Understanding
Yahweh to be Your King!
February 11, 2007
Good Morning:
In today’s first lesson from the book of 1st Kings (contemporarily renamed to 1st Samuel) chapter 10, we read how Samuel anointed Saul to be the first human king over the decedents of Jacob (Israel). But how many of you really understand what was happening by this act? Since the Death of Jacob the people of the tribes of Israel, until Moses time, had not had a single unified ruler over them. The Bible tells us each of the related tribes was autonomous in their leadership and although they lived under the Egyptian King they had no real government unto themselves. Moses not only freed the people from Egyptian bondage he also united them under a single leader. Moses still was not their king though, he was a judge to them, and an Icon of Yahweh’s mastership over them, but God himself was their ruler their king.
Now in today’s secular world, ruled by demonic like governments, instituted by the subtle but always ominous work of the Dark Lord of this World, the devil, it may be hard to imagine a nation of people who have no earthly ruler but that is how it was in the early days of Israel. Thousands of thousands of people living together, moving together, and working together with a system of judges to decide issues between them as the only form of earthly control over them. These people didn’t have statutes, ordinances, zoning laws, etc., they lived by the laws of God (Yahweh) that were given to them by Moses in the desert. They didn’t need any other laws because the laws of God as handed down to us in scripture were and are to this day complete. Any judge in the world today could use these laws to decide any possible case that could be brought in front of him. God doesn’t write laws that become obsolete or can’t be applied as society and technology change. The bible tells us Yahweh’s laws for us are eternal, that they will last until the end of this earth. So why did the people want an earthly King when they had Yahweh (God) as their day-to-day government, their actual king?
The answer to this question is the people began to succumb to fear. Fear is the great tool used by the princes of darkness, the princes of this era of the world, to move us to accomplish their goals. Greed is the natural extension of fear in that when you become fearful you tend to compensate that fear by storing up on something physical that you hope will protect you from the things you fear. In the days when the children of Jacob (Israel) were taking over the Promised Land from the Canaanites and others that possessed it, they relied on God as their king and daily ruler. The people themselves enforced God’s (Yahweh) laws, each-and-everyone of them was an enforcer of the law, and the judges appointed over them determined any disputes. The result was everything was fair. Everyone was on an equal footing with his or her neighbors and this was the beginning of the problem for the people. In those days just as it is today the children of the devil were in the land and mingled unknown amongst the children of Adam the Israelites. They spread the poison of fear and some people began to succumb to the poison and they became greedy. These people could see the earthly governments of kings around them. These governments had been strongly influenced by the Devil and his children. The governments of the earth had become corrupt and unfair governments where the rich and powerful got everything and the poor were stepped on, abused by the powerful, and enslaved. The fearful people of Israel, those who lacked faith in their God and King Yahweh, they who in their greed saw this form of earthly government to be advantageous to them at the expense of others.
The faithless slowly but surely spread their fears and their lies amongst
the people. It was easy actually to
do this, because by now no one who had been in the dessert during the exodus was
alive. With money and power it was
easy to rewrite the facts of history to read in their favor and scare the common
people. Life was getting good for
the people as a whole and they were too busy with entertaining themselves and
didn’t have time to learn the old truth and separate out the lies.
So they followed the easiest and most materialistic path by joining with
the faithless in desiring an earthly king.
The initial group of Hebrews desiring an earthly king could have had only
one motivation behind such an act of segregation from the daily rule of Yahweh
that they enjoyed. They wanted to
create a flawed system of governments in which they could become more equal then
others. Lead by fear of loosing the
material wealth they possessed they thought to protect themselves from such
loses by having an earthly government much like the neighboring nations, which
they could corrupt and mold to their best interests. You
can read about the corruption that was taking place in
1 Samuel chapter 8, for even the Prophet Samuel’s own sons were caught up in
it.
Why did God (Yahweh) allow Samuel to set up a
kingdom with an earthly king? God
spoke to Samuel and told him that the people of Israel had rejected him (God)
not Samuel. In indeed the
Israelites, the children of Jacob had rejected Yahweh.
We continue to learn from Samuel chapter 8 that since the time Yahweh
(God) brought them from Egypt they had continually rebelled against him and
worshiped other gods. Yahweh was
fed up, he was tired with their whining and their disobedience and so he decided
to punish them by giving them what they asked for. Our governments as we know them to day are not a blessing by
God but are a curse. See what is
says in 1st
Samuel 8:7 “And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the
people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they
have rejected me, that I should not be king over them.”
God told Samuel to
warn them about the evils of man run governments but the people didn’t care.
Their fears and greed had been increased so that they could no longer
reason. Their newfound wealth and
material possessions had blinded them to the truth about God (Yahweh) and the
prince of this world, the devil, who had other plans for them.
The lessons taught to them by Moses were ignored, the history of their
ancestors in Egypt and before that were being forgotten, and the records of all
earlier mankind from Adam through Noah and his children were cast aside as
legends and myths, until what should have been remembered about the love of God
and the evil of the devil was erased from their memories.
God let us have our governments of man because we had earned it through
our selfish nature.
In our second lesson
today from 1 Peter chapter 2 we see that the apostle is writing to the remnants
of the children of Jacob, our ancestors telling them to put aside these evil
attributes that they have inherited from their fathers.
Peter is talking to us today, the children of Jacob, as the inheritors of
Yahweh’s promise to remember that we are still God’s (Yahweh’s) elect, his
chosen people. He has renewed his
promise to be our eternal Lord and leader, through the giving to us of the
Messiah Yeshua. First though, we
must throw off our old ways, the inherited ways of those Israelites who stood
before Samuel and demanded an earthly king.
We must put on a heavenly attitude, one in which we recognize God
(Yahweh) as our one and only King. We
must be willing to accept and welcome his government over us here on earth as
well as in heaven now and forever. Then
he will latterly save us from ourselves. When
Peter says that we are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, he is
talking to us today as much as those decedents of Jacob that were scattered
around the world in his time. The
key to understanding that God is reaching out to you personally through the
Messiah Yeshua is the knowledge that Peter wasn’t talking to the
Pharisees/Jews of Jerusalem who Yeshua identifies as pretenders who will be
uncloaked in the end times. See
what it says about them in Revelations 3:9 “See,
I am giving up those of the congregation of Satan, who say they are Yehudim and
are not, but lie. See, I am making
them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you (TSV).”
Yehudim are
legitimate blood decedents of Judah, a son of Jacob, remember Yeshua calls the
Pharisees on the carpet in John 8:44 for pretending to be the sons of Judah
(Yehudim) when in fact they weren’t, they were the sons of the devil. God is our eternal King that is the message he sent through
the Messiah Yeshua for us today. A
Message you need to understand and embrace.
You need to shake off the corruption of this materialistic world and
embrace the truth of God’s realm so that you can be here to partake of his
kingdom on earth. This is what it
means when Yeshua tells us we must be “born from above” to inherit the
kingdom of heaven. (John 3:3
Jesus replied to Nicodemus, "I can guarantee this truth: No one can
see the kingdom of God without being born from above." ).
To be like a new baby who has just been brought into the world with the
innocence from heaven above.
As one of God’s
chosen you are a very special invited member to his feast of salvation.
The question you have to answer is “Will you come?”
Just as the master, in our lesson today from the Gospel of Thomas,
invited his special guest so God is also inviting you.
He sends his messengers to you in many ways and awaits your joyous
response to his invitation. Will
you show up or will you be like the friends of the master who were too busy to
come to his diner? If you are too
busy to read his work, if you are too busy to study the lessons taught us be his
prophets from old, if you are too busy to take the time to learn and understand
his plan for you from the beginning of time to the end, then he will just find
someone else to take your place at his feast of salvation.
God knows his own and
he know who you really are and believe it or not you really know who your God
is. If you serve this world then
your God is of this world but if you serve the word of God then your God is the
eternal God. Just like the demon
named Legion in the man of Gadarenes, who knew who Yeshua was, your spirit is
attracted to your true God. But
will you be faithful to the will of your spirit and let it guide you to Yahweh,
when he calls for you? Swine are
amazing creatures in that they can live comfortably in both the cleanest of
environments or in the nastiest of dirty corners in the barnyard.
In our lesson today we see that the swine were feeding on a mountainside,
not a dirty mud hole in the barnyard. Yet
when the demon Legion entered into them, the swine ran immediately to the sea
and were choked by the mire. The
demons drove the swine to a destructive end, they sought out their god, who is
the god of this world and his reward is destruction.
As you go into the
world this week seek out your King, allow your will to bend and move toward the
light of the thrown of Yahweh (God).
Amen.