Living Like A King

If you would open your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter 17.

Deuteronomy 17 · chapter mention

Deuteronomy chapter 17.

Deuteronomy 17 · chapter mention

This is actually our third time being in this chapter.

We divide it into three portions in the first one.

And that was about worship and unacceptable worship.

And then we looked at verses eight through thirteen, which was about conflict resolution among the people of Israel.

And tonight we come to verses fourteen through twenty, which are rules for a king.

And so I've entitled this Living Like a King.

Beginning in verse 14, it says, When you are come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and shall say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me, thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose.

One from among thy brethren shalt thou set over thee.

Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brethren, but he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses, for as much as the Lord has said unto you, ye shall henceforth return no more that way.

Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away, neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

And it shall be when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites, and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them, that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, we come to you tonight wanting to be instructed by you, wanting to be reproved by you, wanting to be corrected by you, wanting to be edified by your word.

Lord, we are willing participants in this exercise tonight.

And so we just pray and ask, Lord, that as we study your text and what you said to the Israelites of old, that we would find that application to us as New Testament believers.

Father, I pray and ask that you would help us in our endeavor to live for you, not to get sidetracked and not to uh diversify ourselves into things that you've never sanctioned us to do.

And so, Father, I just pray and ask that you would help us to learn to live like kings, and I pray that in Jesus' name, amen.

In this portion of the chapter, Moses is equipping the saints for their future in the promised land, and he is doing that.

We saw in the beginning of the chapter about telling them what's acceptable or worship and what's unacceptable.

And so he is preparing them.

He knows that they're going to the promised land.

He wants them to inherit everything that God has for them, and so he's teaching them about worship.

And then he goes into conflict resolution in the second part of the chapter.

He knows that when you get this many people together, there's going to be conflicts, and he wants them to be able to resolve that so it doesn't bring division to the nation.

And here in this text, he is teaching them or giving them rules for a king.

Down the road, when you get into the land and you want a king, here are some rules for the king.

You see, God in his foreknowledge knew that the time would come when the people of Israel would want a king.

Although that's not God's original design for government in this nation.

As a matter of fact, God's design at this time is a theocracy.

That is, that God is the head of the nation.

And the intermediary is Moses, a man of God, not a king, not an elected president, but a holy man.

And he is the one who simply receives God's word, delivers it to the people.

He doesn't originate it, he receives it and he delivers it.

And that was God's primary design for Israel.

But God is all-knowing.

God knows the beginning from the end.

God knows every choice that we're going to make, and he knows every possible choice that we could make.

And so, in the foreknowledge of God, as he looks down through the halls of time, he knows that Israel is going to turn from his prescribed form of government, and they're going to want a king like the other nations has.

And so he gives them some ground rules for that king.

You may remember that time did come for Israel in 1 Samuel chapter 8.

1 Samuel 8 · chapter mention

Samuel was the last judge, as he comes at the end of the book of Judges.

If you remember, the judges were local leaders, regional leaders that God would raise up at a time to deliver Israel from their enemies.

And Samuel is the last of the judges.

And even though he doesn't fall in the book of Judges, he would be categorized as one.

Samuel has a couple of sons, and those sons are not the quality of men that he is.

And so the people of Israel say, We don't want your sons to take your place.

We know you're getting older.

We don't want them to rule over us.

And they use almost the exact words that God said they would use here when they say, We want to have a king like the other nations.

But the reality is God designed Israel not to be like the other nations.

And that was part of the uniqueness of Israel, that they are different from the nations that are around them.

Even from a flyover view, you're going to know notice that all the other nations are pantheistic.

That is, they have multiple gods.

Israel is monotheistic.

They have only one God.

And really, that is a great differentiating factor between Israel and the ancient Near East.

We know today that there are really only three religions that have one God.

It is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

And Islam didn't come around until around the 7th century A.D., 700 years after Christ.

And so when we're looking back at the time of Moses, they are the only monotheistic people in the world.

That is the only people who believe that there's one God.

And so they are different than everybody else.

And so when God does accommodate for them to have a king, he doesn't want their king to be like all the other kings.

And so in preparation for that inevitable day, God included some instructions in the law for the man who would ascend to the throne and serve in the role as the king of Israel.

In this text, what you will find are two do's and four don'ts.

In much of God's instruction in the law, it is thou shalt and thou shalt not.

And the thou shalt not come first in this text.

And so we're going to look at what the king is not to do, four of those items, and then what the king is to do, two of those.

Number one, do not multiply horses.

Do not multiply a horse.

And this may seem like an odd rule to you, and you may really be trying to grasp how in the world that has any application spiritually to us today.

So let me explain it.

Horses were a symbol of power in the ancient world.

And it was a flex of the military if they had, if they had a cavalry, and so uh cavalry.

Uh and uh it would be like uh today having ships or jets.

I remember uh going through Norfolk and them giving us a tour and telling us that the United States had the largest Navy in the world at that time.

Now, China's been making a lot of ships, so I don't know where the numbers are now, but that that was a flex that was saying, hey, we are the greatest world power because we have the greatest Navy as part of our military, and we can police or we can defend uh nearly anywhere on the seas.

And so when you're thinking about the idea of multiplying horses, the idea of having those horses was this security for a nation.

We've got power, we've got defense, we've got the ability to attack and to conquer.

And so God says that he doesn't want the king of Israel to multiply horses.

Why?

Well, he doesn't want him to put his trust in horses.

I don't know if you remember this, but there's a story when Israel has been surrounded, and Assyria has sent a couple of its generals there named uh Rabsaris and Rabshaka to Jerusalem, and uh they are going to threaten King Hezekiah, and they use some intimidation tactics, some psyops, if you will.

And so one of the things that they say to them is, don't tell me that tired old line that you're gonna trust in the Lord, because it's gonna take more than prayers and sacrifices to save you from our army.

And they they taunt them a little bit and they said, I'll tell you what, we'll we'll we'll give you a fighting chance.

We'll give you 2,000 horses.

We'll just bring 2,000 horses to you.

And we don't think that you could even find 2,000 horsemen in your men to ride those horses, but even if you can, you still wouldn't be able to defeat the least of our generals in his brigade.

What were the Assyrians trusting in?

Tell me.

They were trusting in their horses.

They were trusting in their military might.

They were trusting in their power.

And that's why God commanded that the king of Israel not multiply horses, because it has the possibility of diverting his trust from God Almighty to the horse stables that he can look and see and say, hey, we're secure because we've got this.

And so God says, rule number one, don't multiply horses.

Number two, do not go back to Egypt, right?

Don't lead them back into Egypt.

God knows the influence that one culture can have over another culture.

And he did not want Israel being influenced by the pagan Egyptians.

Not only was Egypt a place of pagan idolatry, by the way, if you remember, those ten plagues that God sent actually were directed at the ten major gods that the Egyptians worshiped.

It was showing that the God of Israel is the true and living God, and that he could whip all of their gods.

And so those plagues were directly and specifically targeted toward that.

And so God doesn't want Israel to be influenced by this pagan idolatry.

But it is also, if you remember, the place of Israel's past bondage.

They had once been enslaved there.

And God took great measures to deliver them from their bondage.

I mean, speaking of those plagues, God sent plague after plague after plague after plague into Egypt, really decimating that country, wiping out their crops and their water supplies and part of their population and doing all of these things.

I mean, those are massive miracles.

And then the parting of the Red Sea, and then the closing of the Red Sea that destroys the Egyptian army.

I mean, God took some extreme measures to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, and he didn't want them, and he didn't want a pragmatic king taking them back there, right?

And if you notice in that text, it says, don't lead them back into Egypt so that you can multiply horses.

The idea is don't be striking up these coalitions with Egypt.

Don't be buddying up to them.

And as you think about that, you say, well, you know, I live pretty far from Egypt, don't have any plans of going there.

And the spiritual point of this is that once you've been delivered from bondage, you shouldn't go back to the place where you were in bondage.

Even though they may not be going back as slaves, there is a culture there, there is a history there, there is baggage there.

And I think the picture is clear for a believer that when we get saved, God delivers us from the Egypt of the world.

He delivers us from our sins.

We are no longer under bondage to that sin.

And now, if a believer goes back into those sins, they are going back into Egypt of their own free will.

They are placing themselves back under that influence that they had been delivered from.

And so, don't go back to Egypt, he says.

Third, do not multiply wives.

Now, guys, that probably is a good place for y'all to say amen, right there, right?

I mean, get some brownie points with your wife.

God never authorized polygamy.

He knew, though, that the custom of the kings was to have a harem, was it not?

And so he clearly instructs the future kings not to multiply wives.

Now, let me just kind of speak practically to you here.

In that time, polygamy, one, it wasn't authorized or legalized by God.

Sometimes there were people who had multiple wives, right?

We know that Abraham had a wife and then he had a concubine.

And I just asked you how'd that work out for him.

And then Jacob had two wives, which I don't think Jacob intended to have two wives, but his father-in-law tricked him into the ugly sister, and he really wanted the pretty sister, and so he ended up with two wives.

And again, I'd ask you, how did that I listen?

I'm not being mean, that's what the text says.

It says that that Leah was tender-eyed, but Rachel was beautiful.

Well, that's King James, for she's ugly.

And the other one was pretty.

And so Jacob, I don't think, was a polygamist by design.

I think he was a victim of polygamy.

And again, I just asked you, how's that work out for him?

But on a practical level, most people were not polygamous because they couldn't afford to be.

The wives weren't working outside of the home in that culture.

And so if you were a guy and you married more than one wife, you had to support more than one wife.

And that's why you find kings being polygamous.

And you find kings having harems because they had the money to do so, and they could indulge themselves in that way.

And so God says, listen, when you have a guy who is made king, he's going to be tempted by the culture that he is placed in.

And by the way, that's a good principle for us to realize that whatever culture we're placed in, we're going to have some battles we have to fight there.

So if your culture is in the academic world, you're going to have to fight some specific things in academia.

If your culture is in the workplace, or if your culture is in the military, if your culture happens to be in entertainment, there are going to be different risks and temptations in each one of those subcultures that we have to guard ourselves against.

And so in that subculture of kings, which would have been a pretty small group, there would have been a pressure to have multiple wives, to have a harem, because that's one of the things that they showed off when a visiting king would come.

And so God says, listen, I'm going to allow you to have a king.

That's not my original design, but I'm going to allow it.

But that king has some rules.

Don't multiply horses, don't go back to Egypt, don't multiply wives.

The danger of multiplying wives is spelled out in the text because it actually says that they will turn his heart away from the Lord.

That's what God says.

This is why you shouldn't multiply wives.

And as you think about that, we have two natures that dwell within us.

We have the carnal nature and we have the spiritual nature.

We have the flesh and we have the spirit.

And the one that you feed the most becomes the strongest.

And so multiplying wives would have fed the carnal nature of the king, and in turn it would have turned his heart away from the spiritual.

Well, God wants the leader of his people to be a spiritual leader.

Even though he may not be a prophet, he may not be a priest, he should be a godly man.

Fourth, do not greatly multiply silver and gold.

And so notice the modifier greatly is added to the second clause in verse 17.

Don't multiply wives, don't greatly multiply silver and gold, which indicates that the king can increase wealth.

There is not a forbidding of increasing in wealth, but that he should not greatly increase it.

And the indication is that it would reach a point, like if that's the goal, like more, more, more, more, it is going to reach a point where the materialism will become idolatry and the king will value and pursue riches more than God.

Jesus spoke to that in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, where thieves break through and steal.

And he goes on to say, Lay up for your treasures treasures in heaven.

Why?

Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

And he concludes that whole text by saying, Listen, you cannot serve two masters.

You'll love one and hate the other.

You can't serve God and mammon.

And that word mammon means wealth.

And so what we find is this consistent principle that if we make success, if we make wealth, if we make prosperity the goal, then we are going to make it our idol, and it's going to cause us to neglect our pursuit of God.

By the way, here's something that I want to point out, which I think just it is ironic to me.

But the wisest of kings can be ensnared by these things.

If you read the account of King Solomon's life, you will find that he had 40,000 stalls of horses.

40,000 stalls of horses.

That's at least 40,000 horses, isn't it?

1 Kings 4, 26.

We also find that he traded horses with Egypt.

And he married one of Pharaoh's daughters.

Well, that sounds like crawling back in bed with Egypt to me.

You find that in 1 Kings 10, 28 and 29.

He multiplied wives, did he not?

We are given the number.

He had 700 wives plus 300 concubines.

And we are plainly told in 1 Kings 11, 1 through 4, that they turned his heart away from the Lord.

Did exactly what God warned would happen.

And not to leave anything out.

Solomon greatly multiplied silver and gold to the point that silver was of no value in Jerusalem.

It was So prevalent that it was as common as a stone, they say.

And according to the Bible, Solomon's riches exceeded all other kings.

1 Kings 10, 21 through 23.

And so what we find is the wisest king who ever lived failed on all four of God's rules for kings.

Which, by the way, is why he writes in his very last book of Ecclesiastes about the absolute emptiness of pursuing the enticements of life to the neglect of God.

And some of his final words are, remember now thy creator in the days of your youth.

And so Solomon serves as an example of what not to do.

And so I would say to you to think of these do-nots as guardrails for the king.

That's what God is setting up for the king.

They're guardrails.

And they are meant to protect him from going over a cliff.

What comes next are the do's.

And they are guidelines.

Guardrails keep you from going over the edge.

Guidelines help keep you centered and on track with the Lord.

So four don'ts are guardrails, two do's guidelines.

Number five, do handwrite the word of God.

Do handwrite the word of God.

God commands the king to hand copy the books of Moses.

There are copies of the books of Moses in the temple, and when the king came to the throne, he was to take one of those and make a copy for himself.

He was to handwrite it.

And that is not just because they didn't have copy machines, it's because it's actually a beneficial exercise.

It is a beneficial exercise for that king to hand copy his own copy of the Word of God.

When you hand copy something, think about it, you interact with it at least three times as much as you do when just reading it.

Because you start with reading it, and then you've got to hold it somewhere, right?

And you're either holding it in your brain or you're holding it in your mouth, right?

And you're saying in the beginning, we're retaining it somewhere.

And then it passes through our fingertips, and it is recorded on the page.

And so I think that there was intentionality about God saying to the king, copy for himself, because the king has scribes.

And he didn't say, have a scribe make a copy for yourself.

He said, have the king write his own copy of it.

And I can tell you from personal experience that this is beneficial to your spiritual life.

For a period of time, this was part of my daily discipline.

With Bible reading and prayer time, I would hand copy portions of the Word of God.

I have hand copied the entire New Testament and many of the books of the Old Testament.

And what I found was that it did help familiarize me with Scripture.

It did help me to grow in my walk with the Lord.

It did cause me to interact with the Word more than just reading it.

And so God prescribes to the king, King, I want you to go, and the first thing is I want you to make your own copy with your own hand.

Write it down.

And then, sixth, finally, do read the word of God.

The king was to take that handwritten copy of the Word of God and read it.

Not just once.

It says, all the days of his life.

All the days of his life.

That indicates that this was supposed to be a lifelong practice.

That it was something that was to be done regularly, if not daily.

And you may look at it and say, well, the king's a busy man.

He has a kingdom to govern.

He has borders he has to protect.

He has laws he has to enforce.

He has issues that only he can address.

What good will it do him to spend time reading the Bible?

His time is more important than that.

And our text tells us five things that will benefit him by reading the Bible.

It says that he will learn to fear the Lord.

He'll learn to fear the Lord.

Man, that's a great gift from Bible reading.

Because God is Almighty.

God is not some soft, squishy pushover, go along and affirm whatever you want to do.

He is the moral authority of the universe.

He is the holiest of holilists.

He has things that he absolutely does not condone.

And we should not treat God as if he is a peer.

We need to recognize him as the only true and living God.

We ought to know that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

That those who stand before God in judgment will be condemned eternally.

There is a God to be feared.

And sometimes people are repelled by that idea.

Well, you know, I don't want to serve a God that I fear.

I I, you know, I I'm more about the love.

You understand there's different types of fear, don't you?

I don't know about you, but I well, I kind of like being scared.

And so we have gone to haunted houses over the years, right?

Halloween time, they open those things up.

That's one kind of scared, isn't it?

Being scared that way.

There's other types of fear.

Uh authority, right?

You get pulled over and the state police walks up to your car or you have to appear in court for something.

There's a fear that takes you there.

That's a different kind of fear than the jump scare fear.

Well, how about the fear when you're around something that's powerful?

You ever been around an electric substation that is just buzzing with electricity?

And you have some sort of fear because you know the power that that thing possesses.

And if it is not kept in control, it is certain to annihilate you.

I would say that's the kind of fear we're talking about here.

It is just simply being in the presence of the most powerful being in the universe and realizing that if he does not control himself, I have no hope.

I'm completely annihilated.

And so the word of God, you neglect it, you won't have any respect for the power of God, the authority of God, but you read it and you will grow, you will learn to fear the Lord.

Not only that, it says that reading the Bible will prompt him to do what God has commanded.

And so he'll keep these commands that God has given.

Well, doing what God has commanded is simply obedience.

We are called to a life of obedience, but my natural bent is to disobedience, and I'm like a car out of a line.

The further I go along, the more I'm going to get away from what God wants me to do.

And the word of God keeps me on track.

It helps me to obey.

Having a steady diet of the Word of God is going to help me obey the Word of God.

And then reading the Bible will help him in the fight against that cardinal sin of pride that kings are so prone to, that it will keep him humble.

It'll keep him from exalting himself and thinking that he is some great one.

Apparently, Saul did not follow these directions either because his cardinal sin was pride, was it not?

Wasn't it God who said through Samuel to him that when you started out, you were small in your own eyes, but then you got too big for your breeches.

Then you thought you were the man.

You thought you didn't have to obey God.

Reading the word will keep him on the right path and prevent him from being pulled in the wrong direction.

And so, once again, the word of God anchors us, keeps us from being drawn away.

And then lastly, it says that reading the Bible will not only benefit him, but that it will benefit his family.

He says, if you do this, then it'll be good for you and for your children and for your kingdom.

And so I would say to you that reading the Bible is not just good for you, it's going to be good for all the people around you, especially the people who live with you.

It's going to make you a better husband.

It's going to make you a better wife.

It's going to make you a better parent.

It's going to make you a better child.

It is going to help us to be more Christ-like in whatever relational role that we have.

And really, it's hard to come up with any counter-argument to that.

And yet, the history of Israel's kings is primarily a history of those who neglected these instructions.

Is that an accurate statement?

The history of Israel's kings, if we read it, is primarily a history of kings who neglected these instructions.

Can you even imagine how different Israel's story would be if the kings had done these things?

It's a total different story, is it not?

It's a different story.

Even with their greatest king, King David, it's going to be different.

It's going to be different with King Solomon.

It's certainly going to be different with Rehoboam and all the succeeding kings that come out of them.

I mean, it is the game changer.

And sadly, they neglected these simple instructions.

Oh, by the way, did you know that you're kings?

That's what the Bible says in Revelation chapter 1, verses 5 and 6, Revelation 5, 9 and 10.

Revelation 1:5

The Bible says that every single believer, everyone's put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, has been made a king by the King of kings, Jesus Christ.

And so just like you and I are priests with God, right?

We don't have the Levitical priesthood anymore.

There's not just this one segregated party among us who has access to God, who mediates between us.

Jesus is our great high priest.

We are now priests with God.

We have direct access to God.

Not only are we fulfilling that office of priest, but we are also now kings with God, because Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

And he has made us kings with our God.

And so I would say to you that you should be living like a king.

And by that I mean that you should be trusting in the Lord instead of your own power.

You should not be going back to the old world God delivered you from.

You should be resisting the flesh and not feeding your carnal appetites.

You should not be consumed with materialism.

And you should be reading your copy of the Word of God every single day.

That's how to live like a king.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, thank you so much for this instruction for kings.

Thank you for the living example that shows us what happens when kings did not live by your simple instructions.

Help us, Lord, to simply believe your word when you now say that we are kings, that we are kings with you in your kingdom, and that these rules have an application to our lives.

Oh Father, I pray that we would not have the same pattern that the kings of Israel had.

That we would not be found to have neglected all of these instructions.

Oh Lord, may our story, may our story be the story of obedience and faithfulness of those who simply did what our Lord commanded us, knowing that it is going to guard us against the dangers and guide us in the right path.

And I pray that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you would let's stand and sing holy, holy, holy.