From the time the people have come out of Egypt they have been loudly and consistently dissatisfied with God’s treatment of them. With the exception of Joshua and the best times of Samuel they have complained about their conditions. When they get what they want they only want more. When they do not get what they want they whine. Moses saved them from destruction in the wilderness. Joshua led them into Canaan. The Judges saved them from being overrun by their enemies and Samuel protected them until he was old.

But that was not enough. They wanted more. They wanted to be like the world around them. They wanted to fit in.

Israel Asks for a King

1 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as Israel’s leaders.[a] 2 The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. 3 But his sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. 4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead[b] us, such as all the other nations have.” 6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.” 10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” 19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” 21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord. 22 The Lord answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”

2.  Samuel was old and his sons were corrupt.

In some ways, Samuel had contributed to the problem by not bringing along a successor to replace him as Moses had done with Joshua. Yet, none of the Judges had done that before him. The Judge had always been a temporary office that was filled during a military emergency and then vacant until the next threat. The Judge was more like George Washington who gave up power and went home. Samuel had stayed because the threats to Israel had remained constant but there was still no thought about a successor. They would just wait until the next emergency.

If anyone had thought about a successor they would have looked to Samuel’s sons – and they were corrupt. This was not unusual in Scripture for leadership. All the way from Cain to the grandson of Moses who set up an idol, the sons of Eli who were despised by the people, and on through most of the kings the children and grandchildren of great men have serious and often fatal flaws. Samuel was no exception.

So, without successors and no other options the people want a king.

3.  How do God and Samuel respond?

Both are upset and through Samuel God makes it clear that this is not just a misguided choice that will result in their becoming slaves again but it is an evil choice.

10:19: “But you have now rejected your God, who saves you out of all your disasters and calamities. And you have said, ‘No, appoint a king over us.’”

12:17-19: “Now then, stand still and see this great thing the Lord is about to do before your eyes! 17 Is it not wheat harvest now? I will call on the Lord to send thunder and rain. And you will realize what an evil thing you did in the eyes of the Lord when you asked for a king.” 18 Then Samuel called on the Lord, and that same day the Lord sent thunder and rain. So all the people stood in awe of the Lord and of Samuel. 19 The people all said to Samuel, “Pray to the Lord your God for your servants so that we will not die, for we have added to all our other sins the evil of asking for a king.”

Again, it does not say they have made a mistake or taken a wrong turn that is easily corrected later on. It says they have done evil – and they know it. We have chosen evil and have deliberately sinned. For God and Samuel this presents an issue. How will they respond?

God’s Response: For that we go first back to the Garden of Eden. How did God respond to their choice to disobey? He evicted them from the Garden. What else? He covered them with clothes made of skin. In other words, something in a once perfect world had to die to provide for them once they had chosen evil and deliberately sinned. He did not destroy them. He covered them.

If we fast forward to the New Testament we see the same. How does God respond to “none are righteous” and all of us have chosen sin? He covers us at the cost of someone having to die.

How does He respond to their choosing deliberately to sin by demanding a king to rule over them? He not only gives them a king but he actually anoints him. He does not punish them or destroy them. In fact, in David he raises up a king who will be the model for and the founder of the line of the coming King.

Each time, when he should have destroyed them and or left them to fend for themselves he protects them in spite of their willful sin. God does not leave us but He does not eliminate the consequences of our choices.

Samuel’s Response: This one is more difficult in some ways. Samuel was a righteous man and a man who listened to God. He did whatever God called him to do. Here is a man who believes what the people are doing is willful evil. Even they have admitted it but will not repent of it. They simply ask Samuel to pray to God that they will not die for their sin.

Samuel has a dilemma. What the people want is evil and against God and yet God is sending him to anoint a man to be God’s choice. How can that be?

Think about it this way. What was God asking of Peter in Acts 10 when he gave him the dream of the animals in the sheet? What was Peter’s response? “I have never eaten anything unclean.” Why not? Because it was unimaginable. It would have been sin.

What did God ask Paul to do? To follow a man who threatened everything he believed about God.

What was God asking of Abraham in Genesis 22? It was unthinkable, wasn’t it?

It would be the same perhaps as God saying to us, “People have chosen to do evil by accepting gay marriage – not just civil unions but redefining marriage. Samuel, go and do the first wedding.”

If you can get your mind around that then you can understand the position Samuel was in. “Every fiber of my being believes this is wrong and the people should be punished – not tolerated or even encouraged in their sin – but God is instructing me to anoint a man after they have rejected God. That makes me complicit in their sin. Surely I have not heard God right this time. He could not contradict Himself.”

I’ve thought about the same choice Dietrich Bonhoeffer made when he believed completely in pacifism in the face of evil and yet decided to participate in the plot against Hitler. He went against everything he believed to be true – even about his own salvation.

“Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.”

I do sincerely pray that I will never have such an agonizing choice to make. I don’t believe I have the faith to make a choice that puts my faith against what I know to be true. However, I do believe there are people whom God has called to make them. These are not just hard ethical choices. They are choices in which you risk everything because God has called you to be loyal to Him – no matter how irrational and even wrong it appears.

Read 1 Samuel 16:13

4.  I love the process and, of course, it is a universal theme – the least likely in the eyes of the world is the best choice. We all love that which is why it is the basis of so many movies, books and fairy tales. Think about Cinderella. All the sisters vying to be chosen but rejected for the least likely. Remember the movie “King Ralph” with John Goodman and Peter O’Toole? What about Rapunzel in the movie “Tangled”? My grandson and I have watched it 100 times and the part about her discovering who she really is never gets old. What about Superman disguised as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent? In some way, all of us feel we are something special in disguise waiting to be discovered like Lana Turner when she skipped typing class to get a Coke at the Top Hat Malt Shop.

Neither his brothers or even his own father can imagine David’s being the one Samuel has been sent to anoint. Surely, it must be one of them. It’s not.

A number of years ago the Ford Foundation did a study of all the existing programs for identifying and bringing along “emerging leaders” and they found the results were no better than random selection. Those who appeared to be leaders to the selection panels and mentors were typically those who looked most like those choosing them. Their frame of reference was so limited they completely missed on identifying actual leaders.

There are very few, if any, reliable testing instruments for identifying what God is looking for – the heart of a person. It’s often hidden and imperceptible. No one sees it because it does not conform to our own bias or experience. But it’s the heart of the person – their character – that matters most. It’s interesting that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, has come to the same conclusion after a number of scandals among top-ranking officers. Without character their competence is not useful.

How similar it was to Jesus. Not only the leadership but even his own family was surprised when he did and said those things. Where did that come from? Why have we not seen that before now? Where has he been hiding all of this?

And when we are reading it there is something in us that says, “Of course this is true and it is true because it is a surprise. It is hidden like all genuine treasure. Why even the persons themselves do not recognize it.” It’s not like being caught while trying to cover ourselves – like Saul hiding among the baggage after he had been anointed – but being found and recognized for who you really are.

I see too many young Christian leaders today who are far too anxious for visibility and fame. The publishers tell them to build a platform through Twitter and speaking and then they can come to them to write a book they can sell to their followers. They do not trust being discovered or even anointed. They are too ambitious for that. Brennan Manning, who died this week-end, said the biggest idol and threat to evangelical Christian leadership was the idol of ambition. Leaders want platforms and recognition. The term on Twitter is “humblebrag.” “I am so humbled and honored to be famous or with famous people.” They don’t want to risk being unnoticed shepherds when they could be kings and, too often, their congregations only feed that.

Andrew McLaren puts it this way:

“There are subsidiary lessons, especially for young and ardent souls confined for the present to lowly tasks, and feeling some call to something higher in a dim future. Patience, the faithful doing of to-day’s trivial tasks, the habit of self-repression, the quiet trust in God who opens the way in due time,—these, and such like, were the signs that David was called to a throne, and that God’s Spirit was preparing him for it. They are the virtues which will best prepare us for whatever the future may have in store for us, and will be in themselves abundant reward, whether they draw after them a high position, which is a heavy burden, or, more happily, leave us in our sheltered obscurity.”

George Herbert in his poem “Submission” writes of his own ambition to make a career in the church.

Were it not better to bestow
Some place and power on me?
Then should thy praises with me grow,
And share in my degree.
How know I, if thou shouldst me raise,
That I should then raise thee?
Perhaps great places and thy praise
Do not so well agree.

Remember what Paul says about ambition? Godly ambition is possible and good. His own ambition was to preach the Gospel and to please God. Paul said ours should be to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

Brennan Manning put it this way: “Do the truth quietly without display.”

5.  So God’s preparation for leadership is different from ours, isn’t it? How does He work?

He starts with humility. Not false humility or self-degradation but a genuine recognition of the gifts He has given you – and an innate security about that. In Luke 14 Jesus sees all the dignitaries scrambling to sit at the head of the table and he tells them to be careful about their desire to be recognized and important. He warned his own disciples about the deceit of appearing to be great and their own ambition to be recognized.

This week I had the opportunity to be part of a group visiting the new Bush Institute in Dallas. In fact, we were the first group to visit before the official opening on April 23rd. What was so interesting was the scramble among the staff to be included, recognized and noticed. They were all caught up in the show. People had to introduce people who introduced other people who, finally, introduced President Bush. He seemed to be the only person oblivious to the scramble. That’s what Jesus was talking about. The desire to be seen as important to people who are important.

He often puts leaders in the wilderness for a very long time. Moses was in Midian for a third of his life. Paul was in Arabia for three years. We know that Mother Theresa had long periods of doubt and dryness. Others have experienced deserts and wilderness experiences for years or what St. John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul. The so-called “victorious Christian life” has often eluded some of the greatest saints of the church.

He often begins with solitude. David spent years alone with the sheep. Remember how even his brothers were surprised by his stories of defending the sheep against lions and bears? His own family had almost forgotten he existed.

As we’ve said before, He delights in raising people from obscurity. Those we would choose are not those He anoints. Anointing does not mean perfection but only that in spite of their flaws and failings they are chosen for His purposes. God does choose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and the weak things to shame the strong.

So…this week think about these things.

Am I looking to God or wanting to find a leader to make me secure?

Am I expecting all of the choices in my life to be as simple as possible – a clear right and a clear wrong?

How much do I desire recognition and being noticed?

Is my ambition for great places or to serve wherever I am placed?