We come now to 1 Samuel chapter
6. This is the third of four chapters
we've been looking at where the Lord teaches the Church of God
who our help is. The stone of our help is the
Lord Jesus Christ, and he's referred to here in this stretch of chapters
as our Ebenezer, the stone of help. Now in these chapters,
we see how the Lord has done good for his people. He's stripped
her of her vain confidences. He's shown her that she cannot
relieve herself of her oppressors. She can't, through religion,
get rid of her oppression and her sin. She needs the grace
of God. And the Lord settles her. in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we've seen how the Lord
confronts our idolatry with the gospel to destroy those vain
imaginations of man, which exalt themselves against the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ and our salvation by him. Now, the
Israel of God has been wounded dearly here, as far as she's
concerned, as far as she understands, because the mercy seat, in the
Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat has been taken from her. And Eli's daughter-in-law, she's
not named, but she's the wife of Phineas, she goes into labor,
bears a child, and she dies, but not before she cries out
Ichabod. She names the child Ichabod,
meaning the glory is departed from Israel, for the ark of the
Lord is taken. The Philistines, the enemies
of the people, had taken that ark. And so they're distraught,
they're worried, they're terrified as to what this means, but we
find that the Ark of the Lord does rather well on its own. The Lord is out on his own campaign
destroying the enemies of God, making them to know their wickedness,
making them to know what evil thing they had done. And what
we see in this is that our God, unlike the idol gods of man,
our God is able to do whatsoever He pleases. He's not a God who
has no hands but your hands. He has hands. He has a mouth.
He can speak, and He can see, and He can move, and He can do
whatever He wants to do because He's not limited by us and our
weakness. And so we see in this the sovereignty
of our God who conquers his enemies and puts them to flight. He delivers
his people. Now in this chapter, 1 Samuel
6, the Philistines have decided they've had enough. They've had
enough. And they want to know how they
can make things right, because the hand of the Lord is heavy
upon them. and heavy upon their gods, and
they're getting beat up by the Lord. He's taking care of them. And so they begin to inquire,
how might we deliver ourselves from the heavy hand of the Lord,
which is showing us our weakness, is showing us our lack of strength,
is showing us our inability to save ourselves. And this is what
the Lord teaches us through the Gospel, through His Word, by
His Spirit. He makes us to know our infirmity. He makes us to know our sin,
that we are undone before the true and living God. All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. Well, it's the
Lord who teaches us that. who makes us to know I'm the
sinner, and I've offended holy God. Lord, save me. How can I be delivered from what
I've done in offending you? And so if you, like the Philistines
here, are sinners, and you've offended holy God, and your hands
are covered with blood, and your heart is full of sin, and your
thoughts and mind are full of sin, and you would know how can
I, a sinner, be reconciled to holy God? Well, listen up, because
our Lord gives us a picture of the salvation of His people here
in this chapter. How then can a man be justified
with God, or how can he be clean that is born of a woman. How
can I, a sinner who has offended God and transgressed His holy
law, how can I be reconciled to the Lord? How can I be made
clean of sin? So if that is the burden of your
heart, give your ear to this passage here, because the Lord
gives us the answer. He gives us a picture, a type
here, with a cart pulled by two milchkind, two milking cows,
and it's a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and how that He
saves His people from their sins. So first we begin in 1 Samuel
6 verse 1, 1 Samuel 6 verse 1, and the ark
of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. Seven months. Now, this is a
time frame. And we know the number seven
means perfection. It means completion. And what
the Lord is telling us there is that he has done a complete
and thorough work in the midst of these Philistines so that
they know they have transgressed the holy law of God. They have
sinned against the true and living God. He's made them to know in
that time to know their sin, their shame, their iniquity. We're told back in 1 Samuel 5,
verse 6, that the Lord smote them with emeralds. And today,
we understand that to mean hemorrhoids. These people were smitten with
hemorrhoids. And by those who have had hemorrhoids,
the way they describe them is they're painful. They burn. They itch. They're deep within.
It makes them to know to feel shame and humiliated and humbled. And they feel that in themselves. This was done in their secret
parts, it says. This is a case of hemorrhoids. And they feel very uncomfortable
with it. And they feel their humiliation. And they feel ashamed for this
disease that's afflicted them. And what does this sound like? What does this describe to us?
This is a picture of our sin. It describes the shame, the pain,
the sorrow, and the suffering of our sin. It's a good description
of what we are by nature before the true and living God, who
makes us to know that we've offended God. how that we've broken his
law, how that we don't honor the Lord, we don't obey his voice,
we don't do what we ought to do, we don't do what is right,
we rebel against that which is right, and we turn from the true
and living God. And so our sin is likened to
these hemorrhoids, which is a painful and shameful disease in those
that have them. The scriptures describe us in
our sin as being covered with wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores. Our sin stinks. Our sin is shameful. I know more and more in our society
that people flaunt their sin and flaunt their wickedness,
which people were once ashamed of and kept hidden, but the Lord
will make them to know. They keep flaunting it and they
keep doing what they're doing and the Lord will bring them
to account, and they shall be ashamed." They shall be ashamed. And so the Lord is making this
people to know that they have sinned against the true and living
God, and their disease is a type, it's a picture of our disease
by nature. that we are sinners. We're sinners
in Adam. We're sinners by our actions.
We're sinners in thought, word, and deed. We have offended holy
God and we shall stand before the true and living God in the
day that he brings us to stand before him and brings us to account. Now Jeremiah, the prophet, asked
these questions saying, can the Ethiopian change his skin? Can the leopard change his spot? If that can be done, that a man
can change the color of his skin or an animal can remove the spots
from off them, then so can you that are accustomed to doing
evil do good. Then you can change. And the
fact is, we can't change. We can't, we try to change ourselves
by religion, we try to change ourselves by ceremony, we try
to change ourselves by saying we'll never do that again and
that's it, I'm done with that, you'll never see me do that again.
Lies, the Lord shows us that we're liars, we can't, we cannot
change ourselves, we can't stop from doing those wicked things
because it's our very nature. That's who we are at our core.
We need the grace of God. And so these Philistines have
been troubled, and now they want to know how can they be cured
of this disease. Well, look at verses 2 and 3,
1 Samuel 6, 2 and 3. And the Philistines called for
the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do to the
ark of the Lord? Tell us wherewith we shall send
it to his place. And they said, if ye send away
the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty. But in any
wise, return him a trespass offering, that ye shall be healed. Then
ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand
is not removed from you. And so the thing for a sinner
is, what can we give to the Lord? What can we do if it stands to
reason that if my hands are full of sin and stench and full of
corruption, what am I going to do? What can I touch and hand
to the Lord and expect it not to be full of sin and corruption
and stench? When your hands are full of grease,
how can you touch something and not get it greasy? How can I
give something to the Lord and the Lord accept it? If all my
works are sin, how can I give anything to the Lord that's not
polluted with sin? And what the Lord makes us to
know is we are all sinners. We've got a problem. We cannot
cleanse our filthy hands. We can't cleanse our filthy heart.
We can't cleanse our filthy mouth or our filthy mind. We can't
deliver ourselves from sin. The scriptures say, as it is
written, there's none righteous. No, not one. There's none that
understandeth. There's none that seeketh after
God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become
unprofitable. There is none that doeth good.
No, not one. And that's where we're being
brought to by the Lord. If we've offended holy God, what
can we do to make ourselves acceptable to the true and living God? How
can we fix this? That's what they want to know.
How can we make this right? Look at 1 Samuel chapter 6, 1
Samuel 6 verses 4 and 5. Then said they, what shall be
the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered,
five golden emeralds and five golden mice, according to the
number of the lords of the Philistines, for one plague was on you all
and on your lords." What it's referencing there is that we
all, born of Adam's seed, have one plague, one plague that we
all have. We're all sinners before the
true and living God. None of us can boast and say,
you're sinful and I'm righteous. You've done wrong and I've done
no wrong. No, we're all sinners. We've all transgressed and offended
the true and living God. We've all fallen in sin and we
cannot save ourselves. Wherefore, they said, ye shall
make images of your emirates and images of your mice that
mar the land, and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel.
Peradventure, he will lighten his hand from off you and from
off your gods and from off your land. And so what are they describing
here? It's the very thing that the
Lord has used to afflict them and to show them their shame
and their humiliation. The hemorrhoids, or the hemorrhoids,
a figure of them, and the mice. The hemorrhoids were made known
to them the depths of their sin, their ruin, their pain, their
suffering, their sorrow. And the mice devour their sustenance
and spread disease among the people. and destroyed them. And so these were the things
that the Lord used to make them know how that they transgressed
against the Lord, how they sinned against the Lord. That's what
these things are picturing, their sin, their wickedness. And so
they're acknowledging, Lord, this is our sin. This is our
shame. This is what we've done, and
you've made us to know our transgression against you. Verse 6 Wherefore
then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh
hardened their hearts, when he had wrought wonderfully among
them? Did they not let the people go, and they departed? They are
addressing that which rises up in us naturally, in our flesh. Why do I have to do that? Why
do I have to acknowledge my sin to the Lord? Why do I got to
go through these things? How is this going to help? And
they said, why don't you just be silent and listen to what
the Lord is saying? You've offended the holy God.
You've offended the Lord. You've transgressed against him.
And this is a confession of your sin. Confess your sin with the
emeralds and the mice. Why? Because the Lord's going
to conquer your heart anyway. You're going to bow before him.
All men are going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. All
men are going to bow before him and confess that he and he alone
is righteous and we ourselves are sinners, worthy of our destruction,
worthy of our damnation and condemnation. And so they're hardening their
hearts and they're addressing that. And this is a picture of
what the Lord did when he delivered his people from Egyptian bondage. And we see the nature of man
in the Egyptians. We see the nature of man in Pharaoh,
who hardened his heart against the Lord and would not listen. And so the Lord broke him. And
the Lord destroyed him and brought that man to ruin. And so the
Lord is going to have his way to deliver his people. He's going
to bring his people out of their bondage. He's going to bring
his people out of death and ruin and save them. He's going to
do that, and he's going to do it by overthrowing our taskmasters
and our oppressors, just like we see with Christ. We can't
deliver ourselves from the strong man, but Christ came, and he
entered into the house of the strong man, and he bound the
strong man and took out those precious things. those which
were given to him by the Lord. And he delivered his people out
from the house of oppression and gave them liberty and life
and light in himself. And that's what the Lord is working
here. The scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose
have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that
my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath
he mercy, on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth. He hardeneth. And so what we
see here is that when the Lord purposes to be gracious, when
the Lord purposes to be gracious to a people, he makes them to
know their sin. He makes us to know our enemies. He makes us to know our enmity
against the true and living God. He makes us to feel our oppression
under sin, our ruin under sin, how that we've offended God and
how that we cannot save ourselves or deliver ourselves. And if
the Lord be gracious to you, you will not harden your heart
to him, but your heart will be given faith and the Lord will
lay you bare before him. to show you your weakness, to
show you your shame, to show you your suffering and your need
of him. And he works that in his people
by his grace, by his power, making it effectual in our hearts because
the natural man resists the Lord. The natural man hardens himself
against the truth of God and will not hear or obey the Lord. And so by grace, if the Lord
be gracious to us, He makes us to hear, I'm the sinner and I
need salvation. I need deliverance. I need this
Lord. Save me, otherwise I cannot be
saved because I'm polluted. My heart's filthy. My thoughts
are filthy. I thought by my works I could
save myself. I thought by my doing I could
deliver myself, but you've shown me my shame and humiliation. You've shown me my sin and you've
shown me that I'm broken and undone and diseased and wretched
before you. Now here's a description in verse
7 of our Savior, of our salvation. This is a type, what we're about
to hear now in 1 Samuel 6 verse 7, and the verses following,
is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the salvation
that the Father has sent to save his people from their sins, because
we cannot save ourselves. Verse 7. Now therefore make a
new cart, and take two milch kind, on which there hath come
no yoke, and tie the kind to the cart, and bring their calves
home from them. So here is a new cart with two
milch kind hitched up to it, two milk cows. And this is a
description of the Lord Jesus Christ who was sent to the Father
to save his people from their sins. He is the new cart. He's born of a woman. You and
I all are born of the seed of Adam. We're born of the seed
of man. And Adam sinned against God. He didn't establish the
covenant for us. He sinned against the true and
living God. And so when he sinned against
God, he died. spiritually, meaning that fellowship
was broken. And he has no knowledge or understanding
of the true and living God. And that seed is what you and
I are born of, that corrupt, ruined, sinful, defiled seed. And so when we come forth from
our mother's womb, we come forth sinners and liars. We come forth
corrupt. We come forth in darkness. We
come forth with no understanding of the true and living God. We're
broken, we're diseased, we're polluted. We're already born
in sin when we come forth. We're already dead in trespasses
and sins. But Christ isn't born of Adam's
corrupt seed. He's born of the seed of woman
by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost who came upon Mary so that
the Son of God was made like unto us in flesh. be a fit Savior. And that we see in the two Milchkind,
the two natures of our Lord. One, He's born of the seed of
Mary, of the seed of woman, by the Holy Ghost, so that He comes
forth like us in the flesh. But he's also the son of God,
fully God and fully man, that his sacrifice would be eternal
and perfect and accomplish that which the Father sent him to
do. And so he's this new cart. He's
the two-milch kind. It is a picture of our Savior. And this yoke, there's no yoke
of man on him. He's never had the yoke of man.
Man didn't instruct the Lord. The father spoke to the son.
The father told him all things, and he spoke according to his
father. What the father sent him to do,
that's what he told us, and revealed to us the true and living God,
makes known to us our salvation. And the calves, we see the whole
hand of God in it, because when they took those calves away,
those two mother cows would have wanted to be with their calves.
and they would have been swollen with milk. They were feeding
those cows at that time. The whole thing shows that this
is of the Lord. And they were sanctified to this
work, just like our Savior was sanctified of the Father to this
work. That's why when he came, he set
his face like a flint, and he went to Jerusalem to lay down
his life for his people on the cross, to give us life and salvation. Now, 1 Samuel 6, 8, they said,
and take the ark of the Lord, and lay it upon the cart, and
put the jewels of gold which he returned him for a trespass
offering in a coffer by the side thereof, and send it away that
it may go. And so here we see a picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ sent to the Father into the world,
spared not, but delivered him up for all his people. And he
came, born of a woman, under the law, and fulfilled that law
of God perfectly, which you and I cannot fulfill. Every jot,
every tittle, was fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ. And he
obeyed the Father in all things, because he is the Lamb of God,
sent to take away the sins of his people, scattered throughout
the world. to deliver them, to give them
life and salvation. And then those jewels of gold,
picturing the emeralds and the mice, which is a picture of our
sin and our corruption and our trespasses and transgressions,
they were laid on him, laid on him. And that figure there was
laid on the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore the sin and the iniquity
of his people before the Father as our sacrifice. to put away
our sin. The prophet Isaiah in Isaiah
53 6 tells us the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all. And again he shall bear their
iniquities. And so this is a picture of what
Christ did. who came, the new cart, the two-milch
kind, bearing the sins of his people, bearing the law of God
perfectly, and sacrificing himself unto the Father to atone for
the sins of his people. and to make reconciliation between
us and the Father, not by any works that we have done, not
because we have changed ourselves or put away our sin, but Christ
has delivered us, Christ has paid the price, and by His life,
and by His Spirit, He gives life, and cleanses us from all sin,
and makes and reconciles us to the Father. Verse 9, And see,
if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to Beth Shemesh,
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. And so when Christ came, he walked
perfectly that way which the Father gave him. He did exactly
what he needed to do to save his people from their sins. And we see him willingly going
to the cross for his people. As our high priest and as our
sacrifice, as everything that we needed, Christ provided it
all and delivered himself up to the Father as an offering
to atone for our sins and to make reconciliation by himself
for the sins of the people and to give us life and light and
salvation in himself. And what did the Father do? He
raised him from the dead. to declare all who trust Christ
are justified from their sins. The work's done. The works are
finished. He's done it all for his people.
Now look at verses 10 through 12 And the men did so, and took
two milch kine, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their
calves at home. And they laid the ark of the
Lord upon the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold, and the
images of their emeralds. And the kine took the straight
way to the way of Beth Shemesh, and went along the highway, lowing
as they went, 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. Those cows were
never broken. They never had a yoke on them.
And they should have fought one another. They should have. One
wanted to go this way and get some food. One wanted to go that
way. They would have wanted to go back to their calves, but
they didn't fight. They didn't resist it. They went
willingly along the straight way, just like our Savior, who
did exactly what the Father sent Him to do, to work salvation,
to accomplish our redemption for the people of God, given
to Him. And we see that in there. So God was in this work, and
it's given to picture Christ, the Savior of sinners. If you
would be just with God, look to the Lord Jesus Christ, believe
on Him. You shall never be ashamed to
stand before God in the blood of Christ, hoping in Christ and
Christ alone. If you will come to God in your
works, in what you've done, in your own righteousness, you shall
be ashamed. You shall die in your sins and
be cast out from his presence forever. Look to the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's accomplished this work perfectly. Now, just in closing, look at
verses 13 through 15. 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. And the cart
came into the field of Joshua, which we know is the very name
of Christ our Savior, Yeshua. And he's a Beth Shemite, and
it stood there. It stood there where there was
a great stone. And they claimed the wood of
the cart and offered the kind, a burnt offering unto the Lord.
And the Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the coffer
that was with it, wherein the jewels of gold were, and they
put them on the great stone. And the men of Beth Shemesh offered
burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto
the Lord. That name Joshua means Jehovah
is salvation. And that's where this cart came
to rest. In the field of Joshua. That
Jehovah is salvation. And that's what our Lord has
done. He's brought his people to rest in the salvation of the
Lord. We can't cleanse ourselves. We
can't make an atonement for our sins. Christ, our mediator, our
high priest, our lamb, our sacrifice, our all has obtained eternal
redemption for his people and in him We rest from all our labors. In Him, we have peace with God,
and salvation, and forgiveness of sins. He is the great stone
of our help. We stand upon Him, upon that
unshakable ground, before the true and living God, and have
no fear, no worries, because Christ has done it all. Everything
necessary, our Lord did it all. And we see the satisfaction even
with these Philistines. In verse 16, when they saw what
had been done, they returned to Ekron that same day. They were satisfied with what
the Lord had done. And the Lord makes all His people
satisfied in Christ, even as the Father is satisfied in the
Son. You that believe in Him, you
shall never be ashamed. Thank the Lord, you that believe
in Him and trust Him, thank your God because God has given that
to you. He's done that work of grace
in your heart. That's not of the flesh, that's of the Spirit
of God who gives salvation to His people. I pray the Lord bless
that word to your hearts. Amen.