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SAMUEL’S DEALINGS WITH ISRAEL
FRIDAY, MARCH 31
1 Samuel 12

Ecclesiastes 9:10

 

“I have walked before you from

my childhood unto this day.”

 

SAMUEL’S DEALINGS WITH ISRAEL
 
What we have before us is Samuel’s last recorded public address to the people of Israel. It was an address that charged the people and made known to them the state of their heart: a state that the book of Judges has endeavoured to show in the repeated cycles recorded in it. It was an address given to the people as they began a new chapter in the life of the nation, and sought to change the narrative that was in the period of the judges. “There was no king in Israel” (Judg 21:25), but now they had the king of their choice and desires. Samuel made them to understand their problem was not the absence of a king and so the presence of a king would not present to them a solution.
 
“…stand still, that I may reason with you before the LORD…” (1 Sam 12:7). Samuel began his address by rehearsing to them their history and heritage to point out their relationship to God and their duty and obligation based on that relationship. Their failure was not administrative but spiritual, and so the solution must be spiritual. The period of the judges and its trials was because “they forgat the LORD their God” (1 Sam 12:9), and their deliverance through men God used was attributed to their spiritual return to the LORD when “they cried unto the LORD” (1 Sam 12:10). The testimony of their history was that the LORD was their safety, peace, and prosperity. Israel owed everything to the LORD.
 
“If ye will fear the LORD, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel…” (1 Sam 12:14). The LORD allowed them to have their king; that was great favour. This favour did not negate their obligation and duty to God, it did not change the truth that they owed everything to the LORD. They and their king were not at liberty to chart a new course for themselves, to forsake the covenant God had made with their fathers, or to continue in the sin that so often ensnared them in the past. There would be changes in life under their king, and this they were forewarned of, but allegiance to God must remain. They must “turn not aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD…” (1 Sam 12:20).
 
THOUGHT: “Oh Jesus, I have promised to serve Thee to the end.”

PRAYER: “O speak, and make me listen, Thou guardian of my soul.”

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