God’s Unfailing Promise

The return of the Ark by. Gustav Dore

First and Second Samuel are perhaps two of the most popular books to preach from as well as teach in Sunday school.  When they were first written they were actually treated as a single book, they were just split between two scrolls (the ancient world had its limitations).    Most Christians are very familiar with the book’s famous stories. King Saul rises to power and fails miserably in his service to God as David takes the throne. David in his youth defeats the giant Goliath with a single stone flung from a sling.  Who can forget the scandalous acts that David committed against Bathsheba and her husband Uriah.  These two books are filled with content that is very useful for building up and edifying the church.  There is however a passage from 1 Samuel that is not brought up as frequently as the ones mentioned above.  I am referring to when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel 5 and 6.  We will set up the context of these two chapters then walk through some of the highlights to get a good understanding.  This blog will be a little more theological than some of my previous ones but I promise there will be some application at the end that will be crucial to understanding God’s plan for salvation.

In setting up the foundation of the text, it is important to note chronologically, 1 Samuel takes up where the book of Judges left off.  Take a look at the very last verse of Judges.

Judges 21:25 ESV  “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

It is no secret that the events in Judges were part of one of the darkest times for Israel. Anyone who has read chapter 19 will know that it is not very kid friendly either.  I am all for teaching/preaching the full counsel of God but this is one of those texts that you need to have discretion about when discussing it in youth groups or even from the pulpit where everyone including children can hear.  Nonetheless, that chapter gives you an idea of what  the writer of Judges meant by “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”.  As a result, almost the entire tribe of Benjamin was wiped out (Judges 21). 

Leading up to 1 Samuel 5 we have the account of Samuel's birth after Hannah’s desperate prayers for God to heal her infertility (1 Samuel 1,2).  This is really one of those texts that deserves its own blog but reading it will give you a great picture of what godly prayer looks like.  We also see that a man named Eli and his son’s were priests at a place called Shiloh.  This is where Samuel stayed during his youth and received his calling from God to become a prophet in Israel (1 Samuel 3).  It is also notable that the actions of Eli’s sons were completely reprehensible.  They were making a mockery of the sacrifices to God and chasing after women.  It is by the sheer grace of God they were not immediately consumed by fire like Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10:1,2.  And finally, near a place called Ebenezer, the Israelites lost the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines (1 Samuel 4).  It was such a tragic defeat that when the news was brought to Eli that his sons and the ark of God were lost in battle, he immediately fell over from shock and died from a broken neck (1 Samuel 4:18).  

Before we get to the text it will be worth asking how we got to this point.  Prior to Israel’s major defeat there was a smaller battle where 4000 of their men were killed.  They were completely beside themselves.  Listen to their reaction below.  

1 Samuel 4:3,4 “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 is enthroned on the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.”

The people of Israel knew that it was God who fought for them and guided them in their victories. 

Many times in the book of Joshua and Judges you will read the Lord saying that He will be with Israel as they go out to battle.  But there is a catch to this.  In Deuteronomy 28 we have this concept of divine blessing and divine cursing.  If Israel is obedient/faithful to God then they will be blessed but if she(Israel) is disobedient/unfaithful they will be inflicted by the curse of God.  We are not talking about something that is done by a voodoo witch-doctor or some magical hex, this is the wrath of God being poured out.  See the contrast for yourself.  

Blessing,

Deuteronomy 28:1 “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.”

Deuteronomy 28:7,8  “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” 

Cursing,

Deuteronomy 28:15 “But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.”

Israel treated the ark of God as some sort of magical device that will automatically win them victory over their enemies.  However, it was not the ark itself but the power of God that accompanied Israel in battle.  Therefore, since they were drenched in iniquity, God held fast to his covenant promises to Israel in the wilderness and did not go before them when they went out to fight the Philistines.

Now that we have the context leading up to 1 Samuel 5 and 6, let us look at what happened next.  If someone has not heard this story before, they may be wondering how Israel was going to get the ark of God back.  Are they going to cry out to God in repentance and send some hero and his men of valor to fight the Philistines to take back the ark? Well, no.  That is not what happens at all.  The Philistines carried the ark away to a place called Ashdod and placed it in a temple dedicated to one of their gods, Dagon (1 Samuel 5:1,2).  To their surprise, a stone statue of Dagon had fallen over twice while no one was around, and the second time his head and arms were broken off (1 Samuel 5:3-5).  The Philistines were so disturbed by this that they would not even tread across the threshold of the temple afterwards.  Then scripture tells us that the “hand of the LORD was very heavy against the people of Ashdod” (1 Samuel 5:6).   The Hebrew word for hand is ‘yad’ (a as in father) which in addition to meaning ‘hand’ or ‘arm’ also has the meaning ‘power’.  So the LORD is unleashing his power on the people of Ashdod.  They were afflicted with tumors and other plagues.  The Philistines assumed that the God of Israel just didn’t like Dagon so they decided to move the ark to Gath (1 Samuel 5:8).  The exact same plagues came upon them so they moved the ark once again to Ekron but the situation was no different there (1 Samuel 5:10).  At this point the Philistines are terrified and the text tells us “there was a deathly 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.” (1 Samuel 5:11,12).  The holiness of God is on full display, an attribute of God that we need to know well in order to fully understand all the calamity that is occurring in this passage.  I will likely write a blog on this in the future.  

What we are seeing here is that the same divine curses that God threatened against Israel, He was now inflicting upon the Philistines. 

At this point, they didn’t know what to do.  In Chapter 6 The Philistines summoned all of their priests and diviners together and consulted with them what must be done (1 Samuel 6:2).  Their advice was this, they were to place the ark and a guilt offering on a cart and yoke two milk cows to it, then if the cows carry the cart back to Israel at Beth-shemesh they will know this plague was from God, but if not then it was all a coincidence (1 Samuel 6:3-9).  They followed the priests’ advice and to their surprise the cows started up the road, “They turned neither to the right nor to the left” and went all the way to Beth-shemesh (1 Samuel 6:10-13). It was not a hero of Israel or even the Philistines who returned the ark of God, it was the divine providence and power of God Himself.  One thing that we must all know about God, is that while Israel may fail Him and become disobedient, God will never fail or be disobedient.  We have to remember what God promised to Abraham back in Genesis.

Genesis 15:17-21 “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.’”

God has promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations and that through his seed all the nations would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3).  The “pieces” referred to are animals that were split in half.  It is commonly thought during the time of Abraham that when an oath is made, it was made between a king or person of higher status and a servant. Ones pledges loyalty to the king in exchange for protection for example.  It was also implied that if you break your end of the covenant, you would become like the animals that you walked through when you made the promise.  In the passage above we see that it is God who passed through in the form of a flaming torch and took on all the covenant responsibility and risk to bless the whole world through Abraham's offspring.  Since God cannot die or lie we know that his promise is guaranteed to happen.  The new testament clarifies this more.

Hebrews 6:13-19 “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely I will bless you and multiply you.’ And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain”

In the text above we see that God took it upon himself to fulfill the covenant promise with Abraham.  If it was left solely up to Abraham or the rest of Israel it all would have failed long ago.  We should take great encouragement by the wondrous truth that “It is impossible for God to lie”.  He absolutely will not fail.  And the fulfillment of this covenant promise was through our Lord Jesus Christ.  

The covenant God made with Moses in the wilderness did not replace the covenant of Abraham but added a layer to it.  If they would obey God, He would bless Israel and if they disobeyed then God would curse them but not to the point where they would be completely wiped out.  God in his grace would faithfully sustain a remnant of Israel even through Babylonian captivity by His covenant to Abraham regardless of how bad they failed in the covenant to Moses.

To conclude I want to point out one more detail in scripture.  The promise to rescue mankind from the fall was not first spoken in Genesis 12 to Abraham but in Genesis 3 in the presence of Adam and Eve.  After they ate the fruit, God said to the serpent “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15).  This is the first time we see the promise of the coming messiah to destroy the work of the Devil and rescue mankind from his fallen state.  This again is another promise by God.  Though Adam and Eve failed to stay faithful to God, even though He cursed them and the earth itself because of their disobedience, He made a covenant of sheer grace to rescue their offspring from the fall that they have caused all mankind to be under.  So even God’s covenant with Abraham was just another layer to the promise God made in Genesis 3:15.  And once again, this covenant finds its fulfillment in the coming of Jesus Christ, to rescue us from sin and death, not because of anything that we have done, but because of the grace of God to send Christ to die in our place and become a curse for us (Gal 3:13).   Nothing, including the Philistines, the unfaithfulness of Israel or even Satan himself is going to stop God from fulfilling his covenant promises to us.  We saw this when it was Him who brought back the ark to Israel. This is a promise we hold onto by faith in Jesus Christ, believing that when He comes back to judge the world, the curse of the fall will end and we will live in eternal blessedness in the presence of almighty God.  

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