the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 2 of 5
1 Samuel 15:1-16
Ch. 15 is important from two points of view. It contains the divine judgment against Amalek and it also has the final testing of king Saul. Amalek was a dastardly and cruel adversary who had made a surprise attack on Israel just after the exodus from Egypt. This wickedness could not be forgiven them. "I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek", the LORD had announced (Exodus 17:8; Exodus 17:14). Four hundred years had passed but God had not forgotten. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away," declares the Lord (Matthew 24:35). And Israel should not have forgotten it either: "Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt," Moses warned them. "Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it" (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).
Let us not forget the enemies who have taken us by surprise in the past – what are these enemies? They are anger, lying, moral impurity – or any other kind of sin. If we relax our vigilance with regard to these sins of the flesh, we may have to relearn a lesson for which perhaps we had paid dearly earlier. Let us not spare ourselves but judge without pity all the stirrings of our old nature.
