And so they said, Make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
Verse 6, But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us.
And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
And the Lord said unto Samuel, Harken unto the voice of the people and all that they
say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should
not reign over them.
Now on the surface, it seems like they're just rejecting Samuel and they're just rejecting
his sons.
And his sons deserve to be rejected because they're a couple of bozos.
But it says here that from God's perspective, they were rejecting him because he had established
this institution of the judges and they are not following God's plan.
That's not a rejection of Samuel personally.
And you can sit there and point your rage or your anger toward a specific person or
church or pastor or whoever you want to blame.
But when you forsake the Christian path, when you forsake church, when you stop serving
God in the local church, you know what?
It's really, it says more about your relationship with God than about a relationship with a
particular church.
Because you know what?
If you have a problem with a particular church, here's what you do, you go to a different
church.
If you have a problem with a particular pastor, you get a different pastor.
You go somewhere else, you move on.
But what you don't do is say, well you know, I've just been hurt too many times so I'm
going to go whine about it and go become a worldly person out there.
And look, we knock the doors of people all day long with all the reasons why they don't
go to church and it's always someone else's fault.
But you know what?
Jesus Christ is the one who established the church and built the church and shed his blood
for the church.
And you know what?
He's the one that we're coming to church for, him.
And rejection of church is a rejection of him.
Rejection of the Christian life is a rejection of the path that he has laid for us, not the
rejection of whatever person you're upset at for whatever reason.