God took it personally (Exodus 17:16) when the Amalekites attacked his people on their way out of Egypt, especially when the Amalekites picked on the weak and vulnerable (Deuteronomy 25:17-19). He also made sure that Mordecai in the book of Esther was “held in high esteem” because he “worked for the good of his people, and spoke up for the welfare of all the Jews,” Esther 10:3. So when it came to his people, whether it was good things happening to them or bad, God took it personally.
He took things personally again 500 years after Mordecai, when Saul, later Paul, felt “convinced” in Acts 26:9, that he “should do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth,” and in Jerusalem he “put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death” he “cast his vote against them.” He also tried to force Christians into denying Jesus, and expanded his obsession against Christians into foreign cities too (10-11).
But it was on his way to Damascus to create more mayhem for Christians that a blazing light shone and with it “a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’” (12-14). So this time it was Jesus taking things personally, and again because of what was happening to his people.
But if you were a Jew on the receiving end of Saul’s “Amalekite-like” obsession with your destruction, it must’ve felt like God didn’t care at all. Why would he let this brutish man pick on his fledgling church threatening its very existence? Wasn’t this just like the Amalekites picking on the weak and vulnerable all over again?
Yes it was, which is why Jesus personally stopped Saul in his tracks, “appeared” to him personally, and “appointed” him as his personal “servant and witness of what you have seen of me (personally) and what I (personally) will show you” (16). And what Jesus showed Saul personally was his “unlimited patience” with the likes of him (1 Timothy 1:13, 16), so that Saul, now Paul, could ask and answer with conviction in Romans 11:1, “I say then, has God cast away his people? Certainly not!”
So here we have Paul, another Benjamite like Esther and Mordecai, confirming God’s care for his people, despite their history of failing him again and again. Which is good to know, because in the brutish attitude toward Jews and Christians now growing in our world, one cannot help wondering: “Do Amalekites still exist today?”….(next blog)
