Introduction
This is one of those passages that we cringe when we read. Perhaps it even embarrasses us: God commanding that an entire people group be destroyed? Men, women, children of all ages, and all their possessions? What have they done to deserve that? This command seems to us like the action of capricious and moody God. We might think, "I am so glad that God is not like that anymore. Now he is all about love and grace because of Jesus. I like the NT God better!"
When we think like that, we have succumbed to several modern pressures, and we show that we don't truly know the character of God and the seriousness of sin. It is the NT that urges us to consider the severity of God!
Rom. 11:22 – Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off.
I. A Though Message from the Lord, 1.
A. Samuel reminds Saul of whom he is – I am the one who anointed you king.
1. It doesn't mean that Saul forgot who Samuel was.
2. It means that Samuel has the right credentials and that Saul should listen to him even though he had a hard message for him.
B. Can you imagine the faith and allegiance to the Lord required of Samuel in order to deliver this message?
1. Are you sure Lord? Kill even the little ones? (We should have a gut reaction of being bothered by this command)
2. Real conviction shows itself when obedience to the Lord puts you at odds with everyone around you.
C. Notice that Samuel brings the message from the Lord of hosts: YHWH Sabaoth = the Lord of Heaven's Army.
II. Kill the Amalekites, 3.
A. I think more people are bothered by this command than they are by Saul's partial obedience.
B. Before we look at the command to destroy, let's consider who the Amalekites were and the reason given for their destruction.
1. The Amalekites
a. They were the descendants of Esau through his son Eliphaz.
b. They were a bit of a nomadic bunch who lived in the Negev and Sinai Peninsula.
2. The reason for their destruction: what they did to Israel as they were coming out of Egypt, 2.
Ex. 17:8-14 – Now Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, "Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand." So Joshua did as Moses said to him, and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven."
Dt. 25:17-19 – Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you on the way and attacked your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear, when you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God. Therefore it shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from your enemies all around, in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, thatyou will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.
C. How should we understand this command to destroy?
"The total 'curse of destruction' sounds horrid. How can these be the words of the God whose compassion is over all that he had made…? How can we claim this passage as the word of this God?" Ralph Dale Davis
1. First, it is horrid!
2. Second, our claim is only that the Bible is true, not sanitized – Noah Webster's attempt to make the Bible more of a G document (1833).
3. Third, the Lord's vengeance on the Amalekites should not be repudiated by us as God not at his best, but praised if is a just vengeance.
a. That really is the crux of the matter.
b. Is this a just vengeance?
D. A just vengeance.
1. This is a consequence of their attacking Israel, 2.
a. The Amalekites attacked Israel when they were barely out of Egypt.
b. Moses also told us that it was a dirty attack.
1) From the rear.
2) Those who were weaker.
2. Amalekites had not changed through the years.
a. It is not that an innocent generation was going to suffer for the sins of previous generations.
b. They were sinners and continued to attack like they did against Israel in the wilderness, 18, 33.
3. The Lord gave them over 300 years to repent – isn't that a testimony that the God of the Bible is slow to anger and the furthest thing from capricious and moody?
III. God's People Find Comfort in God's Vengeance.
A. The Lord doesn't forget how his enemies have hated, trampled, and crushed hi people.
Is. 35:4 – Say to those who are fearful-hearted, "Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; He will come and save you."
1. If God doesn't do that, what ultimate hope do we have?
2. The full Gospel, the good news in all its completeness, always proclaims both the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God.
Is. 61:2 – … To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn….
3. Our Lord Jesus quoted this passage and said that this was his ministry.
B. God's suffering people have always understood that his people enjoy his favor and his enemies receive his vengeance – this is the bedrock of their prayers.
Rev. 6:9-10 – When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?"
C. God's destruction of the Amalekites is a display of his zeal and love for his church!
Is. 43:1-3a – But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior….
IV. Our Squeamishness toward This Passage May Reveal Our Lack of Understanding of How Serious Sin Is.
A. We might say that the Amalekites didn't deserve their destruction ad we would be right, but not in the way we might have meant it.
B. They deserved much worse than what they got because they were sinners.
C. But the reality we must come to terms with is that we too deserve what they got and much more because we too are sinners.
Ez. 18:20a – The soul who sins shall die.
Rom. 3:9-18 – What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one. Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes."
D. Every single sin is against the infinitely holy God who is infinitely offended by it.
1. That's why hell is eternal suffering as punishment for sin.
2. It takes eternity in hell in order to justify the sin of a finite creature against the infinite God.
3. And that is what the Amalekites deserved and what everyone of us in this room deserves.
4. Every day in which we don't receive that, is a day of God's mercy to us.
2 Pt. 2:9 – The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment…. O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment." Jonathan Edwards in Sinners in the Hands
E. The ultimate display of the seriousness of sin is the cross of Christ.
1. The holy and infinite God the Son took upon himself the nature of humanity.
2. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man, was crucified because of our sin.
3. On the cross, he bore the infinite weight of God's wrath and judgment for our sins.
F. If you think that the destruction of the Amalekites was a ghastly display of the unsophisticated OT God, you have no category in your thinking for the truly ghastly death of the Son of God because of sin!
G. Yet, that cross, that gruesome display of God's wrath, is also the clearest and ultimate display of God's love.
Jn. 3:16-17 – For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Conclusion
Some of you will hear this message and will rejoice in your God. You will cherish his love and his zeal. Some of you may hear this message and be put off by the cross. The apostle speaks to both of you.
2 Cor. 2:15-17 – For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leadingto death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who issufficient for these things? For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ.
May Christ be the aroma of life for all of you!
http://olympiabp.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-severity-of-god-1-sam-151-9.html
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