Sermon Tone Analysis

Methods, Machinery, or Men?

Background

Eli, the high priest, had two corrupt priestly sons whom he failed to rebuke and correct.

Hoping to secure a win against the Philistines, Eli succumbed to the request of the people to send the ark out to the battle of Aphek.

Israel was defeated and the ark of the LORD was captured (1 Samuel 4).

In addition, Eli’s two sons were killed in the battle.

When Eli heard the news, he fell backward in his chair and broke his neck, killing him.

One of Eli’s daughter-in-laws, went into labor and bore a son whom she named “Ichabod”, meaning “the glory has departed”.

The Philistines put the ark in the temple of Dagon (fish god).

The idol of Dagon fell over on the first night.

They set it back up.

It fell again the second night, this time breaking off its head and hands on the threshold.

(1 Samuel 5)

A plague of tumors and rats broke out on the Philistines.

After seven months they sought for a way to return the ark of the LORD to Israel.

They made a new cart and harnessed to it two milk cows (signifying they had new calves) that had never been yoked.

They placed the ark on the cart and placed beside it a trespass offering of five golden tumors and five golden rats.

They released the cart on its way and watched to see if the cows would ignore their mothering instinct to return to their calves as they traveled to Beth Shemesh in Israel.

If they did, the Philistines would know that the plague was from the LORD.

The cows went to Beth Shemesh, lowing the entire way.

Upon its arrival, the people of Beth Shemesh looked in the ark and 50,070 people died.

Being afraid, the people of Beth Shemesh sent the ark to Kirjath-Jearim to the house of Abinadab, a Levite.

His son Eleazar was consecrated to oversee the ark.

Since Saul reigned as King for forty years, it remained with Abinadab for over forty years.

King David seeks to bring the ark to the City of David in Jerusalem.

David gathered 30,000 of his choice men.

They built a new ox cart and set the ark on it.

Abinadab’s sons, Uzzah and Ahio, monitored the cart in transport.

When they came to Nachon’s threshing floor, the oxen stumbled and Uzzah put out his hand to stabilize the ark of God.

The anger of the Lord broke out against Uzzah, and he died.

David became angry and called the place “Perez-Uzzah” meaning, “outbreak against Uzzah.”

David was afraid of the LORD and said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”

Restoring the Glory of God to the Church

First, recognize why the glory of God has departed.

A sinful and compromised people.

A defiled priesthood.

A religious mindset.

Israel trusted in the symbol of God’s presence, the ark.

Second, cultivate the fear of the Lord.

The Philistines and the people of Beth Shemesh learned this.

David learned this with the outbreak of God against Uzzah.

Uzzah’s familiarity with the ark caused him to lose his fear of God.

Third, cultivate a hunger for God.

No one sought the ark of the Lord for 100 years.

David yearned to bring the ark to his city of Jerusalem.

Do you yearn for His presence in your life?

Fourth, do not seek manmade methods and machinery.

David sinned by trying to sanctify the Philistine’s method and machinery.

He did not seek the LORD or consult the Scripture.

David’s failure resulted in Uzzah’s death.

Casualties result when we attempt to usher in God’s holy presence with man’s methods and machinery.

Fifth, God has ordained that His glory and presence will be ushered in on the shoulders of chosen and consecrated men.

E.M. Bounds declared in his book Power through Prayer, “We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel.

This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization.

God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else.

Men are God’s method.

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John.”

The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John.

“Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

The world’s salvation comes out of that cradled Son.

When Paul appeals to the personal character of the men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their success.

The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it.

When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world.

This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget.

The forgetting of it is as baneful on the work of God as would be the striking of the sun from his sphere.

Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.

The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men.

He does not come on machinery, but on men.

He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.”[1]

Response to the Word

Will you be among those whom God will choose to usher in His glory?

1) [1] [Bounds, E. M. (1999).

Power through prayer.

Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.]