May 31, 2008
A sermon by Mike Woodruff (Lake Forest, IL) on 1 Sam. 15 and the question of the Amalekites:
There comes a time in most everyone’s life when they realize that they just are not as good as they thought they were. They are not as fast or as strong as they imagined, not as smart or as popular or whatever. For people who coast through high school, reality sets in during their first year at college. For some who coast through college, reality sets in during their first year of grad school.
When I was ten I played in my first tennis tournament. To say I expected to win is not half of it. Nike was still only a figment of Phil Knight’s imagination, but I fully expected him to sign me to a contract on the spot. I lost 6–0 in the first round.
For some of you, this message will have that kind of shock value. In order to understand how much God loves us, and how amazing his grace is, and how unbelievably good the Good News is, we have to understand how much trouble we are in—how fallen and rebellious we are. It is not pretty. The descent is steep. But the other side is amazing, and we realize what a King we serve.
God commands that the Amalekites be destroyed.
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May 7, 2008
Taken from Dr. Constable’s notes on Deuteronomy:
“The ceremonial custom of boiling a kid in its mother’s milk is known from the ancient Canaanite tablets found at Ugarit [i.e., the Ras Shamra Tablets]. Such a rite was superstitiously observed by the Canaanites, hoping that through magical acts they could increase fertility and productivity (14:21; Ex. 23:19; 34:26).”
161
“. . . various Canaanite cults regularly engaged in the practices of seething a kid in its mother’s milk as a fertility rite of sympathetic magic intended to coerce the deity into granting fertility to the wives, fields, and flocks of the cults’
adherents. Such rites of sympathetic magic ‘worked’ on the premise that the gods were in some way part of and subject to the same natural created order that human beings also inhabited. By finding the common natural connection points, human beings could ‘push the right buttons’ and thus manipulate the gods . . .
“Israelites do not, through an act of sympathetic magic, try to
coerce the deity into blessing them with fertility for the year to come; but instead, after the year’s crops have been harvested and whether that year’s harvest has been fruitful or not, Israelites bring a tithe to God as an act of gratitude [cf. vv. 22-29].” 162
Samuel J. Schultz, Deuteronomy, p. 55.
162
Michael L. Goldberg, “The Story of the Moral: Gifts or Bribes in Deuteronomy?” Interpretation 38:1 (January 1984):21-22.
April 25, 2008
i was going through this in devotions this morning. What does it mean? Context helps us here:
In Deuteronomy 14 the broad context is what does it mean to take the Lord’s name (be a part of His people) and not do that in vain. Both in Deuteronomy 14 and Exo. 23 the immediate context is on tithing. Giving back to the Lord his due.
The picture also helps. The mother’s milk would be the sustenance provided for the kid as well as for the family. The kid is itself a picture of God’s provision through goat herding.
I think the meaning is that we should not use all of God’s provision for our own purposes because we are God’s people.
