God and Genocide

Well, brothers and sisters, you will be confronted with difficult questions.

That's one of the reasons why we're doing the apologetics course.

We've done apologetics before here.

Why do it again?

Because I think that's one of the periodic things that we need to go over.

Because you have been, I'm sure, maybe right now are confronting tough questions, or you will be confronted with difficult questions.

Like, how do you know God exists?

What do you say to that?

Why Jesus and not other religions?

What do you say to that?

How do you know the Bible is reliable?

What do you say to that?

So those are some of the kind of things we're going to talk about in the apologetics course, but those aren't the ones that are going to be presented to us today.

We're going to deal with one of them today because we will not skirt around tough questions here at Christian Fellowship Church.

We don't ignore them.

We don't stick them in a drawer.

We don't skip over the tough passages and only preach the passages that feel good or that are the ones that I feel like preaching.

I'm not going to deceive you and make you think that I got up this morning like, man, I've been waiting for this passage.

I see it as difficult.

But we don't skip over it, because once you start doing that as a church, okay, then your people start doing that.

And then when you get confronted with those questions, you don't have anything to say.

The God of your Bible is ugly, they might say.

You claim he's beautiful, he seems ugly to me.

And what do you say to that?

So today, we're gonna deal with one of those questions that's prompted by our passage, it's the next passage that's up.

And so what I'm going to do is instead of preaching the whole passage, we would've gone all the way through the end of chapter 15, we're gonna start the end of 1 Samuel 14,we would've gone all the way to the end of 1 Samuel 15,but we're gonna stop partway when this question hits us squarely in between the eyes, and we're gonna deal with that question today, and then next week, we'll do the passage as a whole.

Does that make sense?

So 1st Samuel 14 we're going to start at verse 49 and we're going to go to 15 verse 3. 1st Samuel 14 49 and we're going to go through 15 verse 3 and you'll quickly see why this passage does not make it onto Christian t-shirts mugs or refrigerator magnets.

Starting at verse 49.

Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, Eshvi, and Malkishua.

And the names of his two daughters were these.

The name of the firstborn was Mereb, and the name of the younger was Mikal.

And the name of Saul's wife was Ahinom, the daughter of Ahimaz.

And the name of the commander of his army was Abner, the son of Ner, Saul's uncle.

Kish was the father of Saul, and Ner, the father of Abner, was the son of Abel.

You're like, what's the problem so far?

Nothing yet. But it's giving you the layout, who's who, all right, because it hadn't done that yet.

We weren't even sure who Jonathan was really, and so how does he fit into this whole picture?

It's giving you the layout of the situation.

And then verse 52, there was hard fighting against the Philistines all the days of Saul.

His whole life was characterized by fighting against Philistines.

And when Saul saw any strong man or any valiant man, he attached him to himself.

He's constantly recruiting guys to fight because he's constantly fighting against the Philistines.

Now, chapter 15, verse one.

And Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, Israel.

Now, therefore, listen to the words of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord of hosts.

I'll just pause for a second.

I know I'm pausing a lot, but just I think it's important.

Do you notice how Samuel leads in by bringing weight to what he's about to say?

Like what I'm about to say might be difficult to receive, but you need to receive it because I am God's prophet.

I'm the one that the Lord sent to anoint you as King over his people.

And because of that, I need you to listen to these words that aren't my words.

This isn't my agenda.

This is God's agenda.

Yahweh wants you to do this.

I'm gonna give you specific orders.

Verse two.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, not the people that find your seat at the restaurant, hosts meaning armies.

Okay, Lord is in charge of his heavenly hosts, his earthly hosts, he's in charge, he's the general, he's the commander in chief.

I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt.

Hmm, throwback.

This is a scene from Exodus 17.

We're in 1 Samuel 15.

And God goes, time to fix that.

I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt.

Verse three now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have.

Kill all that they have.

Do not spare them but kill both man and woman child and infant ox and sheep camel and donkey.

There you go.

The question is obvious, right?

How can God be good and command genocide?

Now some might go, well, he's not actually commanding genocide, he is.

So what do we do with that?

I mean, your options are very limited here, okay?

Option A, just be done with God, he's not good, forget it.

Option B, The Bible's not reliable, or I'm going to interpret this some other way, and I'm going to snip out the parts of the Bible that are offensive to me and only cling to the parts that don't offend me.

And I assure you, if you go that route, you have very little left in the Bible.

Most of what we get about judgment and hell is from Jesus' words himself.

If you only got a red letter Bible and said, I don't even want to look at the black letters.

Red letters meaning the Bible, you know, the Bibles that are published and the letters that represent what Jesus specifically said that came out of Jesus' mouth.

Those letters are in red and you only kept those.

You still have to deal with hell.

Most of what we get about hell is from Christ himself.

So option B doesn't look very promising and I think you'll just end up back to option A.

You've left the building.

You've rejected God for who he is and you've just gone a route of making up your own God for who you want him to be.

So option B really leads you back to option A.

What's the other option?

The other option is to try to take the Bible for what it says about who God is, and rather than immediately being offended and going, God must not be good then, is to try to work it out and understand what's happening here.

And I hope that we can do that. Today.

If your friend is harassing you by saying, how can God be good when a verse like this exists and your friend is only giving you 30 seconds, you're going to be like, look man, this needs some conversation and context.

This is not a quick 30 second question.

It's just not.

It does take time and I don't want you to just give them the link to the sermon.

I want you to be able to pass it on without giving them the link to the sermon.

I want you to be able to work it out.

So I hope that you can take notes and I hope that this is helpful to you.

The question is how can God be good and command genocide?

I think that's the obvious question that we're hit with looking at a passage like this.

And this isn't the only one.

This is not the only one.

But this is the one we're dealing with today.

The first thing I think is important to understand is that God is love and he doesn't become love in the New Testament.

God is love in the Old Testament.

Now you might not get that, gather that from this particular verse, but as you move through the Old Testament, God is over and over and over again described as a God of love.

And so it's not that God is a bad guy in the Old Testament, becomes a good guy in the New Testament.

He's rehabbed in that 400 years in between the two testaments, he kind of, you know, in his old age, God just sort of got soft.

I mean, that's not the image, nor is it an image of grumpy, disgruntled, harsh father is now counteracted by kind, shepherdy, nice son.

And, you know, the father wants to kill us, but son's got our back.

Like, you know, the oldest kid in a house with an abusive father standing up to, you know, take the abuse so that the other kids can kind of go play video games.

That's not what's happening here.

What we have is throughout the Old Testament, God being proclaimed as a God of love.

I'll just give you a few examples.

I don't want to rush past this because it's important.

In Genesis, right out of the gate, Adam and Eve sin and he told them they would die.

They sin, they're naked and ashamed and they try to cover themselves with fig leaves and instead God covers them with a better covering.

He doesn't go, why are you trying to cover yourselves?

You guys are done.

No, I'm going to cover you.

I see what you're trying to do there, but that doesn't work.

Let me cover you the right way.

And then Cain, who introduces murder to the world by killing his brother, jealous that he was a better worshiper, God warns him before the act, hey man, sin is going to try to take you over, but you have to master sin.

Cain does it anyway, and God still doesn't kill him.

God expels him, and then when he says, but that's too harsh for me, people are gonna kill me, they're gonna come after me, you know, they're mad.

The other brothers, the other sisters, it wasn't just those two, Cain and Abel.

God puts a mark on him to protect him.

I don't know about you, I've read that and I'm like, I don't know, why are you protecting this guy?

Because he's patient and he's long-suffering.

And he promised Cain wouldn't be touched by vengeance.

And you get to Exodus 22,just a sample verse.

Exodus 22, 27,God says, you know, if somebody is robbed of their cloak, I see that.

And back then it wasn't like people have 15 cloaks.

Like maybe this morning you went to your closet, you're like, which coat should I wear?

Maybe that matches this.

No, no, no, your cloak.

If it gets a hole in it, you fix it.

And in that text, he says, if somebody is robbed of their cloak, they don't have anything.

They're naked.

And I see that.

And I will respond and help that person without a cloak.

Why?

Because I'm compassionate, the verse says.

It's because I'm compassionate.

In Leviticus 19is where we get love your neighbor as yourself.

Did you know that?

That love your neighbor as yourself wasn't Jesus coming in with new news, but he's citing Leviticus 19.

It's there twice.

And in the second one, when it says love your neighbor as yourself, it's talking about the non-Israelite, the sojourner, the stranger that wanders in.

It's like, hey, I know I'm not an Israelite, and I haven't been with you guys since Egypt or before, and I know Abraham's not my father, but you got a good thing going on here.

Can I live with you guys?

Love that person like he was you.

Leviticus 19.

You get to Numbers.

Here's a beautiful verse, Numbers 14, 18.

The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression.

That's Numbers, a book that we sometimes skip because, oh, it's tough.

It's Old Testament.

That's Numbers.

He's slow to anger.

He's abounding in steadfast love.

He forgives iniquity.

He forgives transgression.

Then in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy is full, if you just type love in one of your Bible searches, Deuteronomy pops up a lot.

And a lot of it belongs to how God loves his people. 1018, for example, he says this, listen, God executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

So he doles out love and his heart is filled with compassion when he sees people in need and when he sees people destitute or without cloaks, for instance.

Now, that's just the first five books.

Not sure if you noticed that, but that's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, just the first five books.

And because I do want you to be able to have lunch today, I mean, we won't keep going through all of them, but it's all there, all of the Old Testament, not just the first five books of the Torah, but the Psalms, the prophets, the rest of the Old Testament drive home the truth that God is gracious, He's patient, He's compassionate, He's merciful.

He's not a pushover.

He's not to be trifled with.

He is to be feared.

But he has a long wick.

Like in the cartoons with the pack of dynamite with the wick and they light it.

When that wick runs out, that's patience, boom, vengeance.

And what God teaches through the Old Testament is that he does have a wick.

And there is a level you can reach where he's like, you're done.

But that wick is really, really long.

That's what long suffering means.

He suffers our transgressions for a long time before he finally sees fit to exact judgment and vengeance.

And if anyone asks you why is it taking the Lord Jesus Christ so long to return, that's why.

He's bringing people in to repentance and he's being long-suffering about it before he sends Jesus riding in on the white horse.

It's God's mercy and grace that it's taking this long.

So the Old Testament describes God as a faithful husband to his bride, the Old Testament describes God as a shepherd who comforts his people, and these are images of love and faithfulness.

You might be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got all this, but your friend that's asking you this question might not got all this.

Right.

So it'd be helpful to walk them through passages from the Old Testament before you get to the Gospels that the scripture is clear establishing that God is in a posture of love especially toward his people and for sure toward those who come to him with humility.

The final thing I'll say about the fact that God is love is what other foundation do we have to judge what's right and wrong?

So if we say, how can God do A, B, and C?

Well, what standard are you using to judge God about what he does?

God's standard, because he's the one that taught it, and he's the one that embodies it.

But if you go, I don't want to do anything to do with God because He doesn't meet my standard of love, then you ask, well, where do you get your standard of love?

And then hopefully in that conversation, you can kind of bring it back to, we need an objective standard, okay?

And if we have an objective standard in God, He defines what love is rather than going, no, it's not, it's like this.

How about the inventor of love or the one who embodies love? Defines it for us and then we can move forward from there.

So the first thing to establish is that God is a God of love and he's the one from which we get any standard of love at all.

Otherwise we're just making up love as we go.

And of course, if evolution were true, and one animal is more powerful than another animal and survives by killing that other animal, why can't a stronger people commit genocide on a weaker people and take their resources?

Isn't it survival of the fittest?

No, it's in a world where there's an objective standard of love in which we can even talk about how this might be a problem.

But it's not a problem if there is no God.

All right, that's the first thing.

God is a God of love all over the Old Testament, and you can find many more verses than the ones that I just gave you.

Now, more quickly, but moving forward, the Amalekites are the people that God is commanding Saul to wipe out in this passage.

The Amalekites are wicked.

It's not like they go to Care Bear's land and they're all shooting rainbows out of their stomach and then he's like, hack them down.

I mean, the Amalekites, right?

The Amalekites are not a God-fearing, worshipful people.

They're not helping people out.

They're plunderers.

They're pagans that worship other gods.

I'm going to give you an example of another group of people, the Amorites.

In Genesis 15,and I think we have this for you, God explains to Abraham why his people are going to be enslaved in Egypt for 400 years before they come out and start attacking Canaanites.

I think this is important for you.

This is Genesis 15, 13to 16.

Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400 years.

Wow, this is a great promise so far, God.

Give me more, right?

This sounds like bad news, verse 14.

But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve And afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

You shall be buried in a good old age and they shall come back here in the fourth generation.

So 400 years, four generations.

And then after coming out of Egypt, you're going to come back here.

The implication is in attack mode.

Why?

Because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

Why 400 years?

He's basically going to put Israel in sleep mode for 400 years.

And then when he brings them out, he's going to use them to attack the Amorites.

Why 400 years?

The answer is because during those 400 years, the Amorites are getting worse and worse and worse.

Their wickedness reaches a level.

The wick gets to the end of the dynamite and God decides now it's time to exact justice and he's going to use Israel to do it. 400 years of increasing wickedness before the Amorites are judged.

So we are plopping into, for example, 1 Samuel 15,and out of nowhere we're like, I don't know who the Amalekites were, but wipe them out?

But if you lived back then, you might be like, about time.

Why did it take so long?

Now, we're past the 400 years at this point, so God waited even longer to exact punishment on the Amalekites.

Of course, there were newer people that weren't quite in existence in Genesis 15,but developed soon afterwards. Establishing that we see that the Bible portrays God's judgment against people as groups when the final limit has been reached.

That's what I'm trying to convey to you.

God decides when the final limit is Just like your mom used to tell you, I've had it up to here.

You're like, Whoa, you were pushing the boundaries.

And then now it's time to shut up.

Okay.

God doesn't just randomly or arbitrarily go around the globe, you know, uh, killing people.

But when the limit of his patience has been reached, who gets to decide that God gets to decide that then he brings judgment.

One example would be Sodom and Gomorrah, right?

Where Abraham was like, but what if there's any righteous people in there?

Are you going to destroy them if there's any righteous people in there?

And God's like, no, I won't destroy them if there's any righteous people in there.

You'll remember the back and forth between Abraham and God.

And he's like, Abraham's like, how about if there's this many righteous?

He's like, I won't do it if there's that many.

And he keeps whittling the number down.

So he realizes the only righteous people is me and my family.

He's like, right, get out.

And I'm going to destroy the city, which is utterly and completely wicked.

And you can read the story of how the people were in Sodom and Gomorrah. So that you can see why their wickedness was so great.

In that particular instance, God used a natural disaster to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah, but in other places he would use Israel to do it.

God uses whatever implement he sees fit to exact judgment, whether it's a natural disaster, whether he's using nature to do it, or a plague, or people.

And of course, when Israel was to be judged, God would use people for Israel too.

Okay, so the Amalekites, they were wicked.

And their time was up.

Third thing, the reason scripture gives as to why God has asked or commanded Saul to wipe them out, is in verse 2, 1 Samuel 15, 2.

Look at it right there.

It says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt.

The reason scripture gives for wiping them out is that they were fierce enemies to Israel.

First of all, they attacked Israel when they were weak on their way to Sinai.

They had just come out They've spent 400 years as slaves.

They're not exactly an upper echelon like fighting unit.

They're coming out there with their animals.

They have great possessions.

They're dragging all this wealth into the wilderness.

And Amulek is like, look at these people and the dumb Egyptians that couldn't do anything about it.

Word was out that Yahweh defeated Pharaoh and all their gods.

And what does Amalek do?

Provide passage, cheer them on, give them some water as they, no.

Ignore them?

No.

Let's attack them, and let's attack them from the rear.

The slowest people, the weakest people, the elderly, the children, the lame.

They were the first ones to attack Israel, and they pounced on them right away.

That's in Exodus 17.

You'll remember this is the battle where Moses had his arms up and as long as the staff was up, they defeated the Amalekites and when his arm was down, the Amalekites were winning.

That's this passage.

They weren't looking for the fight, the Israelites, they were jumped.

And then Moses reminded Israel later how brutal of an attack it was.

We'll put this on the screen just so you can see it.

Deuteronomy 25, 17to 19.

Moses says, remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you and he did not fear God.

Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you in the land that your Lord is, the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amlek from under heaven, you shall not forget.

So he already gave the marching orders, he just didn't say when yet.

And now in 1 Samuel 15,he's like, okay, now, why the wait?

I think we already established that.

God decides when the limit has been reached.

They attack Israel again in that waiting period.

They attack Israel by teaming up with the Canaanites in Numbers 14.

They attack Israel by teaming up with the Moabites in Judges 3.

They attack Israel by teaming up with the Midianites in Judges 6.

Now, Judges is just before 1 Samuel, so this is still happening, right?

Do you think that's going to keep happening?

Yeah.

Do you think if you wipe out one generation, the next generation is going to grow up and just stop the attacking?

No.

Another key and important point is that they had opportunity to repent and they didn't.

They had opportunity to repent and they didn't.

How do I know that when the text doesn't exactly say it?

I know it because it's in the Old Testament.

So we sometimes think God had Israel, hated everybody else, wanted to kill everybody else until the New Testament, suddenly he wants everybody to be saved.

But then you have stories like Rahab, Rahab is like, hey, I'll step in for you guys and hide you guys, but then when you guys come and attack, can you save my family?

They're like, deal.

As simple as that, as simple as that.

Hey, I don't wanna attack you.

I know your God is real.

I heard what God did to Egypt, and everybody's quaking in their boots here.

Everybody's afraid over here.

I don't wanna die.

Will you save me?

They're like, hang a colored thing on your window.

And everybody that's in your house will pass over.

That's it.

She didn't have money.

She didn't say I'll be your slave.

Just I fear your God.

Will you please not kill me.

OK.

That's why Moses said in Deuteronomy that they didn't fear God.

They know who God was and they don't fear them.

They don't fear him.

They want to fight him.

That's their posture.

Do you remember the Gibeonites?

This is back in Joshua 9,and it's similar.

They're like, hmm, Joshua is leading this group, and they are on a war path.

With God behind them, they took out Egypt, they defeated the Amalekites, they're beating everybody, God is with them, and they're gonna kill us, all right?

So let's trick them and make them think we're a, We're starving people that traveled from afar.

Will you please make a treaty with us?

When they're just the neighboring Gibeonites, right?

I don't wanna recount the entire story and make it into another sermon, but go check out Joshua 9.

They tricked Israel into making a treaty with them that they wouldn't kill them.

And then even when Israel found out, oh man, these are the Gibeonites, they tricked us, they held to the treaty.

Gibeonites are saved.

One more example from the book of Esther.

Esther, that wonderful hero who saves her people from extermination.

By the way, Haman, the bad guy, he's an Amalekite.

So again, Amalek keeps coming up again and again.

But after her heroic feat, I think we have this for you, but this is Esther 8, 16to 17.

The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king's command, " not Israelite king, Israel is in exile here, wherever the king's command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday.

And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.

You see it?

One is conversion, New Testament, Old Testament.

Rahab converted.

These people are converting.

So you're reading this verse and you're like, wow, God gave gladness and joy to his people.

What about everybody else, God?

Well, the people that were like, I want that, got it.

They just converted.

Hey, I'm a Jew now.

Now I'm sure they were like, hey, slow down, man.

You're not a full Jew, but you'll be okay.

But God gave them the same gladness and joy.

He put those people under the same covering that he had the Jews under.

Right there in the book of Esther, they saw that God is real, God is to be feared, and they cross over.

The Amalekites don't want to cross over, they just want to kill Israel.

And then you notice in this passage, the one that we're in, 1 Samuel 15,I'm going to just give you a sneak preview of the next week real quick, in verses 5 and 6, they don't kill everybody.

There's a particular group of people that didn't join the Amalekites in that fight, that didn't want to jump Israel when they were in the wilderness, and they were actually kind to Israel when they were in the wilderness.

And before Israel attacked, Saul was like, hey guys, we remember how you were kind to us.

Get out of the way real quick, because this is about to get ugly.

So it's a surgical strike, and they're not just wiping out everybody in their path.

It says there in 1 Samuel 15 5,Saul came to the city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley.

So they're ready to attack Amalek.

Then Saul said to the Canaanites, go depart.

Go down from among the Amalekites, they were with them, lest I destroy you with them.

For you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.

So the Canaanites departed from among the Amalekites.

Wouldn't you?

They packed up real quick.

See ya But why did Saul do that because it's not right to kill the Kenites But it is right to kill the Amalekites And so there is such thing as people deserving and people not deserving of judgment Now We don't have a record of all the sins and all the evils of the Amalekite people.

I think we can surmise a lot of them by seeing what other wicked nations were doing in that time.

For instance, the Ammonites worshiping the god of Molech.

And the god of Molech, scholars tell us, they would fashion this god with a calf face and extended arms of bronze that they would heat up with fire.

And then they would take their little babies and put them on those hot bronze arms or just dump them straight into the fire.

That's the kind of stuff they were up to.

We don't know that specifically about the Amalekites.

I just surmise that this is what does a people look like when their wickedness has reached a limit where God is going to judge them.

Maybe their thoughts are evil continually like when God brought the flood in Genesis.

So even though we don't have all the specific sins and a record of all the specific evils of the Amalekite people, we know that they were wicked because God doesn't eradicate people that are righteous.

And we know they took no opportunity to fear God.

They took no opportunity to repent.

They had the opportunity to turn or make a deal like the Gibeonites.

They didn't want to do any of that.

But more importantly than that, there's an underlying point that can't be missed.

And that is the fact that God holds exclusive rights to life and death.

God holds exclusive rights to life and death.

So what if God takes the life of a person who is not terribly wicked?

In other words, if I ended the sermon there and you're like, okay, I get it.

The Amalekites were so wicked that God decided to wipe them out.

I get it.

God is allowed to bring death to somebody who's killing other people, burning babies.

If you're thinking like a lot situation, they're like, people are showing up to your house to gang rape your guest.

How wicked can a people get?

I get it, when you're level 10, then God can do it.

But there's more to it than that.

Because even before you're at level 10, God still has the right to take life.

Isn't that the whole point of Job?

The book of Job?

All his loss and suffering?

Right in the beginning of the book, after Job lost his property, his stuff, his way of making a living, all of it destroyed, and then all his children are destroyed.

Which on one level, we're like, man, is it sad to lose a child?

It's sad to lose a child, but also sad to lose your legacy.

He has nothing, and he has nothing to give to anybody, and he has nobody to give it to even if he had something to give.

It's all wiped out.

And right after that, Job rises, tears his robe, shaves his head, falls on the ground, and worships.

He worships God after losing his kids.

Would you do that?

Would I do that?

That's an important question to ask because when we come and worship a God, as long as he's nice to my kids, we're not worshiping God.

We're worshiping a made up version of God that plays by my rules.

There are things in our lives sometimes where God can't touch that.

I will serve you as long as you don't touch this.

And what the Bible teaches is there's nothing that is untouchable for God.

Job says in verse 21 of chapter 1.

Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return.

Why did I have all this stuff in the first place?

Did I have the right to have one child, let alone many children?

Did I have a right to be married?

Or some people are stuck in celibacy.

Do I have that right?

No, I don't have that right.

I came into the world with nothing, and it's God's prerogative.

That means I leave the world with nothing.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Guys, I tell you, there is no way to worship God like that unless he completely arrests your attention and takes out that heart of stone that defies that and puts in a heart of flesh.

And the heart of flesh goes, I don't deserve life.

When I wake up in the morning and I draw that first breath, my thought shouldn't be, that's what I thought.

That's what I thought.

Good.

Why is it cloudy?

We should draw that first breath and go, wow, another one, another day.

And your kids are leaving the cereal out and they broke the dishwasher.

And you're like, wow, I have kids.

And your spouse is annoying and they're getting old.

You're getting old and you're getting impatient.

But when you step back and think about it, you're like, wow, I have a spouse.

We get to draw breath because God is gracious because he's merciful and he doesn't owe it to us.

Job teaches us that important lesson in a passage like this teaches us that we're not supposed to go yeah God get all the Amalekites because on one level or another we find ourselves somewhere on that spectrum of wickedness.

We may not be as wicked as the Amalekites, but wickedness dwells within us apart from Christ, nonetheless.

Two quick clarifications and then I'll wrap it up.

One clarification is that exacting judgment on people is not the church's role.

I know for many of you, like, that's obvious.

Well, just to be clear, we are grafted into the tree of faith that God established with Israel, but we are not today a political national entity with a king at the top that gets direct orders from Yahweh verbally through a prophet.

That's just not, it's just not where we are right now.

We have a different set of marching orders, but our marching orders are not to go out into all the world and kill infidels.

That is not Christianity.

Why?

Because part of the new covenant is the call to endure suffering without retaliation, like we saw in first Peter at communion.

So when people want to kill us, we don't kill them back.

When people revile us, we don't revile them back.

We endure suffering the way Christ did as our model.

And God teaches us that vengeance is his, not ours.

Then another part of that is that we're called to evangelize and to suffer persecution for it without retaliation.

We're to get the message out to people who need it.

So our posture toward the nations is not judgment but it's warning and it's invitation that judgment is coming but there's a way out.

And then, of course, God uses governments and earthly rulers.

Paul teaches us in Romans 13.

Peter teaches us as well.

God uses governments, rulers, officers, people who bear the sword, now people who bear the rifle or the gun.

He uses them to enact justice.

He does not use the church to do it.

Second clarification, and this is the harder one.

What about the children?

You know, like he wipes out the men, he wipes out the women, he wipes out the donkeys, the cattle, but the kids?

That makes it harder, right?

That makes it harder.

And definitely makes it a darker text.

Our children are not accountable to God in the same way that adults are, but they're still accountable to God.

Children, in a way, are innocent, but they're still guilty and stained in Adam, the Bible teaches.

You don't become stained in Adam when you're 18.

When you're really little and you snatch that toy out of your sibling's hand and then bonk them on the head with it and said, mine, that's not innocent behavior.

We have this sin that's corrupted us from the womb.

And so there's not pure innocence there, but there is an innocence in the way that Jesus says, be like the children.

If you're going to enter the kingdom of God, you're going to be like the children.

There's kind of an innocence there because They're not able to respond to God.

They're not able to respond to nature.

They're not able to respond to scripture because of their undeveloped brains, to be frank.

And many believe that they're not condemned to punishment and instead in some way, God applies the grace of Christ to save babies who are not old enough to respond to the information of the gospel.

Gospel's information is good news.

So, Many children are swept away in God's judgment throughout scripture and throughout time.

I'm not sure that means they will endure the same fate as their parents who put them in that predicament.

Does that make sense?

It's God's prerogative if our children live tomorrow.

That's God's prerogative.

But the children of those that are being judged and swept away because of generation after generation the people are doing the same thing and the wickedness is increasing.

It's God's prerogative to cut it off whether they're 80 years old or eight years old.

It's God's prerogative to cut it off there.

Now this is what we need to be most concerned about. That God is the judge of every person and he will dole out judgment perfectly in the end.

That's what we shy away from.

That's what we're not so ready and eager sometimes to explain to people.

But not to point to Amalekites or people over there or people over here, but to understand that we are wicked.

Will we take the opportunity to repent?

Will we be like Rahab?

Will we be like the people in Esther's time? Who recognize it and cross over?

Or will we be like the Amalekites who just keep digging in our heels against God?

Judgment is waiting for that.

And you don't know if you have tomorrow.

If you're in here this morning and you're still thinking about it, that's a scary proposition.

You have no clue what diagnosis you'll get tomorrow. If you'll even make it home in the car ride this afternoon.

We presume it because normally we don't get into car accidents.

And so far, I'm alive.

It only takes one pass at death to be dead.

And I don't want to be morbid, but when you look at a passage like this, we can either just think about other people that deserve God's judgment or go, hey, wait a minute, where am I with regard to judgment?

The Bible makes clear that we all deserve death. Even though we don't all get the same weight of eternal punishment.

Not everybody is Hitler, not everybody's a rapist, not everyone's a murderer, but there's still sin and iniquity there that separates us from God.

In God there's life, and if I'm separated from God, who is life, what do I get then?

Not life.

What's not life?

Death.

And so we all deserve that, Scripture teaches.

What is the whole point of communion?

Why did Jesus have to suffer death?

It's so that he would take it in our stead.

And the only way to escape that condemnation on any level, however wicked we are or have been, is to embrace Christ.

And then he becomes your refuge, and he is the one that allows death to pass over you, like the cord hanging out of Rahab's window, like the blood of the land that was on the lentil for the Israelites so that death wouldn't touch them.

It's not because they're better than the Amalekites.

It's not because they're better than the Canaanites.

And it sure wasn't because they're better than the Egyptians.

God made that very clear to them.

I didn't choose you because you're better than everybody else.

It's mercy and it's grace.

And when people respond to his mercy and grace and go, I don't get everything, I still am struggling with this passage, but I get that you're God, you're in charge.

And even though I can't figure out how you decide everything that you decide, the cross has so blown me away that you've made a way for me that I'll cling to that and figure everything else out later.

So we should grapple with the severity of God's judgment towards sin.

It's real and it's serious, and we need to make sure that we escape it by taking refuge in Christ.

And we hold this hope out to other people, to those who don't have it, to those who haven't received it yet, to those who are still under judgment.

We're not here to destroy them.

We're here because we know that destruction is real, destruction is coming, and we're here to bring light and offer rescue. So that many who right now are under judgment will find forgiveness and freedom in Christ so that together with us they can proclaim that in Christ there is no condemnation.

Let's pray.