Recap

Things are bad in Israel, from top to bottom. There is no king, everybody’s doing what is right in their own eyes, from the common person all the way to the spiritual leadership of Israel, Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas.

Through an anonymous prophet, God had proclaimed his judgment on Eli’s house, for the way they had abused His house, and the people in it. Then he reconfirmed his judgment through the first prophecy of Israel’s new prophet, Samuel.

Chapter 3 starts with the phrase, “The word of the Lord was rare in those days”, but it ends in a much better place:

All Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba [Maine to SoCal] knew that Samuel was a confirmed prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear in Shiloh, because there he revealed himself to Samuel by his word. And Samuel’s words came to all Israel.

1 Samuel 3:20–4:1

That’s good news—literally! God’s word is no longer rare. Now Israel has a prophet for the first time in generations. Now maybe they’re starting to turn a corner. What will happen next with this young prophet?

And then he just disappears for three and a half chapters. Which is the section we’re going to tackle this AM/PM. So let’s get to it!

The main character in chapters 4–6 is not Samuel, it’s the ark of the covenant. Or rather, the God of the covenant, whose presence is represented by the ark.

We talked about the ark of the covenant for a minute last week. It was a rectangular box, around 4 feet long and 2.5 feet wide and deep, made out of acacia wood and overlayed with gold. In it were the Ten Commandments, a jar of manna from the wilderness, and Moses’ brother Aaron’s staff.

The lid of this box was known as the Mercy Seat, and instead of being just overlayed with gold, it was solid gold. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest would come in and sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice for the forgiveness of the people’s sin.

I loved the way Eugene Peterson put it in his commentary:

The ark of the covenant gave a hard, historical focus to the revealed character of the God that Israel worshipped. It was a visibility that kept them focused on the invisible.

At least, that’s what it was supposed to do.

Story, Part 1

The beginning of chapter 4 is where our story begins today. It says…

Israel went out to meet the Philistines in battle…

1 Samuel 4:1

Israel battled other nations around them in their history, but the Philistines are really their arch enemy, the thorn in their side. They’re the ones who put up the hardest fight and stick around the longest.

The Philistines had a monopoly on iron, which they mainly used to make weapeans. As archeologists have uncovered their cities, one of the most common artifacts they’ve found are beer jugs.

So when you think Philistines, think fierce fighters and
hard drinkers—those things seem to go together somehow.

On this day, they lived up to that reputation. They soundly defeat Israel, and on that one day, there are 4,000 casulties.

In verse 3, we catch up with the leaders of Israel in their post-battle debrief, and look at what they say:

“Why did the Lord defeat us today before the Philistines?

1 Samuel 4:3

It’s interesting, they’ve actually got a right understanding of the events. They didn’t ask “why did the Philistines defeat us today?” It’s “why did the Lord defeat us in front of the Philistines today?” And they’re right in their deduction, it was ultimately the Lord who was in control.

So while they may have had the correct deduction of the day’s events, look at their terrible solution in the very next sentence.

“Why did the Lord defeat us today before the Philistines? Let’s bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh. Then it will go with us and save us from our enemies.”

1 Samuel 4:3

So pretty soon, here come the deadbeat brothers from last week, Hophni and Phinehas, carrying the ark of the covenant down to the army encampment. When arrived, the army got so pumped, they let out such a yell that the ground shook.

Which obviously got the attention of the soldiers on the other side
of the line. When they find out why the Israelites are suddenly so excited, they’re terrified. Even though it’s been 200+ years, the story
of what God had done to the Egyptians still weighed on their minds. They said, “Woe is us! Nothing like this has ever happened before!”
This God has a reputation.

But rather than making them back down, it actually made them bolder.

“Be strong and act like men, you Philistines, or else you will
wind up serving the Hebrews the way they have served you!
Act like men and fight!”

1 Samuel 4:9, NET

And you can imagine what happened next; it was an absolute bloodbath.

So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and each man fled to his tent. (running home to mamma!) The slaughter was severe—thirty thousand of the Israelite foot soldiers fell. The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

1 Samuel 4:10–11

So here’s the first point for this AM/PM…

1. God’s mercy will not be manipulated.

The Israelites thought they could guarantee a victory if the ark was with them.

They were treating this most sacred article of worship, this throne so holy that only the high priest would go near it once a year, this reminder of their relationship with Yahweh God, all He had done for them, all He had meant to them, like a good luck charm.

It was basically their gold-covered rabbit’s foot.

And that is not the way God works. Ever. They were supposed to be relying on His Spirit, not on superstition. But that’s exactly what they’re doing. Look again at what they said in verse 3:

“Why did the Lord defeat us today before the Philistines? Let’s bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh. Then it will
go with us and save us from our enemies.”

1 Samuel 4:3

Not He, not the Lord our God. It—the ark.

There is no evidence that anyone prayed that day… the God who was revealed as personal and sovereign at Midian and Sinai had been traded for a god-in-a-box that the leaders thought could work magic against the Philistines at Aphek.

Eugene Peterson

Human beings have a natural bent toward superstition. Every culture throughout all time has had superstitions.

Thankfully, as Christians we don’t have any superstitions… knock on wood!

The unfortunate reality is that we still have that tendancy within us.

I asked some pastors on Reddit this week for their pet peeve Christian superstitions. The post ended up with 291 comments as of this morning.

No lie, I was reading over, replying, and laughing at all these comments, and then got in my car to go over to the park and write this sermon. As I turned onto Cleveland St, I looked down and the trip meter in the car switched over to 666! Turned around and went home! (not really)

Which is easier to deal with, facts or relationships?

When believers resort to superstitions, most of the time what we’re doing the good thing in the wrong way, with the wrong motivations.

Right things are wrong without the relationship. Our personal God cannot be reduced to an impersonal power.

It’s the sneakiest form of the prosperity gospel.

The Christian life is often difficult and complex. Superstition boils down that complexity to a simple input-output equation.

Scott Redd

We are called to rely on the Spirit, not superstition.

Story, Part 2 (4:12-5:7)

As Israel is retreating and getting slaughtered by the Philistines in the process, one of the soldiers comes running back to Shiloh. He’s a mess—his clothes are torn, there’s dirt on his head, and he’s just run a marathon back to the city (it was around 20 miles).

All day long, Eli’s been sitting in a chair out by the road. He’s worried about the battle; worried about his sons, no doubt; but most of all, he’s worried about the safety of the ark of the covenant.

But he’s also 98 years old at this point, completely blind, so he doesn’t see the messenger coming down the road. The soldier blows right by him into the town square and tells everyone what’s happened. And the people are so horrified, they all cried out, loud enough tha Eli ask, “Why all this commotion?”

So the man comes back to Eli and says, “I’ve just
come from the battlefield—I fled from there today.”

Eli says, “What happened, my son?”

And the messenger gives him the news, from bad, to worse, to worst:

“Israel has fled from the Philistines, and also there was a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are both dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”

1 Samuel 4:17

The judgment on Eli’s house that God had promised twice in chapter 3 has been fulfilled—both his sons died on the same day. And worse than that, the ark of God had been captured.

When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off the chair by the city gate, and since he was old and heavy, his neck broke and he died. Eli had judged Israel forty years.

1 Samuel 4:18

In verse 19—22, we learn that Eli’s daughter-in-law, Phinehas’s wife,
was pregnant. When she heard that her husband and father-in-law were both dead, and that the ark of the covenant had been captured,
the shock caused her to go into early labor. That’s never a good thing,
the birth does not go well, and she doesn’t make it.

But as she’s dying, the women who were with her say, “Don’t be afraid. You’ve given birth to a son!” But it doesn’t make any difference to her. With her dying breath, she named her son Ichabod, which means “no glory”.

“The glory has departed from Israel,” she said,
“because the ark of God has been captured.”

1 Samuel 4:22

Which brings us to our second point this AM/PM. Not only will…

  1. God’s mercy will not be manipulated.

2. God’s glory will not be maligned.

These men had made a mockery of the worship of God. They had abused God’s people by stealing from their offering before they could even offer it. They were sexual predators who had used their status to sleep with the women who served as the greeters in the temple. They had taken what was holy, and made it profane.

God promised that judgment was coming,
and now it has arrived in full force.

Not only can you not manipulate God into doing what you want, you cannot malign the glory of his name and get away with it. Not for long.

Story, Part 3

At the beginning of chapter 5, we switch scenes, from the Israelites reaction to the Philistines. And needless to say, they’re pumped.

Most people in that time were polytheistic—they worshipped all kinds of gods. They’d have gods for the various natural elements (weather, crops, etc), as well as national/regional gods. And if one nation would defeat another, it was just understood that your god had defeated theirs.

But when they conquered another nation, they wouldn’t just get rid of that god. Oh no, they were much too superstitious for that. I mean, what if this nation’s god turns out to be the NFL god, or the god of dessert, or something? You don’t want to offend him, or else your team will be cursed (espescially in Jacksonville!), and you won’t even be able to binge away your sorrow in a bowl of ice cream!

So since they’d so soundly defeated the people of Israel, they naturally assumed they’d defeated the God of Israel, as well. After all, they had the primary object in Israel’s temple! But even though he’s been defeated, go ahead and bring him into our temple and put him up next to our other gods.

After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod, brought it into the temple of Dagon and placed it next to his statue. When the people of Ashdod got up early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen with his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and returned him to his place.

1 Samuel 5:1–3

I’ve mentioned the past few weeks how these narrative parts of the
Bible are more show than tell; here the message is being demonstrated in dramatic fashion! Dagon is no match for the God of Israel. He is the God above all gods.

But when they got up early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen with his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. This time, Dagon’s head and both of his hands were broken off and lying on the threshold. Only Dagon’s torso remained.

1 Samuel 5:4

Well dog-gone, Dagon!

This may be one of the most hilarious depictions of God’s glory
in the whole Bible. I love it. But it gets even better…

The Lord’s hand was heavy on the people of Ashdod. He terrified the people of Ashdod and its territory and afflicted them with tumors. When the people of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, “The ark of Israel’s God must not stay here with us, because his hand is strongly against us and our god Dagon.”

1 Samuel 5:6–7

Don’t miss the delicious irony in those verses:

Yahweh is showing off His complete and utter superiority over Dagon.

Also, about these tumors, that’s one of a couple possible translations. I won’t go into all the details (ask me later if you’re curious), but if you happen to be reading the KJV, you’ll see it says, “and he smote them with emerods”. What’s an emrod? An Old English word for… hemorrhoids!

So the people in this city of Ashdod are miserable, (here’s what one of their roadside stands might have looked like!) and quickly realize that keeping the ark of the God of Israel was not in their best interest. What do they do with it? Pass it on to the next town down the road, Gath.

But pretty soon the people of Gath have had enough, too…
so they send it on down the line to Ekron. Look at their response:

The Ekronites called all the Philistine rulers together. They said, “Send the ark of Israel’s God away. Let it return to its place so it won’t kill us and our people!” For the fear of death pervaded the city; God’s hand was oppressing them.

1 Samuel 5:11

The ark of the covenant has went from the
spoils of war to a nation-wide game of hot potato.

Chapter 6 is the story of the ark’s return back home.

The Philistines get all their priests and diviners and ask them “What should we do about the ark of the Lord? How are we supposed to return it back to it’s own country?

The response was equal parts correct and bizzare. They said, “Don’t send it back without a guilt offering to Israel’s God.” So they knew they were guilty, and they knew there had to be an offering to make it right. And they say…

“Give glory to Israel’s God, and perhaps he will stop oppressing you, your gods, and your land. Why harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened theirs?”

1 Samuel 6:5–6

Sounds pretty good, right? Until you see their suggestion of what the offering should be, where everything goes off the rails!

“Five gold tumors and five gold mice corresponding to the number of Philistine rulers, since there was one plague for both you and your rulers. Make images of your tumors and of your mice that are destroying the land.”

1 Samuel 6:4

Tumors. Golden tumors, or in the KJV, “ye shall make images of your emerods…” You can’t even make this stuff up. There had to be some Philistine sculpters sitting there going, “What am I doing with my life?!”

The priests and diviners they’re consulting are still not 100% convinced that all this trouble is from the Lord—maybe it’s just a coincidence. So they devise a plan.

So that’s what they do, and of course, the cows make
a beeline for Israel, mooing along the way.

Meanwhile, in the border town of Beth-shemesh, the people are working in their fields, when they hear a noise. Can you imagine the scene? “Hey, Josh, what’s that coming up the road? There’s a cart, but there’s no driver. And what’s that on the cart? The sun’s reflecting off it so much I can’t even tell what it is!”

6:13 say the people were overjoyed to see it. They chopped up the cart and the cows and used them as a burnt offering to the Lord. The Philistines rulers watched what happened, and then turned around and… waddled home.

Whew! That’s quite a ride, huh? Finally, after seven months, the ark is back home in Israel.

What’s the point of all this?

  1. God’s mercy will not be manipulated.
  2. God’s glory will not be maligned.

Not by Dagon.
Not by the Philistines.
Not by the Israelites.
Not by you or me.

I am the Lord! That is my name!
I will not share my glory with anyone else,
or the praise due me with idols.

Isaiah 42:8, NET
  1. God’s mercy will not be manipulated.
  2. God’s glory will not be maligned.

3. God’s victory will not be missed.

Where did this whole escapade with the ark start? With Israel going to battle with the Philistines. They wanted to drive them back, to march through Philistia and take back the cities that had been captured from Israel.

And they superstitiously thought that if they just had the ark with them, then God would have to help them win. He would have to defeat their enemies.

After all, He was the one who had told them to drive the Philistines out when they first came into the Promised Land 200+ years before. He had promised that he would be with them, go before them, and defeat their enemies.

What they’d forgotten was that those promises were contigent on obedience, on their keeping the covenant. Which they hadn’t. His word was rare. Everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes.

The ark would defeat the Philistines… but God would do it all by Himself, without their help.

This will become even more important in the story next week, but in the context of where Samuel is going, it’s clear: this is God’s victory march through the Philistine cities.

They couldn’t win the victory by themselves, they needed a God who would do it for them. Sound familiar?

Everything is right in the world again. You’d think so, wouldn’t you… except that back in that wheat field outside Beth-shemesh, after the people rejoiced and worshipped at the miraculous return of the ark, some of them got a little curious. Wouldn’t you? What does manna really look like? What does God’s handwriting on the Ten Commandments look like?

This was the ark of the covenant. It was to be kept in the holy of holies, approached by one man one time a year. They treated the representation of God’s presence in Israel like a relic, a museum piece, a sideshow.

And God judged them for it—he struck down 70 people in their town because they looked inside the ark. And of course, the people mourned because the Lord had struck down so many in their town.

The people of Beth-shemesh asked, “Who is able to stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom should the ark go from here?”

1 Samuel 6:20

That’s the same question we face. Who is able to stand in His presence?

He is a holy God.

There’s only one who was able to stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God.

What is the Dagon in your life—make it bow before the God above all Gods this morning. He doesn’t share His glory with any idol.

  1. God’s mercy will not be manipulated.
  2. God’s glory will not be maligned.
  3. God’s victory will not be missed.