Israel’s Rebellion and the Rise of Saul

1 Samuel 8:1-18

Main Idea: Israel’s rebellion in requesting a king “like all the other nations” is answered by God’s grace in providing a king they need.

1. A Rebellious Demand
2. What Was Wrong with the Demand?
3. What Was So Devastating about the Demand?
4. What Did God, in His Grace, Do with Their Demand?

David’s life is not just a random personality profile of a cool guy in the Old Testament. It is not just the tale of a fascinating man who killed a giant and fought great battles and slept with a woman who was not his wife. No, the Old Testament has a lot of stories, but they are all part of one grand story, and that is the coming of Jesus Christ. All these stories are designed to show readers that Jesus Christ is the ultimate answer to humanity’s problems and that Jesus Christ is essentially what mankind is searching for.

David’s life, specifically, is the story of Israel’s search for a king. At this point in Israel’s history, Israel has taken possession of the promised land. In 1 Samuel 8, they are demanding a king who will protect them, prosper them, and fulfill them.

There is nothing wrong with Israel’s request for a king per se. In fact, God had already told Israel He would one day give them one (Deut 17:20). However, the reasons behind their request show a complete lack of faith in God. God was supposed to be their true King. He was supposed to be the one they depended on to meet their needs. But here they are saying, “Well, sure, it is all well and good to have God there like a safety net—something to fall back on in an emergency. We certainly do not want to tick Him off so that He sends us to hell. But in the here and now, we have real bills to pay, real enemies who want to hurt us, and real social issues to deal with. Frankly, we need something more than an invisible God whose whereabouts are unknown half the time. We need somebody we can depend on, someone we can hold accountable.”

God rightly calls this a rejection of Him. It was not total rejection, as if they wanted nothing to do with God. It was rejection through demanding that God give some other source of happiness and security. Both are forms of rejection, and they still persist today: Irreligious people reject God by not wanting Him to be a part of their lives at all; religious people reject God by letting Him be a part of their lives but not really trusting Him or depending on Him.

A word picture may help explain the difference. When I was in high school, I (J. D.) took up rock climbing as a hobby. One day a friend suggested that instead of climbing up the rock face, we rappel down it. Even though I had never rappelled before, I got volunteered to go first. The belay rope was tied around me, and I stood with my back toward a 75-foot drop. The guide told me to “lean back.”

I stood there for a few seconds working up my courage, and then I leaned back. Fully committed. What was surely no longer than a nanosecond seemed like an eternity as I waited for the rope to catch me. But it did, and there I stood, perpendicular to the rock face and parallel to the ground, suspended in the air by a rope.

My best friend was next. He had never rappelled before either. From 75 feet below, I could hear him being given the same instructions I was given. But when it came time to lean back, he did not budge. Instead, he took one of his legs and felt down below for a foothold. He found one, and then another and then another. He slowly worked his way down the rock face, one foothold at a time. Of course, that is not rappelling. That is rock climbing with rappelling equipment.

Both my friend and I had all the same equipment. Both of us were going the same general direction—down the face of the rock. Still, there was a huge difference in what we were doing. When you rappel, you are leaning your full weight on the rope, trusting it to keep you off the ground. When you are rock climbing, you are using your hands and feet to move up the mountain, and the rope is there as a safety net. My friend did not lean his weight back on the rope because he didn’t trust it. He trusted his own arms and legs and wanted the rope there as a safety net if he slipped.

That is the picture of what is happening with Israel here. They want God as their safety net but are still primarily trusting in their own strength.

A Rebellious Demand

First Samuel 8 begins with Samuel. Remember him? He was the one who was miraculously born to Hannah. He grew up to be one of Israel’s greatest prophets. He heard directly from God and told the people what God wanted. Unfortunately, his sons turn out to be dirtbags, and they do not follow God (8:3). All of this provides an opportunity for Israel to request something they have been itching after for some time.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and went to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not follow your example. Therefore, appoint a king to judge us the same as all the other nations have.”

When they said, “Give us a king to judge us,” Samuel considered their demand sinful, so he prayed to the Lord. (1 Sam 8:4-6)

Why is Samuel displeased? Is this just a personal insult? Is he just upset because they wanted a change of regime and had stopped liking him? Certainly, that is involved. But Samuel senses something deeper in this request than just disapproval of his children, and he is correct.

But the Lord told him, “Listen to the people and everything they say to you. They have not rejected you; they have rejected Me as their king. They are doing the same thing to you that they have done to Me, since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, abandoning Me and worshiping other gods.” (1 Sam 8:7-8)

Their request represents a complete lack of trust in God and satisfaction with Him. God was supposed to be their real King. They were supposed to depend on Him for everything. But from the beginning that had never been enough for them. They never trusted Him enough to say, “God, I am just going to do Your will, and I will let You worry about everything else.”

No, they had constantly demanded golden calves and strong armies and guaranteed food and water sources and safe land conditions to feel secure.

They had never rejected God outright; they had always said, “God, yes, we want You . . . but we also need a guarantee of this, and that, and this, and that.” There are two ways to reject God: one is to reject Him outright; the other is to say you follow Him but then not really to depend on Him. It is still rebellion to claim to follow God but to insist on a number of other things being present in your life before you will feel secure.

This is not just an ancient Israelite problem. This is our problem. Is it not easier to “trust God” when everything that you feel like you need for life is right in front of you? Your job is secure, your marriage is fulfilling, everyone you care about is healthy. But when one of those things is missing, do you not have this feeling of insecurity or anxiety or unhappiness? Israel is not content to lean back and trust God. So they feel they need something they can get their hands on and control.

What Was Wrong with the Demand?

Wouldn’t it be easier to trust God and follow Him if you had some kind of binding, legal guarantee of what He would do? Imagine some sort of guaranteed overdraft protection on your bank account, so that when you were out of money, it would automatically dip into God’s, and you could look online and see how much money God had at the moment. Or maybe you would like a security system on your house that automatically tied into God, so that when a burglar came in, a couple of angels showed up to “whup up on” the bad guys. Or maybe you would like a little God medical insurance card that came in the mail and said, “May get sick temporarily but will be always be miraculously healed.”

It would be so much easier to trust God if we could control Him. But we cannot, and so we have a list of requirements that we demand in addition to God. We will “follow” Him, but we have some stipulations as well.

God calls that a rejection of Him because it is a rejection of trust in Him. The author of Hebrews says that without faith it is impossible to please God because those with faith must believe that He rewards those who seek Him (Heb 11:6). To know God, you have to trust Him, to lean on Him.

You see, when you do not trust someone, you feel like you have to control them. The reason we require contracts enforceable by law with people we do business with is because we do not inherently trust them to keep up their end of the bargain. So we control them with contracts.

My kids do this with me (J. D.). I took one of my daughters out for some daddy-daughter time recently, and on the way to the mall, she tried to get me to promise her all sorts of stuff. “Daddy, do you promise that we will get candy? Do you promise that we will go to the toy store? Daddy, do you promise that if we eat lunch, we can get ice cream for dessert?”

What is going on? She does not trust me, so she wants guarantees that I will perform to her expectations. What is so sad about this is that my whole philosophy as a dad is to spoil her, to take good care of her, to be so gracious to her that every boy she dates in the future is a letdown.

This is where Israel is. They want a king they can see and touch and control because they do not fully trust God. And God rightly calls this rejection because everything about His character proves that they should be able to trust Him.

“Listen to them,” God says, and give them a king (v. 9). God calls their request for a king disobedience, but then He acquiesces. This is a little confusing. If this request was so bad, why did God give it to them? Why not simply say no? This is why: God will sometimes answer your prayers to let you learn the hard way that what you were asking for was wrong.

Have you ever had that happen? Have you ever wanted something so badly that you worked for it, you obsessed over it, and you prayed about it—but then when you got it, it was not what you thought it would be? What you had hoped would be a blessing turned out to be more of a curse in your life.

This happens all the time for people who win the lottery. Most people still assume that life would be so easy, so good with millions of dollars. But what happens? Most people who win the lottery have none of the money left within just a few years. And throughout the process, they are harassed by so many people who want their money that countless relationships break down. What they had wanted as a blessing turned out to be an enormous curse.

Some people work feverishly to get a particular job or a particular promotion. But once they reach the apex, as they look back on their lives, they realize it was a curse because it destroyed their family. Having the “job you always wanted” does not lead to happiness because it so often comes with enormous stress or with relational dysfunction.

Many people think this way about marriage. A certain woman, for instance, may demand a husband. “Oh, God, I have to be married. Please, God, do not leave me single! I need to be married, and now!” Sometimes God says, “Fine. So you do not trust Me? Here is Mr. Perfect. Enjoy.” But Mr. Perfect can never satisfy the role God is supposed to fill, so the marriage becomes a mess.

One of the worst judgment statements in the Bible is Romans 1:26: God turned them over to the desires of their heart. In other words, God’s judgment on them was to answer all their prayers with a yes.

The reverse is also true. Some of God’s greatest mercies to us come in the form of unanswered prayers. This should change how we think of unanswered prayers. Some people get so mad at God for not answering their prayers. But what if He is refusing to answer your prayer as a way of protecting you? It may not seem like protection. After all, what is the harm in being married? What is so bad about making an extra $20,000 a year? But the greatest blessing God could ever give is the ability to be happy in Him alone. Sometimes He has to teach us that lesson by withholding blessings we think would be beneficial.

This happens with ministers just like everyone else. Some pastors get really upset at God for not answering their prayers to make their churches big. But many of them may be experiencing God’s no because they are incredibly arrogant. The worst thing for them would be for God to give them success and fan the fire of their ego. So God keeps their ministry small as a mercy to them, so that they would learn to trust Him and be fulfilled in Him.

To clarify, it is not inherently wrong to desire money or marriage or success. It is not wrong to ask God for them. There is nothing sinful about praying, “God, I really want to be married,” or, “I really want to have children,” or, “I really would like a raise.”

The problem comes when a person craves those things and feels like they could not be happy or secure without them. That sort of passion is what the Bible calls epithumia—a desire that has taken on so much weight that it drives everything about a person. It is the “lust” for worldly goods in 1 John 2:16-17. Epithumia is a craving that controls (Rom 1:24). This is what Israel feels about a king. Their desire for a king is a craving they could not live without.

Israel was not supposed to avoid having a king at all costs. They were supposed to avoid being consumed by the idea. Whenever life is consumed with things—even good things—then it shows that God has been displaced. He has been outweighed by some lesser thing.

The result of this displacement is never pretty. It leads to unhappiness, anxiety, and depression. These things are like smoke from a fire, and if you follow the smoke down to its source, you will find the fires of idolatry.

So God gives Israel their king, telling Samuel, “You must solemnly warn them and tell them about the rights of the king who will rule over them” (v. 9). Samuel does exactly that, warning Israel of the devastating consequences of their idolatrous request (vv. 11-18).

What Was So Devastating about the Demand?

The dominant word in this description is take. The king will take your sons and daughters; he will take your crops and your lands; he will take the best years of your lives. And he will exploit them for himself.

The irony here is tremendous. The Israelites look to a king to guarantee prosperity and security. What they receive instead is a king who would take those things from them. They wanted a king whom they could control. Instead, that king ends up controlling them.

This is an Old Testament version of a New Testament principle: when you have other kings besides God, those kings do not save you; they tyrannize you.

Whatever you depend on for happiness and security, you become the slave of that thing. For example, if you have to be married to be happy, you become the slave of marriage. You feel miserable all the time if you are single. You live with depression because you are alone. You make bad relationship decisions and end up dating terrible people and doing foolish things.

This does not get better once you get married, either. If you depend on marriage to be happy, then once you get married, you become co-dependent. You constantly feel like your spouse lets you down. You are constantly tempted to leave your marriage and find fulfillment in a new marriage or an extramarital affair.

If you have to be successful to find fulfillment, you become the slave of success. You overwork; you get jealous of other successful people; you resent others their opportunities, promotions, and praise. You are devastated when people talk about you without giving you due credit and recognizing your value. We say that certain people are “driven by success,” but a better way to say it might be that they are “enslaved by success.” Success drives us until we destroy our families, our health, our very lives.

If you have to have some physical escape to release stress or feel relaxed, it can quickly enslave you. It starts out as an enjoyable escape that you can control, but it ends up as a tyrant that controls you. The type of escape varies—pornography, drugs, alcohol, overeating. But the pattern is the same. It begins as something you can go to on your own terms to escape the tedium of your day. But then you begin to crave it, and more of it, and worse types of it. And you cannot turn the drive off. The physical pleasure you once mastered quickly masters you, ruining relationships and souring every aspect of your life.

Every life has a king. A king in your life is whatever you must have in order to be happy and secure. And kings make all their subjects into servants. The apostle Paul says it this way: “But in the past, when you didn’t know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not gods” (Gal 4:8); and “Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey . . . ?” (Rom 6:16). Or as Bob Dylan says, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Now, there are always some free spirits who feel like they have gamed the whole system. “‘You’re gonna serve somebody,’ huh? Well, not me. I don’t need anything or anybody. I’m not enslaved to any of that stuff. I’m a free man.” But these are the same people who are afraid to commit in their relationships. Precisely because they are “free,” they will not allow anything to stand in the way of their absolute independence. Independence becomes their king, and they become its slave. They must have selfish independence to be happy.

Everybody serves something. There are no exceptions. You are either enslaved to something that brings life (God), or you are enslaved to something that brings death.

First Samuel 8 ends with God warning the people of Israel of all the bad consequences of receiving a king. They demand one anyway, and in the next few chapters, God gives them exactly what they ask for. God gives Israel a king named Saul, who was smart, a good leader, and physically buff. Saul promises change, gives the people hope they could believe in, and guarantees that Israel’s status in the world would be restored.

But after a good start, Saul starts to do exactly what God said he would. He starts to use the people for his own advantage. He turns out to be a self-idolizing, self-willed tyrant.

What Did God, in His Grace, Do with Their Demand?

Christians who read the story of Saul cannot end by saying, “Poor Israelites, they should not have done that. Bad Saul, he should not have been so bad.” No, Saul is being set up in contrast to God’s true King, Jesus. What Saul fails to deliver for the people of Israel, Jesus would fulfill in magnificent ways.

Note some of the parallels between Saul and Jesus. When Saul is anointed king, he is filled with the Spirit and he starts to prophesy (10:1-13). When Jesus is anointed, the Holy Spirit descends from heaven like a dove, and Jesus begins to speak with the voice of God (Matt 3:16-17; 4:17).

But note the contrasts. Saul would start well, but Jesus would end well, faithful unto death. Saul thought of his own interests, but Jesus thought primarily of ours. Saul made Israel his servants, but Jesus said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt 20:28). Saul’s sinful, selfish choices would cause many in Israel to die. Jesus’ loving choices would cause many in Israel to live. Israel had to die for Saul’s sins, but Jesus would die for ours. Saul was harsh and unforgiving with those who disappointed him. When Jesus’ subjects disappointed and rebelled against Him, He laid down His life for them.

Jesus, God in the flesh, was the King the people of Israel were seeking. He alone could satisfy and save. Every king says, “Please me, obey me, and I will guarantee you happiness.” Money says, “Find me and you will be happy.” Marriage says, “Find me and you will be happy.” Family, success, fame, independence—all make these claims.

But every king also says, “If you disappoint me, I will make you miserable.” Money says that: “If you fail to get me, and you become poor, you will be miserable.” Marriage says, “If you fail to get me, and you grow old single, life will be terrible.” As Tim Keller says, “Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally” (The Reason for God, 179).

We all have to choose a king. Each of us has already chosen one. We are either enslaved to something that brings life or enslaved to something that brings death. What will we choose from this point forward?

All earthly kings disappoint. But God is an altogether different King. He showed Israel time and time again that He had been faithful to them, even when they were not. They were unbelieving in the wilderness, but God gave them manna. They served idols, which led to other nations afflicting them; but when they called out to God in repentance, He immediately came to their aid and delivered them. Here is a King who not only supplies the needs of His own but also forgives and has mercy on those who fail Him. Why would anyone desire another king than Him?

We have the chance to make the choice that Israel did not make—the choice of faith. And we have more evidence to analyze than they did. We have a longer history of God’s faithfulness to reflect on, more stories of His faithfulness in the midst of human faithlessness. Most importantly, we have the cross, the ultimate display of God’s love and faithfulness to us. There is no king we could serve who gave more for us than God did.

Many people find the idea of the Christian God just fine—provided they can institute certain conditions. “As long as God does this, prevents me from that, provides me with this, then I will follow Him.” But that is not faith at all. That is rebellion because conditional obedience is still disobedience. To follow this King, we must step out in faith, with absolutely no conditions and no exceptions.

How can we be sure God will take care of us? How can we lean back into the unknown with confidence that God will actually hold us up? We need only to look at the cross, where God poured Himself out for us. There, on Calvary, God proved that His compassion for us was beyond anything we could have imagined. There, once and for all, He proved that He is a King worth trusting with absolutely everything.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does this passage help you understand about God?
2. How does this passage of Scripture exalt Jesus?
3. Why is Samuel displeased with the demand of God’s people?
4. How do you make the same mistake of treating the Lord as your “safety net” while still wanting to live as you see fit?
5. What are some of the parallels between Saul and Jesus?
6. What are some of the differences between Saul and Jesus?
7. We have said that “everyone serves something.” What do you serve, and why?
8. Why does Jesus not disappoint when other kings do disappoint?
9. Compare Deuteronomy 17:14-20 and 1 Samuel 8. What language is similar between these texts? Write down your thoughts.
10. Why is it important that God still dealt with the Israelites out of His grace and mercy?