I have mentioned before the problem in the Old Testament of
"obeying the voice" of anyone else.
That little phrase is first seen in the Lord's accusation against Adam,
that he obeyed the voice of his wife.
Throughout the Jacob stories we see him obeying the voice of his
mother. Here, God tells Samuel to obey
the voice of the people in anointing them a king. In doing so, Samuel is obeying the voice of
God when he gives them a king. Samuel
certainly gives a solemn warning to the people concerning what kind of man this
king will be. Who in the world would
say, at the end of that diatribe, give us such a king? The people, however, refuse to obey the voice
of Samuel in the matter, his influence over them has waned due to the failure
of his two sons to be the men their father was in judging them. They did the two things a judge couldn’t do,
take bribes and pervert justice.
Finally, the Lord again commands Samuel to obey the voice of the people
and now the transition to being like every other nation begins.
Jesus says the contours of His kingdom are dramatically
different from the world's kingdoms. The
path to greatness, which is what the disciples seek, is different from that of
the world. The kings of the Gentiles (at
this point the Israelites have no king, they are not sovereign in the Land, but
subservient to the Romans) lord it over their people, exactly like Samuel was
told the Israelite kings would do. In
the kingdom Jesus has in mind, the path to greatness is in serving rather than
being served and He has shown the way.
Ultimately, He will show even more of the way of serving and
loving. I wonder, when he mentioned that
the disciples would sit on thrones in the kingdom, judging the people, was the
image of service still in their mind's eye?
Stephen begins his sermon by recounting the early history of
the nation. Why? History is important in that in order to
understand who we are, or who we were intended to be, we must know what the
founding fathers, in this case, the patriarchs, envisioned. Israel's history, however, is different. It isn't the vision of the founding fathers
that is important, but the vision of the founding Father, Yahweh, that
matters. Stephen knows who the hero of
the story is, God. People make God's
story a muddle by disobedience and a desire to be great rather than to allow
the Lord to guide and direct at His will.
Abraham followed God in faith, believing that the Lord would and could
do all He promised without seeing the fulfillment of the promises. He was certainly not perfect, his affair with
Hagar, when he obeyed the voice of his wife, produced the conflict that
continues, 4000+ years later in the middle east and over the world, between the
descendants of Abraham through Hagar and those of Sarah. The mess created by internecine strife in the
next couple of generations caused the people to be in the incubator known as
Egypt for four hundred years before they were redeemed and the promise
fulfilled. Greatness is a characteristic
only of the Lord.
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