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Who is in charge?

1 Samuel 8: 1 – end

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 03 Jul, 2005

THE BASIC question for individuals or for society is, “Who is in charge?” How a society answers that question will affect work, welfare, families, politics, terrorism and just about everything.

  This problem has troubled people for centuries and will trouble people until Jesus returns. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is a story about who is in charge, so is the story of the Tower of Babel. The history of the Patriarchs, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, constantly deals with questions of who is in charge. The Israelites struggling under the Pharaohs faced the question of who is in charge. So did the new nation under the Judges, the Kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon. and the Jews returning from Babylon.

 Over and over, the big question is, “Who is in charge?”; and the fates of individuals and nations rest on the answer.

  And your fate and mine, and the fate of our nation, rest on our answer to the question, “Who is in charge?”

  1 Samuel tells about the end of the old system of rule by judges and its replacement by kings.

 After Israel settled in Canaan’s fair and happy land, they were a small and scattered people, struggling against powerful neighbours. They had no great organisations or structures. When enemies attacked, the Israelite farmers and herders grabbed what weapons they had, and fought guerilla wars against their enemies.

  When the people grew complacent, and forgot the Lord, God gave them over into the hands of the nations living around them; when the people repented, God raised up a judge, a man of justice, to lead them back into victory.

 Samuel was the last of their judges.

  But the people looked at the nations around them and desired what their neighbours had.

“You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

they said.

They wanted kings; they didn‘t want temporary judges. They wanted pomp and splendour; they wanted a figurehead. And the idea had Samuel peeved. We read,

1SA 8:6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD.

  Some years ago, the Baptists of NSW saw a lack. Every year, we elected a President to chair our Assembly meetings. But we had no permanent head.

 At State Functions, the Government gives precedence based on length of service. So Catholic and Anglican and Orthodox leaders always came first in the processions, always got seats at the head table, always spent official mealtimes talking to Premiers and Governors and Prime Ministers.

 So, when a politician wanted to know what the Churches thought on an issue, he would ask someone he knew — an archbishop.

 And, at the tail end came the Presidents of groups like Baptists and the Churches of Christ. No one knew them; no one asked their opinions, none got to the head table.

 So we decided to elect a General Superintendent to be the Permanent Head, and stay there for years, and be invited and consulted.

  Some Baptists were upset like Samuel. They said, “We are electing an Archbishop! Don’t do it!” But most saw at least some good points to having a General Superintendent.

  When Israel wanted a king, not every single person sided with that idea, nor was Samuel alone in opposing it.

  My guess is that many were like us Baptists in the mid 1990s: they had mixed feelings.

 Of course, Samuel was upset. He was upset that the people rejected God. He said, “Your only true King is God. If you take a king like the surrounding nations do, you will regret it, because that means that you don’t want God as your king, you want an ordinary human being.”

¹⁸ When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

he told them.

  In the early 1500s, Martin Luther spearheaded a movement which became known as The Reformation. I say, “spearheaded”, because the movement grew so rapidly that it is clear that many other people were thinking the same as Luther. But it was Luther who put it all into words and showed a way ahead for practical action.

 The rapid division of the Reformation also shows how widespread the demand for reform had been. While many followed Luther, many others already had different ideas. Some followed Zwingli, some followed Calvin, some followed the Anabaptists.

 The Reformation was also about who is in charge. The Reformers said that a solution had to be found to put God back in central place.

 When the Reformers said, “sola scriptura” — “by Scripture alone”, the underlying issue was, “When it comes to the crunch, does the final authority lie with the Pope, or with a Council, or does authority lie with what God himself has said through his word?”

  Skip forwards a little more than a century. In the 1630s and 1640s, after years of conflict, Civil War broke out in England.

  At the heart of that conflict was a big question: where does ultimate authority lie?

  I won’t pretend that there was not a lot of self–interest and sin in what happened.

  But the King said, “I have been placed here by God; therefore, I rule by divine right.” He rejected the authority of Parliament. When the Parliament disagreed with him, he dissolved Parliament. That was why they called it the Short Parliament.

  Debate raged, fueled by an economic crisis and by the King’s foolish decisions.

 And the Puritan and Presbyterian Parliamentary forces concluded that no King was the ultimate authority on earth, no more than the Pope or the Metropolitan of Constantinople or anyone else was.

  They argued for the collective authority of sensible people who obeyed God as they discovered his will in the Bible.

 You might react against this. The rabble doesn’t speak for God. In the French Revolution, some people proclaimed, “Vox populi, vox dei” — ”The voice of the people is God’s voice.” But it’s not.

 We all know that mere numbers do not equate with the will of God.

  It was a mob which called for the crucifixion of Jesus, after all. And mobs still reject him.

 Did the mobs which rampaged through Jewish areas on Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany speak for God? Do the mobs which abuse workers at abortion clinics speak for God — no matter how wrong abortion is? Don’t majorities vote evil men into governments?

  But we know that sensible women and men can meet together around God’s word and discern his will.

  We know that a minority can know God’s purposes, that one person can stand against the human tide and change the flow of history.

  We know that each of us is responsible to discern and obey God’s will, even if the world is against us. even if our church disagrees.

 It was just like this when Peter and John stood before the Sanhedrin.

AC 4:18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. ¹⁹ But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. ²⁰ For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

  For Peter and John, though there were only two of them, and though the Sanhedrin was the most powerful court in Israel, there was only ever one decision. They repeated it whenever they were hauled before the courts:

AC 5:29 Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men!...”

  When the chips are down, when it is crunch time, that has to be the final choice: we must obey God rather than men. And, if obeying God puts us in conflict with the authorities, so be it.

 There are times in every life when we have to confront that choice. Who will rule my life? Who will rule my town? Who will rule the State or the Country?

 The Evangelist and revivalist, John Wesley, was one of England’s bold men. People pelted him with stones, manure, eggs, and he kept preaching. People attempted to shoot him, and he stood his ground.

  But his wife — whom he married comparatively late in life — would grab him by the hair and fling him into the wall. Sometimes she beat him with saucepans and rolling pins.

 And Wesley didn’t know what to do about it. He was powerless before his wife’s onslaught, and they finally separated.

 While they were together, her violence was a great hindrance to his mission. She controlled him, until he gave up and ran away.

  It’s sad that many people are bold in public, but controlled by a wife or a husband or a parent. Yes, we need to be loving towards our closest family; but “loving towards” doesn’t mean “dominated by”. Too many Christians abandon their faith because of some significant person won the tussle and took control.

 But those Christian also made a choice. Those Christians said, “I will have a king, and God will not necessarily rule my life any more.”

  It is also sad that we Christians so often capitulate to the world we live in.

  It is fashionable for Christians to be partisans of right–wing political groups. Many newspaper articles have devoted themselves to this topic since George W Bush managed to increase his vote from Evangelicals by 10%.

 Thirty years ago, Evangelicals were hardly interested in politics. We believed that our aim was to get the world converted and social ills would sort themselves out.

  Then we read the Old Testament, and realised that we have a role in social issues.

 But, for too many, that became a decision to support the right wing parties.

  What happens when political parties become the supreme ruler? What happens when Christians side with John Howard or Kim Beazley or any of the other hopefuls?

  Unless we, as believers, subject all the authorities and all the powers and all the realms of this dark world to the light of Christ, we cede authority to those human institutions and reject the rule of Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

 It is as Samuel predicted:

11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots [... ] ¹⁶ Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle 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, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

 Never imagine that this only refers to how things were in Israel 3 000 years ago. It’s about our choices today, and where we put our trust.

 We live in a world where we are told repeatedly that business will look after us if we look after them. The Bible says that God will look after us if we do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with him.

  Who is in charge here?

 We live in a world where we are told repeatedly that the rich will not work unless they are given money and the poor will not work unless they have money taken from them.

 The Bible tells us that a labourer is worthy of his hire and condemns those who withhold mercy from the poor.

 Who is in charge here?

  We live in a world where we are told repeatedly that our security depends on harassment of people who are different. The Bible tells us to welcome the stranger and the sojourner.

  Who is in charge here?:

 We live in a world which says that the economy will improve if justice is denied to workers; the Bible says that God’s wrath will fall on those who deny justice.

  Who is in charge here?

  We live in a world where the injured are deported, the mentally ill incarcerated, the asylum–seekers detained indefinitely. The Bible says that to give the hungry something to eat, to give the thirsty something to drink, to invite the stranger in, is to serve Jesus. It tells us that clothing the naked, looking after the sick and visiting the imprisoned is to minister in just those ways to Christ the Lord.

 Who is in charge here?

  So here is our question:

“Who is in charge?” Who will be in charge? Who will we stand for in our lives and in our societies? Mammon or God? The world or the coming Kingdom?

 When a nation abandons God, at first very little changes. But gradually people begin to abandon ethics. It happens little by little. Subtle changes, as people develop a feeling that there is no authority to respond to, except my own. From believing that the final judge and arbiter is God, people come to believe that the final judge and arbiter is public opinion. Morality is overturned in favour of expedience; what will get me results becomes the norm, what I can get away with becomes the operating principle.

 As much as Saul gave up obedience to God and began doing what he thought would keep the people on side, nations and their leaders have given up God today. And Christians, sadly, too often persecute those who sin through fear and ignorance and vote for those who sin through greed and avarice. We condemn heroin addicts and applaud power addicts.

  Our attitudes need to be governed by Christ, who died for the ungodly; our actions need to reflect his care and both the justice and the mercy of God. And that will often put us into direct confrontation with the world and its ways.

 The time has come for all good Christians to choose whom they will serve. We have to determine whether or not God will be in charge.

  The same challenge confronts us as confronted Israel as they entered the land. As Joshua said,

JOS 24:15 ...if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

This challenge still applies to us: who will be in charge, from today and forever more?

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)