If only King Saul had wiped out the Amalekites as God instructed, because their brutality cropped up again in Esther’s day in Haman the Amalekite, whose sole aim was the total destruction of the Jews (Esther 3:8-14).
And although the Amalekites disappeared as a tribe by that name, there are people today whose sole aim is also the total destruction of the Jews – and Christians – and blatantly stated in public too.
That being the case, what are we to do as Christians? God’s solution in the Old Testament was telling the Israelites in 1 Samuel 15:3 to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them, including men, women, children, infants and livestock” to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven,” Deuteronomy 25:19.
But because that wasn’t done we have Amalelite-like people in our world now displaying exactly the same aim and brutal attitude as the Amalekites of old. So, what is God’s solution today? Does he want Christians to wipe out Amalek and finish off what Israel failed to do?
Fortunately, God chose a second Saul, and a Benjamite too like King Saul, with an answer to that question from his own life, when he wrote in 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” So there was “fighting” involved, as well as successfully “finishing” off what he was fighting too, but it wasn’t by slicing the heads off all Amalekite-like people he met. It was by “keeping the faith” – the simple faith that “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom,” verse 18.
One such “evil attack” came when he was “given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me,” 2 Corinthians 12:7. Paul was attacked at his weakest, just like the Amalekites attacked the Israelites at their weakest. But Paul couldn’t swing a sword like the Israelites of old to wipe the problem out. And God wasn’t asking him to either, because when it came to evil in Paul’s life, it was by “Christ’s power resting on me” (9) that Paul learnt how the fight is won.
Which brings to mind Jacob’s original prophecy in Genesis 49:27 about Benjamin being a “ravenous wolf devouring its prey and dividing the plunder,” because was that also meant to picture Christ’s power, and what he’s like when dealing with the Amalekite-like attacks launched against us? If so, is there more we can learn about Jesus from Jacob’s grandchildren, “Ephraim and Manasseh,” too?….(next blog)
