The Glory of God

Prayer

No Glory

We’re back in the story of 1 Samuel, making our way through the bigger story of the Old Testament, the story of the people of Israel. We left off last week with Samuel being called by God to serve as his prophet, one who would speak God’s word to his people. It wasn’t Samuel’s only role, he also serves as a priest and will end up serving as the judge. But not quite yet, Eli is still the main priest, along with his two sons, the evil ones, Hophni and Phinehas.

Today we’re going to look at 1 Samuel 4-7, which is the final story before we move into the anointing of the first king. We start with the Israelites fighting against the Philistines. The two armies engage in battle and it does not go well for Israel - 4,000 of their men are killed. And that defeat leads to this, vs. 3, When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, “Why did the Lord bring defeat on us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh, so that he may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.”

This turns out to be a very bad idea. They send men to go get the ark of the covenant and who should accompany it? Eli’s sons, Hophni & Phinehas. Israel gets very excited when the ark arrives - which panics the Philistines. What’s interesting here is that their fear is rooted in the recognition of the great deeds God has done - they know this is the God who struck down the Egyptians with the plagues (which by this time happened several hundred years earlier). But they don’t recoil in fear, they are determined to fight - and fight they do.

The two armies go to battle again and it ends even worse for the Israelites, vv. 10-11: So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great; Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers. 11 The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

That’s quite the trifecta - 30,000 troops killed in one battle, the death of two priests, and the ark of the covenant, the symbol of God’s presence among his people, is now in the hands of the enemies. A man runs to Shiloh to deliver the news to Eli, who is gravely concerned for the ark of the covenant (not so much his sons, it seems). When Eli hears the news, he falls backyards off his chair, breaking his neck, and dies. So now the leader of the Israelites is dead as well.

The news comes to Phinehas’ wife, who is very pregnant - when she hears all the tragic news, she goes into labor and gives birth. But the birth does not go well, she dies - but before she dies, we get this, vs. 21-22: She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel - because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. She said, “The Glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”

The name Ichabod means “no glory.” There’s no glory left in Israel, the glory of God has left them.

Then we get this funny story in 1 Samuel 5. It’s funny, but it says a lot about who God is. The Philistines take the ark of covenant to one of their main towns, Ashdod, where they place it in the temple of their god, Dagon, setting it beside the statue of Dagon. It’s a way of saying, “our god is superior, we won.” Turns out they were a wee bit overconfident.

1 Samuel 5:3-4, When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place. But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained.

As it turns out, it wasn’t only the statue who suffered - “The Lord’s hand was heavy on the people of Ashdod and it vicinity; he brought devastation on them and afflicted them with tumors.” They realize that the God of Israel is too much for them, so they send the ark of the covenant to another Philistine town, Gath. I’m sure the citizens of Gath were like, “thanks a lot” because the Lord’s hand was heavy on them as well - an another outbreak of tumors. So they send the ark to another town, Ekron - who panic, they know what’s coming next. And it does.

So now they know they must send the ark of the covenant back to Israel - but they can’t just send it back, they have to do it with a guilt offering (they have offended this god - that’s the pagan thinking). They mold five gold tumors and five gold rats, one for each of the Philistine towns and declare that they must “give glory to Israel’s god.” They do not want to make the same mistake the Egyptians did - take this god seriously.

And it’s interesting to see how they send the ark of the covenant back - put it on a cart hitched to two cows who had recently given birth to calves and had never been yoked - that is, they have never been hitched to a cart or plow. Then they just let the cows go. The natural thing would have been for the cows to want to return to their calves who were penned up, especially having never been hitched to a cart before. But if the God of Israel is behind this, those cows would take the ark back to Israel, which is exactly what happens.

The cows go all the way to the town of Beth Shemesh, in Israel, the people there are thrilled - they make a sacrifice to the Lord using the cows and the wood of the cart. But they make a fatal error - they look inside the ark. So God strikes down 70 of them. 1 Samuel 6:20, And the people of Beth Shemesh asked, “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?” So they ask the people of Kiriath Jearim to come get it, and they do. The ark stays there for twenty years.

Last part of our story, 1 Samuel 7 - now that Eli and his sons are dead, Samuel becomes the leader of the Israelites. And he leads them back to faithfulness to the Lord, 1 Samuel 7:2-4: Then all the people of Israel turned back to the Lord. 3 So Samuel said to all the Israelites, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only.

They engage in a time of prayer and fasting and making sacrifices to the Lord. While they are doing so, the Philistines draw near to engage them in battle. “But that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.”

Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, God watched over the Israelites, giving them victory over the Philistines.

Give Glory to God

So, what’s at the heart of this story, what’s going on here? This story is really about glory, and giving God the glory he deserves because he is the God of glory. He is the glorious God. Now glory is one of those words that I think that we have a sense of, but is hard to define. There is an official definition, glory is honor, praise or distinction accorded by common consent. Being highly praise worthy.

And that’s helpful, but there’s more to it than that. To offer a contrast - as our group was on our trip to Dallas, we had to, of course, go through security. Take your bags, your shoes, belt, jacket, place them into those bins so they can take them through the scanner. And I don’t know who brought it up, but we learned about a trend that’s making it’s way through the TikToks called “airport tray aesthetics (I’m not making this up, I googled it just to make sure it’s a real thing) - people are making videos of putting their stuff in the bins, but doing so in an aesthetically pleasing way. So they are taking the time to make sure that all that stuff - the bags, belt, shoes, are arranged neatly, looks good - then making a video of it. All I have to say is if you’re holding up the line and I’m behind you - I’m not a happy camper. Feng Shui your luggage on your own time!

The question is, why? That’s what we were all asking. Why take the time to try to be so neat - your stuff is going fifteen feet on the conveyor belt and then you pull it back out again? And why video it - and post it for public consumption? How did this ever get to be a thing? It’s frivolous, it serves no purpose. It’s just empty, fluff, trivial. Which describes so much of what is on social media - and we are a culture swimming in trivial distractions.

The Hebrew word for glory is kabod - Ichabod means “no glory.” Root for kabod is heavy, it’s weighty, real, substantial. Of great importance. Not to be dismissed, but to be taken very seriously. This is what it means to say that God is the God of glory. The King of glory. He is full of kabod.

And this was the problem for the Israelites, they didn’t take God seriously. They did not honor him as the one True God, they didn’t glorify him properly as the Lord of all. And that’s immediately evident when we see them call for the ark of the covenant to be brought to the battle against the Philistines. It was an attempt to manipulate - if we bring our god to the battle, then he’ll help us and we’ll win. God becomes a token, a super-charged good luck charm.

The extreme of that today would be prosperity gospel - I can use God to get what I want. What I really want is health and wealth, and God becomes the vehicle to get that. Or we use God for our political purposes, because that’s what we’re really concerned about - he’s just there to prove we’re on the side of right. Or God becomes a tool for us to feel morally superior to others (which is essentially what the Pharisees did), or to make us feel better about ourselves - a security blanket. When we enjoy God’s good gifts without recognizing him, thanking him, when we fail to praise him for all he’s good for us, we fail to glorify God.

But all those minimize God, fail to take him seriously, to give him the glory he deserves. The glory of God didn’t depart Israel because they lost the ark, it departed Israel because they tried to manipulate God for their purposes, they failed to glorify him. Which is what they eventually did under the leadership of Samuel - they came to him with a heart of repentance, praying, fasting, making sacrifices, and putting away the false gods they had been worshiping. And when they do, God reveals his glory by thundering over the Philistines, giving the Israelites the victory that had so long eluded them. And it’s a powerful picture - because there is a glory to thunder - it catches our attention, we respect thunder and lightning. It puts a halt to all outdoor activity for at least thirty minutes. God is making sure the Philistines know he is a god worthy to be glorified.

That wasn’t the only example - God revealed his glory to the Philistines in their own temple. It’s such a fun story - they thought they had the superior god, they mockingly put the Lord (as if they could) in the temple of Dagon as a defeated enemy. They had quite the surprise the next morning when Dagon is flat on his face before the ark, as if he is worshiping the Lord. The next day it’s even worse - Dagon is just a torso - head off, hands cut off (which were signs of a defeated enemy, that’s what they would do at times).

Then God shows the Philistines that he is not a god to be trifled with - and notice how it describes how he comes against them - “the Lord’s hand was heavy on the people of Ashdod” - there’s that word - heavy, root of glory, kabod. God’s bringing his weight on them, showing that he is the God of glory.

All of this is a wonderful reminder to us that God deserves our honor, our praise, our glory. One of the confessions for ECO is the Westminster Confession of Faith. It has what’s known as the Larger Catechism, a series of questions designed to teach the faith. The very first question is, What is the chief end (or purpose of man)? In other words, why do we exist? Why are we here (that’s a worldview question).

So, why do we exist? Why do you exist? What’s your purpose in life? Vital question - we don’t want to live a false purpose, an empty one (like arranging our airport trays aesthetically).

The answer the Larger Catechism gives is this: The chief end of man is “To glorify God and enjoy him forever” (what a great summary!). Our primary purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever and ever.

I love the combination of the two - that we are to enjoy God, delight in him - his love for us, his daily mercies, all the goodness he pours into our lives, all the things he has done for us. God, you’re wonderful! You’re amazing him. The idea that we are not just to know God, but enjoy him - how awesome is that. And, at the same time, glorify him. Take him seriously -with the weight he deserves. Revere him. Praise him. Honor him. He is the God of all glory. The King of Glory.

Spiritual Disciplines

Daily self-offering to Jesus. 1 Corinthians 10:31 - So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Notice how all encompassing this is, even in the most ordinary of activities - whatever you do. Do it all. Even if it’s something you do numerous times every day, like eating and drinking. Do it all for the glory of God. Being mindful of him. In a way that honors him - in obedience to him, recognizing that whatever you’re enjoying in that moment is because of him.

Rest to the glory of God. Work to the glory of God. Do household chores to the glory of God. Engage your neighbors to the glory of God. Talk with a friend to the glory of God. Exercise to the glory of God. Worship to the glory of God. Watch TV or a movie to the glory of God. Run errands to the glory of God. Engage in social media to the glory of God. Do it all to the glory of God.