4:3 - The Israelites, much like in the book of Judges, still have a very primitive/pagan view of God. They believe that they can bring the ark into battle with them and it will give them the power to defeat their enemies. They act like God is in the ark, or God is the ark and they treat it like a lucky charm. After all these years and all these miracles, they do not understand the magnitude of God...they do not understand that God cannot be put in a box! They lost the battle because of their sin and the sin of Phineas and Hophni...not because they didn't bring the ark. Do you see any modern day application there?
4:10 - Unfortunately, because of the Israelites unfaithfulness, it is God's name that is run into the ground (That sounds really familiar for some reason). The Philistines believe that they have defeated God because they defeated the men of Israel while they had the ark, but they were really being used by God as a tool of judgement to destroy a corrupt priesthood like Samuel prophesied.
5:3,4,6 - Now we see that God can stand up for himself. He humiliates the god Dagon and forces the statue to bow to the ark. He plagues the people of Philistia with tumors and mice wherever they move the ark - God defends His own name, because His people refuse to do so.
6:4 - The Philistines realize that they have desecrated the ark of God, and they are willing to pay a guilt offering in gold and send the ark back to the Israelites. The funny thing is that the Philistines are quicker to see their own sinfulness with regards to God, than the Israelites are. Sometimes religious people can get so caught up in their "superiority" that they fail to see the corruption in their lives that is running the name of God into the ground.
6:12 - The cows don't even falter...they head straight back to Israel. God wants to make it clear to the Philistines that He has been in control the whole time - this is no freak accident.
6:19 - This is kinda shocking - why do the Israelites get killed for looking at the ark? They seem like they were really happy to have it back, so what's the problem? The problem comes from how they looked at the ark. With God, motivation and heart are always key. The Hebrew word for "looked upon" used int his passage actually implies that they stared and gloated over the ark with irreverence. They were not killed for looking at the ark...they were killed for for their disrespect of God and the ark. It would be good fro contemporary Christian to remember how important it is to treat God and His name with great respect.
No comments:
Post a Comment