Ep. 006 Vox Populi Vox Dei

Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located

in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship

Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,

discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church

and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bickford and I will be your

host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing

to you and bring you closer to God.

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. My name is David Bickford and this is the Potter's

House Church podcast in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. Today the message that I have is

called Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. But is it?

The text that we will be working from today is going to be 1 Samuel 8, 1-9. Basically,

we will look at this period of time in Israel's history when they were demanding a king.

So as we kind of jump into this, I saw an article that kind of made me start thinking

in this way. This article is from a while back, but anyway, the article was, Elon Musk

reinstates his Trump Twitter account, ending the lifetime ban. So Twitter CEO Elon Musk

formally reinstated Trump this weekend after conducting a poll on the platform that received

more than 15 million votes. Reinstate former President Trump, yes or no? The poll simply

asked. 52% of users agreed he should be allowed to be back on the platform, which has already

restored other subject to bans, including the satirical account Babylon Bee or Kathy

Griffin and Jordan Peterson. The people have spoken Trump will be reinstated, Musk wrote.

And then he ended with saying, Vox Populi, Vox Dei. And immediately, as you can imagine,

certain groups, liberals on Twitter fumed after Musk reinstated Trump to the platform

saying, God help us, which I find particularly ironic. That being said, though, what I want

to look at in that article isn't any of the context behind the reasons why someone was

banned or anything like that. No, what I want to hone in on is the term that he uses, Vox

Populi. It sounds like some sort of thing it would have been commonly invoked in the

Roman Empire. But actually, the earliest known reference to equating it with the voice of

God or Vox Populi, Vox Dei, is in a disapproving way. It's attributed to a Saxon scholar and

teacher Alcuin of York who lived between 735 and 804 AD. The then master of the palace

school of Aken used this in a letter to the Emperor Charlemagne in 800. And he wrote,

And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is

the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always close to insanity. So

this kind of brings the context of the saying or the phrase into a different kind of light.

Now we're starting to see that this wasn't meant as an evocation of God's working through

man. Rather, it was an evocation of the madness of man working through the mob.

So let's look at our text in 1 Samuel 8, 1 through 9. This is when Israel demanded a

king. And so it starts, When Samuel became old, he made his sons judge over Israel. The

name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second Abishai. They were judges

in Beersheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside for gain. They

took bribes and perverted justice. And then all the elders of Israel gathered together

and came to Samuel at Ramaph and said to him, Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk

in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing

displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge over us. And Samuel prayed

to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Obey the voice of the people and all that

they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being

king over them. According to the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them

up out of Egypt, even to this day forsaking me and serving other gods. So they are also

doing to you. Now then obey their voice. Only you shall solemnly warn them and show them

the ways of the king who shall reign over them. So this brings me my first point. My

first point is peer pressure. And then we're going to look at the second point being mob

rule. And then finally, we'll look at it our third point, which would be Christ is our

Redeemer. So let's look at peer pressure then and you give us a king like all other nations.

The situation here is that the Israelites desired to have a king that was both from

a place of unbelief and envy. They routinely fought God's plan for their lives and that

opened them up to being filled with envy for what they believed other nations had. At this

time of Israel's history, they had yet to have a king outside of God himself. There

were judges who God rose up to help the Israelites in times of need. And there were priests that

were meant to point Israel to the law of Moses and the covenant that they had with God. If

you consider the rights and privileges that were laid out in Levitical law, you could

argue that they were a constitutional form of government at this time. Each tribe fundamentally

governed themselves, but was required to rule according to the tenets of the law or the

constitution given by God himself, the covenant. And then we look at their desire, the desire

to be like other nations springs up out of their lost faith in God. This happens when

Moses was too slow coming down from Mount Sinai. So they have a history of this happening.

But if we look at Exodus 32, we see the story of the golden cap in verse one, when the people

saw that Moses was so long and coming down from the mountains, they gathered around Aaron

and said, come and make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought

us up out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him. So then we also see today

in Christian culture that constantly strives to bend the word of God to fit the secular

world around us. We are called to accept ungodliness in our society as something to be revered.

We are persecuted and judged for holding godly standards. We are told that times have changed

and we need to reinterpret what the scripture and God's word really means. Our desire to

fit in is moving against our conscience and pressuring us to give up our belief in God's

word in order to belong and find friends in this world. So then we come to the warning.

This is what happened to the Israelites and it became their downfall. God's plan to govern

his people through his prophets, judges and priests, a theocracy based on the benevolence

of the covenant, on God's benevolence and the covenant. His plan did not include an

earthly king. Despite God's warnings though, the people of Israel would not relent. So

God allowed them to fit in and suffer their choice to reject God. So let's pick up again

in first Samuel 8, 10 through 12. First Samuel 8, 10 through 12 when Samuel's warning against

the kings. So in verse 10 it says, so Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people

who were asking for a king from him. He said, these will be the ways of the king who will

reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his

horsemen to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands

and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, to make

his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters

to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your field and vineyards

and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of

your vineyards and give it to his officers and his servants. And he will take your male

servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your doggies and put

them to his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks and you shall be his slaves. And

in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves,

but the Lord will not answer you in that day. So Israel continues on here and their request

is granted. But the people refuse to obey. So we pick up in verse 19, they refuse to

obey the voice of Samuel and they say, no, but there shall be a king over us that we

may also be like the other nations and that our king may judge us and go out before us

and fight our battles. And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated

them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, obey their voice and make

them a king. Samuel then said to the men of Israel, go every man to a city. Oftentimes

we can encounter peer pressure. We could seek out advice. Sometimes that advice is from

a godly resource and sometimes it's from the voice of our friends. This entire episode

reminds me of a later incident in Israel when Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, grandson of

King David, had a choice to make. In 1 Kings 12, 3 through 5 it says, and they sent and

called him and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, your

father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and

his heavy yoke on us and we will serve you. And he said to them, go away for three days

and come again to me. So the people went. Now the rest of this story is the advisors

of King Solomon, his Rehoboam's father recommended lightening their load and dealing with them

in humility, stating that it would endear them back to the house of Judah. Rehoboam's

friends on the other hand had provided very harsh advice on how to deal with the situation.

They recommended to threaten a heavier burden and harsher conditions and even punishment.

This scenario did play out. He chose the advice of his friends and it had played out the way

God had intended in order to illustrate what had happened within the heart of the people

of Israel. Oftentimes even a king can be led astray because the desire to follow his friends.

So rather than heed the advice of Solomon's advisors, he wanted to be buddies. He wanted

his buddies to see him as being the big man and making the hard choices and being a leader.

This choice immediately led to the splitting of the kingdom of Israel. All but one tribe

of Israel defected from Judah because of Rehoboam's decision. So this was an example of not seeking

godly advice again but seeking the advice of the crowd of his friends. Which brings

me to my second point which is mob rule. Whether it's Exodus 32 and the golden calf,

first Samuel 8 and the demand for a king or in our own life, it is dangerous to follow

the mob, especially when it is in the opposite direction of God. So let's look at man's

wisdom. Socialism can provide us with good examples of the dangers of the mob. Philosophy

is always able to sway people's desires for equality and equity. The reality is that it

always leads to the same disparities that it contends to fight against but in the end

everyone has less than when we started. Michael Frank who has held a number of positions on

Capitol Hill is the vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation and he

wrote writing in his diary the dire economic straits and self-destructive behaviors that

consumed his fellow Puritans. Shortly after the arrival, Governor William Bradford painted

a picture of destitute settlers selling their clothes and bed coverings for food while others

became servants to the Indians. Cutting wood and fetching water in exchange for a capful

of corn, the most desperate among them starved. With Bradford recounting how one settler and

gathering shellfish along the shore was so weak he stuck fast in the mud it was found

dead in the place. The colony's leaders identified the source of their problem as a particularly

vile form of what Bradford called communism. Prosperity and Plymouth colony observed was

communally owned and cultivated. This system taking away of property and bringing it into

a commonwealth bred confusion and discontent and retarded much employment that would have

been to the settlers benefit and comfort. This brought them to the brink of extermination

the most able and fit young man of Plymouth thought it an injustice that they were paid

the same as those not able to do a quarter the others could. Women meanwhile viewed the

communal chores they were required to perform for others as a form of slavery. On the brink

of extermination the colony leaders changed course and allotted a parcel of land to each

settler hoping to hoping the private ownership of the farmland would encourage self-sufficiency

and lead to cultivation of more corn and other food stuffs. As Adam Smith would have predicated

this new system worked famously. This had very good success Bradford reported for it

made all hands very industrious. In fact much more corn was planted that otherwise would

have been and productivity increased. Women for example went willingly into the field

and took their little ones with them to set corn. The famine that nearly wiped out the

Pilgrims in 1623 gave way to a period of agricultural abundance and enabled Massachusetts settlers

to set down permanent roots in the new world, prosper and play an indispensable role in

the ultimate success of the American experiment. A profoundly religious man Bradford saw the

hand of God in Pilgrim's economic recovery. Their success he observed may well evice the

vanity of that conceit that the taking away of property would make men happy and flourishing

as if they were wiser than God. Bradford surmised God in his wisdom saw another course fitter

for them. Amen to that. The reason why he could say this the reason why he can say God

in his wisdom saw another course fitter than them is when you look through the Bible when

you look at God's wisdom Levitical law provides us guidance on property rights a preferred

judicial system and even a sort of welfare rights. Leviticus 9.9 or 19.9 it says when

you reap the harvest of your land do not reap the very edges of your field or gather the

gleaning of the harvest. When you reap the harvest of your land it's so it repeats this

again in verse 22 saying the same thing. But it goes on and it says leave them for the

poor and for the foreigner residing among you I am the Lord your God. So what you can see

though with the Old Testament is that there were parcels of land there was private land

divided up amongst the tribes with the expectation that they would flourish on their land on

their family land. Ultimately though we are called to put nothing before God. He is to

be the center and he is meant to be the head of Israel's government. Humanity constantly

strives to put celebrities and these days to politicians scientists and doctors above

God there's a constant drive to supersede God in our society. We are called by the mob

to deny God and our Savior Jesus Christ to please the mob. In Psalm 1 1 through 6 it

says blessed is the one who does not walk in the steps or walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers but who delight

whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night. That

person is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and

whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers not so the wicked they are all

like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in judgment or stand

in the judgment nor the sinner and the assembly of the righteous for the Lord watches over

the ways of the righteous but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. This brings me

to my final point which is Christ is our Redeemer. Despite the sins of Israel God provided deliverance

to the nations through their kingly line. Saul was chosen to be the first king and he

was initially a good king. He entered into his kingship with humility and first Samuel

he was plucked out of obscurity and first Samuel 9 that's when that happened and first

Samuel 10 we see him being anointed to be king. But unfortunately even though he was

a good king in the beginning he quickly fell to the pride of man. So pride defeated Saul.

Saul defeats the Ammonites the Philistines but he makes an unlawful sacrifice supplanting

his position of kingship but supplanting the rightful position that Samuel had as the priest.

So he did priestly duties thinking that he was above God's law. This led to him to being

removed from having the anointing of God. God removed his hand from Saul's life because

the consistent choices that Saul made to feel that he was above the law of God. This led

him to insanity and in first Samuel 15 we see the Lord rejecting Saul. At the scene

where Samuel judges the king of the Amalekites Agag and then in first Samuel 28 we see how

far he's gone from being a godly king anointed found in obscurity. We see Saul now going

to the Witch of Endor to seek out mystical advice because he can no longer tap in to

the advice or to the anointing of God. Well then what happens then is that we see that

God has chosen a different man a better king and David becomes the anointed of God and

again he is plucked out of obscurity and he is anointed as king over over Israel in humility.

In first Samuel 16 David is anointed king by Saul as by Samuel and first Samuel 17 we

see the battles the battle of Goliath where David is anointed by God is able to defeat

the giant Goliath and spare and then later on we see him go out of his way that even

though he's being hunted by a very jealous king Saul we see David having every opportunity

to to kill his enemy which is Saul but David did not see him as an enemy and so he spares

Saul's life in first Samuel 24 and 26. This really shows the difference of King David

you know versus King Saul but he is still just a man and he does fall to his own pride

so at the time of the nations when kings are out to war second Samuel 11 we see David commit

adultery with Bathsheba but here's the difference with King David is that when shown his failing

when shown his sinful nature he decides on a different route than what King Saul decides.

King Saul lifts himself up in pride even more whereas King David humbled himself and he

cried out for redemption and we see that in second Samuel 12 when Nathan rebukes Nathan

the prophet of the kingdom rebukes King David and David stops in his tracks and he repents

and it's because of that repentance is because that King David had a heart that was after

the Lord that we see something very different happen in this this man's life. He is he there's

a covenant made with King David that it is his line that will be the Messianic line and

it brings us to the best of kings the King of Kings the Lord of Lords our our savior

Jesus Christ. He is perfect he is sinless and he is willing to sacrifice he sacrificed

his life he came to earth lived as a human but he sacrificed his life so that we could

enter back into direct relationship with our God all during the time of the Levitical line

of all of the Levitical law there was always priests that had to meet that had to go before

us to have relationship with God but not anymore now we are able to have that direct relationship

with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and it's that salvation that we can receive through

the repentance of our sins and acceptance of Jesus as our Lord that makes him the King

for all time. It is through Christ that our relationship with God is set right again the

sin of the mob is to turn away from God's teaching and to look only at man's limited

understanding we constantly need to turn our eyes back to the cross and to our Savior Jesus

Christ even though all of Israel's rebellions all throughout the Israel's history their

constant rebellion God had a plan to save the nations through the Messiah and bring

us back to right relationship with God the Father the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ our

Savior and King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He set us back into that that righteous path

of our Lordship being God not a king but being God and we get that through the Father the

Son and the Holy Ghost today so with that as long as you're not driving right you know

I like to every head bow every eye closed if you're driving I just like you to listen

to this because this is every single time I'm I preach a message wherever I'm at there

has to be an opportunity there has to be an opportunity to give your life to Jesus Christ

be like King David don't be like King Saul when when you're shown the fact that we all

are fallen we all have fallen short of the glory of God we all need salvation in Jesus

Christ because we have sinned and fallen short but in that's we have all all need to do that

and it is just at this moment this message is spoken to you at all turn your heart to

God let the don't let the conviction of the Lord pass but rather turn your heart to God

and accept him as your Lord and Savior. It's a very easy thing to do it doesn't take any

time really but all you have to do is recognize that yes Lord I am a sinner I know that I've

fallen short of the glory of God I know that I've lied I've cheated I've stolen I've done

all sorts of wicked things but I repent which just means turn I turn from my sin and I accept

you to be my Lord my Lord Jesus Christ and I thank you for the salvation that comes from

that knowledge and that's just a simple prayer that you can say so it would just be real

quick it'd be like dear Lord God I know that I'm a sinner but I know that you died for

my sins I accept you as my Lord Savior Jesus Christ I repent of my sins I turn away from

them and I thank you for salvation through grace in Jesus name amen simple prayer if

you prayed that prayer send me a message let me know let me know if these messages are getting

out there if they're right if they're you know impacting you in any way because that's

the whole goal of this is to get the gospel of Jesus Christ out as far as we can and it

with with our Potter's house churches and Christ fellowship ministries we do that we

have three thousand churches globally roughly and we are trying to push forward the gospel

of Jesus Christ the undeleted gospel that you can get from reading the Bible so I thank

you for taking the time to listen to me today tonight whenever you're listening and I just

pray that these messages are impacting you and I can't wait for you to come back next

time thank you God bless thank you for listening to the P.H.S.A. Potter's house salmon arm

podcast be sure to follow us on Instagram at Potter's house underscore salmon arm to

keep up to date on what we are doing join the conversation and discover how Jesus Christ

can revolutionize your life.