In today’s lesson we are going to see how well a human king worked out for Israel as a nation. If you have been seeing Israel’s cycles of faithfulness towards God (or lack thereof), you can guess with accuracy that things didn’t go very well for very long. The cycles of rebellion continued, and there were consequences. Through His prophets, God encourages, challenges, and calls the people back to Himself. And through these cycles God reminds Israel of the Deliverer - the one who would offer true freedom from their rebellious, sinful hearts.