Pray To The Lord Your God

1 Samuel 12:12,14,17-19 – “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…If you fear the Lord and serve and obey him and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you and the king who reigns over you follow the Lord your God—good!...Is it not wheat harvest now? I will call on the Lord to send thunder and rain. And you will realize what an evil thing you did in the eyes of the Lord when you asked for a king.” Then Samuel called on the Lord, and that same day the Lord sent thunder and rain. So all the people stood in awe of the Lord and of Samuel. The people all said to Samuel, “Pray to the Lord your God for your servants so that we will not die, for we have added to all our other sins the evil of asking for a king.”

1 Samuel 2:9-10 – He will guard the feet of his faithful servants, but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness. “It is not by strength that one prevails; those who oppose the Lord will be broken. The Most High will thunder from heaven; the Lord will judge the ends of the earth. “He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

1 Samuel 8:7 – 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.

1 Samuel 7:8 – They said to Samuel, “Do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.”

Deuteronomy 9:19 – I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the Lord listened to me.

Application:

• ·         Hannah’s prophetic anticipation of a king at the time of the dedication of her son Samuel, who was to be God’s agent for establishing kingship in Israel, is entirely appropriate.
• ·         The sin of Israel in requesting a king rested not in any evil inherent in kingship itself but in the kind of kingship the people envisioned and their reasons for requesting it.
• ·         As persons who were called out from among the people to mediate God’s word to them, prophets were given unique access to God’s council chamber.
• ·         Moses’ intercessory prayer on this occasion ranks among the great prayers for Israel’s national survival
• ·         In the face of the combined threat from the Philistines in the west and the Ammonites in the east, the Israelites sought to find security in the person of a human king.
• ·         In this new era where potential for divided loyalty between the Lord and the human king arises, Israel’s loyalty to the Lord must remain inviolate.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV