From Victory to Defeat: The Consequences of Disobedience

Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.

I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.

Now, come along.

Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.

All right, well, we're going to go ahead and continue our study here in First Samuel.

So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there with me.

First Samuel, chapter four.

So we're three chapters in so far, and we've been tracking so far the life of Samuel.

And if you remember, Samuel is a product of the power of God and the prayer of his mother, Hannah.

And Hannah prays and asks the Lord to give her a son, and he gives her a son.

And part of the promise that she made the Lord was that she would commit her son to the work of the Lord there in the tabernacle.

And that's what she does.

And so first.

First chapter is about that.

Second chapter is about Samuel and his obedience as a young child.

And then we see that there were two men.

And you need to know these two men, because they're going to play a huge role in chapter four is sons of Eli, which are named Hophni and Phineas.

Hophni and Phineas are living in rebellion to the Lord.

We see that they have the love of money.

They're stealing from people that are bringing tithes and offerings to the.

The tabernacle.

And then also they were abusing women that were coming to worship there.

And so they were sinning in.

In two capacities.

One in covetousness and pride and.

And theft.

And then the other way, they were fornicating and living in sin.

And then God rebukes his.

Eli's sons there, and he gives a vision, or actually he gives a.

A message to Samuel to present to Eli.

And that is that God would judge Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phineas, and he would actually judge Eli's whole family.

But in doing so, part of the promise was that Hophni and Phineas would die.

So that was the hard message that Samuel had to bring to Eli, his spiritual mentor.

But at the end of chapter three, we see that Samuel grew, Samuel mature, and the testimony of the Lord was working through him.

So now we're going to pick up in Samuel, chapter four, First Samuel, chapter four.

And this is a very difficult passage of Scripture to talk about, because we see here that there's defeat we see that there's pain and suffering, but really the pain and suffering and the defeat come through rebellion and missing the message of the Lord.

So look with me.

In verse number one, it says, and the word of Samuel came to all Israel.

And so that's a testimony of Samuel's ministry.

Samuel at this point is prophesying about the things of God to the people.

And remember, that's the role of a prophet.

The role of a prophet was to speak the word of God to the people, to speak forth the Word.

And that's what Samuel was doing.

But what we see here is that the vast majority of Israel is not listening to the preaching of the Word of God.

They're living their own way.

And we see at this point in time, they are in battle with the Philistines.

And the Philistines were a regular foe that they would face against.

And the Philistines were a group of people that lived on the western side of Israel.

They had five city states, and they were basically transplants from the island of Crete.

And they had come to the land of Israel at this point, the land of Canaan.

And they were in rebellion to God.

They were pagan, and they were obviously against the Israelites.

And so they're in battle here.

And it says now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle and pitch beside Ebenezer.

And the Philistines pitched in Aphek.

So we see this setting.

The setting is a battlefield.

The way that you read it here, it kind of looks like the Israelites instigated the battle.

But really what we can understand through the original Hebrew is that the Philistines initiated this battle, verse 2.

And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel.

And when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines.

And they slew of an army in the field, about 4,000 men.

So right here, because of Israel's rejection to the Word of God because of their sin, they go out into battle and they lose against the Philistines.

And they lose 4,000 men.

And that sounds like a lot.

Until we study a little bit further on in this chapter, we're going to see that there's a greater defeat.

And so they turn to something, but they don't turn to the right thing.

If you read verse three and four, you might initially think that they're turning to God, but they're not turning to God.

They're actually turning to what we would consider to be a superstition.

They turn to the Ark.

Now, the Ark of the Covenant was a Picture of God's power.

The Ark of the Covenant, as you know through other stories in scripture, contained certain elements of the power of God.

But by this point in time for the Israelites, they were looking to the Ark of the Covenant somewhat like a lucky charm.

Basically, there's something that they could turn to a superstition that they could turn to thinking that that Ark was the reason why they were powerful, that Ark was the reason why they had victory.

But what we're going to see is that instead of turning to God, they turn to the gift that God had brought them.

And.

And so we're going to see that they turn to the ark.

Verse 3.

And when the people were coming to the camp, the elders of Israel said, wherefore hath the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines?

So the question is this.

Why did God do this to us?

Again, they're blaming God for this defeat.

Let us fetch the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us.

And so at this point in time, the Ark was being held in a place called Shiloh.

And so they said, let's go to a place called Shiloh.

Let's take the Ark and let's bring it into battle.

That will give us a victory.

So when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies.

And so instead of turning to God, instead of asking God why, instead of pleading with the Lord in humility to give them the victory, which we've seen in other studies, is a recipe for victory in the Lord, is by coming to him in humility and asking him for guidance, asking him from strength.

Instead, they get ahead of the Lord and they say, well, we just need to bring the Ark into the battlefield.

The Ark will give us everything we need.

The Ark is going to bring us to the victory.

And so verse four, the people sent to Shiloh and they that bring from fence the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherubims and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, remember them?

We already talked about them.

They're living in open rebellion to God.

Eli knows about their rebellion.

God knows about their rebellion.

And God has already prophesied that they would die.

So Hophni and Phinehas were there with the Ark of the Covenant.

So essentially, Hoffney and Phineas are the ones that are ushering the Ark into the battlefield.

So we see it's agents of sin trying to pose as deliverers of God.

And.

And that's a recipe for disaster, which we're going to see here in a few moments.

And so during this time, the Philistines are already on top with those 4,000 men that were slain.

And now they think that they can turn this around.

And looking to the Ark of the Covenant, they think that this is their, their salvation.

And really that's what we see at the end of this, this chapter essentially is that the Ark does not save them.

Ultimately, it's only God that can save them.

And so they think that they, it's, it's the Ark that can save us and not God that can save them.

So, so look at there with me with, at the end of verse four, it says that Hoffney and Phineas came and they were with the Ark of the Covenant of God.

So instead of Hophni and Phineas being dealt with in their sin, they're actually championed as the ones that are gonna be bringing victory.

And so their hope is, their hope at this time, their hope is to bring the Ark for victory.

Instead.

What we see here in this passage is that, that what they should have been doing is repenting of their sin and turning to God.

Their, their hope was in a quick pragmatic fix.

Meaning this, if it works, it's worked for us before, it's going to work for us again.

We got to do this quick.

We got to find an easy way, we got to find a fast way to get back into this.

And so if you look at verse three, they, they say, let's fetch the Ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us that when it cometh among us, it might save us, that it might save us, that it might be the fix.

And so sometimes in our Christian life, instead of going the way that God has us to go through a lifestyle of repentance and humility and confession and brokenness and growth and allowing God to grow us, we as humans look for that fast route.

We look for a quick fix.

We look for something that we can just grab and apply and get through it.

And that's really what our Christianity looks like today in most senses, is that people want that easy fix.

I, I, I want to figure this out in my life.

What, what three step program do I need to get into?

I, I, I've got about three weeks.

I can get this right.

Look, sometimes God's timing is not an overnight fix.

Sometimes it's, it's a series of lessons that we have to learn and choices that we have to make.

And so they think, well, instead of Thinking about why did we lose 4,000 people in this battle?

And it wasn't because of their battle tactics.

It wasn't because the Philistines had more power than they had.

It was because they were walking away from God.

They should have learned that from prior battles.

So we look here that they're looking for this vix with Hophni and Phineas and eventually what we're going to see is that there's an emotional response.

But emotional responses don't equal truth and it doesn't equal change.

So look at verse number six.

And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout.

Now what shout are we talking about?

Well, if you look back at verse five, it says when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp.

So they're in the camp, they're waiting to go back into the battlefield and the ark comes.

What, what's the response?

What's the Israelites response?

It says when it came into the camp, all Israel shouted with great shout so that the earth rang again.

So we see that there's this huge emotional response.

They all cheer, they all, they all celebrate thinking victory is here.

And what we can liken this to is an emotional response to something that happens within our life.

But there's no truth change, there's no heart change.

And what we're really seeing is that in this case there's a lot of sound, there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of emotion, but there's no true sense of substance, of the truth, of repentance.

And I liken this to a lot of times what we see in modern worship.

Modern worship's a lot of sound, a lot of noise, a lot of excitement, a lot of energy.

But at the core of it, there's not a lot of truth, there's not a lot of repentance.

And here we see that the Philistines hear this shout and they said, what meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews?

And they understood that the ark of the Lord was coming to the camp.

So they hear that the ark is coming.

Now the Philistines, now remember, Philistines are pagans.

The Israelites knew the true God, the Philistines did not.

At least they didn't know him in a personal way.

They knew about him.

We're going to see here.

But they didn't know God in a personal way.

And the Philistines were afraid.

The Philistines first reaction to hearing that the ark is coming is, wow, there's there's fear here.

Why?

Because it says in verse 7, God has come into the camp.

And they said, woe unto us, for there hath not been such a thing heretofore.

Meaning they've never seen this before.

The Philistines had never seen the ark actually come into the camp.

And so for the Philistine side of things, they're thinking, man, their God is powerful.

Their God's in their camp.

Obviously, there's going to be a lot of power on the side of the Israelites.

And they say, woe unto us who shall deliver us out of the hands of these mighty gods.

Now, you see that it's plural there, that that means that they don't understand the God of Israel.

They think that just like every other country, every other people, that there's multiple gods.

And they say, who can save us from these gods?

These are the gods that smoke the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness.

And so the Philistines knew the testimony of the Lord.

The Israelites knew the testimony of the Lord.

The only difference is, is that the Israelites had that personal walk with God where the Philistines didn't.

And what we can see in our world today is that people understand the power that God has, but many times they're not willing to submit.

It would be one thing if the Philistines said, we need to go over there and join them.

But instead, they strengthen themselves in their rebellion.

They harden their necks, and they say, okay, this is going to be hard, but we're going to do it.

Verse 9.

Be strong and quit yourselves like men.

Oh, ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews as they have been to you.

Quit yourselves like men and fight.

Meaning, all right, this is going to be hard, but we're going to do it.

So the Philistines continue their rebellion as well.

And so what we really should see is a difference between the Israelites and the Philistines.

We should see the Philistines, knowing that they're pagans, stiffening their necks, getting upset and saying, okay, this is going to be a tough fight.

The Israelites should have repented and turned to the Lord for victory, but they don't do that.

And so what really we see in verses five, all the way down to verse nine, is that there is a emotional response, but there is not truth, there is not justice.

There is not repentance.

It's just noise without a response.

It's.

It's instead what we should have within our Christian lives, within our worship, within our service.

Within everything, it should be substance over sound.

Now, sometimes sound is presented when we worship the Lord.

Sometimes a noise is presented.

But what we mean here is that sometimes people equate busyness and excitement with spirituality.

And sometimes that doesn't necessarily mean that we're spiritually where we need to be just because we're excited about something.

And one of the things that I've been thinking about and studying about recently when it comes to worship and it comes to the church, is this movement of the juvenilization of the American church, which means we want to dumb everything down.

We want to make everything exciting.

We want to make things flashy and moving because that shows that we're spiritual, but we have to have substance behind the movement.

I'm not saying that movement is wrong.

I'm not saying excitement is wrong.

I'm not saying that energy is wrong.

But what I am saying is that energy and excitement and movement without substance is a problem because we're not getting to the core of what God has called us to do with our worship, with our obedience.

And really what we have to see is that if we say we love God, the Bible doesn't say if we love God, we'll worship louder.

If we love God, we'll worship in certain ways and excitement.

The Bible says if we love God, we obey him.

So one of the acts of worship that we must follow through with, if we say that we're worshiping God is obeying his word.

So the Israelites are excited the ark is in the camp, but they're looking at the ark disconnected from the power of God that gave them that ark.

It's similar to when we talk about us as Christians worshiping the gift more than the gift giver.

Oftentimes we look at something that God has given us and we worship that, or we celebrate that, or we get so happy about those things instead of thanking the Lord and worshiping the Lord for the one being the gift giver.

And so here in First Samuel, chapter four, they get so excited about the ark, but they forget about the one who gave them the ark.

And so we know that the ark has power.

But the only reason the ark has power is because of the God who extended that.

So verse 10, the Philistines fought and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent, and there was a very great slaughter.

For there fell of Israel 30,000 footmen.

And so what we see here is that there's a bigger loss.

So.

So they doubled down, Israel doubled down, doubles down and says, okay, I know we lost 4,000.

But now we're going to try to do it our way.

We're going to do it the way that we think is best.

We're going to bring Hoffney and Phineas in with the Ark, and we're going to try to do what's worked for our forefathers.

But yet they do it without substance, they do it without repentance, they do it without humility.

They do it without having a heart for God and seeking his will.

And what we see is that there's a greater defeat.

So it goes from 4,000 to 30,000.

And so they not only lose 30,000 men in this battle, but we're going to see that there's a Greater loss.

Verse 11.

And the ark of God was taken.

Now, now they've allowed not only for 30,000 men to be slaughtered, which is a huge amount, but now they've allowed the ark, which was called for them to protect and to champion and ultimately to worship God through that has now been taken.

And then we see more loss.

And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were slain, which obviously is a culmination of God's promise to Eli that his sons would be killed.

He didn't say that his sons would be killed at the same time.

But we see here in this case, they.

They are killed in this battle as well.

And so they lose the ark, they lose 30,000, and they lose 2 of their spiritual leaders, as bad as they are.

So moving forward, we're going to see that Eli hears about his sons being killed, he hears about the 30,000 being lost, and he hears ultimately the Ark being taken.

Verse 12.

And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent and with earth upon his head.

Now, every time I see that a guy runs, I've always just read those verses and never thought about how far do they run.

And so recently, what I've been trying to do is look at how far the cities are, and obviously we're not going to have the exact numbers, but from my research, not that this might matter to any of you, but it was probably about 20 miles that he ran in that timeframe.

So he's having a purpose.

He's trying to get back and tell Eli what happened.

Now, you might say, what's significant about Eli.

Well, he's the high priest.

He's.

He's the main spiritual leader of Israel at this point.

And so he runs, and it says his clothes rent with Earth upon his head.

That means he's in a picture of mourning, he's in sadness, and he's bringing the news to Eli.

Verse 13.

And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching, for his heart trembled for the Ark of God.

I mean, he knew probably that in.

In this case, that they shouldn't have taken the Ark.

They weren't in the right place for it.

And when the man came into the city and told it, all the city cried out.

And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, what meaneth the noise of this tumult?

And the man came in hastily and told Eli.

Now Eli was 90 and 8 years old, and his eyes were dim that he could not see.

And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled today out of the army.

And he said, what is there done, my son?

And the messenger answered and said, israel has fled before the Philistines.

And there hath been also a great slaughter among the people.

And thy two sons also hop in.

The opinions are dead and the Ark of God is taken.

So he just dumps it all on Eli right there.

He tells him everything.

Now, what we're going to see here is the death of Eli.

He's lived a long life, and there's a lot of criticism that we could have for Eli.

We definitely know that Eli was not a good father.

We know that through chapters one through three, that he was not disappointing his children the way that he should have.

Eli still, though, was sensitive to the call of God.

And he has such a reaction to this.

Verse 18.

And it came to pass when he made mention of the Ark of God, that he fell off the seat backward.

This is interesting because I thought, always hearing this when I was growing up, I thought that it was the news of his sons that he would fall.

You know, like he would just get so overwhelmed with hearing his two sons died.

But you actually see what causes him to fall.

Here it says that he heard the mention of the Ark of God.

And I think that he realizes here what this really is.

This is not just a physical defeat, but this is a spiritual defeat that the enemies, the Philistines, would take their most precious possession that God had given them, and that's the Ark of the Covenant.

And so because of hearing of the Ark being taken by the Philistines, he fell backward by the side of the gate and his neck break, and he died.

For he was an old man and heavy, and he had judged Israel 40 years.

And so we see sadness.

We see a sad end to the life of Eli.

And I think it's a picture, an example of living an extended amount of time where he does not get right with God, does not align himself completely with the obedience that God has called for him to live.

And now we see great loss.

He loses his sons, he loses 30,000 people, and he ultimately sees the ark being lost.

Now, we know that God restores that ark, but in this period of time, this is a huge loss for them.

And we know that even earlier on in the book of First Samuel, that Eli heard that not only would his two sons die, but basically the priesthood would leave his family, which was a great shame on his part.

But the story isn't over with yet.

I wish I could tell you that that was it.

But there's.

There's more.

Verse 19.

And his daughter in law, Phineas's wife, was with child, near to be delivered.

And when she heard the tidings that the ark of.

Of God was taken and that her father in law and her husband were dead, she bound herself and travailed for her pains came upon her.

So she's with child.

And because of this great stress, she goes into labor.

Verse 20.

And about the time of her death, the woman that stood by her said unto her, fear not for thou has born a son.

But she answered not, neither did she regard it.

Now, when you.

When you hear verse 20, you might skip over it and you might not understand the implication there that's being told to us.

But she's having her son, which is a.

In specifically in this culture, but in every culture, it's a joyous occasion.

It's an occasion that causes.

I mean, though there's pain and travail, there's usually joy in a birth of a son.

But what we see here in verse 20 is because of the news and because of the sin that was in the nation of Israel, it says, but she answered not.

Neither did she regard it, meaning she didn't even care that her son was born.

And so she hears this news and it stresses her out.

And, you know, specifically in the Jewish culture of the birth of a son was wonderful news, but not for her.

This day she's full of anguish, she's full of loss.

And we see that through how she names her child.

Verse 21.

And she named the child Ichabod.

What does Ichabod mean?

Saying the glory is departed from Israel.

So her outlook on everything in life.

Because when they would name their child, it wasn't just a name that they would like to hear, you know, today, you know, most people name their child because that's a cool name or that's a, that's an interesting name.

And maybe you think about the meaning.

But for the Hebrew culture, it was, it was vital for them to name their child for a specific purpose.

For, for, you know, Joshua and Joseph, they all have meanings behind their names.

So he, she names him Ichabod.

So at the core of everything, Ichabod means the glory has departed, particularly with their nation of Israel.

And so this shows her grief, this shows her sadness, this shows her brokenness.

And I think it's a picture of the whole country at this point in time, the whole people that they are in grief.

And now why are they in grief?

It's not just because they lost the battle.

It's really at the core of it because they're in rebellion to God, whether they know it or not.

Great sorrow, great, great, great struggles, great pain, great separation comes through rebellion to the Lord.

So her grief is, is great.

Her maternal joy did not overcome that grief.

And so it's a, it's a total loss.

And so that's a sadness that we see here in the life of this woman and the sadness in all the people going forward.

It says, it explains why.

She says the glory is departed because the ark of God was taken and because of her father in law and her husband.

And she said the glory is departed from Israel for the ark of God is taken.

And so we can see that there at the end of chapter four.

I wish, I wish I could end you with good news that we could keep, continue on in chapter five and six and, and work our way to when they get the ark back, which they do.

And, and there's more good news that comes later on.

But really the end of chapter four, that's just hopelessness.

It's sadness, it's grief, it's, it's emptiness to the degree of basically there's no hope, the glory is gone, we've lost it, we've missed the mark.

We, we're, we're, we're done.

And that's a picture and, and, and an example of really how we can end up being when we are walking in rebellion to God.

You know, there's, there's Christians who know that they're walking away from the Lord or they're not in step with God and his plan.

And that can bring great sadness, that can bring great grief, that can bring hopelessness, that can bring despair.

And I'm not saying that every Christian that goes through pain and suffering causes it through rebellion.

Obviously there's pain and suffering, no matter what the case might be, because we're humans and that's the part of the same curse.

But many times Christians can lose joy, they can lose hope, they can lose satisfaction, they can lose everything when it comes to walking in rebellion to God.

And some of the most miserable people that can be are people that know the grace of God, but yet are walking outside of that in rebellion.

And so what I would encourage us to do is to not get to a place in our life where we're at the place where we're saying that the.

The glory of God is departed from my life.

I've mentioned this before, that, you know, even David the psalmist asked God to restore in him the joy of his salvation.

And sometimes that's a prayer that we need to have because we lose for whatever reason.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it's because of open rebellion and sin.

But sometimes, for whatever cause, we lose the joy of our salvation.

Folks, the Bible says in Nehemiah, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

So when we don't have the joy of the Lord, we're losing our strength, we're losing our effectiveness.

And so I personally don't believe that we can lose our salvation because of the security of God, because of his mighty hand in our life.

But the Bible does speak of how we can lose our joy and ultimately miss the glory of God in our life.

That's all around us.

We live in a time that it would be easy to get our eyes fixed on all of the evil and darkness around us.

And we say, well, the glory of the Lord's left us us.

But if we're open and our hearts are ready to receive the things that God has for us, it's very easy to see the glory of the Lord around us.

And for them, the reason why they couldn't see the glory of the Lord around them is because they were in rebellion.

They had the art taken away from them.

They had just been defeated.

But what I'm going to tell you here is that no matter what the case might be, within our life, within our spiritual battles that we face, the glory of Lord has not departed us.

And what we have to do is, you know, they, they didn't know this because they don't know the rest of the story.

We know the rest of the story.

God, God had not departed them yet.

He was just beginning to show his glory.

And we're going to see that later on in chapter five, that God even In the midst of Israel's rebellion, God's going to show his power against the false gods of the Philistines.

And every time God comes out on top, every time God displays his power, it might look like and.

And we will fail him as his people.

But at the same time, God never fails.

And we're going to see the overwhelming power of God against the Philistines.

And we're going to see that God restores his people, that God restores his plan and his purpose and their lives, and ultimately they turn to Him.

Yet there's ups and downs through that.

And we're going to get all the way to chapter eight in First Samuel, and we're going to see that after God gets them through all of this, you've got, God restores everything back to them and God gives them victory.

They say, now we want a king.

It's like, weren't you satisfied with the Lord?

Weren't you satisfied as God being your king?

But yet they wanted a person.

They wanted to be like everybody else in the world.

And that's sometimes where we get in trouble with our own Christian walk in our churches and in our personal life is we.

We aren't satisfied with just what God has for us.

We want what other people have.

We want what the world has.

We want to have the same things.

We want to be treated the same.

But I'm going to tell you here tonight, and, and this is the lesson I'm trying to learn, is I need to learn that I don't want the things of the world because I don't want the things that come along with it.

I don't want to be tied to this world because the Bible says the more that we're tied to this world, the less we're tied to the things of God.

And so what I would encourage you to think about in this passage of Scripture, it's a very bleak passage of Scripture, but I think about the idea that decisions that we make in our life do have consequences.

We live in this interesting balance in our life where as Christians, we live in a life of grace.

Thank God for grace.

Thank him so much for the fact that when I fail him, he's there and that he picks me up and that he's faithful, as the New Testament says, even when I'm not faithful.

But at the same time, we all must realize that decisions that we make even under the veil of grace do have consequences on this side of heaven.

And what I will say to you here this evening is that just as Hophni and Phinehas fell into the trap of the lust of this world, in particular the lust of covetousness and having material things, and then ultimately the lust of the flesh.

It really boils down to the sins that are listed in the New Testament.

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Those are the three areas that God attack that, that Satan attacks us.

And then God warns us about lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

And really the only answer to overcoming those things and those temptations and ultimately not falling into sin is to rest in a relationship with God.

What happened is, is that Israel drifted away Israel's relationship and, and the person, the personal touch of God in their life had drifted and they were doing their own thing.

And that's exactly when the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life can attack us and grip us and ultimately have us fall into those sins that can cause devastation in our homes and our families, in our communities, in our churches.

And though we are going to be perfect, we have the flesh in our life.

It doesn't mean that we just give up and give into that.

So, yes, we walk in grace, but at the same time, we know that decisions that we make ultimately in our relationship with God do matter.

And when you look at Israel, yes, Israel makes a ton of mistakes, Christians make a ton of mistakes.

But when we.

We see a common theme in the Old Testament and the New.

When someone is walking with God, it doesn't matter how smart they are, it doesn't matter how perfect they are.

It really matters is where they're walking.

Are they walking with God?

Are they walking in their own wisdom?

And every time someone's walking with God, they go.

They can go through great hardship.

Think about Job.

I mean, Job was in many ways probably the one that struggled the most in scripture, but yet he walked with God in the midst of it.

There's others.

Joseph.

Think about Joseph.

I mean, he.

He was sold into slavery by his own brothers.

He was betrayed by his brothers.

He was then betrayed by someone in his house, and he was lied about over and over again.

Joseph went through all these things, and at the very end he says, yes, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

He had the right outlook in the midst of difficulty.

Then we look at some other examples in Scripture, and they did not have the right outlook of difficult circumstances.

And they allowed those temptations to let them fall into that life of lifestyle sin.

And so I think that's a picture there of Eli Hoffney and Phineas as they just didn't deal with the temptations of this world in the right way.

And so how do we.

How do we prepare ourselves in that?

Well, we don't look at the things of God as superstitious things that we can just add in when things are, are, are needed.

We don't.

We don't look at the Bible as a rabbit's foot that, you know, when I'm going through a struggle now, I bring out the Bible and make it help me.

And then when everything's good, then I just put back on the shelf and.

And go back to it when I can.

And that's often how American Christianity is.

Again.

It's that.

It's that pragmatic fix.

Right now.

They go, my life isn't going so well, so I better get back into church.

I'm not saying that getting back in church is the wrong thing.

What I'm saying is getting out of church is the reason why there are issues in her life.

And I'm not saying that being in church causes all those issues to go away.

But what I will say is that sometimes we look for religious things as little tokens of luck and superstition, and that's exactly what they were doing with the Ark of the Covenant.

There's nothing wrong with the Ark.

There's nothing wrong with the Bible.

There's nothing wrong with going to church.

There's nothing wrong with serving in ministries.

There's nothing wrong with prayer.

But if we look to all these fringe things as the cause of us getting right, that's.

That's the problem.

Because really, at the end of the day, it's all things that are getting us closer to God.

God is the answer.

If.

If we just say a little recitation prayer that is, I don't know, on a piece of paper, and we just say that prayer, but we don't have any meaning behind it.

We're not really communicating with God.

That prayer in and of itself is not going to save us.

What, what saves us is that relationship with God.

Draw near to God and He draws near to us.

Now, how do we talk to Him?

We talk to him through prayer.

But what we can see in this passage is that people were doing religious things, but they were not connecting with God.

I think that can happen.

And many of you maybe have even experienced sections of that in your life that you were doing religious things, but there was no connection to God because it was devoid of God.

It was.

It was just little things that we were doing.

And so I'm not against traditions.

I'm not against doing different things that are disciplines in our life.

But what I would say is always understand that everything that we do, whether it's prayer, Bible study, going to church, anything, wearing a cross, you know, doing whatever, putting up a sign in our house, putting a fish on the back of our car, I'm not saying that any of those things are bad, but reason we do that is ultimately to have that closer relationship with God.

It's not so that we can just have a little token that's going to keep us safe.

And so, yeah, I'm all for putting up things in our houses.

I mean, I have different signage in our house that helps me remind myself of my goal for the day over the door that I head on every single day I have.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

And it's not just there for a decorative piece.

It's there so that I'm reminded every single day when I walk out.

That that's my call.

That's my mission, is I want to serve the Lord.

I want to have my house and my family serving the Lord.

But again, if I just put that up on my house and said I'm serving the Lord just because it's up there, that doesn't, that doesn't equate to that.

It equates to the application of whatever we're dealing with in our life.

And so what I would encourage you to do is just think about it from this perspective and what I am, is what I'm doing in my day to day life as a Christian drawing me closer to God.

Or is it just something that I'm doing to stay busy?

I've been there.

I've been in ministry long enough to go through seasons where I'm just staying busy, thinking that that's enough.

But busyness does not equate spirituality.

Busyness does not equate me being close to the Lord.

So what I would encourage you to do is not just think about like, well, yes, Pastor, I'm close with God.

I'm in six ministries.

I didn't ask you how many ministries you're in.

Yes, Pastor, I read my Bible every day.

I'm good.

That's great.

I'm glad you read.

I mean, we should be reading her Bible as much as we possibly can.

But at the core of it, is my Bible reading a checklist or is my Bible reading a way for me to get to know my Lord more?

Pastor, I pray, but.

But is it just.

I say my, my set prayer before my meals, I ask God for all my, my issues in my life, and then I just go back to my everyday life.

Or is it, yes, I ask God for things?

I.

Yes, I pray for my meals, but at the same time, it's me communicating with him in a personal way to get to know him more, for him to get to know me.

And it's like, God knows me completely.

God knows me.

Like, I was talking to my, my kids recently and I made a joke.

I was like, I know you guys really well.

And they're like, yeah, you don't know us that well.

I was like, I've known you guys your whole life.

I've.

I've seen you from the very beginning.

And, and so, yes, I. I know my kids well, but just because I know them, it doesn't mean that I want to stop getting to know them.

If I have a good relationship with my family, I want to get to know them more.

And so God knows us completely.

And so it's not a matter of God being aware of us.

He already is aware of us, but it's that growth and that bond that we have with Him.

And so that's what we saw Israel lose.

We saw Israel lose that personal walk with God.

Therefore, there was judgment and there was problems and ultimately defeat.

But we're going to have good news next week.

We're going to come back and we're going to read an awesome story about how God clearly is on top and the Philistines are gonna give the ark back.

Basically, they're gonna return the ark and then there's some stories there that we're going to look at, and it's going to be pretty interesting.

Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast.

I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.

You would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon, you can find us@middletown baptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

You can also email me directly at Josh Massaro at middletownbaptistchurch.

Com.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and follow along for future podcast and updates.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Have a wonderful day.