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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.
Barak Obama & the King Delusion
| Sermon ID | 1116081821280 |
| Duration | 48:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | 1 Samuel 8 |
| Language | English |
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