In 1 Samuel 15 God orders Saul to kill all the Amalekites. Every man, woman, child and baby was to die. Even the animals were to be put to death. Saul disobeyed God. You might think that Saul was more loving than God was, but that is not true. God had ordered the death of the Amalekites because of His love for Israel.
God did love the Amalekites, but He also knew their hearts and what the future held if they were to live. God looks not only at what is happening now, but also what the results of today's actions will bring tomorrow.
Because of Saul's disobedience to kill every Amalekite, the people of Israel suffered. A wicked man named Haman devised a plot to kill all the Jews in the Persian Empire. Haman was an Amalekite. He didn't succeed because God used Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai to stop Haman's plot.
God is the Great Physician not only of our bodies but of our lives. When a Doctor finds a cancer it must be removed before it affects the rest of the body. The Amalekites had a heart that was godless and dark. Israel tried to befriend them, but their hatred for Israel brought them to war against Israel. God knew that this Amalekite cancer would only get worse. Just as a Doctor would never want to remove an arm from a patient, God did not want to kill all the Amalekites. But just as a Doctor does remove a cancerous arm before the cancer spreads and kills the patient; God ordered the Amalekites removed.
God never wants to cause pain in the world or in our lives, but because He knows what the future holds in this world, He does bring pain in order to save us. We can not judge what God does because we can not see what He sees. We can only trust Him and His love for us that it will all works out for good.
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