Being a leader of God’s people is never easy, as
Samuel is discovering. You can hardly fault his efforts to dissuade the people
from their wish for a king. He spells out the consequences in considerable
detail and warns that it will all end in tears.
But the people refuse to listen to him and insist on
their own way. Note again how rejection of the Lord’s leader is bound up with a
subtle rejection of the Lord himself – the people’s desire is to
be
like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and
fight our battles
What about God? Is his kingly rule no longer good
enough for them? Have they learnt nothing from their roller-coaster ride of
military defeat and victory? Have they not seen that their only guarantee of
success comes when the Lord leads them into battle? How can they imagine that
having a human king will improve their chances?
The extraordinary thing is how graciously God deals
with his people’s rebellion. He accedes to their demands and begins to direct
events (and specifically donkeys, ironically the members of the animal kingdom
which we label as stubborn and headstrong!) supernaturally to ensure that
Samuel meets Saul and anoints him king.
However, even if God is gracious and blesses his
people despite their sin, there is a clear hint in the text that they have
missed God’s best for them. Note the description of Saul in 9:2 – the people
will get the king they crave: impressive in an outward, human way but, as we
shall soon discover, lacking in the depth of spiritual character needed. [When
David is chosen as Saul’s successor, the contrast is striking – there is no
human reason to select him at all]
Jeremiah 46 shows the Lord straddling the global
stage: kings, emperors, armies and empires are all at his disposal, a point
which, as we have seen, God’s people are prone to forget. We’re also given one
of scripture’s historical pegs – the battle of Carchemish ,
in 605 BC, saw the end of Egypt
Despite the miraculous signs of the previous chapter,
the Pharisees decide that the most pressing concern of the moment is to ensure
that Jesus instructs his followers in correct liturgical practice and ritual
hygiene. This is a chilling example of something which starts out as a
God-ordained practice with a deep spiritual resonance, but which over time
becomes divorced from that meaning, and ends up as a dry religious observance
bringing death rather than life. Jews were commanded to attend to external
cleanliness as a continual reminder of the need for inner purity, and a life
lived in response to God’s command to love neighbour and stranger as self.
One of the main reasons that religion becomes a curse
is that it always tempts us to limit what we need to do for God. He wants us to
show compassion to the alien, the widow and orphan, to take care of elderly
parents, and to see the world transformed. But it’s so much easier just to give
that dinner plate an extra rinse …
Having exposed the corrupt heart of the Pharisees,
Jesus exposes the desperate heart of a foreign woman in one of scripture’s most
extraordinary encounters. Yes, he does seem to call her a dog, doesn’t he? Yet
we can’t see the tenderness in his eyes, nor hear his tone of voice. Whatever
it was, something encouraged her to persevere, and this showed Jesus the heart
attitude he continues to seek in those who come before him. We heard earlier in
the week that some people took offence at Jesus. Still today he offends the
mind to reveal the heart. I know a modern-day Syro-Phoenician woman who came to
faith as a result of this text, and is now an evangelist on the streets of Albania
What does your heart tell the Lord today?
(member of the clergy)