This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to 1st Samuel chapter 8. This is week 2, day 5 of our look through 1st
and 2nd Samuel. And this is the day when the people tell Samuel that they want a
king.

In fact, let me begin by reading what happens in verses 1 to 9. When Samuel grew
old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was
Joel, and the name of his second was Abijah.

They served at Beersheba, but his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned
aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. So all the
elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah.

They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now
appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have. " But when they
said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel.

He prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to him, "Listen to all that the people
are saying to you. It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me
as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt
until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods.

So they are doing to you. Now listen to them, but warn them solemnly and let
them know what the king who will reign over them will do. " Now, an aside before
we see some of the lessons here and aside in these verses is the fact that we
often take things personally that we just simply should not.

Samuel's sons obviously were at fault here. They weren't following God. And
Samuel could have seen this whole thing as being about him, their rejection of
him.

But he has the advantage of hearing directly from God and God says, "That's not
what it's about at all. " God says, "They're not rejecting you. They're
rejecting me.

" I wonder how many times in my life I act like people are rejecting me when
really they're rejecting God. I'd have a lot better attitude if I realized it's
more about God and less about me. Just a lesson that's in these verses.

And now as we walk into this, we're going to see that we learn something about
having a heart for God in these verses in this chapter from the people, and we
learn something about having a heart for God from Samuel. From the people we
learn, "Watch out for your desires. " Why?

Because God might give you your desires. And Samuel tells them about that in
verse 10. God told him to warn them, so he does.

Verse 10, Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking
him for a king. And he said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will
do. He will take your sons, he'll make them serve with his chariots and horses,
and they will run in front of his chariots.

Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and
others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons
of war and equipment for his chariots. Then he'll take your daughters to be
perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your
vineyards and your olive groves and he'll give them to his attendants.

He'll take a tenth of your grain and your vintage and he'll give it to his
officials and his attendants. Your manservants and your maidservants and the
best of your cattle and donkeys, he'll take them for his own use. He will take a
tenth of your flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves.

When that day comes you will cry out for relief from the king that you've chosen
and the Lord will not answer you on that day. " But the people refused to listen
to Samuel. "No," they said, "we want a king over us and then we will be like all
the other nations with a king to lead us and go out before us and fight our
battles.

" Wow. Israel let their desires mold their view of the truth. And you might have
noticed there at the end, they wanted to be like all the other nations, like so
many of us.

Their desires were molded by their jealousies, by their envy, by wanting to be
like other people. That's what commercials on TV and radio and on the internet
do, by the way. They play on these desires for us to be like somebody else.

So I have to buy that thing. I have to have that thing. And they, they wanted a
king.

God said, "Okay, you can have a king. That king is going to enslave you. He's
going to enslave your children.

He's going to take your harvest. He's going to take your servants. You're going
to cry out.

" But they still wanted a king. They wouldn't listen to the voice of Samuel.
Instead they listened to the voice of their desires.

And there's a great lesson for you and I here in Having a Heart for God. How do
you make your decisions? Is it based on your feelings or is it based on faith?

And if you're honest about it, there are times in all of our lives when we base
our decisions on our feelings, on our desires, on what we want. And we wonder
why God isn't giving us what we want. And we cry for it again and again and
again.

Is it going to be your desires or God's direction? And Israel serves as a great
example of those who got their desires but found great loss in it. Those things
that sometimes I most desire for myself, that I selfishly desire, those are
things that will ruin my life.

And sometimes God allows those desires to be had in your life just so that you
can see, just so that I can see that those are things that will ruin my life.
Now the great thing is God has grace. He will restore you from that.

And if you've been ruined by your desires, that's not the end of the story. The
fact is I can come to God and say, "God, I've been ruined by my desires. I need
a new life.

I want to live for your desires from now on. I've learned that lesson. Keep
helping me to learn it again.

What you want, what you want is what's best for me, not what I want. " You see,
the way we're wired, we think of what we want is what's best for us. That's just
human nature.

But you can see from the Garden of Eden on that it is not best for us. So my
desires can ruin my life. We learn that from the people this day about our
hearts.

Watch out for your desires. Watch out for what you want. Ask God, "Please mold
my desires to be what you want.

" And then from Samuel, we learn that from the people. From Samuel we learn,
"Watch out for your opinions and recognize that God's Word may have to override
your good opinion. " Samuel didn't want them to have a king.

He told God why they shouldn't have a king. God agreed with him that it's going
to ruin their lives. But God said, "I'm still going to give them a king.

" So in verse 21 and 22, when Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated
it before the Lord, and the Lord answered, "Listen to them and give them a king.
" And then Samuel said to the men of Israel, "Everyone go back to his town. "
You almost sense Samuel just giving up here.

I just said, "Okay, that's it. I can't do anything about it. " Samuel thought it
was wrong for them to have a king.

He was personally involved. They were rejecting his sons as the future leaders
of Israel. They were pointing to his failures as a father.

But to his credit, his heart accepted God's will instead of forcing his opinion.
I don't know if I could have done that, but he did. Because the truth is,
Samuel's opinion was logically right, but spiritually wrong.

And I've got to accept the fact that sometimes my opinion is logically right,
but spiritually wrong. It may make sense from a human perspective to do it this
way, but God says, "I'm going to do it this way. " It makes sense from a human
perspective to move to this town and to take that job.

But God directs you, "No, I want you to move to this town and serve these
people. " And you say, "I'm not going to make enough money, God. That's not the
place I should be.

" But you certainly want to be where God wants you to be, not where you want to
be. And the logical decision from a human perspective is not always the
spiritual decision. Now why is that true?

Well, because logically I don't know everything. Because logically there are
things in my future that I cannot know if I go to that place. Why is that true?

Because there's something greater than logic, and that is relationship. The
relationship that I have with God and what he wants to do in my life. And I
don't know the future, but God does.

So the question I have to ask myself, ask you is, when was the last time God's
Word changed your opinion about something? You thought logically this is what
we're going to do, but you read God's Word, you heard from God, and God said,
"No, do this. Move here.

Say this. Be this instead. " And you said, "Okay, Lord.

" If we're going to have an open heart before God, there are going to be many
times in life when we do what may not make sense to us, but we know is God's
direction in our lives. And maybe God's doing that in your life right now. Maybe
you think about some business decision, some family decision, some financial
decision, some school decision.

God is directing in your life. And maybe you think no one else will understand.
Maybe you think everyone else will judge me for this.

Maybe you think I don't like to be the kind of person who does things that don't
make sense. But the truth of the matter is there's no better decision than the
decision of doing what God wants. That's what Samuel did that day.

He decided to let God's Word override his opinion. Now let's take a minute if we
talk about having an open heart, to talk to the Lord about having the open
heart, because He's the only one that can open our hearts. So Lord, as we pray,
we just bring this to you.

We ask that you give us an open heart before you. Help us to understand the
danger of our desires. That when we want the wrong thing, sometimes wanting it
so badly for so long, it will actually come into our lives and maybe ruin our
lives.

So Lord, help us to realize that what we want is not so important as your will.
That what we want is not so important as your direction. And let our desires not
overwhelm us.

Let our desires not ruin us. Instead, we want to do your will. And Lord, we also
bring our opinions to you.

And it's our prayer that instead of doing what we always think is right, we do
what you direct. You do work through logic sometimes. You do give us wisdom and
opinions and we thank you that so many times through that logic you work.

But there are those times, Lord, when you say, "No, it seems you should turn
right, but I want you to turn left. " And when you make that clear to us through
your word, through your people, through your spirit, Lord, give us the faith to
follow you, I pray. Let us have that faith today.

We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, next week, we're going to launch into a
look at the life of Saul, the man with a troubled heart.