1 Samuel Lesson 7
Humiliation of God’s Enemies – Chapters 5-6
I hope you’re all relaxed because this is a passage in God’s Word that
is humorous with a Jewish sense of humor, with a Biblical sense of humor. And I have noticed in certain Christian
circles that some people get very uptight over certain things. You’ll see some things that if you’re the
typically religious uptight person it will offend you tonight, but if you can
relax and laugh you’ll manage to make it through the passage. In 1 Samuel 5 we continue the theme chapters
1-7, devoted to a preparation of the nation
In 1:1-2:10 we have the birth of Samuel, the prophet. Samuel becomes the first in the official line
of Hebrew prophets. Therefore Samuel is
a very important person to understand because Samuel defines what a prophet is
from this time forward in the Bible.
From this time forward you will always find a prophet ordaining the
king, a king which represents the highest form of civil authority in the nation
is subject to the Word of God through the prophet. And this is a lesson that has always been
followed wherever Christianity has been taken in a Biblical way. The Reformation thinkers, the Puritans and
others always insist that the civil government will operate under law, not
under men and that primarily the highest level of authority in any society is
in the revealed will of God, not in the man who holds the political
office. This has been true, you can test
this for yourself by taking a map of the world and shading in one color where
the Bible has gone with evangelical Protestantism and shading with another
color where you have had republican governments and you find those two
cross-hatchings agree over most of the globe, that where the Word of God has
gone and in depth and intensity, such as England, northern Germany, Holland,
etc. you have more of a republican trend in government, more of a democratic
trend in government. Where
And actually, understanding this principle will solve your understanding
of some of the racial problems that often creep into a society that are not
racial at all.
This is why we have insisted the book of Samuel in the Bible, both the
first and second parts, is very, very critical that you as a believer be
prepared to [can’t understand word] politically. These books are designed to give you
information that will enable you to make wise political decisions, that will
give you information so that you can understand the proper function of
government, the improper function of government and all this is contained in the
pages of God’s Word.
Now after this first section, from 1:1-2:10 where we have the
establishment of the prophet, we come to the second section,
The Philistines practiced disarmament, sort of like the people who want
to register all the firearms so they can take them away from the law-abiding
citizens. The same thing here, the
Philistines moved into these areas and took away all the iron tools that could
possibly be used for spears and arrows, with the result that the Jews were disarmed
and obviously the Philistines never had too much trouble controlling a disarmed
people. So one of the great lessons we
learn from this era of history is that this kind of disarmament is always
promoted by people who want to subjugate a nation. And here we have an historical illustration
of that truth.
Now at the battle of Aphek the ark of God was lost. They used the ark of God as sort of a magical
charm, and by way of background you want to understand the ark of God
apparently looked something like a coffin, from the descriptions in
Exodus. Inside were several things, one
of which was a copy of the Mosaic Covenant.
On the top of this thing was a gold dish of some sort and to the left
and to the right were two statues of cherubs, which are a high form of
angels. Angels have hierarchies in the
universe and the cherubs are the highest of those hierarchies. And so the cherubs are pictured here on this
ark. Remember the Jews lost the first
battle at Aphek and they went back and they got this thing from
Now we turn to 1 Samuel 5 and we find the first light on the scene, and
this is the chapter where God Himself begins to set up the mechanisms by which
He will deliver the nation. As I said,
chapters 5 and 6 are meant to be read with a sense of humor. They were recorded portions of history that
probably the Hebrews laughed at. It was
to show how ridiculous God made their enemies and it was downright hilarious to
the believers to watch how God so thoroughly humiliated the enemies. So as we go into this, remember, that is the
objective; it is to record the humiliation of the enemies of Jehovah and there
is some very poignant sections, some very humorous sections and there are some
very terrifying sections in these two chapters.
The two chapters together form a unit and therefore tonight we’ll deal
with both chapters.
The principle in chapter 5-6 is this: that what the Jews tried to do at
the battle of Aphek by using the ark as a good luck charm God Himself will do
now. God is going to do by Himself what
the nation could not do by themselves.
The nation tried to use the ark as a device to win the battle. God said the battle is Mine, and I will win
it on My terms. So we have the ark going
into captivity as we left it last week in Psalm 78, the ark is going into
captivity, the glory of the Lord is gone.
After this point in the history of the nation
Now let’s look at 5:1, this is after the Philistines have taken the ark
into captivity and the Philistines apparently don’t learn from the Samson
incident, so they proceed to immediately make the same mistake that they made
with Samson. Verses 1-2, “And the
Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Eben-ezer unto
Now they did a very similar thing if you turn back to Judges 16:23. When they finally captured Samson they did a
very foolish thing. They punched his
eyes out, which was all right as far as they were concerned, and they made him
a prisoner, but when they proceeded to go beyond that point they invited the
wrath of God down upon them. Now both
these incidents in Judges 16 and 1 Samuel 5 show why Satan always loses in
history; he never learns because Satan is always interested in promoting
schemes that will detract and subtract from the glory of God. And every time Satan does this he invites
God’s judgment upon himself and his agents, with the result Satan never learns
to keep by himself and stop messing with God’s character. He’s always got to extend himself beyond the
domain and ask for judgment and get it.
And here we have Satan operating through these people.
In verse 23, “The lords of the Philistines,” these are the mayors of the
five cities of the Philistine pentapolis, gathered them together to offer a
great sacrifice unto Dagon, their god, and to rejoice,” with this refrain, “Our
god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hand. [24] And when the people
saw him, they praised their god; for they said, Our god hath delivered into our
hands our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, who slew man of us. [25] And
it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson,
that he may make sport for us.” We’ll make fun of him. And obviously you remember Samson was brought
in to this great feast and he made a prayer.
Verse 28, “And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord God,
remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O
God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.”
Now Samson is out of it as usual, and this prayer is wrong. He wasn’t supposed to pray for his eyes. Samson was a blind man spiritually and here
he’s a blind man physically and this prayer of vengeance was not why God
answered his prayer. The reason God
answered his prayer is because Samson is praying for the damnation upon the
religion of the Philistines. It’s a
false religion and therefore should receive the condemnation of God. They have attacked Jehovah, they have marred
Jehovah’s glory and therefore the invite Jehovah’s judgment. And the fact that God answers the prayer of
verse 28 is not a signal that God has respected Samson’s prayer of
vengeance. God, as it were, doesn’t care
about Samson’s eyes, God cares about His own character, and He will not have
that character misrepresented by some satanic religion. So therefore God gives Samson the strength
and he crushes the temple. So that ended
one temple.
Now we come to 1 Samuel 5 and they try the same thing; this time instead
of bringing Samson into the temple they bring the ark of Jehovah into the
temple, but basically they do it for the same reason. They bring it into the house of Dagon and
they set the ark by Dagon. Now the
reason for this is to show that Yahweh, the God of Israel, should do homage to
Dagon, the god of Philistia, and there is a confrontation in theology, a
confrontation between the two national gods, and the outcome of this battle is
not just an outcome of an innocent battle, it is an outcome of a titanic
conflict between Dagon and Jehovah. And
the Philistines have interpreted their victory, not as a loss that Jehovah
deliberately allowed, but as the fact that Dagon, their god, really does exist
and that he has caused this victory.
Verse 3, “And when they of
The Bible has a doctrine of two kinds of war; there is holy war in
Scripture and there is the doctrine of the just war. The two are different. Holy war is an authorized war to exterminate
populations and peoples who have gone on negative volition toward God and have
increased heathenism in their area. It
is authorized between the years of 1440 BC and 586 BC. Holy war has not been authorized outside of
that time as a rule in history. During
that time when God was working through the nation Israel, God Himself, through
living prophets would reveal areas of the human race that had to be surgically
removed. Now critics of the Bible always
point to holy war and blood and slaughter and say oh isn’t this horrible, God
is a God of gore and so on. These very
people should be thankful for these holy wars.
If it were not for these holy wars we wouldn’t be sitting here today.
These holy wars in God’s Word gave freedom to the ancient world. If these holy wars had not gone on, the world
would have died in tyranny, died in the tyranny of Egypt, died in the tyranny
of the Babylonians or the Syrians. The
fact that God authorized holy war is the only reason we are here today, the
only reason. The human race would have
assassinated itself; the human race would have committed race-wide suicide had
God not authorized the extermination of great areas of the population that had
gone under and on negative volition toward the Word of God.
By the way, relevant to our own generation, all of these areas that were
exterminated between 1440, and largely between 1440 and 1000 BC, the time of
David, most of the holy wars were in that interval, during that interval almost
every major population that was exterminated, and I mean exterminated, God’s
Word was to kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the cattle,
just exterminate them completely from history.
Every one of the peoples that were exterminated in those four centuries
were people that messed with demonology, occultism and so on. Every one of them; they were involved in
great occultic practices. And where you
have major sections of a population engaging in this kind of thing, you have
people in bondage to Satan in a very direct way and they must be exterminated
physically. It’s a very cruel operation,
but it must be done, and any objections to holy war actually is an objection to
God’s holiness.
Now the doctrine of the just war is something altogether different; this
is the doctrine that comes under the fourth divine institution. God has authorized judicial power and in Genesis
9 after the flood the idea of judicial power being given to man was given in
the form of the sword, or capital punishment.
Capital punishment in the Bible is the ground of all government. Government is authorized by the right to take
life; it is cruel, yes, but that is the foundation Biblically of all
government. This means that no
government can exist without a court system, without a police force, and
without a military. Any government that
does not have these cannot exist.
Freedom has always been purchased in history by military victory,
always. Never have the people ever
attained freedom in the world except as they have had a strong military and the
military has won their wars. So freedom
comes through military victory. And
religious people that can be very sentimental at times and sloppy in their
thinking may not like that, and that’s too bad because they are usually the
people that will wind up in slavery because they have no values worth fighting
for.
Don’t be dissuaded by a modern pacifist movement in our country. The modern pacifist is not like the old
fashioned pacifist. The Amish are a
group of people in this country that are the old fashioned pacifists, and they
are a very honorable group; they believe the Word of God, their interpretation
we would disagree with, but the Amish have always been patriotic, they have
always supported their country. They
have gone into battle as unarmed ambulance drivers in World War I and World War
II. They have served in hospitals and so
on, to help in time of conflict and national disaster. There is nothing wrong with that kind of a
pacifist, but the modern pacifists who reacts against all military, who reacts
against any form of war, basically is a person who has no values worth fighting
for. And I ask you which is worse, a man
who will stand up and fight for something that is worthwhile or the man who has
no backbone because he has no values worth fighting for. I would say that the pacifist today is in far
worse shape than we have ever had people in our country before. They certainly be named, even with the name
pacifist, because they do not have any historic bearing with people like the
Amish and so on, they’re an insult to them.
Well, the doctrine of the just war says that not all wars are just, but
that there is such a thing as war that is legitimate on Biblical grounds and
the Christian citizens can whole-heartedly support this kind of war. And moreover he can pray for people engaged
in this kind of war. And this means
praying that the soldiers be as efficient as possible. It means praying for the men in aircraft that
they will drop their bombs as accurately as possible. I say it in those blunt terms because this is
the only way to get across the point that this is what just war means, that
there is such a thing as a just war, and the Christian citizen can support that
war. He doesn’t enjoy the war; Robert E.
Lee never enjoyed war, but Robert E. Lee is one of the greatest Christians this
country has ever seen. And he was a
great and marvelous military general.
And you would do well to read the biography of Robert E. Lee because in
there you will see a man who captured the Biblical view and brought it into the
military.
Another one, Stonewall Jackson, who by the way, when he had his army in
western Virginia had as one of chiefs of staff one of the great fundamentalist
theologians, Dr. Dudley, and he brought this man, who had taught theology in
Virginia for many years and he made him the chief of staff and all the officers
that served under Stonewall Jackson had to learn the book of Joshua backwards
and forwards. He made all military
reports filed in format of Joshua. And
this is how, actually, one of the unknown areas of American history, how
Stonewall Jackson ran his army. And he didn’t
see any conflict between the Bible and War and went on accordingly. Now those are examples of just war and
illustrations of Christian gentlemen who were great soldiers and who were
magnificent patriots who fought in their generation.
Now the holy war that we are seeing in the here in the text is a concept
that is not true of the just war. Just
war is not exterminating populations; just war is to simply win judgment upon
evil and to keep bringing it upon evil until that evildoer relinquishes his insistence
upon doing his evil. And in that the just war is terminated. But we are not talking about just war that
would be conducted, say for example today, by Gentile nations. We are discussing here holy war, that is
authorized to exterminate populations.
Now they were authorized to exterminate the Philistines. The Philistines knew it and this is why they
did what they did in Judges. But here in
Numbers 10:35 Moses, when he authorizes the armies to go into battle in holy
war he says, “Rise up LORD, and let Your enemies be scattered; let them that
hate Thee flee before Thee.”
Now this doesn’t mean they’re just going to take the ark into battle and
sit back and ho-hum, wait until the ark is going to do something. It’s not that all, and believers of that day
must actually take sword and spear drills, they must learn how to throw a spear
so that it will kill, they must learn how to shoot an arrow so that it will not
wound but will kill. And they must be
experts in the art of war. But this
command is that God will back up the soldiers so that they will be accurate and
will kill their opponents. But notice
how the order is given because the first part of verse 34 describes something
that physically happens while Moses speaks those words. And so while Moses said “Lord arise,” the
Levites would lift the ark upward, and there would actually be a physical
motion upward, actually they’d look like pall bearers would today, as they’d
lift this great coffin upward and they’d begin to march and the army would march
into battle. When that ark would lift
up, that would be the signal that Jehovah Himself was rising. And then in verse 36, when the ark rested,
Moses would say as the priests set the ark down, “Return, O LORD, unto the many
thousands of Israel, rest.” So Jehovah
would have a time or war and a time of peace, a time of struggle and a time of
rest. And Jehovah Himself would identify
in location with the ark, I don’t say identified with the ark, that would be
idolatry and the Israelites never worshiped the ark itself. But visualize enthroned between the cherubs
was Jehovah Himself, it was His throne, when those Levites lifted up the ark
and we have the two cherubs here, that Jehovah Himself was seated between the
two. And it was as though they were lifting
His throne up and moving Jehovah Himself into battle.
Now it is this command in verses 35-36, that they tried to duplicate in
the battle of Aphek; they tried to bring the ark into the battle but where they
failed was that it was an unauthorized battle to begin with, and there’s where
Jehovah was not with them. Now turn to 1
Samuel 5 where you have verse 3. [“And
when they of Ashdod arose early on the next day, behold, Dagon was fallen upon
his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place
again.”] God has a marvelous sense of humor and the first thing that God does
is that He during the night He apparently gets some angels together, because
God is obviously working in the physical realm, could move this by some
impersonal force but usually in the Bible we see Him moving by personal force,
so He got a bunch of angels together during the night when everybody was
sleeping and they did a little remodeling job on Dagon’s temple, they must have
been laughing all night about this because if the people slept lightly during
the night they probably could have heard the angels laughing down in the temple
of Dagon, they were having a ball down there rearranging the furniture.
And what they did was they took Dagon and they put him face down on the
temple, and this is very interesting because in ancient Near Eastern
architecture we have many paintings where you have the victorious king standing
here and… we have one, for example, of Jehu, the kind of the north, bowing down
to Shalmanezer, and here he is kissing Shalmanezer’s feet, and this is the way
the angels manipulated this idol during the night, so when everybody woke up
there was their Dagon down kissing the feet of Jehovah, and it was a beautiful
physical portrayal of a vassal to a great king, that Dagon was a vassal of
Jehovah and must bow to Him. So
obviously God and His angels must have thought that was pretty funny.
So the next day the people wake up and they set Dagon in its place. Now this itself is very funny and God is
going to use this in a few verses to increase the humor. See the people wake up in the morning and
they see what’s happened and so they call a construction in and the remodel it
back the way it was before. And the most
interesting thing about it, and Isaiah picks this up later on in God’s Word, he
says what did you people that worship idols, isn’t it funny that the idols that
you ask prayers of you have to support yourself; now does that make sense,
Isaiah will say later on. He says you
have to have chains to hold your gods up, and those are the gods that you pray
to.
Now that really makes sense doesn’t it.
Yet in our own generation we have idolatrous thought and it’s never
recognized for idolatrous thought.
Behind evolution there are two gods, chance and development; these are
two processes of nature that have been deified in the modern man’s
thoughts. Everything is attributed to
one of these two gods. These are the
gods that are used as the source of all else.
And they have become gods in our own day. And they must be propped up. The evolutionist who can’t respond to the
mathematical and scientific objections against his own theories refuses to respond,
he ignores them. And like the people
here, he has to take his own idol and set it up by the weight of his own human
effort. He has to hold these idols up.
And this is the sarcasm of the whole thing; in other words, the point
God is making here and will make the next night, is the fact that you people
are worshiping an impotent God. So
therefore verse 4, “And when they arose early on the next morning, behold,
Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD;” so
evidently God called the angels in and they did another remodeling job, except
they brought some tools in this time and went to work on the statue. “…and the head of Dagon and both the palms of
his hands,” that is the arms it should be, the Hebrew word for palm and arms
are about the same, “the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold;
only the stump of Dagon was left to him.”
So they did a little amputation during the night, and this was obviously
designed for a purpose because the head and the arms were symbols of power. The head was the place of the crown and the
crown was always the place of power. You
often find in Scripture the phrase, “He has exalted the horn of His
anointed.” What is the “horn of his
anointed?” It is the crown which goes on
the head. And so by cutting the head and
the arms off, the angels were saying how do you like Dagon now, this is how he
really is. In other words, he has no
power. So for the second night in a row
there’s a ball going on in Dagon’s temple, unknown to the Philistines.
And they woke up, and verse 5, “Therefore, neither the priests of Dagon,
nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod
unto this day.” This is one of those
little historic notices by the way, that if archeology could tell us enough
about Philistine culture, verse 3 would be a point of verification. We would
look to find in Philistine culture some sort of a custom about not stepping on
the threshold of this temple. But we
don’t know enough to confirm this.
Verse 6, “But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod,” now
up to this point, God has portrayed His humor against the gods… up to this
point. Now he’s going to have some fun
with the population. So all of this has
been brought about because the population tries to discredit Jehovah. This is part of holy war. And So God in verse 6 destroyed them; now we
don’t know what method God used but some great disease broke out in the
Philistine pentapolis and destroyed many people, “…and He destroyed them, and
smote them with emerods [tumors], even Ashdod and its coast thereof
[borders].” Now this is the word for
hemorrhoids, so most of you get the point that God gave them a pain in the you
know where. And this was obviously to be
read for generations later with a great sense of humor. Now obviously a few uptight believers can’t
stand the humor; that’s all right, just relax, we’ll be through it next
week.
But this was to be read down through the centuries as this is what God
does, and it was to be a shame, it was to be something that would be humorous,
it would show them, of all the possible diseases that would be the most
humiliating, which one would you pick out?
And so you can imagine thousands of people with this problem, and this
went on for months. We’ll leave it to
your imagination.
Verse 7, “And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The
ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us; for His hand is heavy upon
us, and upon Dagon our god.” Now the
most interesting thing here, it shows you the negative volition of the
people. Even though empirically God has
demonstrated His superior power to both their god and to them, nevertheless,
they still go about worshiping their god.
This is why there was holy war authorized. Nothing would break these people’s religious
allegiance. They had to be eliminated and this is why holy war was done.
Verse 8, “They sent, therefore, and gathered all the lords of the
Philistines,” and here again we have another interesting sense of humor because
the Philistine pentapolis apparently had some inter-city rivalry going on. They got along fairly well during war time,
but during peace time these Philistine cities would kind of make snide remarks
at each other and so on, they had a lot of inter-city rivalry. So the city fathers of Ashdod got together
and said now listen, we’ve had enough of this stuff so let’s pass it on to our
friends. And we’ll share the
blessing. So in verse 8, “The sent,
therefore, and gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them, and said,
What shall we doth the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark
of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel
there. [9] And it was so that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the
LORD was against the city with a very great destruction;” and there was a
repeat performance, so they got it. “…
and He smote the men of the city, both shall and great, and they had emerods
[tumors] in their secret parts.”
So you have Ashdod and Gath, and then you’re going to have this go
through the whole Philistine pentapolis; this is the most marvelous use of
negative volition. This morning in
Sunday School we were discussing sovereignty and volition, well here God is
using negative volition in a very humorous way, and this passage was meant to
be read and enjoyed and laughed at; God made a laughing stock of His
enemies.
Verse 10, “Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron. And it came to
pass, as the ark of God came to Ekron,” they’re just passing it on some more,
and finally they get wise, they’ve heard the news, “that the Ekronites cried
out, saying, They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to
slay us and our people.” Verse 11, “So
they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said,
Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to its own place,
that ti slay us not, and our people; for there was a deadly destruction
throughout all the city. The hand of God
was very heavy there.” This is an
admission tantamount to defeat. Whenever
a nation in the ancient East would give up a god or give up the tribute from a
conquered enemy, this was tantamount to admitting defeat. This is why, by the way, it’s a miracle as we
were studying in Sunday School, how in Ezra, Cyrus put forth the decree that
all of the content of the tabernacle of God will be returned to the land. This is unheard of in the ancient East, that
was a miracle because this would always be looked upon by a civilization as a
great defeat.
So here in verse 11 we find the people forced, and I want you to look at
how God did this, because coming up in the next chapter is another scene
showing you that these people were not the naïve ignoramuses that people think
the ancient were. These people respected
empirical data; they didn’t have, like so many people today, well I just
believe because I believe because I believe.
These people demanded facts and evidences, and they were confronted with
these evidences. And when they were
confronted they responded.
Verse 12, “And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods
[tumors]; and the cry of the city went up to heaven.” And this is also a final touch on the whole
humorous sense of this because who was in heaven? It was the God that cause it, so to whom must
they cry for removal of the curse? The
God who brought it; certainly not Dagon, Dagon is the god of grain, he was
never the God of heaven. So the cry
going up to heaven obviously is a final rejoinder to the Philistines and what
they tried to do.
Now in chapter 6 we have God showing Himself that He is able; see the
theme of chapter 5 has been that God is showing all by Himself, without the
help of any Israelite, that’s the point of this chapter. They had [can’t understand word/s] who were
trying to help them in chapter 4 and they goofed, here the lone ark of God,
with not one bodyguard, seems to take care of itself pretty well. Now in chapter 6 He does another job; both
chapter 5 and chapter 6 together are to show you that God is capable, and the
reason for chapter 5 and chapter 6 in God’s Word is so you never get the wrong
impression from the dark ages of the Judges.
It might be possible, had your Bibles not had these two chapters, if you
had lived in that day to draw the conclusion after centuries and centuries of political
oppression and defeat, that your God was weak, that God could not handle the
situation. So God must provide
empirical historical evidences that are insufficient, Israel, trust Me, I am
sufficient. And God must show this in
history to these people. And chapters 5
and chapters 6, humorous though they are, are written for a very serious
purpose, to provide historical evidence that God does not need the help of any
Hebrew to take care of Himself, rather the Jews need His help, but He doesn’t
need theirs.
So in chapter 6 “And the ark of the LORD was in the country of the
Philistines seven months.” And finally in verse 2 they called for their demon
possessed occultic artists, those are the diviners, “And the Philistines called
for the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do to the ark of the
LORD? Tell us in what way we shall send it to its place.” There is one final note here of humiliation
and that is that apparently, we know these diviners were demon possessed from
Deuteronomy 18, and so apparently what God does, He puts some sort of pressure
on the demons that speak through these diviners. So when the Philistines come to the diviners,
hey, what should we do, what should we do, what should we do, they say well
look, you have to do two things; you not only take the ark back there but you
have to make golden statues, one of which is a golden statue of hemorrhoids and
the other of mice, and not only that, but I want you to put it on the cart and
you’re going to publicly track thing all the through Philistia, all the way up
into Israel. And that obviously is the
final humorous note because now the deep humiliation must be publicly expressed
by a tribute to the opposing side.
So verse 3 and verse 4 deals with this.
[3, “And they said, If we send away the ark of the God of Israel, send
it not empty; but by all means return him a trespass offering; then ye shall he
healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you. [4]
Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to
him? They answered, Five golden tumors,
and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines;
for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.”] The “five” meaning the “five mice” and so on,
means the five cities of the Philistine pentapolis. [5, “Wherefore ye shall make images of your
tumors, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto
the God of Israel. Perhaps He will
lighten His hand from you, and from your gods, and from your land.”]
Verse 6, “Why, then, do you harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and
Pharaoh hardened their hearts?” Now this
is most interesting because for the second time in this episode that we have
studied, back in 4:7, do you remember what happened in 4:7-8, when the
Philistines saw the ark coming in, “they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto us!...” Verse 8, “Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us out of the hand of these
might gods? These are the gods that
smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness.” So the news of the overt objective historic
evidences had gotten out to the ancient world; they had the objective
evidences. And this is what is wrong
with too much evangelicalism today, preaching a subjective gospel, invite Jesus
into your heart and everything is going to be better. That’s not the New Testament gospel, Christ
in Acts 1 provided many infallible proofs.
When you preach the gospel you must present the objective historical
evidences behind the thing, so that when a man believes he believes because he
knows it is true, not because he hopes it is true, he knows it is true and
therefore he believes.
So in chapter 6 then when we see this testimony it’s a reminder to the
tremendous objective witness of God.
Remember revelation in God’s Word is one of the prerequisites for the
faith technique. A believer cannot
exercise the faith technique unless four things are true. First there must be a public or historic
revelation. It can’t be some mystical
thing where I crawl into the closet and contemplate my navel for six hours
every evening and come up with some sort of a vision. Historic revelation is something that is
actually given in space/time history that can be studied. The second thing that is required is that you
have to have a creation the way the Bible says; if the universe isn’t
structured the way the Bible says, then obviously all the miracles and so on
are out. The content of the revelation,
you must have part of the mind of God.
You must have part of the mind of God; there must be content for the
revelation. And finally the fourth part
of the faith technique is that the person must study it until their own
conscience gives ascent to it. So those
are the four… [tape turns]
… small evidences in God’s Word that these people really thought through
things. They just didn’t naively believe
watch the text. Verse 7, “Now,
therefore, make a new cart,” and by the way, this is going to turn out to
blessing too, God’s going to use this.
“Now, therefore, make a new cart, and take two milk cows, on which there
has come no yoke, and tie the cows to the cart, and bring their calves home
from them. [8] And take the ark of the
LORD, and lay it upon the car; and put the jewels of gold, which ye return him for
a trespass offering, in a coffer [box] by the side of it; and send it away,
that it may go.” Now these tests
depended on two items, first, the cattle involved had never been subjected to a
yoke and the priests said now if Jehovah is really so great and we milk these
cattle and hook them up to the oxen, they could probably tear off in five
different directions, now if they go together as a team and they pull this cart
down the road, what does that show? It
shows obviously there is some supernatural unusual power working here. So here is an empirical test that they give
to the God of the Bible. They take two
unyoked animals, and secondly, they remove their young, so that the mother
instinct would take over, under normal circumstances the mother instinct would
take over and the cattle would want to go back to nurse their young.
So they’ve got two things to this test, the cattle must overcome two
tremendous natural barriers, and if they do, then obviously some supernatural
thing has occurred. If they don’t, then
it’s purely natural. Now don’t you see
then, that the people in the ancient world did not do what so many liberals
always say they do? Why those people,
they had no idea of the laws of natural science, all they did was they saw
these things happen and so they exaggerated them and exaggerated them because
it wasn’t controlled by our 20th century knowledge of science, and
so then they developed the idea of a miracle; how foolish. These people knew what regularity was in
nature, and they used this regularity in nature in this text, so this disproves
the liberal position that these people had no idea of regularity in
nature. They most certainly did. And they most certainly therefore are
qualified eyewitness observers when God did something in the past. This passage, small as though it may appear
to you, is one of the qualifications that shows the eyewitnesses to Old
Testament history are credible eyewitnesses.
It shows they did know natural law and could tell a miracle when they
saw it. [Verse 9, “And see, if it goes
up by the way of its own border to Beth-shemesh, then He hath done us this
great evil; but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote
us; it was a chance that happened to us.”]
Verse 10, “And the men did so; and took two milk cows, and tied them to
the cart, and shut up their calves at home. [11] And they laid the ark of the
LORD upon the cart, and the box with the mice of gold and the images of their
tumors. [12] And the cows took the straight way to the way of Beth-shemesh, and
went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside to the right
hand or to the left; and the lords of the
Philistines went after them unto the border of Beth-shemesh.” Now Beth-shemesh is up the coast from the
Philistine pentapolis, it’s a point Aphek is up here, Beth-shemesh is right
about here, and there’s another city, Kirjath-jearim here. And the road takes them right up here, and
this area is the boundary line; to the left of this boundary is Philistia; to
the right of this boundary is Israel, but still occupied by Philistia. It is not free territory when they get to
Beth-shemesh. That is not free, it is
occupied and controlled but it still isn’t part of Philistia. So they come to the boundary.
In verse 13, “And they of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest
in the valley; and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced.
[14] And the cart came into the field of Joshua,” see the historic detail? This is not some myth some place, this was written
to be tested, somebody’s back yard this came to rest in, and it’s an invitation
to the original readers of the book, if you don’t believe what I say, go to the
guy’s back yard and look. In other word,
we have a great deal of detail. This is
an eyewitness of what actually happened.
In verse 14 we have one of the final points of the story, the
independency of the God of Israel, not only does He take care of Himself in
enemy territory, when He comes into the homeland, what does He do for the
believers. He provides completely for
them. How?
Look in verse 14, “And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a
Beth-shemite, and stood there, and there was a great stone,” so it didn’t go
any further, God led these cows, in the Hebrew it speaks in verse 12 of the
lowing as they went, the idea is that the cattle were being shepherded along
the road by unseen forces, that they didn’t naturally want to go, they were
straining at the yoke not to go in this direction, that’s the purpose of that
phrase in verse 12, to show that they were naturally not wanting to do it but
something was guiding them right along the rode. And the cart came into the field and they
clave, verse 14, “And they clave [split] the wood of the cart, and offered the
cows a burnt offering unto the LORD.” So
look what the Lord did. He returned the
ark, the first act of worship He provided the sacrifice and He provided the
wood to burn for the fire for the sacrifice, total provision.
What did the Hebrews do in all of chapter 5 and 6 by way of
deliverance? Not one thing. You see why it’s so wrong to say God helps
those that help themselves. This came
from Ben Franklin and not from God’s Word.
This obviously disproves it; God is helping those who can’t help
themselves. And this has been written,
designed and engineered to deliberately show the point. Nothing is done by them, they didn’t even
bring the ark there, it’s brought to them by two animals. They don’t do anything to provide the
sacrifice, God provides it. There’s only one thing required of the believer,
positive volition to want to worship God. That’s the only thing the believers
do in all these chapters. The only
thing, everything else is provided.
That’s the mirror image of the gospel, isn’t it. Look, here’s man behind the 8-ball because of
sin; if it were not for the cross of Jesus Christ we would have a tremendous
moral problem tonight; we would be behind the sin barrier and no amount of
therapy, no amount of religiosity, no amount of anything else would ever remove
the legal guilt, guilt feelings yes, but not the legal guilt. However, God has provided in Christ’s
atonement on the cross all of our sins laid upon Him. Do we do anything for that? No, God provided for us. God provided the Savior, God provided the
sacrifice. What is necessary to
appropriate the salvation? What the
believers are doing here, active volition, receiving what God has provided by a
decision, by an actual choice, positive volition. Same principle here, God has provided
everything for deliverance.
Now the titanic thing about chapters 5 and 6 is that for 400 years they
haven’t had to listen, for 400 years they’ve lived in political oppression of
one sort or another. Now the light is
about to dawn on a new era, and as we see the king come we’ll see this
deliverance dawn. God is teaching them one lesson, that deliverance comes from
Me, and Me alone, and you should learn from this story.
Verse 15, “And the Levites took down the ark of the LORD,” and one more
lesson has to be learned before this over, they took down the ark of the LORD,
and they sacrificed sacrifices there. [“…and the box that was with it, wherein
the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great stone; and the men of
Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices the same day
unto the Lord.” [16, And when the five lords of the Philistines had seen it,
they returned to Ekron the same day. [17] And these are the golden tumors which
the Philistines returned for a trespass offering unto the LORD: For Ashdod,
one, for Gaza, one, for Ashkelon, one, for Gath, one, for Ekron, one. [18] And the golden mice, according to the number
of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of
fortified cities, and of country villages, even unto the great stone of Abel,
whereon they set down the ask of the LORD, which stone remains unto this day in
the field of Joshua, the Beth-shemite.”]
Verse 19, “And he [God] smote the men of Beth-shemesh,” now why does God
smite the men of this country, “because they looked into the ark of the LORD,
even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men,” now the
problem in Hebrew is that the two words together, seventy and fifty thousand,
and most authorities agree that the fifty thousand is a textual mistake, so smote
seventy men. Now why are these seventy
men “smote.” They looked into the
ark. What was wrong with this? Now it doesn’t say they peeked inside the
ark, that probably is not what is meant, they were staring at the thing,
looking at it, kind of feeling it, oh, isn’t that nice. Some time later in God’s Word, in 2 Samuel 6,
for this story is not picked up again until 2 Samuel 6, next week something
else will happen, but in 2 Samuel 6 they begin to move the ark again and when
they begin to start off the ark starts to topple, the cart hits a little rough
place and one of the priests puts out his hand to steady the ark and
immediately he’s smitten. Why? God doesn’t have to be stabilized. And you’ll find Him as a jealous God to all
of this account; the ark will not be supported by any human means. And so when it starts to topple, no priest
could ever say I held God up, I held His throne. God’s throne doesn’t need human hands for
support.
So here you have the same lesson; these people cannot just carelessly
look upon the being of God. This reminds
us of something that’s found in Exodus 19, when God spoke the Ten Commandments
remember how He appeared. You see in
history, after creation in the Garden of Eden, Jesus Christ in preincarnate
form walked with Adam, it says in the cool of the day they carried on a
conversation. Obviously God taught the
human race language because language must always be taught by somebody who
previously can speak language. Who
taught Adam to speak? Obviously it must
have been God who taught Adam to speak.
So God gave at least language lessons to Adam after He created him. And while this conversation was going on,
everything was fine. And then you have
the great fall; forever after the fall, whenever God appears in all of His
holiness you get the reaction you get in Exodus 19. Verse 16, “So it came to pass on the third
day, in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud
upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud, so that all the
people that were in the camp trembled.”
Verse 18, He appeared with “the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount
quaked greatly.” Verse 19, “And when the
voice of the trumpet sounded long, and became louder and louder, Moses spoke,
and God answered him by a voice.” Verse
21, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break
through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them perish.”
Now this is what was going on in the ark; God, in all of His holiness
cannot be viewed by a fallen creature.
Ultimately in eternity yes, but in our present state, no. And every time God appears, to the prophets
in Isaiah 6, in Ezekiel 1, in Revelation, there’s always a tremendous
physiological shock; the only way I can use as an analogy is that man is
tampering with ultra-high voltage when God appears on the scene, and the shock
is just too much for the physical body this side of the fall. And so you always get this, and this is why
God said I’m warning you, because you are all sinful creatures, no matter how
much I may love you as individuals, you re not fit for My presence now. And if you break through and you come up this
mountain, this will happen to you.
This is the same think with the ark, remember the identification between
the ark, and this is why “he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had
looked into the ark of the LORD,” they treated it as just an object, just
cursory, and they didn’t treat it with the holiness that the person of God
demands. Verse 20, the final conclusion,
and this conclusion ties together the two chapters, “And the men of
Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? And to whom
shall he go up for us?” That is what God
had wanted the people to say for 400 years and never could get the point
across. And now after the incidents of
chapter 5 and chapter 6 God has produced this response in His people. Now they know that no one can stand before
Me. Now that has to be brought about,
but the point of chapters 5-6 is that it was brought about how? By subjective mysticism, people crawling in
their closet for a religious experience?
Or was it brought about by God objectively showing Himself in history? Obviously the latter.
What does that tell us about Christianity today? That if we are to produce a testimony for
God, the clergy, and the churches must be loyal to the historic record of God’s
objective revelation and where you have people casting doubts upon that
historic record of God’s objective revelation this effect cannot be produced, and
if this effect is not produced you have no spiritual depth.
The conclusion of the matter is again found in Psalm 78. Psalm 78 is a Psalm of history, it’s a wisdom
and last Sunday we concluded with a portion of Psalm 78 and I’d like to
conclude with another portion of the same Psalm, a very long Psalm that
recounts the objective historical revelation of God to Israel. This is how Israel viewed chapters 5-6;
beginning at verse 65, remember we left off with 62, 63, 64, where “He gave His
people over to the sword,” verse 64, “The priests fell by the sword,” the note
of defeat, the tone of despair, now look what happens in verse 65; if this
Psalm was sung there’d be a tremendous titanic change in the music here. “And then the LORD awakened, as one out of sleep,
like a mighty man that shouts by reason of wine. [66] And He smote His enemies
in the hinder parts,” so that should clarify in case you object to my
interpretation of chapter 5, “He put them to a perpetual reproach,” that’s the
shame of it. So this psalm got it, they had a good laugh when they sang Psalm
78 too. [67] Moreover, He refused the
tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim.” Now from verse 67 on and the rest of this
Psalm is the sequel to the story, of which you only got a part tonight in
chapters 5-6. God is wandering in the
ark, but He comes to the back to the land, but God is going to wander and
wander until finally the king comes. And
here’s the significance; it is not until the authorized king takes his throne
that the ark of God comes to rest. Until
David sits on the throne and personally authorizes the ark in Jerusalem, the
ark of Jehovah is always floating, as though God Himself is wandering and
wandering and wandering in the land, until He Himself is at home. This Psalm is a commemoration after the ark,
that you just saw, is brought back to the city of Jerusalem.
Verse 69, “And He built his sanctuary like high places, like the earth
which He has established forever. [70] He chose David His servant, and took him
from the sheepfolds.” Verse 72, “So He
fed them according to the integrity of His heart, and guided them by the
skillfulness of His hands.” The idea is
that God will want His king and it will take the king himself to settle the ark
issue. The ark, so far in chapters 5 and
6, has been seen to show that God is capable.
Now why? Let’s turn to the
beginning of Psalm 78 and there’ll you’ll see the spiritual conclusion to the
whole matter, how Israel looked upon this event years later.
Psalm 78:1, “Give ear, O My people, to My law,” see it’s very wisdom
like, very much like Proverbs, “incline your ears to the words of My mouth. [2]
I will open My mouth in a parable;” that means a proverb, “I will utter dark
sayings of old, [3] Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told
us. [4] We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to
come the praises of the LORD, and His strength, and His wonderful works that He
has done.” That is the conclusion to the
matter; there must be an objective historic record of God’s revelation in
history passed from father to son, to son, to son, to son, to son, down through
the streams of the families the tradition must be preserved. And notice what it is, to shoe “the praises
of the LORD, and His strength.” How do
you show this, just oh praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord? No, the praises are seen by His historic
works.
Now they had a good laugh over this one, and as believers I hope some of
you, when you get out of here and don’t want me to see you laughing, you can
laugh and relax about it, and I hope you do because that’s part of your
response to the Word of God. This will
show you how the people of