What happens when leadership change happens among God’s People? All ministers are eventually called elsewhere, to a well-earned retirement, or home to glory. When these changes occur, do we seek God’s leading and timing or seek our own worldly solutions?
In 1 Samuel 8, a leadership crisis arose as Samuel grew old and his sons showed themselves unsuitable. So Israel sought a king, as the nations around them desired. Ultimately, this was a rejection of God’s leadership. It serves as a reminder that it is God who leads and provides leaders, because sometimes when we get what we want, it is not good for us.
Samuel’s leadership as a Judge over Israel led to decades of peace and prosperity, as he led them spiritually in worship of God (17:15-17). However, like all men, Samuel became old (8:1). The time of his leadership would come to an end. Who would fill the vacuum?
Worldly solutions often come first when problems arise. Samuel’s worldly solution was appointing his two sons, nobly named Joel (Yahweh is God) and Abijah (Yahweh is Father), as Judges in Beersheba (v.2). This was in the south of the country, away from Samuel’s rule. Sadly, his sons failed to live up to their names and Samuel’s example. “They took bribes and perverted justice” (v.3).
This all provided a convenient pretext for Israel to seek a king. While the elders of Israel should have prayed and waited on God to reveal the instrument of his leadership in Samuel’s place (just as God anointed Joshua to lead after Moses), instead they forced the issue themselves.
The elders met Joshua and told him “behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (v.5). Since Samuel was old, and his sons were unworthy, Samuel needed to solve the looming leadership vacuum by appointing a king like the nations around.
Much like Samuel looking to a hereditary handover, the elders of Israel were looking to a worldly solution, and not to God to provide a way. They thought that the problems of Israel would be solved by an earthly autocrat; after all, it worked for all the other nations around them!
Not surprisingly, Samuel was unhappy with the elders for seeking a king (v.6). Unlike the elders, Samuel turned to God in prayer to seek an answer (v.6).
God’s answer may surprise us, considering that the elders were acting from a lack of trust in God to provide leadership. “The LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (v.7).
No doubt Samuel felt that he had failed in his leadership, considering he had for many years encouraged Israel to seek after God. But God pointed out that the rejection was not of Samuel and his leadership, but of God. Samuel had not failed in his service to God of leadership of Israel.
Instead, the rejection shown was just another in a long line stretching “from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods” (v.8).
God’s answer, funnily enough, was to “obey their voice” (v.9) and give Israel what it wanted. But not without warning them about the problems of kingly rule (v.9). Like a parent who sometimes lets a child have their way so that they learn the consequences, God would grant the elders their request as its own punishment.
God had foreseen the provision of a king in his Law (Deut. 17). However, the elders were asking with wrong motives. They needed to experience the wrong kind of king, so they would desire the right kind of king; the type who followed God’s ways, not man’s.
This passage deals with a reaction to a perceived leadership vacuum. Ultimately, God led his people, just as Jesus Christ is King and head of the Church. But it is natural, though generally driven from the same sinful desire to be like the world that Israel’s elders expressed, to seek worldly leadership solutions over God’s solutions.
The Church does not need CEOs, or appropriately “diverse” and “inclusive” leadership, or dynastic succession, it needs leadership by men who demonstrate the qualities God established (1 Timothy 3). It is our privilege to prayerfully identify these men and appoint them to the roles God has set them apart for, in God’s good timing.
Like Samuel, God will uphold those leaders, as he does any parent for that matter, who leads those under their charge Godward, not worldward. If children or church members reject God, that is on them, not on the faithful leader or parent.
God blesses us with faithful leaders, appointed by God, to direct us to Jesus our true king. This passage reminds us to wait on God to raise up and provide these leaders for us, not seek worldly leaders and ways.
