Good morning Church of the Resurrection.
If you are new, my name is Solmani Megadi.
I'm one of the pastors here. We have been in the book of
First Samuel these past few weeks and the 1st 7 chapters of
the book are set at a time when there was no king in Israel.
Everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes.
The book actually opens up with the birth of Samuel, who becomes
God's instrument for Israel's renewal.
But while Samuel is growing up in the temple in favor before
God, the priestly House of Eli is rotting with him.
Eli and his sons are sinning, and the people himself are
sinning. So God judges Eli's household
and hands his glorious ark to the Philistines.
He basically sent himself into exile because of his people's
sins. Yet even in the enemy's
territory, he secures victory over Israel's enemy.
He humiliates Dagon and all the Philistine gods, and he topples
their gods, and he brings the ark back to Israel without a
single Israelite soldier lifting a finger.
And then when Samuel gets older, the people begin to seek the
Lord, and Samuel gathers them in Mizpah for a worship of
repentance, sort of service of national repentance.
And just as they're turning back to God, the Philistines come and
they attack them, and the people cry out to Samuel, please don't
stop praying for us. Samuel then sacrifices a young
lamb, and then he raises his hand to the Lord God.
Please save us. And God thunders from heaven
roots the Philistine Philistines, and they scatter,
and there's victory that day. Somebody should make a movie
about that because it's awesome storytelling.
Really, really good. In the middle of all this, this
corruption, this exiles repentance, this divine
intervention, stands a righteous judge, Samuel, and the king who
fights for his people with Thunder God.
And this is where our passage begins.
First Samuel, Chapter 7, verse 15 to 822.
It's found on page 216 in the ESV Bible.
For a generation, about 20 years or so, Israel flourishes under
Samuel's leadership. He is their faithful judge.
And the circuit that he takes, that's written in verse 16 and
17, that's described there, it shows us the kind of judge that
he actually was. He goes to Bethel.
This is the place where God made a covenant with Jacob.
He goes to Gilgal. That's the other place where God
renews his covenant with Israel through circumcision after they
had crossed the Jordan, then at Mizpah, this most recent place
where the nation repented together and worshiped the Lord
together and God delivered them. And then it seems that it's
indicating that Samuel meets the people at important covenant
markers, places in their history that God met them.
And each of these places already had an altar.
But then Samuel builds an altar at another place, Rama, his own
hometown. The judge of Israel raised and
renewed altars that basically declared Yahweh is our king.
We are in covenant with Yahweh. And therein lies a very
important principle. The altars we raise are the ones
that we pay homage to silently, quietly, in our hearts reveal
the King that we serve. Every altar has a throne behind
it. We are either serving the true
King Jesus seated on his throne forever, or we are bowing down
to smaller kings who do not deserve our loyalty.
So today I want to talk about the altars that Israel built in
this chapter and the altars that we ourselves build and ask the
question, which king will you serve?
That's great. Pierce our hearts with your
Word, Heavenly Father, that we might be captivated by the glory
of Jesus Christ and surrender everything that we are to Him,
that we might be more like him in Christ's name.
Amen. Amen.
All right, so let's talk about false altars.
First. Chapter 8 happens about 20 years
after Chapter 7, and then in verse 4 you see that the elders
come to Samuel at Rama with a very reasonable request.
It seems they're concerned about succession.
Samuel is old, though in hindsight we know that he lives
for another 20-30 years. Later, 30 years more, he anoints
Saul. He tells Saul you've been
rejected when God tells him that his Kingdom has been taken from
him. He anoints David in the middle
of Saul's reign, and he still goes around on the circuit.
The elders, of course, don't know that.
That's understandable. But he is old.
But he's also appointed his two sons, Joel and Abijah, as judges
over the land. His sons were corrupt.
Joel, whose name it means Yahweh is God and Abijah, Yahweh is my
father, did not live as if Yahweh was their God and their
father. No, instead of reflecting God's
justice, these two acted as though they themselves were
gods, and they horrendously fathered the nation through
dishonest gain and perverted justice.
And so the elders say to Samuel, because you're old and because
your sons are evil. Now a point for us, the king, to
judge us like all the nations. And if you look at verse 20,
verse 20 actually fleshes out that request even more.
It says 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 objectively speaking, asking for a king wasn't a bad thing.
In fact, if you read the the the law, God anticipates the king
for his people. He tells Abraham kings shall
come from you, and of Sarah he says kings of people will come
from her. Then you've got the Deuteronomy
chapter 17 passage where God gives this Moses give this
stipulation to the people. He says when you come to the
land that the Lord your God has given you, you indeed may set a
king over you whom the Lord your God will choose.
And then at the beginning of this book for Samuel chapter 2,
verse 10, Samuel's mother Hannah prophesized in Saug before talk
of a king even started. He will give strength to his
king and exalt the horn of his anointed.
So it had always been in God's economy, God's plan for Israel
to have a visible king. That, of course, makes sense.
They had been ruled by judges all this while, local leaders
who held authority in certain sectors of the nation.
But the nation itself wasn't yet united under a single ruler.
So a desire for unity, for stability and leadership, it was
a good thing. Why then did their request
displease Samuel? What's going on here?
So verse 6 says Samuel prayed. I highly recommend prayer when
something displeases you. I know you guys do that anyway.
And it's in God's response that we find out something was off
with the elder's request, something was off.
This is where the false altars come in.
Israel had already built altars within themselves that revealed
the kind of king and the kind of judge that they were looking
for. And the first one was the altar
of idolatry. God says that Israel's request
for a king was actually a rejection of himself.
Look at verses 7 and 8. 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 doing to you also.
Did you catch that? The desire for a king sprang up
from idolatry. Whatever revival they had
experienced 20 years ago at Mizpah had already eroded.
They'd forgotten, and Israel had drifted back to serving the gods
of the Philistines. And it's from that idolatry that
they asked for a king. So even though they were asking
for something that God himself had planned to give them one
day, they were serving at the altar of idolatry and not at the
altar of the Lord. The right question should have
been, Samuel, you are old, your sons are corrupt.
What does God want us to do? That's the right question.
Second altar, the altar of conformity.
They wanted to be like the nations.
Give us a king to judge us like all the nations.
And this wasn't just a rejection of Samuel as the judge because
he was currently their judge. Throwing some shade there on
Samuel or as God as their king was more than that.
It rejected Israel's unique calling as the covenant people
of God. They weren't supposed to be like
the other nations. That's what Leviticus tells us.
You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have
separated you from the peoples that you should be mine.
But Israel wanted to trade. That set apartness for
conformity. They wanted a king who would
rule them with Chariots and horses, in other words, to
return to the system of power in Egypt from which God has set
them free. And God warned them that this
particular type of imitation would lead to slavery.
The third altar, the altar of safety, or if you like, the
altar of fear and insecurity. We want a king who will go out
before us and fight our battles for us.
Fear was driving the request. A couple of chapters later,
chapter 12, verse 12, Samuel is giving his final address to the
people, and he says this. 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. The looming threat of foreign
elements made them desperate for a permanent battle.
Ready king. And that's kind of ironic since
in the previous chapter, Chapter 7, God had displayed his power
at Mizpah and had gone before them and fought their enemy with
Thunder, scattered their enemy. But you see an invisible God who
fights on his own timetable, who wants their allegiance, who
wants their obedience, Someone they cannot control or see did
not appeal to their fearful, insecure hearts.
They preferred a king they could see.
They wanted visible assurance to combat their fears and
insecurity. These were the altars where the
Israelites worship the altar of idolatry, of conformity, of
safety, or if you like, fear and insecurity.
And that is why their request was evil in the sights of the
Lord. And so God says to Samuel, Now
then, obey their voice, only you shall solemnly warn them and
show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.
In other words, go ahead, Samuel, give them what they're
asking for, but first show them what kind of king grows out of
those false altars. Samuel delivers the warning.
It's painfully clear the kind of king they're asking for will be
a taker. He will take their sons for his
armies, take their daughters for his kitchens, take their fields,
vineyards, olive Groves, take a tithe.
Now a tithe is the language you use for something you give to
God. A tenth of their grain and
vineyards take a tithe of their flocks, and even take the people
themselves as servants for his officers.
And the king will also make them slaves, just like they were
slaves in Egypt. There are 7 warnings, 6 takes in
Samuel's response to the people. The king that they're asking for
will do exactly what Joel and Abijah were doing, perverting
justice and using power for gain.
Even more so, he would demand things that belong to God.
First the king would become their God.
And then in verse 18, 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 king you want
will consume you. You will cry out to me, and I
will not answer you. And the people say that's fine,
give us a king anyway. Salma returns to the Lord in
grief reports. All of the people said.
And the Lord replies, Give the people what they want.
It's a sobering reality that God sometimes permits us to rebel,
that after he has warned us, he will give us what we demand even
when it isn't good for us. It's a sobering reality that we
often get the leaders we deserve, leaders who mirror the
altars of our own hearts. It's a sobering reality that
when we insist on a particular gift, we insist on the King that
we want. When it begins to consume us and
we cry out for help, that God might not answer, He might let
us feel the full weight of what we chose.
I know what it's like to serve a false king who takes.
I'm not talking about Dan. Those of you who know me, you
know that I love acting and directing and film.
I just, I love those things. I love storytelling.
And I think it's a good gift from the Lord.
But when I was in my late teens and well into my college years,
in my efforts to honor that gift, to fan it into flame, I
began to feed it without any discernment.
I exposed myself to everything related to acting in film.
And before long, I wasn't pursuing a calling.
I was pursuing A craving. I became addicted to the craft,
to the movies, to the stories, to the celebrities.
I would spend hours upon hours watching film after film, show
after show, trying to learn, to absorb, to grow in this thing
that I love to do. I exposed myself the things I
shouldn't have. There was inexorable pool to
entertainment itself. I became addicted to all sorts
of things, to video games and eventually to even darker
things, more unsavory forms of entertainment.
It stopped being about beauty, about the beauty of performance,
and became about finding meaning and purpose and escape and
valuing what I watch. Things that could never
satisfied me, the false king of entertainment and performance
took, took and took from me. It took my time, it took my
sleep, my joy, my mental stability, my health.
As an example, I kid you not, I watched the first five seasons
of 24 in eight Days. Yeah, that's not right.
That's just not right. It was that bad.
And of course it affected my relationships with people.
I couldn't love people the way I was supposed to because I wasn't
wow mentally and I put God in the back burner.
NEPA, the utility company in Nigeria, we call it NEPA.
They often take away the power. So we have bits of time when
there's absolutely no light at all.
I would be praying to the Lord God Almighty in the middle at at
eight, 8:00 PM when there's no light with kind of faithfully
praying because I just had my devotions and the the power
would come back and in the middle of a sentence, I'd rush
out and continue watching 24 and I'd forget that I was praying.
I was enslaved by His mercy. God confronted that false king
and He redeemed the passion that He gave me.
But every so often I still hear it crouching nearby, wanting to
consume me and to devour me. So if you ever wonder why I'm
hesitant to binge watch something, or to game with you,
or to just watch one more episode, it's because I know
what God saved me from. I'm aware now.
It's not wrong to desire good things from God, but make sure
you haven't built altars around that desire, altars of idolatry
and conformity and fear or safety or control or whatever
other altars there are. Because if your heart worships
at those altars, your request, no matter how good it sounds,
even if God wants to give it to you, will be evil in God's
sight. And the very gift you ask for
will consume you. Whether it's your job that
you're asking for, whether it's marriage, you're asking for a
sense of justice in our society, the safety you want.
All those things will consume you if you're worshipping at the
wrong altars. But there's another danger that
we need to watch out for from this passage.
Each of us has a potential to be a ruler who takes, and
unfortunately, I know what it's like to be a false king who
takes. I went to boarding school in
Nigeria for high school, and we had a system there where
students who were in 12th grade were elected as prefects and
given real authority to help organize and run the school with
the teachers and to enforce discipline.
That was a level of power that I don't think we're ready for.
I think we're too mature to handle that power.
I was the study prefect, which along with the other prefects,
gave me authority to, like I said, discipline, if you want to
be honest, to punish other students from the 7th grade to
my own peers, as long as they weren't prefects.
I couldn't punish another prefect, but I could punish my
own classmates. Yeah, it was weird.
By the time I was in 12th grade, though, there was a saving
grace. The school no longer allowed
prefects to flog and to beat other students.
There was a time that was permitted, but the forms of
punishment that remained were only limited by your creativity
and imagination. And if you were creative, they
could be brutal. One of my one of the ones that I
would never forget, one of my colleagues, one of my prefect
classmates, he made a whole class, kneeled down on the
concrete floor, each of them carrying one cinder block in
each hand, raised up like this until their hands were tired.
Why? Because they were whispering
during study prep. And you know, I kidded myself
that I was not as bad as the others.
I was a pastor's kid with the conscience.
Yes, I wielded power, but no, I had mercy.
I was merciful and just. But I know beyond the shadow of
a doubt that I misused my power. I treated fellow human beings as
less than myself. I enjoyed it.
I corrupted it because in the moment it felt so good to take.
So I ask you, you who are a ruler in your own right, you
have influence over others in some way or another.
How do you rule at work, at home, in your relationships?
Do you spend your days taking and taking and taking from those
you have power or influence over?
When your church family, your friends, your spouse, your
children, your parents look at you, do they feel refreshed by
your presence or drained by it? Do they sigh inwardly because
you're a taker, someone who steals their time, their peace,
their joy, their sense of safety, their patience?
Marriages suffer because spouses, one or both of them are
takers. Workplaces suffer because
leaders are takers. And some of you lead teams.
You supervise staff. You manage classrooms.
You manage households and projects and ministries.
Some of you serve on the Hill, in agencies, in advocacy, or in
uniform. Whatever your sphere of
influence, the question is the same.
Am I using my God-given authority to give or to take, to
advance integrity, truth and the common good, or to perpetuate
corruption and self-interest? Am I oppressing the very people
I am meant to serve such that they cry out to God as sons and
daughters with the Most High God call to reign with Christ?
We are all rulers. Do we take?
What do we give? It's a very important question
to answer because there is judgement for takers.
The Israelites got what they asked for.
The King who takes. Here's my favorite part.
The good news of the gospel is that God gives us a different
kind of king, the king who gives.
If you know me, I love the gospel.
I love the gospel and I see it in the story.
The Altars at Bethel, a Gilgal as Misbah and Rama, they all
point forward to another altar, the cross at Calvary, where the
true King gave and gave and gave and continues to give and give
and give. Jesus gave His life as a ransom
for many. His body was broken for us.
His blood was poured out for us. He gives His Spirit to dwell
within us and strengthen us. He gives His word and His
promises for our assurance. He gives His Kingdom for our
everlasting inheritance. At the cross of Calvary.
Jesus Christ sets us free from the altars of idolatry that once
held our hearts, so that we might see Yahweh as our true
King, reconciled, liberated from the modern modern Pagan gods of
our age at the cross of Calvary, Jesus Christ sets us free from
the altar of conformity. We are now a Kingdom of priest,
a royal nation to our God for His glory.
Therefore, as Paul says, we must no longer be conformed to the
pattern of this world. We must come out from among
them. We can't mirror them any longer
at the cross of Calvary. Jesus Christ sets us free from
fear and insecurity, from our constant desire to trust in the
honor of flesh, to save us from our Philistines.
No, we must not do that. Look, there's nothing wrong with
Chariots and horses and policies and activisms.
Those things are God that use it are things that God uses.
But a Psalm 20 declares some trust in Chariots, some trust in
horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
For you see, God has exalted Jesus Christ to the highest
place. He has set his King on his
mountain and said this is my anointed, that in the name of
Jesus Christ every knee should bow under heaven and on earth,
and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the Father. He is the King over everybody,
whether it be Pope Leo the 14th, Donald Trump, Muriel Bowser,
Archbishop Steve Wood, Glenn Youngkin, Wes Moore, Benjamin
Netanyahu, Somani, Megadi Zelensky, every president, Prime
Minister and ruler, all the leaders of the world at whatever
level of authority, and inevitably you and I serve at
the pleasure of King Jesus. He's exalted.
The King is exalted forevermore, and we all will be judged by how
we rule, by the King who gives. So fellow believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ and all who are yet to profess him as Lord, I
implore you to come to the greatest altar in history,
greater than Bethel or Gilgal or Mizpah or Rama, the altar at
Calvary, the cross of Jesus Christ, and surrender.
Surrender so that idolatry and conformity and fear and all the
other altars no longer control you, so that your heart is
aligned to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling,
to kiss the Son and take refuge in him.
Which king will you serve? Let's pray.
You are exalted, You who are the King are exalted on high.
We will forever praise Your name and give You glory and honor.
Set our hearts, Lord Jesus, to look to King Jesus to turn away
from the altars that we are tempted to pursue.
The Christ might be glorified in US, and we will say with all of
our strength that Yahweh is our God and Father our King.
In your Son's name I pray. Amen.