1. "The beginning of a right relationship with God is not feeling good about yourself and assuming that God wants you to feel even better. The beginning of a right relationship with God is recognizing that you are far worse than you ever thought."

2. "If you worship this God alongside other gods, you're not really worshiping him. If you worship this God alongside yourself, you're not really worshiping him. Worship means to treat as supreme."

3. "Our memories of God's saving work fade faster than the freshly picked flowers you have on your kitchen table. And so we need these kinds of reminders set up to trip our memories, to turn them back on so that what God's done for us doesn't just drain out of our forgetful hearts."

4. "Every not yet will one day become till now. Have you ever experienced something that when it was bearing down and coming at you looked terrifying, but God proved faithful?"

5. "God calls us to be salt and light. Light only works because it differs from the darkness around it. Salt only works because it's different from what you put it on to preserve it."

6. "Trust of any kind is only as good as its object. Faith is only as good as its object."

7. "They wanted to walk by sight, not by faith. That's why their request for a king was a rejection of God. They wanted to be protected by human strength rather than by divine strength."

8. "It is possible to sin in response to being sinned against. Everything from sibling squabbles to marital conflict to international wars can be illustrations of that principle."

9. "Sometimes, God giving us what we want is a judgment and his withholding it is a mercy."

10. "God himself is that pleasure free from all disappointment. He's enough because he's all the security you need and he's all the satisfaction you can desire."

Observation Questions

1. According to 1 Samuel 7:3, what two things did Samuel tell the people to do if they were returning to the Lord "with all your heart"?

2. In 1 Samuel 7:10, how did the Lord respond when the Philistines drew near to attack Israel while Samuel was offering the burnt offering?

3. What did Samuel name the memorial stone he set up in 1 Samuel 7:12, and what reason did he give for naming it that?

4. According to 1 Samuel 8:3, in what specific ways did Samuel's sons fail to walk in his ways?

5. In 1 Samuel 8:5, what two reasons did the elders of Israel give for wanting a king?

6. According to 1 Samuel 8:7-8, how did the Lord describe the people's request for a king, and what pattern did He say it followed?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that the Israelites' repentance in 1 Samuel 7:3-6 required putting away foreign gods and serving the Lord "only"? What does this reveal about the nature of true worship?

2. The sermon emphasized that God "boxed Israel in" by allowing the Philistines to attack while they were defenseless at Mizpah. How does God's deliverance in that vulnerable moment demonstrate what He wants His people to learn about trusting Him?

3. In 1 Samuel 8:20, the people wanted a king to "go out before us and fight our battles." Given what God had just done for them in chapter 7, why does the sermon describe this request as a rejection of God rather than simply a political preference?

4. How does the repeated verb "take" in Samuel's warning about the king (1 Samuel 8:11-17) contrast with God's character as Israel had experienced Him? What does this contrast reveal about the consequences of misplaced trust?

5. The sermon connected Israel's request for a king to God's larger redemptive plan through David and ultimately Christ. How does understanding this help us see both God's judgment and His grace working together in this passage?

Application Questions

1. The sermon described "moralistic therapeutic deism" as treating God like a "cosmic fallback plan" for emergencies. In what specific situations this past week have you been tempted to rely on your own plans first and only turn to God when things went wrong?

2. Samuel called the people to direct their hearts to the Lord and serve Him "only." What competing loyalties, comforts, or securities in your life function as "foreign gods" that you need to put away in order to give God your whole heart?

3. The Ebenezer stone was meant to prevent forgetting God's faithfulness. What practical habit or reminder could you establish this week to help you remember how God has helped you "till now" when you face uncertain circumstances?

4. The Israelites wanted to be "like all the nations" rather than remaining distinct as God's people. In what area of your life are you most tempted to blend in with the surrounding culture rather than maintain a distinctively Christian way of living?

5. The sermon noted that when others reject you for obeying God, they are ultimately rejecting Him. How might recognizing this truth change the way you respond to someone who has criticized or distanced themselves from you because of your faith?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 — This passage provides the original guidelines for Israel's future king, showing both that God permitted kingship and the conditions under which it should operate.

2. Psalm 73:1-28 — Referenced in the sermon, this psalm explores the same question of whether God is enough when the wicked prosper and circumstances are difficult.

3. Psalm 146:1-10 — This psalm warns against trusting in princes and celebrates the Lord as the true helper of the helpless, reinforcing the sermon's theme of misplaced trust.

4. Isaiah 46:1-13 — This passage contrasts idols that must be carried with the God who carries His people "even to old age," echoing the sermon's promise of God's faithfulness.

5. John 10:7-18 — Jesus describes Himself as the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep, illustrating the sermon's point that Christ is the King who gives rather than takes.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Is God Enough? The Challenge of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

II. Repentance: Turning from Sin and Trusting God Alone (1 Samuel 7:2-6)

III. Deliverance: God Fights for His People (1 Samuel 7:7-17)

IV. Rejection: Israel Asks for a King Instead of God (1 Samuel 8:1-9)

V. Disaster: The Consequences of Rejecting God (1 Samuel 8:10-22)

VI. Christ the King Who Gives Rather Than Takes

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Is God enough for you?

If you're not a follower of Jesus, I imagine that question might sound strange. Don't we all need air and water, food and rest? God isn't any of those things, so how can it make sense to say that he would be enough for someone? Another reason the question might sound strange is that so many people relate to God primarily as a source. For the things they want or need.

Many people's basic spiritual attitude is that God is a kind of cosmic fallback plan. Live a good life, do your best, be a good person, and if you get into any kind of a pinch, you can pray and God will help you out. He's there for you when things get rough, but otherwise, his goal is for you to be happy and self-fulfilled. Apart from when you have to call him up on emergency speed dial, he just wants you to do you. About 15 years ago, the sociologist Christian Smith labeled this outlook moralistic therapeutic deism.

That's a mouthful, but it's a useful phrase. Moralistic therapeutic deism. And Christian Smith argued that this is the basic religious outlook held by most American teenagers. Teens up in the balcony, fresh off the youth retreat, is this what you believe? Listen carefully.

This view is moralistic because it holds that God's fundamental concern is for you to be a good person. That's what he wants for you. It's what he wants from you. This view is therapeutic because it understands the central goal of life as being happy and feeling good about yourself. And it's deism because such people see God as the creator but he's distant, he's removed, he's not involved in the day-to-day business of life.

Smith writes, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when he's needed to resolve a problem. Most of the time, Smith says, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance. In short, God is something like a combination divine butler and cosmic therapist. He's always on call, takes care of any problems that arise. Professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves and does not become too personally involved in the process.

If this moralistic therapeutic deism fits your understanding of Christianity, then I have some surprising news for you this morning. The real God, the God of the Bible, is far more intimately involved with the details of your life than any divine butler or cosmic therapist. Not only that but your problems are so serious and they arise from so deep within that in order to make any real progress in spirituality, you first have to start feeling a whole lot worse about yourself before you have any confident hope of feeling any better. And what God wants for you is something different, something greater, something far more transforming than simply being a good person.

What God wants for you is for you to give him your whole self and for you to receive God himself as the satisfaction of your heart in return. What God wants for you is for God himself to be enough. The most revealing test of your relationship with God is whether God alone is enough for you. What happens when your plans go off the rails? What happens when a long cherished dream dies?

What happens when you're having a hard time getting all that you need, much less anything you want?

The true test of your relationship with God comes when the equation of your life is not God plus, but God minus. God minus job. God minus friends. God minus fulfillment. God minus security.

God minus plans. God minus dreams. What then?

Can God minus everything satisfy you? Can God plus nothing be enough? That's the question Psalm 73 posed to us last week in Omar's wonderful sermon. If you weren't here, I'd encourage you to listen to it. And that's basically the same question that our passage for this morning brings to us as a challenge.

This morning we return to the Old Testament history book of 1 Samuel. Looking at chapters seven and eight, you can find it on page 230 of the Pew Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, you can easily read, feel free to take that one as a gift from us. And our passage you're going to see that the people of Israel faced a God minus test. The Lord was putting the question to them, Am I enough for you?

This test and its results unfold in a kind of back and forth drama throughout the passage. Each chapter starts with what the people do and then the second half is what God does in response. Since each chapter has two halves, we'll walk through the two chapters in four parts. Each part presses home the question, Is God enough for you? Point one, repentance.

Repentance. We'll see this in chapter 7, verses 2 to 6. Repentance is turning from sin and trusting in God. Repentance is recognizing that you've wrongly put other things in God's place. And resolving to worship Him alone.

And that's what we see the Israelites doing in these verses. So start with verse 2. From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some 20 years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. A month ago, I preached from 1 Samuel 4:1 all the way to chapter 7:1 ending right here. If you were here, you'll remember that in those chapters, through the exile and return of the Lord's ark, God himself came back to the people.

Now the question is, will the people come back to God? Look at verse 3 all the way down to verse 6. And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, 'If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.' so the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only.

Then Samuel said, 'Gather all Israel at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you.' so they gathered at Mizpah, and drew water, and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day, and said there, 'We have sinned against the Lord. And Samuel judged the people of Israel at Mizpah. Verse 3 is crucial here: Put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you. As they so often had throughout their history, the people of Israel were worshiping false gods. They were worshiping gods of wood and stone, mute gods, deaf gods, dumb gods that could not save.

And so, just as an aside here, if you're accustomed to think of the Bible as religious propaganda, This is very poor propaganda. The Old Testament mercilessly exposes the continual failures of God's people. And the New Testament does it too. The biblical authors are not trying to make themselves look good, they're not trying to shore up their own authority, they're trying to proclaim and get people to submit to God's authority. And the Bible's impartial cataloging of Israel's failures is one among dozens of evidences of its truthfulness, its trustworthiness, its reliability.

Oftentimes, scholars of a more critical bent will, you know, uncover evidence of idolatry in ancient Israel and say, Aha! you know, they didn't really worship the one true God. They weren't really monotheists. All you got to do is ask Jeremiah. See the tears streaming down his face as he says, I know!

So what did the people do? They got rid of their idols and they served God alone. And they gathered at Mitzpah for a kind of corporate ceremony of repentance. It's hard to be sure, 100% sure what this water pouring out means because it doesn't happen anywhere else in Scripture, but it seems to be a symbolic expression of repentance as if to say, Our lives are like this water pulled up, drawn out, tipped over, empty. Nothing left because we've turned away from you.

So we need you, O Lord, to be our everything. Because by turning away from you we've become nothing. The two most important phrases in this little part of the passage each show up twice. That's a clue to their importance. The first one is heart.

So in verse three, if you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, direct your heart to the Lord. When scripture says heart, it means the command center of your affections. And will. It means the magnetic charge within you that determines what you are drawn to and attracted to most fundamentally. When Samuel commands the people to turn their hearts to the Lord, he's saying that God wants all of you.

He doesn't want an occasional phone call when you're really in trouble and you just need a little help. He wants you to be primarily and fundamentally devoted to him. He doesn't want you to just tick off little moral boxes, do a little token good deed here and there. He wants you to prize him more than any earthly treasure and seek after him more than you seek any earthly good. Giving your whole heart to God is what God wants from you and it's what he wants for you.

God wants nothing less than your whole self and giving your whole self to God is the only way to become A whole self. As Augustine confessed to God, When I turned away from you, the one God, and pursued a multitude of things, I went to pieces.

The other key phrase is in verse 3, where Samuel says, Serve him only. And then verse 4 says they did that. They put away the false gods and they served the Lord only. Only is key. The only true worship of God is exclusive worship of God.

If you worship this God alongside other gods, you're not really worshiping him. If you worship this God alongside yourself, you're not really worshiping him. Worship means to treat as supreme. Worship means to put higher than any other value or goal or plan or aspiration. Worship means to turn to that one in trouble instead of relying on any scheme or plan you can come up with.

To worship God is to say deep down in the bottom of your soul that having God is worth more than anything you could ever gain or anything you could ever lose. Looking at the middle of verse 6, The people said, we have sinned against the Lord. The beginning of a right relationship with God is not feeling good about yourself and assuming that God wants you to feel even better. The beginning of a right relationship with God is recognizing that you are far worse than you ever thought. The beginning of a right relationship with God is in recognizing that you commit sins because you are a sinner, that you do wrong things because your heart is wrong and that the wrongness starts within and expresses itself without.

The beginning of a right relationship with God is recognizing that you are broken beyond all hope of self-repair.

Five years ago, when our family moved from England back to DC, I brought with me a beloved bicycle. A dear friend had bought it for me, very cheap. It was a used bike. It was refurbished at this nonprofit where they taught kids how to do bike repair. It was vintage.

It was a classic. It was 25, 30 years old. They didn't make that kind of frame anymore. Whenever I brought it in to get worked on, the bike tech would go, Wow, that's a nice one. So we brought it back to DC.

I'm excited about riding it all around to meet with members for lunch and that kind of thing. So a few months after we moved back, I'm riding down Independence going down Capitol Hill, picking up a little bit of speed. I run over a pothole and I feel this kthunk. I start pedaling when I get to the bottom of the hill and I'm feeling this grinding underneath me. So I look down and it turns out that the seat tube had detached completely from the bottom tube and was just kind of sliding around on it.

The tube that supported my weight had come unstuck. So long story short, I brought it into Conti's Bike Shop, and they looked at it and told me that for all practical purposes, it is beyond repair. So very much to my dismay, I had to get a new bike.

If you've never turned from sin and trusted in Christ, you need to know that repentance begins with recognizing that you can't fix yourself. And like my poor bike, no one else can fix you. But God can. Repentance comes when you say, God, I can't fix myself. Only you can.

And I want to be fixed in all the ways you say I need fixing. That is repentance. So then we have to ask, how did God respond to the people's repentance? That's point two, deliverance. Deliverance.

We see this in verses 7 to 17 of chapter 7. God delivered his people from danger. Look first at verse 7.

Now when the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the people of Israel heard of it, they were afraid of the Philistines. While the Israelites are gathered for repentance and worship, their political enemies are looking to press their strategic advantage. The Israelites clearly did not bring all their weapons with them when they came to have this repentance service. They're just trying to have church and it looks like their enemies are going to ambush them.

They're helpless, they're defenseless, they're unprepared, they're naturally afraid. So what's their situation? God minus. God minus military preparedness, God minus weapons, God minus any reasonable hope of victory. As the pastor and Old Testament scholar Dale Ralph Davis commented on this verse, Sometimes the Father may box us in, place us in a situation in which one by one all our secondary helps and supports are taken from us.

In order that, defenseless, we may lean on His mercy alone.

What circumstances do you face right now that are beyond your power to fix? What secondary helps or supports has God taken away from you? Have you considered that His boxing you in might be an act of mercy? That He might be lovingly, gently leading you by process of elimination to the only place where true help can be found.

What did Israel do in response? They remembered that all my help comes from the Lord. So they turned to God in prayer. Look at verses 8 to 11. And the people of Israel said to Samuel, 'Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.' so Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord.

And Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him. As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines, and threw them into confusion, and they were defeated before Israel. And the men of Israel went out from Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and struck them, as far as below Beth-hacar. So here Samuel intercedes for the Israelites and he offers a sacrifice to God on their behalf.

He's asking for God's help. Verse 9 tells us that the Lord answered him and verse 10 tells us how. Look again at verse 10. As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel, but The Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion, and they were defeated before Israel. At the very moment that the smoke of Samuel's offering was ascending to heaven and his prayers were going up with it, the Lord unleashed his answer to that prayer.

The timing proves Jesus' point. Your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask him. God sprung into action instantly and he won their victory in a way that only he could. He caused the heavens themselves to pronounce a curse on the Philistines. Thunder just starts shouting at them from the sky.

They're terrified. They run away. All Israel has to do is sort of like chase them out to make sure they go far enough away. They're just doing a little cleanup work. The point is that they didn't need an army when they had God fighting for them.

They didn't need human help when they had divine help. And in order to get that divine help, all they had to do was ask. What help do you need from God? And are you asking him for it?

In verse 12, Samuel commemorates this signal deliverance. Verse 12 says, Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer, for he said, 'Till now the Lord has helped us.' Ebenezer means stone of help, like we sing, Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come. This is a memorial of God's saving work. It's set up both to praise God and prevent forgetting. Our faith is prone to forget.

The Israelites ate manna from heaven in the wilderness and then complained about the lack of water. The disciples saw Jesus feed 5,000 people from five loaves of bread and then a short while later they were worried because they forgot to bring bread with them on their journey. And if you're ever tempted to think, how dumb were they? Then you clearly don't know yourself very well because you're just as forgetful as they are. You're just as prone to see God work and remember his saving power and then forget it very quickly.

Our memories of God's saving work fade faster than the freshly picked flowers you have on your kitchen table. And so we need these kinds of reminders set up to trip our memories, to get the circuit going again, to turn them back on so that what God's done for us doesn't just drain out of our forgetful hearts. What aspect of God's saving character are you prone to forget? Is it the fullness of his forgiveness? Is it his faithfulness and his promises?

Is it maybe his sovereignty or his goodness?

Brothers and sisters, as a local church, how do we raise our Ebenezers? How can we drive a stake into the ground to fix our memories on God's saving goodness to us? One way we do it is simply by gathering for corporate worship every week, every time we gather together to declare who God is and what he's done, we raise that stone again together. We do it by being transparent with one another, by sharing with each other the struggles that we have, the ways we're having a hard time seeing God's goodness, and then by drawing each other's eyes to God's faithfulness past and present. We raise up an Ebenezer by looking back over your own past with eyes of faith and then thanking God in the present for all the ways he's proved faithful in your own past.

Till now, the Lord has helped us. Looking back on his whole track record, it is nothing but help. Every time, perfect consistency, all the way to here, all the way to now. So what should you conclude from that track record?

Because he has always helped, he always will help. The point of raising an Ebenezer and saying, Till now, is to train your heart to look at that uncertain, seeming future through lenses informed by God's perfect faithfulness in the past all the way up to the present.

Every not yet will one day become Till now. Have you ever experienced something that when it was bearing down and coming at you looked terrifying, but God proved faithful? God helped you, and now when you look at it in the rear view, you can say, Ebenezer, till now the Lord has helped. Will God stop helping you if you lose your job? Will God stop helping you if illness robs you of all kinds of joys and plans?

Will God stop helping you in old age? When you come right up to the edge of death, will God stop helping you? In light of this verse, Spurgeon looked ahead to death and asked of God's help in Is it over now? No, no, no.

We will raise one stone more. When we get into the river, we will shout, Ebenezer, there! Hitherto the Lord has helped us, for there is more to come. Look to death itself through the lens of till now, the Lord has helped us. Death itself won't stop God's help.

Just as he has enabled you to live by grace, so he will help you into glory. Here's a promise to take home with you. Here's a promise to write up and stick on your mirror this week. Isaiah 46:4. Even to your old age I am he, and two gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made and I will bear; I will carry and will save. The one who has created you and redeemed you will not abandon you when you most need him.

Verses 13 and 17, excuse me, 13 through 17, after recording this great act of deliverance, they give us a kind of summary description of how Israel prospered and flourished under the rest of Samuel's ministry. It's kind of a fast forward time lapse. What happened next? Look at verses 13 to 17.

So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The cities that the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel from Ekron to Gath, and Israel delivered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites. Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life.

And he went on a circuit year by year to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah, and he judged Israel in all these places. Then he would return to Ramah, for his home was there. And there also he judged Israel. And he built there an altar to the Lord.

These verses tell us that under Samuel, Israel was at peace with their neighbors. The Philistines occasionally attacked them, but the Lord always protected them. That's what it means when it says his hand was heavy against the Philistines. Not only that, but territory the Philistines had taken was restored. And Samuel traveled through a portion of Israel on a kind of continual circuit to teach God's word and administer justice.

The picture here is that all is well. The people of Israel are safe and secure. They're protected, they're flourishing. Life is as it should be. What more could they want?

We're about to find out. Point three, rejection. Rejection. In chapter 8, verses 1 to 9, the people ask for a king. In doing so, they reject not only Samuel but God himself.

Rejection, chapter 8, verses 1 to 9. Look first at verses 1 to 3. When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second was Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba.

Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice. There are two problems here. The first problem is that judge is not a hereditary office. This is kind of continuing the cycle from the book of Judges and throughout the book of Judges, God is the one who raised up a judge. When that judge died and was gone, he didn't get to sort of pick a new one.

That was God's job. So what Samuel is doing here is something the Lord has not authorized him to do. He is styling himself more a king than a judge and he's setting up his own little dynasty. The second problem here is that Samuel's sons are unfit for office. They're corrupt.

They distort justice in order to enrich themselves. In order to responsibly exercise any kind of authority, you have to seek others' good more than your own gain. Anytime others' good and your gain come into conflict, others' good must win. So Samuel sinned against the people and usurped authority from God by appointing his sinful sons as priests. But, and here is a headline that always bears repeating, it is possible to sin in response to being sinned against.

I'll say that again, it is possible to sin in response to being sinned against. Everything from sibling squabbles to marital conflict to international wars. Can be illustrations of that principle. And verses four and five illustrate the principle too. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, 'Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways.

Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.' Like all the nations. This is another illustration of what we saw in Psalm 73 last week. Israel envied the prosperity of the wicked. They forgot that God called them to be different by design. They wanted the perks of living like all the other nations.

They were unwilling to be different for God's sake. They wanted to fit in. They were like children. Complaining to a parent. Well, if he gets to have one, how come I don't?

Brothers and sisters, beware the desire to be just like everyone else. God means for his people to be different by design. God calls us to be salt and light. Light only works because it differs from the darkness around it. Salt only works because it's different from what you put it on to preserve it.

Being different from the world can be tiring. You get sick of saying no, sick of being talked down to and dismissed, sick of being made fun of, sick of having to answer the same questions over and over again, sick of having certain conversations stop when you enter the room. Brother or sister, to be holy is to be devoted to God and therefore, different from the world? Are you sick of holiness? Are you sick of the cost it's requiring you to pay?

If you are, how can you renew your desire to be different for God's sake?

Now, was it wrong for the people to ask for a king? That requires a careful answer. The thing asked for was not sinful in itself. Deuteronomy 17:14-15 make that clear. That passage envisions this exact scenario.

And then verse 15 in Deuteronomy 17 says, you, may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose, one from among your brothers, you shall set as king over you. So it does not seem intrinsically wrong for them to want a king or get a king. But the following verses are going to show us that this request was, in fact, sinful. So the question is why? And an answer to that is going to start to appear soon.

Look at verses 6 to 9.

But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, 'Give us a king to judge us.' and Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, 'Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.' According to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then obey their voice. Only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them. Verses seven and eight are key to the question of why their request was sinful. They're rejecting not Samuel but God.

And God says their request is an instance of idolatry. Their asking for a king is an expression of worshiping false gods every bit as much as bowing down to a block of wood or a carved stone. But why? How does this request count as idolatry, as false worship? Skip ahead to the end of the passage, verses 19 and 20.

We'll look at this again in a minute, but this is really helpful for answering our question. After Samuel warns the people about the ways the king will mistreat them, they say, No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles. Now, some time has passed between chapters seven and eight. We know that from it letting us know that Samuel's grown old. But the author sets chapters seven and eight side by side for a reason.

The end of chapter 7 shows us that. Under a judge chosen by God, Israel was flourishing. They were secure. Samuel's sons were unfit for office and Samuel was wrong to thrust them into it, but the people should have appealed to God to give them another leader like he always had. Further, the last phrase in verse 20 is crucial.

They wanted a king to fight our battles.

Who's been fighting their battles up to this point? The Lord. But that wasn't enough for them. That wasn't good enough. They wanted a human king to fight on their behalf.

After all, what if he doesn't show up? What if he decides not to thunder from heaven next time? What if he up and leaves like he did in chapter 4 when the ark went into hostile territory? What then? The Israelites' problem was that they wanted to walk by sight, not by faith.

That's why their request for a king was a rejection of God. They wanted a defensive power they could see: an army with chariots and horsemen and a king standing at its head. They wanted to be protected by human strength rather than by divine strength. The problem wasn't that they wanted a king, but that they were trusting in a king the way they should only have trusted in God. Just like Psalm 146:3 says, Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

They had a God who saved them, but they wanted a man to save them instead. Their fundamental problem was misplaced trust. Trust of any kind is only as good as its object. Faith is only as good as its object. This week, I entrusted myself in a unique way to current CHBC intern, Ryan Korea.

On Wednesday night after Bible study in my kitchen at home, I sat still on a chair A shroud covered my upper body, and Ryan operated sharp metal scissors in close proximity to my eyes, ears, scalp. I would say that my trust in Ryan was well placed judging by the results.

But it was an act of trust. He could have done a very poor job. I think by God's grace, he came through. My point is, you're always trusting someone, you're always trusting something. Whatever you decide to trust, the question is, will it come through?

Will it make good for you? And the scandal, the shock of this passage is that God had made good. God had come through. He had done an admirable job of saving his people and defending them. They just thought, yeah, it's not enough.

So that's why God says to Samuel, It's not you they're rejecting, it's me. They thought that God plus king would be better than God minus king, but in asking for God plus king, they were really asking for a king instead of God.

Has someone, ever rejected you because they were more fundamentally rejecting God. Maybe it's parents or siblings who see your efforts to obey God as a referendum on their disregard of God. Maybe it's a coworker giving you a cold shoulder or worse because you agree with God about who is a human being. And you agree with God about what a man and woman are and you agree with God about what sex is for. Someone who's rejecting all those things may well reject you but it's because of a prior and more fundamental rejection of God.

Or parents, are your children ever angry with you for simply maintaining a rule that God himself has written? If so, hear God's words to Samuel: It's not you they're rejecting, it's me. Their rejection is revealing the state of their heart before God and if they don't repent, they will give a fearful accounting to God for that hardness and that rejection. Seeing the stakes involved and seeing the fundamental root issue can help you not take it personally. It can help you to recognize the problem here is far bigger than what they're doing to me.

It can help you recognize that their sin is far more of an affront to God than it is to you. And it can help you to be merciful and compassionate, to be gentle with them, to return good for evil, not to return evil for evil. And so when you do that, you can become a display to them not only of God's justice in how you're trying to live and what you're trying to maintain, but also of God's mercy. And trying to love them despite their rejection of you.

Despite all God did for his people, despite his fighting from heaven, thundering from heaven, helping them till now, his people rejected him. God was not enough for them, so they thought. So they decided. And that tells us nothing about God and everything about them. So what happens when you decide that God is not enough for you?

Point four, disaster.

Disaster. In verses 10 to 22 of chapter 8, the Lord warns that disaster is what's going to happen to Israel when they get what they want. Look first at verses 10 to 18.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, these will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds and and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.

He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and put them to his work.

He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

Just to be clear, this speech is not a treatise of political philosophy that compares the relative merits of different systems of government. It is not a universal condemnation of all monarchies. Instead, it's a warning about how God's judgment is going to take shape in the way that he grants them their request. You want it? You got it.

And here's how it's going to be. The focus of the passage is on the ripple effects that will follow from the creation of a standing army. That's what they wanted a king for. Okay, that's what he he's going to do, let's see how that's going to go. As we saw in verses 19 and 20, that's Israel's main motivation.

So, what will a king bring with him in the way of demands when he sets up his military force? Well, whose sons is he going to enlist? And then he'll need not troops, not just troops, but commanders. And then he'll need land and people to farm it, to feed all those soldiers all year round. And then he'll need some people to cook for them.

And then he'll need still more crops and produce this time to give his rewards to his loyal nobles and officers. But while the focus of the passage is on the cost of a standing army, the king's negative impact on their welfare extends far beyond that. That's why it says in verse 17 and verse 18, He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. The people don't realize how good they had it when Yahweh alone was their king.

When they get a human king who's going to enrich himself at their expense, now just like Samuel's sons have done, they're going to become his slaves. Instead of the king making himself the servant of the people, he's going to reduce them all to the status of his servants. So there certainly is a warning here about the temptations of power. And there certainly is an awareness that the more centralized the power, the greater the temptation. If you're in authority, the farther you are authorized to reach, the greater the temptation there is for you to reach out and amass for yourself in ways that are harmful to others instead of using that authority to build up and bless and equip others.

When Yahweh alone was their king, they cried out and he answered as we saw in chapter seven. But once they get a human king and he oppresses them, they'll cry out for relief, but God's not going to listen. You got what you wanted and you got what you deserved. Sometimes, God giving us what we want is a judgment and his withholding it is a mercy. So how do the people respond to Samuel's warning?

Look at verses 19 to 22, the rest of our passage. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, 'No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.' and when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, 'Obey their voice, and make them a king. Samuel then said to the men of Israel, Go, every man to his city. In other words, okay, this is going to happen but not quite yet.

It'll happen in the way God is going to reveal in his own time. Through his prophet, God warned the people but they didn't listen. Through whom has God warned you lately?

Through a friend, a small group leader, one of the elders of this church. Whenever God warns you through his Word, you have only two options: listen or harden. There's no neutrality. There's no taking it under advisement for later consideration. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

So the people ask for a king, again, which it's an allowable request but a sinful motive. God grants their request partly to teach them a lesson. It is better to be ruled by the perfect God than by any sinful human being. But God also had other, bigger plans for this request. It was through this Israelite monarchy that's just coming into existence now that God would one day redeem the world.

He ordained even this sinfully motivated request to be taken up into his eternal plan of redemption. As we'll see throughout the rest of 1 Samuel, Israel's first king, Saul, is a tragic figure and a tragic failure. But Saul would be succeeded by David. And to David, God made a promise that one of his offspring would reign forever. Jesus is that promised offspring of David who came and now reigns on heaven's throne from which no one will ever depose him.

Jesus reigns perfectly to save. Jesus reigns in a way that restores and renews and repairs that broken, messed up reign Jamie was leading us and lamenting earlier in the service. God reigns over all creation, creation and appointed us to reign under him. But we've all made a mess of it. We've all made a hash of the authority God has given us.

We've all said to God, no, thank you. I don't quite need you. I can handle this on my own. Thanks very much. And by doing that, by turning away from God as our greatest love and treasure and authority, we've all corrupted our own ways.

We've all corrupted our own justice and gone after gain like Samuel's sons. We are all broken. Beyond repair, beyond any hope of self repair, beyond any hope of repair by others. So Jesus came to be the king who, unlike this king, who's all take and no give, Jesus would be all give and no take. That's the verb that runs throughout the whole passage here.

The king will take, he will take, he will take, he will take your sons, he will take your land, he will take your daughters, he will take your fields, take, take, take, take, take, take, take. When Jesus came, he came to give. As he says to his disciples in John's gospel, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. Jesus gave his life on the cross to pay the penalty for all of our sins. Jesus gave his life so that we would have life.

Jesus destroyed death and inaugurated eternal life by his resurrection so that all who turned from sin and trust in him would have his own everlasting life. If you've never turned from sin and trusted in Christ, come to Him as the King who gave Himself for you. Come to Him as the only one who can deliver you from the mess you've made of your own life and from God's everlasting judgment that He promises if you persist in sin. What is God's righteous response to our rejection of Him? It's disaster.

We experience the disastrous consequences of sin in our own lives now. And there is coming an eternal disaster that is far worse and from which there is no hope of deliverance once it sets in. But now, God is saying to you, Trust in Jesus, turn from sin, repent, come to Him, and you will be saved. What happens when you declare that God isn't enough? Is disaster.

But that disaster is no match for the Lord Jesus Christ. Is God enough for you? If you think of him as a divine butler or a cosmic therapist, I don't see how he possibly could be enough for you. But God is far more than that. And what he wants for you is far more than to be a good person.

Or to feel better about yourself. One way God shows you that he's enough is by granting you to obtain your desires and then tasting the bitter fruit that comes from discovering you desired the wrong thing. When you get what you want and it turned out not to be at all what you were expecting, what should you conclude? That you were made to desire something else and something far greater. Augustine summarized his whole life before becoming a Christian like this: you: were ever present to me, mercifully angry, sprinkling very bitter disappointments over all my unlawful pleasures.

So that I might seek a pleasure free from all disappointment. God himself is that pleasure free from all disappointment. He's enough because he's all the security you need and he's all the satisfaction you can desire. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise youe because till now you have helped us. So, Father, we pray that yout would teach us all to look at the ways yous've proved faithful in the past and to conclude deep in our hearts that yout're enough. You're enough for our eternity. You're enough for life and death. You're enough to satisfy us amid the hardest trials and most bitter disappointment.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.