The danger of spiritual short-cuts
A dozen year ago I was listening to Dr. Charles Price who at the time was the pastor of The Peoples Church in Toronto, ON. He was speaking to a large group of pastors and something he said, I believe, bears repeating.
The Amalekites will come back to haunt you
In his message he asked us if we were Saul or David. The message was a home-run, hitting the heart.
Charles took us through several passages in 1 Samuel relating how much of Saul’s motivation for action or inaction was based on fear, rather than faith. He constantly took short-cuts in his private life and it took its toll on his public life. When nearing his death on the battlefield, he asked a soldier to finish him off. Interestingly, Saul asked the soldier who he was. The soldier told him he was an Amalekite. He obeyed King Saul, gave the fatal blow, and recounted the story to David (2 Samuel 1:1-16).
There is an irony in all of this. God had sanctioned Saul to destroy the Amalekites. But, Saul’s “enlightened” sensibilities did not allow him to fully follow through on God’s will. Eventually the people whom he was to destroy would kill him.
The point: If we don’t take care of our private life, it can destroy us. Hidden sin has a horrible way of finding us out. And Saul’s forbearance would return to haunt his descendants.
Five centuries later, Haman, the Hitler of the Persian Empire, sought to wipe out the Jewish race. Haman was a descendant of Agag (Esther 3:1), the king of the Amalekites. Five centuries further on, we discover King Herod trying to commit genocide among young Jewish boys by ordering the slaughter of boys less than two years old in an attempt to murder God’s anointed. King Herod was an Edomite and the Edomites were related to the Amalekites. Amalek was the son of Esau’s (that is, Edom’s) first-born son, Eliphaz.
Charles Price pointed out the irony. King Saul’s “enlightened” approach to following God’s will would not only destroy his own life, it would also bring untold grief to his people for generations to come.
When we choose to “fudge” on doing what we know to be true because of the expediency or convenience or enlightened “common sense”, we run the risk of not only harming our own life, but also the lives of our family, our church, the Christian community, and even our grandchildren’s grandchildren. A sobering thought.
Let’s all take care of our inner/private lives for the sake of Jesus’ reputation today and for generations to come.