Unveiling the Sacred: The Return of the Ark of the Covenant

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, we're going to go ahead and continue our Bible study in 1st Samuel.

So if you have your Bibles and you want to follow along, which I encourage you to do, we're in First Samuel, chapter six.

I'll catch you guys up with where we left off.

I know a week sometimes can feel like a long time.

If you were here last week, if you weren't here, I'll try to catch you up the best way that I can.

Here in First Samuel, we've been tracking the story of the Israelites and how they turned away from the Lord, specifically through the leadership of Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phineas.

Hophni and Phineas were involved with a bunch of different sins, and they were in rebellion to God.

And then, in so doing, God judges the family of Eli and by extension, the nation of Israel.

And so Israel is defeated by a group of people called the Philistines.

And I'm sure if you study the Bible at any point, you've heard the name the Philistines.

One of the famous Philistines is Goliath, the giant that.

That you're aware of.

He's from Gath.

Uh, there's five cities in the Philistine kingdom.

And you're going to need to know that, because a couple of them are mentioned in chapter five.

But essentially what happens is on the battlefield, there's a guy named Hoffney, Phineas.

They're killed.

And then when the news gets back to their dad, Eli, he dies.

And then the bigger news is that the Ark of the Covenant was taken away.

And that might not sound like a big deal for us, but for them, that was huge.

The Ark of the Covenant was a representation of the power of God.

It was the representation of the presence of God.

And in the rebellion, God allowed for the Philistines to steal the Ark of the Covenant.

And so, obviously, Israel is, in their minds, defeated, in their hearts, defeated, spiritually defeated.

And at the end of chapter four, we see that they are just broken.

And there's a lady there that she basically names her child who's born through all this, Ichabod, which means the glory has departed from Israel.

So in Many people's minds, the glory had departed from Israel.

Now we know that God's glory didn't depart.

It was their rebellion that allowed the glory to.

But even in the midst of Israel's unfaithfulness, God is still faithful to Himself, and He's faithful to His Word, and He gives glory to Himself.

And so, if you remember, the Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant and they put it into the house of Dagon.

Dagon was a false God that the Philistines worshiped.

And as the Ark of the Covenant was in the house of Dagon, they come back in the morning.

Dagon's fallen on his face, which is a picture of God's power over Dagon.

And then the next day, they come back, and Dagon's statue had fallen, the idol fell, his head was knocked off, his arms were knocked off.

All that was left was the.

The body there.

And so obviously they're like, what in the world is happening?

A Deon has fallen to the God of the Israelites, and they recognize his power.

But instead of turning to the God of Israel and worshiping him, they try to avoid him and send the.

The Ark of the Covenant away.

But in the meantime, there is sickness.

And we know that they're struck with these tumors that take over their whole bodies.

And so they pass it to three different cities.

There was a city called Ashdod, there was a city called Gath, and there was a city of Ekron.

And they're all afflicted with the sickness.

And so they make a decision.

They say, we've got to get rid of this Ark.

We've got to get rid of the judgment of God.

And if you remember, what we talked about last week was the.

The idea that everybody will face the power of God at some point in their life, whether it be through the power of faith and the power of salvation or the power of judgment.

And so the Philistines were facing the power of God's judgment.

And instead of turning in repentance and humbling themselves before God, which he calls us to do, they just turn with the idea of rejection, and they want to get rid of the presence of God and his judgment.

So we're in chapter six.

This is where we're going to pick up.

And this is.

The Philistines plan to return the Ark back to Israel.

They're like, God is a problem for us.

We thought he was going to work for us.

They saw the.

If you guys know some of the stories of the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant seemed to the people around the world to be the source of the power.

They said, well, if we have the Ark, we have the same power as the Israelites.

What they failed to understand is that it wasn't the Ark itself that was the power.

It was the God behind the ark.

And so the Philistines wanted to use the Ark for their advantage, and they realized that it wasn't going to be for their advantage.

So chapter six is all about them trying to get the.

The power from the judgment away from them.

And so let's look at verse number one.

In 1st Samuel, chapter six, it says, and the ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months.

So it took them seven months to make a decision.

They had made some small decisions about passing it around to the different cities, but ultimately they did not make a decision to repent or to give it back.

It took them seven months to do that.

And I thought about that for a second, and I thought about, why did they take so long?

Why were they reluctant to make a decision?

Well, I think it was because they saw the ark as a trophy and they were resting in their pride.

They were.

They were resting in their victory and in some way trying to make it work for them.

But what we know is that when we're trying to make it work on our own strength, when we're trying to make it work in our own pride, God can ultimately level us down and make us to a place where we are going to make a decision, whether it be rebellion or repentance.

And so verse number two, it says in the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners.

So basically, they're holy people.

They're.

They're shamans, so to speak.

And they said, what shall we do to the ark of the Lord?

Tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place.

And so the Philistine priests came up with an idea here, verse three.

And they said, if you send it, if you send away the ark of God of Israel, send it not empty.

So their minds basically turn to this.

We have to try to appease this God.

They're.

They're going to try to treat the God of Israel the same way that they treat their gods, which, if you know, the pagan gods, what they would try to do is appease them by giving them offerings and sacrifices, but not in the way that God had called for in the Old Testament, but in more selfish ways.

So, like, if we want a good crop, we're going to give our crops to him and actually they went further.

Many of you know that the pagan worship in the Old Testament in the Canaanite kingdom and many of the other Babylonian areas were essentially child sacrifice.

They would offer their children for a BAAL and for Moloch for these sacrifices to give them some type of fruitfulness later on and fertility.

But nonetheless, we see that they try to worship still the God of Israel in their own way.

They said, we have to send something, obviously, because we, we know that these plagues were not by accident.

We know that God was giving us some sort of judgment, so maybe buying him off will.

Will give us some kind of salvation here.

And so they said, we can't send it back empty, but in any wise return him a trespass offering.

So they said, so this is interesting.

The Philistines actually recognized that they had trespassed against the God of Israel.

But instead of doing what was right and repenting and turning away from their gods, they just said, let's try to throw something at him.

Let's try to give God something to, to appease Him.

And that's sometimes what we see in the world today.

You know, there.

There are people that might even recognize that they're sinning against God.

But instead of dealing with it and repenting and humbling themselves and turning to the truth and turning to holiness, they basically say, well, I'm just going to give more.

I'm just going to try harder.

I'm going to try to have my Christian karma.

I'm going to try to have my good outweigh my bad.

And that's essentially what we see here, and that's what we've seen throughout history.

That's man's way to worship, but that's not God's way of worshiping.

So they, they recognize that there is a sin here.

They recognize that they are in the wrong, but they don't deal with it in the proper way.

And so they had enough sense to know that they had offended the true God of Israel.

But they did not express it in the right way.

They didn't express itself in sorrow and repentance.

They tried to appease God.

And ultimately we'll never be able to do that because we can't pay for our own sin.

Then what do they say?

They say, give.

Give a trespass offering.

Then you shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.

So basically, they're trying to figure out God.

They're trying to figure out his mind.

And really, I'm going to tell you this.

Ultimately we as we as human beings cannot ultimately get into the mind of God and know specifically why he's doing what he's doing.

There are going to be times where God does lay out his plans.

There are going to be times where God does lay out his thoughts.

We see that in scripture.

But ultimately we can never understand the mind of God completely.

Verse 4.

Then they said, what shall.

What shall be?

The trespass offering which we shall return to him.

So that's the big question.

What's going to be enough for God?

And what they come up with is, is kind of interesting.

I don't know if that's what I would come up with, but this is what they came up with.

They said, we're going to give him five golden emodes or five golden tumors.

So since they had been given tumors, what they believed by God because of their sin, which we agree to, it would be God's judgment upon them.

They say, we're going to have these five tumors that are golden and give that to, to God and put that in the ark.

And then it says, in five golden mice, which seems kind of out of place.

I'm like, where did the mice come from?

So I was reading up on that because I was like, I, I want to know.

That just gets piques my curiosity.

So some scholars, they don't know for sure why they put the mice in there or the rats.

And in the Hebrew, it could have been either one rodent.

But essentially what most people think, most scholars think is that this, these tumors were coming about through some kind of plague, bubonic plague.

And if you know, in the past, the way that that plague was passed along was through rats and those kind of things.

So some scholars might think that that was along with it.

We don't know for sure.

But five emirates or five tumors and five golden mice according to the number of the lords of the Philistines.

Remember that number five is significant for the Philistines because they had five kingdoms.

So that's why they pick five.

Five of each of the cities there for one plague was on you all and on your lords.

And so this is a recognition of God's judgment upon all of the cities of the Philistines.

And so we know the plague involved tumors, and we know that it was destructive, and we know that there was a lot of calamity with it.

And so what they say is this, this is, this is interesting as well.

It says when they, they said verse 5, wherefore you shall make images of your emirates and images of your mice that mar the land.

So.

So in some way the mice were marring the land.

We see that there.

And you shall give glory unto the God of Israel.

So, so in some degree, this is their way of saying that they're going to give glory to the God of Israel.

And, and so they acknowledge God's judgment.

And that's one way to give glory to God.

But obviously they're not doing it in a way that's according to the plan of God.

But it says here that, that and hopefully, per adventure, he will lighten his hand from off you and from your gods and from off your land.

So we, we see in verse five that their heart is not to turn to God like so.

So giving glory to God doesn't necessarily equate that I'm going to exclusively worship him.

And that's what God wants.

God wants our exclusive worship.

I have to be very clear in Scripture, God does not say that we should add him into our Rolodex of worship.

We should not add him as one of our gods.

And that's really what the Philistines were doing.

They said, let's appease the God of Israel.

So he would lay off on us, and he'll lay off on our gods and he'll lay off of our land.

And that's one of the things that we have to take note of in our world today because there's a lot of people that will say, you know what?

I'm glad that you believe in God, and I'm even okay that you believe in Jesus, but he's just one of my many things that I worship in my life.

You know, if there's certain religions, there's certain world religions that will say, I'll accept Jesus as my Savior along with a hundred other gods.

And what we know is that's not what God look is looking for.

He's looking for exclusive worship.

It's him, the way, the truth, and the life.

God is a jealous God.

And, and I don't want to make you confused with that, because sometimes when you hear the word jealousy, you think of it as negative.

And in most cases in our humanity, it is.

Because usually our jealousy is based off of our flesh.

Our jealousy is based off of our pride.

Our jealousy is based off of something that deals with us getting something.

But really, biblically speaking, the Bible says that there is a godly jealousy.

It's mentioned in the New Testament.

And we know that God is jealous over his people.

And if God, if God desires our exclusive worship, what that means is that if we worship anything Outside of Him, we are committing something called idolatry.

We're giving worship to something that is not God.

And that's, that's, that's idol worship.

And the Bible says that clearly something that God hates.

And so we see in verse five that there, this is not the proper repentance and worship.

It says that, that maybe if we give this to God, maybe He will lighten his hand.

From off of you.

So there's that selfish focus.

And from off of your gods there, there's that polytheism, multiple gods, and from off of your land.

So there's that materialism there.

And so we see that there's just like a very humanistic way to worship.

And we have to be so careful about that.

The Bible, the Bible teaches that there is a proper way to worship God.

And I've heard people say, and I have to caution all of us on this, and I want you to be careful.

I've heard people say that there's no wrong way to worship.

Like, as long as your heart's in it, God is happy.

But, but I do want you to take note that in the New Testament, In John chapter 4, Jesus clearly teaches the Samaritan woman that we should worship him in spirit and in truth.

And so there is a right way to worship.

And the right way to worship is the way that God calls us to worship.

So instead of trying to give God what we think he wants, why don't we go to His Word and look at what he tells us that he wants?

And that's his complete devotion to him, complete obedience to Him, a complete dedication with our hearts and with our minds and with our actions.

And that's what we see.

The failure of the Philistines, among many other things, is that they're trying to appease God and worship God on their terms.

So it would be similar to this.

We would say this, well, I worship this way because this, this makes me feel good.

Well, I understand what we mean by that.

And there might be certain elements of worship that we attract ourselves to.

Like, for, for some people, some people really enjoy music or some people really enjoy Bible study.

There's going to be some, some things that we do in worship that we tend to be more naturally drawn to.

But at the same time, we can't just make up our own terms on how we want to worship God.

Specifically if he tells us that there are certain things that are not the right way to worship Him.

So one thing that we, we see, and I mentioned this before, and some of you are, are you Know, if you're here with all my services, I apologize because sometimes I'll use a reference on a Wednesday night, and I have no idea if I use that on Sunday night, Sunday morning.

So if you were here, and this is a double up, I apologize.

But it still has the same application we see in the New Testament.

There was a group of people in the church of Corinth, and the church at Corinth were.

They were believers.

First Corinthians chapter 3 tells us that they were believers, but they were immature believers.

They.

They were carnal.

They.

They had not grown in their faith.

And Paul says, I should be bringing you the meat, but I can't bring you the meat because you're still in the milk.

You should be teaching, but you're not because you haven't matured.

And one of the reasons why they didn't mature is because they were allowing pagan worship to seep into the church.

And so if you know the church of Corinth, they had the goddess Diana and they had a, a whole temple there that people would travel from all over the world to worship.

And so people in Corinth were used to worshiping in a way that was similar to what we would call pagan worship.

And I don't need to go through all the details, but one of the things I will say is that the church at Corinth began to allow some of that to seep into their worship.

And when Paul gets there, he's like, that should not be the case.

We've got to deal with this.

And so if we have these examples in the Old Testament and the New of improper worship, we should take note of that and say, hey, are we in the church properly worshiping the Lord?

And so I think that that's a note to take there, but we will move on a little bit here.

Now, verse six.

Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh harden their hearts?

So the question would be is, are you going to harden your hearts the way that the Egyptians did?

Now this is also I, I find so fascinating because the people here in Phil, in the Philistine area, the, the people that were living in Canaan had heard the stories of what the God of Israel did to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, which, if you remember, they brought a bunch of plagues to the Egyptians.

God brought all the plagues there.

And ultimately the, the great judgment of taking the firstborn of the Egyptians.

And so essentially the Philistine priests are like, are you going to be the same way as the Egyptians?

You're going to try to do it the way they did it.

And when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go and they departed?

And so the idea would be this.

They were aware of the, what we would call the Exodus account.

And the Philistines rightly remembered that anyone who comes against the Lord loses.

And even if they are selfishly interested, they do understand that hardening their hearts against the God of Israel has great problems.

And, and I think that's evident, and I think that's even as Christians, we should recognize that hardening our hearts against God, against His will, against his, his conviction in our life is going to always lead us to a devastation and destruction and emptiness.

And so even the pagan Philistines recognize that disobeying the God of Israel has consequences all the more.

Why, it's so hard to understand why the Israelites couldn't understand that.

But we know because of their flesh and because of their rebellion, that was certainly something that they had to.

To deal with.

All right, so verse seven, they come up with a plan.

How, how are they going to get the ark there?

How are they going to get.

How they couldn't put it on a plane and fly it there.

They had to figure out a plan.

And, and even in this plan it seems so interesting because the Philistines still are deciding if this is really God doing it.

And so they basically give God one last test here to see if what they're doing here is their own will or ultimately it's God's power.

Verse 7.

Now therefore, make a new cart and take two milch kind on which there hath come no yoke.

So that's two, two milk cows, basically.

All right, in everyday English it's you say take two cows that are milking right now that have two calves on which there have become no yoke.

And so the idea here would be that you're taking two mil cows that have never been yolked up, they've never worked, they never carried a cart.

These are freshly yolked animals that have never worked in this way and tie the kind to the cart and bring their calves home from them.

So they say basically we're going to make an impossible situation.

It would have been maybe not impossible, but highly improbable that two milking cows that had calves and had their calves taken away from them and then never been yolked would actually find their way.

And that's what we're going to see here, is that they're going to take two milk cows, take their calves away from them, hide them so that the cows would go.

And ultimately we know that their nature would be that they would go after their, their, their calves.

And what we're going to see here is that they take these impossible situation of these two cows and ultimately God's going to use it and take it all the way to Israel, verse 8, and take the ark of the Lord and lay it upon the cart, and put the jewels of gold which he returned for a trespass offering in a coffer by the side thereof, and send it away that they may go, that it may go.

So they say, okay, here they're conducting an experiment after all of this.

Maybe God is sending this.

But ultimately we're not 100 sure that this is God.

So we're going to give this test to God and we're going to put all these hardships in the way.

And if this works, if this works, then we'll know that this was God.

And you know, God's going to work against their maternal instinct.

God's going to work against their inexperience and he's going to take the ark to Israel, verse 9, and see if it go up by the way of his own coast to Beth Shemus, which Beth Shemesh was an Israelite city there town.

Then he hath done us this great evil.

But if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote us, it was a chance that happened to us.

So even in verse nine we see that they're not a hundred percent sure that this is God.

They said, well, maybe, just maybe, this is just by chance, by luck.

And again, depending on your belief in God, I don't believe in chance, I don't believe in luck.

I don't believe in any of those things.

I believe that God ordained certain things to happen.

And so for them, they're still in question of whether or not this is truly God's working or this just was a bad situation for them.

And so this test is played out there for the Lord.

Now, we know a couple different things.

One, there is a very specific way to move the ark.

And we know that through other scenarios when the Israelites didn't move it the right way.

If you remember, there was a guy named Uzzah who the cart, they try to take the quick route later on, and the ark falls and Uzzah goes to catch it and he dies.

And so then the question would be is why?

Why did, why did God judge Israel for making a cart and not the Philistines?

Well, there's a couple reasons for that.

I believe.

I believe, number one, God understood that he had laid out the instructions to the Israelites and they knew better.

The Philistines were not children of God, therefore they were not part of God's covenant.

Also, they had not been instructed of how to do it.

So God does judge on different sections here.

He judges the people that knew the truth and the people who did not know the truth.

And so God doesn't necessarily strike them all dead, because we're actually going to see in, in a few verses in this passage that the Israelites actually just peek into the ark.

And they peek into the ark and they actually die for doing the same thing.

And there's a lot of reasons why that is the case.

And we'll get to that here in a few moments.

So they come up with a plan.

Instead of carrying it the proper way by putting the rods in and having the Levites carry it, they just put it on an unmanned cart with two milk cows that have their calves taken away and have never been yoked.

And let's see if this is God's plan now.

Again, this is still.

This is still testing God.

I don't.

I don't think in the Bible it ever really celebrates testing God.

There are some situations in which people came and asked God, like, Lord, if this happens, do this, do this sign for me.

And I think even in those cases, those aren't probably the best things because it shows a lack of faith.

I really do believe that.

Now, if God does give us signs, I don't think it's a bad thing.

But I think that when we come and try to test God and set up a situation, say God, if you do this and then this and this and this, I think that's a very dangerous place to be in our life.

And that's exactly what the Philistines are doing here.

Verse 11.

And they laid the ark of the Lord upon the cart and the coffer with the mice of the gold and the images of the Emirates and the kind took the straight way to the Beth way of Beth Shemesh and went along the highway.

And this is interesting here, lowing as they went.

Meaning basically the idea is, is that they're.

They're calling out like in, like.

Like if.

How angry a cow can be.

Okay, right.

We don't want to anthropomorphize an animal.

Like they're not humans.

But the cow itself was making a loud noise.

That's what it's saying.

And so what the meaning of the Text would be, is that basically they're going against their will.

God is forcing them down the road.

And so we see that they're moving down, lowing as they went, and.

But.

But.

And turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.

And the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Beth Shemesh.

So this is probably an interesting scene.

You see these two cows that are, you know, mooing as loud as they can, but they're staying straight on the path.

And you see these Philistine guys following behind it, kind of watching from a distance.

Verse 13.

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 imagine if you're the guys from Beth Shemesh, you're out here working in the field, your mind is set upon the fact that the Ark of the Covenant's been taken.

The Philistines are never going to bring it back.

They've got the power of God.

And all of a sudden they look up and they see two cows calling out and they're like, what is that coming?

And it's the Ark of the Covenant, unmanned, just coming their way.

And obviously it would be like a reunion.

It would be like seeing the Lord coming back.

It would be in many ways exciting for them to see that God's power was still there with them.

And so they're rejoicing to see it.

They're.

They're excited to see it.

And I think that all of us could understand their.

Their excitement in.

In that regard.

And so, against all odds, against all expectation, the cows go to the land of Israel where the ark should be, and God returns it back safely.

And so we.

We know that it was against all expectation because the cows should have resisted the yoke.

This is their first time ever doing it.

They should have never been harnessed.

They should have wanted to go back to their calves, and they definitely wouldn't have known where to go.

But God didn't leave this up to chance.

God stepped in and directed the path of these animals to where they needed to go.

So the ark is back at Beth Shemesh.

They're excited and they're cheering and verse 14.

And the cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stood there where there was a great stone, and they clave the wood of the cart and offered the kind a burnt offering unto the Lord.

Now that is an interesting thing.

They.

They knew this was the right thing to do in honoring God.

But in a strict sense, though, if you're going to go off of the Mosaic law, they were not supposed to offer female animals.

And so we can still see a little bit of the immaturity and the lack of complete understanding of the law of God here, because they take these two female cows and they sacrifice these cows as a burnt offering, which really should have not been done according to Leviticus chapter one and Leviticus chapter 22.

That's a forbidden thing.

And they murk and they make a burnt offering to the Lord away from the tabernacle, which again, is.

Is not something that would be what they would consider to be the.

The plan of God.

And that violated.

I believe It's Deuteronomy chapter 12 as well.

But I. I guess it's because they're excited and against these circumstances, I. I believe still the God was honored.

But, yeah, again, they're trying to do it in their own way.

But we do know the Levites took down the ark of the Lord, which was a good thing, verse 15.

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 a great stone.

And the men of Beshemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrifice sacrifices the same day unto the Lord.

And when the five lords of the Philistines had seen it, they returned to Ekron the same day.

So, like, it's an understatement.

I wish I knew more about what happened.

Like, what did the Philistines do once they went back?

I don't know.

The Bible doesn't tell us, but it just says there they went back to Ekron, verse 17.

And these are the golden emrods which the Philistines returned for a trespass offering unto the lord for Ashdod 1, for Gaza, 1, for Ascalon, 1, for Gath, 1, and for Ekron 1, and the golden mice.

According to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belong the five lords, both fenced cities and the 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 Shemesh.

So that's.

That's actually very interesting.

It kind of tells you the location where it was set and everything like that.

And so the offering went to the Lord there, and the Ark of the Covenant was only handled by the Levites, which was a good thing.

And that was according to.

To God.

And the men of Beshemesh are.

But they're going to sin here.

Verse 19.

So verse 19.

And he smote the men of Beshemesh.

So after all this, God kills these men.

And, and some people don't understand this, but God is very clear on his teaching on who should deal with the ark.

And they're just openly rebelling him because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.

Now you like, if I just read that verse out of context, I'd be like, man, that is not very fair.

Like, God brings them the ark and they look into it and he kills them.

But God, for his reasons, it's very clear that no one should be touching the ark except the Levites.

And they have to do it in the right way.

And no one should be looking into the ark except those that are called to do so.

So essentially what we see is they're just an open rebellion to God.

They're just doing what they want to do.

And so it says, because they looked into the ark, even he smote of the people 50,000 and three score and 10 men.

And the people lamented because the Lord had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.

And the men of Beshemesh said, who?

And this is so interesting because they asked this question, and it's a, it's a real question, but from the wrong heart.

Okay, let me, let me, let me explain what I mean by that.

There are questions that we can write that are the ask that are the right questions, but with the wrong motivation.

So they asked this question.

It says, who is able to stand before this holy God?

Their, their thing is this.

Well, if we can't look onto his holiness, who can stand before Him?

Like, what.

What's the point?

You know, how, how can any of us be holy enough for this?

God is what they're asking.

And, and the real question is this.

Who can stand before the Lord?

And none of us can.

None of us in our own merit can stand before the Lord.

But we know the answer to the question is, is that when we turn to Jesus, when we turn to the one who bore the weight of our sin, we can stand in the presence of God and his holiness.

And so they asked this question, who can stand before the Lord?

And I thought about that and their disrespect for God.

Essentially, the men offended the holiness of God.

But now it, when you, when you're faced with the holiness of God, it really should turn us to one thing.

It should turn us to worship.

It should turn us to repentance.

It should turn us to a place of desiring a closer relationship with God.

Instead of how this was for them, they distanced themselves from God.

See it here, verse 21.

And they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjath Jarem saying, the Philistines have brought again the ark of the Lord.

Come ye down and fetch it up too.

So they say we look on the holiness of God improperly.

We, we can't stand before the holiness of God.

He judges our people.

So we need to get rid of this.

That's not the right response.

The right response to the holiness of God should be, I need a closer relationship with Him.

I need his grace, I need his mercy, I need his forgiveness.

Instead, the people here at B Shemesh just said, we got to get rid of this.

We've got to separate ourselves.

And so there's really two choices that we can make when the holiness of God is revealed to us.

And by the way, I think that we should do an in depth study, all of us as Christians at some point in our life and looking at the pure holiness of God.

What does the word holy mean?

I think that's a place that we should start.

Holiness.

Yes, it means sinless, but it also means to be separate, to be distinct, to be different, to be like totally unique.

And though we are called to be holy, as God is called to be holy, we can never be on the same level of God's holy.

The Bible says be holy, for I am holy, meaning we are called to be set aside for a specific use as God is holy.

But none of us can be on the same level of God's holiness.

So, so when God calls us to be holy, yes, the desire is for us to be sinless.

But none of us can be sinless because of our lack of complete holiness in our life.

But God is completely holy.

So what does that mean?

Even in, even if you remember back in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah is, is revealed in a vision.

The holiness and the power of God.

And if you remember, what did he say?

He says, holy, holy, holy.

He says, woe is me for him.

I am a man of unclean lips.

He basically recognizes that he needs God's mercy.

He is in comparison to the holiness of God, as the Bible says, even in our goodness filthy rags, as the book of Isaiah says.

So what you're like, what's, what are you trying to make?

What, what point are you trying to make here?

I'm trying to make this point.

The, the recognition of God's holiness should bring us only to one conclusion.

That I am a sinner, that I am broken, that I am in great need of his mercy and grace, and I can only be saved and only have righteousness and only have forgiveness through him and his work.

Now, for the Old Testament, that was looking towards the Messiah.

For us, that's looking back to Jesus Christ and looking up to him.

But on the other side of things, a lot of people's response to God's holiness is when they recognize really, really who God is, it's almost like a disdain for him.

Like, well, why would God judge me?

And actually Paul deals with that in the book of Romans.

Paul's like, there are some people that say, if God is so holy and he made me and then I sin, why does he get mad at me?

And, and so that's a good question.

And he ultimately says, it's not God who makes us sin.

It's our own desires, it's our, it's our own flesh.

And so what we can ultimately see is that God cannot look on our sin as a holy God and leave it unnoticed.

For example, if, if I was, if we were walking out tonight to the car and there was a, a crime happening in the parking lot, maybe, maybe there was a guy and he was attacking somebody on the parking lot, and we all just looked and said, well, not my problem, not my issue.

I think all of us would recognize the wrong in that.

I mean, maybe, maybe I'm not asking all of you to go jump on that criminal, but you would at least, hopefully someone would call 911 and address that and not just let it go.

And, and, and we understand that principle.

So think about God, the creator of the universe, the One who created all things perfectly.

And then we mar it and there's all this evil in the world.

God has every right and is in complete holiness to judge that evil as the righteous judge of this world, as a holy, righteous God.

And we that are saved are only saved through his mercy and his grace.

We don't deserve it.

So, so I say all that to say this.

We.

We need to go back to the word of God.

We need to go back to the truth of his word, to the place of saying, man, God is totally perfect.

He's called me not to do this.

And the list goes on and on.

And guess what?

I do list goes on and on.

So, so why does God still forgive me?

Because he is completely holy.

But also at the same time, he's completely loving, he's merciful, he's gracious, and so the opposite happens here at the end of this chapter.

These men see that they offend the holiness of God.

They do the exact thing that God says not for them to do.

They do it.

God judges them.

And then the rest of them go, well, who could even stand before this righteous God?

You know?

And essentially the idea would be questioning God's holiness.

I mean, if you're questioning why God judges somebody, then you're questioning the holiness of God, the goodness of God, and that's not a place that we want to be.

So the end of this would be the negative conclusion that these people from Beth Shemesh, instead of being revealed to the judgment and holiness of God, instead of turning to him and wanting to be in his presence, they turn away and they try to push it away.

And so the primary idea behind holiness is not just moral purity, but it's being distinct, being separated, and being separated with God.

And so when.

When humans encounter the holiness of God in our flesh, we.

We are repulsed by it.

But hopefully in our spirit, we are drawn to the holiness of God.

And so, you know, I think that if.

If you.

If you see indications in Scripture, like obviously we mentioned Isaiah, we even see in Luke, chapter five, Peter, he.

He recognizes the holiness of God, and he says, depart from me.

I'm.

I'm a sinful man.

And.

And so I think that what we can see in our own lives is that we have to have a proper response to the holiness of God.

And so the men of Beshamesh showed their heart with the question, who.

Who can stand before God?

Their question made God seem too harsh.

The question made God basically, like, like.

Like we know better than God.

Why did God do this?

And that's sometimes questions that people ask.

I. I know.

I know people, and I've even struggled with this question is like, why would God allow this to happen?

Or why would God do this?

Or.

Or why would God not judge this or whatever it is?

I mean, the list goes on and on with the questions that we have for God.

But what we have to go back to is the fact that I believe that God's defining attribute, even though he's loving, even though he's forgiving, even though he's patient, all the things that you can think of with God, I think his defining attribute is his holiness.

His holiness ties all of his other attributes together.

Because I could say to you, I'm loving, but if I'm not holy, my love might not be perfect.

So his love is perfect because he's completely holy in every way.

So the men of Beshemesh are asking a good question, but with the wrong heart.

So I would say to you tonight, who.

Who.

Who could.

Who could stand before God?

Could any of us stand before God?

And the answer is not without a person and work of Jesus Christ, none of us can stand before God.

If we try to meet God and worship him on our terms, we're always going to fail.

If we meet God on his terms through his Son, we ultimately are going to find grace and forgiveness.

And so for the men of Beit Shemesh, the holiness of God was a problem.

And the way that they were going to try to fix that problem was not through asking him for forgiveness, but by disting them, distancing themselves.

And so they said, we're going to give it to the men of Kirjath Jarem.

And we don't know why they picked this village.

Maybe they just knew some people over there.

Maybe they thought that they could take care of the ark.

Well, or maybe.

Maybe the other side of things, maybe they didn't like them.

And they're like, well, maybe they can deal with that.

I don't know why they sent it there, but it's interesting.

It did stay in that town, that city, late, all the way to Second Samuel, chapter six, until David eventually brings the ark to Jerusalem.

And then we know with David, David had the desire to build the temple.

But if you remember, God said, no, David, not you, your son.

But we'll get into that story later on.

So it's interesting to track the Ark of the Covenant.

So basically, in First Samuel, we've seen it in Shiloh, and we've seen it now, very, very short amount of time in Bet Shemesh, and then it goes to Kirjath Jarem.

And then eventually it goes to Jerusalem.

And you might not find that interesting, but I think it is interesting because we see God's hand of protection upon it until it gets to the temple there with King Solomon, which.

That's a whole other story for another day.

And if you stick around, we'll get there.

But in that time, we'll.

We'll be covering a lot of.

A lot of stuff here.

So with that being said, you know, we've got some heavy, heavy stuff.

Anytime you study the.

I've heard people say this, and I understand the sentiment behind it.

Anytime you study the Old Testament, they say, you know, it seems like there's a different God in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and.

And I understand the thinking behind that.

But what we have to understand is that it's not a different God.

Obviously, he's dealing with people in a different covenant, different time frame.

And so there's different dispensations.

The Bible says.

And so we're living in a different time frame.

And God still deals with his same character, but he deals with people various ways.

And what I will say to you is that if you understood, number one, if you understood the evil of the Old Testament pagans and in, in Canaan and other places, you would understand why God sometimes had to judge them in certain ways.

Again, we're not the ones to be the judges today.

The Bible says, vengeance is mine.

I will, I will repay, say the Lord.

So it's our, our.

In our culture today, what do we do?

We turn it over to the Lord.

We, we trust that the Lord's going to make it right.

We're going to trust that God's going to do his work and ultimately that God's going to make it right one day.

And even the psalmist, even David seemed like, lord, seems like you're not dealing with the people the way that you should be dealing with them.

So even David in the Old Testament didn't think God was being harsh enough.

He was like, God, why are you letting these evil people get away with things?

And you seem to be judging your people.

And basically God tells them, be patient, I'm God.

You don't have the right to question me.

And we even see that in the story of you guys.

Remember the story of guy that goes to Nineveh, Jonah, okay, If you remember one.

A lot of people think that Jonah was just so scared, like I always was framed in the question.

Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh because he was scared of all the Ninevite people.

They were really mean.

Actually, Jonah says, why he didn't go to Nineveh.

He didn't like the people in Nineveh.

And he said, God, you're so gracious.

I know you're going to save them.

And I know if I preach this, you're going to save them.

And I don't want that.

He didn't want them to be saved.

He was he.

There was enemies.

And that was tough for him.

God still used Jonah.

Even though he was struggling and was unfaithful, God still forced him basically to go there.

And the word of God was presented.

And so just as much as some might say, well, God isn't a gracious God in the Old Testament, I just gave you a few analogies where people were accusing God of being too gracious in the Old Testament.

And so I think that what we have to do is we have to see it from the bigger perspective, different time, a different dispensation.

But ultimately it's the same God with the same grace and the same mercy.

And God deals people.

God deals with people fairly in every single sense of the word.

And so I would encourage you to think about that and pray through that.

And that's something that you're wrestling with.

You know, study through it.

And I would encourage you to look it up on your own and pray through that.

And I believe God will give you peace and comfort in that.

Well, with that being said, we'll come back next week and we'll see that there.

There's more to the story.

The Philistines are.

They're not going to get rid of the Philistines that easily.

And then you.

God gets them through everything.

And one of the passages of scripture that I struggle with is when Israel then comes back and says, okay, God, you've got us through all this, but now we want a real king.

We want a king that like everyone else has.

And we just see Israel as a picture of those that have been faithful some degree, but ultimately God is completely faithful.

And we're going to talk about that and we're going to see why Saul was selected.

And some of you know the story of Saul and David.

And I know there's a lot of information about, of all the Bible characters, I feel like David probably has some of the most material out there, if you will, about people secondarily making shows and movies and, and, and books and plays and all that.

And I'm not saying that those are bad, but what I am saying is that make sure when you're getting your biblical content of who is what and what they're doing.

Get it from the word.

And obviously people have to take artistic liberties in these plays when we go there.

So like when we went to Sight and Sound and it was David up there, I'm like, I don't know.

That didn't happen in the Bible or something like that.

So again, we have to just be discerning on those things.

I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is that sometimes what we have to be very careful with is people that are well known in scripture.

There's a lot to be said about them.

And not all that stuff that's said about them in popular culture is true.

So we have to just be really aware of that as we're, as we're intaking information.

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

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

If you would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

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Thank you so much.

God Bless.

Have a wonderful day.