What was wrong with the king
Answers
Answer:
I can do it myself!” I’m not sure how young I was or what I was doing when I first uttered those words to my parents. Knowing my independent stubborn nature, I was probably pretty young. Since I’ve had children, and knowing other parents’ children, I have heard this phrase countless times. Something in us, even at a young age, wants to live life on our terms and do things our way. This is one of the life-messages we saw in the book of judges.
Eventually, Israel’s desire to do things by themselves leads them to cry out for a king. They wanted someone to protect them from the surrounding nations, someone to make then feel good about themselves, rather than rely on God’s judges. This really ticked off Samuel, the current judge in Israel. When he complains about it to God, God (the king of kings) tells Samuel, “they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment” (1 Sam 8:7-8). Nothing is wrong serving, following, worshiping the king of kings, that’s how life is supposed to work. But rejecting God for a mere human substitute will always end in disaster. A human king is a poor substitute for the king of kings. A human king will always struggle with his own spiritual sin and brokenness.
Centuries later, when the actual king of kings, born within the line of the Davidic kings, comes in person to usher in God’s kingdom, they don’t embrace him, they kill him. Why? They rejected God. They wanted a king, but they wanted to do it by themselves. God be our king? No way! And when Stephen calls out the Jewish religious leaders on their rejection and killing of the king of kings, they killed him too.
The problem is that we can’t “do it ourselves.” Not really. Not the big issues of life that really matter. Despite the proliferation of self-help books, we are powerless to govern and rescue ourselves from the sin and brokenness of the world. We do need a king, but only accepting the king of kings, living life his way, can put on the path of real life.