1 Samuel 8, How Does God’s Kingdom Come?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

1 Samuel 8 and the Question of How God’s Kingdom Comes

1 Samuel chapter 8, meaning the entire chapter, hear the word of the Lord. When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel and the name of his second, Abijah.

They were judges in Beersheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to 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. But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord and 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, according to all the deeds that they have done. From the day that I brought them out of Egypt, even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you.

Now then, obey their voice, only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them. So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him.

He said, These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment for his chariots.

He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants.

He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flock and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel and they said, No, but there shall be a king over us that we also may be like all the other nations and that our king may judge us and go before us and fight our battles.

And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the Lord and the Lord said to Samuel, Obey their voice and make them a king. Samuel then said to the men of Israel, Go, every man to a city.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, one of the recent online debates among Christians over the last year or two is over what's called Christian nationalism. The word nationalism scares a lot of people with feelings apparently left over from World War II, I guess, which had the national socialists, the Nazis, the fascists, started the war.

The feeling since World War II until maybe recently, maybe it's waning now, is that since nationalism started the deadliest war in history, then it must be a bad thing. And of course no Christian wants to be in favor of a bad thing.

Now the more thoughtful reply to Christian nationalism has been that the term Christian nationalism implies that a nation can be Christian, but they, and most of these critics are Baptists who say this, they say that to be Christian one has to be born again.

And so it's only for individuals or perhaps for churches. Nations, they say, can't be Christian. Like Jesus's parable of the weeds and, you know, the parable of the field. The kingdom of God is like a field in which the enemy sows weeds and they grow up and they're hard to tell apart what are the weeds and what are the wheat.

And so they grow up side by side. And in the world, so the wicked and the God's people, they grow up side by side until the final judgment. So we'll always have God's people and the wicked living together in every nation.

So we can't make a nation perfectly Christian. Now I don't think that's what those calling for Christian nationalism means, that we'll be perfect and everyone will be a true Christian if we just pass a few laws.

I don't think that's what they mean. They mean by Christian that the laws and the policies, the culture is determined by or promotes Christian teaching, promotes the church or promotes the gospel. For example, they would be in favor of blue laws.

Again, blue laws restricted certain activities and businesses on Sundays so that most businesses had to close on Sundays. Whether motivated by getting people to church, that was probably one of the reasons for it.

It also helped small businesses compete against big businesses. We still had blue laws in the South when I was a kid. Now some are in favor of state church, a church supported by tax money. But I told one such person that we Baptists are not going to pay taxes to support your pouring water on baby's heads and calling it baptism.

You know, we've been through that before. We've done that, served the jail time. No, thank you. We don't want to do that again. But if we could make it easier for people to do good things, you know, if our laws, our systems, our government, everything made it easier to do good, to raise a family, perhaps on like a one income, so one parent can stay home, especially the mother.

Make it easier to go to church, so most businesses are closed on Sundays. Make it easier to send kids to the schools they want or homeschool them. Now wouldn't that be good? In that way, by laws, by the government, quote, Christian nationalism, the kingdom of God can come.

But is that the way God's kingdom comes? Maybe. It can. It's complicated. Ironically or oddly, at the same time there's this debate going on about Christian nationalism, should we have blue laws or should we establish a church?

All this going on in sort of in the Christian realm. Out in the real world, the federal government passed the so-called Respect for Marriage Act late last year. It was a propaganda term for a law that enshrines same-sex pseudo marriages.

Some states have passed laws allowing abortion up until birth. In the culture, about 30 of all videos downloaded on the Internet are pornography. Just this past week, a federal judge blocked a law in Arkansas that protected children from so-called gender-affirming care, another propaganda term, which is really for child genital mutilation.

This is amazing we're talking about that in what's supposed to be a civilized country. The judge's official judicial opinion, which until it's overturned by another judge, has the force of law, is full of transgender propaganda.

He listed in this judicial opinion as, quote, findings of fact. One of his findings of fact was that sex is, quote, assigned at birth. It's like you're assigned at college. You're assigned such-and-such professor for English 101.

This is kind of arbitrary. It's meaningless. And so he found that your sex is just assigned. It's just as meaningless and arbitrary as that. He said, that's a fact, and that's a federal judge. And so there's all that going on in the culture.

Meanwhile, some Christians are seriously debating about whether when we take over the country, like we're on the verge of doing it, should we establish a church or should we just have blue laws? I don't know if they're like totally out of touch with reality, if they're using this kind of fantasizing about what we're gonna do to escape from what's really going on out in the world.

It would be like me planning on where I'm gonna put my gold medal that I think I'm gonna win in the next Olympics. Should I put it in the living room or in the hallway? Go buy a trophy case from Hobby Lobby to put it in.

It'd be kind of like that. Is that what's going on with all this talk about Christian nationalism? Or maybe they're right. If this level of barbarity and insanity I read the judge's opinion, and it has the force of law of this country.

It's insane. This level of barbarity and insanity can't last much longer, and it's gonna come crashing down. And so maybe we better start planning on how we're gonna put the pieces back together, how to bring the kingdom of God into this nation.

Now, of course, that begs the question that how does the kingdom of God come? Can we bring it to this nation with, quote, Christian nationalism? Maybe just pass some blue laws. So will you establish a state church?

Maybe we'll go establish the right church this time. We'll get it right this time. Maybe they think the problem with other state churches they had in the past was they established the wrong one. We'll get it right this time.

But, of course, that's certain to corrupt the church. Whatever church you establish, you will corrupt it. Some Christian nationalists might say, you know, if you force your children to go to church when they'd rather stay at home and watch cartoons or play video games, why not force your neighbors?

Bad argument, though, I think, since children are children, and they don't know what's best for them yet, which is why you, parent, have to choose for them. You have to show them by example. We're Christians, so we go to church on Sunday, even if it conflicts with money-making, even if we lose some money because we have to close down to go to church.

We have a family blue law. We have a family-established church, even if we don't believe in one for the nation. Or maybe we do, and so we're starting with our family. But still, is that how the kingdom of God comes?

We're told to pray, your kingdom come, but how does it come? We see that here in four parts. First, the situation. Second, the supplication. Third, the caution. And finally, the submission. Well, first, there's a situation.

Samuel's old. We met him when he was just a baby, just a toddler. Now he's old. He's been bringing in the kingdom of God, and he's bringing in the rule of God to Israel his whole life. He's applying the Word of God to the people of God, and that's how you bring in, or at least create the environment to bring in, the kingdom of God.

Speak the Word, believe the Word, do the Word. But now he's getting old, and they need to think about what comes after him. Now Samuel's plan was to have his sons succeed him. And he has two sons, Joel, which means Yahweh, or the Lord is God, and Abijah, which means Yahweh is my Father.

And now Samuel obviously made a statement to Israel and to his sons by naming them like that. He named them to remind them and everyone else that the Lord is their God and Father. You can't make your children part of God's kingdom, but you can raise them so that they hear the Word, and they come to church, they know about the Lord being God and Father.

And when Samuel is old, he places sons as judges over Israel. There's two problems with that. First one that's really not mentioned here is that a judge is not hereditary. Judges proved that they were selected by God.

They had what the Chinese called the mandate of heaven by defeating the enemies of God's people, by showing themselves to be a savior. And so a judge is not elected by the people, he's not appointed by a council, and he doesn't inherit his position.

He earns it. He has to prove it by winning. But here Samuel thinks he can just appoint them, appoint his sons as judges. And the second, the bigger problem, is that Samuel's sons are corrupt. Apparently, doesn't say, but apparently, you've got to wonder whether Samuel learned his parenting from Eli.

Remember, Eli would correct, he would cajole his boys, but ultimately he enabled them. He wouldn't use his authority to stop their immorality and their corruption, and the end result was their destruction.

Eli didn't use his authority as a parent to make his sons do what is right when he had the power to do it. Now likely Samuel did the same. So parents, use your authority as a parent, while you have it, to make your children do what is right.

You can't make them believe, you can't change their heart, but you can make them do while they're in your house. Make them come to church, to get them under the hearing of the Word of God, get them in the way of grace, and maybe God will be gracious and give them grace.

Now like Eli, Samuel's sons turn out to be corrupt. They set up shop down in Beersheba, which is way in the far south of Israel, that's kind of weird. But they didn't use their authority to bring in the kingdom of God, like their father had.

They did not walk in his ways, it says in verse 3. Samuel sincerely followed the Lord, they didn't. Instead, it says they turned aside, which there's the same word for repent. They repented of Samuel's ways.

This is a negative repentance. Repented of Samuel's ways, the way Samuel taught them, and went the other way, after dishonest gain. Samuel showed them the right way, and they turned around and went toward bribery, deciding cases by who paid them the most, perverted justice, giving decisions to whoever would give them the most cash.

They bent their decisions according to what benefited them, instead of following God's Word. You bring in God's kingdom by applying God's Word when the pressure is on. The pressure's on from the world, with its money, when it promises you that you can have wealth if you do what it wants.

You'll get rich by seeking first dollars. That's the deceitfulness of riches. The world says, riches says, mammon says, follow me, do what I say, and I'll give you lots of cash. You bring in the kingdom of God when you say, no, I will keep God's ways.

The world says, you know, you keep your job as a professor or a teacher or pastor, or you get elected. If you disregard the Word of God, you twist the Word like they want, like the world wants. But if you bring in the kingdom of God, you keep it straight.

You tell the truth. Samuel's sons didn't. They turned out the opposite of Samuel. They turned away from the kingdom of God and sought their own kingdom. That's the situation. Now, second, the supplication, beginning in verse 4.

The elders of Israel come to Samuel at Ramah, that's his hometown in central Israel, with a request. You know, behold, this is the situation. Look at this. Behold, verse 5, you are old. I don't know if he didn't know that, but they tell him that.

You don't have much time left, and your sons do not walk in your ways. They don't bring in the kingdom of God like you did. The supplication, the request, is appoint for us a king. They say the only one more powerful than a king is a kingmaker, and they trust Samuel to be the kingmaker.

He'll appoint the king, and then they'll have a kingdom. Now, the complicated question is whether that is right, whether it's God's will. Now, it's God's will in one sense, and that God is in control of all this, using it for His purposes.

We'll see that because this gets us to where God wants it to go. It's His will of decree. He's decreed that this would happen, that these people would come to Him and seek a king, even for the wrong motives.

But is it His will of command? That is, does God command them to have a king? Now, even that's not an easy question to answer. Does God will us to have a king? Oh, yes. Jesus is king, Lord, the Son of David.

So when we confess, you say, Jesus is Lord. You mean, He's your king. He's the one who fulfills the promise to David to have an eternal light of kings coming from Him. So, yes, a king is God's will for us, eventually for them, but their reasons for wanting a king are all wrong.

If they wanted to be in the kingdom of God, then they'd say, appoint for us a king to judge us according to God's word, to keep us in our covenant with God, keep us faithful. If you're seeking first the kingdom of God, then you ask God to appoint for you a king to judge you, to rule over you, to set you right.

You say, Jesus is Lord. You welcome the conviction of the Holy Spirit. But they say, appoint for us a king to judge us like all the other nations. They were supposed to be a holy nation. They're supposed to be different from the other nations.

Not just kind of, well, other nations are doing it, so we will, too, be conformed. The practical question was, how did the Lord rule over them? The Lord was supposed to rule over them, but how was He going to do it?

Up to now, He's been doing it through judges. Judges prove that they were appointed by God by their victories. They wanted change. They want the person who judges them to be a king through a dynasty. They were supposed to be ruled by everyone, obey God.

They were supposed to be before this, obey God's word. But what happened was that everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and so there was decline. How low can they go? Well, they did bring in the kingdom of God into their lives by obedience, and now they ask for a king.

But not because they're seeking first the kingdom of God, but because they're seeking to be like the world. Now, that displeased Samuel in verse 6. Now, we could be cynical and think, well, he's just displeased because he wants his sons to have that position to be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

But it appears that he's most displeased because they weren't seeking the Lord to rule over them. They weren't seeking, Israel was not seeking God's kingdom first, to be holy, to be set apart from the world.

And so he prays to the Lord, and the Lord tells him in verse 7, obey the voice of the people. Listen to them. Do what they say. Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God, is an old Latin saying.

Is that true? It's true that God controls the voice of the people so that they say what God has decreed. It's not true that they say what God commands that they should. The crowds, the people, the mob, the democracy shouted to Pontius Pilate as he was trying to look for a legal, faith-saving way to save the Lord Jesus, to let him go.

The mob, the people, the democracy cried, crucify him. Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Well, it was the will of the Lord to crush him. They did what God's plan in hand had predestined to take place. But the command of God, the command of God, the voice of God, the Vox Dei, is do not murder.

The voice of the people said, crucify him. The voice of the people may be God's way of bringing us to judgment. Now, their problem here isn't that they wanted a king, but that they wanted one for the wrong reason.

They wanted to be worldly. They wanted to be unholy. They wanted a king not to live in God's kingdom, but precisely for the opposite reason, because they've rejected God. And so, God tells Samuel in verse 7, they have not rejected you, Samuel, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

Now, they want a king, but not God's kingdom. And the irony here, though, they've rejected God by seeking a king, but the irony is that God used the rejection of his kingdom to bring in his kingdom. How does the kingdom of God come?

Well, Protestantism is committed to the idea that God can rule his people through his word. Scripture is the final authority, not a man or a council, but sola scriptura. And like Israel, that's the ideal, right?

Sola scriptura is the ideal, but just like Israel up until now, many people, instead of seeking God's kingdom, they call themselves God's people, but instead of seeking God's kingdom from his word, they do whatever is right in their own eyes.

Now, the Roman church says, see, look at all those people. You say Scripture is the final authority, but you have all these people doing whatever is right in their own eyes. What you need is our king, their magisterium, they call it, their human rulers, to decide.

Now, they're right that we need a king, but not theirs because theirs is like the world until Christ comes. And we'll always have false brothers and sisters who do whatever is right in their own eyes, even though they claim to be God's people, who claim that they're following God's word, but they're really just following their own desires.

And the solution to that is it to be just so discouraged to say, well, this just doesn't work, following God's word ourselves. Sola scriptura, studying the Bible, studying God's word and applying it. No, we need a king to rule over us.

Now, that doesn't work. No merely human king, no vicar of Christ or bishop or patriarch can solve that problem. And if we think they can, it's because we've given up seeking the kingdom of God and we're seeking to be like the world.

We've given up being holy people who have to seek the will of God from His word, and we're just seeking someone to make those other people conform who aren't conforming. Here, Israel has given up on the kingdom of God, but the king will come through what they're doing anyway.

They've rejected me, God says, but give them a king anyway. He tells Samuel in verse 8, according to all the deeds that they have done from the day that I brought them out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you.

This is consistent. They're doing it over and over again, rejecting the Lord, going away from His word. They're doing it again. So, this seeking a king is a rebellion against God's kingship, and yet, ironically, God is going to use it to bring in His kingdom.

And here, for Samuel, he's getting rejected. The prophets get the same rejection God gets. But still, in verse 9, obey their voice, God says. Fox populi, fox dei. Their voice, their supplication is for a king.

God says, obey it, because through the king, God will bring in His kingdom. How does God's kingdom come? Well, it comes first through a king. But first, warn them, God says, show them all the ways of the king who shall reign over them.

Caution them about the king they'll get, because they couldn't wait for God's king. So, third, caution. Samuel warns them about the kind of king they'll get. They're seeking a king, but not the kingdom of God.

And so, the result will be mistreatment, tyranny, oppression, takers who exploit them. Samuel told them all that the Lord said, and then from verses 10 to 18, he cautions them. These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you.

You reject God's kingdom, this is what you're going to get. He'll have to draft. He'll draft your sons into his army. He'll make them to be in his chariots, or in his infantry, running in front of the chariots, or in his cavalry.

He'll take your sons to work for him, to plow for him, to harvest for him instead of for you. He'll put them to work making stuff for him, in verse 12, instead of for you. And it's not just your sons.

He'll take your daughters and make them work as perfumers, and cooks, and bakers. He's all about his own court, looking, smelling great, and good food. Verse 13, he doesn't care about your daughters. He'll take the best of the land for himself.

He'll take the best fields, and vineyards, and all orchards, either for himself or to reward his cronies. He'll take your taxes, too, in verse 15. Now, Samuel is trying to scare them with how bad it's going to be with a selfish king.

This is how bad it's going to be, Samuel says in verse 15. Wait for this. You won't believe it, Israel. It's so bad, he's going to tax you. You won't believe the rate. Ten percent. Ten percent. Ten percent, can you believe it, of your income he'll take.

A whole ten percent. As if that's so exploitative, they'll never agree to that. Of course, we now have far more taken from us. In verse 16, he'll take your servants, your employees, because he wants them for himself.

He doesn't care about you, your business, your needs, or maybe he'll pay them so much not to work that they stay home. Finally, again, in verse 17, he'll take a tenth of your flock, taxing you exorbitantly, taxing you so much.

You're basically a slave now. At a certain level of taxation, you're a slave. At a certain point, so much of your income goes to the state. Basically, you belong to the state. And here, it's ten percent.

Maybe it's higher for us, since we get more out of it arguably, get better roads and police and fire protection, get some services. Maybe also a factor is we get more income than they did. But still, at a certain point of taxation and control, you become slaves of a government that's just taking.

Notice over and over again how the selfish king takes. In verse 11, he will take your sons. In verse 13, he will take your daughters. In verse 14, he will take your land. In verse 15, he will take a tenth of your grain.

In verse 16, he will take your servants. In verse 17, he will take a tenth of your flock. The human king is a taker. He builds grand palaces for himself, takes great titles for himself, pontificus, maximus, and they'll boast about how they've been public servants.

I've been in public service all my life. I'm a public servant. Somehow managed to have, as a public servant, somehow managed to have multiple million-dollar mansions and beach houses and luxury cars and staffs and all that.

They live, public servants live, as we say, like a king. That's the kind of people we're cautioned against. Here, you reject the kingdom of God, you get exploited like that. Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

Here, they ask for a king, not to bring in God's kingdom, but to bring in their own. So finally, verse 18, in the day when you finally had enough, you've been exploited so much, so much taken from you, and you cry out to God for relief, your king, Samuel calls him, warning, your king, he's your king.

The one you chose, he says, for yourselves. Notice that in verse 18, for yourselves. Not for the kingdom of God. You didn't care about the kingdom of God. You chose him for yourselves. You thought this king could make life easier for you.

And they could seek a king to bring in God's kingdom. But here, they're seeking a king for themselves, thinking, he'll be better for us. He'll get us more prosperity. He'll get us the things, the family we want better than seeking the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is not working, so we'll seek our king for ourselves. He'll help us better. So when he turns out to be a taker, and instead of using his own vast wealth to build that magnificent building he wants to build in Rome, instead of that, he sells get-out-of-purgatory gift cards to make money from gullible people, sends out his salesman with a catchy jingle, whenever the coin in the coffer rings, your dear, beloved grandfather sold from Purgatory Springs.

Who wouldn't buy that? And when he has multiple mansions and posh vacation resorts, and you finally get tired of all that, all that exploitation, all that taking, and you cry out to God for relief, you'll be stuck with the consequences.

Samuel says, the Lord will not answer you in that day. If you don't seek the kingdom of God, you won't get the protection of God. That's the caution. But the people say in verse 19, no, they refuse to believe it, but there shall be a king over us.

They won't listen to Samuel. And so finally, the submission. God tells Samuel to submit to their request, Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people says, there will be a king over us. The supplication really wasn't a supplication, it was a demand.

And they gave three reasons for their demand in verse 20. First, repeating the reason they gave earlier, that we also may be like all the nations. Instead of being holy, different, and set apart, they want to be like all the other nations where one man was in power, one man represented the whole nation.

He said what was what, the head of the country. When they need to organize, instead of this kind of mess of elders debating and discussing what they're going to do, everyone doing what is right in their own eyes, they just submit to a king.

He decides, like every other nation does. And second, that our king may judge us, like the other nations. They want one man making the decisions, a Supreme Court who settles things. So much easier, they think.

Some people today convert from being evangelical, Bible-believing, into Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. A lot of people motivated to do that is because they want an authority to tell them what to believe.

So when it comes to some question, you know, the role of women in the ministry, about giving or working on Sundays, you know, what do we believe? We have to say, search the Scriptures. What does the Word of God say?

We have to go study the Bible, sometimes discuss it among ourselves. What does God say? And then there are false teachers who come around, confuse things, almost always telling us that, well, be like the world.

So it's so much easier, instead of all that, searching the Scriptures for ourselves and debating and thinking clearly and screening out who are these false teachers, can I figure out who they are and hear the voice of God from His Word?

So much easier. Just ask the man. That's all you got to do. The leader of the king. What's the role of women in ministry? How much should I give? Or can I work on Sunday? He answers the question, and we just follow what he says, unbothered by other opinions, unbothered by having to search the Scriptures for ourselves or seeking the Kingdom of God.

Some people prefer that. Like here, they've rejected God. Finally, third reason, in verse 20, that He might go out before us and fight our battles. They want one focal person, one man who is responsible to look to in times of emergency, organize the troops, lead them in battle and protect them.

Of course, who has been protecting them up until now? He's been fighting their battles up to this point. Oh, God did. He would raise up judges when they were needed. He would thunder from the sky, confuse the enemy.

But the problem with God is that He wouldn't be controlled. Remember, they thought they could control Him by bringing the Ark of the Covenant to the battlefield, and it didn't work. He might not show up when wanted.

And so they could lose. They could be routed, and they would then be oppressed by the enemy, sometimes for decades. And then they would go through this process of they would have to repent again, and then after they repented, the Lord would raise up a deliverer, a judge, and He would set them free, and then they would have some relief.

So now, let's just stop this cycle and just have a king who will protect us. Cut out the judgment and the oppression part. Cut out the part where we're afflicted and have to learn from our mistakes. Cut out our repentance so we don't want to have to do that anymore.

Just have the protection. In other words, they wanted to walk by sight, not by faith. So Samuel heard all this, repeated it to the Lord in prayer, and the Lord tells him in verse 22, submit. Obey their voice, the vox populi.

Make them a king. So Samuel tells them, go home until he knows who to make king. How does the kingdom of God come? It comes through a king. There's no kingdom without a king. Before, up until now, Israel had an invisible king that they were to seek by living according to His covenant, following His word.

Now, they want someone they could see. Just like the rest of the world, they wanted to walk by sight. Now, the ideal had been up until now that they seek the kingdom of the invisible king and walk by faith in Him.

Same as our ideal. But they rejected the Lord as king over them. They sought a king but not the kingdom of God. How do you get the kingdom of God to come into your life? Just get a man who will implement it, who will impose it on you?

No. We're told to pray for it, to seek it first. Seek it first over seeking food, over clothing, over shelter, over money and everything that it buys. We're told to strive, to agonize, to enter the kingdom of God.

And so we must pray for the king to rule our lives, to seek his rule over us, over our money, over our time, over what we watch, what we listen to. Here they rejected the Lord's kingship. We must seek it, strive for it, sometimes agonize to get into it.

It doesn't come easily. That's some man just imposing it on us, some government just passing laws that bring it on us. To have the kingdom come, we need a king. The Lord used their rejection of His kingship to bring His king.

That's the irony of this, isn't it? They're rejecting His kingship and God uses that to bring His king. Of course when the king came, he was despised and rejected by men, Isaiah says. But he was still the king, indeed the king of kings.

We don't have to be cautioned against him taking from us, exploiting us, calling himself a public servant while using us to serve him. No, he's called the servant of the Lord and he says that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

He came not to take but to give. The kingdom of God comes into our life when we submit to Him as king. So, do that now.