Sermon Tone Analysis

As always, it is a privilege to steward the pulpit for this congregation and bring the Word of God.

Alistair Begg said, “In preaching to the congregation, the pastor’s job is not so much to inform them of things they don’t know, but to remind them of things they shouldn’t forget.”

We have taken this series “Heroes and Villains” and used it to explore some occurences that we may not often dwell upon as we study the Word of God.

We have been focussing on the Historical Narratives that show us the time in which the Philistines defeated the Israelites and took the ark of the covenant.

We have seen the destructive fallout there was from this among the Israelites.

They lost over 30,000 soldiers in battle, the three prominent priests died, there was distress in the city.

One woman called out, “Ichabod—the glory of the Lord has departed.”

In this moment Israel is down.

We’ve seen that this is an expression of God’s judgment on His people who were not faithful to Him.

Today we will see what happens to the Philistines now that they have taken hold of the ark that many of the Israelites cared so much for.

Many of the details in this story may be new to you, especially some of the more gruesome things we will see as walk through the text.

You may not have spent much time in the book of 1 Samuel, focussing mainly on the New Testament in your personal studies of the Word.

But its important to remember two things, first that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness and also that the whole of Scripture, both the old and the new testaments are a cohesive message.

Every page, every word, every jot and tittle points to Jesus Christ.

It is showing the need of, the hope of, the coming of, or the salvation through Jesus Christ.

I bring this up for a very important reason as we are beginning our look at Scripture this morning.

That is because there are many interesting things going on in this narrative.

There may very well be new information that you are informed of, interested in, or even repulsed by, but let the hearer understand: The main intention of this message is not to strike your intellectual interest, but if you know the Lord as Savior its purpose is to stir you up for love and good works and if you do not know the Lord the purpose is to show you your absolute need for a Savior and that that Savior is none other than Jesus Christ.

That is what all of Scripture points to.

It is my prayer that Christ is exalted at all times especially during the proclamation of the Word of God so that:

So may Christ be lifted up and may we all look to Him, and all who believe in Him may have eternal life.

That verse, John 3:14, is an overt example of the continuity of Scripture.

It makes reference to the staff with a serpent on it Moses lifted up in the wilderness.

That staff was a type of Christ, that it is, in its function, it pointed to the ultimate salvation that would come through Jesus Christ.

Y’all, the Old Testament is rich with teaching and goodness for the soul of those who thirst for God’s Word.

May we be thirsty this morning and seek to have that thirst quenched by the Word of God.

With that in mind, open in your Bibles to 1 Samuel 5. I’ve already given this a brief introduction, but where we pick up this morning is the other side of the story from what we looked at last week.

Last week we saw that the Israelites were in dismay over the great loss that they had suffered.

They were experiencing Ichabod, the glory of God has departed, and it was due to God’s judgment over the festering of sin in their Nation.

Today, we will see how what happens to the victorious Philistines.

Begin in

We will stop here because we need to fill in a lot of context here.

First off, who are the Philistines again?

They are an advanced, opposing nation.

They wanted the same land that the Israelites had so battle was inevitable.

They also were a relatively advanced society.

They were one of the first in the area to start processing iron.

We saw during the battle in chapter 4, that they had some knowledge of the Israelite’s God, but they did not submit to Him.

When the ark was brought out onto the battlefield they were at first afraid of it and the God it represented, but instead of surrender, they doubled down in their resolve and actually beat the Israelites.

So they went from fearing the ark, to now seeing themselves as the master of it.

Look there at verse 1.

They captured it and brought it to their city Ashdod.

What was a symbol of the presence of God was now the Philistine’s to do with as they pleased.

What a turn around this would have been from when they had just said, “Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty Gods,” prior to the battle.

Now they are parading through their streets with the Ark of the Covenant.

Little did they know that it was the God whom that Ark represented who allowed them the victory and even the capture of the ark.

But they would soon find out.

Matthew Henry notes that God restrained the Philistines in their treatment of the ark.

You see the Israelites were always commanded by God to break the idols of those whom they defeated in battle.

We will come back to what this means a little more, but God’s commandment to destroy other images of false gods is given because there is nothing that is to be worshiped other than One True God.

God is God alone.

There is no one else beside our God.

Thus He requires those fake and flimsy imitators of Him to be destroyed.

But the Philistines did not destroy this symbol of the Lord.

They took it and placed it in the temple beside a carved image of Dagon.

Matthew Henry notes, “Whether their curiosity led them to open it, and to read what was written with the finger of God on the two tables of stone that were in it, we are not told; perhaps they looked no further than the golden outside and the cherubim that covered it, like children that are more affected with the fine binding of their bibles than with the precious matter contained in them.”

They carried it from battle to the temple of Dagon and placed the ark by Dagon.

The fact that they placed the ark by the carving of Dagon is significant in itself, but before we go further, I want to explain what we know about Dagon.

Dagon was one of the many gods of the polytheistic Philistines.

Not much is know about the lore around Dagon.

He was one of the oldest recognized deities in Mesopotamia with temples found as early as 3000 BC.

There is some dispute in the academic world as to if Dagon was a fish god, being half man-half fish, or god of grain.

Regardless of the specificities, it is important for us to know that he was a little “g” god.

He was a concoction of the imaginations of man whom long ago reject the one true God who created the world and brought Noah through the flood.

Many believe him to be represented by a statue of merman.

Fish on the bottom and man up top.

People would build temples to this false god and bring offerings.

In our civilized world we think about just how preposterous it was for their to be people who really believed, hoped in, and prayed to this statue of a merman.

I would be guess that absolutely none of us prayed to the little mermaid this week.

Not a single person we know gave an offering to Poseidon recently.

So it is so easy to look at the culture of the Philistines and think that their little idols were so unsophisticated and that we have grown way beyond such foolish entrapments.

But, as we touched on a couple of weeks ago, I would like to propose to you that idolatry and even polytheism is alive and well today.

It looks a little different, but many of our lives are filled with little g god idols taking our attention and becoming the objects of our worship.

You say, “well Brad, that’s just not true.

This church is the only place I go to worship.”

Well first of all, if that’s the case then that’s a problem in and of its self because we should be worshiping our God at all times, praying without ceasing.

Secondly, I would suggest to you that many of us if we were honest with ourselves, we join the ol’ hymnist in expressing how we are, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.”

And what we are prone to wander from God and towards idols.

You say, “Brad, I don’t have any little tiki men sitting up on my mantle that I pray to.”

Well sure.

But let me borrow from Greg Gifford’s Heart and Habits to describe three criterion for how anything can become an idol in your life.

“Sin to Get It: We know that we are desiring something too much when we are willing to sin against God to get that thing we are desiring.

It doesn't mean that the desire is inherently sinful, because we can desire something good and sin to get that good thing (i.e, appreciation).

Sin to Keep It: Sometimes we know that what we have is good and we will do whatever it takes to keep this thing, including sinning against God.

Relationships are an example of this: we desire a relationship so much (good thing) that we will stay in a sinful relationship that we know dishonors God (sin to keep),

Sin if We Don't Get It: When we don't get what we want, we lash out in sinful responses.

Whether we are pouty for the next three days or explode in sinful bursts of anger, we didn't get what we desired and now are sinning as a result.”

Anything in your life can be an idol.

Are you sinning to get it, sinning to keep it, or sinning if you don’t get it?

If so, then don’t be scoffing with your nose turned up at the “primitive ancients”.

Instead, understand that you are right now in just as much need for grace and repentance as they were then.

But alas, in our text this morning, the Philistines did not recognize their need for grace and repentance.

Instead if we return to our verses we see that the flaunted their victory and sat the ark of the Lord, placed it in the temple of one of their gods and set it up next to the carve image of that god.

They placed the ark of the covent beside the statue of Dagon for one of two reasons.

The either believed the item to be sacred to some degree whilst still not recognizing the Lord for the Supreme God He is.

Or, they laid it there to be a footstool to their god Dagon.

They wanted to show it off like a great trophy they had won.

The second reasoning would not be out of character for the Philistines.

This is of course what they did when the Spirit of the Lord left Samson and they were finally able to subdue him.

It is very possible that the Philistines saw the capturing of the ark as an even greater victory than the capturing of Samson.