We Live Like Kings

Kings have not been a part of the American experience. When our nation was formed, our wise leaders worked hard to avoid the role of a totalitarian ruler. They remembered from whence they came. And so, we have a representative republic. No king.

The idea of kingship was also foreign to Israel in its early days. Foreign nations indeed did have kings, but God was Israel’s King, and He ruled initially through Moses, the prophet, God’s spokesman. It came as a shock, then, generations later, when Israel demanded a king from Samuel. It seems as though they were rejecting the Kingship of God! But the seeds of kingship can be found way book in the Law, in those words that Moses wrote under God’s inspiration, in Deuteronomy 17.

It has been said that we in American live like kings. To a degree, this may be true, with regard to our luxury. Not, thank goodness, with respect to our authority. But if it is true that we live (a little) like kings, then it we might consider the warnings and instructions given to future kings in Deuteronomy 17. There are three warnings:

• Do acquire many horses (transportation)

• Do not acquire many wives

• Do not acquire excessive silver or gold

Scripture says to the king, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you must.” It says, “Set limits on your selves.” We should do the same.

With regard to instruction, the text says that the king is to make his own copy of the Law of the Lord in his own hand. Painstaking? Yes. Helpful? Of course. Sometimes we take notes, not so much to review them later, though we may, but because the very act of writing may help us listen better. It helps to internalize the message.

But the king was to do something with that personal copy: “he shall read it all the days of his life.” We might call it “daily devotions.” Call it what you will, make sure that you do it daily, so that we might not just imitate the kings of the world, so often models of really bad behavior, but rather, that we might prove to be humble subjects of the King of Kings, even though he has allowed us, in His providence, to live a little like kings.

Jesus Himself, King of kings, modeled a role that required a new term. He was the Servant-King, and we would do well top follow His lead.