Listening for God's Voice

Welcome to week three of our Bible study on 1 Samuel, called The Coming King. Today, we're going to cover chapters four through seven. And we could title this A Tale of Two Wars, but I'm going to title it Proper Spiritual Warfare. There's really three main parts to these four chapters. The first part, in chapter four, is battle A with the Philistines under the leadership of Eli. The third part is battle B with the Philistines under the leadership of Samuel. And in between those two, we have two chapters that I'll call an intermission. And it's all about the Ark of the Covenant. It is tragic, it's somewhat hilarious, and it's miraculous experience with the Ark of the Covenant. Now, if we are to learn from history, which we are always meant to do, we should observe in these chapters a stark contrast between the first battle that we see, which ended in defeat when Eli was influencing the nation, and the second battle when Samuel was influencing the nation, which ended in victory and built up their faith. So it's a tale of two leaders. And both of these men are described in these chapters as judges. And those references are 5, 18, and 7, 17. I titled this Proper Spiritual Warfare. And before we get into the text, I want to give you some things to roll around in your mind and to ponder while we do that. First question, did the outcome of these battles have anything to do with the spiritual health of the nation at the time? Did Eli and Samuel as leaders influence the spiritual health of the nation at the time? Do these battles have any correlation to our own lives? And is our spiritual health, as we meet battles and temptations, predictive of either success or failure? And if so, how do we improve our spiritual health? All right, those are some application questions. Now we're going to dive into our text. Before I even start reading, though, I want to tell you that we've now gotten to the part in 1 Samuel where we're taking quite a few chapters. It's going to be way too much for me to read every single verse, because that would take up our whole time. But I don't feel too badly about that, because see, the way we've modeled our Bible study is that you actually are studying verse by verse when you do the study guide. You are doing the observation part. You are looking into the text. You're answering some of those directed questions that I give you. And you're observing. You're doing that what does it say part. I come here, and I do a little bit of interpretation. And I bring us the what does it mean part. And then you get to discuss at your tables, and you get to do the application, which is what does it mean to me. So we have all the parts, and so I don't feel too badly. We'll begin in chapter 4. And as we start there, we find that Israel is in a state of defeat before the Philistines. About 4,000 men have died on the battlefield. And so we jump into this with Israel as a nation feeling defeated, grieving, feeling vulnerable. We meet the Philistines for the first time here in 1 Samuel, although it's not the first time that we've met them, because we met them multiple times in the book of Judges. And they're not a new adversary. They go back all the way to the days of Abraham. But this is the first time in this study that we're meeting the Philistines. Israel is losing to the Philistines. And no nation wants to remain in a state of defeat, because see, the next stage after defeat is captivity. So you don't want to remain there. So in the middle of verse 3, the elders of Israel said, why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? And I want you to note that they did not wait for an answer from the Lord, but they determined a strategy immediately. 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. And I would call this improper spiritual warfare on a couple of levels. First of all, note where their faith is fixed. Let us bring the Ark of the Covenant that it may save us from the Philistines. So they're placing their faith in this item that they want to use as a mascot or a lucky charm in war. So that's improper. The next thing we look at, what about this timing that I just mentioned? There didn't seem to be any time for them to listen or to wait. Do you remember what we learned from Samuel last week? Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Listening means we're listening until we hear. But they seemed to just move right on. Now, I've done this. Perhaps you've done it too. You have a dilemma. You begin to pray. Before you even put an exclamation point on your prayer, you have an idea. And you begin to execute your brilliant idea. It is easy to do. So I can't blame them too much. And yet, we remember it's improper. That is not good spiritual warfare. How could they have listened in this moment? Well, I want to say something here that's worth listening to. God speaks through what he's already spoken. And that is true for us today. God speaks through what he has already spoken. For us, that means here. This is how we can hear from God, what he's already spoken. It was the same thing for them. Listen, they had the law. They knew the proper use of the Ark of the Covenant. They knew what it was for. They knew that the intention of it was for the spiritual health of the nation. They could have stopped and listened to God, what he'd already spoken. But they did not. So we don't want to make that same mistake. In verse 4, so the people sent to Shiloh and brought from there the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of Hosts, who's enthroned on the cherubim. I love that big, long name that we have there. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. And everyone loves a mascot like this. And verse 5 says, all Israel gave a mighty shout so that the earth resounded. They were super pumped. This was the quintessential pep rally. Do you remember Friday mornings at school, all school pep rally, and you would just get all excited for the game that night? Well, the Philistines also heard that they were excited. They could hear this. Of course, it wasn't terribly far away. And they were also superstitious people. And so they said, in verse 7, a god has come into the camp. Woe to us. They were afraid. And so they screwed up all of their fighting ambition. And then we have these six words that define this battle in verse 10. It says, the Philistines fought. Israel was defeated. Just like that. 30,000 soldiers fell. 30,000. Listen, that means that there was probably not a family that didn't lose a husband, or a father, or a son, or a brother. 30,000 fighting men. This is an enormous defeat. Verse 11, the ark of God was captured. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died. And a man from Benjamin ran to Shiloh with the news of this battle. He came to 98-year-old blind Eli. And in verse 17, his message was this. 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. And 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. And here it tells us he judged Israel 40 years. We didn't really know that about him. We knew that he was a priest. But now we found out he was really the leader. He was the judge of Israel for 40 years. I always sort of liked Eli. I wanted him to improve. He just, I don't know, there was something about him that I liked. But he was not a good leader. And it's no wonder that Israel was struggling, because their leader was struggling. God's leaders need to learn to do what's right, to do the right thing. Now, we've studied Titus. This is why Paul gave Titus those qualifications for the area that he was ministering. He goes, OK, you've got to find yourself elders and overseers. And I'll tell you what kind of men you should be looking for. And one of the things that he said was they need to be able to manage their own house. How can you manage the church of God or the nation of God if you can't manage your own house? And Eli, we learned, could not manage his own house. He could not manage his sons. It said that he honored them above the Lord. So battle A can be summarized now with a few words. that Phineas's wife says as she went into labor and she gave birth and out of her pain and grief she named her child Ichabod. And in verse 22 it tells us that his name means the glory has departed from Israel for the ark of God has been captured. Very sad way. Again a recap, 30,000 men are dead, Hophni and Phineas died, Eli died, the ark of God was captured, the woman was right, the glory had departed from Israel. From the time in at the base of Mount Sinai when the ark was built until now this has never happened. So this is a big deal. I want to talk about the ark and why this was so tragic. First of all the ark is just merely a box that was plated in gold but there were two cherubim on top and they were solid gold. You know the difference between a Valentine's Day between a hollow Hershey kiss and a solid Hershey kiss? You know you hold that solid one it's like whoa we got some chocolate on our hands you know so imagine solid gold cherubim on top. This was a heavy object but the ark was to Israel what the heart is to a human body. It was the most precious place in the holy of holies, it was the mercy seat, it was the location the place of the propitiation of sins on the day of atonement and that long phrase that I said he who sits enthroned on the cherubim. Just a little side note that I found kind of interesting I'd love to go on a long rabbit trail but I'll try and make it short as possible. Verse 4 is the last time that this box the ark is referred to as the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts. 28 more times it will be called the ark of God or the ark but never the ark of the covenant until we get to 2nd Samuel chapter 15 and there is a new priest named Zadok that will be carrying the ark. The story is you know we'll get to it when we get to it next spring we'll get to that but interesting that the terminology I found that fascinating that the terminology changed. Okay now we've studied in past studies the use and the placement of the ark we even put a few of those passages into our study guide. It was a terrible thing it was tragic. What would Israel do now? They didn't have this heartbeat of their covenant with God it had been captured and isn't that the way our lives go sometimes is that we we keep moving along in life until we lose something really significant and boy does that get our attention. So now we're going to come to the intermission for today's study and it's all about this capture of the ark of the covenant. Two chapters on how God deals with the situation. So chapter 5 begins this way when the Philistines captured the ark of God they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod and they brought it into the house of Dagon and they set it up beside Dagon. Who is Dagon? He is an ancient demigod that's been around for a long time again since about the days of Abraham. He had the head of a fish and the body of a man. A surf and turf kind of a guy and he was I think that that was to express the God of land and sea kind of a thing and he was also revered as the God of Baal. Okay so he has this temple they built a temple to him and the Philistines put the ark in the temple of Dagon either to add to their collection of gods trophies or to offer it to Dagon like look what we brought you you have subdued this God whatever. Now remember that these writings were originally meant to be heard. They didn't have this printed. It was passed down it was recited it was read to people. I can only imagine how much the young people loved getting to this next part. I used to love to teach this next part in Sunday school. I thought it was great. So here we are verse 3 when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day behold Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord bowing down if you will. So they took Dagon and they put him back in his place and I used to tell the little kids how would you like to serve a God who falls face down and you have to get up in the morning and put him back up right. Verse 4 when they rose early on 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 of his hands were lying cut off on the threshold only the trunk of Dagon was left to him and God was making a statement because the Philistines thought that they had defeated the God of the Hebrews but God was beginning to show them that he was actually defeating them in this. So it tells us in verse 6 that he began to terrify and afflict them with tumors the people this is and some translators translations say he smote them with emeralds. I think I put that in the study guide the King James says that which is basically hemorrhoidal tumors or dysentery which is terrible in any day and age but particularly in an age before preparation age because we remember giving birth and we you know we we stuck pretty close to that stuff and it really worked but this is this is dreadful and the Philistines weren't terribly bright when they realized they were having these problems they just began moving the ark from city to city so off it went now you know Ashdod and Gath and Ekron but the people of Ekron said no we need to talk this over and so in the middle of verse 11 they said send away the ark of God of Israel and let it return to its own place that it may not kill us and our people. So as we go into chapter 6 we find out that this took seven months the ark had been in Philistine territory for seven months and it sounds like they finally hired a consulting firm in the in the shape of priests and diviners to figure out what to do and these they asked these priests and diviners what shall we do with the ark of the Lord tell us with what we shall send it to its place and so the consultants suggested that they try returning the ark to the God of Israel but not empty so they explained to them this guilt offering that they thought would be a good idea it was five golden tumors and five golden mice according to the number of the Lords of the Philistines because the Philistines had five cities five city-states and each had a Lord and so this is why the number five and they said make images of your tumors and items and images of your look at this remember this mice that ravage the land and give glory to the God of Israel perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts after he had dealt severely with them did they not send the people away and they departed so we learned two things about these priests and diviners number one thing that we learned is they did learn from history they did know history and they learned from it and they were making a complete parallel between what was going on right now in the Philistine territory and what had gone on when Israel was in Egypt and they knew about the plagues in Egypt and they they looked at that history and they said there was lice and there was frogs and there was all these gnats and all these things and Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go so these priests are saying don't do that that didn't work out well don't be that those people and so they were saying don't be stubborn the second thing that these diviners assessed was look at they said make make images of these mice that ravage the land so the plague was all over the Philistine territory and it does seem true that it was a plague of animals that God had sent maybe he used those but you know we know now that bubonic plague which has been a thing and you know past generations it actually is carried from person to person from a flea that lives on rodents that infects the people also interesting that in the Greek the word bubonic it actually means groin so infecting the groin area maybe this was the bubonic plague before the dark ages that that the Lord was using but at any rate they were done the Philistines wanted nothing more to do with this trophy of war they couldn't just bury it in the ground they couldn't abandon it they couldn't send it back in a military procession and so this the consultants came up with an idea they said you need to know for sure that their God has taken it back so here's our idea here's what you do you build a cart you get yourself two cows cows that have never towed a cart much less pulled it together and cows that have young at home so they're towing against nature and you get this all organized with your boxes of gold things, and you send it on the way. So we're at verse 10. The men took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart, and he shut up their calves at home. And they put the Ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. Now, the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and when they lifted up their eyes and saw the Ark, they rejoiced to see it. The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there, and they split up the wood of the cart, and they offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. An interesting little side note is that many scholars think that this great stone that was there is actually the very same great stone that Manoah and his wife offered that fellowship offering when the angel of God came and told them they were going to have Samson. But in verse 15, it said, The Levites took down the Ark of the Lord, and the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrifices on that day. And when the five lords of the Philistines, who were probably up on the hill watching what was going on, saw it, they returned to Ekron. So it was a great day. It was a miraculous return. But in that moment, not everyone treated the Ark with respect. And those of us who grew up in the days of Raiders of the Lost Ark probably have some kind of a scene playing out here. Verse 19, God struck some of the men because they looked upon the Ark of the Lord. He struck 70 men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. And instead of realizing what they had done wrong and repenting, apologizing, it seems to me that what these people did in this moment is they blamed God because they couldn't live the way they wanted to and look at what they wanted to and do what they wanted to without the discipline of the Lord coming. And so instead of saying, oh, wow, we shouldn't have done that, we know better, verse 20, the men of Beth Shemesh said, well, who in the world can stand before God anyway? Like, who among us doesn't do wrong? This was so unfair of him to do this, this holy God. So to whom shall he go up away from us? What they were saying was, we don't want this among us. We would just as soon have distance between us and God. What about those people in Kiriath Jerim? They seem to be kind of holy people. Maybe they'll want it. Maybe we should, but we don't want to live with this among us. And we can have a similar response today, can't we? We want to do something. It brings a discipline of the Lord. And sometimes rather than recognizing that and repenting and saying, oh, I'm in the wrong, you're in the right, I'm going to change my ways. We blame God and we distance. Out of sight, out of mind. And that's what they did. Chapter 7, the men of Kiriath Jerim came. And they took the ark of the Lord and they brought it into the house of Abimnadab on the hill. And they consecrated his son, Eleazar, to have charge of the ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath Jerim, a long time passed, 20 years, and all of the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. 20 years without church. 20 years without their covenant being fulfilled. 20 years without the day of atonement, propitiation for sins. So now we come to battle B, which is our second bookmark here. And Samuel is now the influencer over Israel. Of course, Eli died a long time ago. Years have passed. And what we find encouraging is the people are lamenting after the Lord. And what we said is that sometimes it takes a loss in our lives. It takes the loss of something in order for us to pay attention and to lament after the Lord and say, I don't want it to be this way. I need to change. Israel needed a revival. And revival begins with a sense that something is missing. That's how revival begins, a sense that something is missing in my life, that I need a closer connection with the Lord, that God is absent from my life. So I want us to pay close attention to this battle because we are going to learn now what I titled this session, proper spiritual warfare. We're going to learn things for our own lives. In verse 3, Samuel said to all the house of Israel, because they were lamenting after the Lord, he said, if you're returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away your foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only. And he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. The next verse tells us that Israel did just that. But I want to linger on verse 3. And I want to lift these things out phrase by phrase for our benefit because the Philistine problem parallels for us problems that we have in our life. It is a parallel with the temptations that we have in our life with the flesh and the world and the devil. Those are our Philistines. We want to be victorious, but we don't always apply proper spiritual warfare. So we're not always victorious. Samuel was a godly leader, and he gave excellent advice. So I'm going to put these phrases on the screen, and we're going to go through them together to just pick apart as much as we can. The first is, he said, return to the Lord. And this is an honest question for us to ask ourselves. Look, we experience distance from God. We all do. Sometimes it's unintentional, unintentional distance from God. And what do I mean by that? Like, for example, our culture. Our culture has kind of stripped away so many of the things of the Lord, even that we enjoyed in the 90s. 31 years later, from when Paul and I first came here, our culture is very, very different. That's an unintentional distance from the Lord. Look at all those people in Israel. It wasn't in their mind to send the Ark of the Covenant into battle. They didn't want to do that. It just happened. It was what it was. And they had to live all those 20-plus years having a distance from the Lord. So there's some unintentional things that come into our lives. And then, on top of it, we purposefully create distance from the Lord by ignoring or removing things of the Lord. And this is what the people of Beth Shemesh did. God disciplined them, and they said, nope, we don't want any of it. And they distanced. They specifically said, send that Ark away. We want distance between us and God because we want to live the way we want, we want to look at what we want, and we want to do what we want. This happens to us. Either way, we need proper spiritual warfare to return to the Lord. The next thing that Samuel said is, with all your heart, fully devoted, and this is an intention, this is my intention, to return to the Lord with all of my heart. But that's the intention. That's not the action. Next, Samuel gave us the action. He gave them the action. He told them, put away foreign gods. That's the action. Get rid of it. Whatever is giving us, and you know, whatever gives us comfort in our lives instead of God could be described as a foreign god. I think in our Christian verbiage, we'll say more. It's an idol, an idol in my life. Samuel told them to put away, demolish, destroy, get rid of anything that they were serving instead of Jehovah or alongside of Jehovah. And this is where it hits us because probably none of us in this room serves an idol instead of God. You wouldn't be here if that was the case. But how many of us have a collection of idols that we serve in addition to God? That's a real thing. And so he's saying to them, get rid of those things. I think about the Apostle John, who says at the end of his first epistle, the end of 1 John, his last words are, little children, keep yourselves from idols. That's how he closed his book. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. That's proper spiritual warfare. Next phrase that Samuel said is, direct your heart to the Lord. Now that the idols are removed, we are free. We are unchained to direct our attention to the Lord only. And what do we do with that? Samuel said, serve him only. We're no longer double-minded, serving two gods, three gods, 10 gods, we're single-minded now. And we are free to serve him only. And I would add that we are free to actually serve him. because perhaps we're not serving him, but we are free to serve him and serve him only. And then the last thing that Samuel says was a promise. He will deliver you. To the person who goes through this kind of a revival, this sort of repentance, you can freely say, God will deliver you. He will deliver you. What a promise. God will deliver us from our enemies, from our temptations, from the things that snare us. Now, this would be a fantastic women's retreat because we'd say, okay, let's go and take an hour and I'll just process this and have a little revival of our own. But we can't go from one year to the next year. This is daily renewal. What Samuel is saying here describes what we would call the Christian's daily renewal. And this is a daily experience for us. Verse five, then Samuel said, gather all Israel at Mizpah and I will pray to the Lord for you. So they gathered at Mizpah, they drew water, poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, we have sinned against the Lord. When you follow that pattern that Samuel just gave us for proper spiritual warfare, you're no longer in denial and you can freely say, we have sinned before the Lord, but we're doing something about it. Israel was now in a different attitude than they had been with battle A. The attitude is completely different. The attitude with battle A, when Eli was influencing the nation was bring the ark, it will save us. Now we find out that they're gonna say something different. Verse eight, the people of Israel said to Samuel, do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us that he may save us. Do you see how their hope was set firmly on the Lord, not the things of the Lord? Okay, so Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord and Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel and the Lord answered him. As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, oh, here comes the enemy. And the enemy always comes in when we're having a revival, right? The Philistines drew near to attack Israel, but the Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and drew them into confusion and they were defeated before Israel. What was that? An earthquake, thunderstorm? I don't know, it doesn't say. He just thundered with, maybe he just spoke. But Samuel took a great stone and he set it up between Mizpah and Shem and called its name Ebenezer for he said, till now the Lord has helped us or I like it from the King James, thus far has the Lord helped us and we get this idea of offering praise to God. So in the same way that Hannah took her ordinary words of praise to God that became a permanent monument of praise, her son now Samuel takes an ordinary stone, consecrates it in a way to the Lord and says thus far has the Lord helped us and turns it into a permanent monument of God's work in his life. I love that. And so sometimes we talk about what has God done in our lives that deserves this sort of recognition, that deserves praise? What is your Ebenezer? We should have lots of Ebenezers. If you don't have a recent Ebenezer, then I would suggest you go back through Samuel's phrases and you seek a revival in your life because God is willing to do things and waiting to do things that we can praise him for. And I'm not saying, oh, God gave me a big house. Look at this, free. I didn't have to pay anything. Now that would be cool, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about things like I prayed, I asked God to keep my mouth shut at the family reunion and he did it and I'm so excited. And I just praise him because that was completely his work. I'm talking about those kinds of things where we petition the Lord for his work in our lives. So we wrap this up in verse 13. The Philistines were subdued and did not enter the territory of Israel. As a bonus in 14, there was peace also between Israel and the Amorites. So that's great. And then we finish it off in verse 15. Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. And he went on a circuit year by year to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah. And he judged Israel in all of these places. And then he would return to Ramah for his home was there. And there he also judged Israel and he built there an altar to the Lord. I wanna wrap it up with two quick points that I wanna make. The first one is put your faith in God alone, not the things of God. We cannot fight our spiritual battles in our life by relying on the things of God, like going to church, like tithing, like having a baptism certificate, like saying certain prayers, or for Pete's sake, having a St. Christopher in your car. Is he the one that's supposed to save you from car accidents? I don't know. Some of those things, they're good things. But if we're using them for spiritual warfare and saying, I have done this, therefore God will fight for me, that's like getting the ark and putting it in front of our battles. So we wanna put God in front of our battles. Second, last point, be a godly influence. Be a Samuel, don't be an Eli. In next week's lesson and for the rest of this whole session, we are going to have lessons on leading. Both Eli and Samuel had their chance to influence the nation and the outcome was very different. And so our exhortation here is, look at Samuel as an example and let's be a godly influence for those around us. Let's be an influencer like Samuel was an influencer for the nation. Father, thank you for these lessons and these two battles, two leaders. Lord, we can learn so much and I pray that you would help us to apply these principles of spiritual warfare in our life and truly put you in front of us. Lord, we do lean on you to save us. We lean on you to give us the power that we need, the grace that we need for the situations in our life. And Lord, help us to daily renew ourselves in these ways, in Jesus' name, amen.