1 Samuel Lesson 6
Gimmicks vs. Grace – 1 Samuel 4
The first seven chapters of this book are preparatory, they describe
God’s preparations that He is making in the nation
Here you have God, you have the nation
And so we have the rise of the prophets.
This is very important in Christian political theory because before a
king can come on the scene and before you can have any socialized authority
there must be a living prophet, a man who has God’s Word and who uses the Word
of God to control the policies of that national entity. Now in our country in the past we have had
our policies, both domestic and foreign, under the control of the Word in the
sense, not that the church dictated it but through the Puritans and other early
Americans divine viewpoint was plugged into the American culture. So you had a maximum number thinking in terms
of the divine viewpoint categories, even though they may not personally have
been believers, nevertheless they thought in divine viewpoint categories. And so therefore the nation was strong. They thought in divine viewpoint categories
with regard to economics, for the whole 19th century the economics
of this country started to deteriorate as more and more people lost the divine
viewpoint, and certain economic policies and certain banking policies were set
up in the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th
that have had a tremendous fallout effect in the 20th century and we
are suffering because human viewpoint has infiltrated national leadership in
the area of economics.
We have had the same thing in the military; it used to be that military
was used by the government to judge evil, as it should be in the divine
viewpoint framework. However we have
come in our day where the military is being used to carry out political
policies rather than the policy of judging evil. And the reason for this is that we have lost
our standards, we’ve somehow lost our way and we are not even able to find out
what the evil is. This is why one of the
central questions today, what is an enemy of the
Let’s see what happens here. We
have the
Then along came a man by the name of Samuel who began to teach the Word
at a place called
Now let’s look at verse 1, “And the word of Samuel came to all
So the Philistines are the power in control. Verses 1-2 tell us that Israel at this point
is trying to overthrow, after a while even stupid people wake up and by this
time Israel is waking up to the fact that they are enslaved; that they want
their freedom. And it’s a desperate
attempt to regain national freedom from an oppressor and they go into battle
the first time and they are slaughtered, four thousand. But nothing compared to what’s coming, this
is a major disaster right here, but they don’t stop here. In verse 3 they begin to do something. “And when the people were come into the camp,
the elders of
Now that is a fatal error in verse 3 and you cannot understand the rest
of the chapter unless you understand details why this is a mistake. Why is a tragic error being made here at
national policy levels? The error
surrounds the principles of the existence of the nation and the principles of
freedom. The nation was free only as
they were in submission to Yahweh or the King.
So their freedom was a product of positive volition toward Yahweh or
toward Jehovah. Their freedom was
dependent upon positive volition. They
are in a disciplinary situation and their freedom is being slowly removed. Why?
Because their positive volition was previously removed. You had negative volition develop in a nation
to a tremendous degree. And they went on
negative volition toward God’s Word, they absorbed ecumenical religion with the
result that God is simply administering the covenants of blessing and cursing
of Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26.
Those two chapters depict the controls that God is using on the
international and domestic scenes to discipline the nation. So Jehovah is eroding their freedom as they
erode their loyalty to Jehovah.
But when they say “the LORD has smitten us today” it’s quite obvious
that the national leaders recognize the sovereignty of God. So their first step is correct; they have
recognized that God was the One who allowed them to be smitten. There’s no error so far. The error starts in the next sentence, “Let
us fetch the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of Shiloh, that it may save
us.” So the error here is they have
rejected confession, they are out of fellowship nationally and they have
bypassed God’s mode for getting back in fellowship, which is national
confession. This is the omitted
step. They are going to bypass national
confession. Remember in the book of
Judges God would bring the disciplinarians in, the oppressors in over the
nation, the nation would respond, they’d become sorrowful and then it says they
would repent. What does that mean? They would recognize that they’d had violated
the covenant of Moses, that they had violated and turned against the Word of
God and therefore they had some business to tend to before they could do
anything else.
Now this is a principle we apply in our Christian life over and
over. We are either in fellowship or out
of fellowship at any given time. There
are only two points of existence in the Christian life; at any given moment you
are in fellowship with the Lord or you are out of it and if you are out of it
like the nation Israel is out of it at this point, the tendency is to do
exactly what they’re going to do. And
what is it? Rely on a religious gimmick,
bypass confession and rely on a religious gimmick. That in itself, by the way, is good; that in
itself is good.
Let me give you some illustrations of these gimmicks in Christian
circles. We’ll have a Christian
organization raised up by God, no question about it. God has raised them up to do a job. Maybe a local church that God has blessed, no
question about it, God has really blessed them.
It may be some Christian institution, but somewhere along the line they
lose their way, they get out of fellowship as an organization, no longer is
divine viewpoint being adhered to, no longer is God the Lord of that
organization. And so what do they do? They begin to experience His discipline and
usually the thing that hits first is money.
And so they begin to notice, oh-oh, what are we going to do now, our
income is sliding. So they begin to say
what we’ve got to do is solve our financial problem, we have to call in bigger
and better financial advisors, we have to get on some sort of a fund raising
campaign and get all the pledge cards out, etc.
What is the trouble? It’s just
like bringing the ark of the covenant out because the primary solution is get
back in fellowship, the money will take care of itself. But this is not done and so we have the money
gimmick used in religious circles; we have even witnessing gimmicks being
used. We begin to notice a decline in
the number of people so what we need to do is bring more people in by
witnessing, so we bring some hustler to the church and he develops a program of
hustling and he tells us how to greet everybody with a smile, etc. and all the
gimmicks are there and we have all of a sudden an evangelistic witnessing
campaign to bring in and increase our numbers.
Still haven’t dealt with the spiritual problem, still haven’t solved it
and you’ll never solve it that way.
Another gimmick is even Bible study.
I have known people to come to Bible class just to salve their own
conscience; people listen to tapes just to salve their own conscience. They can say let’s go to Bible class, I’m not
going to really listen to what’s said, I’m not going to study it, but I’m going
to go to put in my appearance and impress everyone. I’ve got to appear that I’m on positive
volition even if I’m not so I’ll put in my show. Again this is being used as a gimmick and it
bypasses confession and it’s not going to work.
We could go on and on and on.
So we have religious gimmicks and here is the religious gimmick, “Let us
fetch the ark of the covenant out of Shiloh,” and it is going to save us, the
magic genie. So this is brought out and
in verse 4, “So the people sent to Shiloh,” now notice the sarcasm of the
author. Now of course this book was
written after the fact and it’s very interesting how the author in verse 4
describes the ark. He uses every single
title he possible can to show us that the emphasis should be on the Lord and
not on the ark. The ark is just a
physical manifestation of God’s presence, but it isn’t God.
“So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from there the ark
of the covenant of the LORD of hosts,” remember that title, we studied in
chapter 1. “The Lord of hosts,” the
first title used here for God refers to the angelic conflict. It refers to the fact that down through
history we have a tremendous horde of unseen personal powers that control the
international scene in the present day, and the materialism of the 20th
century laughs at it but that’s because they start with a materialist
presupposition. It has nothing to do
with your intelligence, it has to do with the starting point and since many
people start with materialism they laugh at this, but the angelic conflict is
all tied into this name, “the Lord of armies,” literally. The “armies” however are not human armies,
they are angelic armies and this has reference to what those angelic armies are
doing in history.
And in chapter 1 we reviewed what these angelic armies are doing down
through history. They are manipulating
political forces in various places. When
you pray for go, which I hope you do and you are commanded to do as a believer
in 1 Timothy 2, when we pray for our government, have you ever stopped to think
how God answers those prayers? God has a
mechanism for answering prayers and it’s through the hierarchy of the
angels. We know from Daniel 10, from
Zechariah 1 and 2 we know from Isaiah, we know from Matthew 25, and we know
from Matthew 4 that there are hordes of angels that if you have a given country,
say with a boundary like this, that superimposed on that nation, above it and
unseen by the people is an angelic nation that is in charge of that real
estate. And in that angelic realm is
constantly the fallen angels and the elect angels struggling for the
power. Your prayers are the things that
activate those elect angels. So your
prayers are very important according to 1 Timothy 2; it is your request as
believers as the salt of a nation that preserves the nation. The greatest thing
you can do as an American citizen is pray for your country because whenever you
do you are given orders, through the Father and the Son, to these angelic
hordes that are standing by. To a large
degree the more we study Scripture, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that
the angels depend upon our initiative often times. God built it that way. You think oh well, they’ll just do it
anyway. Oh no, they depend a lot on the
believer’s initiative; the believer must initiate by prayer. This is why James says you have not because
you ask not.
So “the Lord of hosts” the first time in verse 4 refers to this angelic
conflict. Then the next one, “who dwells
between the cherubim,” “im” is a plural ending in Hebrew, “who is dwelling
between the cherubs,” now we don’t know what the cherubs look like but the
Philistines saw them. Here’s the ark, it
looks something like a coffin, you had a gold bowl on the top for the blood,
and then you had these cherubs, they had wings of some sort on them, but we
don’t know anything more than that. They
were [can’t understand word] of angels that are guarding the presence of
God. God Himself was visualized to
actually exist right in between them, so that this is looked upon as the throne
of God. And that will explain what’s
going to happen here in this chapter.
“…the LORD of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim:” now literally God
dwells between the cherubs in the throne room in heaven, but this is a picture
of what that throne room looks like.
“…and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark
of the covenant of God.” And this ties
it together and this alerts us that we’re going to see some fulfilled prophecy
here in a moment.
Verse 5, “And when the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the
camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so the earth rang again,”
reverberated literally. Now in verse 5
we have the beginning of a very humorous series of events. It’s not going to be humorous to the
Israelites, they lose 30,000 people because of it. But in one sense it’s very humorous and in
another sense it’s a very tragic lesson for believers to learn. What is happening in verse 5 is a sheer
psychological motivation. The ark has
lost its spiritual power, there’s no power in that ark because they had
violated the Word. As long as the Word
has been violated there is no automatic genie, there is no automatic religious
symbol. None of these things are valid
because the Word, Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26, has been violated. Since the Word has been violated there can’t
be any real power, but why do they bring the ark down? To do what verse 5 says is happening; verse 5
shows you there is a tremendous psychological gimmick.
They are going to motivate the people by psychological devices. There’s nothing that’s spiritually powerful
in back of it. It is all sheer
psychological motivation, that’s all it is, nothing else, has no base
whatever. It’s just a lot of rah, rah,
rah, rah, rah. Now look around and see
where you see this in religious circles today.
People are too busy to study the Word of God and get the foundation so
instead of doing that they revert to this kind of thing, we’ll all get together
and sing hymns as fast as we can, and we’ll really feel the power, power, power
and we go out and fall flat on our face.
That’s psychological gimmicks.
Now watch, two sides are going to us psychological gimmicks and you
notice which one is more effective, believers using it or unbelievers.
Verse 6, “And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said,
What means the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they understood that the ark of the LORD
was come into the camp. [7] And the Philistines were afraid; for they said, God
is come into the camp. And they said,
Woe unto us! For there has not been such
a thing heretofore.” Now with this verse
we have an interesting thing. The
Philistines have no historic evidence on their side. Now watch this. I’ll draw a chart up here, on one side we’re
going to have Israel and on the other side we’re going to have the Philistines
and I’m going to show you that neither side used faith in this battle; both
sides were using gimmicks. Let’s look at
the Philistine side first; first thing was they had no positive historic
evidence for their victory, all of the evidence they had was negative.
I’ll show you some of the negative evidence, turn to Deuteronomy 4:32,
Moses recounted the historic evidences that God was behind it all, behind the
Exodus, behind the historic events, something we harp on all the time around
here, you cannot separate Bible doctrine from history. Religious claims are substantiated only as
the attendant historical claims are.
Jesus said if I had told you earthly things and you don’t believe, you
can’t believe Me when I tell you heavenly things. Stop fooling yourself; if you can’t accept
the literal historic events of Scripture you don’t believe and be honest and
admit it; I don’t believe if I don’t accept the historic events of Scripture.
What does Deuteronomy 4:31 say, “For the LORD thy God is a merciful
God,” now that’s a theological statement.
How does Moses prove it? Verse
32, “For ask now of the days that are
past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the
earth, and ask from one side of heaven unto the other, whether there has been
any such thing as this great thing is, or has been heard like it.” What is he doing? He’s appealing to historic events…historic
events! Has it ever occurred to you to
think about the little details that attend the great miracles. I was with my son the other night and we were
looking at one of the models of the baby in the manger and one of them
expressed surprise that the baby wasn’t born in a hospital, and was just born
in a dirty manger. And if you stop and
think of it, can you imagine, put yourself back in the manger scene for a
moment and think of the dirt, and think of the humiliation and think that at
the same time other babies were being born, probably none under those
circumstances, but consider the baby that was being born. Now isn’t it interesting that when God chose
to invade this world He chose in the lowliest of areas. Now you can’t say that God is a gracious God
and a loving God if you don’t accept the fact that the virgin happened in a
literal manger. If you don’t have that
historic fact what good does it do to say I believe in God because He’s a
loving God and He’s gracious and so.
Where are you getting that from?
The only place you get it from or could ever get is from is one place,
historic facts, always the facts. And if
you’re faith isn’t founded on facts it isn’t founded, period. Faith can never be founded on emotion and
psychological gimmicks.
Let’s go back to 1 Samuel 4 and see what’s happening. The Philistines have no positive historic
evidence they’re right, all the evidence is against them. So what do they say,
operation bootstrap. Look at verse 8 and
9. “Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us out of the hand of these
mighty gods?” Notice it’s plural, see
the Philistines see the ark coming down, they see the priests bringing the ark
down and they see the two cherubs and the think the cherubs represent God so
they’re saying these are the mighty gods, these are the gods that smote the
Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. By the way, don’t you get the feeling here
that the opponents also had heard of the historical power of God; it was an
international subject of conversation. When God did something it wasn’t done in
a closet. So it was a public statement
and they knew this. They had all the
historic evidence of what they were up against.
But notice verse 9, here comes operation psychological gimmick. “Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O
ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to
you: quit yourselves like men, and fight.”
In other words, in the lack of any evidence to the contrary, except the
survival instinct, go ahead and fight and engage them in battle. In other words there is no faith on the
Philistine’s part, it is sheer emotional psychological gimmick, it’s the
rah-rah approach. But fortunately for
them, Israel who had gone on negative volition toward confession and therefore
is minus power, they are trying to get plus power from a gimmick too. So now look what’s going to happen. We’re
going to have believers with a gimmick fighting unbelievers with a
gimmick. We’re going to have
gimmicks. Both of them are without
facts; both of them are operating out of line with the Word of God. And who always wins? The unbelievers and that’s what’s going to
happen.
Verse 10, “And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they
fled every man into his tent; and there was a very great slaughter; for there
fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen. [11] And the ark of God was taken; and
the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.” I’ll get into the fulfilled prophecy of that
in a moment but I want you to notice something.
Whenever you have a gimmick the unbeliever will always be able to use it
more and better, more effectively than the believer. Always…always! We are not made for gimmicks. Has it ever occurred to you this is why often
Christian gimmicks fall flat on their face.
God hasn’t designed believers to use gimmicks; He has designed us to use
grace. We are made for grace and when
we’re trying to use gimmicks where we should be using grace, we will always
fall flat on our face, every single time.
We aren’t built for it and God will not permit it. He will not permit His children to use that
for which they are not designed.
Now you have to think through in your own life some of the gimmicks that
you use; just think of the last time you were out of fellowship, and think of
the gimmick that you used to substitute for getting back in fellowship. Whatever it was that you used to substitute
getting back into fellowship is exactly your little ark that you parade out;
it’s the same thing, it’s a gimmick or a device that you use, maybe it’s being
busy, busy, busy, you get out of fellowship and you can’t sit down five minutes
to deal with the problem so you’ve got to go busy, busy, busy all over the
place and this hides it so you don’t think of it for a while, so you can put it
out of your mind. Funny thing though,
after you go a while suddenly the weight begins to get heavier and heavier and
getting busy, busy, busy doesn’t seem to solve the problem. It’s the same thing here.
We wind up with thirty thousand dead.
The ark of God was taken and the two sons were dead. Now the two sons were dead is the author
trying to show us the fulfilled prophecy of 1 Samuel 2:34. You remember the great prophecy that was
given to Eli. You have the great
priestly family that had the eternal covenant.
This is eternal security, the eternal covenant could not be taken away from
them, but God could modify it and restrict the blessings down to a very narrow
area compared to what they were. And
this is what happened with the priestly family, He said, look Eli, the priestly
of coming through you is going to experience less blessing, less blessing, less
blessing as time goes on. You’ll always
have some, because I promised, but the sphere of enjoyment is going to get less
and less. And Eli could say well, prove
it. All right, he’s going to; verse 34,
“This shall be a sign unto thee,” a sign of what, that this historic prophecy
is going to come true. “This shall be a
sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: in one
day they shall die, both of them.” So
you have a literal fulfilled prophecy, you have specifics that can be
tested. Prophecy is not vague; Biblical
prophecy is specific. Any prophecy that
comes from the Lord who is omniscient will always be perfect; remember that. All this gift or prophecy business and all
the rest of it is a lot of hocus pocus.
To be a prophet of God everything has to come true or it is a phony
thing. So people who are claiming to
have the gift or prophecy would be stoned to death today; if they had lived in
the days of Israel would have been stoned to death.
1 Samuel 4:12, “And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and
came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn, and with earth upon his
head.” Verse 13, “And when he came, lo,”
and this is a beautiful picture.
Remember Eli, dear Eli; Eli is a picture of the carnal believer who just
gets so wrapped up in social things and religious things that he can’t break
loose, always putting something before the Word of God. The Word of God is never first, always
something else. And you remember Eli had
two sons who were probably unbelievers, and they were violating the Law of God
in front of his face and He didn’t do anything about it. Do your remember what God said to him as a
parent, “you honor your children more than you honor Me,” and God had no
patience whatever with that kind of thing. That’s His attitude toward parents
who are afraid to bring their children into line. Eli was in the middle of apostasy and didn’t
want to do anything about it, afraid he’d rock the boat.
So verse 13 is the most beautiful portrait of this kind of a
believer. If you ever think in terms of
pictures, etch this one into your mind and never forget it; it is a beautiful,
almost hilarious picture of a believer who’s carnal and too afraid to do anything
about it. “And when he came, lo, Eli sat
upon a seat by the wayside watching;” he’s always sitting on his seat, every
time we have seen Eli he is sitting down on something, just sitting down, every
time we meet this guy he’s seated on a seat. Well, here he is again, he’s
seated “on a seat by the wayside, watching; for his heart trembled for the ark
of God.” Now that shows you that he had
some spirituality, he had some knowledge of what was going on. Eli is caught, as many believers are in this
state. They’re caught on the one hand by their mind that says negative
volition, no, and yet they’re caught on the other hand by their conscience and
their conscience says yes, you know what’s going on friend, you know what God
wants you to do. No, I just can’t apply
that, oh I’m miserable. And so here Eli is, he knows they should never have
taken the ark, he is afraid of it, and he has a premonition that something is
going to happen. Well if he had the
premonition something was going to happen, he was the high priest, they had to
get his permission to move it. But
obviously again, same with his sons, they went to him and he bowed down, backed
down. Typical chicken believer, afraid
to stand up for the Word and so he backed down and here he is, sitting on his
seat as usual, afraid. We’ll see a
follow up to verse 13 in a moment.
Verse 13, “…And when the man came into the city, and told it, all the
city cried out. [14] And when Eli heard the noise of the crying,” remember he’s
blind, “he said, What means the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily, and told
Eli.” Verse 15, “Now Eli was ninety and
eight years old, and his eyes were dim, that he could not see. [16] And the man said unto Eli, I am he who came
out of the army, and I fled today out of the army. And he said, What is there done, my son? [17]
And the messenger answered,” and I want you to notice what the messenger says,
the order in which he says it and how Eli reacts to this order. There are three things that the messenger
reports. First, “Israel is fled before
the Philistines, and there has been also a great slaughter among the people,”
that’s the first thing, there’s been military defeat. But this doesn’t appear to bother Eli so
much. Secondly, “and thy two sons also,
Hophni and Phinehas, are dead,” thy two sons are included in the
casualties. Even this doesn’t bother
him. But then, “and the ark of God is
taken.. [18] And it came to pass, when
he made mention of the ark of God, that he fell from off the seat backward by
the side of the gate, and his neck broke, and he died; for he was an old man,
and heavy,” literally fat, [“And he had judged Israel forty years.”] He’s
sitting there on his seat, afraid to do anything about things, you see. This is a picture of Eli and here he is, doing
nothing, knowing just like believers in this city that they’re sitting on a
powder keg, people have told me they know the organizations they’re in don’t
teach the Word of God but… I’ve got to stay in because I’ve got to have a
testimony. So don’t think Eli is a
unique exception. Eli is a picture of a
lot of carnal believers today who know where the Word is and refuse to come
simply because they have something more important on their mind.
Verse 18, “And it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of God,”
what does that tell you was on Eli’s mind all the time. This man was a believer, he did have the
priorities of the Word up here, he knew what was going on. And when he fell off backwards he didn’t die,
he died of the injuries of falling off backward; he died because he
fainted. The psychological pressure
between the conscience and his mind snapped at that point, he fainted. He went into shock. Why did he do this? Because he had a tremendous pressure on the
inside of him that just blew up; he was out of fellowship and he knew he was
out of fellowship, he was under tremendous psychological pressure and that was
it, right there.
Verse 19, “And his daughter-in-law, Phinehas’ wife, was with child, near
to be delivered. And when she heard the
tidings that the ark of God was taken, and that her father-in-law and her
husband were dead, she bowed herself,” the word “bowed” here is the way the
ancient Near Eastern women and they still do this in the Arab countries, this
is their birth position, the position the woman assumes for giving birth to a
child, “she bowed herself and travailed; for her pains came upon her. [20] And
about the time of her death the women who stood by her” these are the midwives,
“said unto her, Fear not; for thou has borne a son.” And in the ancient Near East this would be
the highest thing for a woman, even if she was dying in childbirth she would
rejoice that she had given birth to a son.
It comes out of the Messianic tradition, by the way. “But she answered not, neither did she regard
it. [21] And she named the child I -chabod,” chabod, the word chabod
in the Hebrew is the word glory, ahead of this word in the Hebrew is [can’t
understand word]. Nobody knows what that
means, the best lexicographers guess that it means no, it’s a negation, no
glory.
And then she makes what appears to be almost a prophecy, and like Hannah
did a few chapters ago, this woman comes out with a statement that is loaded
all around. “And she named the child
I –chabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel; because the ark of
God was taken an because of her father-in-law and her husband. [22] And she
said, The glory is departed from Israel; for the ark of God is taken.” The word “depart” doesn’t mean to depart, it
means to go into exile. And what she is
saying, she is actually predicting the disaster in 586 BC, whether she’s
conscious of this or not, the vocabulary she uses, “the glory has gone into
exile.”
Let me show you how this is fouled up.
We’re not given in chapter 4 everything that happened; the historian as
he concludes chapter 4 just gives us the quick events, shows us what happened
to Eli, shows us what happened to the ark, but there were other things that
came. After this scene in chapter 4 the
Philistine armies came, and they destroyed Shiloh, the place, and just turned
it into a desolation. This is recorded
for us in other passages of God’s Word.
Turn to Psalm 78 where we can have the rest of chapter 4. Psalm 78:55; here we have the rest of the
missing history from chapter 4. It’s
important to get this so that you’ll see that 1 Samuel 4 is a picture of
catastrophes that God brings on His historical instruments. By “historical instruments” we mean the
tabernacle for one, that’s at Shiloh, we mean Jerusalem and the temple for
another, and we mean, and I’ll put it in quotes, “the church.” Now I’m going to show you verses that show in
all three cases God has brought into historic existence an entity to His glory
and in every case when that institution and that instrument becomes sinful, God
removes it from history.
Psalm 78:55, “He cast out the heathen,” this is praising God for His
works, “he cast the heathens also before them,” this is the conquest, “and
divided them inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in
their tents. [56] Yet they tempted and
provoked Him the Most High God, and kept not His testimonies, [57] But turned
back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers; they were turned aside like a
deceitful bow. [58] For they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and
moved him to jealousy with their graven images.” Verse 58 tells us what was going on in the
religious background of 1 Samuel 4, that the nation had slowly assimilated the
categories of Philistine religion. Here
you have the infiltration of ecumenical religion. And verse 59, look at the tremendous
personalness of this. “When God heard
this, He was angry, and greatly abhorred Israel; [60] So that He forsook the
tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among men.” And here we have 1 Samuel 4 with details we
didn’t get from 1 Samuel 4. [61] He
“delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.
[62] He gave His people over also unto the sword, and was wroth [angry] with
His inheritance. [63] The fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were
not given in marriage,” it means they were killed, it’s just an idiom for
slaughter; usually the enemy raped them first and then they slaughtered them.
[64] Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no
lamentation.” Now the end of verse 64 is
the end of 1 Samuel 4. That fills us in
on some more things that went on that were not reported there.
Turn to Jeremiah 7:12; the shock of 1 Samuel 4 reverberated and echoed
again and again down through Israel’s history.
Here we begin to see its prophetic significance. This isn’t just an isolated incident that
happened in 1 Samuel 4, it’s a model event that pictures something that’s going
to come in the future. “But go now unto
My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I
did to it for the wickedness of My people, Israel. [13] And now, because ye
have done all these works, saith the LORD, and I spoke unto you, rising up
early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you, but you answered not,
[14] Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by My name in which
ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have
done to Shiloh.”
What’s Jeremiah saying? He’s
saying look, we saw that temple get wiped out; you people in 586, around 600 BC
or 586 were trusting in the temple, oh nothing’s going to happen to us, God put
His temple here, He’s not going to allow His temple to be crushed. And what does Jeremiah say, just walk down the
road and look at that little place where the grass has grown all over it and
it’s just ruins; remember what happened there, that was Shiloh. Remember what the people said, oh nothing’s
going to happen, we’ve got the tabernacle.
What does Jeremiah say, just take a trip down there and review your
history. So Jeremiah is telling the
people the same thing is going to happen to Jerusalem. He is using the battle of Aphek as a model of
the future disaster in 586 BC.
Jeremiah 26:6, same thing, “I will make this house like Shiloh, and will
make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.” What is God saying through Jeremiah? That little event, the battle of Aphek of 1
Samuel 4 is the model of coming catastrophe.
Now let’s skip many, many centuries, down past our own era into the
future. What is the instrument that God
has given to history the last 1900 years.
It’s been the (quote) “Christian church.” Prophecy is a startling thing to say about
what’s going to happen to Christianity.
People are going to trust in Christianity like they trusted in the
tabernacle, like they trusted in the temple, and there’s one more verse I want
you to see that predicts the end of Christianity in history. Revelation 17:16, here was have a prophecy
that is the death of the Church, but like all models in history this one is
very, very carefully constructed and all of its details accurate. In Revelation 17:16 we have Babylon the
great, the mother of harlots. This is
ecumenical religion that appears to be the future form of what we will call
Christendom. By this time in history
Christendom will have tremendous economic power, apparently through the World
Council of Churches, apparently Catholicism and Protestantism will combine. Don’t be surprised if the Catholics come into
the World Council of Churches and you have one massive powerful political
organization.
This organization is predicted in the Bible to grow and grow and grow
into a tremendously powerful religious machine that has economic and political
power. And all the nations are going to
trust in it and then out of all this, everybody is trusting in it, along will
come Satan incarnate, the antichrist, the beast, and when He comes He will
destroy and this is the destruction.
Verse 16, “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast,” the ten
horns refer to the ten kingdoms, apparently European countries very much
analogous to the present day European Common Market. “And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the
beast, these shall hate the whore [harlot],” now the whore is the Christendom
in that day, she’s spoken of as a whore because she has sold out, she is a
woman who is sold out, the Church is the bride whose job it is to yield herself
into the arms of her lover, which is Jesus Christ.
So the apostate church is always looked upon as a whore that has left
her true lover and has gone and given herself to somebody else. This terminology, “whore” refers to
Christendom, unfaithful Christendom.
“…and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and
burn her with fire.” In other words,
there’s going to become a revolt, just like in Israel, and the liberals and all
the people that have shouted for disarmament and all the people who have [can’t
understand word] for world peace, and brotherhood, these people in the final
analysis of the days of the Tribulation will fall themselves, disasters of the
antichrist.
Now where does that place the true Church of Christ. Here’s where we see one of those little
details but I insist show the inspiration of Scripture. Before Israel was clobbered at Shiloh what
had to happen first? The glory had to
depart, before the destruction. So also
in the future, what is going to happen?
The glory is going to depart from Christendom and what is the departure
of the glory before the [can’t understand word]. It is the rapture of the Church, the rapture
of all true born again believers in Jesus Christ at one moment in time in
history, and it could be tomorrow it could be the next day, could be years from
now, could be the next century but there will come a time in future history
when every believer will be removed from history. That will be the departure of the glory just
as at the battle of Aphek, and after that departure what is left, the kernel,
the core of the organization and all [can’t understand word] will be turned
over to Christendom and will be used by a tremendous ecumenical machine. The question that we can ask ourselves, and
close on tonight, is how this applies and is a counterpart to Christmas. Before you can have peace and before you can
have any real benefit spiritually, you have to have the presence of the
glory. Turn to John 1.
John 1 would be the chapter that would give you the deepest
understanding of Christmas. The other gospels
give you the straightforward history, John 1 gives you the central core, the
philosophic and theological overtones of the Christmas event. There’s one verse, and only one part of that
verse to which I want to draw your attention. “The Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us,” and what is it that we beheld, “(and we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.” That’s the Christmas event, the glory has
returned, the glory that departed with Ichabod, has returned, that glory is the
life of Jesus Christ; the glory is still available in history to men by those
who are believers. The glory is still
here, but not always. And that’s the
note that I want to end, that Christmas is not a perpetual guarantee the glory
is always going to be available. Just as
the battle Aphek showed, the glory isn’t always going to be available. Don’t trust it, don’t think oh well, we can
be comfortable, we’ve got the glory here, God isn’t going to abandon His
saints. No He isn’t, He’s going to
remove them and then He’s going to abandon the world. So be warned.
The Christmas is a nice story because it relates the coming of the glory
but the thing you have to use to balance your understanding of Christian is the
coming departure of the glory.