in addition to being a rather unfamiliar tune, the imagery used in that song is also quite unfamiliar to us, isn't it? Edom is my bowl for washing, or I on Edom cast my shoe. What on earth does that mean? Well, it means that all the earth, all the earth belongs to God, and he does with the nations of the earth what he wills. He says that Gilead and Manasseh and Ephraim and Judah belong to Him, but no less do the pagan nations, the nations who do not love the Lord, no less do they belong to God as well. And we'll see that in our Scripture reading and in the sermon that follows 1 Samuel 4-5. 1 Samuel 4-5, and when we come to the end of chapter 4, you'll see very quickly why it is that we're reading two chapters instead of just one. 1 Samuel, we're going to start reading at 1 Samuel 4, verse 1. You'll remember that at the end of chapter 3, The boy Samuel, who is now somewhat grown, became known by Israel as a prophet of God, someone who spoke the words of God to the people of God. And now at the beginning of chapter four, we're going to find out something about how well the people of God listen to the prophet of God. This is the word of God. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines. They encamped at Ebenezer and the Philistines encamped at Aphek. The Philistines drew up in line against Israel, and when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines, who killed about 4,000 men on the field of battle. And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.' So the people sent to Shiloh and brought from there the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of Hosts, who was enthroned on the cherubim, and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. As soon as the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, All Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded. And when the Philistines heard the sound of the shouting, they said, what is this great shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean? And when they learned that the ark of the Lord had come to the camp, the Philistines were afraid, for they said, a God has come into the camp. And they said, woe to us for nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us. Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness. Take courage and be men, O Philistines, lest you become slaves to the Hebrews as they have been to you. Be men and fight. So the Philistines fought. And Israel was defeated, and they fled, every man to his home. And there was a very great slaughter, for 30,000 foot soldiers of Israel fell. And the ark of God was captured, and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died. A man of Benjamin ran from the battle line and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and with dirt on his head. When he arrived, Eli was sitting on his seat by the road watching, for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city and told the news, all the city cried out. When Eli heard the sound of the outcry, he said, what is this uproar? Then the man hurried and came and told Eli. Now Eli was 98 years old and his eyes were set so that he could not see. And the man said to Eli, I am he who has come from the battle. I fled from the battle today. And he said, how did it go, my son? He who brought the news answered and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines. And there has also been a great defeat among the people. Your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured." As soon as he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell over backward from his seat by the side of the gate, and his neck was broken, and he died. For the man was old and heavy. He had judged Israel forty years. Now his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, was pregnant and about to give birth. And when she heard the news that the ark of God was captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death, the woman attending her said to her, do not be afraid, for you have born a son. But she did not answer or pay attention. And she named the child Ichabod, saying, the glory has departed from Israel, because the ark of God had been captured, and because her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, the glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured. When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of God. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. When they rose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord and the head of Dagon, and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day. The hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod, and He terrified and afflicted them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory. And when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, the ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His hand is hard against us and against Dagon our God. So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, what shall we do with the Ark of the God of Israel? They answered, let the Ark of the God of Israel be brought around to Gath. So they brought the Ark of the God of Israel there. But after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a very great panic, and he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so the tumors broke out on them. So they sent the Ark of God to Ekron. But as soon as the ark of God came to Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, they've brought around to us the ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people. They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, send away the ark of the God of Israel and let it return to its own place that it may not kill us and our people. For there was a deadly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there. The men who did not die were struck with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven." This is the Word of God. Now, just for the sake of clarification before I get into the sermon proper, I want to tell you a little bit about what exactly the Ark of the Covenant or the Ark of God was. When I ask you, just out of the blue, how big was the Ark, you'll probably say something like, well, about 500 feet long, about 150 feet wide, and so on. You've got in your mind Noah's Ark. That giant boat on which both humanity and creation were saved during the worldwide flood. But this Ark of the Covenant is not that big, not that big at all. This Ark of the Covenant was about two feet tall, by about two feet long, by about three and a half feet wide. It was not very big at all, but it was an incredibly, incredibly significant piece of furniture in the life of Old Testament Israel. You see, during their wanderings in in the wilderness after they were saved from Egypt, God told Israel to build for Him a tabernacle, a place where they could meet with Him. And that tabernacle had a courtyard all around it for the people and for the priests and the Levites to go into. But then inside that courtyard, there was the tabernacle, a smaller tent. where there was a holy place and a most holy place. The priests would come every day into the holy place, and they would do their priestly duties there. But the most holy place, the place, in fact, where the ark of God was, was the most holy place in the entire nation of Israel, because that was the place where God himself was. The ark of God was for Israel the throne of God. It was the place where God lived with His people. The ark of God was, if you want to use a New Testament term or even an Isaianic term, the ark of God was Immanuel. It was God with them. Not to say that the ark itself was God, of course not, The fact that the ark was within Israel was a picture of the fact that God, the covenant God of Israel, who had saved them out of Egypt, who had made them His own, He was with His people. He was not far off, He was with His people. But at the same time, if you think about the actual picture of the ark in the Bible, there were these angels on top of it, these cherubim, The angels on top demonstrated the fact that the God who made this ark His throne was a God who was, in fact, high and lifted up. He was a God who was near, who was with His people, but not a God who belonged to His people. Rather, the people belonged to Him. He was with his people, but he did not belong to his people. In fact, his people belonged to him. And this was very plainly not what Israel at this time thought. The priests, you remember in chapters one and two, the priests used the tabernacle of God and the people who came to worship there to fatten themselves, to please themselves. And the people of Israel here in chapter four, they try to do the exact same thing. They had gone so far from where God wanted his people to be, they needed to be called back. And so God sends them a prophet. But now the question is, when God's word comes, will they listen? And the answer very plainly is no. The words of Samuel come to all Israel from Dan in the very north to Beersheba in the very south. And he was made mighty by the power of the Lord. And all Israel knew that he was God's prophet, God's spokesman. But when it came time to go to war, Israel decided to take God, put him on a shelf, and do things their way until their lives became too inconvenient, and then they'd take him back down and see if he was of any use to them. The staff, the shepherd's staff that was to gently guide them along their way, it was not working. But instead of giving up on them, God swaps out his staff for his rod. Now, in these two chapters, we see the weight of divine justice, first against God's own people, punishing them for their rebellion against Him. Second, we see the weight of divine justice against His priests, punishing them for their apostasy. But then thirdly and finally, in chapter 5, we see the weight of divine justice against God's enemies as well. Yes, He uses Philistia to punish His people but then he calls Philistia to task as well. We begin in 1 Samuel 4 verse 1. You see Israel gathering together as a nation against their enemies, against Philistia. And we learn a little later on in the chapter that the Philistines had conquered and had enslaved Israel. I said a few weeks ago that Samuel and Samson were around the same time. And you remember in the stories of Samson, you also get this hostile power, the Philistines fighting against and enslaving God's people. And you might remember how that story ended, with Samson dying in Philistine territory. And yes, he killed many Philistines as he died, but he did not, in fact, free Israel from Philistine rule. But here we see that Israel has once again had enough of foreign rule. They're sick of the Philistines ruling over them. They want to be free. They want to be free once more, but something here is missing. They gather for battle Something's missing. You might remember from the book of Judges the cycle of the judges. Every time the Israelites were taken over by a foreign power in the book of Judges, they call to the Lord in their distress, and He raises up a judge to free them from their adversaries, but here they do no such thing. The Lord's Word is coming to them. They've got the Lord's prophet, but they don't seek the Lord. And so when they go out to fight the Philistines, they are demolished. Now, this has happened before in Israelite history, that they've been defeated in battle before. You might remember the story of Israel in the book of Joshua. After the famous battle of Jericho, they fight against another city, a smaller city, Ai, and they expect easy victory. But the people of Ai defeat the people of Israel. And so what did Israel do? Well, they got down on their faces and they wept before God, and they prayed to Him, and then He gave them victory because they were once again acting like His people. And you might remember the time in the book of Judges when all of Israel went to fight against Benjamin. Twice they fought, and twice Israel was routed by their enemy. And so what did Israel do? Well, they got down on their faces and they wept before God and prayed to Him, and He gave them the victory because they were once more acting like His people. So what should Israel do here? What do they do now? Well, surely they've learned their lesson. Surely they're going to get down on their hands and knees and weep before God and pray to God. No, they don't do that, do they? They don't do that at all. See, the hearts of the people of Israel, they're all messed up. They don't think that God gets to tell them what to do. They think that they're the ones who get to tell God what to do. So perhaps one of them, one of the elders of Israel says, hey, you know, I remember a story that my mom and dad used to tell me about the battle of Jericho. Our enemies were too strong for us, and so we took the ark of God, and it went before us, and the walls came tumbling down. And then perhaps another one says, yeah, hey, and remember the story that our great-grandfathers, that our great-grandparents told us? They couldn't cross that River Jordan, but then the Levites took the Ark of God and the waters split. And then another one might say, yeah, hey, and remember Moses' song that he sang before the Ark whenever Israel went forth. Arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered. Well, we've got loads of enemies, but we've got no Ark. The ark's up in Shiloh. What's it doing? What good will the ark do up in Shiloh? Let's take it down. Let's see if Hophni and Phinehas will let us bring the ark down. If the ark is here, then God will have to fight for us. And you know how it goes. Before anyone's really putting up any serious resistance, before anyone's actually put any serious thought into this, they're off to Shiloh. And if you know anything about Hophni and Phinehas, you know they're not gonna put up much of a fight. And so they pick up the ark and they bring it on down. And as soon as it comes into the camp, the Israelites start rejoicing and laughing and dancing. Yes, God has come into our camp. He's with us now. And they're shouting so loudly that the echoes of their shouts are heard all the way over in the Philistine camp, which was some way off. But before we move over to the Philistine camp, what has happened here in Israel? What has happened to God's people? in a word, they've forgotten. They've replaced the law of God and the covenant of God with a sort of microwave religion, religion made to order. And the author of Samuel kind of subtly hints at this, although he's not too subtle. The Israelites keep calling this the ark of God or the ark of the Lord. And the author of the book of 1 Samuel says, no, this is the ark. of the covenant of the Lord of hosts who's enthroned on the cherubim, their God was too small. Or rather, their idea of who God is was far too small. They saw God like we might see a plumber. When you need plumbing done, you call the plumber, he comes and you agree that he'll do some plumbing for you and he'll install some pipes or whatever it is that plumbers do, and then you'll give him the amount of money that he charges for that particular service. He's providing the product, you're providing the dough, you're equal partners, you shake hands in this financial transaction. And that was how Israel saw God. They had forgotten that he was not someone to be bargained with, trifled with, or coerced. He was not their equal. They were supposed to come to him, not on their terms, but on his terms. They thought they could just pull him off the shelf when it was convenient, and then stick him back up there when they didn't need him anymore, so that he wouldn't get in their way. But now we go over to the Philistine camp. Israel has forgotten who they're dealing with, but the Philistines, they haven't forgotten. Or at least they remember more than Israel has. They hear the shouting in the Israelite camp, and perhaps they send their spies to see what's going on, and they find out that the Ark has come into the Israelite camp, and now they're shaking in their boots. A God has come into their camp, they say. And they're talking to each other. This is without precedent, man. This has never happened before. We are sure to be destroyed. Don't you remember what Israel's God can do? You know Egypt, right? You've heard of Egypt, that huge, incredibly powerful nation that nobody can defeat. Well, guess what? Israel's God wiped the floor with them. He sent plagues on them and rescued that nation out of Egypt. He is not a God to be trifled with. The Philistines have remembered more than the Israelites have. And then something unexpected happens. The Philistines psych each other up, and as a result, they're willing to fight all the harder. And when the battle comes, they are able to fight all the harder, and Israel is just annihilated, and their army is slaughtered. And all the survivors, rather than be slaughtered along with their brothers, they turn tail and run back to whichever home they come from. Israel is toast. And that's not the worst of it. In addition to taking the lives of some 30,000 soldiers of Israel, the Philistines take the Ark of God as well. And its keepers, the priests, Hophni and Phinehas, they're killed as well. But why has this happened? Why has this, we might ask the question that the elders of Israel ask in verse three, why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Why has this happened? Well, the author doesn't tell us, but he expects us to know what the first five books of the Bible say, that Israel is God's nation. And if they don't act like God's nation, then God will not act like their God until they are humbled and come back to him. They are God's people. They're circumcised Israelites. They're people in covenant with God. But we'll find out later in chapter 7 that they've actually been faithless to God. They've been collecting whatever other idols they can from the nations all around them. All kinds of bales and ashtoreths and other feek, feeble foreign deities. And the reason God leaves His people is because they left Him first. And this discipline, this military defeat, the loss of the priest, the loss of the ark, it is designed by God, by a good God, to bring them back to Him. Which, by the way, will happen about 20 years later, but that's about two weeks from now. But God's justice is not finished yet. He promised to punish Eli's sons, to put them to death by the edge of the sword, and that's happened. And the news of that will cause the ears of everyone in Israel to tingle. But God's not done with the house of Eli. And so we move from the battlefield to the city of Shiloh, where the ark of God had been until just a little while ago. The priest Eli and I'm sure all the people of Shiloh were waiting eagerly for news of the battle, for news regarding the priests and the ark. But when a messenger comes and they spy him in the distance, he's coming, he's running toward the city in the clothes of a mourner. Someone who's weeping, a Benjamite runs up to the city, but there's no smile on his face. Rather, there are lines streaking down from his eyes. He's been weeping and his clothes are torn. Not the slashes of swords, but the sorts of tears that come when you rip your clothes yourself. And his hair is a mess. It's covered with dirt, not just the dust of the road, but he literally took dirt from the ground and rubbed it into his hair. This is a man in mourning. Pretty soon, all of Shiloh is in the same state. He shares his dreadful news, and that morning is taken over by the whole city. Things are worse than they could have possibly imagined. Not only have the Philistines not been defeated, not only are they still under the thumb of this hostile foreign power, but their own army, the multitudes of Israel, lie dead on the fields, and the priests have been slaughtered, and the Ark of God. And the city is put into an uproar. And all the city cries out. And then we come to Eli. Old, pitiable Eli. He's 98 years old, he's very heavy, he's blind, but he's been watching and waiting for the ark of God, waiting for it to return. And his heart is trembling because he's so worried, not about Israel's armies, not even about his sons, but he is so worried about the ark of God. Because you understand, right? The ark was not God, and God was not in the ark, but the ark was the means by which God lived with his people. It wasn't just a picture or a symbol of his presence with them, it was the thing that God used in order that he might rightly and truly be Emmanuel to them. God with Israel. In fact, the ark of God, more than anything else, it was a type of Christ, the Christ who was to come. The loss of the ark was huge. Eli, his heart's been pounding in his chest, and he hears the noise from the city, and he has to know, has the worst happened? And so he calls the Benjamite messenger over, and he says, how did it go, my son? What has happened? And the messenger lets him know. It's as bad as he feared. Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has been a great defeat among the people. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured." And as soon as the words leave his mouth, Eli falls backward off his seat and breaks his neck. And then just to add misery to misery, the camera pulls back, it leaves the gate of Shiloh and focuses on one of the houses in the city of Shiloh. The house belonging to the late Phineas, the son of Eli. And there we see Phineas' wife, Eli's daughter-in-law, about to give birth. And like her father-in-law, she's in rough shape. And when she hears the news about the capture of the ark of God, when she hears about what's happened to her husband and what has now happened to her father-in-law, she is shocked into labor. But like I said, she's in rough shape, and birth and death occur mere moments apart. And this baby is born on the same day that his uncle, his father, his mother, and his grandfather all die. And the midwife tries to offer some comfort. Don't worry, don't be afraid. Look, look, it's a boy. You have born a son. Things aren't as hopeless as you think they are. She pays no attention to those attempts to lift her spirits. Her spirits will not be lifted from the depths they have sunk into. His name is no glory. Call him Ichabod. She whispers, for glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured. And so God's judgment begins to be weighed out on Eli's family. because of their faithlessness, because of their rebellion against Him, because they had forced Israel to sin along with them, and so they drove the people away from true faith in the God of Israel. God has now punished His priests. They thought they could do whatever they wanted with the things and the people that belonged to God. They thought of God as their equal, or even as their servant, though they should have known better. They rebelled, and they died in their rebellion. And the final words that we get from the house of Eli are these, the glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured. Now you understand why it is that We're hearing a sermon not just on chapter 4, but chapter 5 as well, because we have to wonder, is it true? Has the glory departed from Israel because the ark of God has been captured? Well, it's not quite true. And there are two reasons for this. First of all, whatever glory there might have been in Shiloh has been veiled, has been hidden by the antics of the house of Eli. They stole the glory of God before the Philistines ever did. These maverick ministers have stolen God's sacrifices and they have dishonored God's people. The glory of Israel has been shrouded for quite some time. But second, second, as we'll see, the ark of God is not quite as captured as we might have been led to believe. And so we move on to chapter five. You see, no fisherman weeps for his hook when a five-pound bass bites into it. Yes, in a sense, the hook, the lure, the worm has been captured, but that was the fisherman's design all along. The ark has not been captured so that the glory of God would depart. The ark has been captured so that the glory of God would be revealed, first by his judgment of Israel and Shiloh, but also by his judgment of his rival. And we'll soon see just how pathetic a rival he'd turn out to be. We left the battlefield once and went off to Shiloh in part two of this sermon. Now in part three, we're following the Philistines as they leave the battlefield and go west toward the seacoast where they live, toward their cities on the Mediterranean to see what will happen there. And the first city we visit is Ashdod. The ark of God is brought, I'm sure, with a whole victory parade through the highways of Philistia to the city of Ashdod and then through the streets of Ashdod until it comes to the temple of Dagon, the mightiest of the Philistine gods. It's brought from the heat of the Ashdod streets to the coolness of the temple and placed before the large imposing statue of Dagon. Dagon the mighty, Dagon the proud, Dagon the victorious. And I'm sure with tears in their eyes and hearts that have been buoyed by the greatness and goodness of Dagon, the great and terrible, the people of Ashdod and the princes and the priests, they leave for the night. They head home. They've captured the ark of God. One day of victory. But then they wake up. And they get up, and they open the doors of Dagon's temple, and what do they find? Well, Dagon's statue has fallen over. Oops, that's not good. And to make matters worse, it looks an awful lot like the statue of Dagon is bowing down to the ark of God. That is not the thing you wanna see first thing in the morning. And so they pick up the statue of poor Dagon, and they prop him back up again. Maybe he's a little wobbly, so they prop some two-by-fours under his arms. The whole time I'm sure they're looking over at the ark. What happened here last night? Hadn't Dagon's people beaten Yahweh's people? What's going on? And so they prop him up again and for the rest of the day he's good to go. All right, all right. They might not be quite so sure of themselves anymore, but it's been two days. Dagon is still in one piece and all is as it should be, right? Two days of victory, right? But then the third day dawns, and Dagon cannot keep his prey. God tore his arms away. And the priests wake up, and I'm sure they run a little faster than usual back to the temple of Dagon, but there's no propping him up. This time, Dagon's head has fallen, and his hands are lopped off and sitting on the threshold. Only the ark of God is untouched. Even in the darkest temple in a pagan land, God reigns supreme. And the Philistines, they get the memo. And it's brought home to them even more when they start to develop these strange tumors all over. And God's mighty hand, once raised against Egypt, is now raised against Philistia. And their great fears from before the battle, their great fears have come true. Though Israel was no great threat, the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim, he is mighty to save even in the land of death. And the inhabitants of Ashdod are terrified. They don't want to keep it, but can they destroy it? Well, no, then Yahweh, the God of Israel, will destroy them for sure. Could they send it back to Israel? Well, no, they just got this thing. And so the five cities of the Philistines start playing hot potato with the ark of God, passing it on from city to city to city. Gath picks it up, but no sooner have they accepted custody of it, then they start breaking it out in the same tumors. And so they try to pass it along to Ekron. But the people of Ekron aren't having it. They just about see this as a declaration of war. No way! You're not bringing that in here! And now they've got a real problem. Their people are dying in droves. Their cities are just about tearing themselves apart. There's rioting in the streets. And in their desperation, we even see the Philistines doing what the Israelites didn't have the sense to do for two whole chapters. We see the Philistines crying out, and their cry going all the way up to heaven. And that's where we'll leave the Philistines until next week, turning from the wrath of Israel's God to Israel's God for mercy. And we'll see next week if Israel has the sense to do the same thing. But before we leave these chapters behind, let me make clear what I've hinted at already. In these chapters, we see what a dear friend of mine likes to call an adumbration of Christ. In blurry shadows and pixelated pictures, we see, don't we, this image laid out for us of the ministry of Christ. The ark of God, of course, God's presence with His people, it stands for Christ Himself, the Emmanuel. It's this blurry picture painted by God Himself, representing for Israel the shape, the character, and the ministry of the Messiah to come. He would be God, high and lifted up, and thrown among the cherubim. but a God among his people, Immanuel. And this Christ, as we saw in the first point, would be taken by Israel to be a king fit for battle against their physical geopolitical enemies. In the first century, of course, that'd be the Romans, not the Philistines. And so when Christ comes into Jerusalem, how was he greeted? With shouts from the people so that the very earth resounded. And it was the shouts of the people that prompted Satan's sons among the Jewish leadership to redouble their efforts against him, and redouble they did. And they went so far as to kill him, to gain what they supposed was an unimpeachable victory, and the disciples and the women wept. For they were sure that the glory had departed from Israel with the death of this great prophet. But just as the ark rested in the temple of Dagon for three days, after which the head of that idol was toppled from its shoulders, so it took only three days for Christ to take the head of the serpent and crush it, even as He stripped death of its power." Dear Christians, Your Christ is bigger and stronger and mightier than you think He is. No matter how highly you think of Him, He is higher than you know, but at the same time, He is a God who is nearer at hand and mightier to save than you'd ever dare hope. So, dear Christian, learn the lesson that Israel failed to pick up. He will save. He will. That is an unassailable truth. It is a fact. But when he saves, he works his justice in his own way. Let's pray.