Tips for Teaching This Week’s Session of The Gospel Project for Adults

Listen to this week’s leader training podcast with Y Bonesteele, team leader for The Gospel Project for Adults, for a summary and guidance in leading your group.

This week’s additional resources for study and preparation:

• Article: “A Bid for the Throne and a Rightful Heir” by Jeanie Layne
• Article: “Israel Sinfully Demands a King” by Ligonier
• Sermon: “Give Us a King” by Alistair Begg

Transcript of Leader Training Podcast:

Hi, this is Y Bonesteele, team leader of The Gospel Project for Adults. Welcome to another Leader Training Podcast. We have made it to the next quarter, we are in Unit 10, Session 1, Foolish Envy, with the core passage of 1 Samuel 8:4-20, and the key concept of, God sometimes allows foolishness so we recognize it. Let’s dive in!

We saw throughout the period of the judges, how the people kept going through a sin cycle, calling out to God, God gives them a judge or deliverer, they praise Him but then return back to their sin. When Samuel was leading them, he acquired back the ark of the covenant from the Philistines and the Israelites were victorious over them. He led them until he was older. But like Eli, the priest, Samuel’s sons weren’t so great as they “turned toward dishonest profit, took bribes, and perverted justice” seen in 1 Samuel 8:3. The elders thus asked Samuel to “appoint a king to judge us the same as all the other nations have” in verse 5. Now reading it off hand, it might seem like the elders were justified in asking this. They saw that Samuel’s boys were evil, not suited to lead. They were just trying to be wise about future leadership as Samuel was getting old. However, their downfall was in their motive. They wanted a king, not like how God would want it, but “the same as all the other nation.” And the other nations were the Philistines, the Ammonites, and the Moabites, to name a few—nations that followed other gods and walked in their own ways.

Now, we know that it wasn’t the fact that they wanted a king that was bad. In Genesis 17:6 God states, “I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you.” However, it was that they wanted a king like the other nations. But God also knew this was coming. During the time of Moses, the Lord told him that the people would want a king. But He prescribed how that king should rule. Deuteronomy 17:14-15 states, “ ‘When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, take possession of it, live in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations around me,’ you are to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses.’ ” God knew that the people would want a king. He even knew that their motives would be wrong in wanting a king “like all the nations.” But He tried to minimize their foolishness by giving them instructions to follow God’s lead on that one. He shouldn’t be a foreigner, he shouldn’t have many horses, or wives, or gold or silver. And he was to write these instructions down and read it to remember to fear God from Deuteronomy 17:15-20. But Israel’s kings failed to do this completely as Scripture later reveals.

Ultimately, Israel’s desire for a king was a rejection of God as their king. When the elders asked for a king, Samuel knew something was wrong and he went straight to the Lord. And the Lord knew that the people weren’t just rejecting Samuel and his leadership, they were rejecting God Himself. God’s words are a reminder of how we continually hurt Him: “They are doing the same thing to you that they have done to me, since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, abandoning me and worshiping other gods.” When I read that, I can almost feel the angst and pain and grieving God felt. “Since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day” has this feeling of, ‘I’ve been so faithful to them, rescuing them from slavery and death, and yet they continue to abandon me and worship other gods.’ It’s a little heart-wrenching to hear. Then God allows it! He says, “Listen to them.” But in His goodness, He even says, “solemnly warn them,” help them see that danger is ahead when they walk this path. So in one sentence, the Lord’s response to Samuel, could be simply, “Let them know that they can have what they want but it’s not going to turn out well.” This reminds me of parenting. Our parents sometimes have warned us of things we shouldn’t do, and yet, they allowed us to do some of them and we’ve learned the hard way that they were right all along. We followed our own way and paid the price for it.

As a believer, how do you recognize the sinful tendencies in your heart and move toward true and lasting change? For some of us, it takes someone else to point it out to us. Sometimes it takes negative consequences to recognize our sinful tendencies. It’s always the Holy Spirit moving in various ways to show us our sinful hearts and direct us back to God and His Word. Hopefully it doesn’t take us getting to rock bottom for us to recognize sin but sometimes that’s what happens. Sometimes, God allows us to chase sin so we can reap the negative consequences of our actions and hopefully turn back to Him.

So Samuel turned back to the people and told them, “Okay, here you go. This is what having a human king will be like. He will take, take, take. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The repeated word here is definitely the word “take” and that’s exactly what the king can and will do. Samuel spells it out for them pretty clearly. Their human king like the other nations will be able to take anything away from the people that he wants. He could even take them as his servants.

And Samuel gave them a final warning: “When that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you’ve chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you on that day.” God would be silent and not answer their cry of help as they’ve made their own bed and slept in it.  But what did the people say? The people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!… We must have a king over us. Then we’ll be like all the other nations: our king will judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles” (vv. 19-20). Again their reason for wanting a king was to be like all the other nations. It’s so easy to be envious of others, wanting what they have, thinking you need what they have because you don’t have it yourself. Sometimes you don’t even realize you wanted something until you see someone else have it and then it’s as if you can’t live without it when clearly you were able to live without it before. Our fleshly desires and pride, wanting what others have will definitely lead to our demise. Yet God had been the Israelites constant throughout. He had always led them and judged them, and gone out before them and fought their battles. It’s as if they forgot that’s been the case all along and somehow this king would be the savior they thought they never had, when it was God always being faithful to them. So faithful even, that one day, the gift of His Son’s sacrifice, Jesus’s death and resurrection, would make Him the ultimate King  over all.

Onto the Group Experience then, the Arrival icebreaker, asks, “When you were a child, what is something you begged your parents for simply because your friend had one?” For me, it was a GI Joe Snake Eyes toy figure. Because “knowing is half the battle.” Transition into the context reviewing Samuel’s leadership if needed and transition into the fact that Samuel was getting older and his sons weren’t the best leaders to succeed him. Recap by passing out Pack Item 2: Seeing Jesus in the Kingdom. We first see that God’s intent was that He would be Israelite’s king—He was the King of glory. We also see that Samuel was a type of Jesus, pointing to Jesus in how he lived his life. From the handout, we are reminded that Samuel grew in favor with the Lord and was picked by God to judge, lead, and intercede for the people. And now the people wanted to pick a leader of their own, mainly because they wanted to be like the other nations. They were jealous and envious and couldn’t see the foolishness of their actions.

Moving to the Group Activity then, we’re going to look at envy and its consequences. Ask a volunteer to read 1 Samuel 8:4-9. Write in the top left box what the Israelites’ foolish request was: to have a king, “the same as all the nations does.” Then ask, “What motivated the Israelites to demand a king, and why was that a foolish request and a ‘wrong’ demand (v. 6)?” The Israelites were motivated by envy and jealousy, thinking that they should have what the other nations have, a king. They didn’t realize that God, being their king, was more than enough and much better than any other earthly king. They wanted a king like the nations have. It was a foolish and wrong request because they should have wanted a king according to the Lord’s will, not because the other nations had. They should have been grateful and seen all that God had already done. In wanting a king like the nations, they were rejecting God. Have your group add the notes of “why it was wrong” in the same box. Ask, What happens when our hearts are motivated by envy or a lack of trust in God? We try to take matters into our own hands; we make passive-aggressive comments to others; we demand God give us what we want; we are impulsive and make foolish choices.

Then tell the group to write down in the lower left box a foolish request in their own life, past or present, caused by envy, wanting what others have or what the world tells us we should have. Then ask, “Recognizing that we have all made foolish requests of God, how can we know what requests are wise to ask of God?” The top of page 26 of the Leader Guide gives you answers there—namely, letting God and the Spirit lead us toward right requests and looking to the Word for examples, like in Jesus’s model of prayer. Praying first for God’s will in every situation and His glory to be made known.

Then have a volunteer read 1 Samuel 8:10-20. Pass out copies of Pack Item 4: Prophets, Priests, and Kings and have the group skim through the Kings column on their own. Then follow the instructions on Identify on page 26, saying: “Every choice we make results in unintended consequences, whether good or bad. For example, notice in the Kings column on the handout that of the 43 rulers in Israel’s history because of their request for a king, only 9 did what was right in God’s sight, and even those 9 were inconsistent.” Then ask volunteers to identify and write down the consequences for the people if they rejected the Lord’s leadership in favor of an earthly king from verses 10-20: the king could take their sons for battle or for slave labor in fields or to make weapons; he could take their daughters to help run his household; he could take their land or harvests to give to others; he could take their servants and livestock; and he could also take them as servants. Also, if/when that should happen and they cry out to God, He’s not going to answer them. Those are the consequences of wanting a king like the other nations. Then looking at your group’s own life and what they wrote down as their foolish request, have them write down what the consequences were or could be. Onto the Debrief question: How does this passage inform the way we pray? It reminds us to seek God’s will in all things, even to ask for wisdom in asking for a particular request. We should confess and make sure our hearts are right before the Lord before a request is made. What are some ways we can examine our motives in prayer? We can confess sin first to make sure our hearts are right with God, then we’re able to be more clear on our requests. We can also ask God to help us examine ourselves and our motives.

Summarize and walk through the Head, Heart, Hands section, focusing on the Heart if time is limited. In what areas of your life are you prone to envy the world’s resources or way of living? For some of us it might be physical things, like a home or car, clothes or our own sense of beauty. It could be experiences like a job, or opportunities to travel or do fun things, or a life stage like being married or being a parent or retirement. These are things we can be envious of. It also could be spiritual things. Like a particular church or pastor or worship team, wanting that for our church instead of being grateful for what we have. It could be someone’s spiritual walk or spiritual discipline, how someone studies the Bible or fosters their spiritual walk. We can admire and hope to grow in a particular area, but if it becomes envy or jealousy, we are heading in the wrong direction.

Challenge your group in the Next Steps to go through the various passages given on their own time. Read and pray through Psalm 37:1-4, if time permits:

Do not be agitated by evildoers;

do not envy those who do wrong.

2 For they wither quickly like grass

and wilt like tender green plants.

3 Trust in the Lord and do what is good;

dwell in the land and live securely.

4 Take delight in the Lord,

and he will give you your heart’s desires. — Psalms 37:1-4 (CSB)

Thanks again for joining me on another Leader Training podcast. Send questions and comments to [email protected] and have a great group time!