WEDNESDAY April 10, 2019
Mercy for Kindness
Then Saul said to the Kenites, “Go, depart, get down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the children of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.
1 Samuel 15:6
Unlike the Amalekites who ambushed God’s people as they left Egypt, the Kenites showed kindness to them. Saul sought to return the kindness and warned them to leave before he attacked the Amalekite city. Interestingly, Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses lived in the territory of Midian. He was a Midian priest who was believed to belong to a Kenite clan. The Kenites eventually lived among the people of Israel:
Now the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, went up from the City of Palms with the children of Judah into the Wilderness of Judah, which lies in the South near Arad; and they went and dwelt among the people (Judges 1:16).
God would judge the Amalekites because they showed no mercy to Israel, but He showed His mercy to the Kenites in sparing them. In James 2:13, we find this truth: For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
God is merciful. His Word tells us how His mercy has saved us:
For great is Your mercy toward me, and You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol (Psalm 86:13).
But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit… (Titus 3:4-5).
God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of its light, or make space too narrow than to diminish the great mercy of God.
~C.H. Spurgeon~
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