🌿Breathe Truth🌿
“But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel, so He prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.
As they have done from the day I have brought them out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.” —1 Samuel 8:6-8
🌿Believe Truth🌿
A love story involves two people. Two sides. Two parties. An extender and an accepter. A giver and a receiver. A reciprocation of both. A love story as a shared history of connection, commitment, and continuum. A pledge and a promise.
But for the Israelites, theirs is a rejection story. Marked by an absence of faithfulness and fidelity. Their leaving God would trigger a domino effect through every generation after them.
God however, in His compassion and mercy, would introduce into their rejection story, a new Character, a fallen hero who would give his life to halt that domino effect and rewrite a new love story.
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Living by sight. The Israelites wanted a new king to lead them. They wanted a leader they could physically see. Samuel passed on the Lord’s warnings to the people of the adverse consequences of having a king: Their sons will work as charioteers running dangerously in front of the chariots, make weapons, plow fields and harvest crops, defend and fight. Their daughters will be forced to cook, bake, do menial work. All for the king. Their best fields and groves, finest animals and cattle, and one tenth of their flocks will be taken away from them. In other words, the king will take their best of everything for his own usage. God would not make these demands against His people. Yet the Israelites didn’t want God, a spiritual King they couldn’t see. Sight preceded faith.
Living by the world. But the people refused to listen to Samuel’s warning. “We want to be like the nations around us. Our king will judge us and lead us into battle.” (Samuel 8:21). The Israelites had abandoned a faith perspective of God. They wanted a leader version like the idol worshipping nations and people groups around them. A leader not with the mind of Christ, the righteousness of a godly judge, or the purpose of a divine Savior. They desired a worldly king with a worldly agenda to lead and judge solely in the flesh. Conformity to the world preceded faith.
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The history of the Israelites. Their resulting kings would lead them away from a pure worship of God to idol worship like the rest of the world. They would lose their first love commitment to God and be conquered by successive kingdoms antagonistic and violent towards their faith in Yahweh God. Ultimately, all of Israel, the north and south, would fall to the Assyrians and Babylonians. The Israelites would lose their lives, be enslaved, and conquered by the very nations they emulated to have a king.
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Despite their rejection of God, He would send His Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem them from their mistake of embracing a worldly kingship. God’s plan: to establish a new kingship, a new heaven and earth.
A Rejection Story becomes a new Love Story. A King who loved His people so much. He would sacrifice His Son for them.
Come and be a part of this Love Story. God wants to include you in the beginning, middle, and ending, eternity with Him forever.
Come and live out this Real Love Story today.