A Hard Command

I Samuel 15:1-6

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All right. I invite you to take your Bibles, make your way to 1 Samuel 15. We will be picking up our systematic study from where we left off last year. Before I reset the stage and where we were at, I wanted to take just a moment to explain why we ended up here as far as timing. We just came through Easter and really the most celebratory time for us as Christians as we consider the death and resurrection of Christ and the plan of God for our salvation. And while it, of course, the death of Christ is certainly sobering, we also recognize it as a wonderful time, right? Because Christ overcame death that provides for us the reality of eternal life for all of us who believe in Jesus and that he died for our sins. Now, the next course of business, if you will, as far as the church calendar, is Pentecost and the consideration and celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell believers. And also the founding of the church. And that being the case, what I normally do at this time is turn to a New Testament book, often an epistle or the book of Acts. I did ponder that. Ultimately, I opted to go back to the Old Testament really because of the chapter we are at here in 1 Samuel and its contents. While Easter Sunday provided a good number of reasons for us to be encouraged, it invited skeptics to consider reasons to believe in God, and there are a good number. We talked about those last week. 1 Samuel 15 is one of those chapters that skeptics point to as a reason to not believe in God. Or even if you do, some would say, how can you worship a God who calls for the activity that God calls for in this chapter? So I want us to address that. Not only that, there's a couple of other topics of interest in the chapter. One is simply a detailed consideration of what it means to be obedient to God. Now, I say that, and if we're being honest, we that can be a little bit daunting to us. The good news is we're we'll plan on studying Romans 7 probably immediately after this chapter, and that will help us to know that while God does command our obedience, He also understands that we struggle greatly. And so I just make mention of that so you take heart, even as you may be confronted by sin that you know you need to deal with, but more on that later. Secondly, and this topic has become of more interest to me personally as of late. So, what happens sometimes when I take a personal interest in something, you end up having to hear about it. But uh anyway, that that is the issue of how God relates to time. We've addressed this piecemeal, you might say at times, but the way the biblical writer relays God's displeasure with Saul in 1 Samuel 15 opens this consideration up again. And so I'm gonna take the opportunity, and we'll probably end up doing this next week, to consider the four main views that Christians hold with respect to how God interacts with time. And part of what's pushing me to talk about that is that there's been an uptick in support for what is called dynamic omniscience, which I probably mentioned here, but you may not understand what it means. But it's the idea that God may not know the future because the future is actually completely open. Now, I don't I don't know that we'll buy into that, but there is biblical reason to give it a hearing, so I want us to check it out. Okay, for now we are at 1 Samuel 15, which means we left off with 1 Samuel 14, and in that chapter, just briefly, we ended with a summary of Saul's kingship, and we read that Saul fought his enemies bravely, but we also saw cracks, if you will, in Saul's character. We'll not rehash them other than to say that Saul was shallow, his strength was. He was not a man after God's own heart. His own relationship with God was more about image than substance. His kingdom ultimately would not last, his story is ultimately tragic. And we'll get more into his demise in this chapter, but we'll start today um by considering the issue I mentioned earlier about God's activity. And so let's pray and then we'll read today's passage. Father in heaven, as we come to your word, we pray for understanding. We want to understand you better. We want to uh learn from this Father, not only to follow you, but to also give a defense where we might need to, or to be prepared to answer where we might be asked to. So we ask now for your guidance and we thank you for your word, and we ask that you will help us to understand it more clearly in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, first 1 Samuel 15, verses 1 through 6. Samuel told Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint you as king over his people Israel. Now listen to the words of the Lord. This is what the Lord of armies says. I witness what the Amalekites did to the Israelites when they opposed them along the way as they were coming out of Egypt. Now go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have. Do not spare them. Kill men and women, infants, and nursing babies, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys. Then Saul summoned the troops and counted them at Telim, two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand men from Judah. Saul came to the city Amalek of Amelech and set up an ambush in the water. He warned the Kennites, since you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came out of Egypt, go and leave. Get away from the Amalekites, or I'll sweep you away with them. So the Kennites withdrew from the Amalekites. Verses one through three provide a clear command. Verse three, a radical command, certainly by today's standards. God tells Saul through Samuel to kill all that the Amalekites have, and that includes man, woman, infant, and nursing child, and every animal. This, of course, provides fodder for unbelievers to either disbelieve the Old Testament record or insist that if it is a true record, God is, as C.S. Lewis surmised when considering the Calvinistic doctrine of total inability, God would be we know not what. It was not my intent to uh bash Calvinism today. It seems to come out of me. I'm not going to get into that today. But that was the context of the quote. That aside for now, I think it applies in this instance as well, as some would say. Lewis says this quote, if God's moral judgment differs from ours, so that our black may be his white, we can mean nothing by calling him good. For to say God is good, while asserting his goodness is wholly other than ours, is real is really only to say God is we know not what. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving him or obeying him. If he is not in our sense good, we shall obey, if at all, only through fear, and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent fiend. Now again, he goes on to equate this to Calvinistic doctrine, but that's not the issue here. Here, of course, the issue is the killing of those who are not even aware of their sin, and certainly not the sin of their ancestors. Hence, this is how this is how some view 1 Samuel 15 3. Now, before we consider the implications of this, we must, and we must, let's first go through our typical exegetical view of the passage. Samuel as Israel's spiritual leader is bringing Saul's message, or is bringing God's message to Saul as Israel's military leader. And I don't know if my version, again, the Christian Standard Bible, tried to clean this up, but the word kill is better translated utterly destroyed. It's the Hebrew verb he hiram, if that helps you, that's how it's spelled. I don't know how you say it. But it's used eight times in this text, and scholars say it's the idea of complete and total judgment. There is reason given for this judgment, even before the judgment is announced. In verse 2, the Lord says, I witnessed what the Amalekites did to the Israelites when they opposed them along the way as they were coming out of Egypt. Again, I'm not thrilled with the mellowing out of what is being said. I'm surmising that the CSB interpreters were a little perplexed about how to present the tenor of this event. So they left it more vague than what it actually is in the Hebrew. Other translations say something like God is saying this, I will punish them or I will avenge Amalek for what he did to Israel. How he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. So Amalek had clearly committed a terrible sin against Israel when the nation was weak and vulnerable. The Amalekites attacked the weakest and vulnerable of Israel. And God had pronounced judgment on them literally hundreds of years before. And I want you to see that. Exodus 17. Exodus 17, and beginning in verse 14. Then the and this is after the Exodus from Egypt, the Lord then said to Moses, Write this down on a scroll as a reminder and recite it to Joshua. I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek Amalek under heaven. And Moses built an altar and named it the Lord is my banner. He said, Indeed, my hand is lifted toward the Lord's throne. The Lord will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation. And then over in Deuteronomy, we see this brought up again. Deuteronomy chapter 25 and verse 17. This is the Lord speaking. Remember what the Amalekites did to you on the journey after you left Egypt. They met you along the way and attacked all your stragglers from behind when you were tired and weary. They did not fear God. When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land, the Lord you got the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, blot out the memory of Amalek Amalek under heaven. Do not forget. So clearly God was very upset about what the Amalekites had done to Israel. But given we're talking about the destruction of infants and toddlers, and the fact that all this occurred around 400 years earlier, it complicates the mind, uh complicates the matter in others' minds, if not our own. God is taking out this vengeance on a remnant of a people rather than the people who originally perpetrated the event. So we'll come back to that. As it is here, judgment was pronounced and Saul was to carry it out. Okay, so verses four through six, then we see Saul summons the troops, 210,000 men per the CSB. That sounds like a good-sized army for that day and time, and the writer goes on to explain that Saul set up an ambush. And what all that is speaking to is Saul's prowess as a military leader. He is certainly a capable leader. He has gathered and organized a large army here. He is waiting to attack in surprise fashion. Now, in verse 6, we see he warns the Kenites of impending doom. I'm not sure how this happened in a day and time when you can't pick up the phone and give a call to the leader. Hey, we're coming. You better get out. Some way or another, he probably sent a messenger to a leader of the Kenites. We're not told, got that information to them. And Saul does this, it says, because the Kenites showed kindness to the Israelites when they came out of Egypt. And I'll say, Saul is doing well here. He's showing both mercy and wisdom. God's judgment was not on the Kenites. So what Saul is doing here is a good thing. And now, for whatever reason, I want to draw a lesson from this more obscure verse. I didn't read any lessons about this in the commentaries. It just came to my mind, and I think it's because of the situation I'm at in life, and it just resonated with me a bit. Notice that in the specific directions of God, we have no record of God telling Saul to do this, to extend mercy. And later, where Samuel spells out Saul's failures in this mission, this is not one of them. So again, it's safe to say this was actually a wise and kind thing for Saul to do, and any commentator I read on this agreed with that. So we might ask, why did God not tell Saul to do this? And what if Saul had not done it? Well, I don't want to get too far into the weeds here as the text doesn't speculate on any of this. I think we can rest assured that God knew that Saul would reach this conclusion. And so that wouldn't make us tend to think that God decided to allow Saul to think these things through for himself and to go where his discernment led him. So what I would say we can take from this is something I hope I'm able to communicate. It's it's if you believe God is leading you in a certain direction, still keep your eyes open for specific choices within that move that may not have been immediately clear. In other words, God may give you direction and yet not tell you everything about where you're going. Now, I say that and I think you probably understand what I'm saying, but I have had occasion to talk to people who almost seem paralyzed because they didn't feel like God had given them enough to keep moving. So God sent them in a general direction, and from there they got hung up because they were waiting for more info. If I may be so bold, I suggest if you believe God is sending you in a direction, go, and then if you're not sure where to go from there, follow God's moral law as you go. You'll need to do that whether you go or stay. And that's really what Saul is doing here. He understands it's good to extend mercy and kindness, and so that's what he does. This may so this may seem like a weird analogy, and maybe it is, uh, but it again it just came to my mind, so I'll share it with you. I I pretty much decided and communicated to my boss that my intention was to retire in September of 2027. I felt good about it. There were things that I wanted to get done, and I felt like that would give me time. And then, kind of out of the blue, upper management made a decision that I was completely opposed to that involved employees that worked for me. And I won't get into all that again. I think I mentioned a little bit about it earlier. Anyway, suffice to say I was very stressed about it, and it just came to me just as I was sitting, what if I just go ahead and retire? Um, how would that impact the people that's working for me? And what I what came to me pretty quickly is well, I don't know if it matters. I'm not helping them now. What they do, what they did was of no help to them at all. So I prayed about it, and the more I thought about it, I woke up the next morning with a spiritual peace over it. You've probably experienced that. I feel certain was some major decision where you've asked God about it and you pray about it and you wake up with peace about it. And I felt like I had experienced that in my life with other decisions that, okay, I believe that's what I need to do, but this is major. So I gave it another night, I prayed more about it, I thought of other things that might happen, and I woke up the next, and I even tried to stress myself out a little bit and managed to do so, which is pretty easy for me. I can stress myself out. So, anyway, I woke up the next morning and I felt fine about it again. I had the same peace. So my plans changed. Where it relates here is that I'll confess, in the back of my mind, there was some temptation. I could burn this place down. Um because I know things that could make it really cause real problems. I don't to be clear, I don't know that I could burn it down, but I could take it a while for it to be built back up to where it needs to be. And I thought about that, and I knew God would not want me to do that. I knew based on his word that even if he was telling me to go, he would want me to go being the best I could as I wound things up. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be happy if God came in and burned it down himself. But that's God's to-do, right? And if he doesn't, I'll just have to trust him to deal with all that is going on and protect those who are under my care. The gist is this once you have a move from God, or once you feel like God is giving you a move, take it. That doesn't mean every decision will be spelled out for you by God. You will still have to use your critical faculties with guidance from the Spirit, guidance from scriptures about how you navigate the road you're now on. That's but that's going to be true whether you took the right road or you might, as I have done on a time or two, realize I took the wrong road. I didn't pay enough attention, and I really didn't pray about it, and I just took off in the direction. And even if you do that, the best you can do in either circumstance, follow God as best you can in the moment. Try to follow his moral law, whatever that is, and then go forward and look for him to give you guidance. Now, to the main issue in the text and how to deal with it. Again, verse 3 Do not spare them, kill or utterly destroy men and women, infants, nursing babies, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys. And this again is the sort of things that atheists make hay of. They will say, Well, there you go. The God of the Bible is not a loving God, so either he really does not exist, or he's certainly not all good. So, how do we explain this? Well, in thinking about it, I ended up trying to tackle it a bit differently, I think, because I wanted to be kind of comprehensive about it, comprehensive about it. And by that I don't mean to the nth degree of detail. What I mean is thinking about it from a broad range of how people look at these things. And I do this because we must admit this is difficult from what we know about God. It's especially difficult for those in our culture. And again, it can even be difficult for us. And so I'm going at it fairly broadly as far as angles and hope that something will resonate with you and be of help. Because we're all different. Some reasons may seem more understandable than others, but there are numerous plausible reasons and issues here. That's not to say they're all necessarily understandable or even valid, but it is to say this. offends people's sensitivities from different perspectives. So I want to dress as wide a range as possible. So I'm going to approach it in these ways. One is psychological, one is philosophical, one is practical, one is biblical, and one is theological. And okay, I'm not going to repeat those. I'll mention them as we come to them. Don't be daunted. We'll move fairly quickly through each of them. First, psychological. By this I mean we are a culture that at least pretends to value life. We understandably are adverse to war. We we get a feel for this right now by what is happening in Iran right currently. When I mention Iran I'm not saying I'm for the conflict with Iran or against it. I'm not particularly for it, but I understand it. What I'm saying is we were in conflicts with Korea and Vietnam just a few decades ago. Both lasted for years. What's a little bit strange today is that people are freaking out we're in conflict more than a couple of weeks. Again, I'm not advocating for the position in the current conflict. I'm just saying our psychology is much different than it used to be. And understand it is very different from Old Testament folks in Old Testament times. So all that to say we should be personally careful and if this comes up for you to discuss with someone I would say you advise them to be very careful of any knee-jerk initial reaction to Old Testament realities. They were living in a much different reality and much different threats than we are. We're not there and we're far from there. Next is philosophical and this raises the question of how can God do something like this? Well I'd say on this and this will be a little blunt but it's true God is God we are not. And I understand people may not like to hear it phrased that way but they do need to be reminded of it. God created life and from that perspective he really is the authority for how life is dealt with by him. As creator it is right it is his right whether or not we fully appreciate it to grant who lives and who dies. This comes to an issue of authority. It's not the whole answer because again we hope to worship what we know not what we don't know. But it does point us to the fact that God is in charge. Okay another is practical and I didn't think of this initially and as I do sometimes with some of these harder things I like to raise the issue with my wife because again she comes at it from a different Christian background than I do. She comes at it from a charismatic background. And I discussed this with her and she mentioned this idea of practicality. And that is if all the male soldiers had to be killed how practical would it be to let the women and children live? Now I will say this you have to be careful with that one because that's what pro-abortion people say. Oh it's not practical for the baby to live right again this is of course different God as creator may take all things into consideration abortion is very different from miscarriage. So how could the Israelites though have cared for the women and children and what animosity there would be if all the men had to be killed how would they deal with that? Again the psychology of this may still be difficult for some of us but in reality this is a real practical issue. Now let's get to the real heart of the issues and that's the biblical and theological aspects on the biblical side I'm referring to what we see immediately here in the text that we've already mentioned briefly. The message from God is this punish Amalek for what he did to Israel. Utterly destroy all they have do not spare them God is telling Samuel to bring a total judgment against the Amalekites through Saul. We read of the judgment foretold earlier this was to be carried out with a sense of solemnity this would be the kind of thing that's done with a judicial execution it's definitely not an invitation to go and wage war against an enemy. Everyone would understand this based on what God tells them there is to be no material benefit that accrues to Israel. The spoils of war would not be kept that's not its purpose this is God's judgment. What we also see here and what I think is where the heart of the difficulty is and we'll just have to look at it and pray about it time does not erase sin before God. Among men should erase sin and the years should make us more forgiving toward one another but before God does not atone for sin. That's made clear again and again only the blood of Jesus Christ erased sin, not time. Based on what we know about God, the Amalekites were probably given this time and could have reached out to the Israelites as some other tribes did and they could have repented and God would have relented. However it seems that hundreds of years of hardened unrepentant hearts made them more guilty not less and what this makes clear also is this is not what some attempt to charge. This is no issue of ethnic cleansing this is not about the ethnicity of the Amalekites the issue is ethical not ethnic the Amalekites are to be destroyed because not because they were Amalekites but because they were sinners and they had sinned greatly against God's chosen people. And let's say here while God no longer causes people to take up arms as instruments of his judgment it does not mean that God has stopped judging the nation has an interesting in it I came across a quote he had that I wanted to share with you and he says quote we cannot suppose for a single moment that the judgment of the nations is to be altogether regulate relegated to the final day. Throughout the history of the world the nations have been standing before Christ's bar. Nineveh stood there Babylon stood there I just thought and I made mention of this he didn't write this but Sodom and Gomorrah stood there he goes on and says Greece and Rome stood there which of course they did they the Roman Empire fell Greece fell Spain and France stood there and he says Great Britain is standing there today one after another has had the solemn word depart and they have passed into a destruction which has been absolute and terrible in that sense we would be foolish to think the same thing cannot happen to America. So what we can say from this as far as our own country standing, the best we can do for our country is to stay close to God, to strive for holiness, to lift up America in prayer as well as her leaders as him Hebrews 10 3 says it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. One other clear biblical issue is that these events reveal Saul's true heart which we'll see as we go forward. Some might say Saul was being tested my wife mentioned this also I I don't know that it's about being tested it's about Saul's heart being revealed. Also when we take a step back and look at this in light of 1 Samuel 15 you you realize that the events are to be viewed in the supreme plan of God to provide salvation salvation comes not from a disobedient earthly king ultimately it's going to come from the obedient king the Lord Jesus and that's part of the theological as well and that brings us more to the theological and I am appealing to this last because I think it's in the larger truths of scripture and history that we get some even further fuller resolution at least as full as we'll be able to this entails what has been referred to as holy war. That terminology is not referred to in scripture it refers to those conflicts that God himself initiates he is a warrior he graces the battlefield for the physical nation Israel such wars are portrayed in the Old Testament as acts of worship. They're surrounded with sacrifices and ritual and often Israel is told to disregard the number of troops on that you know they may remember well we're greatly outnumbered and God says no you go forward I'm behind you on this so it's a matter of trust it was a matter of trust for Israel to follow them. And it is clear again as I mentioned on the biblical side as and we'll see as we get more into 1 Samuel 15 God was showing Saul what he was doing and where his heart really was and Saul truly failed we also know this from scripture wiping out the Amalekites would have prevented future problems for Israel. By Saul not doing this the results ended up being dire. Just a couple of decades later there were enough Amalekites to take David and his men's family captive. Had Solobeyed that would have saved all of that and not caused all of that trouble. Also I'll just mention this and you all know this God is the ultimate author of life and he could have taken any of the little ones any of the innocent ones into his presence for salvation we're obviously not toll but that would seem to be in keeping with his character as I mentioned before we've talked about original sin some the reform view of original sin is kind of taken over and we need to be leery of it. It's not God doesn't look at people as being in Adam as being guilty of sin. It's in they're in Adam and their nature is affected by sin but they're not inherently guilty. That's a view that's come about from reform theology it's not the view that most Christians have held and it's not the view that even non-reformed Protestant Christians hold today and certainly not one that I hold God doesn't look at people as inherently guilty. Their nature is simply affected by Adam's sin. And we've talked about that and I'm sure as we get into Romans we'll talk more about it again. But what I'm saying is all of this is that we know as we saw in Genesis the God of all the earth will do right as Abraham kept questioning are you going to destroy this if there's any of these innocent people or there's any of that we don't have to worry that God will bring unfair harm to those who would want to know him. Not only even if they never had the chance but I think especially if they never had the chance so let us conclude with this is in no way the biggest genocide story in scripture we read about that last year. Remember what that was the flood right and that story God wipes out all mankind everybody. And you can be sure there were infants and toddlers in there he do he wipes out all mankind directly himself save eight as a as a pastor McCalpine says the fact you can go in a toy store and directly buy an ark shows that the story has been fairy taled to the point the shock has been taken out of it. But it is in line with God's judgment we see judgment events break into history at certain times we mentioned quite a few of them those are the precursor for what the final judgment day. The final judgment as described in Revelation is described as a very bloody battle the Old Testament challenges people by making clear God does and will bring judgment against sin. The good news of course as we have just come through Easter is that on the cross Jesus takes on the force of God's judgment on himself. So for those of us in Christ what is coming for us is not judgment is salvation. And as you surely know as Christians we're not called to engage in holy war with these physical people that's Islam. That's a big distinction between Christianity and Islam. The battles that we are called to fight now are spiritual battles. Paul says the weapons of our warfare are not physical weapons. So while we may feel baffled by this holy war in the Old Testament what we know as history has come forward and Christ came and died for our sins and rose again we can be thankful we don't have to continue in that. It was not God's intent for us to frankly a big part of the problem here is society's inability to take sin seriously lends to this confusion. And of course that can affect us as well of us as we think about it we want the right to be done but the issue is justice often doesn't come easily it comes hard. So I'll just close by saying how can we hope for a non-Christian to take the sin of the Melechites and ultimately those who reject Christ so seriously if we're not taking our own sin seriously. The passage tells us that God takes sin very seriously he's not going to allow it to continue ultimately but of course the price he paid due to his love and wanting for everyone to come to a knowledge of the truth and is not willing that any should perish the price he paid himself was the death of his son on the cross let's pray Father in heaven we know that you are a just God we tremble before it because we are not just we don't fully understand but we also know that you made provision to save that Christ came that he bore the penalty for sin and that all can be saved who believe in you and we don't always understand what happens to those who never had opportunity to believe in you but we trust you to do right. And we thank you Father that you love us thank you for the assurance thank you that you tell us that you are love and then we read in 1 Corinthians 13 what love is and the wonderful attributes of that and so we know love doesn't delight in evil but we also know father that you're patient long suffering and that you want the good for everyone so we praise you thank you for your help please help us Father and please help other Christians that are having to engage in this type of consideration and debate with non-Christians that they may be able to speak through the power of the Spirit and have words of wisdom that would be helpful because our um society has framed these things in such a way that we see them perhaps differently than has ever been seen in the past. And so Father we simply pray that you will give us guidance as we go forward and we know Father we are to reflect a life of love and a life of kindness so we pray that you'll help us to do that Father in a way that is pleasing to you and that we would not compromise the truth but that we would go forward in a loving way. And we ask these things in Jesus' name Amen.