Ep 147 | Cover to Cover 26 | Pastor Ryan Clark | June 28, 2026

Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Clark.

You are listening to a message from St.

John's Lutheran Church in Buffalo, Minnesota.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

As we are transitioning now into the Samuels and the Kings and the Chronicles, we're gonna be talking about a lot of kings in the weeks to come.

And that got me thinking this week about the strangest, most bizarre leaders, kings, and queens throughout the history of the world.

And so I did a little bit of research this week because I knew that there were some really strange ones throughout history, but I had no idea just how strange they were.

And I'd like to share just a few of those with you here as we begin this message.

First of all, maybe you've heard of this guy, the Emperor Caligula.

He was the emperor of Rome shortly after Jesus was here.

He was most likely insane, and one of the many insane things that he did is he declared that his own horse was a Roman senator.

That's kinda crazy.

And then we have this guy, Charles VI of France, who ruled in the late 14th century.

He too suffered from bouts of madness, and he also had this deep paranoia.

He famously had the delusion that he was made, ready for this, of glass, and that he could shatter very easily.

During these delusions, he would nary move a muscle, sitting extremely still for up to hours on end.

In the same vein was this lady, Princess Alexandria of Bavaria.

As a 23-year-old, she became convinced that she had swallowed in her youth an entire glass grand piano and that any sudden movement she would make would shatter the instrument that was within her.

She was said to walk sideways through doorways and corridors to avoid breaking.

You can't make this stuff up This guy, Peter the Great.

In the early 18th century, he enacted what was called a beard tax where he demanded that every man in Russia, both royal and peasant alike, shave their beards.

Any beards out there today? This is an interesting one.

Peter III, who ruled Russia in the late 18th century.

This guy never really grew up.

Although he was married to the famous Catherine the Great, he never seemed to have too much time for her or for ruling his country.

Why? Because he spent copious amounts of time in bed playing with his toy soldiers.

He loved these toy soldiers so much that when a rat got into his bedroom and bit the head off of one of his beloved toy soldiers, he caught the rat, he gave it a proper court martial and trial, and then he hung the vermin from a tiny little gallow that he had constructed himself.

That's crazy.

And then finally, we have Joanna of Castile from the 16th century.

She earned the title Juana la Loca, Joanna the Crazy One.

Why? For her obsession with her husband.

You say, "Well, that's not a bad thing."

It is when her husband had died.

After his sudden death in 1506, she refused to bury his body, and she kept it in her room and even traveled with it.

Kinda gives you that Weekend of Bernie's vibe, doesn't it? Like I said, as we're moving through our sermon series, Cover to Cover, we're now moving into this period of time that we're gonna see king after king after king over the nation of Israel.

And just like those kings that I just talked about, most of the kings are gonna be bad.

And so as we start 1 Samuel, it's the first time that they begin asking for a king.

We see in 1 Samuel 8, it says, "So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel in Ramah.

And they said to him," how would you like someone to say this to you? "'You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways.

Now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.'

And when they said, 'Give us a king to lead us,' this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord.

And the Lord told him: 'Listen to all that the people are saying to you.

It is not you that they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king.

Now listen to them, but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.'"

So He says, "Samuel, don't be upset.

Don't be offended.

It's not you they're rejecting.

They're rejecting Me because I have told them that I am their king.

Give them a king, but warn them what a human king will be like."

And so he said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights.

He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.

He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.

He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves.

He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage.

You yourselves will become his slaves.

When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen.

But the Lord will not answer you in that day."

He says, "Let them know, Samuel, what an earthly king is gonna do to them.

You're gonna think that he's going to give you all of this good stuff, but what is he gonna do? Over and over again, he's gonna take from you.

He's going to use you for his purposes, and finally, you're gonna be his slaves.

Do you really want that?" But the people refused to listen to Samuel.

"No," they said, "we want a king over us.

Then we will be like all the other nations with a king to lead us and go out before us and fight our battles."

When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord.

And the Lord answered, "Listen to them and give them their king."

Now, what can we learn from this? Number one is this.

By nature, we refuse to listen to the Lord This is what it means to be sinners.

And when we refuse to follow Him, it's like we're saying, "God, I don't want you to be king over my life.

I wanna be king.

I wanna be the one that calls the shots."

What else can we learn from this? This is actually a little scary.

In God's love for us, sometimes He allows us to have what we insist on, even if it's not gonna be good for us.

In the end, we say, "Lord, You know better than I do.

You're the King.

You're the Wise One.

You're the Powerful One.

Give me what I need."

That's far better than what was happening with the Israelites He said, "Then," the people said, "Then we will be like all the other nations."

What's wrong with that? Well, they were never supposed to be like all the other nations.

When God called Israel to be His own nation, He said, "You're gonna be different than all the other nations.

All the other nations are in slavery to their kings, but I'm gonna be your king.

I'm gonna be a great and gracious and powerful king on your behalf."

And they said, "No, we wanna be just like all the other nations."

And sometimes we're like that, too, aren't we? Sometimes we wanna be like everybody else around us, and so pretty soon we start acting like everyone around us.

But here, this church, we were never supposed to be like the rest of the world.

God says, "I want to have a special, intimate relationship with you."

that the world just doesn't have.

Why would you like to be like the rest of the world? But the Israelites did not listen, and so Samuel gave them what they asked for, a king.

And he anointed Saul to be the first king of Israel.

And as you're gonna see in your readings this coming week, it didn't take long for it to not start going well for them.

Here's our very important point of the day.

God isn't calling us today through these readings to not have human leaders.

We are just not to put our full trust in them for our good.

That trust is to be reserved for our Heavenly King alone.

Have you noticed that in your lifetime? I definitely have in my 50 years of life.

I have noticed that every person that I vote for, that I've got these high hopes for, by the end of their term, I'm usually disappointed.

Why? Because there's no king like our God.

In Psalm 20 it says, "Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we put our trust in the Lord our God."

We don't put our trust in human beings.

We don't put our trust in human kings and presidents, and governors.

We put our trust in the Lord our God, and that is putting our trust in the right place.

Why? Why is the Lord worthy of our worship as our King? Well, for the remainder of this message, we're gonna look at five reasons from our readings this week why the Lord is worthy to be our king.

Number one: you have a king who is holy.

In 1 Samuel 2 it says, "There is no one holy like the Lord.

There is no one besides you.

There is no rock like our God."

The word holy literally means to be set apart.

If we've got all of these rulers, all of these kings over here, God says, "I'm holy.

I'm set apart.

I'm over here.

There's nobody like me.

And as we're gonna see through the next four, that is true.

We have a king who is holy.

We also have a king who is powerful and able to save, no matter what.

In 1 Samuel 7 it says, "The Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle."

Now by the way, the Philistines in this time were one of the most powerful people in the world.

But that day the Lord, the King, thundered with loud thunder.

It's pretty cool we had thunder today.

Against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen.

He named it Ebenezer saying, "Thus far the Lord has helped us."

So we have these powerful people, the Philistines.

But the King over Israel is the Lord God and He has power to save, and they don't stand a chance against Him.

And then after they are routed, what does Samuel do? He takes the stone and he sets it up.

And what does he call it? The Ebenezer Stone.

The rock of our help.

It was a reminder to them that the Lord is King and He helped them.

We sang that just a little bit ago, didn't we? Here I raise my Ebenezer.

In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel says this: "Do not turn away after useless idols.

They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you."

They're useless.

Samuel was saying it is silly for you to bow down to some piece of stone or wood or metal.

Those things can't help you.

You know who can? The Lord, because He is powerful and able to save.

And people of God, He hasn't changed.

He is still powerful, and He is still able to save you no matter what is coming against you.

Number three, you have a king who is just.

Praise the Lord.

In 1 Samuel, 2, it says, "Now the sons of Eli were corrupt.

They did not know the Lord.

When any man offered a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come with a three-pronged flesh hook in his hand while the meat was boiling, that he would thrust it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot, and the priest would take for himself all that the flesh hook brought up.

So they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there."

Little bit of background.

So the Lord had said that when people would bring these different offerings to present before the Lord, there was a portion of some of them that would go to the priest.

But what the sons of Eli, who were serving as priests, were doing is they were saying, "Yes, we'll take that apportioned piece, but then we're also gonna take a fork, and we're gonna stick it into the pot, and we're gonna pull out whatever else comes out on our behalf as well."

And the people were saying, "That isn't right.

You're, you shouldn't be doing this."

They said, "You either give it to us or we're gonna take it by force."

And what ended up happening is people stopped wanting to sacrifice to the Lord because of what these two boys were doing.

It was not right.

They were taking advantage of the people, and they were obscuring God's good name.

But the Lord is a just God.

This is what the Lord says: "Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribe for my dwelling? The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your priestly house so that no one in it will reach old age."

Your king is a king of justice, and he doesn't let injustice go on forever.

Eventually, he deals with it Think about that.

Wouldn't it be nice if all of our leaders in our country were just? When someone did right, they would be heralded.

When someone did wrong, they would be dealt with.

But unfortunately, many of our leaders are injust in the way that they act.

Fourth, you have a worthy King in our God because He is accessible, and this is a big one.

The Lord is accessible.

Wouldn't it be nice if all of your leaders were easily accessible to you? As the book of 1 Samuel opens up, we have Hannah, and Hannah had an unfortunate situation.

She was married to a husband who also had a second wife That's a problem, especially when one of the wives keeps on having child after child after child, and Hannah is barren.

And the wife that was having all of these children was rubbing it in to Hannah, so much so that she just was really struggling emotionally.

And so one day they go to the house of the Lord, and Hannah goes before the Lord and she begins crying out from her heart to her King.

And she says, "Lord, please remember me.

If you give me a child, I'll give him back to you."

Hannah said, "I am a woman who is deeply troubled.

I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief."

Eli, the priest, answered, "Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you've asked of him."

And I love these words.

The Lord remembered her.

So in the course of time, Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son.

She named him Samuel, saying, "Because I asked the Lord for him."

You have a king who is accessible to you.

Hannah was no different than you and me.

She had a need, and she brought it before her King, and the King who was accessible to her heard her prayer and helped her in her time of need.

And she miraculously has this child, Samuel, and she makes good on her promise.

Once he's weaned, she takes him to the house of the Lord, and she says, "You're gonna serve the Lord in his temple for the rest of your life."

Now the boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli.

The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, "Here I am."

And he ran to Eli and said, "Here I am.

You called me?" But Eli said, "I did not call you.

Go back and lie down."

So here we have Hannah's little child, he's still a young boy, and he's there inside the temple, and the Lord speaks to him.

He doesn't know the Lord's voice, and so he runs into Eli and he says, "Here I am."

And Eli says, "Go back to bed.

I didn't call you."

And this happens a few times.

Samuel just keeps on getting woken up.

A third time the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am.

You called me?" Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy.

So Eli told Samuel, "Go and lie down, and if He calls you again, say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"

The Lord came and stood there, calling as at other times, "Samuel, Samuel!" Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."

So this little boy, Samuel, he didn't know the voice of the Lord yet, but God was even calling this little boy.

Kids, if you think that you have to become an adult before God will call you and talk to you, you're mistaken.

He wants to talk to anybody that will listen.

It says in 1 Samuel 3, "The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli.

And in those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions."

In other words, not many people were hearing from the Lord during this time that Samuel was serving inside the temple I think there's people that believe that about today.

"Well, the Lord's really not speaking.

There's not a whole lot of visions.

God's really not talking to us today."

But you know what? That's not what the Bible says.

In Acts 2, says this: "In the last days," and we're living in the last days, God says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams from me.

Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy."

No, the word of the Lord is not rare today.

We are living in the days that God is pouring out His Spirit on people.

He wants to be accessible to people.

He wants to not only hear our prayers, He wants to speak back to us in many and various ways.

He wants us to learn how to prophesy.

What does that mean? It means that God speaks to us, and then we say what God has said, and that is the prophesying.

We take what God has said, and then we say it as well.

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord.

The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

It's not saying there that Samuel didn't know who God was.

He knew who God was.

He just hadn't met Him yet.

He just hadn't learned to discern His voice yet.

I sometimes think about it as one of those old radios, you know, where you turn it on and all you get is static, right? Until you start turning the dial, and you turn it real slowly, and pretty soon that static becomes kind of broken words.

But as you keep on turning it, you get to that place where all of a sudden you're hearing someone's voice or some song over the radio.

Now, that song or that voice, that person on there, that's been going on forever.

But it took us a little while to get to that place on the dial.

And in the same way, we who know who the Lord is, it takes us a little time to tune in to His voice, but He is speaking.

He's pouring out His Spirit in this day and age.

So what does that look like? How can I tune my ears to hear His voice? Well, if you take a little bit of time each day.

Maybe you read through the Bible, you read through your chapters in your two-year read-through.

And then after that you say, "You know what? I'm gonna take 15 minutes to pray, to talk to the Lord, and then I'm gonna take a few minutes to listen to see if He has anything to say to me."

And as you do that, what you're doing is you're tuning your ears to be able to discern what His voice sounds like.

Or what you can also do is maybe once a quarter you take a full day to get away with the Lord and say, "Lord, I really want to hear your voice.

If you are truly pouring out your Spirit on all people, I don't want to miss that."

And so I wanna take a full day to seek you in your Word, to seek you in prayer, to learn how to hear your voice.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I try to do this about once a quarter, once a semester.

I have never once walked away not having heard the Lord's voice.

It's just nobody does it.

But He's speaking, and He wants us to tune our ears to His voice.

He promises us in Jeremiah 29, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I will be found by you," declares the Lord.

So we have a King who is worthy of our praise, worthy of following Him because He's holy, because He's powerful.

He's able to save us like nobody else.

He's just in everything that He does.

He's very accessible to us.

And finally, number five, He is forgiving and gracious.

In 1 Samuel 7 it says, "So Samuel said to all the Israelites, 'If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then rid yourself of all the foreign gods you've been worshiping, all the Ashtoreths, and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.'

So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths and served the Lord only.

Then Samuel said, 'Assemble all Israel at Mizpah, and I will intercede with the Lord for you.'

Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and sacrificed it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord.

He cried out to the Lord on Israel's behalf, and the Lord answered him."

So we have all of these Israelite people that at the time had forgotten who God is, and they were worshiping other gods that were not gods at all But in spite of that, when they turned back to the Lord in repentance, and Samuel took that poor, innocent suckling lamb and slaughtered it on their behalf, through their repentance and through that sacrifice, God forgave them and was gracious to them and came to be their King once again.

How about you and me? If we repent of our sins, if we turn back from all of those things that God has said not to do, do we too have a lamb that would be sacrificed for us so that all of our sins could be forgiven and we could have a fresh new start in our relationship with God? And you know where this is going.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the whole world.

2,000 years ago, God sent His own Son down here to this world to be the once for all sacrifice, the Lamb of God who would, through His suffering and death on that cross, take away the sins of the whole world.

He would be a King that would wear a crown, but not a golden crown.

He would wear a crown of thorns for you and for me, and then He would die on that cross and be buried.

But He wouldn't stay in that grave.

He would rise again three days later.

He would ascend up into heaven where He has now taken His seat as the King over every king, the Lord over every lord, the King of the universe.

And the Bible is crystal clear that very soon that King is coming back here, not as a king with a crown of thorns this time, but as a King with a crown of glory, and He's coming to make all things new, including you and me.

Knowing that that is the King.

How do we respond? We respond by bowing the knee to this King Jesus and saying, "Lord, I'm sorry.

I've been worshiping other gods, things that I think that are going to make me happy, but you have told me they never could.

I've tried to put myself on the throne, Lord I wanted to call the shots, but you're a better king than me.

Lord, I'm sorry, and for the sake of Jesus, I ask you that you would forgive me."

And when we do that, because of Jesus' sacrifice, over and over and over again, He shows himself to be a good King, a just King, a powerful King who is able to save, a good King, a gracious king, and a forgiving King.

May we worship our King today and always.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

You've been listening to a sermon from St.

John's Lutheran Church in Buffalo, Minnesota.

If you would like more information about St.

John's and any of our ministries to our community and beyond, you can go to our website, www.

stjohnsbuffalo.

org.

Thank you and God bless you.