He works through human means, like it or not. He calls us into fellowship with himself. What an honor! We find it sometimes as a drag. Why do I gotta do your dirty work, Lord?
Don't be careful if you're gonna Say that you might, a thought might flash across your mind, but you don't have to embrace it.
So God uses us in fellowship with Him.
So that His will flows through us, through sinners. What a smack in Satan's face. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Samuel.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. One last chance is the title of Pastor Rick's message, and today he'll be teaching in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 15. The Lord is saying in this verse, If I've got to kill the wickedness, In its earliest stages, to prevent them from killing the righteous in their earliest stages, then so be it. It's their choice. Yeah, the Amalekites were aggressive, they were sneaky, and they were deadly, and they would have wiped the Jews off the planet if they could.
And to this day, at the time that these events were taking place, they were still launching raids on the Jews. They were doing this to their people. When we get to verse 33, next session. Samuel will say to Agag their king, the king of this city, that they're going to attack. As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.
And then what does Samuel do? He hacks him to death.
Now that is not new covenant. You see the the importance of understanding new covenant, old covenant. We are We are to defend ourselves, but we are not to go and launch a f. aggressive actions in the interests of whatever we think is right. We can uphold civil laws, but we are not to be vigilantes under the throne of God.
Judgment, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. That's what this was. A very simple And we'll kind of break this down because, you know, there are those people that just think they're more merciful than God, and they are not. If you think you're more merciful than God, You're either lying or stupid. And that's it.
And if you're lying, it's because you don't believe God. He is Sovereign. He is perfect in all his ways, even in this cursed world. Because he does not lift the curse at the snap of his fingers, does not mean he's somehow imperfect. He is free to let it run its course for his purposes because his purposes are perfect.
And by faith we accept that. That's the whole chapter of 11 in Hebrews. By faith, they understood enough about God to keep pushing forward towards the throne of God no matter what. That's the whole story of Hebrews chapter 11, and that's the story of our lives too. I don't get it.
I don't like it. You're a God, I worship you, and that's enough.
Well The tragedy of Executing judgment on the Amalekites, it's not so much that this ethnic group would be removed from the face of the earth. The tragedy is that they were not fit to continue to be on the face of the earth in God's eyes. How come no one sees that? How come no one sees that? Poor God, why does God get saddled with these people?
Why does the people of God? Why are they put in jeopardy because these people are allowed to exist?
Well, here's a case where God says, I'm going to do something about it. And there are some who protest.
Now in Revelation we read that there are people in heaven from every tongue. I would have No objection to someone in their theology saying, You see these infants that were slaughtered here? You'll see em in heaven. I would not object to that. The adults Who chose wickedness over righteousness?
Another story. God will always do right, whether we see it or not. We will, those who believe, and ultimately we get to heaven and we'll see it. I think.
Well, what we see the righteous in heaven, and there's silence in heaven for about an hour because we're just in shock. I can't believe I'm here. Really, I can't believe you're here. And that'd be a wonderful thing. That he does it all right.
Not Well, it's all right. I mean, it is completely Correct.
Well He works through human means, like it or not. He calls us into fellowship with himself. What an honor! We find it sometimes as a drag. So why do I gotta do your dirty work, Lord?
Don't be careful if you're gonna Say that you might, a thought might flash across your mind, but you don't have to embrace it.
So God uses us in fellowship with Him.
so that his will flows through us, through sinners. What a smack in Satan's face. I'm gonna use these uh this motley crew to do you in. The whole story of Job. And It costs Job, but God pulled it off.
He will multiply the bread. but he will use human hands to distribute the bread. What an honor You know when Jesus multiplied the bread and the fish, we don't read about him eating. We read about him feeding everyone else, even his disciples. He raises the dead, but men have to roll the stone away and have to take the grave clothes off of Lazarus.
to complete the miracle. He still does it this way. He saves this persecutor named Saul of Tarsus through the words Of his Soon-to-be bloody martyred Stephen. And he makes a short little saying in Revelation. He says, Antipas, my faithful witness.
Just that, that's all he gets, my faithful water. Just as sure that's it. I take that. Could you imagine your name? I mean, not just.
The name, but you. Being mentioned in the Bible as a hero?
Well, you might not get to be mentioned in the Bible as a hero, but you get to be. Mentioned in heaven is one when the Lord says, Enter in, well done.
So God is always on the lookout for useful people.
However, To be useful to God so that He can develop you and dispatch you. involves quite a few things. over a long period of time.
Sometimes it's just waiting, feeling like you're being passed over. You know, the song, Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, while on others thou art calling, Do not pass me by. If you're not serving God, that should be an ambition. How do you want to use me? And don't go thinking while you're making breakfast God's using you.
I mean, you know. What do you do? The house of God is the... Primary or the platform for serving God. It is not the only place, but it is.
in many ways the most excellent. It is his house. It is blood bought. And the blood that bought it is pure, it's not animal blood. It's not human blood.
It's the Son of God. And so there is Isaiah wondering, scratching his head: I'm a prophet, but how is God going to use me? What good is being a prophet if I'm not sent? How shall they hear? How shall they believe if they don't hear?
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? Isaiah chapter 6, verse 8. This is when Isaiah, of course. Saw the throne of God and the Lord on it.
The train of his robe filled the temple. Isaiah having this vision after King Uzziah died. King Uzziah was on the throne 52 years, he was a good king. To have him drop dead like that left an incredible void. What's going to happen to us now?
God gives the prophet a vision. And in the midst of that vision, he says, also. I heard the voice of the Lord Adonai. Saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?
Then I said, here I am, send me. And of course, his instructions were: go preach to these people how much of a knucklehead they are. No, no, I want to preach on love. I want to preach on the glory of the kingdom. I mean, every time I look for a topical message, my first stop is the throne.
I want to preach on good things. And then God pushes me over. This is there. Look, that stuff, they know these things. I need you to preach what they've lost sight of.
And I don't know what that is until no pastor does, if he's seeking God's word, until he gets it from the Scripture. It should be the same with you. If you're preaching to people out in the world, you don't know what to say to them until God gives it to you. At least not in power and force. 2 Chronicles 16, verse 9: For the eyes of Yahweh run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those who.
whose heart is loyal to him. We can have loyal hearts in spite of our stumblings, our shortcomings, our sins, our failures. It doesn't make us disloyal to Him in and of themselves. There's more to it. And Saul, he reveals to us what it is to actually be a flagrant sinner.
As opposed to David, who also stumbled, but was never. careless He caught up. Entangled. Who is the last human being named in the Bible? David.
Oh man, what an honor. You know, not Moses, I'm not as a competition, but how much truth and theology is built into just that? David gets to be the last human being mentioned in God's closed canon of Scripture.
Well, he says here in verse We're only up to verse 2. We're not? Yeah, we are. Verse 3. Oh, whoa, whoo!
I thought it was 2. Yeah. Mm-hmm. He continues, but kill both man and woman, infant, nursing, child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. It's difficult to even read this.
But who can tell? Who is prepared to stand up and say? that they know What Havoc Well, let me put it this way: what havoc did God stop from taking place? By addressing these people as a people, how much more damage? Would they have morphed into a superpower like the Assyrians, and God knew it, and so He cuts it off?
One survivor. One survivor Alone Heyman. 500 years later will come along and almost wipe the Jewish people out. And not that he was the only survivor, but he is. held up as the poster boy, For if Saul listened to God's commandment through Samuel, there would have been no Haman.
The Jews in Persia would not have had to have gone through that whole experience. I mean, we get upset when we see laws erode from our Constitution. Imagine an edict put out that anybody who wants to kill the Jew can kill the Jew. All because of this. The Doofus King.
So, these people in that part of the world at this time, and even to this day in many places, they have a thirst for retaliation with revenge. with zeal. It's deeply ingrained in them. At this time, you couldn't just go into a village and say there, that's for attacking us, without knowing they're going to come back again and be more vicious than the first time. And this King Agag, who he's going to spare, he is an Amalekite.
And thus Haman was an agite. He was It's a derogatory term in the Jewish mind. He was from the people of Agag, this Amalekite king that Saul. Spared.
So which mother here, if you had a rattlesnake loose in your backyard, a baby one, you know, cute with a little ribbon on his head? Would you spare that rattlesnake? Knowing that if you let it live and grow bigger. Is going to be more of a threat. Are you going to take it out?
If you had a black widow. In the playpen, you're gonna leave it there because it's just a baby. No, you're not. And that's what's going into what is taking place.
So we have the ability, we have the aptitude to see what God is doing here rather than get caught up in misguided pity that actually causes more suffering than God's way. In executing this command, the Israelites were God's instrument of judgment on Amalek, as I said earlier. And often we feel compelled to question God, like John the Baptist. Are you the one, or do we seek another? Like Ananias.
Lord, do you know about this guy? I mean, Ananias, come on. How did you get picked? How did you get picked to go be my messenger to this servant who, incidentally, I'm going to show how much he has to suffer serving me. This dramatic experience Paul had about stepping into Europe, and he gets to Europe through Philippi, where he takes a beating, and then he goes on to Thessalonica.
With that dramatic experience, he had to flash back. He had the vision of the Macedonians saying, come on over.
Well, he had to remember that, I'm sure, as he marched through Europe taking these beatings and these frightful... You know, being stalked and hounded from city to city. Couldn't even stay in Berea, they chased them out of there. He gets to Athens, he's concerned about the Thessalonians, who, in those two little letters, he's in Thessalonica, just maybe three weeks or so. In those two little letters, there's so much doctrine, end time doctrine, present, I mean, just the person of Christ is so much in 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
Uh don't dismiss them. Don't think of it as just, you know, difficult. The pronounce And so there must not be anything there. In verse four. We've we've got to get to verse, I think, 12 or 11.
So if you could hurry up and listen. We'll get there. Verse 4 So Saul gathered the people together and numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand men of Judah. This is an invasion force. Not just a standing army.
I don't remember the ratio. I think it's if you're going to invade, you have to have 10 times the amount of the defenders, modern military. Doctrine, but God is, He is Lord over the nations. And Egypt found that out. Nineveh found that out.
Not only is he Lord, he is also merciful towards the nations. That's why he sent Jonah to Nineveh. And he's merciful to hard-headed Jonah. Jonah's one of the greatest prophets in the Bible.
Well actually I would say that about all of them, because I'm going to meet them one day. And I wanted to know, I said nice things. But I mean, here's a man that just ruined his own ministry and then. He doesn't brag about it. He exposes himself and says, listen, Okay.
I don't know what came over me. I know it came over me. Racism came over me. And he goes and he does his job and the Ninevites are are saved. But then Nahum comes along and says, You blew it.
Now judgment's going to come upon you. The Ninevites were not the wicked people they became till after Jonah went through. And then they became savage, and God again sent Nahum to, and even when Nahum preached about them, that was their opportunity.
Well, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Spain, France, Germany. When you get to Isaiah and Jeremiah and they start talking about the nations, it's kind of boring reading to us, but what they're saying is God rules the earth, He's not just God of the Jew. He's God of the planet. And there are a lot of people in this country fighting to keep it from going the same route as all these other ones had gone, once superpowers and now not. We are watching how fast the planet capitulates.
to one edict, for example, to just wear a mask. You wait till the edict comes to get the chip. and his number will be six, six, and six. And Uh we we view the righteous won't be here for that. I'm sorry, if you think that the church, the the the present church is going to go through the tribulation, your theology is dented.
Converts Tribulation converts will go through the tribulation and they will be solid converts and they will be executed for their faith. But the Lord says very clearly, That we are to comfort each other. Knowing that we will be taken out of here. in the twinkle of an eye. That because you held to my word, I will spare you from judgment, and all this stuff about well, you're going to go through part of it, but not all of it.
It's not what the Bible says. The New Testament says nothing like that. In fact, we have not only New Testament theology straight out. We have it illustrated in the Old Testament. God could not pour down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah until he got Lot out of there.
And that's just one of many. Where was Daniel when the three nice Jewish boys went to the furnace? Three nice Jewish boys in type or Israel going to the furnace, and Daniel is the righteous being removed. from such an experience.
So I'm just saying that because I get the idea that this old theology is creeping back in. There's a lot of dumb theology coming to us from a lot of Christians going to colleges and universities. And they're promoting these teachers over them who are coming who are excellent book writers. Uh but they're departing from the basics of scripture. and you should be ready for them.
And those that follow are drinking this Kool-Aid, you should say, look, that's not what Scripture says, and here's why. I was going to preach on it last Sunday. I was going to do a lot of things last Sunday. Yeah. I was gonna paint the town plaid.
Just ran out of paint. Anyway. You know, I hope I would want a pastor whose head is always running. Lord, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to say?
What do you want me to say? What do you want me to say? Okay, bedtime. Talk to you tomorrow. Yeah.
I went off somewhere. We still got to get through this. Verse 5: And Saul came to a city of Amalek. and lay in wait in the valley. You see that singular A city?
A major settlement of the Amalekites, there were others. He was supposed to wipe them out. This one, the other ones, too. And he launches a substantial campaign. It's not a little, he doesn't just knock the city down, and that's it.
but he still falls short. He was almost, but not quite, Verse 6 Then Saul said to the Kenites Go depart. Get down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. You showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came out of the. out of Egypt, so the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.
Sort of obligated to make this distinction. The Kenites were descendants of Jethro, they were an offshoot of the Midianites. Uh Jethro, her sister's name was Ellie May. And Anyway, he tells them, Look, you better get out of town, or else you're going to get judged with him.
So that was a noble act. See, he had what he needed. It wasn't that Saul was handicapped. He had what he needed and it flashes out and it goes away. It doesn't come back again.
Verse 7. And Saul attacked the Amalekites, From Havilah all the way to Shur. Which is East of Egypt. From one end of the country to the other, this is a campaign lasting days, if not weeks. It's over 100 miles.
More when you count all of the side, there's a lot of work going on here. I mean, how many hundreds of the what did he have? Uh How many hundred thousand men with him to launch this campaign? Gotta feed them, gotta water them. You gotta secure them.
You gotta move them. This is big league stuff. This is not, you know, a village brawl. Verse 8. He also took Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
And right there at verse 8 is the dramatic music in the movie. that alerts the watcher or to the viewer That something went wrong. And went very wrong. You know, and you're seeing a movie about, you know, I don't know, a murder mystery, and they show you a paperclip. You know, well, evidently, that paperclip's gonna fork into the story, well, they wouldn't zoom in on it.
And here it is zooming in. On Saul sparing the life of the king of the Malekites. Another example of his incomplete Obedience. What a scary word. We all have incomplete obedience.
That's why we need the Savior. But his was systematic. and he had no intention of fixing it. and the far-reaching implications that Come along with this is here's a man that is encouraged, that is given a second chance, and this is what he does with it. And as I mentioned, five centuries later.
The uh The Agite Haman is going to attempt to exterminate the Jewish race, and he almost pulls it off. Amalek is a type of the flesh. We should not pass by this. And Saul was to utterly defeat the flesh as we are. We're not to sign a treaty with the flesh.
We're to avoid that. It's very difficult. I'm not trying to oversimplify it. But in refusing to deal with the flesh, He Compromised himself, and that's going to cause great problems. It says, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
So it was a bloodbath. And he was again partially Obedient. The Amalekites will show up again in chapter 27, in chapter 30. Saul will be. Finally, executed, botched, you know, he attempted to kill himself to spare himself from being tortured by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa.
And so he has an Amalekite finish him off, and that is very symbolic. The Amalekites are connected to Saul's blatant disregard. For the care that Samuel and God showed him. Verse 9. But Saul and the people of Pardon me, but Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good.
and were unwilling to utterly destroy them, But everything despised and worthless, they utterly destroyed.
Well there it is, there's the indictment. Saul and the people spared. His word was law. When he said, We killed the man that ate this day, the people were lining up to do it until they found, of course, the details. That there was an innocent man.
It was not somebody in the amongst the tribes that just disobeyed Saul. And Here The people are not protesting, and that's why they are included. They are accomplices. No one said We're supposed to finish them off.
Well, you see, maybe they didn't know. details to get caught up in.
Well, what we do know is the king knew. And that's all we need to know. Haman, again, an Amalekite directly linked to Agag. Mordecai, who would deal with Haman, is directly linked to the tribe of Benjamin, directly linked to Kish. Saul's father.
Making the book of Esther a rematch. Between Saul and God's people, and Amalek, unfinished business. And of course, Mordecai, he didn't play. I'm not bowing to that guy, he's a punk. It's like, what a guy, you just endangered all your people.
Yeah, I didn't see that coming, but I'm still not bowing down to him. And it was a magnificent story. Mordecai is one of the great heroes of the Bible. I mean, his words to Esther, fine, Esther, let me tell you, it's like this. Sister.
You either step up or somebody else is going to do it. You will lose your thunder. And Esther, smart gal that she was, she was not only a woman of great polka-ritude, she was also smart. And she said, yeah, I'm helping. Even if I die, I'm helping.
Yeah. Thanks for joining us for today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. Currently, Pastor Rick is in the book of 1 Samuel. If you'd like to listen again to this or other messages or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreferenceradio.com.
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