#DailyDevotion It’s Never A Good Thing For The Church To Imitate The World
July 27th
Read 1 Sam 12:1–25
1Sa 12:12-15 ESV And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the LORD your God was your king. (13) And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the LORD has set a king over you. (14) If you will fear the LORD and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God, it will be well. (15) But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the hand of the LORD will be against you and your king.
You know the old saying, “Watch out what you pray for, you may just get it.” Well the Israelites wanted a king like their neighbors and the got one. Sure Saul was pretty good at first but as we’ll see he eventually degrades as a king. David will have his problems and the rest of the kings of Israel will certainly be like the kings who surround the Israelites. They will not be like their true King, the King of the Universe.
The people and the kings will not listen to the Lord their God and follow his commandments. The Lord was patient with them and from 1000 A.D. to 722 the Israelites had one of their own as a king and Judah, which was split off from Israel in three generations, had kings until the 6th century B.C.. Their list of kings ended because the people and the kings went their own ways and the hand of the Lord was against them. They did not trust the Lord and did not obey him.
About a thousand years later after this, the Lord is very patient, the Lord Himself would present Himself as King to the Jews. What happened then? Joh 19:14-18 ESV Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He[Pilate] said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” (15) They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” (16) So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, (17) and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. (18) There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.
So even when the Lord comes to them as one of them they reject him. Of course the kingdom he comes to institute is not of this world. He does not come as the kings of this world come. He comes to conquer, yes. But he does not come to conquer the Romans. His enemies are sin, death and the devil. He doesn’t do it by brute force, swords and other machinery. He uses his own people and their enemies, the Romans, to crucify him. He uses their rejection of him again as king to gain for himself a new people who will trust in him. This new people is you.
Lord Jesus Christ, grant us faith in you so we may receive you as our king, trust you for our salvation and live out a life which is pleasing to you. Amen.