We cannot guarantee that our children will follow us in our love for The Lord. Often children brought up in Christian families do not continue in the faith. Amazingly the same happened with Samuel. One might have thought that his children would follow in his walk of faith, but they did not (v1-3). He appointed his sons Joel and Abijah as judges. Sadly, like Eli, he overlooked their sins of dishonesty, taking bribes and perverting justice. It says he appointed them when he was old, so he may have delayed it as long as he could, but it was a mistake, and probably a lack of faith or in desperation.
We must be careful that we don’t indulge our children when we get older and fail to deal with their sinful conduct.
The elders complained to Samuel that he was old, and his sons were not walking in his ways, and they wanted to replace him with a king (v4,5). They had never had a king before. They were right about his sons but not about Samuel. He was still a man of God, the best by far. Just because we are old doesn’t mean we are not wise leaders. It wasn’t a surprise to God that they wanted a king but their reason for wanting one was wrong. They wanted one to be like other nations.
Sadly, some of our churches are guilty of copying the world to attract people into them. This is totally unspiritual and extremely dangerous. Years earlier (Judges 8) Gideon was asked to become king, but he refused and said that none of his sons would be a king. He was adamant that The LORD should be their king.
Samuel was disappointed that they asked for a king, so, he did the right thing, he prayed. He felt that the people had rejected him, but The LORD answered him and told him to do as the people asked (v6-8) because they were rejecting The LORD and not Samuel, and they would be taught a lesson by having a king. God sometimes lets us have what we want so that we would be taught a lesson. God told Samuel to warn the people that having a king would not be good, and they would find the behaviour of the king would be detrimental to them (v9).
Samuel proceeded to warn them of the dangers they faced (v10-18) speaking the words of The LORD. A king would take their sons and commandeer them to be his servants and into the military, to farm his lands and make weapons. He would also take their daughters to look after his daily needs. He would take the best of their fields and produce and their servants and animals for himself, and they would become his servants. All this would make them cry out to The LORD, but The LORD would not hear them. They may have thought that their problems would be solved by having a king, but it would create other problems. They would have a king of their choosing and suffer the consequences. It’s like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The grass may seem greener in the next field, but it doesn’t turn out like that. Someone said, ‘the grass may seem greener, but it still needs mowing’.
Having heard all this, you might have thought they would think again, but not so. They still wanted to be like other nations and have a king who would rule, fight their battles and judge over them (v19-22). God did not want them to be like other nations, they were His special people. He had chosen them, but they were rejecting Him. Samuel went to the LORD in distress, but The LORD told Samuel to go ahead and make them a king.
