They Wanted a Single King to Rule Them

Mike Hosey, Elder

God's people once yearned for a singular human king. Sadly, this was a rejection of God (1 Samuel 8:7).

It's like this, when the Hebrews were in their infancy as a people they were not led by a single human leader.  Instead, God was their singular king, and He administered His government through multiple leaders in the form of prophets, priests and judges (1 Samuel 8) and (Judges 2:16-17).

But when the sons of Samuel the prophet did not live up to their moral duties as judges, the people used this bad behavior as an excuse to pressure Samuel to appoint a singular king (1 Samuel 8:5). Their motive, however, was not to eradicate bad judges.  Instead, their motive was to point to a single man and say "we have a king just like the nations around us do" (1 Samuel 8:5, and 1 Samuel 8:19-20).

It was an attitude born from worldly hearts.

Strangely, they also wanted a mere man to go before them and fight their battles (1 Samuel 8:20). The reason this is so strange is because prior to this point God had gone before them and fought their battles - not any single man (Joshua 10:14, Joshua 10:42, 1 Samuel 7:10). In effect, they wanted to replace God as their point person.

God predicted this eventuality. Way back in Deuteronomy 17:14-20, He foretold that Israel would obtain a king, and He laid out the things a king should not do.    

When God told Samuel to warn the people of what a king would be like, they didn't listen to the warnings. So God told Samuel to obey the people and appoint a king (1 Samuel 8:22). He did.

Not one king lived up to God's requirements from Deuteronomy. Not even David or Solomon. In fact, their very first king, Saul, was rife with pride.

They had some glory initially. But after their third king, they began to fracture, and the people eventually ended up in the Babylonian captivity and bondage.

Their yearning for a king was a yearning to be like those around them, and not a desire to be what God wanted them to be. And this led, as it always does, to a kind of slavery and disunity.

But it didn't stop there. When Jesus entered the world as Messiah, the Hebrew culture did not recognize him for who He was. They were blinded by a worldly view of kingship, and a new fixation on religious tradition.

They yearned for a King to rule them, and God gave them what they yearned for ...and more.

Appointed to Produce Much Fruit

Mike Hosey, Elder

God is a fruit-loving God. This really should come as no surprise since fruit and fruitfulness are seen as profoundly desirable throughout much of the bible.

Of course, the story of fruit begins in the beginning. In Genesis, God commands both his animal and human creations to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:22 and Genesis 1:28). Notice that the idea of multiplication is strongly entwined with the idea of fruitfulness. In fact, it is so entwined that Isaiah 27:6 metaphorically predicts that Israel will bloom with fruit and fill the whole world with it.

In one sense, it already has done much of that by providing the world with the heritage of Jesus Christ.

The bible repeatedly likens God's people to sweet and delicious fruit, grapes, grape vines, figs and fig trees, and when these items are growing and expanding or producing much fruit, they are praised.  

Drawing of Fig, T.J. Crew, Circa 1771

Their productivity is a direct result of God, the vinedresser, pruning and gardening the vine to yield much fruit, and Jesus, the vine, filling the fruit with all of His spiritual goodness (John 15:1-8).

In that passage, God removes those branches of the vine that don't produce fruit.  And those branches that do produce fruit, well, he prunes those - removing anything that gets in the way of increasing the yield of that branch.

Jesus tells us that if we stray from him, then we cut ourselves off from His life-giving sustenance, and that when we do that, we cannot produce fruit. No branch separated from its vine can produce anything.

The biggest problem with separating from Jesus is that not producing fruit goes against one of God's direct plans for our lives. Jesus tells us in this passage that God is glorified through our production of fruit (John 15:8) and that we are, in fact, appointed to produce it (John 15:16).

When we follow Jesus there should be an ever increasing production of fruit within our personal character (Galatians 5:22-23) - which is something God very much loves.  And there should be a drive within us to tell others about Jesus so that they, too, can produce much fruit.

Love and the Spiritual Disciplines

Mike Hosey, Elder

One of the things you will hear me preach from the pulpit often, as well as see written in this blog, is that love means being committed to the well being of another person.  In the case of a person's love for God, love means being committed to Him and His will for your life.

While this may not define love completely, it does make for a substantial portion of what love means. In essence, love is commitment. In fact, if one is not committed to a person, then one does not love that person.

Credit:Tatoli ba Kultura, CC-BY-SA 3.0

It also means to remain committed regardless of whether one has warm, fuzzy feelings at any given moment. Anyone with children or a spouse can attest to that!

I challenge you to take some of the famous love passages from the bible and replace the word love with the word "commit."  For instance, "For God was so committed to the world that he gave his only begotten son  . . ." (John 3:16). Go ahead, try it out with a few other verses as well.

This truth applies to most of the disciplines in our lives.

People who have exercise routines will tell you that they do what they do because they love the routine, or they love what it produces.

Truthfully, the more they engage in their routine, the more it becomes part of their life, and the more they feel they can't live without it. But if they are not committed to the process or the result, they won't engage in it.

This is no less true of spiritual disciplines like prayer, bible study, or private and public worship. Loving God means you'll be committed to communicating with Him, learning about Him and celebrating Him .

Just imagine one spouse uninterested in speaking with the other. When a husband and wife no longer communicate, some level of love or commitment is lost. 

So whenever you find your spiritual disciplines lacking, remind yourself of why you love Jesus, and recommit yourself to Him just as if you were in a personal loving relationship with Him.

The Mockers and The Wise

Mike Hosey, Elder

Have you ever met a mocker? What about a scoffer? Or how about a scorner?

When we Christians think about these terms we usually think of atheists or secular minded people who want to make fun of our belief system. And this is a pretty good definition.

Mockers are not among those intelligent  people who have reasonable questions about our faith and practices, and who need to think about things, or analyze our claims for long periods of time.  They are not among those people who need to have discussions and debates before they can be convinced of the truth. Instead, they are people who will not listen to reason, and who refuse to see the truth. Their minds are made up, and their intent is to belittle how we believe.

They are dangerous, and it is wise to avoid them.

In fact, Proverbs 9:7 tells us that whoever tries to correct them will only receive abuse or injury.

There is a difference between the heart of the mocker and the heart of the wise man.  If you correct a mocker he will hate you. If you correct a wise man he will love you, and he will become wiser still (Proverbs 9:8-9).

Scoffers gonna scoff.

While it is very true that a  good working definition of a mocker includes certain kinds of atheists and secular minded people, it is unfortunate that they are not limited to those groups. Mockers can be found among those folks who claim Christianity.

You can spot them by their attitudes. Rather than having a discussion with you about the merits of your position, they would rather label you or deride you.  They will not consider reasonable biblical arguments if those arguments seem to deviate from their tradition. In truth, they are often steeped in tradition, and have endowed that tradition with greater warrant than it deserves. Because of this they can be very religious, and in many respects, not that different from the Pharisees of Jesus' day.

Regrettably, all of us can have a bit of that mocker in us. Proverbs 9:12 reminds us to beware of this, encouraging us that a pursuit of wisdom will reward us, but warning us that we alone will bear the personal consequences of our own mockery and scoffing.

Does Prayer Really Change Things?

Mike Hosey, Elder

Prayer changes things!  It's one of the most common phrases in Church World. Go to any church of any denomination, sit there for almost any length of time and you're going to hear it said at some point. 

In fact, it is said so much that it has become very much a cliché, and the honest truth of it is too often destroyed. Sometimes its power is even transformed into a lie that is dangerous to kingdom work.

This is how we often interpret the phrase: "When my life gets messed up by my own worldliness, or by external circumstances beyond my control, all I have to do is pray and God will change my life to one where everything is hunky dory and unicorns vomit rainbows."

That exaggeration isn't too far from the truth. We tend to oversimplify the statement in favor of our comforts and pleasures.  While it is true that prayer can change our circumstances, and that such change can be, and often is for the better, it is not true that God is obligated to "fix" our world.  God is more interested in changing us to be more like Jesus than he is interested in changing our immediate environment (Romans 8:29; 1 Peter 1:6-7).

And that's where prayer plays its biggest role. Prayer changes us. It puts God in the forefront of our minds. It allows us to think about God, to communicate with him, and ultimately to submit our desires to his will.  This doesn't mean that we can't or shouldn't ask for things that we desire or need. God is interested in those things, too (Matthew 7:7-11). It's just that he's more interested in changing us, and He will use whatever it takes to do that. Sometimes that takes leaving us in our environment and having us depend on his Spirit more than our material, physical, or emotional world.

Think about it. When God tells us he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalms 37:4) or that he will do whatever we ask in Jesus' name (John 14:13), he doesn't mean any desire or anything. Some things are evil, and so are some of our desires. And some things are neither good nor evil. They're just not part of his plan.