1 Samuel 6-9
Casting Aside Our Distinction

Israel was tired of being different. All other nations around them-established and prosperous nations-had kings. Instead of having a unified nation serving unified leadership, they were divided, independent states with no unified leadership, and they though it was time that changed. "Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations," they told the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 8:4.

If we try to look at their request in the best possible way, perhaps they were, after looking around them at the prosperous states, saying they simply wanted to be an established nation as well. After all, if they were a nation, wasn't it time they had a king, too? If such is the case, what they failed to have was patience to wait to grow up. God had anticipated a desire for a king, and had said they would have a king eventually (Deuteronomy 17:14-15). But, they were not ready for one.

Patience is a hard thing for us. Teenagers naturally want to become adults. Sometimes, in their desire to assume more adult responsibilities, they desire those responsibilities before they are really ready. Instead of trusting in their parents' wisdom to properly govern the situation, they become-perhaps like Israel-impatient. They want, right now, to be what they will be in due time. Young, growing Christians may become impatient and frustrated with their rate of growth.

But, their request may have had a more dangerous motive behind it. They may have wanted to cast aside their distinctiveness in favor of simply being just like everyone else. This certainly was their problem in the past. Why eat manna when they could have been eating melons and cucumbers like the Egyptians? Why worship an unseen God when they could create an idol like other nations? Why have judges when they could have a king? Such reasoning would continue to drive them as well. Their kings would become exactly what God said they would be-like the kings of the nations around them. They would embrace the religions of those around them. And, ultimately, the Assyrians and Babylonians would defeat them like the nations around them as well.

What they failed to remember is that God called them to live distinct lives (Deuteronomy 19), and they had agreed to His terms. When we come to Christ and voluntarily agree to follow Him, we, too, voluntarily agree to follow Him on His terms, not our own. God calls us to live different lives than the pagan nations around us. "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul" (1 Peter 2:9-11). Ultimately, God's instructions are what make us different, and in those times when we distain our distinction, we are tempted to cast off what makes us different-God's instruction. We must trust that God's ways are right and submit to them, realizing that our distinctions qualify us to do something the world can never do-proclaim the excellencies of God in Heaven one day.