Royal Failure
When the Israelites asked for a king in 1 Samuel 8, God took it as a failure of loyalty on their part, a rejection of his kingship. Yet he gave them what they wanted and used it to further his own purpose in bringing the Messiah, who would be known as the Son of David, the greatest of their kings. Then, when the Messiah came, they rejected God as king a second time, and God used that to further his original plan of bringing blessing to the Gentiles through the Abrahamic Covenant.
God works through the failures of his people to accomplish his purposes. He does so as much because of as in spite of their failures. The depth, intricacy, and richness of his providential working is far beyond anything we are capable of imagining —but we are given hints of it when we make connections like the one between the kingship of God in 1 Samuel 8 and the King of Kings in the New Testament.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Bible from the online archives
32.2—March/April 2019
on Preserving Physical & Spiritual Nourishment by Nathanael Devlin
31.4—July/August 2018
on the Brevity & Theology of Her Recorded Words by Judith Anderson
5.3—Summer 1992
Everything You Need to Know About Morality & the Bible by David Mills
more from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
on Childhood Encounters with a Christmas Icon by Rebecca Sicree
29.4—July/August 2016
on Noticing That Modern Science Has Rendered Atheism Irrational by Harry Biltz
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
