Four factors brought Israel to this place in their history.

1. Corruption

2. Conformity

3. Carelessness

4. Uncertainty, which we will call anxiety.

1.        Corruption –

a) Corruption of religious leadership as seen in the priesthood of Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas. 1 Samuel 2:12 Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. ESV. And yet they served as Israel’s priests.

b) The corruption of political leadership as seen in Samuel’s sons. 1 Samuel 8:3 … his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice.

2.        Conformity - The corruption of private faith and a rising desire to conform to the world. Vs 5 appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.
No form of government (not even a theocracy under God himself) is effective in governing a corrupt people. Israel was drowning in greed, graft, bribery, and sexual immorality.
Our own Constitution, said John Adams was, “…made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

3.        Carelessness – a care less attitude concerning their own history.
Israel had been an exceptional nation, a people like no other on the face of the earth. They had risen from slave status to world power status, not because they were better or smarter, or deserved it, not because they had any innate righteousness or strength of their own, but because God graciously shared His wisdom with them through His life sustaining Word. Deuteronomy 8:3 … man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ESV
Forgetting the history of God’s gracious care, they thought it more necessary to improve their government instead of keeping their government and reforming their character, and looked to legislation for the kind of help which can come only from living by the Word of God.
 

4.        Uncertainty - They are afraid and anxious.
We find this out in 1 Samuel 12:12-13 where Samuel says to them; “And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, 'No, but a king shall reign over us,' when the Lord your God was your king. 13 And now behold the king whom you have chosen, ESV

When you take a gutted faith, ignorance of history and mix it with chronic anxiety you have the perfect set up for making a deadly decision. They want an earthly king, a man who will fight their battles.

Listen carefully as Samuel tells them what this anxious and uninformed decision will mean, not in terms of political theory, but in terms of practical experience. Samuel says;
11 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 and to run before his chariots. 12 And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. 15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. 16 He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 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."

Do you see any parallels here to where we are in our nation’s short history of existence?

For one thing there is a great deal of moral corruption at all kinds of leadership levels, Church, Washington D.C., Wall Street and

For another thing there are fears of all kinds. We have this supposed healthcare crisis, the supposed global warming crisis, a real unemployment and potentially devastating economic crisis. There was the swine flew epidemic crisis, and now we have the oil drilling crisis and the new child obesity crisis.[1] Couple this with a decreasing faith and hope in God and you have the recipe for a nation of chronically anxious people.

Here are six characteristics that mark a chronically anxious people. Edwin Freedman lists them as follows. [2]

1.        Increased reactivity — want of a quick fix.

2.        Increased herding instinct — group think.

3.        Increased blame deflection – not my fault, not my responsibility.

4.        Increased emotional gridlock – lack of imaginative thinking.

5.        Increased tension – no sense of fun or play.

6.        Decreased toleration for true leadership – too much pain.

Let’s look at these six things.

1.        Increased Reactivity.
A chronically anxious people become increasingly reactive. They do not live by godly wisdom or the knowledge of history or rational thinking, or by planning or taking personal responsibility for their own well being. They react like a pinball ricocheting off today’s and tomorrow’s bad news. Reactivity causes stock markets to crash and banks to fail when they have way over leveraged their assets and suddenly people want their money in cash.
Reactivity results in a craven desire for a quick fix. A reactive people are much more likely to become the constituency of demagogues[3] who pick up on their anxiety and then promise; “We’ll bring change! We’ll bring new hope! We’ll fix things!” Reactivity in this context is dangerous.

2.        Increase in the herding instinct — group think

Chronically anxious people tend to bunch up—what is called the herding instinct. They forget their individuality, abandon their own ability to solve problems and enter into what is often referred to as group-think. “We the herd are afraid and we the herd want a new king.”
It was the anxiety driven group-think of the ten fearful spies around which an anxious herd of supporters formed (constituents). Their group think was “It’s not safe. We will all be killed.” This is precisely what kept Israel wandering in the wilderness for an additional 40 years rather than proceeding immediately into the Promised Land. An entire generation that could have entered the Promised Land died in the wilderness instead.

Here in the United Sates our elections have come down to this sad state of affairs: We don’t seek God. We don’t ask for His help, even in the church there is very little sense of a need to gather in prayer. We don’t ask which leaders are righteous and will be faithful to the laws of God. We simply choose kings who promise to feed and clothe us, promise us a place to live and make us healthy, safe and comfortable and most of all free us from fear. Giving power to men like this is how a free people become slaves.

3.        The chronically anxious tend to concentrate on who to blame as opposed to taking thoughtful responsibility to search for solutions.
Our political leaders have reached near genius levels at deflecting blame at finding “Whose a_ _ (butt) to kick...” as our president recently put it.
The hope of politicians is that if they can show us who to blame (anyone but them) it will keep us from asking questions such as, “Isn’t this really a failure of leadership?” If leadership can convince us that nothing is their fault then the anxious electorate simply transfers more power and money into their hands so that they can solve the problems and go after the people who “are to blame”.

4.        Increased emotional gridlock. Chronic anxiety kills off imaginative thinking. Imaginative thinking is what caused Christopher Columbus to sale west in order to come to find the Eastern world; this was a total break with conventional wisdom.  Some had debated it, but Columbus bet his life on it and it brought about a break-through to the whole of Western Civilization. Granted Columbus had no idea that between him and what he was aiming at was the whole of the North and South American continents and the entire Pacific Ocean. These colossal geographical features weren’t even on his charts, but there is something about imaginative thinking (risky as it is) that opens up the possibility for serendipitous encounters. Columbus just happened to bump into a new world.
Imaginative thinking is what enabled David to see himself triumphing over Goliath by use of a sling.

King Saul and his army were trapped in a cycle of asking the same questions again and again a thousand times a day; “Knowing all the data about Goliath, what size man, what size spear, and how much armor, what would it take to bring down Goliath? And what if our man loses?” Those were the only questions that Saul and Israel knew to ask. They were immobilized—trapped in emotional gridlock.

David came along with a totally new question. “Is anyone aware that this pagan (uncircumcised) Philistine is blaspheming the Living God and he is therefore under the judgment of God and therefore weak and vulnerable? Since he is now marked by God for judgment most any means will defeat him. Pass me my sling.”

Can you understand why men who lust for power look to find any fear causing problems which they hope to elevate into overwhelming crisis? They have no desire to comfort, encourage or spur us on to bravery.  They hope we will gather in a tight anxious herd and cry out for someone to make it all stop, and when we do they stand up and promise to save us. And so we elect to ourselves kings who promise to fight for us and meet our every need. We think this will free us from all responsibility, but we are actually on a quick march to enslaving ourselves and generations to come.

We give the best of the fruit of our labors to such kings so he and the 17.3 million Federal Employees will take all our money and strength and save us.
We lose the ability to imagine that if we had our fields and our own produce and money and our own inheritances from our parents we could actually care for ourselves, our families and give substantial help to the needs of friends and widows and orphans. But we do not think that way. Instead, in our anxiety, we continue to cede our wealth and our children’s wealth and our liberty and our children’s liberty to kings who promise to cool the planet down, save us from natural disasters and all future economic cycles. And how will they do all this, by the formation of special committees of highly trained bureaucrats. They will take all the risks while our ships remain safely anchored in the harbor. But saints of God I hope you will join your heart to the pilgrims and to our forefathers and founders and the pioneers who were all in agreement that that is not any way to live but a very sure way to die in slavery.

5.        Increased tension. Anxiety kills joy and allows no fun in the common everyday give and take in life. It strangles the ability to enjoy the goodness of God, to be child-like, to play and laugh, and especially to laugh at ourselves. There comes the deadly serious, expressionless look of a reptile. Dogs play, lions play, bears play, horses play, rabbits play, but you never see an Iguana Lizard crack a smile let alone play. Reptiles have a permanently fixed face—a deadly fixed seriousness and no sense of joy.
If allowed anxiety makes life very bitter, very angry, very lonely. It leaves us with a reptilian countenance. And yet hundreds of times the Scriptures tell those who trust in God to rejoice, to celebrate life, to trust God and enjoy each day and to enjoy each other. The Holy Spirit even tells us what to do when we see these kinds of events piling up. Luke 21:28 Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

6.        Decreased acceptance of true leadership.
Where chronic anxiety prevails highly effective, self-differentiated (I am not one of the herd), imaginative leaders are sometimes mocked, often hated and frequently feared. .

True leaders do not take part in the emotional gridlock of the herd. For this they are often branded as being cold and uncaring and selfish. Why, because they threaten the status quo of the herd. Let me give you a few examples.
Israel’s famous leader Samson was captured by his own countrymen and turned over to the Philistines because his bold courage and devastating strength had threatened the status quo of the herd. Judges 15:11-12 Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?" And he said to them, "As they did to me, so have I done to them." 12 And they said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines."  ESV
What are they saying? This, “You are putting the herd in danger.”
A young David is not exactly welcomed in the Israeli army camp when he offers to go kill Goliath. The risk of his imaginative attempt is more than they can stand. But David kept himself apart from their fears, maintained a steadfast trust in God and slew Goliath, and even afterwards was hated and hunted by Saul, the very King they had hired to keep them safe.
A bold Winston Churchill was thought a dangerous blustering fool until a cringing Neville Chamberlain lead (by not leading) Britain and Europe to the brink of total disaster.

Vaclav Klaus (president of the Czech Republic) is in my estimation a leader of this caliber. His people love him but the current Climate Control herd views him as a danger to the world. I love the guy. He is the epitome of a self-differentiated and joyful man, a leader who is accused of being cold and calloused for the simple reason that he refuses to protect or support or have false sympathy for the anxious herd. Loved by many for the courage he inspires, but mocked and hated by the anxious herd.

Conclusions

An anxious herd of people is easier to control than one man of faith who has fought to keep his mind free from fear and still has his wits about him. William Wallace illustrates this truth.
How do men who crave political power try to overwhelm courageous men? Here’s the formula, making up a crisis like global warming, or find problems and start calling them crises, and when you have a scared herd formed you train them to mock, to threaten and shout down voices of true and imaginative leadership. Edmund Burke said this: The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

The delusion is two fold. 1) The crisis is mostly delusional, 2) The ability of these leaders to save us from a real crisis is delusional.

And now behold the king we have chosen.

We are $13.2 trillions in debt as a nation and that number grows by nearly $3 billion dollars a day. Who is going to pay this debt back? Our children and grandchildren will be slaves to this debt much more than we are. They will never know the life of working and saving and getting ahead that you and I have known. The king we wanted will have them as slaves.

What does all this mean?

It means that we can no longer believe that religion is one thing and politics is another because when Christians do nothing, secularists so everything.

A faithless, careless, and anxious people will vote demagogic wicked men into power. Here is what the Bible says, Proverbs 29:2, When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan. ESV

Godliness and good government are inseparably linked. We can no longer say that it doesn’t matter who is in office, or who our Sate, Federal or Supreme Court judges are. It makes all the difference between a rejoicing people and a crushed people.

It means that we must build up immunity to fear and anxiety, not that we will never feel it but that we overcome fear by a strong faith in the providential care of God.

It means that true Christians, of all people, must study our history to know what others have endured in order to provide us with a context for our own times. We need to know what others endured to provide us with the liberties they hoped we could maintain by their example and by the Constitution they so carefully crafted and ratified and handed down to us.

It means that we do not look for quick-fix leaders, who promise what only God can provide.

It means that we personally must never, never give in to the pressure to become like the nations (or the people) around us. Why we want to be like the bankrupt socialistic economies can only be explained by some close to a demonic blindness to history and truth.

It means that by God’s providence we find ourselves alive in such a time as this, and that like Esther of the Old Testament, we must find what we can do for our nation, for our families and for those who will come after us, and then do it even if it should cost us our lives, our fortunes or our sacred honor.

I hope it’s not too late, but even if all we can do is warn as Samuel warned, so let us live in the power of the Holy Spirit and warn our countrymen with all our might.

Nothing has changed as regards the work of the church.

We still pray “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We still pray deliver us from evil.

And we still are under the last instructions Jesus gave us. Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." ESV

We must pray for our nation. Look at Charles Stanley’s 4^th of July message (you can watch it on the internet). Listen to his challenge to 140 days of prayer for our nation.

Next week (if the Lord grants me life), I will bring you the second part of this message  and we will talk about our Constitution, and its direct ties to a Biblical  world view which is why the Statists hate it and with every breath are attempting to overthrow our government without anyone even recognizing that they have done so.

 “There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”  John Adams