The Kings We Choose

What is the thing I keep telling God would finally make me okay?

Israel asked for a king and got one, and it cost them their sons, their fields, and eventually themselves. Paul Desamps tells his own version of it: a nineteen year old in London with exactly the freedom he wanted and nobody left to blame but himself.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel to Ramah. They said to him, “Behold, you are old, and your sons don’t walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” Samuel prayed to Yahweh. Yahweh said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they tell you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me as the king over them.

1 Samuel 8:4–7

They soon forgot his works. They didn’t wait for his counsel, but gave in to craving in the desert, and tested God in the wasteland. He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.

Psalms 106:13–15

Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

James 4:1–3

Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves; who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Romans 1:24–25

Why do the good things I want turn into something that owns me?

Want becomes need, need becomes deserve, and deserve becomes something you do at midnight without deciding to. Israel did not set out to worship a throne, they just wanted to be like everybody else.

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”

1 Samuel 8:19–20

“You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:3–6

Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Colossians 3:5

“Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face. Should I be inquired of at all by them? Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Every man of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face then comes to the prophet, I Yahweh will answer him there according to the multitude of his idols,…

Ezekiel 14:3–4

What has following my own king actually cost the people around me?

Samuel lists it like a drumbeat: he will take your sons, your daughters, your fields, your servants, and then you. Every false king sends a bill, and the people closest to you are usually first in line to pay it.

He said, “This will be the way of the king who shall reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them as his servants, for his chariots and to be his horsemen; and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint them to him for captains of thousands and captains of fifties; and he will assign some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest; and to make his instruments of war and the instruments of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, to be cooks, and to be bakers. He will take your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, even your best, and give them to his servants. He will take one tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants, your female servants, your best young men, and your donkeys, and assign them to his own work. He will take one tenth of your flocks; and you will be his servants.

1 Samuel 8:11–17

Now therefore, my sons, listen to me. Don’t depart from the words of my mouth. Remove your way far from her. Don’t come near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one; lest strangers feast on your wealth, and your labors enrich another man’s house. You will groan at your latter end, when your flesh and your body are consumed, and say, “How I have hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof. I haven’t obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor turned my ear to those who instructed me! I have come to the brink of utter ruin, among the gathered assembly.”

Proverbs 5:7–14

Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken Uriah the Hittite’s wife to be your wife.’ “This is what Yahweh says: ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he will lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did this secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.’”

2 Samuel 12:10–12

Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

Galatians 6:7–8

Not many days after, the younger son gathered all of this together and traveled into a far country. There he wasted his property with riotous living. When he had spent all of it, there arose a severe famine in that country, and he began to be in need. He went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He wanted to fill his belly with the pods that the pigs ate, but no one gave him any.

Luke 15:13–16

Is God still good when he lets me live with what I insisted on?

After the warning, heaven goes quiet on the day they cry out, and the chapter ends on an uncomfortable pause. Hebrews says the silence is discipline from a father who loves, not a door slammed shut.

You will cry out in that day because of your king whom you will have chosen for yourselves; and Yahweh will not answer you in that day.”

1 Samuel 8:18

You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then you are illegitimate, and not children. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days disciplined us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Hebrews 12:5–11

When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped in the heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to you. I didn’t hide my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

Psalms 32:3–5

For the Lord will not cast off forever. For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

Lamentations 3:31–33

As many as I love, I reprove and chasten. Be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:19–20

Who is the king who gives instead of takes?

Samuel said the king would take sons, fields, and freedom, and Jesus did the opposite with every one of them. He emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and went out ahead of us into the battle we could not fight.

Jesus summoned them and said to them, “You know that they who are recognized as rulers over the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you, but whoever wants to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever of you wants to become first among you shall be bondservant of all. For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:42–45

Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:5–11

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished!” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

John 19:30

Oh taste and see that Yahweh is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Oh fear Yahweh, you his saints, for there is no lack with those who fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but those who seek Yahweh shall not lack any good thing.

Psalms 34:8–10