February 27

Deut 17 His-Story of the coming Kings

Deut. 17:14-15 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," 15be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite.

What an incredible truth is being revealed here. The year is 1400 BC and the nation still is in the desert. They are physically out of Egypt but God wants to make sure Egypt is out of them. God has given the nation new laws so they can know what is right and wrong but a whole generation has been buried in the desert because they were slow learners. Now as they are on the brink of entering the land God looks forward 400 years and sees that they will eventually need a king so they can learn the next lesson in their growth. He has repeatedly warned them against desiring a king, yet here he makes provision for one. Is this a contradiction in the Bible?
No, this is what is called “The Story of Redemption” or in theological terms “Redemptive History.” It refers to the increasing manifestation of God's plan of salvation through His acts of redemption. God couldn’t dump the lessons of algebra and trigonometry on the nation in kindergarten. He needed to work on the simple mathematical processes first.... addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
It is like a child growing up. You have to teach your children that it is wrong to hit your friends or steal their toys. It is also healthy to eat clean food and not the dirt in the sandbox. And washing your hands will give you a better life than keeping a dirt pile under your fingernails. These childhood rules are like the first laws that were given to the nation at Sinai. But eventually that child must be sent off to college. You are training them every day to prepare them for the time when they will make adult decisions. They need to learn how to live under God’s authority and not yours.
For adult decisions to be made for the nation, the Israelites would have to learn how to respond to the kingship of God. For them to learn this lesson it would be necessary to have an earthly king over them. Without bad kings how would people appreciate good kings – especially the righteous King of Kings? God, in his omniscience, proclaims there will be a time when kings will govern them.
The final lesson of this growing up process will include living under the guidance of a Messiah. The redemption story reaches its climax with the shedding of the blood of the Son of God on the cross and his new kingdom ethics. All of this is the process of an unfolding story of redemption.

The fascinating question for us today: Does God ever allow me to act against his will in order to bring me within his will?