1 Samuel 15:1-7

God's terrible acts.

The facts are—

1 . Saul is reminded that though a king he is but the servant of God, and bound to carry out his declared will.

2 . Saul is commanded to utterly destroy Amalek in retribution for former sins.

3 . In prosecuting his duty Saul discriminates in favour of the Kenites, then resident among the Amalekites, in consequence of their former kindness to Israel. It appears from 1 Samuel 14:48 that, although the sin of Amalek in bygone times ( Exodus 17:8-16 ) was the primary ground of the judgment about to be inflicted, the recent annoyance and injury caused to Saul's subjects was the occasion for the execution of the ancient sentence at this juncture. Those living under the mild and beneficent influences of the Christian dispensation are conscious of a shock to their sensibilities in reading the account of wholesale destruction brought by human instrumentality on an entire people; and the emotional disturbance is supplemented by intellectual perplexity on observing that the transaction was in obedience to a most explicit command of God. It is sometimes the practice, very easy for all who will not take pains to enter carefully into the subject, to get rid of the emotion and the perplexity by rejecting the inspiration of the entire record, or else by saying that Samuel and Saul sincerely but ignorantly mistook their own views of policy and dispositions of heart for the voice of God. The question at issue is a large one, but as it embraces in principle the whole of what in the Psalms are called his "terrible acts," which, whenever occurring or read, tax our feelings and perplex our intellects, we may notice a few points applicable more or less to all God's righteous judgments.

I. THE SPIRIT WITH WHICH WE SHOULD APPROACH THE CONSIDERATION OF GOD 'S " TERRIBLE ACTS ." It is not improbable that an unteachable, self-assertive spirit—a spirit that will not repose in a higher wisdom and goodness than its own, or that chafes under its inability to square human views of sin and its relations with God's—is the moral cause of man's quarrel with some of the records of Old Testament history. Our present contention is not with atheists, who to get rid of one difficulty create many others, but with those who believe in an almighty, all-wise, and merciful God, who is the Author of the moral and physical laws, by the action of which the world finds bliss or woe. We cannot help finding ourselves face to face with events bringing sorrow add shame, material and moral desolation to multitudes, because God so willed one creature's condition to be affected by the conduct of another. Apart from all human conduct, there are awful events in which, so to speak, the reputation of God for goodness and tenderness seems to be at stake. This circumstance should make the rejecter of Old Testament records pause ere he yields to the spirit of unbelief. There are "clouds and darkness" round about the throne; and he who would flee from mystery may well seek to flee from the universe. The judgment that condemns everything of which it does not see the reason is not qualified to exercise itself on the acts of an infinite Being. The cherubim and seraphim cover their faces, not presuming to attempt to pierce even with their clear and strong vision the ineffable glory; and so when a great burden of fear rests on our heart because of the terrible things of God, it is for us to bow in lowliness and trustfulness, saying for our comfort, because of what we know him to be, and not because we can solve the awful problems of existence, "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?" ( Revelation 15:3 , Revelation 15:4 ; cf. Psalms 36:6 ).

II. FACTS AND PRINCIPLES THAT SHOULD WEIGH WITH US IN OUR THOUGHTS UPON GOD 'S " TERRIBLE ACTS ." It is not possible to find a perfect solution of all the acts ascribed to God, or even those known, without question, to result from his appointments. But some light shines around the "clouds and darkness," and here and there a rift in the awful covering appears.

1 . There is an awful as well as a mild aspect of the Divine nature. Christianity is no doubt mildness, tenderness, peace, love—all that is precious to the sorrowing, perplexed spirit. The tendency of some, however, is to overlook the significant fact that all this becomes real to us in virtue of the awful sufferings and death of the Son of God. The fact, and the evident necessity of the fact, for otherwise it would not occur, of his unutterable woes is perhaps the most stupendous of all terrible acts known by man. There was the love that gave him for man; yes, and the awful righteousness which had so originally constituted the moral relations of men to a holy God that love could only effect its work through a catastrophe, on which angels must have gazed with perplexity, and possibly pain, greater than any we know when contemplating a ruined Amalek or a world swept by deluge. It is an imperfect Christianity which eliminates the majesty of righteousness in Law. He who said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," is the same who one day will say, "Depart." "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." The "wrath of the Lamb" is as real as his love.

2 . The events which confound our thought are not confined to the Scripture record. Who shall estimate the pains of death experienced during the succession of catastrophes incident to the history of our globe? It is probable that the number of Amalekites who fell under the judgment of God was less than the sum of young and old who in one day experience the "pains of death" by the ordination of God. The destruction caused by the deluge, the fire on Sodom, the waters on the Egyptians, is not greater in the number of lives cut off than what befell the thousands cut off by events not mentioned in the Bible. What though the events—the sweeping calamities of famine, plague, earthquake, and flood, and the daily sufferings and death of thousands of young and old—be the outcome of law! God is the Author of that law, and, therefore, the events are in a significant sense his, as truly as were the ruin of Sodom and the doom of the Amalekites. No doubt the sum of enjoyment in the lives of creatures cut off by catastrophes was far in excess of the sum of misery experienced in the cutting of them off, and so a philosopher can still rest in the benevolence of God. Sudden destruction is not identical with a whole existence given up only to anguish.

3 . So far as we can see, the great woes that come by ordinary law and by special command are alike subordinate to an ulterior issue. Although we speak of some events occurring by the action of natural law,— e.g. earthquakes, floods, famines, and plagues,—yet those in which the specific command appears are also according to law. The difference lies in the fact of the Divine origin of the arrangement which issues in destruction being brought out and emphasised. The laws that work ruin in fire and tempest and flood are subordinate to the higher laws involved in the perfect economy of the world. Laws involving incidental disasters subserve the conservation of the whole system of which they are a part. The laws which bring destruction to men who have sinned, and because they have sinned, are subordinate to the moral laws that govern man's relation to God. They are so interrelated, in these instances, as to be parts of one great system, and to subserve the final supremacy of the law of righteousness on which the health and well being of the world depend. It is a Divine ordination, and is incorporated with the physical and mental constitution of man, that the sin of the fathers shall be visited, not to the exclusion from woe of the parent, but intensifying it, on the third and fourth generation. We see this law at work every day. Awful as it is, we can even now see its value as subservient to the righteousness which alone makes men blessed; for it is a most potent check to vice. Irrespective of their own immoral condition, the cutting off of the Amalekites for the sin of their ancestors is analogous to the shortened lives, the wretched health, the filthy poverty, and other miseries which are the inevitable lot of the offspring of the desperately vicious; and this for ulterior issues.

4 . Nations have no posthumous existence. For individuals judgment is often reserved till another life. Nations, if visited with judgment at all, must suffer here. In the instruction of the individual, the fact of the coming punishment of the individual sinner bears an important part as a deterrent. In the instruction of nations as such, the signal and conspicuous punishment of a people also plays an important part. This use of national judgments is constantly recognised in the language of Scripture. "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations" ( Isaiah 52:10 ): "Put them in fear, O Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men" ( Psalms 9:20 ). At the same time the judgments which on earth come on nations as such do not necessarily foreclose hope to the young and innocent among them of a personal salvation from the woe due to the personally guilty in another life.

5 . God is the only true Judge of the actual demerits of a guilty nation. We cannot rightly estimate the intrinsic evil even of our own personal sins. "The Judge of all the earth" must decide what is appropriate punishment for national crime; for he only knows the degree of enmity in the minds of Sodomites and Amalekites. None but he can see the intricate bearings of their sin and of their continued existence as a people. He also knows best what blessed deterrent influence will arise to mankind from the conspicuous character of the judgment executed.

6 . The means by which judgment is executed appear to be determined by conditions known to God. Judgment works inwardly through the conscience and the mental faculties in general. They bear the curse of the sin committed. It also works externally by the pressure against the sinner of the order of nature, which is in league with righteousness, and ultimately makes "the way of transgressors hard." Nations have not a very lively conscience. The force of Divine judgments usually comes from without. The instrumentality used is evidently connected with the actual presence of forces which, acting in a natural way under the preordained direction of the Omniscient, become "his arm." Doubtless there were physical conditions of earth and atmosphere which rendered destruction by a deluge both natural and yet conspicuously of God. The Sodomites were destroyed not by water, nor slow plague, nor famine, but by the natural combustible materials close at hand. The Amalekites were not left to die out by internal anarchy, or famine, or pestilence, but were given up to the action of that international hostility which was as real an element of destruction close at hand as was the volcanic force at Sodom. He who in his vast prevision, seeing the coexistence of the vices of antediluvians with certain fluvial conditions of a portion of the earth, and the coexistence of the sin of Sodom with certain volcanic conditions, used them for this purpose, may have also given full freedom to the play of national sentiment in the minds of Israel coexisting at that juncture with the fit time for the execution of a purpose to obliterate a guilty nation. Had pestilence or earthquake carried them off, it would have been God's act as truly as when the soldiers of Saul were the executioners of a decree. The employment of an executioner gives no right, but the reverse, to others to go and do the same.

7 . The form of punishment on communities under the Old Testament dispensation is evidently suggestive of the danger of antagonism to Christ. The sin of Amalek was that of deliberate attempt to destroy the people of God ( Exodus 17:8-16 ; Deuteronomy 25:17-19 ). That means to prevent the realisation of salvation in the "seed of Abraham." If Amalek knew, as is certainly possible, the lofty claims of Israel, the crime was most fearful. That in the mind of God and of Israel such was the nature of the sin is seen in the discrimination made in favour of the Kenites because they showed kindness to Israel (verse 6). It is at all events clear that God would have men learn that it was the sin of obstructing his purposes of mercy for mankind that was so obnoxious in his sight. The terrible national destruction which this sin brought on is a clear intimation of the "destruction from the presence of the Lord" which must come on the individuals who set themselves in antagonism to Christ and his purposes of mercy to the world. A more terrible sin than that cannot be conceived; a more terrible act of judgment cannot be imagined than that which will come when Christ shall say, "Depart from me, ye cursed" ( Matthew 25:41 ). "It is a fearful thing," even under the gospel dispensation, "to fall into the hands of the living God" after a life of deliberate antagonism to the very Saviour he has sent to redeem us. Although, therefore, there may be much in the recorded "terrible acts" of God which weighs on our spirit and demands of us reverence and humility, still we are not without some gleams of light to sustain our faith both in the sacred records and the righteousness which never fails.

General lessons : —

1 . We see how judgment does surely come, though for generations it seems to linger.

2 . It becomes us to inquire whether we by any conduct of ours are impeding the march of God's people.

3 . We see how God remembers, and causes his servants to remember, acts of kindness rendered to the weary on their way to the promised rest.

4 . It is a painful duty to have to be executors of God's judgments; yet when men in national and domestic affairs are really called to it, let them subordinate personal sentiment to solemn duty.

5 . In all our painful thoughts over the woes that come on the universe, involving the young and old, let us seek grace to "be still," and to wait for the passing away of the night and the coming of the light that shall turn weeping into joy; for it will come.