Destroy Your Enemy

    Who is your enemy?  An enemy is your adversary, foe, a hater that seeks to harm you or others.  It sounds extreme to destroy a person even when you don't want to be anywhere near them.  There are evil people out there and they do have to be stopped, but the real enemy is Satan and his demons.  We can't destroy them, only God can do that.  However, we can fight evil where we are.

    When God told Moses to destroy all the Midianite men and he took it seriously.  He knew God wasn't playing and it was not time to stop and think about all the good times.  It was time to make a decision and carry it out.  Moses.gathered his warriors (1,000 men from each tribe= 12,000 men) and armed them for war.  He was determined to clean house before he died.

    Every Midianite man was killed including the five kinds and Balaam (the oracle) who came back to serve his king.  It was not a wise decision on his part.  The women and children were captured and the land plundered as payment of service to the soldiers.  

    Moses was not happy that the women and children survive.  It ultimately meant they would have to wait until the day they grew up and decided to go to war against the Hebrew nation.  These people had led to a plague that wiped out thousands of Hebrews.  How many more needed to die in the future?

    Moses had the soldiers kill all the boys and women that were not virgins.  It was a good day to be virtuous.  It was all he could think of to keep this fight from reoccurring.  He then ordered that all the plunder to be purified by fire or water.  If it could not withstand, then it would be destroyed.  He gave them seven days.  

    From the plunder a portion was given to God.  They understood that they would never have would without Him.  The Hebrews tried to be honorable and merciful through it all.  They did not enjoy the slaughter.  It was what had to be done.  They did not do it for the money, so when the money was divided it was done in an orderly and honest fashion without resentment or arguing.  It was all counted up and organized for the records.

    We do not need to start fights.  We don't have to even finish a fight.  We do need to be in tune enough with God to know how He wants us to handle a fight.  We live in an imperfect world where people argue.  We get our feelings hurt.  The innocent get wounded.  It does not mean we have the right to always destroy our foe.  God will tell us if we have an enemy that needs to be destroyed and if He does, then you better be prepared to carry it out.

Numbers 31