Kingdom Culture, Part Four
From the very beginning, the Bible presents us with choices, forks in the road that will determine the future. In Genesis, it’s the choice between the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9, 16–17). In the book of Psalms, it’s the way of the righteous versus the way of the wicked (Psalm 1). In the Gospels, it’s the narrow gate that leads to life or the broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13–14).
This is life. We never escape it. Choices come at us every day. But God, in His mercy, nudges us toward life and goodness in His presence. Wisdom is being able to hear His voice and choose the path that leads home. And when we choose the path that seems right to us without considering God and His plans, the results can be disastrous.
The bigger the stakes, the more important our choices. God’s people learned this lesson the hard way when they told the prophet Samuel they wanted a king “such as all the other nations have” (1 Samuel 8:5). It was a fork in the road, and they made their choice.
Now, to be fair to the Israelites, the high priest Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phineas, had been a disaster, corrupt as the day is long. And while Samuel himself was a righteous man who guided the people according to the Lord’s ways, he was old, and his own sons seemed like Hophni and Phineas 2.0. It’s no wonder the Israelites were nervous and looking for an alternative leadership model.
But rather than driving deeper toward God, their true King, and seeking His will on the matter, the people of Israel looked around at the other nations in the region. They saw how their kings led their people into battle. They saw the flash and glitz of the worldly glory with which those kings adorned themselves. They saw the simplicity and stability of a power structure in which all authority was wielded by a single man. They saw all this, and they wanted it for themselves.
Of course, God saw what they didn’t. God knew that those kings were not mighty at all. He saw that their wealth and prestige were the ancient equivalent of Instagram photos. He knew that the power they wielded came from dark spiritual powers and robbed everyone—including the king himself—of the freedom God designed human beings to walk in.
This is the warning God gave to His people through Sameul:
“This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:11–18)
Some of the details don’t speak to us the same way they would an ancient Israelite. We don’t know what it means to have our sons run in front of chariots, for instance. But reading through this list, we get the gist of it. A king of this world, without a heart infused with the love of God, will make his people slaves (v. 17). That’s because, as we’ve already seen, a king does not rule alone. There are spiritual forces—”authorities” and “powers,” as Paul described them in Ephesians 6:12—who are in rebellion against God and who seek to do us, His image-bearers, great harm. And these demons often work through earthly rulers.
We see this time and time again throughout the history of Israel and Judah. It wasn’t merely that kings were prideful and taxed the people heavily, although there was that—I’m looking at you, Rehoboam. It was also that the wicked kings led the people into the worship of foreign gods, going so far as to promote child sacrifice. Rather than living up to the covenant with its life-giving commands, the people sank about as low as you can get.
The single, greatest exception to this is David, a king who was hand-picked by God because of what he had on the inside; he was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). This was a man who mourned when his enemy died, who welcomed a potential rival to eat at his table as one of his own children, and whose greatest joy was worshiping the Lord. David wasn’t perfect, but he was an example of godly leadership. How did David’s God-directed heart make him a good king? He didn’t see power as something to cling to, and he sought to please God in everything he did. That’s a template for us (and we’ll explore it in the next post).
A king like David wasn’t an afterthought. God had made provisions for kings in the law of Moses. It was always His plan to give His people kings to lead them. The problem with the Israelites’ request in Samuel’s day was that they wanted a king like the nations around them had. They didn’t want God’s best; they wanted to keep up with the Joneses.
Now, think back to what Jesus said about “those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles.” He said they “lord it over” their people (Mark 10:42). Isn’t that the picture God painted when He described to the Israelites what “a king such as all the other nations have” would do? It’s not just bad management; it’s evil, the path that bends and winds its way to a living death.
So, when church leaders and Christian authors point to the leadership principles of the world and tell us we ought to adopt them in our churches and ministries, it’s no small thing. It’s akin to saying, “We want a CEO as the other organizations have!”
Does that mean there’s never, ever anything we can learn from the businesses of this world? No, of course not. But it does mean that we need to use our discernment, knowing that the goals of Nike and Apple and Coca-Cola are often at odds with the kingdom of God. Remember: God’s plan in our world is never aimed at mere profit or market share; it’s always directed toward human flourishing—that is, it’s aimed at shalom in its truest sense.
Next time, we’ll look at what Jesus said about how we determine a kingdom approach to business, leadership, and working with others. Until then, think about the current state of corporate culture. The memes can’t all be wrong. Something is definitely broken, and it’s because we’ve chosen the wrong path.
Check out my latest books:
The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein (The TimeFall Trilogy, Part 1)
And if you’ve missed the previous posts in this series, you can check them out here:
“Who’s the Boss? (Kingdom Culture, Part One“
“The Price of Worldly Power (Kingdom Culture, Part Two)”
“When Your Boss Is a Slave Driver (Kingdom Culture, Part Three)”
Pages of Joy // John Greco 
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