Moses dies you have these city governments all over the land, made up of the shoterim, the judges, and the sarim and then up here you have the
supreme council and the supreme council was made of judges and priests. Therefore you have no legislature in
Now here’s the problem. If you
begin to put a human king right there, which is what’s going to happen, you
have but one man over all of this government.
Now, why does the Bible warn against centralization of power? Because the Bible says something that the 20th
century hasn’t woken up to yet except in one area and that’s in the area of
violence. We are finally having some sociologists admit that man has a problem;
we don’t understand this problem of violence and so finally some segments of
our academic community are waking up to the fact that man has a sin nature,
although they won’t call it that and their recognition of it is very
partial. But this is why the Bible warns
against centralization of power. If you
centralize authority and power in one man, what happens when the one man
sins? It’s as simple that.
That one idea spells the difference between northern Europe, England,
the United States and the rest of the world for in these areas you have had
representative governments, you have had constitutional government, or you have
had in the past. And the reason why,
it’s found on this principle that you’re facing here in the text right now. It’s as simple as that, that in northern
Europe you have had Protestants who have believed that man has a sin nature and
therefore they are suspicious anytime you have a man taking over power. Not on the basis of his personality, not
because they don’t like the man, but because they are inherently suspicious of
any man, suspicious even of themselves.
John Calvin wrote in his theology, I am afraid of myself. And the reason he did this is because John
Calvin recognized his own sin nature and this is why you have congregational
government in the local church, so we don’t have power groups taking over the
congregation. We have a broad
distribution of power. We have ourselves
protected by the constitution of the church; I have a sin nature, the board has
a sin nature, and every one of you have a sin nature. And when you have this many sin natures
together you’re going to have some problems sooner or later. Therefore we might as well protect ourselves
by having written agreements and this is why we have constitutional government.
Now in this case, in the ancient nation of Israel, God foresaw the
problem with this king and so He tried to put in safeguards. So if you want to have one man at the helm,
let’s make sure of some things. First,
God will choose. Now how did God
choose? Hold the place and we’ll take a
brief survey of the Old Testament to show you how God chose the kings, to prove
to you that the men did not ascend by political intrigue; they ascended when
they were called by God.
1 Sam. 9:16, keep in mind this is a protective device, to protect the
nation against a despot. So God is going
to pick the people out. In 1 Sam. 9:16
we have God talking to Samuel, verse 15, “Now the LORD had told Samuel is his ear
a day before Saul came, saying, [16] Tomorrow about this time I will send thee
a man out of the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over
my people, Israel,” and here you have the choosing of Saul through a prophet
and this is the story of the entire Old Testament. This is why Jeremiah goes up into the king’s
presence and calls him every name under the sun, and you say what audacity does
a prophet have to address the highest man in the land; because though the king
is high, the prophet is higher, the prophet has the Word of God. God is the
King speaking through His prophet and the prophet is higher than the civil
official known as the king. So in verse
16 we have the prophet Samuel picking Saul.
Saul was fine for a while but Saul had a sin nature and he let it get
the better of him and he went into a carnal spiral and committed the sin unto
death. Eventually God took away his
sanity; Saul went insane because he failed to follow the will of God and God
says Saul, the way back to fellowship with Me is 1 John 1:9 and Saul said no,
I’m not going to do it, I’m king of this nation and I’m going to run it the way
I want to run it. Saul tried it and Saul
went insane because you cannot play games with God, and God made sure Saul
wasn’t going to run the nation so He deprived the man of his sanity. Later on Saul met a very tragic death in the
battle, he committed suicide; also a horrible death to commit as a believer,
worst possible way to go out is by suicide because what you’re doing is
essentially going along with Satan. If
you’re a believer that’s operating with the grace of God Satan wants you off
the scene and so the worst thing you can do as far as the Lord is concerned is
commit suicide; you’re playing right into the hands of Satan. Satan would love to get you off the scene and
you’re just accommodating Satan by the principle of suicide. So this was a very horrible death that Saul
took out. Samuel picked Saul.
Notice God picked the man and still he didn’t turn out so don’t feel
guilty when you vote for somebody and you get him in office and they turn out
to be a clod. God didn’t do any better,
God picked Saul, and God knew what was going to happen but God gave Saul the
opportunity and Saul went flat on his face.
Then God said all right, I’m going to pick a replacement, I’m going to
pick a new man.
Here we have 1 Sam. 16:13, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil,” again
who’s doing the picking? The prophet is doing the picking, “and anointed him,”
that’s masach from which we get
Messiah, “anointed him in the midst of his brethren; and the Spirit of the LORD
came upon David from that day onward.” So again we have a prophet picking a
king. Samuel picks David. Now David comes on and we have the beginning
of that we call the Davidic dynasty. There is only going to be one dynasty in
history, that Davidic dynasty, and it is a dynasty that will go on into the
Millennium because David himself, some scholars believe, will be resurrected
and will be the ruler during the Millennium under the Lord Jesus Christ’s
Messiahship. So David is one of the
great names of history, no matter what you have learned in your history about
the great kings of Europe and the great leaders of Asia, just remember there is
only one authorized dynasty in God’s Word and that is the Davidic dynasty.
Now we have a situation come up; David has a few wives and they produce
all these children. Now who picks which
child is going to be king? You see, you
have many children; you have a man by the Nathan, not Nathan the prophet. Nathan is the son of David, and by the way,
one of Nathan’s ancestors turns out to be the Virgin Mary and this is how Jesus
Christ claims His physical relationship to the throne. In Luke 3 the genealogy is back to David
through Nathan; in Matthew the genealogy of Christ is given back through
Solomon, two different genealogies because two different people. One is Joseph’s genealogy; one is Mary’s
genealogy. Solomon is picked out of all
of these children, but who picks him out.
2 Sam. 12:24, “And 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 Jedidiah, because of the LORD.” Here you have the selection of the selection
of a son not by the father, the father couldn’t say son, I want you to succeed
me in my throne. The father, who was the
reigning king in Israel, had to wait until a prophet of God came to this man
and said sir, I am picking out this son of yours to be king, he will be
king. And this is the way the prophets
went; they had power over the king. So
here we have Solomon picked out by Nathan the prophet.
Now we have a few other cases. 1
Kings 11:29, it’s always amusing, you read the liberal’s view of the Old
Testament and they always have some big hairy explanation for how these men got
chosen; Solomon had a group of boys with him and they convinced Nathan and
Nathan went in there and he played ball with David and they made a back
smoke-filled room deal and that’s how Solomon came to be king. The reason for this is to the liberal God
can’t really cause anything to happen so it’s got to be by human means. This is why they have all these fancified
explanations. It’s very simple, God just
revealed to the prophet: I pick this person. And then the prophet went to the
man. 1 Kings 11:29, “And it came to pass
at that time, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah, the
Shilonite, found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment;
and they two were alone in the field.”
And the story goes on to explain that this king of the northern kingdom,
Jeroboam was picked by the prophet Ahijah.
So you see again we have a civil servant, the highest man in the land,
picked by a prophet. He did not pick
himself; he was not even picked by his father. Again, turn to 1 Kings 19, we
have another situation of a king being picked by a prophet. By the way, if you have studied the life of
our Lord Jesus Christ should be putting two and two together; do you see what
the function of John the Baptist was to the Lord Jesus Christ? The Lord Jesus Christ had to be picked by a
prophet and this is the significance of the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ. John says “this is the Lamb of God that takes
away the sin of the world,” and even when Messiah Himself came Messiah could
not set Himself on the throne until He had received a prophetic approval, and
the prophetic approval in Jesus’ day came from John the Baptist and this is why
the Gospels begin, not with Jesus, but they begin with the ministry of John the
Baptist. They carry on this tradition of
the Old Testament.
1 Kings 19:16, “And Jehu, the son of Nimshi, shalt thou anoint to be
king over Israel.” Who is this addressed to?
This is addressed to Elijah, and so Elijah is the prophet who anoints
the king and this is Jehu, the son of Nimshi, or Jehu the king. Therefore we have these people and there are
many cases that you could trace through1 & 2 Kings but I think we’ve traced
enough to give you the idea that the man who seeks the office has to receive
prophetic approval. Why? Because God wanted to keep control. How did He control the nation? Through the Law and through His prophets, and
therefore He kept the lid on the country by picking the men who would lead the
country. It doesn’t mean these men were
plastic saints but it does mean that God had control.
Back to Deut. 17, we begin to realize a little bit about this search in
verse 15 that’s tucked away there that you might read by without even thinking
twice about it, “Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom the LORD
thy God shall choose:” and we now know what that sentence means; the Lord is
going to chose the king through His prophets.
And this is what gives, later on, the right that the prophet has to come
and lambaste the king for not upholding in the law. “… one from among my brethren, shall thou set
king over thee,” and this is to fulfill the topology of the nation, “thou
mayest not set a stranger over thee, who is not thy brother,” again to fulfill
the typology of the nation.
Throughout the rest of this chapter we have four warnings given to the
king. These four warnings should be
understood because these four warnings can apply to any system of government
today. The first warning is found in
verse 16, “But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to
return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses; forasmuch as the
LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.” Now what is the point here? Why is this talk about horses? Horses in the ancient world were looked upon
as the ultimate military weapon and what this warning is saying is that the
centralized government must not rely upon a gigantic defense machine. It doesn’t mean they are not to arm
themselves but it means that their confidence cannot be placed in a gigantic
military industrial complex. This is
what is said here in verse 16, you must “not multiply horses.” By the way, this has another
repercussion. I hope as I go through
here I’m trying to show you how the Old Testament [can’t understand word] the
understanding of the New Testament, how you can help yourself by just reading
the Old Testament to understand the crucial passages of the New Testament.
Do you see now why the Lord Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on an
ass? When all the other kings would ride
on a horse, because Jesus followed the precedent that even His own mode of
transportation would not be a horse, it would be the meek and lowly donkey, for
this was considered a low cheap horse; you might say today the President would
come driving in in a VW instead of a Lincoln.
And that’s the point. And that’s
how the Lord Jesus Christ came riding into Jerusalem, on the lowest form of
transportation. And He followed this
out, “thou shalt not multiply horses to yourself.” Now there are two reasons why God does not
want the nation to trust in a gigantic military machine.
The first one, and this is a reason, by the way, that underlies all the
reasons and it’s something we saw back when we dealt with the problem of
poverty and welfare, in Deut. 14-15.
Remember when we discussed the problem of poverty we said something
about the spiritual cause of poverty; we said that though this is an economic
problem, it looks like an economic problem, it has all the symptoms of an
economic problem, basically God said if you will trust Me and obey Me there
won’t be any more poor in your land. The
only reason why there was poor in the nation Israel was because the nation was
disobedient to God’s Word. That is a
promise you will find in the book of Deuteronomy, quickly followed by the
statement of reality saying but I know the poor are never going to cease out of
the land. And it shows then, that
poverty arises in a strange way; not a direct way, it’s not saying the poor are
the ones that are spiritually out of it, but it just says that the way this
country is set up economically is that one of the symptoms of a decline of
spirituality will be an increase in poverty.
So therefore the poverty is actually caused, according to the Bible,
first by a spiritual decadence among the people and this is always the
precedent. God will bless a nation,
including material things, if that nation will play along with Him and if that
nation will not, you will have poverty.
Now what happens? We said when we
dealt with welfare here’s the tendency, we’ve got a problem. First you have this step one, everybody knows
step one, that’s spiritual decline. Now
watch what happens. A direct result of
the spiritual decline is an increase in poverty. Now you would think when the sign of the
increase of poverty would come that the nation would say wait a minute, we’re
supposed to be blessed by God, how come we have all this poverty. Why don’t you think the nation would turn
around and do a sort of post mortem analysis and say wait a minute, something’s
wrong, we are Israel, we shouldn’t have this poverty in our land, didn’t God
say if we obeyed Him there wouldn’t be any poverty? You would think that the symptom of poverty
would be strong enough to call the nation to self-examination so that when you
reach stage 2 the nation would say wait a minute, before we try to solve
poverty let’s see if we can understand the real cause of poverty. But no, the nation does that and no nation
ever does. The immediate reaction is to
pass into stage three where you formulate all sorts of welfare schemes to take
over the poverty problem.
This is exactly what Adam and Eve did, this is known as “operation fig
leaf,” you have a problem and you pick off a fig leaf to cover it, and that is
exactly the situation here. You have a
problem of poverty, we’re not saying don’t have compassion on the poor but
we’re just saying watch the cause and effect.
These people don’t. So instead of
dealing with poverty and saying why have we got this thing, what are the
spiritual roots of this thing? Instead
of doing that, quick, we have to have a welfare program to take care of it. So immediately millions and millions of
dollars are pumped down the drain to solve a problem and basically, because
it’s God’s problem, it’s never going to be solved. And that’s why welfare
schemes never wind up solving the problem.
Poverty is a symptom of something else and you get nowhere by trying to
cure symptoms without curing the disease.
Therefore warning number one is the same kind of thing. We have the nation in a problem of foreign
policy and they are realizing the fact that they may be defeated militarily and
instead of asking themselves, how did we ever get into the jam; this question
never dawns on anyone, so immediately they say oh, we’re going to be defeated,
we need more weapons, we need a bigger military, and they jump on this
thing. And it’s doing the same thing
with the military problem that you were doing with the poverty problem, not
asking the true cause and effect but trying to cover it up with some operation
fig leaf. This time fig leaf consists of
a gigantic military machine. Now this is
not a sermon on disarmament; as you know, I am very much for military
preparedness. But I am saying that the
Bible is saying don’t put your confidence in a military machine and this is
what is said, “he shall not multiply horses to himself.” Now why?
What are two specifics in the Old Testament that teaches this?
Turn to Exodus 15 you’ll see one of the greatest military situations
that occurred in the early days of Israel, a fantastic thing. Exodus 15 is a song that people sang, and
it’s not like those dear sweet milk-toast lyrics that you find in a hymnal. Notice as you read it, watch the lyrics. Verse 2, “The Lord is my strength and song,
and he is become my salvation; he is my God, and I will prepare him an
habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. [3] The LORD is a man of
war; the LORD is His name. [4] Pharaoh’s chariots and his host has he cast into
the sea; his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.” That’s kind of a gruesome thing but this was
a song of praise, God thank you for smashing the military machine of Pharaoh;
that’s what this hymn is about. Thank
you Father for taking the greatest military machine known in the ancient world
and smashing it in the Red Sea. That shows your power God. So this is teaching that God has the power to
fight any military machine Israel would ever face so all Israel has to remember
is look, how did you get redeemed out of the nation Egypt? Wasn’t it because I smashed the greatest
military machine ever made up to that time in history? Wasn’t it because I took Pharaoh’s chariots
and smashed them in the Red Sea? Now are
you going to turn around and trust something; are you going to be afraid of a
foreign military power when you know that I am a man of war and I have already
defeated the most potent military machine on earth. That is one reason why Israel is not to trust
in many horses.
The second reason and it comes out in Isaiah 30, this is later on in the
history of the nation when they had somebody in the state department of the
nation that thought he was quite a little diplomat. They had a group in the state department of
Israel that thought they were going to diplomacize their way out of everything;
they were going to negotiate their way through every problem. Isaiah 30:1-3 is a warning to the state
department. Isaiah says “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, who
take counsel, but not of me; and who cover with a covering, but not of my
Spirit, that they may add sin to sin.”
Now here’s the point. Going back
to the problem of poverty as an illustration, here’s the sin back here, the
initial sin causes poverty. Then after this sin comes to the surface and the
fruition of it, they turn around and sin again by refusing to look at their
first sin and they cover it up with something else, another sin. And that is what Isaiah says, you have
covered this, but not with My Spirit, you’ve added sin to sin.
Verse 2 is specifically what he’s talking about, “Who walk to go down
into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth,” now where’s the mouth of God? The
mouth of God was the prophets; the mouth of God was Isaiah. Isaiah was standing there. Isaiah could have given them the counsel of
God and these people didn’t bother with it, and so God says look, your state department
gets busy and says look boys, we’ve got to have a gimmick, we’ve got ourselves
a problem and so instead of looking to the Lord for the solution we’ll crank
out some human gimmick and we’ll get all the negotiators together, and we’ll
send them down to Cairo and negotiate with Egypt. So they walked down to Egypt but you “have
not asked at My mouth” God says, ‘to strengthen themselves in the strength of
Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!”
Now do you see the nature of the sin?
It’s trusting in a human gimmick when you absolve yourself from trusting
in the promises of God.
Now you as an individual believer can apply that anytime in your
life. Every time you get a problem or a
jam in your life, what do you do? Do you
trust in your own confidence and say oh well, never mind, I can work this out
myself, or do you go to the promises of God, “casting all your care upon Him
for He cares for you.” Do you know the
promises, do you use them, or are you too busy fiddling around with human
solutions. So here it is verse 2, they
are trusting in the shadow of Egypt.
Verse 3, this is what God’s saying, okay boys, you want to trust in the
shadow of Egypt, well let me show you something, “Therefore shall the strength
of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your
confusion.” He is going to go on and
show how “the Egyptians shall help in vain,” verse 7, “and to no purpose;
therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is to sit still.” What is the picture? It’s a beautiful
picture, here you have the picture of the ambassadors going down to Egypt;
they’re making a deal with the boys down in the Egyptian state department; hey,
we need some help up here. When the
Assyrians and the Babylonians come in we need a few regiments up here, will you
make the deal. And of course there are always strings attached and Egypt loved
to make deals this way. Oh, yea, we’ll
make a deal, how much do you think we ought to charge you, etc. And this is where the wealth of Israel
went. But God is saying in this verse
that God is going to turn around and say Egypt, sit still, and they are going
to have all their military machine, they are going to be ready to go out and
help Israel and they don’t have any gas for their tanks, no shells for their
cannons and that’s what did happen in history when Israel tried to trust in
Egypt.
Back to Deut. 17, this gives you background on why God warned the king
not to multiply horses to himself; he is not to erect a gigantic machine that
will give him the confidence. You see
every time you erect a human solution you being to place man’s confidence in
himself. And he begins to say oh, look
at this, I’ve got this defense force and that’s my confidence and I don’t have
to worry about anything including the Lord’s promises and my own carnality;
I’ve got it made. And of course
believers do that. I’ve got a certain
amount of wealth, this is why wealth in the Bible is considered sometimes an
enemy of spirituality, because people get wealthy and they have all this wealth
and they say good, now I can lean on my wealth, I can relax now, I’ve got it
made. This is why I think that many
believers aren’t wealthy; God doesn’t want you to be because if you were
wealthy you wouldn’t trust in Him. Therefore
He can’t trust us with wealth.
That’s the first warning given to the king. The second warning is in verse 17 and needs a
little bit of background, “neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his
heart turn now away,” now the wives here is a little different than polygamy. It was polygamy but it was in a different vein,
it wasn’t because he had a lot of girlfriends and wanted them all for
himself. The reason why he had these
wives was because of the diplomatic procedures of the day. If, for example the king of Israel wanted to
seal a document with the king of Egypt he would go down to Egypt and look over
Pharaoh’s daughters and they’d all line up, and the king of Israel would go by
and say I like you and you’re going to be my wife. So he takes her back to
Jerusalem and she was taken back to Jerusalem as a kingly wife, as sort of a
queen but not really a queen in the nation, she was kind of, you might say a
sub-queen, she had certain legal status in the nation but she came back as a
testimony to the treaty that the man had made with Pharaoh. This is why the Bible warns against this
multiplication of wives particularly to the king.
The point here is it’s not against polygamy; polygamy is eliminated
elsewhere in the Old Testament. The main
emphasis here about multiplying wives is don’t get involved in these diplomatic
agreements. Now we have an analogy in
our country. One of the fathers of our
nation, George Washington, I believe it was in his concluding address to
Congress when he left the Presidency, he warned this nation don’t get involved
with agreements. Why did he do that?
Because the first generations of Americans in this country knew
something that we’ve forgotten. They
came from a cesspool known as Europe and they came from Europe because over
there they didn’t have the freedom to teach and read God’s Word and they’d had
enough of European culture and they weren’t about to mix with it again and get
burned. Today we think it’s cultural to
go to Europe and the great museums and all the rest of it over there, when our
ancestors couldn’t stand it over there and they came to this country. Of course we didn’t pay any attention. We’ve
got agreements with nations that don’t even exist we’ve got so many
agreements. We have failed to identify
with that problem that George Washington pointed out and the Bible pointed out.
Nationalism is to preserve your own national culture and don’t mix with
other people. Obviously you have social
intercourse, you have trade, etc. it’s not prohibiting this. The point is that each nation has a distinct
culture and that culture should be maintained.
We have our troubles in this country because we have imported certain
cultural elements from Eastern Europe, etc. and it’s these cultural elements
that have ruined this nation. There’s
the warning, “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself,” don’t bring them in.
The third warning is also found in that verse, “neither shall he greatly
multiply to himself silver and gold” either.
Here you have a great national treasury.
Now they are not to have a national treasury obviously, you’re going to
see what happens with a national treasury in just a moment, but the warning
here is don’t you create a vast national treasury either, let the government
operate on a shoestring, so to speak, Israel.
I have set up a system of tithes and that is sufficient and I don’t want
these rulers building up great wealth.
God warned them but they didn’t listen, and in a moment you’re going to
see what happens.
Finally the fourth warning is found in verses 18-20, one of the greatest
warnings. And that is that the king,
whoever he is, whatever family he comes from, when the prophet has picked him
out and he sits on the throne, and mind you, some of these kings, one man took
the office when he was six years old so these men were very young men when they
began to rule but no matter how young they are as kings over Israel they are to
do one thing, verse 18, he is to have a private copy of the Bible. “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,” now if I was in the Gideon’s I’d pick that verse out and use it. Verse 18 is authorizing a civil official to
have a copy of the Bible in his hands.
Verse 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.” so he is to be a Bible
student. Why do you suppose this could
be? You say the king is too busy to
study the Word, I’m too busy to study the Word and I can imagine a king over
everything would be far too busy to study the Word. Is that so?
Well what God is saying is if that king is too busy to study the Word of
God he’s too busy, period and shouldn’t be sitting on the throne. So therefore this person makes time to study
the Word of God and even though he is king and as king he is to be one of the
busiest individuals in the nation, every single day he is to spend time in the
Word of God.
Verse 20, “That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren,” and he
gets a fat head, “and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the 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.”
I’m going to take you to 1 Samuel 8 and you’ll see the tragedy of when
this had to come about and when the nation left God’s original design and
passed over into kingship. Up to this
time you have the nation Israel depend on the supreme council. You had judges on that council and you also
had local judges out in the cities.
That’s the story of the book of Judges.
Now here’s the feature of the judge.
The judges were gifted by God and the nation had to wait on the Lord to
provide the gifted men. This made a
challenge to the faith of the nation; they had to sit around and wait until a
gifted man came along to assume the helm of leadership. God had to provide the leadership. And now the nation says well we can’t wait
for God to provide the leadership, we have to have leadership now. Just like a lot of Christian organizations,
we can’t wait for God to raise up men so we’re going to ram our own men through
the program and send them out on the mission field. We’ll take our own men and ram them through
seminary and put them in the ministry, etc.
This is the same impatience here with the nation.
1 Sam. 8:1, “And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his
sons judges over Israel,” see Samuel was one of these great judges; he was
raised up by God and was a tremendous leader.
Now he’s getting old and he has a few nitwits for sons, and he made his
sons judges over Israel and there’s only one problem, his sons weren’t like the
old man. Verse 2, “Now the name of his
first-born was Joel; and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in
Beer-sheba. [3] And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after
money, and took bribes and perverted justice.”
Now we don’t know why this was, whether Samuel spent too much time away
from home and couldn’t provide the necessities of a father to a son or what
happened but these sons of Samuel turned out to be klutz al the way.
Verse 4, “Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together,
and came to Samuel, [5] And said unto him,” look, we can’t take it, let’s get
rid of these guys and we want a king.
Samuel, before you die, please do us a favor, get rid of your sons and
put a king on a throne and let’s set up a monarchy. Samuel was very shocked about this in verse
6, and he took it to the Lord. [Blank spot, verse 6, “But the thing displeased
Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.”] …but Israel, you are going to be sorry the
day that this happens and you are going to be sorry forever in history because
the thing that you wanted is going to spell your destruction.
So in 1 Samuel 8 we have the attack against this call for centralized
power. Verse 11, “And he said, This will
be the manner of the king who shall reign over you,” and here’s the first
warning, “he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his
chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. [12]
And he will appoint for himself captains over thousands, and captains over
fifties, and will set them to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and t
make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. [13] and he will
take your daughters to be perfumers, and to be cooks, and to be bakers,” in
other words, Samuel’s first warning is that when you do this, do you know
what’s going to happen, Israel? The
first thing, government services, the government is going to invade
agriculture, the government is going to take over manufacturing, the
government is going to get into the food processing business, the government is
going to have bureaucracy upon bureaucracy; this is what you’re asking for
Israel. Now doesn’t that sound a little
familiar? And of course, this is what
Samuel warned the nation about and I’m just simply applying it to our day.
The second warning, also in verses 11-13, and that is his point in verse
11, he’s going to take your sons and he’s going to assign them as chariot
men. They didn’t need chariots in the
first place but nevertheless the government has the chariots, now they need
somebody to drive them. It’s pretty
stupid to have a horse go down the street pulling a chariot with nobody in
it. So we have to have someone sit
there, so we have government job making.
We don’t have enough people employed so we’ve got to take the labor
force, take off thousands of people and give them jobs, pencil sharpeners,
emptying wastepaper baskets, pulling out drawers, replacing drawers, taking 3x5
cards out, turning them around, re-file them and all the rest of the jobs that
government can create. In verse 13 he’s
going to take the girls, they are going to do the same thing except in that day
they were confectionaries, cooks and bakers.
Now the reason they had to cook was because the king had all the
men. Obviously if you take the boys into
the service they have to eat so who’s going to cook? Take the girls so now the girls come in and
they get involved in the deal, so here we have government job making, useless
non-productive jobs.
The third warning he makes is going to be labor maladjustment. We have
the same thing in verse 16, “And he will take your menservants, and your
maidservants, and you choicest young men, and your asses, and put them to his
work.” Here’s one of the great tragedies
and you can find it in the prophets.
This is what happened. In history
the king took these people, he went into the families and took the sons; he
went into the homes and took the daughters, and then when he didn’t have any
more sons and daughters to take he began to take the slaves and do you know
what happened in Israel? You had a
restructuring of society, you began to have little farmer bumped off because
the little farmer lost all his help and you began to have just what we have in
this country, you had these great monopolies in agriculture and this is what
the prophets fought again and again, and this is why in the Millennium Isaiah
says in chapter 65 I’m going to tell you something, when perfect government
comes on this earth every man is going to have his own field and every man is
going to enjoy the fruit of it. That’s
what Isaiah’s point is. This thing is
going to develop because government is going to take your labor force and you
won’t have labor available to work and the small businessman is always the one
to get stomped on. So this is the next
characteristic that Samuel makes in verse 16, verses 11, 13 and 16.
Now in verses 11 and 16 you have the fourth warning. “And he will take
your menservants, and your maidservants,” and the warning basically is that
government for its own sake, the government is interested first and last in
its own support and perpetuation. All
these jobs in verse 11, 13, and 16 are totally unnecessary. Deuteronomy just told you it’s unnecessary. But government is interested more in
perpetuating government. It’s like I’ve
said, first you have Robin Hood who robs the rich to pay the poor; but you turn
around the next day and you have Robin Hood robbing rich and poor alike to
Robin Hood. That’s exactly what happens
and always will happen.
Now you have the fifth thing, verses 15 and 17, “And he will take the
tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and to his
servants.” Verse 17, “He will take the
tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants.” And what is the point here? Burdensome taxation, this is the next warning
that Samuel makes. This man in going to tax and tax and tax and tax and tax
until he breaks your back. This is what
Solomon did; he broke the back of the middle class in Israel, it’s a tremendous
study to study through 2 Samuel and 1 Kings and watch what happens to the
middle class in Israel. The tax paying
class was broken and after the tax paying class was broken at the end of
Solomon’s era what happened? You had a
revolution. The people were fed up and
you had one of the greatest tax revolts ever and you had a tremendous tragedy
happen, the nation was divided on this issue.
Then you have in verse 14, “And he will take your fields, and your
vineyards, and your olive yards, and even the best of them, and give them to
his servants.” What is this warning you
of? This is warning you of property
confiscation, the government will come along and confiscate your property, and
the best of it, that’s what it’s saying.
Not only will the government tax your vineyards, you see it’s taxing the
production but the government is going to come along and even take the means of
production away. Here you have in verse
14 that not only is the government going to tax what comes off the field, the
government is going to go in and take the field. It’s like today; the government comes in and
not only taxes you but takes over your business. It’s exactly the same thing and Samuel warned
them about it.
Then we have the seventh warning, in verse 15, he is going to give them
to his officers; verse 14 he’s going to give them to his servants and here you
have political corruption warned against.
Here you have government paying itself off, staying in power by bribery,
bribing certain officials to do this, vote this way and that way, etc. So and so did so and so a favor so we’ll take
over this person’s property and give it to you.
That’s the point in verses 14-15.
Then we have another warning in verse 17, “He will take the tenth of
your sheep; and ye shall be his servants.”
He’s taking your property, he’s taken your servants, he’s taking your
sheep, he’s taking your sons, he’s taking your sons, he’s taking your daughters
and guess where you are now? You work for Big Brother. And that’s exactly what Samuel warned about,
you will wind up being his servants.
Verse 18, “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king whom he
shall have chosen; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.”
What’s the point? The point is
that they’re going to get down to the point of oppression; taxes are going to
be intolerable, the economy is going to go to pot and the people are going to
cry out God, God, God, solve our problem and God is going to say just a minute,
why do you have the problem? Because you
were the ones that wanted the king, I didn’t have it, I allowed you to have it
but it wasn’t My direct will.
So here we have a very important concluding principle, a basic
principle. Don’t blame the
politicians. Now the politicians are
blamable, I’m not talking about don’t fight corruption. All I’m saying is don’t
blame it all on the politicians; the reason why the politician is there is
because he’s voted into office. And the
people to blame is the citizenry at large, not the politician. If the citizens didn’t want him in there he
wouldn’t be in there. And if the king
wasn’t liked by the people in Israel he wouldn’t have been there. So therefore the last warning is very interesting
in verse 18, you’re going to cry to God and He’s not going to answer you
because you are the ones that are responsible, don’t blame the king for
it. You were the ones that put him here;
you were the ones that wanted this form of government. In our own day it doesn’t take a political
science genius to figure out where we’re headed. At one time we had a Constitutional
government in the United States. We no
longer have it, in case you don’t know that.
We have almost a monarchy; we have almost an empire that has developed
and guess how it got there. It got there
because the American citizens voted it in.
And it’s going to take the American citizens to vote it out and only the
American citizens if they will wake up before it’s too late.
The Bible tells you a very interesting principles here on concentration
of power and I hope you will see some of the obvious applications of our own
time and I hope you see that the Bible is a contemporary book and do you know
why it’s contemporary? Because man’s
nature never changes, he’s the same stinker he was in the Garden of Eden, he’s
going to be the same stinker until he’s totally redeemed, and no matter what
generation and no matter how much technology he has he’s still a stinker.