It Is Not You They Have Rejected, But They Have Rejected Me As Their King

1 Samuel 8:6-7 – 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 that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.

Hosea 13:10 – Where is your king, that he may save you? Where are your rulers in all your towns, of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’?

Numbers 11:19-20 – You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it—because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’”

Genesis 49:10 – The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his.

Numbers 24:17 – “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the people of Sheth.

Deuteronomy 17:14-15,19-20 – When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite…It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

Judges 8:23 – But Gideon told them, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.”

1 Samuel 12:12 – “But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, ‘No, we want a king to rule over us’—even though the Lord your God was your king.

Numbers 23:21 – “No misfortune is seen in Jacob, no misery observed in Israel. The Lord their God is with them; the shout of the King is among them.

Deuteronomy 33:5 – He was king over Jeshurun when the leaders of the people assembled, along with the tribes of Israel.

1 Samuel 10:17-18 – Samuel summoned the people of Israel to the Lord at Mizpah and said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I brought Israel up out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the power of Egypt and all the kingdoms that oppressed you.’

Application:

• ·         Help comes only from the Lord, not from kings.
• ·         In requesting a king “like all the other nations” Israel broke the covenant, rejected the Lord who was their King and forgot His constant provision for their protection in the past.
• ·         The principal issue was not meat at all, but a failure to demonstrate proper gratitude to the Lord, who was in their midst and who was their constant source of good.
• ·         Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, is told to “remove the crown” from his head because dominion over Jerusalem will ultimately be given to the one “to whom it rightfully belongs”.
• ·         Israel’s future deliverer will be like a star; he will wield a royal scepter and bring victory over the enemies of his people.
• ·         Moses anticipates a time when the people would ask for a king contrary to the Lord’s ideal for them.
• ·         The king was not above God’s law, any more than were the humblest of his subjects.
• ·         Gideon, like Samuel, rejected the establishment of a monarchy because he regarded it as a replacement of the Lord’s rule.
• ·         The Israelite desire for and trust in a human leader constituted a rejection of the kingship of the Lord and betrayed a loss of confidence in His care, in spite of His faithfulness during the time of the exodus, conquest and judges.
• ·         Because God is King, He was able to use Balaam for His own ends—to bless His people in a new and wonderful manner.
• ·         The Lord, not an earthly monarch, was to be king over Israel.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV