They were some of the lowest moments of Louis Zamperini’s life. He was in a lifeboat for over a month in World War II, and then he was picked up by the Japanese and tortured in a POW camp. It was in those low moments that he made promises to God that if God would spare his life, he would live for Him. Through an incredible turn of events, Louis Zamperini is liberated. He is brought home to the US. He gets married. But then he slips into such a deep depression that he feels the only way out is drinking, totally ignoring all the promises he had made to God. He slips further and further into this mess until one day he stumbles upon a Billy Graham crusade, hears the gospel, and is gloriously saved. After years of running from God, he could finally make good on his promise, and from then on his life was radically changed. Now, I wonder how many of us, in those moments of weakness and despair, have made the same kind of promises, right? “God, if You get me out of this, I will never…” You fill in the blank. “I will never do X again.” And I wonder how many times those were just empty promises, a kind of foxhole religion.
Well, hello, church. Welcome back to our eighth video through 1 Samuel. I am excited about an upcoming series of videos. This is our church bulletin, and we are starting a congregational singing emphasis month. We have made our own little hymnal here, so I am excited to share that in more detail. In the meantime, we are going through the book of 1 Samuel with these long-form videos, chapter by chapter. We just want to bring the Bible home. The front of our bulletin says, “Welcome to the Lord’s Day,” but at the bottom our little tagline is, “We bring the Bible home.” We want you to continue with the Scriptures not just on Sundays but throughout the week too. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. As we have been going through 1 Samuel, we made it up to chapter 5 in the last video, and now we are at the part of the story where the Philistines have just captured the ark of the covenant and are being punished by God for taking it.
The Philistines Could Have Been Saved
I know we like to pick on the Philistines. They are the villains of the story, always the bad guys. But I believe God would have forgiven the Philistines if they had truly feared Him as they should. Remember, there was a mixed multitude that traveled with Israel through the wilderness, a Gentile group that made Jehovah their God. They were the proselytes, strangers, but they were accepted by God, and that is how Israel was supposed to be: a light to lighten the world. When the Israelite spies first entered Canaan, they came to the house of Rahab. She was a Gentile, Rahab the harlot. She took in the spies and said, “We have heard how the LORD delivered you out of Egypt,” and she believed in the God of Israel. For Rahab, that was not a foxhole religion. Rahab became a true believer in God, so she was spared from the wrath that came upon Jericho. Her life was saved, and essentially she became one of their people. She was placed in the lineage of Jesus Christ. She was a Canaanite, but by giving up her past she received Jehovah as her Lord. Similarly, Ruth the Moabitess was one of the people of Israel’s sworn enemies, but she was accepted by God. There is even a book of the Bible named after Ruth, showing the sovereign guidance of God upon those who love Him. So in Scripture there are many examples of people who turned from false gods and accepted the true God of Israel. That is what the Philistines could have done here; that is what they should have done. I believe if even the Philistines had repented, God would have spared them. They could have been saved. So while they act like the villain here, it did not have to be like that. They do some good things in this chapter, but they do not do enough.
A Trespass Offering
A couple of videos ago we talked about how they captured the ark of God. They tried to show how tough and powerful they were, but God punished them with emerods. If you add a little breath to the front of emerods, it sounds like hemorrhoids, so that is a tough situation. And it has been seven months. “And the ark of the LORD was in the country of the Philistines seven months.” I could probably make that a little bigger here. They have been passing the ark around for seven months, a number that symbolizes fulness, and they are saying, “We are done with this thing. We are sending it back.” So they ask their priests and their diviners, “What shall we do to the ark of the LORD? Tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place.” The priests tell them to send a trespass offering. They understand it is a religious problem; they think they have to pay their sins away to God. So they get five golden mice and five golden emerods; that is what the highlighted words say. And verse 5 says, “Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land.” It is very interesting to me that they felt the heavy hand of God and wanted that hand lightened off them; that is the wording it uses. In the previous chapter, chapter 5 verse 11, the hand of God was very heavy there. So the priests and the diviners get together and realize it is a religious problem: “Let us do this religious act, cast this spell, and maybe the problems will go away.” And they just say it straight out: our gods are not as powerful as their God. “He will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods.” So they are saying, “Okay, we are sorry. Let us say sorry to Israel and give them back their box, the ark of the covenant.”
Now here is a question: was that a good thing? Oh yes, it was good. It is good that the Israelites got the ark of the covenant back. It is good that the Philistines recognized God. It is even good that they gave God the glory; God got the glory for being the God of Israel. That is essentially what verse 5 is saying: “Ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel.” But do not get confused and think the Philistines are the good guys now, or that they have gone far enough. That is not enough. I think people sometimes confuse good actions or good morals with true godliness, and those two things are not the same. That is the classic foxhole-religion dichotomy. It is more like, “Man, let us get this heavy hand off of me. I do not want this problem. We just want the problems gone, and we want this heavy hand of God off us.” And it is like, “Okay, good. Are you ready to renounce Dagon now?” “No, no, no, no, no. Let us not get carried away. We still like Dagon. Sure, he is not as strong as Jehovah, but we are not going to follow God or anything. We are fine just as we are. I do not really need Jehovah. We will stick with Dagon. He is not quite as powerful as Jehovah, but maybe it is a fluke. We just do not want the bad stuff that is happening to us right now, so take this away.” Man, I find that very, very interesting. You are admitting that something is faulty, and yet you still trust it. You are admitting Dagon is not as good as Jehovah, yet you still trust him. Why? And they are saying, “Well, because we are scared of Him.”
The Fear of the Lord
The Bible talks about having the fear of God, and that is a good thing. It says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” That is a good starting point. Well, what is wisdom? One definition of wisdom is the knowledge of God applied to life, the ability to take the revelation of God and actually live it out. How does that play out? It plays out with the fear of God. I think across our American culture, at least, there is a general respect for God. There are good moral entities. There are people doing many, many good things, people who believe loosely in a Creator. There are good pro-life movements, good feed-the-hungry movements, good character-building organizations. All of those things are very good; I am not knocking any of them. There is D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs. There is education in poverty-stricken areas, medical relief for areas that cannot afford it, all kinds of charities, some with a Christian affiliation and some without. What they are doing is good work. But if all they are doing is good work without helping people be saved, then frankly they are making the road to hell more comfortable. What eternal good are they doing? That is what we want to get to. Some say, “Well, we are supposed to give a cup of water in Jesus’ name.” Well, yes, but many times Jesus is nothing more than a symbol. He is not the person of Jesus, just the symbol of Jesus, which in many cases means He is nothing more than an idol.
In our passage in 1 Samuel chapter 6, the ark of the covenant was nothing more than an idol to the Philistines. They supposedly conquered Israel and Israel’s God, they took the ark home and placed it beneath Dagon, and nothing has gone right in the land for seven months. Now they are saying, “Oh man, this box is causing all kinds of problems. We are done with this thing. We do not want it.” They did not want Jehovah. They did not want God. They just wanted relief. And the fear of the Lord is more than just relief from pain. If you are serving God just so God does not zap you, just to get out of trouble, how long is that going to last? We will soon see in this passage that the Philistines’ view of the ark was not much different from the Israelites’ view. The Philistine diviners said, “Put it on a new cart, with two cows that have never pulled a cart.” Verse 7 talks about that: two milch kine on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them. They are saying, “Let us do this supernatural thing. Make sure the cows have calves. Put this box on the cart,” and they put the golden mice and emerods on the cart too, it says in verses 7 and 8. It is like they are saying, “Make sure Israel knows we are real, real, real sorry. And if these cows that have never pulled a cart take the cart away, then we will know for sure what is going on. We will know for sure it was God who did this.” And that is how it went. The Philistines followed the cart all the way to Bethshemesh, and when they saw that this cart with its evil bad-luck charm was received by the Israelites, they left, cheering: “Oh, it is gone. Finally this thing is gone. Now we can go back to our way of living.”
Almost Persuaded
That is such a tragedy. It was as if God’s presence was in their land, and they saw the power of God. In some sense they were hearing God speak. Here is a couple of cows showing them Jehovah’s message, and they still chose to ignore Him. They still turned back from Jehovah to their false gods, who had just been bested. I am amazed when people repeatedly hear the truth of the gospel today, maybe with convincing arguments, and still refuse to believe it. Christopher Hitchens probably knew the gospel better than a lot of people watching. Alex O’Connor. Joe Rogan was agnostic for a long time. There are TV personalities who could quote the gospel. They do interviews with Christians, hear the gospel, hear convincing reasons for the resurrection of Jesus, and many times still go away unchanged, unmoved, still skeptical. Man, I grieve for those who are like King Agrippa in Acts chapter 26: “King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.” It is like that with the Philistines: “Man, you Philistines, you are admitting that God is more powerful than your gods. You admit He is supremely powerful, yet you do not accept Him as Saviour.” Oh, my friend, if you are there with Jesus, I hope you realize life is so, so short. Everything you do is going to go up in flames, and one day you will be facing eternity with or without Jesus Christ. The choice is yours. I do not know how many more choices you will have in your life. That is not a scare tactic; that is just a truth statement. I do not know how many more opportunities you will have, but you must decide one way or the other. Today you can choose to trust and believe that Jesus died for your sin and rose from the grave, and commit your life to Him. Or you can be like the Philistines: “Oh, I am good. I am fine. I was raised this way. My mama believes like this. My grandma taught me like this. I was raised in a church that taught differently. We do not really talk about religion. I do it my way, you do it yours. I am good.” That was like the Philistines: “Send that thing on its way. We do not want it near us anymore.” They turned to God only in times of trouble. Verse 8: “Send it away, that it may go.” That is not the kind of commitment God wants. He does not want us serving Him just out of fear, turning to Him only in times of trouble.
Israel Was No Better
Now, the Israelites were not much better than the Philistines here. They received the ark back, they were happy about getting it back, and you would think that after all they had been through their hearts had changed, right? Sadly, that is not so. They were every bit as guilty as the Philistines of treating the ark of God like an idol. It was not that they were bowing down and worshiping it; they at least knew that part was false. In fact, they seemed to get pretty religious about it in the next couple of verses. “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 to see it.” So that part is good. They cut up the cart, made an altar, killed the cows, and sacrificed them to God. “And the Levites took down the ark of the LORD, and the coffer 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.” Well, that is good; that is a religious thing. They were doing some outward signs of religion. “And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities, and of country villages, even unto the great stone of Abel, whereon they set down the ark of the LORD: which stone remaineth unto this day in the field of Joshua, the Beth-shemite.” Hang on, Israel. God did not tell you to put the ark of the covenant on a great stone. The ark of the covenant is the place where God dwells. It is supposed to be in the holy of holies. It is supposed to be covered and seen only by the high priest once a year, on the day of atonement, when he brings the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkles it on the mercy seat. That is all laid out in the Scriptures. Not to mention that cows were not supposed to be used for burnt offerings; bulls were. So everything they are doing, even though it seems religious, is all messed up. There had been some graciousness from God up to this point, but now it seems crowds of people are starting to gather. It does not say exactly, but I wonder whether this had become some kind of spectacle in Israel. I just imagine some enterprising Israelites saying, “All right, get your carnival tickets to see the ark of the covenant!” The Bible does not say what happened. There are skeptics who would say there is no way fifty thousand people could have assembled in this valley, yet if you look at the topography of the land, it could have held fifty thousand people, a huge crowd like what gathers at a football arena like the Coliseum. It could have been something like that, but it does not say. It might be that they were saying, “Come see what is inside the ark.” It could be that some plague spread across the people. There was a complacency, and everyone around was treating the ark of the covenant like it was nothing. There was no reverence anymore; they were just displaying the ark of God. That was not at all what God said to do with the ark of the covenant. And so verse 19 happens: “And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.” Again, it does not say how He smote them. I do not know if it was one big wave all at once, or if it spread like death through the land. But it says fifty thousand and threescore and ten men died. This is a great slaughter. Some would say, “Oh, I am sure it just means seventy people, right?” Well, no. I believe what it says: fifty thousand and seventy.
Then verse 20 says, “And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? and to whom shall he go up from us?” They got one thing right: God is holy. Back in chapter 2, Hannah said, “There is none holy as the LORD.” But they are not enamored with the holiness of God here in the way Hannah was. They are more like, “Man, we are shocked.” They had just treated the Creator of the universe as if He were a god no better than Dagon. They had treated the ark of the covenant like an idol, as if God were a spectacle and the ark of God a trifle. You might say, “Well, Israel did not know what they were doing.” Well, the Bible talks about sins of ignorance in Leviticus, and it does not say they are not sin. Sins of ignorance are still sin. And in their case, Israel definitely should have known this. Whether it was a sin of ignorance or not, the judgment was just. Bethshemesh was a Levite city, and the Levites were supposed to be the ones teaching the law to the people of God. You can go back and read Deuteronomy 33:10, 2 Chronicles 17:7-9, Nehemiah 8:7-8, and others, which say the priests and Levites should have been the ones teaching the people the law. This was a priests’ city. And there is this principle in the New Testament, Luke 12:48: “But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” This was the priests’ city. They had been given much, and much was required of them. They should have known better, and they should have taught the people better. God is to be worshiped His way, not the way of the Philistines, not the way we want. God will be worshiped His way.
Reverence and Godly Fear
How do we know His way? It is not too difficult. We know the way God wants to be worshiped by His Word. “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.” Man, what a great passage. God is a consuming fire, and He wants to be worshiped with reverence and godly fear. This next one is Deuteronomy 10:12: “And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” That is what God is calling you to. That is the kind of fear that is true and good. Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Israel should never have been where they were. They should never have had the ark of the covenant up on that rock like that. And they responded no better than the Philistines; at the end of verse 19, the people lamented because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter. It is no wonder that in the next chapter, chapter 7, Samuel comes in and says, “All right, are you ready to repent? Turn from your idols and serve the living and true God.” Just because they had religious ceremonies and offered some sacrifices does not mean God was pleased. Their religious ceremonies were not done in obedience to God; they were done however they thought would be cool. It is not foxhole religion God is after, just trying to get out of some problem. It is not religious stuff God is after, as if God will automatically be happy with you. The question is, are you obeying the Scriptures? That is the real question here. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the Israelites and the Philistines kind of respected God, but they did not have a biblical fear of God, and because of that it cost them dearly. The judgment of God was poured out on both of them.
So the question for us is, do you truly fear God, or are you just scared of God? Because true fear of God is obedience. Whatever God says in His Word, you go do that. The great preacher of old, Jonathan Edwards, said that the absence of godly fear signifies a lack of the knowledge of God. Another author said, “We must regard His presence as our supreme joy and our supreme peril. This does not mean we cannot be intimate with God. It means we cannot be familiar with Him. Intimacy is able to call Him Father and tremble at the same time, and as it trembles, know that it is loved.” Man, that is a good quote. God is not just “the man upstairs.” Jesus is not your homeboy, that kind of thing. No, we have got to keep God in His place. When Isaiah saw God high and lifted up in all His glory, he trembled and said, “Woe is me! for I am undone.” So do not just respect God. We need a biblical fear of God. Do not turn the ark into an idol. That is what is going on in this text. Though the Philistines returned the ark with a trespass offering, trying to ease the heavy hand of God upon them, and though the men of Bethshemesh rejoiced to see it, they both failed to respond to God’s holiness with true reverence and fear. They treated the ark like a charm or a spectacle rather than obeying the Lord in true repentance, so they received judgment instead of blessing. If I shorten that, the idea is this: when the ark becomes an idol, God becomes a symbol, not a Saviour. The ark was an idol to the Philistines. The ark was an idol even to the Israelites, in the sense that they wanted relief more than repentance. It was more a symbol of God. They did not want the actual God, just the symbolic God. They did not want the holy Saviour. “Obey God? No, no, no, no. We do not want to obey God. We just want the bad stuff to go away.” Or, “We just want to prove that we won.” They had no real regard for the ark of God. God’s Word was very, very clear about how God would fight for them, and it had nothing to do with the things the Israelites were doing.
A Symbol or a Saviour?
So if we apply this to our lives, I am asking, do I truly fear God, or am I just scared of Him? That is a good question. Do you think, “I have got to serve God, or something bad is going to happen to me”? That is just a superstitious view of God, and I do not believe that is what we ought to get from this passage. In chapter 7, verse 3, Samuel talks about returning unto the LORD with all your hearts, putting away the strange gods, preparing your hearts unto the LORD, and serving Him only. That is what we ought to do. So the question is about the heart. It has always been about the heart, folks. How is your heart? Are you serving God with reverence and godly fear, as the Scriptures teach? Or is God just a symbol instead of a Saviour? Many people walk around with a cross necklace on, but you would never see Christ in them. People ask, “Are you a Christian?” “Yeah, see my cross? I have got a cross necklace.” “Well, yeah, but why are you talking like that? Why do you lie? Why do you watch that stuff? Why do you live the way you are living? That does not seem to be what Christians do. I thought Christians were supposed to be different.” “Oh, well, I go to church.” Well, listen, some people go to church just for the symbol of going to church, not because of the Saviour. That is a problem, man. If you are just going to church to get some obligation out of the way, to get the church service out of the way, “All right, now I am a good Christian. I did my duty. Glad that is done; now I can do that,” hang on. Church can become just a symbol to you. Is it about the symbol, or the Saviour?
Even the number of church services in many churches across America is declining. I believe in night church. I reviewed my booklet A Case for Sunday Evening Church a few weeks ago. My wife and I were recently talking about how most churches are down to pretty much one service per week, and the buildings are left largely unused the rest of the week. I went to a California church-planting emphasis day in Lancaster recently, and some of the Bible college students were asking the church planters, “How do you find a place to meet?” Brother Adam Maruo, from Riverside, was saying, “Well, there are a lot of churches that will just rent you their building.” He was meeting in a church with purple chairs for a while and outgrew that, so he found another church that has Sunday morning services only. That is the only time they use the building. The auditorium seats three hundred people, and there are Sunday school classrooms they are not using, so they said, “Sure, go ahead. Use the whole building.” They do not have Sunday night services, midweek services, classes during the week, or soul-winning meetings. All they have is that one-hour Sunday morning service a week. Is that not a shame? I think it is a shame that many churches are down to a symbolic hour per week when God has clearly told us to assemble, and I am convinced that “so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” means the assembly ought to happen more often. The worship of a holy God should be happening more, not less, and not only when it fits into our schedule. Worshiping God His way means we do it His way. He set aside an entire day per week. That is His day. That is how it was under the old covenant, at least, and I believe much of that mentality carries over into the covenant we are under now. It is not football day. It is not baseball day. It is not basketball day. I do not even believe Sunday is family day. It is called the Lord’s Day, and I believe we ought to give the whole day to the Lord. This is a simple thing, in my mind at least. I believe He is honored by the worship He receives from His people on His day in His house.
Again, my wife and I were talking about how sad we think it is that many churches around us have only one service. That is not a knock on anybody. I just think there could be so much more happening, so much more gathering of God’s people. I realize many of them have small groups on other days and things, and I am happy for all of that. But at our church, I want to keep our Sunday night services vibrant. If our own Sunday night services are never attended, it is not as if, “Oh, we are old paths because we have church on Sunday nights.” Hang on. Who is the “we”? If the people of Calvary Baptist Church are not assembling on Sunday nights, then we do not have church on Sunday nights. If only the pastor shows up and preaches to the staff, that is not the assembly of God’s people. That is not a “we” thing. The church is made up of individuals. It means that Calvary Baptist Church members come to church on Sunday nights, engage on Sunday nights, and worship the Lord on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. People will say, “Well, I am just so busy.” I get that. But college has no problem demanding that you show up to its services five days a week. Football has no problem demanding that you show up to its practices five days a week. I am afraid that if we are given the option between missing church and missing almost anything else, we would miss church first. Many of God’s people put church first on the list of things to miss, as though, “Okay, God’s house, that is nice. Sure, I respect it. I know it is there. It is nice and all, but I have got my life to live over here, and I am not really a part of that. Yeah, I am a part of the church, but committed? No, I am good. I will just leave and go somewhere else that does not expect so much of me.” I do not think the answer is to find a church that does not expect as much of you. I think the answer is to make God more than a symbol. He is your Saviour. We are called to live for Him, and maybe church services are an application of that for you. I just do not want church services to become a symbolic worship of God.
Zamperini and the Bird
Louis Zamperini, the man I mentioned at the beginning of the video, had a foxhole religion for a while, but once he finally got saved, his life was radically changed. He was given a brand-new heart. He even purposed to forgive his captors. There was one guard in particular they called the Bird, who took a special interest in Zamperini. The Bird would single him out of the crowd and beat him mercilessly. But when the war was over and after Louie got saved, he tracked down the Bird. You would think, in modern stories, there would be some kind of revenge arc, but Zamperini forgave this man they called the Bird, even though the Bird never felt he had done anything wrong. How would you face somebody like that? I would want to kill the guy, with years of rage pent up inside like there was in Zamperini. How does a person change and become able to forgive something as atrocious as that? It is when they know that God is not just a symbol. He is a Saviour, and God has made you a new creature. If you are watching this and God is only a symbol to you, only the cross necklace you wear, but you do not know Jesus, I encourage you to get saved today. If you are saved, if you are a Christian, your faith should be truly changing you. Do you fear the Lord with reverence and godly fear? Does that fear of God lead you to obey Him and love Him with all your heart? Or is it just a symbolic faith that does not personally mean anything to you today? Man, God wants your heart. God wants your heart. Is God a symbol, or is He your Saviour? I am so excited about the lessons we are learning from 1 Samuel 6. I am going to shift gears in future videos and also bring some shorter devotional thoughts from the book of Romans; I just started a series on Wednesday nights from Romans. I am looking forward to sharing that with you, as well as the upcoming hymn stories, the hymnal layout, and the update from our congregational singing emphasis month. We have a lot of videos coming in the future, and we will also continue our 1 Samuel series. But that is it for today. We will see you in the next video. God bless you.
