Now it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways; they turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make 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.” So Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also. Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.” So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who asked him for a king. And he said, “This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants.” He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.” Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he repeated them in the hearing of the Lord. So the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed their voice, and make them a king.” And Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Every man go to his city.” 1 Samuel 8:1-22
This incident happened as the time of the judges was drawing to an end. The time of the judges continued for about four hundred years, from the time of Joshua after the Israelites had entered and conquered the land of Canaan. Samuel was both a judge and a prophet. When he was old, his two sons became judges, but they did not fulfill their role as they should have done. Thereupon, the Israelites gathered and asked Samuel to establish a king for them like the other nations around them.
When this happened, God said that the Israelites “rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” In Deuteronomy chapter 33 there is reference to a King of Jeshurun (see verse 5). This King of Jeshurun is God in heaven. God knew in advance that the Israelites would reject Him and demand a king, and so He explained in advance the rules by which their king was to abide (see Deuteronomy 17:14-20).
In a previous lecture, we took as our theme, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1), and through Galatians chapters 3 and 4 and the letter to the Romans, we carefully examined the life of Abraham, who appears in the book of Genesis, in order to examine just as carefully Jesus who came as a descendant of Abraham. We have seen how God promised Abraham, the forefather of the nation of Israel, that he would be the father of many nations, and through his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. This world was to receive a great blessing through the Son of God who would come to this world.
God conveyed His will to Abraham, and through Abraham, we can see what God’s thoughts are towards mankind, what He intends to do, and the compassion He has for us. Also, through the account of Abraham taking his only son, Isaac, to Mount Moriah in order to offer him there as a sacrifice, we can see an image of Jesus Christ who would someday be born into this world in order to suffer and die.
We find another shadow of Christ in the man by the name of David. In the passage we read above in First Samuel, we found that the Israelites wanted a king. Anyone in this world may want to have a king or a leader, but after the Israelites cried out for a king of their own, such as was to be found in the surrounding nations, God said, “they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.”
God promised to give His Seed through Abraham, and this promise was brought about in this world through Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, the Israelites did not recognize Christ when He was born in Bethlehem of Judea as King of Israel and dwelt among them, and they despised Him. It was as the Bible says, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). The Jews saw Jesus’ behavior as inappropriate as He continually pointed out their mistakes, and in the end, they delivered Him up to be crucified.
As a result, their fate turned out as Jesus said it would. Jesus had said, “Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). In 69AD, the Roman general Titus completely destroyed Jerusalem. A rumor had spread amongst the enemy troops to the effect that when the Jews built their temple they had put gold between the stones, so they tore down the temple leaving not a stone unturned. The whole nation was destroyed in this way, and the Jews were scattered throughout the world.
Now, after many years have passed, Israel has been re-established and exists in this world as an independent nation. Knowing through the Bible that God prophesied that the time would come when Israel would be restored, we can see this happening clearly through news reports. Even now, the Jews are waiting for their Messiah to come and restore their nation. They are waiting for the King that was promised to them, and are unaware that the 33-year-old Man their ancestors crucified two thousand years ago was their Messiah.
Within these circumstances, mankind will receive a king. When the Israelites asked for a king, God allowed them to have a leader. When they rejected God and did not want Him to be their king, the Israelites asked for a person to be instated as their king, and the king that God granted them in response to their demand was Saul. Saul was anointed and instated as king over Israel, but not long after this, God said, “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments” (1 Samuel 15:11). Kings who have come to reign following the desires of the people in this world are a shadow of the antichrist who will become the world ruler before Jesus comes again. The history of this world is now running in the direction of that time.
Then when the time comes, the age of the church has come to an end, and the history of this world has passed through the seven years of the great tribulation, Jesus will return to this earth as King of kings. At that time, the Israelites will recognize Him and lament. Similarly, Saul, the king that the Israelites wanted instead of God, reigned over them, but then he was deposed, and David whom God described as, “a man after My own heart” (Acts 13:22) appeared in their history. We read about this in First Samuel from chapter 16.
In Luke chapter 24, we read how Jesus, after His resurrection, spoke to two disciples who were on their way to Emmaus and said, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” (verse 26). First He was to suffer and then enter His glory. In the same way, David appears before the Israelites in the Old Testament as a shadow of Jesus Christ, first suffering and then being glorified. So we can see that the words that appear in Matthew chapter 1 verse 1—“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham”—contain a very deep significance.
If You Diligently Obey the Voice of the Lord Your God, to Observe Carefully all His Commandments
Let’s turn to the book of Revelation chapter 1 and read from verse 4.
John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. verses 4-7
“All the tribes of the earth” here is talking about the twelve tribes of Israel, and it says that all the tribes will see Jesus as He returns.
The entire book of Revelation talks about the seven years of the great tribulation. This book first expresses what will happen at the end of the history of the world. It has been prophesied that the Israelites will go through such a period in their history. Why will it come to that? It is because they crucified Jesus. Even so, in the end this nation of Israel that crucified Jesus will see Him and mourn because of Him, and Jesus will forgive and embrace them.
When we read the Old Testament carefully, we can see that the bride of God who appears there—the nation that turned its back on God—is Israel. Then the bride of Christ who appears in the New Testament is the church. We need to make a clear distinction between the Old and New Testaments.
In books like Jeremiah, Hosea, and Isaiah in the Old Testament, we find passages that refer to the bride of God, and the husband of Israel. In the Old Testament, the nation of Israel appears in the image of a woman, and the Bible tells us that this nation sinned in the manner of adultery.
Let’s turn to Deuteronomy chapter 28 and read from verse 1.
Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. verses 1-6
God had given the law to the Israelites and commanded them to observe this law, and now He spoke these words when their time in the wilderness was drawing towards its end. It is obvious that if they kept all His commandments, He would bless them. This is not difficult to understand.
Now let’s read from verse 15.
But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. Deuteronomy 28:15-19
Now God spoke of the curses that would come upon them if they did not obey His voice. This is the complete opposite. The blessings that this nation received when they lived in accordance with God’s law, and the curses that would come upon them when they turned away from His law can be seen throughout the history of Israel as it appears in the Bible from the book of Joshua on. Now let’s read from verse 45.
Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. Deuteronomy 28:45-46
God said that their descendants would see what had become of their ancestors and would need to take this as a lesson for themselves. There were times when the Israelites followed outstanding kings such as David and Hezekiah, but there were also times when they committed many sins, building altars in high places and there offering incense to Gentile gods, sculpting idols and worshiping them. In the Old Testament, we see how the Israelites were punished because of this, and God rebuked them in various ways, at times allowing them to be invaded by other nations.
Even though images such as these served as a sign and example for their descendants, when those descendants met Jesus, they did not recognize Him. If they had realized who Jesus was, they would have looked back on what had happened in the course of their history and would not have persecuted Him.
For about 1,880 years—from 69AD to 1948—the Jews wandered across the world with no land of their own, and in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century in particular, they suffered terrible persecution. Yet, strange to say, even though they wandered around all that long time, that nation did not disappear. How is it possible that this nation that was cursed for crucifying Jesus has been able to re-establish their nation and live in their land under their national flag bearing the star of David, after the long period of almost two thousand years? Do you imagine it would be possible?
This was possible because it was recorded in advance in the Bible. It is because God’s words of prophecy are alive and say that He will protect Israel to the end that this nation has the power even now to be able to live in their land and keep it even now. We cannot see that power physically, but we hear about these things happening in news reports. It is easy to think of these events merely as incidents that occur amongst the people of the world, but it is important to be aware that behind them the invisible God has said these things in the Bible, and His words are living and active.
Once God has spoken, His words do not become ineffective after a few days. In the book of Isaiah it says, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (55:11). Also, in the letter
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