Now these prophecies or these passages run parallel to the one that opens Malachi's prophecy. God says in Malachi 1,
Now passages like these spur commentators to say stupid things like the God of the Old Testament is mean and vindictive, that He is hateful and unjust, He is warlike and cruel, and then they claim they prefer Jesus, the New Testament God over the Old Testament God, which is just wacky because they are the same Person.
How do we explain this? How do we explain this perpetual hatred? How do we explain His commands to wipe these nations out like Amalek and the Amorites and so forth? Well, Paul gives us a pretty good idea of how to do this in Romans 1 and in Romans 9. Let us start in Romans 1, verses 18 through 23. It is actually a pretty easy concept to understand, but people are pretty obtuse and they do not want to see how simple it can be.
What is he saying? He is saying people know. They know what is right. They know that there is a God. He has shown it to them. If they claim they do not know, they are lying; they are simply remaining willfully ignorant of that, and He says they have no excuse.
So they do not want to worship God because He places restrictions on them. He places responsibilities on them. They ignore His law. They ignore all the ways that He has shown that He is there and He is enforcing His way, and so God says they are without excuse. They have done it to themselves.
These passages give us a theological basis for God doing these things to the Amorites and the Amalekites and others. Paul's overall argument is that God is justified in what He does. I mean, that is pretty simple. God is justified in what He does. He does not do anything wrong. He does not do anything that is unfair or unrighteous. He is God! He sets all the rules. He lives by those rules. He has perfect character. Not only that, He is the Creator. He made us all. He made everything. He made His law known.
So these people are without excuse. They sinned in worshipping other gods, and they sinned in various other ways against others and certainly against His people Israel. And so they are guilty. And because they are guilty, God has every right as Judge of all to punish their iniquities in wrath. He is not being mean. He is giving them what they asked for because they failed to keep His law. They sinned.
And because He is God, He is totally sovereign. He can use whomever He wants to bring that wrath upon sinners. Sometimes He used the nation of Israel - the old nation or kingdom of Israel - to do that. They were His sword. They were the rod of the Lord, and they punished the Canaanites. Sometimes He used Assyria, and He used them to punish Israel; sometimes, to Habakkuk's dismay, He used the terrible Babylonians, the Chaldeans, to punish Israel. He thought that was just terrible. And God says, I can do whatever I want. You guys are sinners. You've been judged, found wanting, and the nation must die.
In addition, because He is God, He is sovereign over all things, He can choose or prepare certain peoples to bring about His plan of redemption. He can choose them to be vessels of mercy and honor, or He can choose them to be vessels of wrath or dishonor. He is God. He can choose whomever He wants. He can enlighten some, He can harden others. And He does this in righteousness according to His holy character, and no one has standing to gainsay His decisions. You have no argument against what He does if He is acting as Judge and He judges righteously and fairly.
Besides, these severe punishments for iniquity are not necessarily eternal. The wages of sin is death. But our God, that same Lord of hosts, the Commander of the armies of the Lord, has overcome death. And He can raise them up in the general resurrection and give them their day of salvation. So in the end, I say this kind of flippantly, but no harm, no foul. He was moving His purpose forward and did that as Commander of the Lord's armies to move the purpose … . . .
