Good weekend to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
Have you ever been traveling and suddenly you realized you were going in the wrong direction? How long did it take for you to actually turn around and begin going the RIGHT direction? Maybe this has not been restricted to traveling in your life, maybe you’ve had that same experience in a relationship which was going in the wrong direction, or perhaps an employment situation or maybe a business deal or maybe even a health care situation which required a significant change in treatment. While all those are important, I wonder if you have experienced a change in your direction spiritually? Were you at one time far from God and then you turned toward God and specifically to Jesus and your life has changed?
Let’s return to Israel, about 3000 years ago and we’ll watch a major change of direction which impacted a lot of people! Yesterday we watched as the Philistine town of Ekron was shaken and frightened as the Ark of the Covenant of the God of Israel was brought to Ekron from Gath. The Ark had been captured by the Philistines when they invaded into Israelite territory. The Israelite leaders had made a terrible miscalculation by taking the Ark out of its sacred place in the Tabernacle and bringing it to the battlefield!
In a ferocious fight, Israel lost 30,000 soldiers, the priests Hophni and Phinehas were killed, and their father the High Priest Eli died when he heard the news. Worst of all, the precious Ark of the Covenant was captured and taken first to the Philistine city of Ashdod, then on to Gath, and now to Ekron! In all three cities the record of 1 Samuel 5 reports that God’s hand was heavy on the Philistines and many people became sick and died of what appear to be cancerous tumors, as rats also infested the towns.
The residents of these three cities demanded that their Philistine leaders assume responsibility. The Ark had been captured for 7 months and nothing, but pain and death had followed it wherever it had been in Philistine territory. The record tells us that finally a Philistine senior leadership meeting was held, and a plan was made to reverse course and send the captured Israeli Ark away. The big question these senior leaders had was WHY?
Why had the statue of their god Dagon been toppled on its face, with hands and head broken off the torso? Did the Ark really have such power? And why had people suddenly been getting sick in the towns where the Ark was taken, and why did rats start showing up all over these same towns, but only after the Ark was brought into town? The Philistine leaders sought counsel from the Dagon priests and sourcers, and their answer formed a plan for reversing course with the Ark! The details are in 1 Samuel 6, and I urge you to listen to the audio Bible rendition, the link is at the bottom of this page…
In short, the plan had Four parts:
First, build a new cart on which nothing had ever been carried.
Second, make gold offerings to put inside a specially made chest as peace offerings to the God of Israel.
What offerings? 5 gold tumors and 5 gold rats, representing the 5 Philistine cities which had been struck by cancer tumors and rat infestations! Put the chest with the golden offerings and the Ark of the Covenant on the new cart.
Then third, hitch two cows to the cart, but not just any cows. Cows which were still nursing their calves. Separate the calves from the cows, yoke the cows together and hitch the cows to the cart.
And then the fourth important action: let the cart and cows go without any driver and watch what happens.
“If it goes up to Israel, toward Beth Shemesh, then the LORD the God of Israel has brought this great disaster upon us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not God’s hand that struck us, it happened to us by chance.” (1 Samuel 6:9) So let’s just stand and watch all this for a moment. Look at them wrestling with those cows, while others put the Ark and little chest up on the cart. And look over there, those guys trying to hold the calves back from their mothers. Now they are all hitched up and what do you think will happen?
The record says: “The cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed the cart as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were harvesting their wheat in the valley, and when they looked up and saw the Ark they rejoiced at the sight. The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and there it stopped beside a large rock. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the LORD God of Israel. The Levites took down the Ark of the LORD, together with the chest containing the gold objects, and placed them on the rock, before the LORD. The five rulers of the Philistines saw all this and returned that same day to Ekron.” (1 Samuel 6:13-16)
Now what do you think my friends? What have we just witnessed? Why did the cows not turn around and go to their calves? Why did choose the road to Beth Shemesh? Can you see those working in their fields and someone pointing to a cart way over there on the road, with something on the cart that is reflecting the sunlight? And when the cart got close enough for the people to see there was no human being driving the cows, and the sunlight reflecting cargo was their precious Ark of the LORD’s Covenant, can you see the people all running to the cart and walking along beside it until it came to rest at the large rock? And why did the cows stop at this large rock? The field all around them was full of harvesting wheat, why did the cows not walk into the field and start grazing? Do you see the hand of God at work here my friends?
And as the Philistine rulers watched all this, what conclusions do you think they drew? And as the Israelites placed the Ark & chest on the large rock, and chopped up the ark, and sacrificed the cows and celebrated with worship before the LORD God of Israel, what do you suppose those Philistine rulers were talking about? They were seeing the very same sight as took place when the ancestors of these Israelites worshipped on the shoreline of the Red Sea, after they had all passed through the water tunnel God had made, and God then closed the water tunnel over Pharaoh’s pursuing army! Worship which celebrates the miraculous work of Almighty, Holy God is great worship, and that was happening at Beth Shemesh that day!
We have no record of what those 5 Philistine rulers said to the people of their 5 fortified cities upon their return to Ekron, Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Gaza city. But we can be sure their reports of this event assured the people of those cities that it was certainly the right thing for them to reverse course and send the Ark of the Covenant of the God of Israel away from the Philistines and back to the Israelites. Oh, they had paid a very heavy price for their slaughter of Israelites and their capture of the Ark of God.
As we close today, watch two groups of people celebrating… wheat harvesting Israelites celebrating the return of their precious Ark of the Covenant of the LORD; and five Philistine rulers celebrating that the traumatizing Ark, whatever it is, was gone from Philistine territory! One week from this weekend will be Christmas!
Is there any course correction God is leading you to make in these days as we prepare for Christmas? I’ve chosen a special worship song today that is sung in Hebrew with English subtitles. It should not be difficult for us to imagine Jewish worship of Almighty God, perhaps as they did that day in Beth Shemesh.
Today’s Scripture is 1 Samuel 6:1-18.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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