Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good Morning...

Let’s begin this morning by doing a brainwashing test to see how brainwashed we all really are.

We are going to throw up a grid of 30 different pictures and you check and see how many you don’t recognize.

Ready set go...

I bet you recognize many of them don’t you.

If you saw them on a sign, screen or front door you would think that you had a pretty good idea of what you would find there.

And not because the pictures accurately depict what it there, but because your mind has been trained i.e. brainwashed to think that this picture equals their product.

For example if you opened a present next Christmas and on the box there was this a picture of an apple with a bite out of it, you would not think that Santa brought you a box of half eaten fruit.

You would expect an intuitive and confusing to me piece of technology from the Apple company.

A symbol is designed to point you to something else.

It doesn’t even have to be a picture of that something, but whatever the picture, a symbol draws your mind to that thing.

Or at least you expect it to.

Have you ever been driving a long distance and you started to get really hungry for food from a particular place.

For me it would be a burrito from chipotle.

Not long ago I would have to check the signs at every exit along our route to see if that restaurant was there, but like everything else these days there is an app for that.

So I can talk to my little box with a half eaten fruit on it and “siri” can tell me where the closest one is and find it is close enough and you begin to taste the burrito in your mouth as you make your way closer and closer.

Then you see the sign, there it is and you get really excited until you pull into the empty parking lot to read on the door “coming soon”.

The sign said your delicious burrito is here, but in the end the sign was pointing to a place that was empty.

Tension

This is what happened to the Children of Israel in 1 Samuel chapter 4, only they were looking for something much more important that expensive guacamole.

They were looking for victory in a battle against an enemy that seemed bent on their destruction.

They thought back to the great victories that they had in the past:

When God delivered them from the Egyptian army when they crossed the Dead sea and

When God handed them the victory over the stronghold of Jericho when the walls came a tumbling down.

They remembered that God had instructed them to bring the sign of His presence into each of these battles.

It was this particular piece of furniture from Holy of Holies in the tabernacle, and God had instructed them to carry it out into these battles.

So when they lost the first round of a battle with a different pagan nation, they decided that they would just go get that same symbol of God’s presence and bring it into the battle, believing that it would once again assure them the victory.

But they never got to taste that victory, in fact they tasted an even more bitter defeat.

Sometimes we can get so focused on the symbol or sign that we loose track of the substance.

We start believing that as long as we secure the symbol in our life, then that is good enough, until we find out that the symbol by itself does nothing when it is pointing to something empty.

It is one thing when this works to not satisfy your craving for a good burrito, but quite another when your life in on line.

something points to something else so strongly that we can lose the substance in the symbol.

We might start believing that securing the symbol in our life is good enough and we miss what the symbol is pointing us toward.

This was true in our text today for the Children of Israel, and more than that

That is the story we are going to unpack this morning from the book of 1 Samuel, so open up with me if you will to , p. 228 in the Bibles in the chairs.

I’ll pray and we will search together for the substance behind the many symbols in this text.

Truth

So last week we met Samuel, the long awaited son of Hannah and the prophet for the entire people of Israel.

He was only about 11 years old when the Word of the Lord first came to him, and the first message was not happy news.

Young Samuel confirmed for Eli the priest that God was no longer going to tolerate the evil behavior of his sons.

God would judge Eli’s family by removing their line from the priesthood by death with a sword.

These next 3 chapters give us the story of that judgement, but there is even more for us to learn from it.

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This is a carrying out of the judgement of God on the house of Eli

The Ark description

God relates in the same way today to people who would abuse their position and His name for their own selfish gain.

He will tolerate this for a season, but then He will judge it.

That is one of the reasons that the New Testament says:

So Eli’s family was rejected as the messengers of God, even as Samuel was elevated into that role for all the nation of Isreal.

These chapters really leave Samuel off in the first verse and then they don’t mention him again, but we will talk later of how his lack of screen time for Samuel is an important part of this story.

exodus 25:10-2

These chapters really leave Samuel off in the first verse and then they don’t mention him again, but we will talk later of how his lack of play time in the story actually tells us quite a bit.

So in Chapter 4:1 we read

So in Chapter 4:1 we read

These chapters really leave Samuel off in the first verse and then they don’t mention him again, but we will talk later of how his lack of play time in the story actually tells us quite a bit.

So in Chapter 4:1 we read

The story begins , so in Chapter 4:1 we read

At this point in history the nation of Philistia was a constant threat to the people of Israel.

(map)They were a coastal plains people who were constantly battling with the people of Israel as they attempted to expand from the shores of the Mediterranean sea eastward.

If you remember the story of the long haired muscle man Samson, he was constantly battling against the Philistines.

His traitor girlfriend kept saying, “Awake Sampson the Philistines are upon you” and then she would ask him again and again for the secret of his strength, and eventually he blindly told her and it went so very poorly for him...

Anyway, We aren’t sure what inspired this particular battle, only that it happened and that Israel was defeated something fierce.

They lost 4,000 men on the field of battle, and returned home to seek wisdom from their Elders to see what to do next.

It is here that we see how...

The people confuse the symbol of God’s presence with His actual presence ()

This is how it happened:

And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines…

Notice who they recognize to be responsible for their defeat.

They don’t blame the Philistines.

They don’t blame their military stradegy or the strength of their men.

They see their defeat as something that was orchestrated by the Lord.

So wouldn’t it make sense then that their next step would be to inquire why the Lord would do such a thing and what they should do now?

The had the means.

Remember that all of Israel now recognized Samuel as a prophet of the Lord.

Everyone from the northern most tribe to the southern recognized Samuel as a Prophet of the Lord and this story began with the reminder that the word of Samuel came to all Israel… but they did not seek the Word of the Lord, they just went ahead with a practice that worked in the past, assuming that they could get it to work again.

TThis isn’t saying that sometimes Samuel just spoke his own word instead of Gods, it means that Samuel was accessable to all of Israel, but they did not seek him.

They had a better idea than seeking the word of the Lord, they would just use the symbol of the Lord.

The Word of the LORD was accessible through His appointed prophet Samuel, but they did not seek the Word of the Lord, they just went ahead with a practice that worked in the past, assuming that they could get it to work again.

1 sa

Remember that this section of Scripture is a record of God’s fulfillment of his judgement on these two sons of Eli.

As priests themselves, they were exploiting their position to fulfill their appetites and the text says that “they did not know the Lord”.

Their presence confirms for us that the bringing of the Ark of the Covenant was not something that they got from God, but something they were simply doing out of their own godless character, still the Lord will then use this wayward decision to accomplish His will in ending their lives.

But as I said, I see even more here for us to understand and apply than just the judgement on these two sons.

as a huge part of their evil was in doing things against the law of the Lord.

So lets talk for just a moment on what this piece of furniture knows as the “Ark of the Covenant” was.

The way we have referenced it so far this morning might make you think it was a mighty weapon of war.

That is how Steven Spielberg anyway ... but in truth it was a box.

The Hebrew word that we translate to be “ark” is “a-rone” which used by itself meant box, chest, money chest or even coffin.

And this box was about the size of the crate you see here on the stage, but it’s size is all it would have in common with a box like this. because the Ark of the Covenant was crazy fancy!

The instructions for building this box were given to Moses by God himself.

He wanted a particular wood.

He wanted a particular size.

He wanted a particular craftsman.

He wanted only particular people to touch it in particular ways.

He wanted every square inch of it meticulously and beautifully overlayed with pure gold.

This was no ordinary box.

This was no crate picked up on the side of the road.

This was something special…but what made it special?

Was it the special wood, designs or gold?

No.