Palm Sunday • 2026

What happens when God’s people ask for something He never intended for them? In 1 Samuel 8, Israel demands a king—not out of faith, but out of a desire to be like the nations around them. What they wanted felt right, but it came with consequences they couldn’t see. This Sunday, we’ll explore how our hearts can drift toward trusting in what feels secure, visible, and familiar instead of trusting in God as our true King. And ultimately, we’ll see how even in our misplaced desires, God was preparing the way for the King we truly need—Jesus.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, so we're diving in. 1 Samuel, Palm Sunday. We're looking at the king we wanted. Next week we're going to look at the king we needed, but we're going to have to wrestle with some stuff first. So 1 Samuel, Old Testament, crack open your Bible or app. We're going to be about a third of the way through the Old Testament. If you don't know where 1 Samuel is, chapter 8, we're going to be uh going verse by verse through this. So as you're finding your way there, here's something I want to submit to you. I would submit that our lives can be most understood through the lens of kingdoms and kings. All of life is organized around a kingdom, and our lives are submitted to a king. In fact, I would argue that we're designed to desire being ruled over. Now we may fight with that because we love autonomy and this rugged individuality that uh America was founded on, right? But the reality is this: deep down, we want someone to rule over us. And we're constantly looking for who that king might be that we might participate in the benefits of their kingdom. This is what our life pursuit really is. Now, that may not be the language that you use, and that that's fair, but it is the reality that you live. Every person's pursuing something or someone that they believe will deliver the good life. However, you want to define that. And whatever that is, however you define it, it functions then as your king who can deliver that good life to you. You see, that king then shapes your decisions, it guards your priorities, and most assuredly, that king demands your loyalty. All the accumulation of everything that that king rules over in your life, well, that's their kingdom. So the question has never been whether you belong to a kingdom. The question is always, which one? While scripture speaks of many kingdoms and kings, there are two that we need to give our full attention to this morning. There is the kingdom of self, where you sit on the throne, you call all of your own shots, and you bend everything in your kingdom around your own flourishing. And then there's the kingdom of God, where the Lord reigns, where his purposes govern, and life is ordered around his glory and his people's ultimate good. You see, there exists this tension in this reality that I believe Augustine really wrote about with clarity in his work, The City of God. He says this about these two cities or two kingdoms. Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly love by the love of self, even to the contempt of God, the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. Most of us live somewhere in the uneasy tension between the two. Claiming to belong to God's kingdom, often we quietly seek to run our own. And that attention is exactly what this passage exposes for us. Israel had already belonged to the kingdom of God. They had the Lord Himself as their king, and they walked away from it to chase a kingdom that looked more like everyone else's. And the warning that God gave them through his prophet Samuel, I believe, is the same warning that he gives to us today. So let's dive in together. In one through three, we're introduced to Samuel in his old age, who has appointed his two sons to take his place as judges over Israel. But they're corrupt. They take bribes, they pervert justice, and so the people come to Samuel with a request. The elders of Israel come to the prophet with this very honest and fair frustration. They see how his sons are operating in the land, how they are greedy, how they are manipulative, and they come to Samuel with this genuine frustration. The system of judges is failing. And God's people are suffering for it. But notice what they ask for. They don't say, hey, Samuel, could you remove your sons from office? They don't say, hey, God, could you raise up a faithful judge among your people? They say this in 1 Samuel 8, 5, in the second half. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. That last phrase, like all the nations. That's where the real problem surfaces in the hearts of God's people. You see, their frustration with these corrupt sons of Samuel, it was understandable. But their solution ultimately was a rejection of their identity. You see, they were supposed to be a people set apart, unlike the surrounding nations, that they were supposed to be governed by Yahweh as he reigned over them as their king. But here, they're not just asking for some type of political resolve. They're asking for a change of their very identity. They don't want to be different. They want to be like all the other nations. We often do this too. Right? We experience real pain in our life, real instability in our circumstances, real failure in the structures that govern us. And instead of bringing that pain to the Lord, honestly and vulnerably, we scan the horizon for whatever king seems most capable of fixing it. I want that. I want to be like them. You see, the frustration that we feel and experience, they're legitimate. They're honest at times, but but it's the direction that our hearts turn in our frustration that actually reveals what we actually trust. So if I can be corny for a moment, right? Is that okay? Here's something I think is really helpful. What we run to in our crisis reveals who our Christ is. What we run to in our crisis reveals who our Christ is. In these moments of panic and anxiety and fear and worry, when we run to someone or something, we're ultimately requesting for them to save us, to deliver us, to protect us. Now, in verses 7 through 8, God speaks to Samuel to help bring clarity and understanding of what's going on. Samuel brings their request to the Lord, and God's response kind of reframes everything in Samuel's thinking because he's seeing this as a rejection of himself, but God helps him understand, no, this isn't about you at all, Samuel. Look at verses eight or uh verse seven, the second half. Here's what God says to Samuel They have not rejected you, they have rejected me from being king over them. Now, what initially looked like a political request. Can we just have a different ruler? A request that was birthed out of frustration and fear. This was actually a theological statement that they were making. Here's what I mean by this: Israel wasn't just asking for better governance, they were declaring that God's kingship wasn't enough. That God's rule and reign over them as his people was ultimately insufficient. And God connects this request that they make to a pattern that he's actually observed in the lives of his people from their deliverance out of Egypt. He says this in verse 8. He says, according to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. So here's what we see in the text. This wasn't a new failure, right? This wasn't God and Samuel trying to figure out a game plan over this new rebellion that was birthed out of the heart of his people. No, this was the same failure repeated time after time, a failure that resided for centuries deep within their heart. But this time in their frustration and fear, it's said out loud. Now that should give us some pause because often we're prone to this same pattern. Every time we look to something else to give us what only God can provide, right? Security, meaning, deliverance, joy, peace. We're not just making some type of simple pragmatic mistake. We're declaring something theological. We're actually falling into the same habitual patterns that Israel did, that eventually led them to deny or reject their identity along with their king who gave them meaning and purpose as a people. So we're saying with our choices, if not our words, that the Lord's kingship isn't sufficient for what we actually need in this life. Now, God is gracious and he loves his people, so he warns them about what this king is going to look like. Verses 10 through 18, we see God's warning. God tells Samuel, go ahead and grant their request, but first warn them. And his warning is one of the most relentless passages in all of Scripture. Here's what he says. I'm going to try to summarize 11 through 17 for us together. This king, he's going to take your sons. He's going to enlist them into his army. He's going to assign them to his chariots. He's going to put them to work in his fields. And not only will he take your sons, but he's going to take your daughters. And they're going to be enslaved in his kitchen. They're going to work in his perfumeries. And then what is he going to do? He's going to take your fields, your vineyards, and your olive orchards, the best of them. And he's going to give them to his servants. And then he's going to take a tenth of your grain and your flocks and your servants. And in the end, verse 17 says plainly, this is your fate. You shall be his slaves. There's no irony that God is pointing out that from Egypt, when he delivered them out of slavery, that their heart's desire has always been to enter back into the slavery of which he delivered them from, ultimately in rejecting him as their king. You want to be enslaved? Have it. Eight times in seven verses, God uses the same word, take. Because this is the nature of every king who is not the Lord. They accumulate, they consume, they promise protection, but they deliver enlistment. Ultimately, we are convinced that they will serve us, but the very nature of every king who is not the Lord is that their people end up serving them. Right? That's the wicked irony. We come to infinitely lesser kings because we're convinced of their false promise that they will serve us. But over time we find ourselves entrapped and enslaved and only serving them. The people who wanted someone to fight for them, for their battles, to protect them from their fears, they end up fighting for him instead, losing their lives on their own selfish personal conquests. And the very things we crown as kings in our lives, man, they have the same nature. What does the king of career advancement do to us? When we try to crown that as king because we think that that's going to serve our desires and purposes, well, it ends up taking. It takes your evenings, it takes your weekends, it takes your presence with the people that you love most. What about the king of financial security? If we can just store up enough in these houses, we'll be protected from whatever storm may come in life. But it takes your peace because no amount of money is ever enough. It takes your generosity, your willingness to live open-handedly for the sake of God glorifying obedience, you now live with clenched fists instead. What about the king of reputation? It'll take your honesty, it'll take your backbone and your courage, it'll take your freedom to be truly known by others. Every substitute king, whether in a tangible person or in an idol risen within our heart, presents itself as a giver. But every single one of them turns out to be a taker. God isn't warning Israel to be cruel. He's warning them because he knows what they don't, that what they're reaching for is going to cost them everything that they're trying to protect. Then we have the refusal of the people in verses 19 through 20. And then after hearing all of it, Israel still says no. Look at 1 Samuel 8, 19 through 20. No, but there shall be a king over us. That we also, again, here's that phrase, may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us. And then here, this is the revealing of the heart, the fear, and go out before us and fight our battles. You see, the warning that God gave them, it didn't change their mind. They heard exactly what the king would do to them, and they still wanted him anyway. Now we shouldn't judge Israel too quickly. We often do the same thing, right? We've heard the warnings of what sin will do to us. We've seen what happens when we crown lesser kings in our life. We've lived through the taking, and still, when that fear rises or that desire flares up within our chest, we reach for lesser kings to serve us. And sadly, we find ourselves over time enslaved to them. Because at the end of their request, as I said, is the deepest confession of all. They want a king to fight our battles. They were afraid. When you're afraid, you'll reach out and crown anyone or anything that can present itself as a solution to that worry and anxiousness. So the question this passage presses on us is whether we're going to trust the king who has already proved himself to his people? Or are we going to keep reaching for the one who only promises what he can never actually deliver? You see, here's what Israel couldn't get through their head. Or more importantly, they couldn't get into their stone heart. That the Lord is the mighty and benevolent king of his people. Mighty and benevolent king of his people. Look, what God was offering Israel, what ultimately they traded away in their demand for a king, it was something that no human ruler could ever provide for them. Lord wasn't just taking king in title. He was the only king who was both perfectly mighty and perfectly benevolent at the same time. Let's work through this, right? He was mighty. In the wilderness, he poured out provision to each of them. Ultimately, God never ruled over his people for his own gain. No, God governed his people for their flourishing. So God's warning to Israel wasn't just this kind of pragmatic political advice. It was a contrast that he was setting up for them to see. Here's what a human king will do. Here's what I have done, and what I will continue to do for you. Every king Israel ever had after this moment would prove God's warning true. They took, they enslaved, and none of them, not Saul, not David, not Solomon, could defeat the enemy that actually threatened Israel's ultimate good. And so the tragedy of this passage isn't that Israel wanted new leadership. No, the tragedy is that they already had the best king imaginable. And they traded him for a taker. You see, this is the truth that runs through every verse of this passage. I think that this is the truth that weaves the fabric of scripture, and it's one that cuts right into our hearts this morning. The Lord is the mighty and benevolent King of His people, and every single king we've chosen in his place has turned out to be infinitely less mighty than we needed in our life, and far less benevolent than we could have ever hoped for. You see, we often we we cry for other kings to rule over us. We cry, our hearts cry for other kings to rule over us. We're not that altogether different from Israel. We look at what the world offers: security, status, comfort, control, you name it. And we want a king that we can see, that we can touch, that we can feel working on our behalf. And here's where it normally happens. It normally happens in either the presence of fear or the presence of desire. Those two realities seem to be catalysts for us to reach our hand to crown lesser kings that they might serve our immediate felt need. Something feels threatened, right? And so we reach for whoever seems strong enough to protect it. Something promises satisfaction. And we reach for whoever seems generous enough to deliver it. Now we don't announce the coronation of this new king. The most deceptive thing is that you and I normally don't even notice it's happening. We just wake up one day and we realize that something other than the Lord has been sitting on the throne of our heart and we've been serving it faithfully. You see, every one of these kings makes the same promise that Israel heard. I will fight your battles, and I will give you what you're looking for. And every one of them turns out to be exactly what God warned about. Not a giver, but a taker. Not a mighty king to fight your battles, but a tyrant that will enslave you to fight their own. You see, many of us in this room, I would submit that we struggle to see God as a benevolent king. We struggle to see God as a benevolent king. Some of us we don't necessarily battle with doubt about his power, but we do struggle with his sense of goodness. We struggle with our own desires that creep up within us. You see, deep down, many of us we've accepted the oldest lie in Scripture. God really isn't that good. That God actually desires to keep from us what we long for. You see, deep down we've accepted that God's design for our life is not about flourishing, but it's about deprivation. That we see Him as a taker. We look at what the world is offering, right? Its pleasures, its freedoms, its vision of the good life. And then we look at God, what he seems to be asking for us to give up. And here's what we conclude, even if it's just quietly within us, that God is really just a taker, deceitfully dressed up as a giver. That his commands are the bars of a cage, not the banks of a river.

unknown 25:27

Right?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

That's how scripture talks about his law and his commands, that it's like us being at this bank edge of a river of life-flowing water, our roots running deep down, we're growing into fruitfulness, we're flourishing because of his law, because of his command and our obedience to them, our joy-filled obedience to them. But what do we don't see him as the bank of a river? No, we see him as the bars of a cage that is trying to enslave us, that's trying to deprive us of everything that we long for and want to find joy and satisfaction in. That following him faithfully, it means actually trading real joy for just religious duty. So when the world holds out something to us that promises satisfaction, like a relationship outside of God's design for humanity, a comfort that requires us to compromise to obtain it, a pleasure that demands we look away from what we know is true and good and beautiful in this world. What do we do? We reach for it. Not because we've stopped believing in God, but because in that moment the world's offer feels more generous. The world's offer feels more benevolent than his. And here's the tragic irony it's that we often are deceived about what genuine soul satisfaction even really is. We think we know best, but at best we are fools in understanding what will actually delight us. Our appetite has been so shaped by a fallen world, by the sin that has bound us that we've lost the ability to recognize what we were made for. His glory. And so we call God's goodness bondage. In the irony of culture, and some of us, we call our chains freedom. Look at society today. They are running back into bondage at breakneck speeds, declaring from the middle of the streets that this is freedom. And some of us look at the very freedom that God offers us and we say, no, thanks, that looks like bondage. Israel wanted a king like the nations. Because God's arrangement didn't look like enough to them. What they didn't yet know was that the nation's kings would take everything. And the Lord that they traded away was the only benevolent one who could and who desired to give them what they were actually longing for. Others of us in this room this morning, we struggle to see God as a mighty king. As a mighty king. We may be sitting in these seats not doubting God's goodness, but we do doubt his sufficiency for the battles that actually feel urgent to us. And the battles feel real. Most of the time, because they are. That worry, that fear, that anxiousness, right? It's there for a reason, sometimes for not good reasons, but sometimes for real legitimate ones. What about a marriage that's just unraveling at the edges? Or a career that seems like it's stalling out, where other people who are less qualified or put in less time than you are advancing beyond you? Or what about a friendship that's been fractured by conflict because you had to speak truth into a situation that was awkward and felt tension-filled? These are genuine struggles, and when we face them, we look for every human power available to win them. What kind of strategy can I figure out to be able to apply to this? What kind of leverage could I have in this situation to get what I truly desire? What words can I speak to persuade the outcome? And honestly, we often mistakenly call this wisdom. But what we've actually done is simply crowned an earthly king to fight a battle that we've decided is too immediate to simply trust God with. And then there are the bigger battles on the social stage. Speak to this cautiously, but direct. The bigger battles on our social stage. The violent foreigner at the border, the nuclear capability in the hands of a hostile regime, the ideology advancing through institutions, quietly dismantling everything that we believe is true and good and beautiful about the world that our children are inheriting. Here's what we need to say. I'm not saying that those aren't battles. I'm not saying that those aren't worth fighting. But Samuel's warning confronts us with this. We have a profound tendency to treat eternally lesser battles as if they were the ultimate one. And let me speak to this too. I think this is one of the reasons we have such infighting even within the church. You see a battle happening on the social stage that feels immediate and that creates fear. And you want a king that's going to be able to bring resolve to that fight. And you and I might see battles differently. We might see fights as either more prominent and immediate than others. And so, what are we going to do? We're looking at who can we crown, who can we give authority to, who can we surrender to that will actually win the fight that's so urgent before us. And so you might crown this candidate as king, and your brother or sister might crown this candidate as king. All the while, I think the enemy is rejoicing at how distracted we are from an infinitely greater battle that stands before us. You see, we orient our deepest hopes and our greatest fears around battles that, even if we win them, leave the real enemy completely untouched. No earthly king has ever defeated death. No political victory has ever emptied a grave. No military strength has ever left sin powerless. The battle that actually determines everything. Death, sin, and the grave is the very one Israel's king and no human king that we could appoint are ever able or strong enough to fight. And so when we live as though these lesser battles are the ultimate ones we face, we've crowned a king who can win backyard brawls, but will always lose the war in front of us. And that's a pathetic king when we contrast him to Yahweh. You see, church, Jesus is the true and better king that we need. God didn't just warn Israel about the king they wanted. He was already planning to send them a king that they needed. It was prophesied that kings and ultimately the king would come through the line of his people. Every failed human king in Israel's history, from Saul to Solomon all the way to the exile, was pointing forward to the one who would be both perfectly mighty and altogether benevolent for the ultimate good of his people. See, Jesus didn't come to take, he came to give. Where every human king took your sons for their army, the Father gives his one and only Son for you. Where every human king taxed and enslaved and demanded, Jesus said this in Matthew 20, 28. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus is the only true, benevolent king. The one who doesn't concentrate power for his own glory and greed, but no, he empties himself for the good of his people. The one who doesn't sit on a throne while his servants suffer beneath his feet. He leaves the throne of heaven, enters the suffering of his people, and he takes the agony upon himself. And here's the beautiful mystery of the gospel that even when he's resurrected and exalted to have his seat at the right hand of the Father by grace through faith, when we are in him, we are seated with him in glory and in power, reigning and ruling. Death. The battle Israel was afraid to name. The one that no matter who sat on that throne, it still gripped their very core. Death ruled and reigned over them, and no king could deliver them from them. But Jesus, he walked straight at death. He died, he descended, and on the third day, he rose victorious. He conquered death. He stripped it of its finality and he walked out of the grave as the first fruits of a new creation, the declaration that death's reign is finished for all who are found in him. I love how the church father Athanasius spoke of this in his work on the incarnation. He said this death has become like a tyrant who has been completely defeated by the legitimate monarch. Bound hand in foot as he now is, the passerby, those who are in Christ is who he's speaking to, sneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage. Why? Because of the king who has conquered him. The king you've been reaching for. And they will face a battle that they cannot win. But mighty King Jesus, he's already won the only battle that matters to us. And he reigns not as a taker, but as the giver of every good and perfect gift. And so my prayer for us is that we would find joy in peace under Jesus' kingship. Joy because he is benevolent. Peace because he is mighty, because Jesus is the king, the one who gives rather than takes, the one who has conquered our ultimate enemy. We can stop reaching to crown pathetic substitutes. You don't need a king who promises to satisfy you. The one who made you for himself has already given everything, even his own life, to have you. It's to have you find your ultimate good and flourishing in him. You don't need a king who promises to protect you. The one who conquered death. Do you really think he's going to abandon you now in the face of the evil of this world? No! He's gone out before you. We don't have to be afraid at what the headlines want to try and tempt us into, being worried and anxious about and reaching for a lesser pathetic backyard brawler of a king. Your king has won the war. And so living under Jesus' kingship is not submission to a demanding ruler. Man, it's rest. It's rest. It's the exhale of finally being governed by the one who fights for you, freely gives to you, and is strong enough to keep every promise he has ever made on your behalf. Samuel's warning turned out to be exactly right. The king they wanted took everything. The king Jesus offers to be to his people is infinitely better. So, church, let him be king.