Beginning to read with verse 1, hear now the word of the Lord. When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of the second, 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. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Romah 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. 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 and 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. 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 fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war. and 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." 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." May the Lord bless this reading. This evening, in preaching, one of the most difficult parts of sermonizing to do well is in the choosing of illustrations for one's message. And sometimes there are illustrations that arise in life that are so appropriate and so telling that it's almost a waste of history or a waste of current events not to use them. And so I would treat the election in America of Barack Obama I've been really amazed as a expatriate citizen over here to see the coverage, the amazing amount of television coverage given to another nation's election. This is the first time, of course, that we've been over here during a time when there was a presidential election. And I trust that you don't normally have this much, but maybe you do. I didn't ask anybody about that ahead of time. But I was utterly amazed to see day after day of the coverage of the of the days leading up to the election. And then the day of the election, the night of the election, I almost felt at home staying up until the wee hours of the morning to see what I could see from the election results. I'm a bit of a political junkie, I must admit. And so when I've been back in America, these things have usually captured my attention. But I just was utterly amazed at the attention given to this. And so with Mr. Obama's election, he's the president-elect. He's not the serving president yet, but he's the president-elect with his election. I think that this gives us an opportunity to look at the Bible, at the whole idea of kings, of rulers, of governments, to evaluate what the Bible's position about government is. And hopefully it'll help us to work in our own lives for more freedom and more responsibility, more prosperity and that sort of thing. Because the main reason is because we have been made spiritually free through Jesus Christ. We can work toward free political systems. If you don't have freedom of heart, if you're a slave at heart, then there's no hope for you really. in terms of your political systems. It's really up to the Lord what he brings this way and that way. But if you're a free people, if you're free spiritually, then there's a possibility for working that freedom out. Wherever the Protestant Reformation and its principles have spread, freedom has spread. Because political freedom follows the freedom of the gospel like night follows day. Or I should say day follows night in this case. illustration more positive. But I've used the title of the messages of Barack Obama and the King delusion and I've used the term delusion consciously and carefully. I guess some people believe that whenever a whole group of people decide on something or a whole group of people are of one mind that that is a sign of wisdom. But if you go through the Bible You'll see all kinds of instances where the Bible says, and the people did this, and the people did that, and it's always bad. We've been deluded in a sense ourselves today to think that whatever the masses of the people want, whatever 51% vote for, that that is like an oracle of God. That's simply not the case. Very often, in fact probably most often, when people cry out for this thing or that thing, They're doing it for some other reason than good rational reasons or native intelligence. Usually the Lord has given them over to some kind of thought system. And it's very difficult to deal with this kind of delusion. My son works for the Sheriff's Department out in North Detroit. And I remember one time there was a fellow that they brought into the jail, and he He got into a cell and then he started to make all kinds of noise. He really was at his wit's end because he had a delusion. He had this fear that there were space aliens that were coming to the jail and they were going to do evil things to him. And he probably had some foreign substances in his system that were causing this delusion, but he was utterly delusional. And the other officers, they kept going in, they were threatening him, they were trying psychology on him, all different kinds of things. Nothing was working. This fellow was completely caught up in his delusional pattern. He was utterly terrified of these aliens who were about to come in upon him. And my son Richard is pretty good with psychology. And so very often they call him in really bad situations. So they called him and asked him to go and see what he could do with this guy. So he went in and he knew that there was a squad car coming. This jail cell was a holding cell where they sort the prisoners. And he knew that there was a group of cars coming in, about three squad cars, in about five minutes. And they were coming in with a rather large group of people that they were bringing for custodial care that night. And so He went into the cell, and he said to this guy, don't worry. He says, I'm with you. I understand what you're talking about. He said, but we have coming in in just a second, we have an anti-galactic force that's coming to totally guard the jail tonight. He said, you look at your watch. They'll be here in about five minutes, you can tell, because there'll be flashing lights and that sort of thing. So the guy starts to look at his watch. Sure enough, five minutes later, in come these squad cars, and the guy totally relaxed. Because he thought that this was the intergalactic force that was going to protect the jail for that night. Now, you see, you can't deal rationally. Why do people have delusions? Well, there are 1,000 reasons. But the big problem is that they are delusions. Delusions are delusions are delusions. Delusions are not based upon truth. They're based upon some sort of confusion. And as we've looked at this election, I've been amazed at just the confusion. As a Christian, there are telltale signs when you know that the events are not proceeding along rational grounds. I probably heard less debate in this last election over a two-year period of time. I heard less debate over real political issues than ever before. I still can't believe. that Mr. Obama managed to cover two years of campaigning and hardly lay out a single thing that he said that he was going to do. Now, whenever that kind of thing happens, you have to ask yourself, why are people so excited when they don't really know what the fellow is for? It's just a bad sign in terms of human behavior. If your husband or your wife came home every day either tremendously sad or tremendously happy, and there was no apparent reason for it, it's time to worry. Because if we're not motivated by rational reasons, by things where you can really cause and effect relationship, then you have to wonder, Why is the person really happy? Because it's not something that you can really deal with. It's not something that you can really reach. And I'm not talking about Mr. Obama's delusion here. I'm talking about the delusion of the voters, the delusion of the Americans, a great number of them that voted for Mr. Obama. And I'm sure there are some that did know more of what he was going to try to do. And they voted for him for rational reasons. there is a good bit of confusion often in politics. And I felt like I observed quite a bit of that this time. Now, if we look to the book of Samuel, we'll see how God talked to Samuel about a delusion that the children of Israel had in this day when Samuel was growing older and was no longer able to judge Israel. and his sons were corrupted, it's a terribly sad thing when one sees a father like Samuel. And we really don't have time to go into this, but there's a sermon just in the first few verses here of how the children of Samuel squandered the inheritance of their father. I mean, even in this situation, when Samuel hears that the people want a king, he immediately goes to prayer. Here's a spiritual man. Here's a man who understands the human heart, his own human heart. And he understands where there is help, where help may avail. So he goes right to the Lord. What were his sons doing? It says here that his sons were only interested in their own welfare and getting gain. for their own lives. What a terrible thing to be reared in a home by such a great and significant figure as Samuel, a great man of God, and yet that just passes over you as if nothing had occurred and you as children go off in your own ways so that the elders of Israel came and they complained to Samuel and they said, your children are not going to be judges after you like you, we We want a king. In verse 5 it says, Behold, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like the nations. Now at this point Samuel doesn't totally understand the situation. He has inclinations that this is not a good thing. And so he goes to the Lord in prayer. But it's what the Lord says to Samuel then that really explains so much about the world of politics and about why people vote for one person or vote for another, why whole populations will go this way and that way. If you look at Western politics right now, what you see over the broad picture, the broad spectrum of modern history, you see people voting for one party for four years or six years and then the pendulum swings the other way. The pendulum of political philosophies goes back and forth and back and forth. And very few people really understand why or how they're going to discover a way for progress. They say in Italy that there have been more prime ministers, more changes in government than there have been years since World War II. In other words, people, our modern populace, the people of our cities, the people of our lands, they don't really know, they don't really see a way out of their situations. They don't really see a way to make progress, and yet they're fairly energetic to a degree about this political party or that political party. Well, in Samuel's day, they were in a place where they had had no king. The tribes were basically ruled by tribal governments, the nation as a whole was what we call a constitutional republic. In other words, it wasn't a nation which had a strong central government at all. It just had this national assembly. It was like a Presbyterian meeting where we send ruling elders and pastors from our church and they meet at a higher Congress of people and you can have these for the local Presbyterian, you can have them for a whole nation. That's what Israel did. Many people don't realize because Israel did get a king, and the kings were famous, many people don't realize that that was not according to God's prescription. There's nowhere in the law of God where you can find God prescribing a king for Israel. He prescribed that they had a constitution, which is basically Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy, that all the people swore to when they came into the land. And then they were basically ruled by their tribal governments, their clan governments in that day. And then if there was a national emergency, they would seek the Lord's face and help, and they would gather together in a national congress and quickly try to figure out a way to deal with that national emergency, like an invasion or something like that. And if there was an invasion, with God's help and their intertribal meeting and fraternal plan, they would deal with the emergency, whatever it was. Now that lasted for a good number of years. And they had their ups and their downs, but they managed to do it. Some people would say, well, how could you have a country? How could you have a nation without a strong national government? Well, Israel did it. for many years, and this was God's prescription for them. But the day came, of which we've read tonight, where Samuel was growing old and his sons were corrupt, and so the people cried out for a king. Now, you notice what they say. They say, appoint us a king to judge us like all the other nations. This is a refrain that we often hear in politics. We can't do this because this is unlike all the other nations. We hear it in America. We've heard it for years. We can't do it this way because none of the countries in Europe do it this way. We have to do it like Europe is doing it. And countries in Europe may hear that of various other countries over here. That's what the people came, that was their thinking behind this idea because as they looked around themselves at the other pagan nations in the world, They saw that all these nations that had anything that were consequential or substantial in any manner, all of these other nations had kings. So they're thinking to themselves, we want to be a substantial nation, therefore we need a king. But of course, that wasn't according to God's plan. Now God says to Samuel in verse 7, He says, Obey the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. This is the unseen principle that God had for His people on that day. He reserved for Himself the right to be the King of Israel. It's stated here, and it's also stated in 1 Samuel 12.12. If you turn a few pages over, page 282, It says, 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. So in God's original prescription for the government of Israel, he reserved for himself the right to be king over Israel. Therefore, when they had national emergencies, when they had issues, they were supposed to seek their king and seek help from him. because he was the power broker of all world history. Of course, if you don't have any faith, then this power broker of all world history diminishes in your eyes. He doesn't seem as powerful as he really is. You have a much more carnal mindset and so you Instead of looking up under the heavens, looking under the hills from whence cometh your help, you look at each other. You say, well, where's my help going to come from? Is it going to come over here from this tribe or that tribe or all of us together? No, we need a strong central government so that we can really be a nation in our day. God, though, took this as it was. He took this as a rejection of himself. In other words, he's saying at root, There's a radical, philosophical, theological decision that's being made by the people. The people have chosen not to rely upon me and faith that I will deliver them. They're choosing to rely on human mechanisms. He only told Samuel two things. If we see this in verse 9, he says, obey their voice. In other words, let them have this choice. And number two, solemnly warn them and show them that the ways of the king, show them the ways of the king who shall rule over them. Now, in terms of obeying his voice, there's a strange thing that takes place here because God tells them to obey the voice of the people, tells Samuel to obey the voice of the people. And you might say, well, why does God, why does God give them over to themselves in this way? Well, he did so for both a negative and a positive reason. Negatively, he wanted to judge his people. But positively, he knew that even when the people made a wrong choice, that he could use that as part of the story of redemption. Because when they did get a king, at first they got this really bad king named Saul. But then, by his grace, he gave them a second King David and another King Solomon, who were much more blessed. and through the second and third Kings he prophesied of his coming son the Messiah even our Lord Jesus Christ which was the topic that we dealt with this morning so in other words all things the Bible says all things work out for good with the Lord if we trust in him and even our mistakes even God can use our mistakes and God did use the mistakes of Israel through the Kings that they chose He used their mistakes to prophesy about a coming Messiah King, even Jesus Christ. Who is the reason why we're here tonight? So there was a negative, positive reason, first of all, where God says to go ahead with this. But then secondly, he said, you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the King. who shall reign over them." And it's in this divine warning that God gives the people that we get a lesson in political philosophy that we can even apply today to our lives today. And we can, if we go one way, we'll be going in the way of freedom and prosperity. If we go the other way, we'll be going more in the way of slavery and servitude and poverty. And in the world, if you look at world history and you look at the different political systems of the different nations of the world, the scale is always swinging one way or the other. Sometimes people just get so sick of the humanistic systems of this world that they call for a reversal and for a while they have more prosperity and then they slip back into their old habits again and the dial goes the other way and they go back. Scripture really gives us an analysis and an intelligence on politics and political systems such as I don't know where you can get anywhere else in the world. And so I would encourage you as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to take a view and a consideration of what God says here in verses 10 and following. It says, 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. First of all, he says he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. Now in some ways that sounds like fun, doesn't it? Sounds like a great idea. We can have military occupations or vocations in our lives and we can do well with that. But you see it says he will take your sons and appoint them to do this and that. This in politics or military policy, this is called conscription. That is when a nation has a strong central government and they need a standing army. A lot of times people don't want to volunteer. If you have a strong central government, the government has certain demands. It sees that it has demands for political security. And so it will or it can, by law, make the young men and sometimes the young women of the nation join the military. In this case, God promises this. This is the first thing that the king will do. Now, in God's law, he had told David not to have a standing army. Because there are certain effects that are generated from certain causes. And whenever you have a standing army, there are certain problems associated with that. In world history, usually, it has led to the loss of freedom by the people of the nation. Now today, We have quite a bit of freedom, relative to world history. We have quite a bit of freedom, even with our standing armies. Most of our standing armies are not allowed to do too much on the domestic front. But of course, in ancient days, it was different. But nonetheless, even if you have a standing army that's pretty much under control, you have to pay for that standing army. And if you pay for that standing army, that means your taxes go up and you've got to pay a price for the choice that you've made. In old Israel, remember what they did, they would operate on the basis of a need. Now that wouldn't be, that wasn't, in our modern era, if a nation tried to operate this way, they wouldn't leave the military issue totally out of the question unless they had some emergency like an invasion on their border. You'd obviously have to have some preparation. You'd have to have some sort of a military think tank and you'd have to have weaponry that would be, that you'd have some capacity to get your hands on. But even if you had that, that's not like a standing army where there's quite such a demand upon the population. So before this time, before Samuel prophesied these words, the people had their tribal armies, but they did not have a central standing army. Just by the way, some people say this would be impossible for the world today. But this is exactly the kind of government that Switzerland has today. Switzerland has a much lower organized military. And in Switzerland, almost every family, I believe, has an automatic weapon in the house. You know, we say, well, we couldn't have guns. But in Switzerland, they do. Their belief is, you see, that if they were invaded, they give every citizen the chance then to be a part of the militias that are immediately formed up. And Switzerland's historical commitment has been to fight to the death with the weaponry that they have available. So even today, this old Israeli system or this pre-King situation is working in one nation today, although I would admit that not many people try it. But the second thing is that God says will happen to the people. He says in verse 12, or no, second half of verse 11, he says, I'm sorry, verse 12, he says, he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment for his chariots. So the second thing God promises here, first thing is conscription for a larger central military. The second thing is a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy comes from the word bureau, which means that there's a committee of people who are committed to run a certain part of your economy. So in most countries today, we have military bureaus, we have education bureaus, we have economic bureaus, we have all these different parts within our governmental system. And each of these groups absorbs a whole lot of the attention of the nation. Now, in this case, in verse 12, Samuel, by the inspiration of God, speaks of two main kinds of bureaus, one military and the other political. That is, that the central government will demand a certain amount of attention to support the military and then a certain amount of attention to support themselves economically with the lands that they will own, the centralized lands, plowing the fields and reaping, and then the military-industrial complex of making the implements of war and the equipment for his chariots. So Samuel is saying to the people that when you ask for a king or when you get a king, you're going to get a stronger military. You're also going to get this this bureaucracy that will grow up. Now, the problem with bureaucracies politically is that the bureaucracies absorb a lot of the money of the country. In a sense, it's two people getting together, and instead of the two people doing the job themselves, they hire a third person who can live in the capital, and that third person helps them to get the job. So all of a sudden, instead of three people being productive and working for the cause that they think is best, now you have three people doing the work of two. Or you have two people working, and the two people are supporting the third person. In many of our governments in the West today, it's not anywhere close to two to one, but it's usually about 50-50, where you have about 50% of the government is supported by the other 50% of the population. The problem with that, the Bible doesn't talk about this, doesn't explain all this, but the problem with this, again, is productivity. Obviously, if four people are all working at productive jobs, they're going to be more productive than if two people work to support a third. In America, about 20 years ago, during the Reagan revolution, there was an economist that did an analysis of the poverty programs of America. And he worked out that if they just got rid, now this would have been an impossible thing because it took up, there was no way to work the system without having the bureaucracy in place. But he worked out that the total cost of the American bureaucracy for supporting people who were out of work or all different kinds of things like this, if they just took all the money that went into that particular social program and divided it up by the number of people that were getting support from the government at that time, they could have doubled the salaries of all the poor people in America. You see, half of the money, half of the money that was going to the poor people in America was being absorbed by the bureaucracy, by all the people that are in the support system that are taking money from you and then redistributing it to somebody else like that. Now that's just a little parable of the fact that anytime you have a bureaucracy, the bureaucracy itself is going to absorb a whole lot of money. So that the people, in order to get that effect of care for the poor, the people are going to have to work not just to support the poor, but they're going to have to work to support the bureaucracy, which then supports the poor. It's a, it's an unproductive system. And it leads not to wealth, but it leads to a degree, at least, of poverty. I remember a story from my own family history. In America, people paid hardly any taxes before World War II. And I remember hearing the story about my grandfather. He ran a medium-sized meat business in Syracuse, New York at the time. And as a little boy, I remember hearing stories about my grandfather who sent about four kids to college. And even as a little boy, I thought, well, why is grandpa sending kids to college? Well, you see, in that day, you had more freedom with your own salary. And so instead of paying the government to do good, if you had an idea of doing good, you could do good yourself. You didn't have to wait for the government to make up its mind. You could just go and do the thing. And so my grandfather knew of, evidently over the period of his life, he knew of four young men who he thought were really virtuous and who were smart kids and who really needed an education, but who didn't have the money to do it. And so my grandfather just paid for their educations out of his own pocket because the taxes were so low at that time. Now I'm sure he was not alone. You see, if you have a smaller central government, every individual has much more power to make choices and to do these kinds of things himself. But the greater the size of the government, the greater the need of the bureaucracy, then the fewer choices that people have. And in essence, you're giving up your choice to do good. And you're hoping that if you pass that up the ladder to a government agency, that that government agency will do the good that you would like to do. The third thing that we see here in verse 13 It says, and 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. Governments, once they're formed, governments tend to grow larger. There are very few examples in human history of governments that have grown smaller of their own volition. It's natural. If I have some post, why should I put myself out of business? by deciding that I'm extraneous, that I can be cast off if there's a better way of doing it. Usually, if we're working at a job, we want to protect that job. And in fact, we think to ourselves, you know, if I could add two more people into my agency or two more people into my bureau, then if things got rough and I had to lay people off, I could lay off one of them and I'd still be protected. So in most government bureaucracies, there's a principle in the thing itself that tends to make the government or the bureaucracies grow. And I've heard complaints over here in the newspapers about councils. The councils play a tremendous role over here in government. And the complaint I've seen in some of the letters to the newspaper and that sort of thing is that that many of the councils are not being as productive as they should or they could, and that they're just adding people into their councils so they can, I guess, to give some political patronage to people that support them. And then also, the bigger that your particular bureau is, then the more power you have and the happier things are for you as a government politician. But that doesn't add up. If you look at that in terms of the nation, That doesn't really add up or lead to blessing for the people of the nation itself. It may lead to blessing for the government. It may lead to blessings for the bureaus, for the agencies. But what about the people? What about the job that really needs to get done? Well, at the bottom of all this, you come to two conclusions based upon what God says to Samuel. Either you will choose self-responsibility and self-rule, and you will obtain more freedom that way, or you will choose to give more of your responsibility to other people, to your government. And then you will obtain degrees of slavery. Now, we see that in verse 16 and 17. He will take your male servants, and your 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." Now, the thing you need to realize is that there are all different degrees of slavery. The same word in both Hebrew and Greek for slavery is also a word for servant or servitude. And so today, when we use the term slave, we tend to think of a person with absolutely no rights whatsoever. But in the ancient world, a slave was someone who was either captured in war or a person who just couldn't take care of themselves. And there are a certain number of people in a society that cannot take care of themselves. And in that case, when you ran up debts that you couldn't pay for, then you would be sold into a degree of slavery in the ancient world. Slavery in the Old Testament, not in the Old Testament world, but in the ancient world, was a form of welfare, of national welfare in a sense. You would trade your freedom for a certain amount of security to be a servant to somebody else. Now God here is saying that when the people cried out for a king, that what they would bring upon themselves was a kind of slavery. He first mentions here, and then again back a few verses, he mentions that a tenth of your increase would be taken for the government. Well, we know, what did God ask for a tithe to support the religious system of Israel and also the social service network of ancient Israel? God decreed that a tenth of one's money would be given to support the religious part of Israel and also the social service part of Israel. A tenth would be given. The tithes would be collected by the priest and be dispensed for the poor and that sort of thing. Now we see, if the people have a national government, it'll automatically increase their taxes by 100%. Not only will they pay God his tenth, but they will also pay the national government its 10th. And so there would be an increase, a fantastic increase in taxation for the people who would choose to have a king over them. And in verse 18 it says, And in that day you will cry out, because your kingdom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. If you analyze, we could take a whole weekend to talk about this and go into a much greater detail of what the consequences are of these various choices. But the bottom line is God speaks to the Israelites and he says there are two ways here. We can either keep going the way that we've been going and you won't have any of this public taking of your lands, taking of your children for this or that. We won't have any bureaucracy. We'll have much more freedom. and we'll have much more prosperity. You can either have that or you can be like all the other peoples of the world and you can have your king. Now rational people, with that kind of a proposal before them, I would pray that rational people, looking at the two, you know, over here you've got freedom and prosperity and you can do your own thing. You can be as creative as you want. You won't be imposed upon so much by government. Over here, you have higher taxation. You've got a growing government. You've got losses of freedom over here. I trust that the rational person, the person who has his senses about him would say, I choose A! You know, I'm not gonna choose this other system over here. But guess what Israel chose? Israel chose choice B. They pulled the election lever and they all voted for B. And that's why I call this a delusion. I call this a mental confusion. But we know that it doesn't just start. It's not just a case of rationality. It's not just a case of education. It's a case of spirituality. It's a case of spirituality. Where is your heart? In the history of the world, what the Bible shows is that people will choose the stupid way. They will choose Nunctyville over wisdom every time if they don't have spiritual freedom in themselves. Why do they do that? Because God gives them over to it. Isaiah 66 verse 4 says, I will choose their delusions. God says, I will choose delusions for the people to believe. Now in the recent election in America, I pulled this off the internet, just some of the things that were said. Some people actually called Barack Obama the Messiah. Now, even if you disagree with my political analysis, I trust that you don't think that Barack is the Messiah. I pray, I hope that. I hope that you're that informed, you know, that you're not going to get confused about who Jesus was. He's not Barack Obama. He came 2,000 years ago. Shrines were built to Barack Obama around the world. One website said, Obama is God. This internet site said, there has been a messianic fervor, adoration, and worship-like atmosphere surrounding him. At some rallies, people fainted at the sight of him. Now, even if I like Mr. Obama, I'm not going to faint. I mean, he's not that great. He's not God. He's not going to deliver. I saw one news clip from some people in Africa and Kenya, where supposedly he comes from. And they were dancing in the street, and they were saying, we're going to get paid. If he's elected, they're going to start paying us over here. Now, maybe they will. I've been surprised by a lot of things in modern politics. But I'd say that the odds are not all that great that they don't have to work anymore, because Barack Obama got elected president of the United States. Newsweek magazine. ran the headline for their article said, the world hopes for its first president. Imagine a world president. Newsweek states, in country after country, polls show a record high fascination with the outcome of the US elections. Where did this come from? I would just say that this is just one of a long line of political delusions. And I would pray, as believers in Jesus Christ, that we get a little bit more intelligent about our lives and about our choices and about world history. World history is not populated by great freedoms and great governments. World history is a story of much tyranny and much suffering on the part of people. Now, hopefully, we are working in the direction of less and less as time goes on. But even in the 20th century, we saw some of the most Vicious outbreaks of tyranny and persecution in world history, when not just hundreds or thousands were killed, slain in the name of some political cause, but millions were killed. Nazi Germany executed 6, 7, 8 million people, Jews plus others, Christians, gypsies, all kinds of people like this. The Russian governments, supposedly 20 million and were killed just in Stalin's moving all the people off the farms and into the cities, and cities onto the farms, his policy there of readjustment of the Russian economy. The same kind of thing we know in Southeast Asia. There have been some terrific incidents like this, China. So world history is not replete with great kinds of freedom. It's replete with stories of great difficulties. and great enslavements of people. Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, you see these delusions are not easily dealt with, but through the gospel of Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ can reach into our hearts and our minds and just change people here and there so that they understand as much as Samuel came to understand by God's talking to him on this night, on this occasion. If we understand just this much, then we no longer are part of the problem. We're no longer part of the delusion. We can start working. We may not carry the day, tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year. But if we have the ideas, the philosophy, the theology of freedom in our hearts, then we can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Let's close in prayer. Our Father and our God, we pray that you would not send us delusions like you do the unbelievers of the world. We pray that we would be part of an intelligent Israel, an Israel that would understand that life is not perfect and life is not easy, but there are better ways and worse ways to go about one's life. And we pray that you might bless us with the instruction from thy word to know that there's a better way to go than trusting than making a Messiah out of big government and trusting that the government will solve all of our problems for us. We pray, O Lord, that we would try to solve more and more of our problems ourselves and that by this that we would find and discover more and more freedom for ourselves, more and more choice, more and more efficiency, more and more productivity. For we pray for the gospel, we pray for salvation amongst our people, O Lord, but we also pray for blessings that would flow from this. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.