High Stakes

 

19 “And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.” And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. 21 And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. 22 For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.”  – 1 Samuel 12:19-22

“No matter what you’ve done, no matter how far gone you feel, God promises you can return to Him; In fact, He stakes His name on it, and the good news is… He never loses.”

If your just now jumping in on the story in 1 Samuel, you may be a little confused. What exactly did these people do to “add to all” their “sins this evil?” Well, just before this, the very same people that are now asking for prayer and forgiveness in the passage were begging for a king, but not just any king, a worldly king that they believed would fulfill their desires.

The problem here is not simply that the people of Israel wanted a king. The problem is a heart issue. They had a king. They had a righteous and Holy Judge, sovereign over all things, but still, they wanted someone they could see, feel, compare themselves to. And they got it. However, king Saul ended up being less of a “good” king and  more of a wake up call. The people of Israel were dealing with the consequences of their decisions and found themselves miserable, now asking for forgiveness.

Isn’t it crazy how even still today, we as God’s people, find ourselves in this same situation over and over again. I can’t help but see myself in this passage, how I constantly ask God for stuff I want, and not what I need. The old Rolling Stones chorus plays over and over in my head.

“No, you can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime,
you just might find
You get what you need”

I’ve heard it said before, “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” Sometimes I get it, and most the time I reap the consequences of my actions too. But this isn’t God punishing us. These are teaching moments. When things like this happen in our life, God is teaching us that we get what we need in Him, not in the stuff we want, and sadly, we usually have to be taught in the same manner the Israelites were taught.

The people of Israel, by God’s grace, return and ask forgiveness, and Samuel gives us a great old testament picture of Jesus in this passage, a picture we all need to see as a reminder of how weak we are, and how amazing God is. Samuel basically says, “Even though you abandoned me, I’ve never stopped praying for you.” Even as we constantly mess up and turn to worldly idols over Jesus, He sits at the right hand of God praying for us every moment of every day.

We, like the Israelites, find ourselves in situations where it’s too late. We got the king we asked for, and now it’s time to deal with it. But, the promise we see spoken from God to the people of Israel in verse 22, gives us a reason to hope for the future. We can sum it up like this. No matter what we’ve done, no matter how far gone we feel, God promises we can return to Him; In fact, He stakes His name on it, and the good news is… He never loses.

– Jared