Recognizing the King
In a 2016 interview, Australian pastor/author Mark Sayers has the following to say:
Post-Christianity is ultimately the project of the West to move beyond Christianity, whilst feasting upon its fruit. Thus it constantly offers us options and off ramps, in which we seemingly have what we enjoy about faith, but without the sacrifices and commitments. It does not demand that we become apostates rather that we reshape our faith to suit the contours of the day, and in the process offers us the promise of tangible freedoms and pleasures for doing so. It does not challenge our faith head on in a kind of apologetics debate; rather it uses soft power, offering a continual background hum of options and incentives which eat away at our commitments. We are offered the mirage that we can have community without commitment, faith without discipleship, the kingdom without the King.
The interview is now seven years old, but that last line has stuck with me as being so true to the human condition. We want the fruit of our labors without the labor part. Applied to God, we want all the benefits that relationship with God produces, but we don't want the hard work of pursuing and living in a relationship. In particular, that descriptor of modern people, we desire a kingdom without the King, seems quite apt and is part of an old, old story that we are going to be picking up in Samuel over the course of the spring and summer.
Samuel (1st and 2nd is really all one narrative) is a book about kingship. Coming on the heels of the Judges when "there was no king in Israel" and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." (Judges 21:25); we encounter the stories of Samuel (the kingmaker), Saul (the king like the nations), and David (the king of YHWH's own choosing). Israel is striving after the shalom of living in covenant with YHWH, all the while failing to acknowledge YHWH as their one, true King with disastrous results all around. But through it all YHWH remains committed to his people, repeatedly saving them from themselves and even granting them an earthly king from whose line will come the ultimate King, our Lord Jesus Christ.
This week we are going to look at the the overarching storyline of Samuel. In 1 Samuel 1:1-10, 2 Samuel 1:17-27, and 2 Samuel 22 we encounter three songs all centered around the theme of kingship. These songs capture the faithfulness of YHWH despite the unfaithfulness of humanity and connect the book of Samuel to the overall storyline of the scripture in which we realize that YHWH is the King for whom our hearts truly long. As we study this book together the question that will be before us will be one of fealty. After all, who wants to be part of a kingdom without a King?
Photo by William Krause on Unsplash