Why Israel Rejected God as King — 1 Samuel 8 Explained

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Again, good afternoon to those of you in the studio and welcome to our program. For all of you out in television, we've in the last month or two also gone on satellites, so we realize it's a possibility for someone joining us almost from coast to coast, from Canada to Central America. And if you happen to be out there and you're listening to the program, we want everyone to know that for the next three or four weeks, we want to call this Letter-Writing Month. We did it last year as we approached the end of our first year, and now we're coming to almost our second anniversary already. And we'd just like to encourage you, if you're enjoying the program, if you're listening, drop us a note. Now, when I say we want to hear from you, we're not asking for money. We've never done that on that program. We haven't had to, and I hope we never do. In fact, I know we won't. If I ever have to get to the place to ask for money, I'll just stay back with the cattle and forget about this. But anyway, we'd like to hear from you, and just drop us a note on a postcard or on, as Gettysburg Address was written, on the back of an envelope. Just let us know that you're listening. Secondly, again, we want to remind you that the first 12 programs that back during Genesis are now available in booklet. They're free. Write for it. Call for it. And we can't offer the VCR videos for free, but they're very nominal. We're charging $25 for six-hour tape, which includes, again, the same 12 programs that are in the book. And we'll gladly mail them to you if you'll just call us or drop us a note. I think that's enough for announcements. Now let's get right back into where we left off. Israel is under Joshua, you remember. We're going to sort of skip over a lot of the familiar territory that is not in the line of our, what I call, through the Bible in a, oh, how shall I put it? God's plan of the ages or whatever it's been coined. But nevertheless, Joshua, over a period of 26 years, gets the children of Israel to the place where they occupy all of the land of Canaan, west of the Jordan River, with the exception of two and a half tribes who stay on the east side. One of them was Reuben, and the other one was Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. Now I emphasize that for a reason. They are going to set up shop over here on the east side, which, of course, takes them all the way up to the Golan on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. Now remember who they are. The tribe of Gad, tribe of Manasseh, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and Reuben, and Gad. Now when we get to Christ's earthly ministry, I will be maintaining that Jesus only had anything to do with two Gentiles, the Canaanite woman and the Roman centurion. And invariably, somebody will come up after class, and they say, Well now, Les, you forgot all about the maniac in Gadara. Remember? That Jesus cast out the legion of demons? I said, Hey, he's not a Gentile. Oh, he had to be. He was over there on the east side of Jordan. My stock answer is a question. What are the first three letters of the word Gadarene? It was Gad. So you see, that maniac of Gadarene was a descendant of the tribe of Gad, which lived on the east side of Jordan. So when Jesus dealt with that maniac of Gadarene, he was still dealing with someone who was more Jewish than he was Gentile. So I merely want to mention that, that those two and a half tribes stayed on the east side of River Jordan. Now I'm going to have you in the studio class, if you will. Turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 17. And as we've skipped over now the rest of the book of Joshua, which, like I said, covered 26 years, we're going to skip through the book of the Judges, which covers between 300 and 400 years. That's a long time. That's twice as long as America has been a nation. But in that period of the Judges, if you know anything of Jewish history at all, they have occupied the land of Canaan, of course, but did they destroy the Canaanite people as God instructed? No, they didn't. And they got soft-hearted, and they thought, well, we can use these people for servants. And for one reason or another, they left off destroying the Canaanite people. Now, just exactly as God promised, as we studied it two or three weeks ago, what kind of an effect did the Canaanite people have upon the children of Israel? Took them right into idolatry. Now, that's something that's hard to comprehend, how a nation of people, such as Israel, who had all of the manifestation, the miracle-working power of their Jehovah God in their midst, and yet they would turn to pagan idols. Well, the history of Israel then, throughout those 300, 400 years of the book of Judges, is a roller coaster. They'll reach a spiritual height under a good judge, who was merely a ruler under God, a God-centered government. And then when he would pass off the scene, the children of Israel would forget all about him and Jehovah, and they'd dip into idolatry, and down they'd go. Enemies would come in and overrun them, tax them, put them under servitude, and then finally the Jews would cry and lament their state. God would hear, bring another judge on the scene. Now, when I speak of the judges, I'm talking of the likes, of course, of Gideon, Samson, even though he was a sorry one, yet he was one of the judges. And you have Barak and Gideon, just to name a few. And then the last one, of course, was Samuel. Samuel was the last of the judges. So every time they have a judge come on the scene, Israel comes up spiritually, prospers materially, and they have it going good, but he dies, and then down they go. And then another judge comes on, and up they come. Three to four hundred years of that. Now then, it finally got to the place, of course, where I guess I should go back. I got you in II Kings, haven't I? Now, I want you to back up with me to Samuel. Come back with me to, I think it's I Samuel, chapter 8. I Samuel, chapter 8. And, of course, Israel, after all of her ups and downs, at the time of Samuel, she has it fairly good. Her sons, of course, were a grief to him. They were certainly not godly. And so, when his ungodly sons began to carry on, the people also began to complain to Samuel that, after all, his sons were not honoring Jehovah. And so, they finally come to the place in verse 5 of I Samuel, chapter 8. I'm sorry I threw that curve at you. I guess I just forgot. I want to come back here to Samuel. In Samuel, chapter 8, verse 5 or 4, Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel under Ramah. And they said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons, they walk not in thy ways. They're not in relationship with Jehovah like you are. Now, make us a king to judge or rule us like what? All the other nations around us. See, everybody had their king. Now, you want to remember that when God made that covenant first with Abraham and then with Moses and the nation of Israel, the first thing he mandated that Israel was to be what? Different. They were to be a set-apart nation of people. That's what sanctification really means. They were to be a sanctified people. They weren't supposed to be like the rest of the nations. But now, what do they want? Hey, we want to be like everybody else. They've all got a king. We want a king. And poor old Samuel is just heartbroken. Now, read on. Verse 6, the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge or rule us. And so Samuel runs back to the Lord. And he prayed to the Lord or to Jehovah. But Jehovah said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee. Do you hear what he said? He says, Samuel, let them have their way. For they have not rejected you, Samuel, they've rejected me. They had turned on Jehovah. Now, I imagine Israel well knew that all these nations around them with their king were pagan. They were idolaters, every one of them. I always have to stress that, you know, that no one but Israel had a knowledge of the one true God. And when Israel would leave off and go into idolatry, there was no witness left. And then God would have to again pick out one man, such as a Gideon and such as a Samson and such as a Samuel, and to bring the people back. It was a sorry state of affairs. It really was. So anyway, they've rejected God. And so He says, go ahead and let them have a king. Then when you get into chapter 9, we have the account now of Israel choosing their first king. And who is it? Saul. King Saul. Now, if you remember when we were teaching way back in Genesis, several have written that they picked it up through the program. And I'm glad when people think of some of these things. All through Scripture there is a format that is never abridged, and it is first the natural and then the spiritual. It carries all the way through from Genesis to Revelation. Now, what do I mean first the natural and then the spiritual? The first man, Adam, was natural. He was of the earth. He was earthy. The second Adam, as we pick up then in Romans and Corinthians, was who? Christ. He wasn't earthy. He was what? He's spiritual. So first the natural, then the spiritual. Now you come into the birth of the first two boys on record. The first was Cain, the natural man who had no faith. The second was Abel, the spiritual. You come up a little further, and I'm just hitting a few of the more well -known ones. The next, of course, are Esau, the natural, no faith. Jacob, the spiritual. Now we come to King Saul, the natural, not a godly man. Who will follow him? David, the spiritual. And all the way through Scripture. Now bring it down to our own situation. We come on the scene, and what are we? We're natural. That's our lost estate. We're natural. We're of the flesh. But when we have our born-again experience, we become what? Spiritual. And so it will all the way, and I said to the very end. First you have the false Christ, the counterfeit Christ, the man anti-Christ, natural. He'll be followed by the second coming again of the true Christ, the spiritual. So just watch for it. All through Scripture, first the natural and then the spiritual. So Saul, King Saul now then, comes on the scene as the first king. He is natural. He's of the flesh. He is not of the Spirit of God. And, of course, you know what happened during Saul's reign. He finally went off the scene in disrepute, and King David comes on the scene and takes his place. Now, just as a review then of Israel's history, and I'm going to do that just sort of off the cuff without taking a lot of Scripture verses for it, most of you are aware that after David died and Solomon takes the throne, Solomon took the kingdom of Israel to its greatest height. Under Solomon, Israel even got a little more than what the three or two and a half tribes had here. Solomon's empire sort of went out like this and then back. Now, we know that according to the Abrahamic Covenant, the Euphrates River runs clear out here all the way down to the Persian Gulf and coming out of southeastern Turkey. But Solomon didn't get all of it, but he got more than anyone before him or after him. But the Abrahamic Covenant, of course, says that it's going to go all the way to the Euphrates and then come back down to the Red Sea and then back up to the River of Egypt. Now, that's all future and that will not be consummated, of course, until Christ returns and sets up His kingdom and Israel will have that whole Middle East. That's still in her future. But nevertheless, under David and Solomon, Israel did reach a pinnacle of greatness. I don't have to remind you. What did the Queen of Sheba say? Why, the half hasn't even been told of the glory of Solomon's kingdom. Had great copper mines, which, of course, the scoffers for years said couldn't have been. They didn't have the technology. Well, now we know they did, and he indeed produced copper. He had chariots, horsemen. By the thousands, they had a great world trade of the then known world under Solomon. But even though Solomon started out as a godly king, how did he finally end up? Well, with his 900 pagan wives and he set up altars all over Israel, he was setting the stage again for the fall and the demise of God's covenant people. And so Solomon dies, and Solomon has a son by the name of Rehoboam, and he was naturally heir apparent to the throne. And so Rehoboam comes on the scene, and immediately the elders of Israel tell him, Now look, your father built a great and glorious kingdom, but it was at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer. You know, aren't we up against it the same way today? My land, I just heard again on the way up. Even here a few years ago when they had that tax increase that was supposed to balance the budget, for every dollar that they raised our taxes, how much did they spend? A dollar and 83 cents. See, and that's exactly what's happening to us. They can raise our taxes, but they spend twice as much as what they raised. Well, it's the same way under Solomon. See, nothing is new under the sun. They taxed them to death, and so they told Rehoboam, Now look, your father Solomon is a great king, but he taxed us, and he taxed us, and he taxed us. Back off from that, and Israel will just elevate you. They'll just think the world of you. Good advice, wasn't it? But what did Rehoboam do? He said, No way. Tax them some more. Tax them some more. And so the ten tribes, especially to the north now then, these other than Judah and Benjamin, now here we got old Jericho here from last week, and right over here about in the center now is Jerusalem. Get my map straight. And then just a little ways north is Samaria. That's between the area of the Dead Sea and Galilee. We got Samaria. And so when Rehoboam refused to lower the taxes and keep peace amongst the people, the ten tribes of the north seceded, I guess we would say. And they said, All right, we'll have our own king. And that turned out to be not even a man who was in the kingly or the royal family line. And his name was Jeroboam. Now, I didn't necessarily remember these names, but nevertheless, you got Rehoboam now, a son of Solomon, who is going to set up shop on his father's throne in Jerusalem, where, of course, the temple now is. Don't forget that. But these ten tribes of the north, which we normally refer to as Israel or the northern kingdom, and we've got Judah down here and Benjamin, those two tribes. And so Rehoboam is king here in Jerusalem, and Jeroboam becomes king then of the northern ten tribes. Now, keep that because I think this is relatively important even up to our own day. So the nation is divided. Now, the first part of Israel that goes into abject idolatry will be the northern kingdom under Jeroboam. He immediately sets up idolatrous worship. He immediately leads the northern ten tribes into idolatry. And so they're going to go down the banana peel first. 150 years later, Judah will follow. Now I'd like to have you turn to where you were a moment ago, and that was 2 Kings, yeah, chapter 17. 2 Kings, chapter 17. Now, again, a lot of time has gone by. The years are piling up. And here we are now at the time of the fall of these northern tribes, about 740 or 750 years B.C. And look what God has to do. Now, this is over hundreds of years, remember, that they have just, excuse me, been going down and down and down. Now, here was the state of Israel. 2 Kings, chapter 17, verse 7. Now, I know this is almost a little too fast a review of Israel's history, but not everybody likes history as well as I do, and I don't want to bore you with it unnecessarily. But as the nation has been divided, they have set up a separate government in Samaria. They have set up their own religious system at Samaria. And now, you see, Syria is up here to the northeast, and Syria has always been a mortal enemy of Israel. Now, let's read what the book says. Verse 7 of chapter 17. For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and they had feared of the God. And they walked in the statutes of whom? The heathen. Imagine. They became just exactly like those heathen Canaanites all around them. And so they walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel and of the kings of Israel which they had made. And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right. Drop down to verse 10. They set them up images and groves in every high hill. Can you imagine what that was like? As you would walk through the countryside of Israel, every place there was a little hill with some trees growing on it. What was in the middle of it? Some idol, some shrine. And they could just stop and worship. Verse 11. There they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before, and they wrought wicked things. Now, always remember, I've said it over and over and over. It wasn't just that they bowed their knee to an idol. That in itself was bad enough. But whenever you go into idolatry, you go into abject immorality as well. In the name of religion. That's the way it's always been and always will be. So they went into all of the sins of the heathen. Verse 12. They served idols whereof the Lord had said, You shall not do this thing. And then drop all the way down to verse 14. Notwithstanding, they would not hear, but hardened their necks. Verse 15. They rejected His statutes and His covenant that He had made with their fathers. Verse 16. They left all the commandments of the Lord their God. Do you see what they're doing? They are literally just telling God, Get out of my life. We don't want you. We don't want you in our national life. We don't want you in our personal life. Verse 17. They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire. Now, I've emphasized this several weeks ago, but I think it bears repeating. Do you know how low those Israelites got spiritually? They actually offered their own little children to the gods in fire. Now, the idol of Moloch was sort of like a Buddha, but with his arms outstretched, and they would heat that white hot, and then they would lay their babies on those outstretched arms of the god Moloch. Imagine. Imagine. Israelites. Well, God couldn't take it anymore. Keep your hand here in Kings. We'll come right back. I'd like to have you turn just a second to Jeremiah. Now, Jeremiah foretold all these things, and he tried to warn Israel as well as Judah. Of course, Jeremiah was predominantly in the southern kingdom. I know that. But what was for one was for the other. Now, in Jeremiah chapter 44, this is the mentality of the Israelites, and this is why God had to deal so severely with them. They had just turned their back on everything that he had tried to do with them. Now, as we're looking at all this, keep your mind back on Genesis 12 when God called Abraham and made that covenant with him that they were to be a nation of people living in the land who would in turn be under his sovereign kingship. And then if they would have been a nation of believers, God would have used them to take a knowledge of himself to all these heathen around him. But you see, they're losing their set-apart position. They're losing everything that God had given them. Now look what they do. In Jeremiah 44, and we have to, for sake of time, jump all the way down to, oh, verse 16. I'd better read verse 15 because I think we're seeing the same thing today. When it comes to apostasy, and I'm not anti-feminist. You gals know that. But when it comes to apostasy and spiritual things, the women lead the way. Do you know that? Look at it here. Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods. Who was doing it? Their wives. But the men knew about it, of course. And all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, Pathos, and Jer... They answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, or Jehovah, we will not hearken unto thee. We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, now watch it, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven. Who's the queen of heaven? The female goddesses. It was Ashtoreth in one case, it was Venus in another, but it was always that same female goddess that was at the very core of most abject idolatry. All right, we will burn incense to the queen of heaven, pour out drink offerings to her. Verse 18, Since we left off burning incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things. You see what they're saying? How ridiculous. If we don't worship the queen of heaven, we don't have anything. We can't even get food to eat if we don't worship her. That's what they're saying. Now come on down. Verse 20, Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men and to the women, and to all the people which are getting that answer, saying, The incense that you burned in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, ye and your fathers, your kings, your princes, and so on and so forth, did not the Lord remember them? Did it not come into his mind so that the Lord could no longer bear because of the evil and what have you? All right, now quickly back to 2 Kings. What did he finally have to do? Now we're talking about the northern kingdom, the northern ten tribes. And so come down now in chapter 17, verse 18, Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of His sight. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only. Verse 20, And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel and afflicted them and delivered them into the hand of spoilers until He had cast them out of His sight. For He had rent Israel from the house of David, that was when they seceded, and He afflicted them and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, for He rent Israel, verse 21, from the house of David and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. Verse 22, For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam, which he did, they departed not from them. And now read that last verse. Verse 23, Until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight and so was Israel carried away to the Assyrians. Good. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the Scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, 30706 West Lona Valley Road, Kenta, Oklahoma 74552 or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette and videotape. Be sure to tune in next time to Through the Bible with Les Feldick.