1 Samuel, Chapter 12 - Samuel's Final Message | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom friends. Welcome back to the Prophet of Israel daily. This is the first book of Samuel chapter 12 brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. Shalom Jeremy. >> Hey, how are you doing? >> Good, good. Okay, so today we stand at one of the most powerful moments um at least in these chapters. If up there up there in the most powerful moments of Tanakh. Right, this is Shmuel Hanavi's farewell address. Right, the man who anointed Israel's first king is stepping aside. You can feel emotional here. That's okay. Right, the era of Shoftim, the judges is officially over. And before he steps down, Samuel puts the entire nation and himself on some level on trial. Verse 1. And Samuel said to all of Israel, "Behold, I have listened to your voice in everything you said to me, and I have set a king over you." He says, "I gave you what you asked for. The king is here." Verse 2. "And behold, the king walks before you, and I I have grown old and gray, and my sons they are here with you, and I have walked before you from my youth until this very day." Notice, notice, you're probably thinking this, "My sons are here with you." Right, the very sons whose corruption triggered this crisis in chapter 8. He doesn't hide them. He brings them into the room. And then he does something that challenges the nation in a in a pretty dramatic way. Verse 3. "Here I am. Testify against me before Hashem and before his anointed one. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I taken a bribe a kopher to look the other way? Tell me, and I'll return it to you." Right, I'm not sure that there's actually a precedent for this in history. I don't know. The supreme leader of a nation is opening himself up publicly to any accusation from any citizen. Right? Verse four. And they said, "You have not oppressed us, and you have not cheated us, and you have not taken anything from any man's hand." >> You know, the contrast that Samuel is setting up here, it's just so special. I mean, remember what he warned the people in chapter eight? What a human king would do. The verb the verb that's used all the time is "vayikach". He will take. He'll take your sons. He'll take your daughters. He'll take your fields. He'll take your vineyards. Take, take, take. And now, Samuel's standing before the people. And then he says, "What have I taken?" And the answer is nothing. Not an ox, not a donkey, nothing. And it's like the man who led Israel for decades and didn't enrich himself with a single shekel. That's the leadership you had. And I think Shmuel is saying like you had a man that was serving you without taking. You had the Torah's model of Moses, of Joshua, right here in front of you. And what did you trade it in for? For a leader in which taking is in the job description, and we're going to see that in just a little bit. >> Yeah, you know, it's true. And and knowing the grief the nation will suffer from corrupt and evil kings, the whole thing is just so tragic. You know, anyways, it's now that Samuel shifts his farewell address from himself personally to the entire history of the nation. His speech commences with him taking the nation on a a cursory tour through their own story. Right? Verse six. And Samuel said to the people, "Hashem is the one who made Moshe and Aaron, and who brought your fathers up from the land of Egypt." And he walks them through the cycle. You know the cycle. They forget Hashem, they're oppressed, they cry out, he sends a savior, Yerubaal, who's Gideon, Bedan, Yiftach, Samuel, you know, Samuel. He's He brings it up to himself. That's where we're at, verse 11. And Hashem sent Yerubaal, and Bedan, and Yiftach, and Samuel, and he rescued you from the hand of your enemies all around, and you dwelt in safety. And then, and it really comes together in verse 12, and then the tiru ki Nachash Melech ben Ammon bo aleichem, and you saw that Nachash, the king of the children of Ammon, came against you, and you said to me, "No, a king shall reign over us, when Hashem, your God, is your king." >> You know what I think Samuel is doing here is really identifying for the people the exact moment when the nation really requested a king. And it was the moment they saw Nachash. It's like they saw a threat, they got scared, and in their fear they decided what they needed was a human king to fight their battles. And Ari, that is such an important prophetic insight. Saul's reign, prophetically, like the first stage of Zionism in Israel's founding, was built entirely out of fear. I mean, Herzl said it, Israel's purpose was to create a night shelter for the day that they might be persecuted, and they have to find a shelter to run away from. And like, so too, Saul's rise to power came from fear of the enemy and the desire for the king of Israel to protect them. And Samuel's telling them, and he's telling us, you know, the king is not what makes you safe. Faithfulness to Hashem is what makes you safe. I mean, your security has nothing to do with the king. If you mess up with the king, you'll be corrected with a king just as you've been corrected before you had a king. Focusing on the king is the sin. It's missing the mark because you're You're looking at the root cause of your troubles. >> Well, I got These stories are really just so timeless. They're just so timeless. But now at this point, right, Samuel turns the speech in an unexpected direction. He doesn't condemn them and walk off the stage. What does he do? He gives them a path forward. Verses 14 through 15. Im tiru at Hashem va'avod'tem oto u'shmatem b'kolo If you fear Hashem and serve him and listen to his voice and not rebel against the mouth of Hashem, then both you and the king who reigns over you will be after Hashem your God. Right, pay attention. That phrase, achar Hashem, after Hashem, the king is not a replacement for God. The king is supposed to walk behind him leading the people in following the creator. If he does that, there's still a future. If not, verse 15, Hashem's hand will be against you just as it was against your fathers. Right, and now Samuel does something most of us miss, at least I miss when I was reading this chapter. If we If you were just read it quickly, you miss it. Verse 17. Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call to Hashem and he will give you thunder, kolot, and rain. Know and see that your evil is great what you have done in the eyes of Hashem in asking for a king. Friends, you have to understand what this means. The wheat harvest in the land of Israel is is in the late spring, the dry season. A storm at wheat harvest here is almost a meteorological impossibility. It would destroy the entire crop. And Samuel says, "Watch. I will pray and Hashem will shatter the sky." And he does. Right, verse 18. And Samuel called to Hashem and Hashem gave thunder and rain on that day, and all the people feared Hashem and Samuel exceedingly. >> You know, Ari, we live in the land. We live on a farm in Judea. We understand exactly what Samuel just did. He's using the land as a witness. I mean, the skies of Eretz Israel, the land of Israel, they answered him. And this points to something the rest of the world just cannot grasp about this land. This isn't just another piece of real estate. This is a land that responds to the spiritual state of the nation that's living on it. And the Torah tells us this explicitly. It's like, when you follow Hashem, the rains come in their time, and the land lights up and produces. And when you don't, the heavens are sealed shut. And Samuel is invoking that covenant in real time, and he wants the people to witness it. And this is one of the deepest reasons that the return of our people to this land in our days is so beautiful, because we're watching prophecy come to life as the land is coming to life. And the same land that withered for 2,000 years when we were exiled, it's coming back to life again, agriculturally, spiritually. It's like the moment the people came home, the land returned to itself. The land knows whose it is. The land knows. >> Yeah, yeah. If there's one thing I've learned from being here and living here, it's that the land of Israel is alive. It's alive. And it was so it's just it's true you said. And then the people's reaction here is such a moving moment. Um they're crushed. They are. Verse 19. And all the people said to Samuel, "Pray for your servants to Hashem your God that we do not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil to ask for a king for ourselves." Right? They have a a moment of reflection, of self-awareness. This is teshuvah. This is real repentance. The nation says it out loud, "We sinned." And now listen to Samuel's response. It's It's words of comfort. He's comforting a nation from And these words are coming from the heart of a leader who so clearly and truly loves his people. Verses 20 and 22. And Samuel said to the people, "Do not fear. You have done all this evil. Only do not turn aside from following Hashem and serve Hashem with all your hearts." Right? And he assures them that Hashem will always be with them no matter what. Right? In in verse 22. For Hashem will not abandon his people for the sake of his great name. Because Hashem willed to make you his people. Friends, we need to to write these verses on our walls, on our hearts, in our minds. Hashem will not abandon his people. Not because we deserve Hashem's loyalty. Not because we earned it. But Hashem will not For the sake of his great name. Because he bound his name to ours and he does not unmake that choice. This is the verse that carried our people through the crusades and the inquisitions, the pogroms, the Holocaust, all the way to the wars that we're fighting right now. Every moment when it looked like we were finished, he will not abandon us. He will not. His name is tied to our name and our story throughout history. Right? And then comes one of the one of my favorite verses in this chapter, verse 23. As for me, far be it from me to sin against Hashem by ceasing to pray for you. And I will teach you the good and the upright way. Samuel is essentially saying, "You rejected me. You replaced me. You asked for a king instead of me. And my response is, I will never stop praying for you. I love you too much for that. And to stop praying would itself be a sin. That is the model of Jewish leadership that Samuel is is showing and that he's leaving behind, right? And in his final words, verse 24, "Only fear Hashem and serve him in truth with all your heart. Forsee what great things he has done with you." See what he has done with you. Look at the impossibility of your survival. Look at the wonders. Serve him with all your heart. Well, friends, we're living through that right now. R'u et Hashem hegdilimachem. See what great things he has done with you. After 2,000 years of exile, after the gas chambers, the pogroms in every land that took us in, against all odds, the Jewish people came home. We planted vineyards in valleys that had been desolate for centuries. We came back to a language nobody had spoken in conversation for two millennia, and we're speaking it with our children at the breakfast table. Right? And just like the generation in this chapter, we're being tempted sometimes to forget. To forget why to say to to to make us normal. Just say to say Hashem, make us safe. Make us like all the other nations. And just like in Samuel's day, Hashem keeps sending us moments where the sky itself testifies. He sent us 1948. He sent us 1967. He has been sending us in this generation both heartbreak and miracles so that we will look up and see. So, friends, I believe that our task is the same task Samuel gave to the nation on his last day. Fear Hashem. Serve Hashem with all of our hearts. See what great things he has done with us because the story isn't over. It's unfolding under our feet in this land in this generation. And the Mashiach ben David, the Messiah son of David, I know it is on his way. May it be speedily in our days. And uh and I want to say, my friends listening around the world, if you've been listening to us for a while and you haven't made a a move yet, this could be the nudge. Right? The simplest way in in is as a haver, a friend, for $10 a month, you get access to our recorded fellowships, our past sessions, teachings from right here in Judea, and more than that, you become a part of something that we're building together, and it really does strengthen us out here. So, come out, find your place at the landofisrael.com. And tomorrow, my friends, we open chapter 13, where the cracks in King Saul, a Shaul Hamelach, they begin to really show. Hazak u'varuch from the hills of Judea, my friends, and we'll see you tomorrow. Shalom.