Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. 1 Samuel 8:4-5
Her parents wondered why their teenage daughter insisted on wearing a new pair of shoes that looked very uncomfortable. ‘But I think they help my posture,’ she insisted when they urged her to wear something more comfortable. Her parents disagreed. ‘But it’s going to rain, and these shoes can stand the wet better than my other ones,’ she tried to explain. Again her parents disagreed. ‘But these are the same ones that Jennifer wears,’ continued the girl, mentioning the most popular girl in her school. Ah, now her parents understood. She wanted to do the popular thing, even if the shoes hurt her feet, peer pressure demanded that she just had to be like the other girls, regardless of the pain. Her excuses remind us of the elders in Israel who came to Samuel looking for excuses as to why they should have a king. First, they complain that he is getting too old to be effective as their judge That wasn’t really true. Then they complained that Samuel’s sons, who were acting as assistant judges, were doing a poor job of it. That was true, but they ignored the fact that if they had a king, they would have to put up with the king’s ungodly sons, too. Then the true reason for their desire came out: they wanted to be like the other nations. They weren’t satisfied with God’s desire that He be their King and with Samuel being God’s judge to them. Other nations had kings, and they wanted to have one too. Being like others is not always a good idea. And it’s definitely not good when it’s not God’s plan.
If you should ever read a book called Miller’s Church History (caution, it’s heavy reading), you will discover a major problem that occurred in the first century of Christianity. During the book of Acts, as the apostles and other evangelists spread the Gospel, they saw many hundreds of local testimonies for the Lord established. And the pattern, as taught by the apostles, and as followed in the book of Acts, was that each of those local testimonies was led by groups of elders, or overseers, who acted as shepherds and guides for the flock. But as the decades passed, those local assemblies began allowing a solitary leader to take over the pastoral duties. They had several excuses for this: a solitary leader could devote himself to the full-time work of being the spiritual leader, and it was easier for the other members to allow him to do that. But the real reason was that these folks saw the religions around them, Judaism for example, and the pagan temples, who had their priests and leaders. And so the Christians wanted to do that too. It worked fine at first, or appeared to, because those early leaders were godly men with a true care for the Lord’s people. But as the years passed, those leaders developed into a separate clergy class that had its own hierarchy that eventually produced the popes of Rome. We see nothing of that in the apostle’s doctrine or in their practice. It was not God’s plan. And it is still not God’s plan.
We create many problems when we deviate from what God wants and try to copy what the world is doing. God’s plan is always the best. -Jim MacIntosh