Remember the story of the first battle the Israelites fought
in the wilderness, the story of Moses holding up his hands in prayer as Joshua
led the people and Aaron and Hur stood by to hold up Moses’ arms so the battle
would go well? That battle was against
the Amalekite, the first people who attacked the people after they crossed the
Red Sea. They are not mentioned in
ancient literature outside the Bible. In
rabbinic Judaism they are less a people than a people who reject God entirely,
atheists. God commands Saul to utterly
destroy the Amalekites and all they own.
This is a sticking point for many people in considering God as
good. Why would He order their
annihilation? We don’t know that answer
is the answer. We don’t know anything
about them other than what I just wrote.
Saul’s failure to do what he was commanded, his keeping alive their king
and the best of the animals, was reason for the Lord to reject him as
king. He failed to be obedient in every
respect, unlike Jesus. I wish I had an
answer for why the Lord chose the Amalekites for such a sentence but I can’t
allow what I don’t know to be a reason for doubting His goodness, I have to
trust that because of what I do know, if I knew the entire truth about this
episode, I would understand God’s command.
I do know this. God did not spare His Son. The God who sent His Son to die for all who
would believe is, without question, good.
We start evaluating God right here, at the cross and move outward. The God we proclaim is not at war with humanity,
we are the image bearers of God. God so
loved the world that He sent His Son, not loved some, loved the world. In the midst of death, Jesus is glorifying
God and the centurion knew it and saw it somehow. Wouldn’t you hate to see, after it was too late,
that a man was wrongly convicted of a crime, suffered horribly and was put to
death. You can hear the centurion’s cry
in that way, anguish over having participated in the crucifixion of an innocent
man. Around the fringes of the day are
Jesus’ “acquaintances” and the women who had followed from Galilee. At the center is Joseph of Arimathea, who was
a council member who disagreed with the council and agreed with the
centurion. They deserve our respect,
they were faithful to the end (or what looked like the end.)
Saul had a difficult beginning to his ministry. Christians were skeptical of his conversion
and Jews were angry enough to kill him for it.
He powerfully argued that Jesus was the Son of God in the synagogues of
Damascus and the Jews plotter to kill him there. The Christians in Damascus considered him a
brother and helped him escape but when he came to Jerusalem the church there
didn’t believe his sincerity until Barnabas came and vouched for him. Soon, however, the Jews there were plotting
to kill him and the church thought it best to send him off to Tarsus, the town
where he was born. Everyone felt safer
with him at that distance and Luke says the church was at peace in Jerusalem,
Judea and Samaria and being built up.
That little circle was the beginning of where Jesus said the Gospel
would go, the people there were primarily Jews, the spread of the Gospel to all
the places Jesus spoke of awaited this man’s return from exile. It also awaits our obedience to the Great
Commission.
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