Ep. 109 | God and Sinners Part 3 (Betrayal): Judas Iscariot and King Agag and the Amalekites | Pickled Chats 6
Speaker: Hunter Hoover & Jesse Turkington
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Summary
Jesse and Hunter return to God and sinners for another look at God's goodness and sovereignty in working alongside and through the lives of sinners. Some of these sinners, are changed to newness of life. Others remain unmoved to their own downfall.
Passages explored: Genesis 50:20; John 6; Matthew 27; John 11:1-16; Zechariah 11:11-14; John 13:5; Matthew 26:23-24; Genesis 36:12; Genesis 36:16; 1 Samuel 15; 1 Samuel 30:16-31; 1 Chronicles 4
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Music created by Chad Hoffman
Artwork created by Anthony Kuenzi
Host’s Bio’s
Hunter grew up in Montana and now serves the Church in Albany Oregon where he works as a youth and young adults pastor. He and his wife Ana stay busy with two kids. Hunter loves studying the Bible and communicating it in a way which encourages further exploration of others. Hunter enjoys listening and making podcasts for others to enjoy.
Jesse Turkington is the executive director of Parable Ministries and has been a Bible teacher for the last 9 years. When Jesse was just finishing high school, he started a little Bible study at his parent’s house. Little did he know, this Bible study would change the direction of his life. He fell in love with the richness of the Bible and he wanted to pursue serious study. About 10 years later, Jesse still carries that passion for the Bible and from this passion was born Parable Ministries - a Bible teaching resource. Jesse believes that the Bible is a life changing book and that it can transform the way we view the world. The Bible presents a Creator God who desires intimate fellowship with us. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Through study and thoughtful meditation, the Bible works to untangle our situational worldview and elevate our hopes and desires - we are encouraged to think on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Jesse is all about this book and he wants to share it with whoever will listen.
Transcript
Intro:
Hey there, welcome to Pickled Parables. This podcast is presented by Parable Ministries as a Bible teaching resource. Thank you for joining us. Pickled Parables is a podcast about taking in and living out the Bible. Here we will study, contemplate, and testify to the Bible's incredible teachings and how it leads us to live better lives. To stay up to date with all things parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. We hope today's message finds you well.
Main Topic:
Well, hello everyone, welcome back to Pickled Chats.
I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I'm joined with, who I, really, you're also like the co-host here.
I'm joined by Jesse Turkington.
Jesse, how are you?
I'm doing well, good to be here.
Yeah, well, welcome back, guys.
And we are going to be, this episode, continuing in our conversation related to God and sinners.
We've done a couple of these.
I want to say it's been two of these at this point, maybe three.
My count's off.
And part of that is because some of what I have to share this week, I was going to share last time, but then we got so far into our conversation about, I believe, Pharaoh and Saul, Paul last time.
And I guess, so before we launch into it this week, Jesse, do you have any follow-up things about last time?
I don't off the top of my head, but I want to open it up to you so we don't leave anything unturned here.
Sure, yeah, appreciate that.
I don't have anything dangling in front of me from last week.
I'm excited about this week, though.
It's gonna be good.
Yeah, I'm excited because, Jesse and I, before we hit record, just another peek behind the curtain.
It's fun here.
I kind of shared a little bit about what I'm going, Jesse shared who he's bringing, and I actually am excited, Jesse, because yours has popped up on my radar in a couple other podcasts and things that I've been listening and reading this week, and so I'm gonna actually let you go ahead.
You mean the character?
The character that I picked has popped up for you?
Yes, yeah, and just so everyone, you can chalk it up to a coincidence or God's providence, but Jesse and I, other than the fact that I mentioned mine a month ago, we don't have too many conversations about who we're bringing in and what we're discussing, so that way there is some learning on the other person, but also some conversation and questions can be asked.
But Jesse, I'm going to let you launch in here.
I'll let you go ahead and take it away with who you want to highlight in our God and Sinners series.
Yeah, I'm wanting to present to you guys Judas Iscariot.
He's a crazy guy in the character and how he's portrayed.
He is the full representation and kind of the full circle of the story or of that term used in Genesis chapter 50 of you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good.
And that was first said by Joseph.
I think we referenced that in our first take hold chats about God and sinners, and Joseph was saying it to his brothers who intended to harm him and sold him in the slavery, and Joseph was very clear.
There's really no wiggle room in what he said.
It's not that God used the bad thing and like made it good, but that God intended that bad action to have a good result.
And Judas Iscariot is, I think, the full embodiment of that statement of he, Judas Iscariot, meant it for evil.
He betrayed Jesus Christ for money.
He sold him.
He delivered him.
He betrayed him with a kiss.
But it's very clear through the writings of the Gospels and even in the epistles that God intended that betrayal for the salvation of mankind.
And it's kind of a full circle of Joseph in Genesis and his brothers with Jesus and Judas Iscariot.
So Judas, a quick little profile on him.
He was one of the 12 disciples.
I believe that there was another Judas among those 12, but this was, he was differentiated by Judas Iscariot.
So Judas Iscariot, he was the money holder.
He held the money bag.
And honestly, like we know, we have a lot of reaction in the Gospels from the disciples.
They didn't know that Judas was going to betray not only their leader, Jesus, to them.
They didn't know.
And I think we see a lot of that reaction in the writings of the Gospels, where every chance the authors of the Gospels have, they just lay into Judas Iscariot with like, yeah, he was probably stealing from the money bag.
Like, he was probably, and like, there was one time when a woman came and anointed Jesus' feet with perfume, and Judas is like, hey, why didn't we just like sell that?
That's like a year's wage and give it to the poor.
And the Apostles write, he probably said that because he wanted to keep the money.
Like, they lay into him, and that's probably the reaction of just the hurt of like, him betraying them.
But to be the guy to hold the money bag takes a lot of responsibility.
In parable ministries, Michael Rogers is our treasurer on the board, and that is because he is a man of excellent integrity.
And like, I have no doubt in my mind that our money is safe with Michael.
And that is the feeling that the disciples probably had with Judas Iscariot.
You don't give money to someone you expect is going to pillage.
Right.
Right.
I think that I was going to hop in, but I'm glad I didn't, Jesse.
That was one of the things that came up recently is that they had to pick one of them, and Judas was chosen to be this money bearer guy.
Like, yeah.
So anyway, it's fascinating is in John chapter 6, Jesus starts giving some really, really hard teachings.
He starts saying really wild things like, you have to eat my flesh and you have to drink my blood.
And he had lots of followers, lots of followers who had a really hard time with that.
And they all left.
They all walked away.
They're like, this is a really hard saying.
Who can accept it?
And they leave.
And the only ones who stay are the 12 disciples.
And Jesus commends them.
Like Judas Iscariot was one of those who stayed.
And Jesus commends them.
He's like, didn't I choose you to 12?
But he does do a little caveat where he's like, though one of you is a devil.
And just like leading that up.
But I want to highlight Judas stayed.
Like he took, he'd stayed.
That was a really hard thing to say.
He stayed.
Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss.
Like an intimate greeting, hello.
And then like stab in the back, essentially.
And he did it for 30 pieces of silver.
We have what seems like a slight contradiction in the Book of Acts.
First chapter, it says that Judas bought a field and that he fell headlong into it.
It's really graphic.
It's saying that his body exploded in the field.
Again, I think that's the disciples being really harmed by Judas' betrayal and just really throwing in like, and he didn't make it.
In Matthew chapter 27, it tells the story of Judas bringing the money back to the chief priests in the temple.
And he's like, I can't take this money.
Like, I realize I just betrayed an innocent man.
I can't take this.
And the chief priests won't like, they take the money, but they're like, we can't put this back in the treasury because this is blood money.
So they, Matthew says that they took Judas' money and bought a field with it.
And they were going to purpose it to be a graveyard for foreigners who died and no one knew where to put them.
And it became known as the field of blood.
So I think that's that's kind of like Judas' money bought the field and he ended up there.
But it says in Matthew Chapter 27 that Judas, after he returned the money, racked with gills, committed suicide.
He went and he hung himself.
And that's just a tragic end to this betrayal of becoming racked with gills, returning what you earned in your betrayal and then ending it.
So I guess as a quick summary, Judas was a member of the inner circle.
He stayed when the majority left.
He managed the money bag.
He was trusted.
He was part of Jesus explaining his parables.
Jesus would only explain his parables to the disciples.
Judas saw Jesus' miracles.
Judas saw a man come back to life.
He went with them when Jesus went and brought Lazarus back to life in John 11.
And Jesus' disciples thought they were going to die.
Jesus was wanted.
He was a wanted man in the region where Lazarus lived.
And his disciples speak up in John 11 saying, Jesus, if you go back to where Lazarus is, you're going to get stoned.
And he goes anyway.
And Thomas is the one.
He's often given the nickname Doubting Thomas.
Honestly, he was just such a bro.
He said, guys, to the disciples, he addressed them and said, guys, let's go die with Jesus.
Let's go.
And Judas went.
Judas was part of that group.
It's wild to me.
This man who is there, he's in it.
And he's the one who betrays Jesus with a kiss.
Yeah.
Judas is a challenge.
I think he's a challenge for the church and Christians in general because we really like this black and white, good guy, bad guy thing.
And I think a lot of what you're saying, Jesse, is keying in on exactly some of the stuff that I've been taking in this week.
You know, Jesus did ministry for three years-ish.
And as far as we know, Judas was a part of that ministry for most, if not all of that, three years.
It's not like he jumps in the last three weeks and then this idea like Jesus and his followers were not loaded with cash.
Like they had money sufficient to like pay for food and meet the needs of their ministry, but it was not as if like Judas, if he wanted, if he was in it solely to get rich, I'm not trying to like excuse his sin because like you betrayed like the main dude.
But if he was out from the outset like, oh, I think I can get, there's a lot better ways.
I mean, even just committing to the life of a Pharisee would have probably produced more profit in his life than following Jesus around and putting up with the Pharisee's nonsense for so long.
And it's just, it's baffling.
So, okay.
I think, Jesse, I want to, I'm going to put it out to you and do you think, do you think, and we're conjecturing, this is conjecture.
We are, you know, speaking of church history and having a little fun.
Do you think Judas is going to be in glory?
Like, do you think we will, he will be there in eternity?
I have no idea.
And I'll offer my thing first.
I go back and forth on this.
And as you noted, I think you said it was Matthew's gospel where he returns the money.
And you and I, Jesse, are kind of from this reformed Protestant Christian tradition where I think we would say that suicide does not negate one's salvation.
I know that there are faith communities that would say that.
And so, like, if Judas believed, then he would be in glory, which is, I think, tough.
Mostly because we really, I think, my human side really wants Judas to not be there, which is awful to say.
You shouldn't want that for anyone.
But in a justice, like, it's like, oh, yep, you know, you kind of committed the worst of these things.
But even Jesus, like, up until the night he is betrayed is like, including Judas in the party.
Even, like, never once condemns Judas.
Like, he, you know, he knew what was coming and he does, you know, and it's like, it's tough and it's, I don't know, I've been kind of going back and forth.
There's a little bit of prophecy around Judas too.
Like, I looked it up while you were sharing.
Zechariah 11, it's one of these dual fulfillment where when you read it in its context, you're like, really though?
Is this really about what they say it's about?
But then when you get to the gospel writers, they're kind of like, yeah, guys, remember this?
And you get this fun thing where like, oh man, they really were, they were really, really in tune with understanding Scripture, which I think is many ways the case.
Or they, you know, they were trying to draw connections in cool new ways.
But in Zechariah 11, I want to read this, it says, so this is like Zechariah and it has a lot to do with like the severing of Israel and Judah and a prophecy related to that.
And he's looking for these wages and it says, so it was annulled on that day and the sheep traders who were watching me knew that it was the word of the Lord.
And then I said to them, if it seems good to you, give me my wages, but if not, keep them.
And they weighed out as my wages 30 pieces of silver.
And the Lord said to me, throw it back to the potter, the lordly price at which I was priced by them.
So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw it into the house of the Lord to the potter.
And while none of this is like it doesn't really like scream of messianic prophecy, it's like that 30 pieces of silver is pretty specific.
I believe I'd have to go look this up, but I believe that was the price set by a slave in the law, like set for a slave in the law.
Which makes like it, the whole thing is wild.
And then the fact that, you know, we see Zechariah returning the payment to the house of the Lord and Judas, racked by guilt, returning the payment to the house of the Lord, the temple, is like, they're drawing these connections here that, you know, this was not a surprise to Jesus as God, but it also ought not have been maybe a surprise to Jesus' followers is kind of one of the things that I, you know, but yeah, man, Judas is a tough one.
He, yeah, and then they like renamed Jude because his name was Judas, but then they're like, well, we don't want that.
We don't like taboo name.
Really?
I don't know if they did it in Acts, but like when you get to like the book of Jude and who wrote it, it's like Judas, the brother of James or Judas, the half brother of Jesus or something.
It's like a relative of Jesus or one of the followers.
And yeah, he like pretty caught like there was a Judas and another Judas listed in the disciples and it's like presumed that Judas was renamed or that they tried to quit using his name as often in church history.
I don't know that many Judases today, you know what I'm talking about?
It's not really practice.
How funny.
Okay.
Sorry.
How funny would it be?
You know how like Christian parents, they like, they really like Bible names and they really like heroes of the faith Bible names.
I'm guilty of this.
My name is Jesse.
How funny.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go.
How funny would not funny, but like you just, you know, because there's some edgy Christians out there.
They're just, and they go to the Bible names, but they pick all the bad guys.
Just, I mean, don't do that to your kids.
If you're listening to this and you're like, oh, we're expecting and don't do that maybe, but like it would be a funny move for me to see if I was like working kids ministry and I had somebody sign their Judas Iscariot last name enter here.
I would probably laugh at it because I'm not nice.
I could imagine a cat if somebody named their pet cat Judas.
I'd be like, oh yeah, and I think that'd be really, oh, he's a cat guy.
All right.
I like dogs too, but I like dogs.
Anyhow, I'm going to backtrack a little bit to your question about Judas and if he is with the Lord in glory today.
First, I'll say I do not know, and it's not something that we will know until the day we find out.
However, for the fun of speculating, man, I wish I had the reference on the top of my head.
There is a reference in the Gospels about the betrayer that Jesus says, and he says, man, it'd be better for that betrayer, for that one to never have been born.
Don't really know what that means, other than essentially, oh woe to you.
We have Judas, like you mentioned, involved with everything.
I believe he was involved.
I think Jesus washed his feet in the upper room.
However, I do think, if I'm looking at my timeline, right?
I'm wondering, did Judas leave?
Yeah, he was sent out.
But did he leave between the supper and the foot washing?
Well, foot washing was first, wasn't it?
Oh, maybe it was.
See, this is why it's good.
It's good to do this.
Yeah, Judas' feet were washed along with the other disciples.
John 13.5 records that after that he poured water in a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet.
Yeah, he still washed Judas' feet.
Yeah, yeah, you're right, Jesse.
I was just curious if that was the case because, man, that would be such a tough, but yeah, again, it's wild.
I wanted to also share that reference, the verse that you were saying about woe to the one who betrays.
It's Matthew 26.
Okay.
23 and 24 it says, He answered, he who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.
The son of man goes as it is written of him.
But woe to the man by whom the son of man is betrayed.
It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.
And then Judas, who would betray him, said, is it I, Rabbi?
And he said to him, yes, you've said so.
Like, see, this is why I flip flop because I like, I want to think that Judas, you know what I mean?
I would love to know his more questions.
Yeah, but then like when Jesus is like, yeah, you're the one that's going to do it, bud.
And he still does it.
Like to me, that is, this is the moment.
Like, exit now.
It's time.
Stop doing it.
Be done.
And he, you know, is told, yep.
And I think, and I might be shoehorning a bit, but like I think we're seeing that Pharaoh's hardening heart, like where Judas, some of his things, something has gone awry with Judas.
And then I think what I get to is, you know, how the church fathers and the gospel writers, they don't speak highly of Judas.
And I think there's, right, I think they're, they have good reason obviously, but I think they having been so, some of them, they're with and on the scene or on the scene shortly after, I think they had a pretty good pulse on this guy.
Ah, man, it's tough.
My hunch is he's not.
I'm going to go ahead and do it.
My hunch is he's not.
But if he is, let me put this way, if he is, if you know, if we, whether we die or get the horn toot and we get up, I'm not going to be like, what the heck?
Why is this guy here?
I'm not, you know, there's not going to be any of that.
Because, you know, we're all sinners.
And there's going to be just a...
Can I hop in here for a second?
Absolutely.
I'm not going to say whether I think he's there or not, because I just, I don't know.
But I will add here, it's very possible he could be.
I don't think there's anything that could have completely kept him away from the Lord, even if he repented.
That might be a hot take, I don't know.
Yeah, it's something that keeps landing in front of me a lot recently.
What I'm trying to get at is, dear listener, if you feel that you have betrayed the Lord in some way, you can still come back to him.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Don't feel like, yeah, it's too late for me.
I've done it, really.
You can come to the Lord and he will forgive you.
That's what he was doing on the cross with the help of Judas.
That's something, again, just looping it back to Joseph with his brothers, I really do think that Judas Iscariot is the full embodiment or the representation of that saying, you meant this for evil, you meant this for personal gain, 30 silver pieces.
God meant that for good.
It was horrible.
I'm not trying to make light of the tragedy of the crucifixion, but the resurrection could only come after that crucifixion.
And so that is what the Lord used, that is what he determined to use.
And Judas, man, you could get into a fascinating conversation about his free will and this whole prophecy thing, like where was Judas in this whole thing?
Where was his mind?
What was his motivations?
I don't know.
I would love to know.
Right.
But I'm pretty sure he had free will and he still just ended up in this situation.
Yeah, I agree.
And I want to also add to what you're saying, Jesse, about there's no sin or failure that you, listener, could commit that exempts you from the saving work of Jesus Christ.
I mean, to me, that is very evident in the person of Paul, which you shared last week.
Like, the guy was actively signing off on killing people who believed in Jesus and were following Jesus.
And even he, you know, Jesus is like, nope, you too.
Yeah, that's super important thing to remind ourselves of, especially as we explore these.
You know, sometimes it's tough to explore so much of the sinner side.
But I think the testimony of every person who is saved by Jesus Christ is that, yeah, you know, we are sinners.
And thank God that Jesus can save even us.
Yeah.
Man.
Thanks, Judas.
No.
It's good.
Yeah.
It's good discussion.
Do you have any other thoughts with Judas to close it out or and then I'll transition to mine here in a moment?
Yeah, please do.
Judas is fascinating to me in the sense of the Lord still worked with him.
He was a member of the inner circle and I think his betrayal was genuine.
I don't think it was like, oh, he was never truly with them.
I think, okay, let's just a little tangent here.
Maybe a rabbit hole.
I know there's a good amount of people when someone walks away from the faith, they will say, oh, he never believed, or she was never truly a Christian.
I understand that there's a Bible passage people often like to reference in that when they say that, and again, this gets into a lot of theological dark water like Wesleyan theology and things like that.
But it is possible for people to have genuine spiritual divine revelation experiences due to solid miracles, he saw the healings and the walk away.
It is absolutely, it's not something that can happen, it's something that happens.
People can see, people experience the Lord, and they still choose to walk away.
Either I've seen it in many different shades, where they walk away because they get angry at the Lord.
Sometimes they walk away because they get angry at the church or at other Christians.
Sometimes they walk away because they get angry at the Bible.
It doesn't always involve anger, but it usually has something in their mind and their heart working together where they can't come to a place of reconciliation and they choose to walk away.
I won't say from the faith, just to keep ourselves from debate, but walk away from the Lord.
I'll say it that way.
It's not just something that can happen, it's something that happens daily.
I think that's Judas.
I think that was someone who was there, he was in it.
I think he was listening to the Rabbi, to Jesus, to the teachings.
I think he was in it.
I think he was about it.
And I think it probably, maybe it started with just a little ceiling, just a little bit like, you know what, I'm going to get some bread.
Just no one will know.
And then from there, maybe it escalated, who knows.
But I think he was in and I think he was in genuine shock.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I think to the disciples, it was a genuine like, oh man, who are you?
And I imagine like three years is a long time to be essentially like traveling companions, ministry partners, you know, they camped out.
I mean, that's three years pretty much nonstop together.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's wild.
Yeah, that's good.
Not the betrayal, but just the conversation.
So I don't have a good transition into mine.
Sometimes I like to do a nice segue where it's smooth and this one's going to be more like whiplash into the Old Testament because other than these two characters are both sinners who God still did something through, there's not a lot of direct connection that I'm able to draw off the top of my head.
I'm sure, listener, you're probably screaming.
It's so obvious, but I've been scrambling in my brain ever since Jesse told me who he was going to talk about trying to– I don't know.
Jesse, this week I am bringing– I'm going to call them a character.
They play a big role in the Bible, but not a big role in that.
They don't get a lot of screen time, but they keep popping up.
It's one of these guys.
King Agag, to give you– we're going to go forward and then we're going to go back to the beginning.
Otherwise, none of what I'm going to say is going to make any sense.
King Agag is in the time of Saul's kingship in 1 Samuel.
After the judges, the people demand a king.
They both are given and also force King Saul into kingship, kind of.
Saul is king of Israel, here we are.
One of the things that he is told is he is told to kill the Amalekite king, King Agag.
That's who this guy is.
Now, jumping backwards in time, the Amalekites are a problem to Israel.
This is when you talk about– there's maybe the connection.
It's not a good connection, but here it is.
When you talk about things in the Bible that people get kind of mad about, one of the things that I am often brought is what is stated as God calling for his people to eradicate a people group.
That one is– I've heard that one a couple of times.
It's like, well, why would God do that?
But the Amalekites were one such people group that God told his followers, or at least we are– it is suggested God said, hey, you need to wipe them out.
Get rid of them.
The earliest mention of the Amalekites is in Genesis 14.7.
This goes way back to the beginning with the call of Abram and it's like they are early on the Amalekites are a player.
Then I'll also share that we are told in Genesis 36 that the Amalekites are like through marriage and somewhat related to the people of Esau.
That's Genesis 30– and I can read this.
Genesis 36, 12, and 16, I just don't want it to be like Hunter's Crazy Ramblings for the next bit here.
So Genesis 36, 12, and 16, it says, Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau's son.
She bore Amalek to Eliphaz.
So Amalek, this guy.
And then 16, Korah listing, these are the chiefs of Korah, Gitaam, and Amalek are the chiefs of Eliphaz in the land of Edom and the sons of Edah.
So Edom is Esau.
So these people derive from Esau who was the brother of Jacob who would later become Israel.
That's the tension set.
They're like cousins.
I like to think of them as kind of cousins, sort of.
So Exodus, in Exodus, when the people come out of slavery, God instructs Moses as an extension to Joshua.
It's one of those things where he's talking to Moses, but like Joshua's in the room, which happened a lot.
That's one of the weird things when you read Exodus, is like Joshua's just kind of there all the time.
It's fun.
But Exodus 17, 14, it says, the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.
So God's pretty upset with Amalek.
And the reason is as they are coming out of slavery into their now wilderness wandering period, or approaching that, they're not there yet, Amalek, who is kind of family with Israel by extension and could have responded maybe more like Esau did to Jacob in Genesis, they war against Israel as this newly freed people with not a lot of fighting power.
Like, I mean, they had a lot of people, but they're not an established people and Amalek, the Amalekites can take advantage of them and God's like, no, no, no, this is my people and I'm going to deal with you, the Amalekites.
So that's the tension.
Fast forward, we get to Joshua and Joshua, I don't, maybe one day we'll tackle the problems between Joshua and Joshua, they're not really problems, but like Joshua paints a very like, we did it, we got them, total victory, God has given us victory and God did.
But we find out in Judges that they missed a few of these Amalekites because in Judges 3, the Amalekites team up with the Moabites to fight against Israel and in Judges 6 in the story of Gideon, they are listed as a group of people that team up with the Midianites to fight Israel.
So it's like a thorn in their side, they keep popping up.
They're responsible for repeated destruction of Israel's land, of Israel's food supply and at this point in the story, we're like, now we're starting to see maybe God knowing things that God knows.
We can see possibly why we are told, hey, you want to deal with these people early on.
God cares for his people and I think God knew some of the tragedy that the Amalekites would cause.
That's me, Hunter's opinion, looking into this and trying to understand this mess.
So getting to Agag, the Amalekites were a problem and so in 1 Samuel 15 in the story of Saul, Saul is told by God, you need to go deal with the Amalekites, you need to utterly destroy them.
It's really this turning point for Saul where the kingship is already kind of wobbly, the railroad tracks are kind of falling apart for Saul.
It's as if God is kind of saying, hey, there's these people that have been a problem for them for hundreds of years for the Israelite people and they're going to continue to be a problem for you.
You as king, this is your moment, go and deal with them.
He is told you need to utterly destroy them and we find out in 1 Samuel 15 that Saul does not do that.
He kills most of them, he lets a few of them flee and he takes a lot of the plunder for himself.
He was supposed to destroy everything.
It's no coincidence that the following chapter, 1 Samuel 16, is when David is anointed.
It is as if it's saying, yep, he couldn't figure it out and now we're on to David.
This guy is the one.
He allows them to flee and Saul's story kind of ends, reader, listener, go read it.
It's a good read, go read 1 Samuel and don't just try to set aside what you already know about the story with David and Goliath and all these things and just read it with Fred.
It's a wild story, but they're allowed to flee and then in 1 Samuel 30, they're back.
The Amalekites are back against David.
We get this like, well, will this ever end with these people?
David's wives are captured, it's fun had by all, but yeah, and I want to get to the– and this is like the end of 1 Samuel.
It says, and when he had taken him down and David said to him, will you take me down to his band?
And he said, swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me.
And so he is asking this person to take him down to this people group.
And when he had taken him down, behold, they were spread abroad, and verse 17, and David struck them down from twilight until evening the next day.
Verse 18, David recovered all the Amalekites had taken and David rescued his wives.
Nothing was missing.
David brought back it all.
David captured all the flocks and all the herds and all the people drove the livestock before him.
David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow him.
They went out to David to meet the people and this story ends with David seemingly defeating the Amalekites.
Now, some of them do flee and we're going to get into that.
But the Amalekites burned and took captive all these villages.
David defeat them.
Again, that's the language used and it's used that way because Saul couldn't do it, but David did.
That's what we're supposed to get in Samuel.
But about a couple hundred of these guys fled later on in the Book of Chronicles, King Hezekiah, a group of people of the tribe of Simeon, I believe.
I have to go look that up.
But it's 1 Chronicles 4 are said to have killed the remaining Amalekites who are living in the Hill Country.
So it is as if the Amalekites have been eradicated.
Now during all this time, the Amalekites, they had kids, they married other people and all these things.
And so we get to, and this is where I'm going to share how all this kind of landed in my just right in my face.
So I've been taking my young adults, this is, I feel like a conspiracy theorist right now, drawing my, but I've been taking the young adults through 1 Samuel.
That's why there's been so much steady in 1 Samuel for me right now.
And my pastor here at our church has been preaching in Esther.
And so recently he was preaching through Esther and I was doing some editing of things for that.
And dear listener, I'm going to tell you right now, Esther is one of those books where every time I go to look it up, I flip back and forth to nauseam because I can never remember if it's before or after Ezra and Nehemiah.
So if you're like, man, I feel like I can't find stuff in the Bible.
It's literally my job to like interact with the Bible and I went to school for it and I still cannot remember where it falls.
But in Esther 3, landing the plane now, we are told, so to give you like Esther's story, Esther is a Jewish girl in captivity.
It's the Persian Empire, I believe the first Persian Empire.
They've been taken captive and then that got captured by the Persians.
And she is in this empire and it's ruled by a king called Ahashuerus.
Probably pronouncing it wrong, it's not important, it is kind of important.
But we're told that King Ahashuerus, and this is in Esther 3, it says, after these things, this is verse 1, King Ahashuerus promoted Haman the Agagite.
And then it talks about like the son of this guy and this guy.
But we have moved from Amalekites to Agagites, and that transition is in King Agag, that is like the connection.
So Agag wasn't Amalekite, and though the Amalekites were destroyed, Agag's people lived on.
And I've looked up a bunch of different, a couple commentaries, a couple things online, I watched a couple of videos, and it's like, yeah, this guy, this is supposed to be a connection to Amalekites.
And so Haman, who, or Haman, I don't know, I'm probably, again, here we are, Haman, he's the bad guy of the story of Esther, to spoil the story for you.
He, yeah, he's not nice to the Jewish people, like great, great, great, great, great grandfather like son.
But to spoil the ending, God uses this Jewish girl, Esther, who wins the hand of the king to save God's people who are in captivity in this Persian empire.
And through doing that, God, who, funny enough, his name is not mentioned outright in the Book of Esther, it's a little fun Esther fact, God is seen as defeating Haman, the Agagite, the Amalekite, because by the end of the book, he is killed.
And so there's this thread and King Agag and Haman and the Amalekites are these people who talk about like God and sinners, you know, and even betrayers, I mean, like they had the opportunity early on to not betray God's people, to help them in the wilderness, and they chose not to, and spent hundreds to thousand plus years just thorn in the side of God's people.
And we see time and again, that is this thing by which God uses both to judge like his people's faithfulness to him, like are you going to listen to me and how to deal with this problem that that God knew was going to be an ongoing and terrible thing?
And coupled that as a means of bringing judgment to God's people when they are unable to follow in his ways as God's people.
It's this wild like intertwining of the history of Israel and God's providence and God's sovereignty over the nations, but also Israel's position, it's a good position as chosen by God as his people, but also it comes with this responsibility to represent God well to the world by doing the things that God calls them to do.
And it comes to like its fruition with Queen Esther when this Amalekite King Agag Haman is killed for his subjection of the Jewish people.
Now, the conspiracy theory lines have been drawn.
I want to read like there's a quote, and I think that this is said to Queen Esther by, I can't remember if it's her brother or cousin or what have you, Mordecai.
He's like the other protagonist in the story.
But he says to Esther, the king is looking for a queen, and he says, if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.
He's got faith that God's going to deliver them.
But you and your father's house will perish.
We see that through Israel's history.
It's like, you guys have the opportunity to win and set this right, and in doing so, you're going to save you and your people right now.
And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this.
And though that's said to Esther, I think that kind of like that, you meant this for evil, but God intended it for good.
You can almost say that back to David, back to Joshua, that who knows whether you were selected at just this exact time to accomplish this thing for God.
Even Saul, like I think Saul could have accomplished a good thing for God if he had listened.
And so mine is King Agag.
It's a little bit of a stretch, but I have just been absolutely fascinated by this Amalekite like connection through.
And yeah, God's ability to work with, I mean, sinners who, there is no moment in scripture where we get, to my knowledge, and I would have to, I tried to find this, where we get this Amalekite person or this Agagite that's like, we're on team God.
We get that with the Moabites, you know, there's a few of these other people groups where we see them coming over and joining God's people.
But yeah, I, it's been a fascinating little thing for me.
I dumped a lot there.
That's, it's a lot of, I just want to digest it.
I'm a big fan of narrative theory.
It's something I like to read about and study and learn about.
And it's so fascinating to me, the way how you have this, this Kinga gag, essentially keep appearing.
What, like not him in bodily form, but his name and what he represents continues to be carried on through the people, people through, through Hey Man, and it's, it's, it's fascinating.
The threads, like you and I both know as, as it's our jobs to study the Bible.
It's just so fascinating.
The threads that will intertwine with each other, narrative threads, the stories, themes that, that get carried and twisted and represented in different scenarios.
So with King Agag representing the, I guess like the failure of listening to God and, and then also being used as the judgment of God in, in that failure is, is a fascinating take on our conversation of God and sinners.
Yes.
God's ability, like God, got a sovereign over the nations, both those that, which I think, unfortunately, the number that do call on him as Lord is, is dwindling, but those who call on him and those who do not, God is able to use them to accomplish both his good purposes in the world, but also his corrective purposes, as we see time and again throughout scripture.
It's just, yeah, like you say, it's a fascinating interplay of God's people and the sovereignty of God and people sin, both God's people and those who are not his and God's ability to use those things to accomplish his purposes in ways that sometimes I just, my brain just kind of bounces trying to come to grips with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm very grateful for how God is willing to work with sinners like me, like us.
Yeah.
We, you, I know you and I are covered by the blood of Jesus, and that was something that folks in the Old Testament times were looking forward to.
But through the Bible, which the Lord worked with people to write it, we see so many different examples of how God will work with different sinners.
And whether it's the Amalekites or Judas Iscariot or Jonah, we have lots of times where the good guys in the Bible, King David.
Jesse, he didn't do anything wrong ever.
Oh, no.
He did a few things wrong.
He did a lot wrong.
He did one very big thing wrong.
He did several big things wrong, yes.
Moses, widely respected, not always perfect, and it's something that causes me to turn to the Lord and go, wow.
Looking at these stories produces a gratefulness in me of how you're willing to get your hands dirty, of how you're willing, Lord, to get in here with us, to work in our history, to work in our cultures and peoples with people, to use the bad stuff purposefully to create good stuff.
That's kind of in a 3000-foot view of God working with people.
We have God making the world in Genesis out of nothing with his speech, with his words, and then God making good.
It changes as bad is introduced into the world.
We see that it's not good coming out of nothing, but it's bad becoming good.
We just see the Lord continue to work and create and produce good, even in the bad.
That's an encouraging thing to me.
Yeah.
I think just to wrap it up, the whole conversation up, I think that is the gospel.
That is what Jesus does for individuals when we put our faith in him.
But the Bible is pretty clear, he's got a plan to do that for all of creation one day, and it is resting on that turning point of his death and resurrection.
Yeah, it's good stuff.
That'll preach as the kids say.
Thank you all for listening.
I think I speak for both of us, but I enjoy doing these kind of character, but from the troubling side, sometimes studies of things that pop up in the Bible.
But yeah, thank you all for joining us again.
Jesse, thank you for sharing about Judas.
I actually felt like I could have talked about that for another 40 minutes.
Maybe we'll have to come back.
But yeah, anyway, I will just say goodbye and you'll hear Marta next, and we appreciate you guys being here.
Thanks for joining us.
Yeah, catch you later.
Outro:
Thank you for listening to Pickled Parables. If you enjoyed this message, please rate us, subscribe, and share with your friends. If you're interested in more things like this, check out our secondary podcast called My Dusky Bible. To stay up-to-date with all things Parable, follow us on Instagram at parable underscore ministries and visit our website at parableministries.com. Parable is a volunteer organization and we would deeply appreciate your prayers. Thank you for joining us today, we'll catch you later.
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