It Never Ends Well
1 Samuel 8:4-18
Ken Whitt March 18, 2007
“It never ends well.”
Thank you Joyce. Joyce came up with today’s sermon title. “It never ends well!”
It never ends well. It never ends well. Kings and their kingdoms, emperors and their empires, dominators and their dominions, powerful leaders, by whatever name, and their powerful nation states, by whatever name. It never ends well. It never ends well.
In the book of 1st Samuel we hear the cry of the people of Israel to have a king so they can be like other nations. “Give us a king.” Up until that point they had been ruled by leaders that were called Judges. These were quasi-political economic and military leaders, like Joshua and Deborah and Gideon and others.
But Israel did not have a king and in that regard they were different from other nations and they wanted a king. Listen to what happens when the people of God insist that God give them a king.
1 Samuel 8:4-18:
4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the LORD, 7 and the LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 Just as they have done to me,a from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9 Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
10 So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12 and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15 He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16 He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
God through Samuel is going to give the people fair warning, and if they still choose to have a king they will have decided their own tragic destiny. They will indeed be like other nations and the king will indeed fight their battles for them. But it is a mighty cost they will pay. It never works out well. Never.
My mother told me never to say never. Maybe your mother said that to you too and maybe it is true. Maybe sometimes it does work out well. Don’t there have to be exceptions? What do you think? Sometimes doesn’t it work out just fine for a king and his kingdom or a powerful leader you know and his powerful nation? Tell the truth. Do you think there is an exception?
For example, what about King Solomon in the Bible, the son of King David? Nancy mentioned him in her prayer and in the call to worship. He was a great king over Israel, acclaimed nationally and internationally for his wisdom and prowess.
From Chapter 4 of 1 Kings, beginning at verse 20, we read about the magnificence of Solomon’s rule.
Fame of Solomon’s Wisdom
29 God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, 30 so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than anyone else, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, children of Mahol; his fame spread throughout all the surrounding nations. 32 He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. 33 He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish. 34 People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon; they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.
During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba, everyone was “living under their own vines and fig trees.” “Their own vines and fig trees” is a common phrase in the Old Testament among the prophets to speak about economic abundance and economic justice. Everybody had their own fig trees. Everybody had their own vines. It is a time of plenty for everyone.
Solomon also had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots and 12,000 horsemen. Those officials supplied provisions for King Solomon and for all who came to Solomon’s tables. King Solomon was a mighty king. Not only did he posses great wisdom as a gift from God, but he built the temple, and a staggering feat it was. But in order to build the temple, and then his palace, and then all of the city walls, and then all of the residences and palaces in surrounding areas, to build all of that, Solomon had to conscript almost the entire work force of Israel, and turn everybody else from other tribes around about into slaves to mine the stone and cut the lumber. It became a time of great oppression against all the people of Israel and all of the surrounding peoples as well, with far too much in common with the oppression the People of Israel experienced at the hands of the Pharaoh of Egypt.
And you can read about that in 1 Kings 5:13-18. This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon conscripted to build the house of the Lord and his own house and those Solomon conscripted for slave labor and so they are slaves to this day.
And that was just the beginning of Solomon’s oppression and Solomon’s idolatry. If you’re looking in your Bibles, you may want to turn to 1 Kings 11:1-12:
Solomon’s Errors
11 King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the Israelites, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you; for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods”; Solomon clung to these in love. 3 Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David. 5 For Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not completely follow the LORD, as his father David had done. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who offered incense and sacrificed to their gods.
9 Then the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, 10 and had commanded him concerning this matter, that he should not follow other gods; but he did not observe what the LORD commanded. 11 Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, “Since this has been your mind and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant. 12 Yet for the sake of your father David I will not do it in your lifetime; I will tear it out of the hand of your son.
700 wives who had been princesses, and 300 concubines. His wives turned his heart away from God. It never ends up well.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It never ends up well for kings and their kingdoms, emperors and their empires, dominators and their dominions, leaders by whatever name who seek power without end and their nation states seeking power without end. It never ends up well.
Am I absolutely certain about this? Are you certain about this? No exceptions? Scan history. Somewhere there has to be a dominator for whom things ended well. What about right in front of our faces? What about 2,500 years ago or 1,200 years ago or 600 years ago or the 1890’s? Somewhere? Someone? Maybe. But the instruction of God in 1 Kings is that there are no exceptions. It never ends well.
It never ends well. The word of God in 1 Kings is, I believe, never trust kings and emperors and dominators and powerful leaders by whatever name to be on God’s side. They will claim God for themselves. Nearly always. Caesar claimed to be God. He was not the last dominator to make that claim. They will call their causes Holy, but empire is never Holy. The Holy Roman Empire was anything but holy. The power mad never fight for a Holy Cause and they never are God and they never represent God. Do not trust the fate of the earth to them. Listen to Psalm 118:5-9.
5 Out of my distress I called on the LORD;
the LORD answered me and set me in a broad place.
6 With the LORD on my side I do not fear.
What can mortals do to me?
7 The LORD is on my side to help me;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
8 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to put confidence in mortals.
9 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to put confidence in princes.
Simply put, do not put your trust in princes, kings, emperors, dominators or powerful leaders by whatever name. It never ends well. Some are better than others and when as citizens we must vote, vote your conscience, guided by God. Still it never ends well when we put our trust in them and not in God. Let me ask you a question, and think about this for a few seconds. And there’s probably more than one really good answer. Where in the Bible do you see a good and strong man living in a right, just relationship to God, standing before God, kneeling before God? Where do you see a man who has got it right and keeps getting it right , a man about whom it might be truthfully said, “It ended well?”
Think about that. Earlier this week I asked myself that question in order help me to think about the kind of person I could trust. Who is a man or woman who stood before God or kneeled before God for whom it did end well. I found myself thinking of a man from the Old Testament by the name of Job.
Maybe some of the rest of you were thinking of Job. Job lost everything. His friends came and gave him all kinds of theological explanations as to why he was suffering, why his life had gone bad, but none of their words were true.
Job never fully understood why things went wrong. Eventually that didn’t matter. As the story moved to its climax what mattered most was not that Job suffered. Everyone suffers. Good people and bad people suffer. Eventually what mattered most was that Job stood in the presence of God as God spoke to him out of the whirlwind. Actually God blasted Job out of the whirlwind with words intended to drive Job to his knees. In the end what mattered was that Job stood or kneeled before God in humility, knowing that God is the ruler of all, the author of all. God is the only one who knows all the answers to all the important questions. God is the One who has the power. To know God, to be in God’s presence, to depend on God—that is the place of Job and everyman in the creation.
If it never ends well for kings and their kingdoms and emperors and their empires and dominators and their dominions and powerful leaders by whatever name and their powerful nation states by whatever name it is because their power corrupts their souls and they do not know how to kneel before God.
Again, vote for these leaders, make choices among them as that is necessary, support them in ways that justice requires and certainly pray for them. But do not trust them to be what they cannot be. Do not expect kings and powerful leaders to merit your confidence. Rather, trust only in God.
God in charge, and people on their knees. People on their knees, not kings. Kings do not kneel. The people kneel. There’s no other way for it to turn out well.
Amen.
