God Most High
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When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.
The hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and afflicted them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory. And when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is hard against us and against Dagon our god.” So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” They answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be brought around to Gath.” So they brought the ark of the God of Israel there. But after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a very great panic, and he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them. So they sent the ark of God to Ekron. But as soon as the ark of God came to Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, “They have brought around to us the ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people.” They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.” For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there. The men who did not die were struck with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
The ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place.” They said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you.” And they said, “What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him?” They answered, “Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for the same plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away, and they departed? Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home, away from them. And take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put in a box at its side the figures of gold, which you are returning to him as a guilt offering. Then send it off and let it go its way and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by coincidence.”
The men did so, and took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth-shemesh along one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh. Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley. And when they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, they rejoiced to see it. The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there. And they split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. And the Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the box that was beside it, in which were the golden figures, and set them upon the great stone. And the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices on that day to the Lord. And when the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned that day to Ekron.
These are the golden tumors that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the Lord: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, one for Ekron, and the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both fortified cities and unwalled villages. The great stone beside which they set down the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh.
And he struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck seventy men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. Then the men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up away from us?” So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you.”
And the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord and brought it to the house of Abinadab on the hill. And they consecrated his son Eleazar to have charge of the ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.
Big themes:
Sovereignty of God
The heart of God vs. the heart of man - it shows us who we really are, Who God really is, and it so clearly shows us our need for Him because of who we are and Who He is!
And once again today, we are going to see these things in a big way, and as we find God in our passage today, I wants us to see how He sovereignly works good, in all circumstances. And how He does what we can’t do.
Because think about what we do. Think about what man does. Think about what we saw last week. The Israelites tried to use God for their own ends. They tried to get God to work their way.
First review the battle, the Ark (given by God to represent His presence) (but used as a token or icon that gave Israel strength - like God would empower them to do things their own way) - the defeat of Israel (their way didn’t work!)
As we saw with Eli and his sons, and the history of Israel, and the condition of the priesthood, and the worship of Israel at this point - almost everything was wrong because they were doing things their way.
But as we have already started to see - God was going to set it right. He would do for His people what they couldn’t do for themselves. Because that’s what our God does.
He had already begun to do that by removing the priesthood as it was and placing Samuel in position to become priest, prophet, and judge in Israel. He took care of the most important in-house problem.
And now God was going to begin to take care of the greatest outward problem, the Philistines. At the end of chapter 4, it looks like the Philistines had won. The earthly circumstances were not seemingly good for God’s people.
But very often, we interpret our own circumstances wrong. Because God is always - ALWAYS - at work to carry out His sovereign - and His good - will. He has a plan, and He has and is and will carry it out.
And we saw Him begin to do that at the end of the last chapter. And He did it, not by giving Israel victory against the Philistines, but defeat. They lost tens of thousands of men, and they lost the Ark. The glory had left Israel.
Everything was going according to God’s plan.
When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon.
Let’s talk some more about Dagon. As Pastor Dave told us last week, Dagon was a half-man, half-fish god.
Here’s Dagon:
Dagon worship has a long history.
Worshiped as early as the third millenium BC in Mesopotamia - Sargon the Great credited Dagon for his conquest of northern Mesopotamia
Early Amorite texts speak of Dagon as one of their chief deities
Hammurabi of Babylon claimed that it was the power of Dagon that gave him military victory
This same Dagon was the god of the Philistines. He was believed to be the god of fertility - both human fertility and the fertility of the land.
As we see when the Philistines captured Samson about 40 years before the events we’re considering today:
Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to rejoice, and they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.”
Now note that even here, if you know the story of Samson that Pastor Dave mentioned last week, God overcame the Philistines not by giving His people victory, but defeat.
God truly uses all circumstances to achieve His will. No matter how it looks to us. God is good, and God is in control.
And here we are again, God has handed His people defeat at the hands of the Philistines, who credit their god for the victory:
When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon.
In the Ancient Near East, it was customary to take the gods or the idols of a defeated enemy and give them to your own god, because it was believed that the victory of one people over another was really the victory of their gods over the gods of those they defeated.
So in this case, Israel brought the Ark into the battle - a representation of their God - and because they were defeated, the Philistines take their “idol” and present it to their god.
And don’t miss that what Israel did here, was act just like the nations around them. They treated the Ark like an idol.
And please realize, that when ancient peoples like the Philistines made statues or idols of gods like Dagon, they were not dumb enough to think that the idol they created was actually a god. They believed the god was a real entity, and the idol or the statue was a physical representation of the god, and that the god would place his presence in the idol or statue.
They would make the idol, pray to the god, and he would then make his presence with them in the man-made vessel.
And this is exactly what God did with the Ark. He had the Ark made with the mercy seat and the Cherubim as a representation of His presence, and He then places His presence there, in the Holy of Holies.
God used many already recognized customs and forms of worship when He revealed Himself to Israel.
But here’s the big difference. Whereas all the other nations would make their vessel and call their god to them, and hope that he would come and reveal himself to them…
…God revealed Himself to His people, commanded the Ark be made, and He placed His presence there, and then called His people to Him. That’s amazing. God brought His presence to His people and then called them to Him.
But Israel treated the Ark no different than the Philistines treated their statue of Dagon. They thought they could bring their “idol” and call God to them there.
But that isn’t how the true God works.
And Israel was defeated. And the Philistines believed Dagon conquered the god of Israel - remember, we saw this in the last chapter:
As soon as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded. And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shouting, they said, “What does this great shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean?” And when they learned that the ark of the Lord had come to the camp, the Philistines were afraid, for they said, “A god has come into the camp.” And they said, “Woe to us! For nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness.
This was a battle of the gods to them. So to them, their victory over Israel was really Dagon’s victory over YHWH.
Now back to Dagon for a moment. In the lore of Dagon, he is said to be subservient only to one god. And the same is said of Baal in Canaanite lore. They are both subject to a supreme God who is named, in both cases, El. Which is a name used of God in the Bible that is usually used when combined with descriptions of His attributes - like El-Shaddai, God Almighty, or El-Elyon - God Most High.
Why is this important?
Well, in order to understand what is going on in our passage today, we need to understand not only the worldview of both the Philistines and the Israelites, but what the Bible says about the spiritual reality behind the physical world.
And let me try to peak your interest in this by telling you right up front, that to the Philistines, and to the Israelites, and according to the Bible - Dagon was real. He wasn’t made up. He wasn’t a statute. He was, in fact, what the Bible calls a god. He was a real heavenly being.
Now before you run me out of town with pitchforks and torches, let me explain. And if you are part off our Tuesday Revelation study, this is all going to be old news to you, so bear with me.
When God created man: man, God, and angels lived together in Eden. This is why when Satan shows up and speaks to Adam and Eve, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Eve is not at all freaked out that some heavenly being is speaking with her.
And God tells man that our job is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth - that we are to spread our perfect image of God over the earth - to make the world like the Garden where God, man, and angel dwelt together.
But we know that one of those angels - Satan - sinned against God, and then he convinced man to join his rebellion against God.
And because sin then becomes the norm on earth, God destroys man with a flood, and tells the survivors to restart human creation and fill the earth and multiply. But sin is still the norm, and instead of filling the earth and subduing it, all these sinners come together at Babel to be in one place and reach heaven themselves - to try themselves to regain what they had lost.
So God separates man - He does what He told man to do, and fills the earth He created with man that He created. But there’s more to it. Because God at that point is saying to man - “fine, have it your way. Do it your way. I’m done with you.” And He disinherits man. He throws them into all these nations and tells the angels to take care of them.
And God calls only one nation out of all the world to be His. He has Israel, and other heavenly beings - angels - have charge of the rest of the world.
As we read in Deuteronomy:
explain “Sons of God”
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
But the Lord’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
So God sends the nations away from Him, puts angels over them, and He takes for Himself just one people.
And while the Bible is silent on when and how, for the most part - these heavenly beings over the nations joined Satan - and man - in our rebellion against God.
So when Israel was called by God, the rest of the world was given to angels. Every nation was alloted their gods. And the Bible calls these beings gods.
And Israel was told not to worship these gods, or bad things would happen. He tells them that if they disobey and they wind up losing the land and losing Him - which they eventually do - it will be for one reason:
all the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them.
And both the book of Deuteronomy and the New Testament reveal that these “gods” are really demons - rebellious angels.
So Dagon - like Baal, or Molech, or Bel, or any of these foreign deities we read about in the Bible - is not made up. He is a demon - a heavenly being - that is literally over the territories of the Philistines because God made it so.
And we need to understand that, to understand what’s happening here. This is a spiritual battle between gods. And YHWH is going to prove to Israel, to the Philistines, and to the false gods of the world that He is El-Shaddai and El-Elyon.
He is still the sovereign and all-powerful God of the whole creation - man and angel.
And no matter how man distorts that. No matter how we treat even God like just another idol. No matter what our circumstances may lead us to believe. God is the only true God, and He is in control, and He is working all things for His own purposes.
Now, let’s see how He does that here. First, God shows Dagon Who really has the power:
Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.
So the Philistines bring the “idol” of the Israelites into Dagon’s temple and present it to him. In their minds, he defeated the God of Israel, and now the God of Israel was subservient to him.
But here’s the thing. Dagon knows YHWH. He knows He is God all powerful. Dagon knows that YHWH is God Most High.
And while this may just be a case of God using physical objects to prove a point, I don’t think that’s the case. I think that Dagon - the actual demon-god of the Philistines - realizes Who it is He is dealing with, and he does what we see demons in the New Testament do.
He falls down before God Most High and says - like Legion said to Jesus - “I beg You, do not torment me.”
Dagon knows who is subservient to Who here.
So he literally - and symbolically with the statue - bows before God and pleads for mercy.
But he receives none. The Philistines find their idol face down before the God of Israel, and they put him back in his place. At least, the place they believe he belongs - in the place of prominence.
And the next day, Dagon has bowed himself before YHWH yet again. But now, Dagon’s head and Dagon’s hands are removed and lying on the threshold of the Temple.
God is, as I said, setting things right. Like He has been from the moment sin entered the world.
And just like God revealed Himself to Israel - whom He called as His own - through His salvation, here, He reveals Himself to the Philistines through judgment.
Just like God cleansed His Temple of the unworthy priests, God cleanses this temple. Just like God ordained that Eli should fall over and break his neck, delivering the judgment He promised, God here breaks the neck of Dagon to deliver judgment.
And it was customary in the ancient near east that when a king would conquer his enemy, he would take the heads and the hands of some of the fallen to signify that they have been totally eliminated - forgotten through defeat. They were unidentifiable without their heads and hands. It showed they were utterly destroyed- that their memory would be wiped out from the earth.
And in ancient texts, we see that some of the gods would do this to their enemies. The gods would defeat men and take their heads and hands to signify their utter defeat.
Here, the true King has defeated an enemy - not a man, but a false god - and He has shown Who reigns supreme, and Who has the power to utterly defeat who.
And note that the hands and head of the statue are on the threshold of the temple.
In the Ancient Near East - and throughout the Bible - the threshold of a dwelling - the main doorway - signalled the separation of what was holy from what was not.
When you broke the threshold - whether in the Temple or in the homes of God’s people - you went from unholy to holy territory, or from holy to unholy.
Like, the blood of the lamb on the doorway protected the holy people during the judgment of the unholy.
Like, God told His people to write the law on the gates of their cities and the doorposts of their houses so that people would know they were entering into a holy place when they were among God’s people.
Like, Ezekiel sees the glory of God leave the Temple in Jerusalem, and God goes from over the Ark - to the threshold - and then leaves. When He breaks the threshold, He’s gone.
Like, Ezekiel sees the glory of God fill the New Temple - the glory of God comes, stops on the threshold, and He enters. When He breaks the threshold, He is present.
The threshold - the doorway of the Temple - pictures the spiritual threshold that signified the presence of God.
Here in the temple of Dagon, the defeated remnants of the image of Dagon are on the threshold.
Because God is showing the Philistines that Dagon has left the building. He has been defeated. God has proven that Dagon - the demon “god” of the Philistines - is really powerless before God Most High.
As Moses sang when He saw such a display of power:
“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
God shows again and again that there are none among the gods like Him.
He just showed Dagon.
Now, God will show His power over man.
The hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and afflicted them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory.
God now strikes the Philistines.
And they know it. They know Dagon has been defeated and now YHWH has turned His attention to them:
And when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is hard against us and against Dagon our god.”
So what do they do? They kick the can down the road, so to speak. The people of Ashdod send the Ark to Gath - one of the other five cities of the Philistines. And what happens?
But after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a very great panic, and he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them.
So they send the Ark to Ekron - another of the five cities.
And they say:
1 Samuel 5:10–12 (ESV)
“They have brought around to us the ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people.” They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.” For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there. The men who did not die were struck with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
They say “okay guys, enough is enough. Let’s stop doing this and send the Ark back to Israel already. God is killing us off, and giving us these tumors.”
Now note that we are told twice that the punishment of the tumors affected the men of the Philistines. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
So now the Philistines are panicked. They want the God of Israel out of their territory and back in Israel - His territory. He has proven His power over their god, and He has proven His power over them.
So they need a plan:
And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place.”
They call their holy men - their priests and prophets - and they ask what they should do.
They said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you.” And they said, “What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him?” They answered, “Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for the same plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land.
So a few things to notice. God, as we saw, was killing off some of the Philistines. We see here that this plague was spreading via mice. So like the pagans would do, when they were afflicted by something, they would make an image of it out of precious metal, and offer it to their gods to appease them in the hopes that they would remove the affliction from them.
This was their attempt to appease YHWH and have Him stop the plague.
But those men who God did not kill, we are told, were struck with tumors, and here in addition to the images of mice, they are to make golden images of the tumors to try to appease God and have Him remove them from the men.
Have you ever read this and wondered what exactly golden replicas of tumors would look like?
Well, there is a play on words happening here. Let’s talk about these tumors.
The word here that is translated as “tumor” can mean:
tumor
boil
hemorrhoid
abscess
It refers to any protruding skin ailment. Because the word means a bulge or protrusion. The word is used in ancient writings to describe things like a hill or even a tower.
But, it is believed to have also been used euphemistically to refer to the male reproductive organ.
So what’s going on here?
Well, remember what the Philistines said about the tumors:
1 Samuel 5:11 (ESV)
“Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.”
God had already defeated the god of the Philistines. He symbolized his utter destruction with the removal of the head and hands - signalling that he would be remembered no more.
Now He was striking the people, and they are not just worried about the disease and the tumors - they are worried about being utterly wiped out as a people.
These tumors or boils or whatever they were, were affecting men. But not just men - this was a disease affecting the male reproductive organs.
And the golden images they made to appease God were not the tumors, they were images of the affected body part.
In the 1990s, archeologists unearthed in Ashkelon - one of the five cities of the Philistines - idols of the male reproductive organ in a temple. And according to ancient writings, these would be made as offerings to the gods to grant fertility to men.
Now remember, Dagon was the god of - what? Fertility.
The Philistines were in a panic because their fertility god had been defeated and now the God of Israel made them infertile.
Do you see what God is doing here?
YHWH is showing them that Dagon is no god. He is showing them that there is One Who has power over life, and that is YHWH. He is showing them that it is in His power alone to give life and withhold life - to let them live or die as a people.
Just as God sovereignly granted Hannah the ability to have children, here, He takes that away from the men of the Philistines.
So, giving back the Ark was a matter of life and death for the Philistine people. They did not want their memory wiped out from the face of the earth.
So they are going to make offerings they would typically offer to Dagon - and they are offering them to YHWH - the Most High God.
As the priests said:
So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away, and they departed?
The Philistines know the deal. Everyone in the area knew what happened in Egypt. As we saw, they already said that the Ark represented the God that won victory over Egypt with every sort of plague.
They were now seeing plagues first hand. And now they realize - their gods have no more power against YHWH than the Egyptian gods did. As God said to Israel at the Exodus, He would send a final plague:
Exodus 12:12 (ESV)
I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.
This was now happening to Dagon and the Philistines.
But the priests want to make sure that they are interpreting these events correctly.
Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home, away from them. And take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put in a box at its side the figures of gold, which you are returning to him as a guilt offering. Then send it off and let it go its way and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by coincidence.”
The priests want to make absolutely sure that this is YHWH doing this and that they aren’t in their own heads.
So they take the Ark, and their offerings, and take two milk cows and yoke them together to carry the Ark.
These cows were not beasts of burden. They weren’t plow cattle. They made baby cows and milk. And here, they take two that have calves - babies - who would be nursing, and they put a yoke on them - which these cows have never had done to them - and use them to return the Ark.
Why?
Because any female mammal that just gave birth would instinctively do only one thing: take care of her baby. These cows wouldn’t just leave their babies. And these cows have never been yoked - they wouldn’t just walk calmly in the same direction together. Cows are trained to pull plows and carry loads together - they have to get used to the yoke.
So by all rights, these two cows - under any and every normal circumstance - would be brought together and yoked, and they would try to fight their way out and get back to their babies. Under no natural circumstances would they calmly leave and abandon their babies.
But as we have seen, these are supernatural circumstances:
The men did so, and took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth-shemesh along one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh.
These two cows do what they would never do. They leave their babies, walk yoked together like it’s their day job, and head straight for Israel.
YHWH shows the Philistines that He is sovereign over everything. Animals, man, angels - them, their gods - everything.
And in His sovereign power, God undid what sinful man did. This is His heart for man.
Man treated Him and the Ark like the nations treat their gods. And Israel lost the Ark - the presence of God - because of it. The glory had left Israel.
So God made it right. He made it right, by once again, coming to His people Himself.
And the Israelites see the Ark, and rejoice. Then they use the wood from the box that held the images, burn it and offer the two cows as a burnt offering to God. The Ark has returned!
And the Philistines go on home, satisfied that it was indeed the hand of YHWH and that they had sufficiently appeased Him.
All was well again, right?
Wrong.
And he struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck seventy men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow.
Israel got the Ark back - God saw to it. But we see that they haven’t learned a thing.
Remember, they treated God and the Ark like the other nations - like the Philistines - treated their gods and their idols.
And here, they offer burnt offerings to God in a way and a place that He did not approve. All of this was to be done in the Tabernacle, where His presence dwelt. Where they should have left the Ark to begin with.
In fact, God forbids in Numbers 4 even looking upon the Ark under penalty of death. Here, God stands by His word.
This punishment on the men of Israel is for everything they did. They treated the Ark like an idol. They sacrificed to God according to their own will.
They treated God like the nations treated their gods.
So God treats them like the nations. Like He struck the Philistines, He strikes Israel. God treating Israel like the nations is a recurring theme in the Old Testament. Because Israel acting like the nations is a recurring theme in the Old Testament.
Like we see here. They offer God what they want, their way, and He punishes them like He punished the Philistines.
And what does Israel do? Just again act just like the Philistines. They kick the can down the road:
Then the men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up away from us?” So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you.”
Just like the Philistines - “let’s take it out of our city and make it someone else’s problem.”
We are already seeing how Israel would rather be like the nations than God’s chosen people. We are already seeing how their worship has tended towards false worship rather than God’s commanded worship.
Think about it: the Philistines recognized God’s hand of judgment on them. And they just wanted to be rid of God.
And Israel’s reaction is the same. They don’t repent. They don’t worship God His way. They just want Him to go away.
And we are already seeing the result. God removes His presence them:
And the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord and brought it to the house of Abinadab on the hill. And they consecrated his son Eleazar to have charge of the ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.
And we see patterns established here.
We will see more and more that Israel wants to do things their way.
We will see that Israel more and more wants to be like the nations around them.
We will see more and more God’s hand of judgment on Israel for their failure to be holy unto Him.
We will see more and more God threaten to remove His presence from them permanently if they do not honor Him and worship Him His way.
And if we’re looking, we will see more and more, God work out His plan of salvation through it all. Through highs and lows. Through times of revival and times of near apostacy. Through good godly leaders, and through wicked kings that are pawns of Satan.
Because God works all things out to save people that would rather go their own way.
And I am so thankful that He does.
And what we see in this passage, once again, is man’s heart, and God’s heart.
The heart of man wants to go his own way. Do things his own way. We’ve seen that throughout the entire book so far. We saw it last week in how Israel used the Ark. We see it here in how they again treat the Ark.
And that reflects their heart towards God. The Ark is not an idol. It is a gift of God to represent His presence.
And Israel abused the gift and did what they wanted.
We see it in the man-made worship of demon deceived people. The Philistines were religious, in a sense, but they didn’t know the true God. So they worshiped their way. They worshiped what they wanted, how they wanted.
And when God showed up, they just wanted Him to go away.
You see, even though He reveals Himself so clearly, still the heart of man just wants Him to go away. To leave us to our own devices.
This is the heart of man.
And then we see God’s heart. His heart is for man. Remember: He is better to us than we are to ourselves.
So God’s heart leads Him to do what man cannot.
Israel lost the Ark. They were defeated by the Philistines.
So God defeats the Philistines. He defeats their god. And He returns the Ark to Israel Himself. They couldn’t do it, so He did.
God’s heart for man leads Him to make things right where man has gone wrong.
A wicked priesthood was replaced by God with a righteous one. We will see as the book unfolds - God will replace wicked leadership with godly leadership and lead His people back to Him.
This is what our God does, because His heart is for us.
God’s heart for man, leads Him to use every circumstance in this world to save.
Even in defeat, God gives victory.
God here allowed fallen man to do things his way and fall to the enemy. Just like He did in the Garden. But God used man’s defeat, as a path to His victory.
And just like God won victory over Dagon and the sinful Philistines through defeat, so He defeated Satan and sin through the physical defeat of One sinless Man on a cross.
And using - literally - the most horrible event in human history from an earthly point of view, God achieved the greatest victory ever won.
Because, once again, He came to His people Himself. He brought the glory to us. And He placed His presence in a vessel not of the finest crafted gold, but of weak human flesh.
And He allowed Himself to fall in physical defeat, but used it to overcome the god of this world.
God set things right.
And now, like He has done from the very beginning - God calls us to Him.
Brothers and sisters, God has done everything. And He has revealed Himself as He truly is. He is El-Shaddai - He has all the power. And in His sovereign power, He gave Himself for our sins.
He is El-Elyon - He is God Most High. He is exalted. He is glorified. He is the reigning King.
Will we bow ourselves before Him? Will we come to Him Who calls?
God is, as I said, setting things right. He has been from the moment sin entered the world. He was during the failures and successes of Israel. He did it ultimately in Christ. He will yet do it completely and finally at His return when the Garden will cover the whole New Heaven and New Earth.
And until then… here we are. And God is doing it through us - through His church.
That was His plan all along.
So here’s my question today.
We see how Israel would rather be like the nations than God’s chosen people. We see how those He called did not live according to the calling of God Most High.
Why?
Because He wasn’t most high to them.
I ask you this morning: what is most high to you?
Is it what this world has to offer? Is it what the people around us value? Is it our own way or our own plans?
Or is it El-Elyon - the sovereign God of the universe, Who came as one of us to do what we couldn’t do, and to set right what we did wrong?
If you have been going your own way, God is still God, and He is ready and He is able to make things right. Because we can’t do it.
But Jesus Christ did.