What We Worship

Last week we reviewed how the ark of God was captured by the Philistines, and though we could have gotten the impression that this meant the Philistines and their gods were stronger than Israel and her God, the Lord quickly put that view to chase. It turns out He intentionally went behind enemy lines, and right from inside Dagon's temple He knocked over that idol and broke off his head and hands like a casualty of battle. And then He sent a plague on each city of the Philistines that His ark was brought to. Single-handedly, without the help of His people, Yahweh is making war on His enemies.

Until eventually the Philistine leaders decide they need to send the ark back. This trophy of battle is too much for them to handle.

1. "Send it Back!" (6:1-6:18)

a. The Plan (vv. 1-6)

And chapter 6 opens up with a little interjection that tells us just how long this whole thing has been going on: seven months. Seven months is a long time to have God's hand rest heavy on you. Seven is also the number that represents completeness in the Bible. It tells us that the time had reached its fullness.

So remember where we left off—they've decided to send the ark back. But they want to know how best to do that. This is not just any ordinary box. So they call for help. Verse 2—“And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners." The political leaders—having gotten to the end of their political process—call in the religious experts, the priests and the fortune-tellers and the sorcerers of their people.

As if they'll know what to do. They should have called in some priests and Levites from Israel. This was their God, after all. They would know better than anyone. But, nope, they ask their own leaders. Classic man move, right?—refusing to ask for help from the right people, assuming they and their buddies have got it all figured out. "What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place” (1 Samuel 6:2). They've already decided to send it back—now they're asking how. How do we do this?

And the priests tell them, with all of their vast knowledge of Israel's God, "don't send it back by itself. Include a guilt offering to atone for what you've done wrong." So, verse 4, they ask, what do we send it back with? What's the guilt offering supposed to be?

And here's the answer, part-way through verse 4: “They answered, ‘Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for the same plague was on all of you and on your lords’” (1 Samuel 6:4).

This whole thing keeps feeling like a comedy sketch. Five golden tumours? Seriously? Imagine passing that order on to your local goldsmith? “Hey, you know those disgusting tumours that have been killing everybody? Yeah, wanna… make a few… out of gold?" And then give golden mice? Is Disney sponsoring the Oscar Awards?

Let's put a few pieces together. First, this is supposed to be somewhat ridiculous. We're supposed to see the religious elite of the Philistines basically fumbling their way through this, coming up with their best answers which are not very good answers at all. "What are they thinking?" is part of the point.

But second, there is a bit of a point here according to the religious logic of the Philistines. It's called sympathetic magic. You make things or use things that look like other things to make things happen. If Israel's God sent tumours on the Philistines, then giving Him golden images of tumours was a logical way, in their way of thinking, of making the tumours stop.

But then we've got the mice thing. What's up with that? We haven't heard about mice until now, but the Biblical writers have a way of saving details like this until later in the story that sheds new light on the story we've already been hearing. They don't tell us everything up front, and it really keeps things interesting.

Verse 5 explains a bit more: “So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land” (1 Samuel 6:5).

Apparently, they had mice ravaging their land. That can happen. I've seen it before. When I was in grade 4 or 5, the field out behind our school had a mouse infestation, and at recess, we'd run around stomping on mice. That's the kind of good, clean fun we had back in the 90s, kids!

But seriously, from what we can tell, Dagon was a grain god. A plague of field mice that destroyed the fields would be a big blow against Dagon's power, and it mirrors well the locusts and frogs against the Egyptians.

On the other hand, the word "mice" could be more of a generic word for rodents, and could include rats, which are the more common carriers for the bubonic plague, or the black plague, which does a good job of fitting the description of the disease afflicting the Philistines.

And we should remember that God can do what He wants. He could just send a plague on the Philistines that has no cause beyond Himself. Or, as the sovereign Lord of nature, He could orchestrate rats and fleas and cause the black plague to spread from city to city at the exact same time as His ark moved from place to place.

He can do what He wants. And, though the details are unclear, it seems like in some way He was using both tumours and rodents here against the Philistines. They want them both to go away, so they're going to send the ark back with golden tumours and golden mice.

There's one more important thing going on here. Remember what Israel did when they left Egypt? They didn't go out empty-handed. Just by asking, they plundered the Egyptians and went out laden with gold. So here, echoing these themes from Exodus, the ark will come back to Israel with gold.

There are so many echoes of Exodus all over the place here. The word they used in verse 3 for sending back the ark is the same word used of Pharaoh sending out Israel, and then look here at verse 6: “Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away, and they departed?” (1 Samuel 6:6).

This whole situation has been a repeat of Israel in Egypt, and the Philistines themselves seem to get it.

c. The Test (vv. 7-9)

Except maybe not. Because these foolish Philistines go right from saying "don't harden your heart" to showing how hard their hearts still were in these next verses, where they set up a test to see if this really was the Lord after all.

“Now then," they say in verse 7, as if what they're about to say is the most natural and logical thing anybody could say next. "Take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home, away from them” (1 Samuel 6:7).

We live in Saskatchewan. At least a few of us have a pretty good sense of how cows work. Even though we've been using tractors for a hundred years or more, if we had to use cows to pull a cart or a plough, we wouldn't use milk cows. They've never been under a yoke. They haven't been trained to pull together. They won't have any idea what to do except maybe get mad.

And you definitely, definitely don't want to use a cow—milk cow or not—that has a calf at home. Because she's just going to make a beeline back to her calf. There's a really strong bond between a cow and her calf.

So basically, this whole thing is set up for failure. Under any version of normal circumstances, these cows are just going to take off for their calves at home, fighting each other and the cart the whole way. This is like putting a five-year-old behind the wheel of a Brinks truck and saying "well, let's see if it finds its way back to the bank."

But that's kind of the point. Keep reading: “8 And take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put in a box at its side the figures of gold, which you are returning to him as a guilt offering. Then send it off and let it go its way 9 and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by coincidence’” (1 Samuel 6:8–9).

You know what these guys are doing? They are putting the Lord to the test. After everything that's happened, and right after saying "don't harden your hearts!" they're still hedging their bets. They're still saying "well, maybe this just happened by coincidence. Maybe the plague just happened to be where the ark was by coincidence. Who knows."

So they're testing God, setting up a situation that seems destined to fail, and are basically forcing Him to override the course of nature to bring His own ark back to His own land. "If He wants it, He can get it Himself, and then we'll know that it was Him."

But otherwise, coincidence.

Unbelievable.

d. The Return (vv. 10-18)

But, in verse 10, they go for it. They accept this bonkers advice from the Philistine magicians, and do everything they suggested. And what happens? Verse 12:

“And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth-shemesh along one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left" (1 Samuel 6:12).

OK, this is just great. This is one of only a tiny handful of times in the Bible where animal noises are recorded. The Hebrew word here for "lowing" is געה (g'h), which might, like our word "moo," be designed to imitate the sound of a cow making a lot of noise.

And we're being told about these noises on purpose. Cows don't low, or go "געה," when they're happy and content. This is exactly the noises they would make if they were calling for their calves. This is a separation noise.

The picture is that they don't want to do this. They want to go back to their calves.

But something—or someone—is driving them on. They go straight in the direction of this nearby Israelite village, straight as an arrow, without turning to the left or the right. And verse 12 says that the Philistine leaders follow the cart right up to the border of Israel's territory.

Verse 13 tells us the scene from the Israelite perspective: they're just out harvesting, when they lift up their eyes and see the ark. Can you imagine? They probably heard it before they saw it. "What's all that mooing?" And there, after seven months, is their national treasure: the ark of God, coming straight their way behind two sad cows, right next to a box of golden horrors.

And right where the cart stops, the people respond to God with worship. The cart becomes wood, and the cows—whose day goes from bad to worse—become the burnt offering, and the people honour the Lord whose ark has come back to them.

And the Philistine leaders, in awe of all that they saw that day and over the previous seven months, fell on their faces, saying, "Yahweh, He is the Lord!" And in fear and trembling they approach the Levites and say, "Please, teach us the ways of your God, who is great above all gods."

Nope. They just go home. Back to their people and back to their puny gods.

This part of the passage wraps up by detailing the golden offerings that came in the box, and telling the readers that the great stone beside which they set the ark was a witness up until the time that 1 Samuel had been written.

2. "Take It Away!" (vv. 19-7:2)

Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story. There's one more scene in this episode before the credits roll. And sadly, it's pretty tough. This isn't a Hallmark movie ending. Verse 19 tells us, “And he struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck seventy men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow” (1 Samuel 6:19).

This verse raises lots of questions. We might wonder, why were those men killed just for looking at the ark? Didn't everybody there look at the ark when it showed up?

Well, yes, which is interesting. Because people weren't supposed to. Numbers 4 (vv. 5, 20) says that the ark was supposed to be covered before it was transported, and that even if the common Levites went into the tabernacle to look at the holy things as they were being packed up for transport, they would die.

OK, but we might ask—how could these people avoid looking at the ark when it just rode up on the back of a cart? And I think we can recognize the difference between looking and looking. There's a difference between seeing something you don't normally see with respect, and staring at something with disrespect.

You've maybe had that situation where you've bumped into someone you know at the pool. Maybe it's a business professional who always wears a suit and a tie, and there he is with no shirt on. You can't help but see him. But you can decide whether you'll hold eye contact and treat him with respect, or whether you'll gawk and snicker.

When the ark showed up without its cover on, the people couldn't help but see it—but the sense is that this group of men stared at the ark with casual carnal curiosity instead of careful reverence.

And they received the punishment that God promised they would. God judges them for their sins against His ark just like He did with the Philistines.

And that's a big part of the message of this last section. The message is that, just because the ark is back, that doesn't mean Israel and God are all okay all of a sudden. God's ark has returned to Israel, but Israel still needs to return to its God. And until they do, His ark is as dangerous to them as it was to the Philistines.

And sadly, the people respond to this just like the Philistines did. Instead of repenting, they say in v. 20, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up away from us?” (1 Samuel 6:20). And they send messengers to the people in the next town to take the ark instead of them. "Take it away!" Just like the Philistines.

As chapter 7 opens up, they find a man willing to take it into his house, with his son "having charge" of the ark, words that speak about guarding it or keeping watch over it. They're not going to let anybody else come and be killed by this ark.

And for 20 years, the ark stays there in Abinadab's house, out of the public eye, having "departed from the national scene" as one author put it ( Antony F. Campbell, 1 Samuel, vol. 7, The Forms of the Old Testament Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 84.).

The ark has returned, but Israel's exile from their God doesn't really seem to have ended at all. And for those 20 years, all Israel lamented after the Lord, waiting for what was going to happen next.

We Become What We Worship

And we'll have to wait for next Sunday to find out what happened next. Big stuff is coming.

But as we look back at this chapter, we want to ask, what have we seen here? A big focus of this chapter, even going back to chapter 5 last week, has been the Philistines (and some of the Israelites) acting like, well, Philistines. Which is to say, acting like complete fools when it comes to Israel's God.

How much more clear could God have made it that He was more powerful and more great than their wannabe gods? How much more clear could He have made it that He, not Dagon, deserved their worship?

But they don't get it, do they? Even up to the very end, even after seeing the Lord do the miracle with the cows, the Philistine leaders just go home. And you know what we're going to find them doing in chapter 7? Going to war with Israel like none of this ever happened.

We can pull our hair out at stories like this and say "How can they be so dumb?" But that's actually a really big point of this story. The Philistine's foolishness is the point.

And it connects up to a much bigger theme in the Bible, which is this: people who worship idols become like those idols. Psalm 115 makes this point very explicitly:

“1 Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! 2 Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?” 3 Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. 4 Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. 5 They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. 6 They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. 7 They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. 8 Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them’” (Psalm 115:1–8).

And this is only one clear example of a theme that shows up all over the place. Idol-worshippers become blind and deaf, just like their idols. They can't see or hear what is real, just like their idols.

G. K. Beale wrote a really helpful study on idolatry called We Become What We Worship, and he argues this is what's going on in Isaiah chapter 6. Why did Israel hear, but not understand, or see, but not perceive? Why was their heart dull and their ears heavy, and their eyes blind (Isa 6:9-10)? Because they worshipped idols instead of the living God, and they became like them.

As Beale sums it up, "we resemble what we revere, either for ruin or restoration" [Beale, G K. We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (p. 49).]

We become what we worship.

So that's what's going on with the Philistines. By rejecting the one true God, and serving idols that their hands had made instead, these people couldn't see clearly even when God was at work right in front of them. They couldn't hear clearly even when God was almost shouting in their ears. Like the dwarves in the Last Battle, they were fools to the end.

And this isn't just for the Philistines. This isn't just for Israel. This is for all people of all times—including people today. Romans 1:21-22 describes the plight of all humanity when it says that “21 …although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21–22).

Sin, and God's judgement on that sin, affects our very thinking. It affects our very hearts. When we foolishly worship foolish things instead of God, we become fools.

This is why really intelligent people in our world today have convinced themselves that some really silly things are true.
Think about how for the past 60 years feminists have argued that a woman can be whatever she wants to be. Nobody can tell a woman what she's supposed to look like, act like, or sound like. But when a man today decides that he's actually a woman, which we're allowed to do now, suddenly he needs to spend tens of thousands of dollars looking and sounding a very specific way to fit a very specific image of womanhood. And the government, filled with good feminists, will help pay for it.

Or think about how we spend millions of dollars each year to scan the skies with giant radio telescopes for the tiniest pattern that would suggest an intelligent source, but then we point microscopes at the mind-blowing complexities of life on Earth and say "this all happened by accident."

And biologists will study DNA and point out all of the supposed evidence for evolution we see in DNA, ignoring the fact that the odds of random mutations producing enough DNA to code one simple protein are so unfathomably large that the thought that any of this—let alone all of this—happened by random mutations will go down in history as one of the silliest ideas anybody has ever believed.

And we could point to example after example after example of this kind of thing, and we can pull our hair and say "How can people be so dumb?" And maybe we think that they just need it explained to them. If only we could get the right information out there, things would make sense and people wouldn't be so silly.

And we so easily forget that the problem with the world doesn't start in our heads. It's not an information problem. And so it can't be fixed with better arguments, better education, better laws. The problem with the world is in our hearts. We don't want to worship the one true God. We'll worship literally anything besides Him.

We'll worship science or sports or sex or shopping or any other stupid substitute for our creator. And we become what we worship.

And the most dangerous thing about all of this is that people don't know that they're fools. All these very silly ideas make sense to people—as much sense as the golden tumours and mice made to the Philistines. Because they're blind.

The blindness isn't complete, though. Romans 1:20 says that God's “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

Deep down, people know there is a God who made all of this, worthy of our worship. Just like the Philistines knew that Yahweh was greater than Dagon. People know it. But they suppress that truth in unrighteousness. They stuff it down and find something else to worship instead.

And brothers and sisters, that means that what our world needs is not our arguments. Not our anger. Not our anxiety about all of the bad things going on.

What our world needs is the gospel. Our world needs to know that, despite their best efforts, the crucified Jesus is alive and reigning at His Father's right hand as king over the universe, and there's been a day fixed on which He's going to judge the world in righteousness, and if they repent of their idolatry—anything that they have honoured above or instead of their Creator—and trust in the gift of salvation, they can be adopted by God instead of judged by God.

It's the best news in the world, and it's that news that God uses to change people's hearts and wake them up from blindness and deafness and give them sight.

Maybe this is not news for you to share this morning—maybe it's for you. Maybe you're furiously trying to keep a lid on the truth. Maybe you're believing lies and foolishness. Maybe you've become the things that you've worshipped. Today could be the day that you just let go of the lid, and you let the truth come out in all of its glory—the truth that you already know, deep down inside—the truth that every sunset and breath of air and drop of rain has been a gift from a good Creator, and you belong to Him, and all your attempts to find joy everywhere else have led you nowhere. And you can come to this Creator with a humble heart, seeking His forgiveness, which was bought and paid for on the cross.

But it doesn't stop there. Because as many of us know this morning, the decision to turn from idols to the living God is not a decision we make once and leave it there. Idols are always yipping at our heels. How did the Apostle John finish his first letter?“Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

This week I freshly re-evaluated: are there things in my life that I am treasuring, not because they've come from God and I enjoy them as gifts from God, but instead I've begun to enjoy them in competition with God, or as substitutes for God? In other words, idols?

Good things can become idols when we forget God from whom all blessings flow. Your health can be an idol. Your marriage can be an idol. Food can be an idol. Our friends can be idols. Kids, your toys can be idols if you forget the God who gave them to you. Being different from other people can become an idol. Being the same as other people can become an idol.

And as we prepare for next week, where Samuel will lead the people to put aside their idols for the living God, that would be a really valuable exercise for us this week. Asking the Lord to show us any idols in our life.

We become what we worship. The good news is that as we worship the Lord, we become like Him. We are transformed into His glory from one degree to another. That's why what we do here every week is so important. Listening to His Word together so that it can shape our hearts and our minds. Singing with joy to shape our affections. Eating and drinking to remember the sacrifice of Jesus—is so important. Because as we worship Jesus through all these ways, He's actually at work to make us more like Himself.

A process that one day will be completed when the earth is filled with the knowledge of His glory like the waters cover the sea.

How stunning is that?