Welcome to Meridian Magazine's Come Follow Me podcast. We're Scott and Maureen Proctor, and we are delighted to be with you again this week as we discuss 1 Samuel chapter 8 through 10, 13, and chapters 15 through 18 in a lesson entitled, The Battle is the Lords. This title gets us

very excited about the things that we're going to discuss. We have with us today a special guest,

Mark Matthews, who has been a teacher in the Seminary Institute program and also has been a teacher

at BYU, specializing in church

history and doctrine. He has a Ph.D. in education from Utah State University, and he and his wife

Mandy live in Springville. So, Mark, we have here at the beginning of these chapters, Samuel,

who's been such a powerful leader, but his sons

have not followed his way. And so they've turned aside from him and they've taken bribes,

and they're just not people who are there to lead Israel. And so the people come to Samuel

and complain that since his sons walk not in his ways,

they want a king.

What do you make of that?

I think it's a really interesting dilemma that they face.

And what the scripture said, I think is really powerful with a great lesson in it.

In 1 Samuel chapter 8 verse 5, it says, Be behold thou art old and thy sons walk not in thy ways now make us a king to judge us like all the nations

and i i think that last phrase is especially powerful like all the right? They want to be like everybody else.

And I think that that is a principle that we can learn from. Everyone's doing it is a strong

argument, even still today for many people. I think it grows out of an insecurity. But when you're

the Lord's people, you can't be like

everybody else. You can't be the only true church and be like everybody else. And yet, and yet,

there's still something inside most, if not all of us, that wants to blend in, that wants to be like

the nations, that wants to be like everybody else, it wants to be like the

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