Alright, last week we began looking
at a stretch of four chapters in 1st Samuel. And it began with
chapter 4. And it was teaching the church
of God about her true help. That is the stone of her help. The stone of our help is the
Lord Jesus Christ. He is the help of the believer. He is the help of the sinner. He's the help of those who have
no righteousness of their own. And he's referred to here in
scripture as Ebenezer, our Ebenezer. And so when we were looking last
Sunday at the fourth chapter, it concluded with something that
seemed like quite a terrible disaster. And it was. It was
a disaster. what happened to Israel because
they lost a great many souls. The sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas
were slain with the sword in battle. Eli died. Phinehas' wife died. And worst
of all for the people of Israel was that the Ark of the Covenant
was taken by their enemies. And what happened was this was
a very fleshly move by Israel. They had been defeated the day
before and they thought well let's bring the Ark of the Covenant
into the camp and surely this will be a blessing for us and
this will gain us the victory over our enemies. But ultimately
What they did was called Ichabod by the widow of Phinehas. Ichabod,
because, she said, the glorious departed from Israel for the
Ark of God is taken. And what was so terrifying about
this for this woman and what was so frightening for Israel
is what the Ark of the Covenant stands for. That is, the Ark
represents the presence of God among his people. The Ark had
many beautiful pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ in it, and
it represents God's presence. This is our fellowship with God
is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so they were broken over
the fact that the covenant was taken from them and brought into
the camp of their enemies who hated them and they thought all
is lost. Now turn over to Exodus chapter
33. Let me just show you two verses
about the presence of God contained here in the ark, what this signifies. So this is Exodus 33, and this
is verses 18 and 19. And remember, Ichabod's wife
said, the glory is departed. Now, this is Moses here in Exodus
33, and he's asked the Lord, Lord, go with us. If you don't
go up with us, don't bring us up into this land of promise.
And Moses asked the Lord, saying, I beseech thee in verse 18, show
me thy glory. And here's what the Lord said
in response to that. He said, I will make all my goodness
pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord
before thee. and will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And so what the Lord is teaching
us here is that it's the glory of God to show mercy and compassion
and grace upon whom he will be merciful and compassionate and
gracious." That's God's glory. That's God's glory. To save whom
he will. To reveal himself to whomsoever
he will. To whomsoever he will is to be
gracious and merciful too. And so this truth of the Lord
that God is gracious to whom God will be gracious runs contrary
to the idolatry of man. That's not something you hear
men speak of and to this day it's still Boasted of and gloried
him by man that man has a free will and he has a choice and
he has to choose Whether to let God save him or not and it's
idolatry. It's a lie. That's not true at
all That's not what the scriptures say. In fact, the scriptures
show that when man is left to himself He chooses to do evil
As Stephen said to the Jews, ye do always resist the Holy
Ghost, you stiff-necked people. That's what we are. We are stiff-necked
people, hard-hearted, who oppose God and oppose his Christ and
oppose the gospel, except God be gracious to us and break our
hard hearts and deliver us from the darkness and filth and evil
of idolatry. That's what we are by nature.
And that's what we need is salvation by Almighty God, Almighty Sovereign
God. Otherwise, we die in our sins. We die in our sins. And so it
is God's glory to save whom he will, because God isn't powerless. God isn't dependent on man. God
saves whom he will. And thank God that he does, because
otherwise we'd all go to hell in our own sin. That God that
waits on man is an idle God. Our Lord does not wait for man
to decide whether He wants God to save him or not. God's glory
is that He saves whom He will, and He overcomes our foolish
stubborn will. He overcomes it. So our God,
the scriptures teach our God chose a people in Christ before
the foundation of the world, before we did any good or evil,
so that man cannot boast that it's of his works. It's of God's
choosing. It's of God's choosing. So then,
Paul, writing, quoting from that very passage in Exodus 33, 19,
what he said to Moses, that he will be merciful to whom he will
be merciful, and compassionate to whom he will be compassionate.
He concluded this, Romans 9, 16, so then it's not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. So that's the glory we're talking
about. God, have you left us? God, have you abandoned us? God,
have you forsaken us and turned from us? That we no longer have
that fellowship with the presence of our God? And so they were
terrified. They were terrified. They were
afraid. So everything about the salvation of the people of God,
it showcases and speaks to the sovereignty of our God. And as
we saw in the last chapter, what Israel failed to do by all her
efforts, all her strength, all her wisdom, everything that she
thought she was going to accomplish, what she failed to do, the Lord
did triumphantly. And that's what we see in this
next chapter, the Lord doing triumphantly, going face to face,
toe to toe with idolatry and destroying. and overcoming the
idolatry of man. So before we look at this lesson
of Chapter 5, I just want to pick up something that we were
closing with in the last message from Chapter 4 that we saw there. I want to look at that gospel
that our Lord accomplished for his people through his blood
redemption on the cross because there's a picture seen here that
when the ark was taken away and all seemed like it was lost,
we see the picture of Christ in that. Because on the night
in which our Lord was betrayed, He was led away willingly by
His enemies who took Him into mock trials and ultimately condemned
to be crucified on the cross, which our Lord willingly went
to. that He might be the fit sacrifice
of His people on that cross. You see, salvation belongeth
unto the Lord. Salvation is the Lord's work,
not the work of man. And it's not by the cooperation
of man. It's our God's work for His people. Our Lord said in Isaiah 63, 5,
He said, I looked, and there was none to help. And I wondered
that there was none to uphold. Therefore mine own arm brought
salvation unto me, and my fury it upheld me. And so our Lord
willingly was taken by the enemies. He went with the enemies in order
to accomplish a triumphant, glorious redemption for His people. He hung on the cross alone as
the sacrifice of His people, as the surety of His people,
and satisfied the justice of Holy God so that God is well
pleased with us in His Son. And then it happened that for
three days and three nights he lay in the grave and his disciples
were broken, afraid, trembling. not understanding what was going
on. They said, we thought that it was him who should redeem
Israel. We thought he was the Messiah. And they were right. They were
right. They just didn't understand it yet. He hadn't risen from
the grave and showed himself to them. At this time when they
said that, he had showed himself, but they didn't know who he was.
Yet, and so the glory, they thought, was departed from Israel, for
their mercy seat was taken from them." Their mercy seat was taken
from them. And Paul tells us, he speaks
of the great triumph of our Savior. He speaks of it in Colossians
2 verses 14 and 15. When our Lord was on the cross,
Paul points out to us, he says, he was blotting out the handwriting
of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he took it out of the way,
nailing it to his cross. He had to go to the cross because
the law opposed us. And we, we had a debt to the
law in Adam. We had a debt to God for perfect
righteousness in Adam, and we could not satisfy that debt.
And so Christ came, and he paid the debt for his people. And
he removed that law, so the law is nothing more to say to you.
And you stand complete in the Lord Jesus Christ. And having
spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly,
triumphing over them in it. That is, he made a public spectacle
of his enemies. He shamed them. He despised the
shame of the cross and he shamed his enemies so that we stand
triumphant in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are now justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. And so these enemies, these Philistines
taking away the Ark of the Covenant and bringing it into Ashkelon
as we'll see, our God laughs from heaven. He laughs at them.
just as our God laughed from heaven, and his Christ laughed
because they knew that in what they were doing, thinking that
they had defeated God's Messiah, that they had defeated God, that
they had killed the son, the heir, and taken the inheritance,
God knew, you haven't done any such thing. I've accomplished
my redemption for my people in this. And the evil in your heart
has only I've only used it to bring it to pass for my glory,
for my glory and your shame. And so the Lord has blessed his
people richly in the Lord Jesus Christ. He rose from the dead
and he accomplished everything he came to do. And so we're no
longer, that's how we overcome the oppression of our oppressors. As we saw Israel trying to throw
off their oppressors last week, and trying to go to religion
to throw off their oppressors last week, and God would not
allow them success in that. Our God doesn't allow us success
in saving ourselves, or using religion in the form of religion
to bless ourselves. It's not going to happen. Christ
is our blessing. Christ is our triumphant Savior.
Christ is all for His people. So of Him, are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,
and redemption, that according as it is written, He that glorieth,
let him glory in the Lord. And so, as we'll see in all these
chapters, Christ is our Ebenezer. Christ is the stone of our help. He's the stone that the builders
rejected, but the same is made the head of the corner by our
God. It's the Lord's doing and it's
glorious in our eyes because God has powerfully, triumphantly
worked this in our hearts. He's given us faith and life
and hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe Him, to trust Him,
and to wait upon Him. Now, as we come into chapter
5 here, the Ark of the Covenant of God coming into the Temple
of the Philistines' false god, what is that picturing for us?
Well, that's a picture of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
coming into contact for war with the idolatry of man. This is
God confronting man's idolatry. This is the gospel coming powerfully
against us by nature and destroying our idolatry and showing us to
be what we are by nature, idolaters. And so this is a picture for
us here of the blessed gospel entering into the ears and the
mind and the hearts of the people. This is a picture of the gospel
being preached and declared. This ark coming into the temple
of Dagon is the word of God coming right into your heart and addressing
the idolatry of us by nature. And so I want to highlight a
few things that we see in this confrontation between the true
and living God and the idolatry of man. Now we're told in verse
one, 1 Samuel 5.1, And the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought
it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. So Ashdod, that's one of the
five main cities of the Philistines, Ashdod. And this city means that
it's a castle or a fortified city. It's a castle or a fortified
city. It's a mighty stronghold of the
enemies of God. This is a picture of us by nature,
impenetrable by nature. We're fortified by nature. We're
a castle, a stronghold by nature, and we're not going to let in
our enemy. We're going to oppose the true
and living God who by nature is our enemy. That's how we see
the true and living God as our enemy. But, through the wisdom
of God, we see how the Lord uses the enemies to bring that gospel
right on in there. They're opening themselves up
and they're bringing that gospel right on in there, right into
the heart of their idolatry. And that's because, by nature,
Man thinks when he's going to hear the gospel, he thinks, well,
that's just like all the other stuff that I've heard in my life.
It's just another one of many options or forms of religion.
It's just another form of idolatry. And so man's open to it. Man's
willing to hear it for a time until he's made to hear it in
truth, in spirit and in truth. And then, then there's a conflict. Then there's a conflict that
there's a warfare that takes place at that time. And man is
open to hearing religion. Man doesn't have a problem with
religion. It's only the truth that he has a problem with. It's
only the truth that he has a problem hearing. And once they hear the
truth, if they're the Lord's, they're going to receive it,
and rejoice in it, and be glad, and be delivered from their idolatry,
and grow in Christ, And if they're not the Lord's, then they're
going to harden themselves to it, and they're going to run
that thing out of there because it's death to them. And they're
going to get rid of it, just like we see the Philistines ultimately
do. All right, so let's see how this
confrontation goes. Verse 2 and 3. When the Philistines
took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and
set it by Dagon. And when they of Ashdod arose
early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face
to the earth before the ark of the Lord, and they took Dagon
and set him in his place again. And so here it is that When the
truth of God comes in to the ears of the idolater, this is
all of us by nature, when it comes to our hearts, to our minds,
and we hear the truth of the gospel, the idolatry must fall. The idolatry does fall. God takes
everything, the false vain hopes of man, and puts it face down
in the dirt, which is where we belong. That's what we are before
God. We are dust and our faces are
put in the dust before the true and living God. That's what the
Lord does by His truth. And so the idols of man fall
and they lie before the true and living God. Those things
that you hope in by nature, your good works, that you're not so
bad, that God is loving and will just receive you without an atonement
being made, without His holy justice being satisfied, that's
idolatry. Sin must be punished. God is
love, but His holiness must be honored and sin must be punished.
That's why we rejoice in Christ, because Christ, he took the punishment
of God's people in their place and satisfied the holy justice
of God for them. But all the false and vain hopes
of man, oh, it'll just work out. I'll talk to God when I get up
there. He'll understand. Lies. They're all lies. And when
you hear the gospel, the gospel says, no such thing. No, you
must be perfect, you must be righteous, and every jot and
every tittle must be fulfilled perfectly or else you cannot
stand before holy God. And man starts to get uncomfortable,
he doesn't like that. And even though we declare the
truth of what Christ has accomplished, he still can't hear it or receive
it. He still can't hear it or receive it. Now, 2 Corinthians
10 verses four through five, tells us that the weapons of
our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling
down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every
high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,
and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. You know, that's the Lord's work
that does that in us. There was no man in Dagon's temple
that knocked over Dagon before the ark of the Lord. There wouldn't
have been any Israelite in there because that was a stronghold
of a city, a castle of a city. They weren't going in there.
And it wouldn't have been a Philistine that would have done that to
their God. This was the Lord who did this. No flesh knocked
this idol over. God did it. And that's what the
Lord does with the gospel. He knocks over our idols. He
knocks over all those things that exalt themselves, all of
man's flesh that exalts themselves against the true and living God. And so our Lord brings down our
idolatry from its lofty place, its ridiculously lofty place,
and puts it face down in the dirt. But what does man do? He goes and he props it up. He
hears the truth. And he goes there and he picks
up his idol, dusts it off, and puts it back in its place where
it was. Because he still trusts and believes
the false idolatrous things that he believed in. Now if the hearer
be a sinner saved by the grace of God, those false idols will
continue to get knocked down until they stay down. The Lord
will knock down our false views, our vain ideas, and he'll go
to battle with them through the gospel, through the gospel, even
after we heard the truth Even now, when we hear the truth,
we still need the grace of God to take away our idols from believing
that it's by something I do that earns and gains the favor of
God. Or it's something I do that keeps evil away from me and gives
me the blessings of God. We still have idolatry. We still
have things that come at the truth of God. And it's only through
the gospel that those things are knocked down. Now if the
hearer is a self-righteous idolater set in his ways, he'll just keep
putting that idol back up. He'll just keep setting it back
up until eventually he tires of hearing the gospel and drives
it from him. He either drives himself away
or he drives the truth from him. Verse 4-5 And when they arose
early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon
his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. And the
head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon
the threshold. Only the stump of Dagon was left
to him. Neither the priests of Dagon
nor any that come into Dagon's house tread on the threshold
of Dagon and Ashdod unto this day. And so as long as the light
of the gospel of the salvation of our God continued to shine
in that darkness, the idols kept falling. And man sets it back
up, and God knocks it right back down again. And man sets it up,
and God knocks it back down again. Because it cannot stand. Our
lies, our sin, our wickedness, the things we're hoping in, cannot
stand before the gospel of our God and Savior. God shows it
to be folly, nonsense, foolishness, ignorance, darkness, death. And he shows that over and over
again. And so they set it up, and down
went the idol again. And this time, the head was removed,
the hands were cut off, and all that remained was the stump of
Dagon. Now this is exactly what the
Gospel of our Savior accomplishes in those whom Christ has redeemed
with His own blood and brought the power of the Gospel to their
ears and caused them to hear it by His Spirit of Grace. First, what does he do? He removes
the head of the idol. He takes the head of the idol
off that which we thought was our wisdom and our connection
to the true and living God. And we thought, I figured it
out. How many times have you thought in your dead religion
that you figured it out? And we're finally going to be
cured and free of your oppression. Only to find out you were still
in bondage. Still in bondage. Well, the Lord
cuts the head off, he crushes the head of the serpent with
the foot of Christ, and he delivers us from our oppressor. And what
happens? Christ is made unto us the wisdom
of God. He becomes our head. He becomes
our wisdom. He becomes our all to us. And
second, the works that we were so fearful of when we were in
bondage, in religion, running to and fro, let me do this, let
me do that better, let me perfect this, and we ran all around trying
to work for our righteousness and try to satisfy our guilty
screaming conscience. And we were working and laboring
and spending and doing everything that we could to improve our
status before the true and living God. And so the Lord, He cut
these hands off so that we stopped working for our righteousness
and stopped trying to work for ourselves to gain a righteousness
and acceptance with the true and living God. And He gave us
peace. Peace in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And He put to bed all that fear and terror and being afraid to
die and wondering if we did enough. He put all that to bed. in Christ
and gave us peace through Christ. And Christ of God has made unto
us righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Christ has made
all to the believer. And what remains in its place?
The stump. And we now look and we say, that,
it was my false religion. And I bowed down to that stump.
And I used to worship that stump. And I trusted in that stump,
and now I see that's all they are. Stumps, they're just idols. A rock there, a piece of wood
there, a little bark there, it's all worthless. It's all worthless
before the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, who saved me, who
delivered me, gave me life in himself. But if there's no grace
and the here be an idolater left to themselves, they'll continue
to show more honor to their Dagon. even though it's all busted up
and ruined, and the gospel has shown that all their works and
all their thoughts are wickedness and evil in the sight of God,
that he hates it and despises it, he's cast it in the dirt
before you, and yet they still trust it, they set up their stump
of a God, they pick him up again, they make excuses for why he
can't do anything and why it's all their fault, and they become
even more superstitious. How did these people become more
superstitious? Well, once they picked up Dagon
and the head was off, and I don't know if they patched it or what
they did, but now they wouldn't even step on the threshold of
Dagon anymore because his face was there. He had fallen over
and fallen apart there. So now they treated it with even
more respect. Even though God showed it to
be more worthless. More worthless. And so that shows
the depth of the darkness of man's nature. that though he
hear the truth, except for the grace of God, the almighty, sovereign
grace of God, man goes right back like a dog to his vomit
and just keeps on lapping it up, thinking that this time it's
going to do something better for him. That's what we are by
nature. That's why we need the sovereign,
almighty presence of God to save us, to be gracious to us, to
be kind and merciful. to deliver us in love, to deliver
us in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because if our gospel
be hid, it's hid to them that are lost, and whom the God of
this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not. Lest
the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of
God, should shine unto them. And so left to ourselves, we
don't discern the folly that we're trusting in. And I can
testify to it for years and years and years and years I spent in
vain religion Sometimes getting close and getting nearer and
nearer and groping about but never coming to a knowledge of
the truth until the Lord Brought me totally out of it and brought
me completely from it, and put me in the arms of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and Him only. You know, Isaiah writes of this,
in Isaiah 44, he writes of this folly, and he talks about how
the sinner goes and cuts down a tree, and uses part of that
tree for wood, and part of that tree for a carving of a stump
of his God, and some other things, and he never thinks about how
That's no God. That's all the work of your hands.
He said, none consider it in his heart. Neither is there knowledge
nor understanding to say, I've burned part of it in the fire.
Yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof. I have
roasted flesh and eaten it. And shall I make the residue
thereof an abomination? Shall I fall down to the stock
of a tree? He feedeth on ashes, a deceived
heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul,
nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand? And that's man
by nature. Now, the Lord made it painfully
obvious to the Philistines that He was responsible for the pain
and the suffering that they were experiencing while they kept
the Ark of the Covenant there. And they apparently received
what's called emerods, which I believe to be hemorrhoids.
And it was painful and embarrassing for them. And that spread to
every city. And then in the city of Gath,
there was a pestilence, it seems, that killed a lot of them. And
then when they thought they would remove the ark and bring it to
Ekron, the people cried out, saying, they've brought about
the ark of the God of Israel to us to slay us and our people. So they knew that it was the
Lord doing this. They were convinced that the
Lord was persecuting them and torturing them for their unbelief
and for keeping the ark of God. But for all their ability to
recognize that God was inflicting this punishment on them, they
never bowed before God. They never repented. They never
turned from their idolatry. They never asked God for forgiveness,
to know Him. They didn't go to Israel and
say, teach us this God. Let us worship this God with
you. We'll be subject to you. Let us know this true and living
God." They never sought God for forgiveness according to the
truth. They just pushed it out. They
got rid of it. They didn't want to hear the
truth any longer. And it's like when the Lord saved
that Gadarene, that Gentile Gadarene, and sent the legion into the
herd of swine. When the people went out there
and saw that man clothed in his right mind, sitting at the feet
of Jesus, what did they ask him? They said, please depart from
us. Please go away from us. Leave us. And that's what the
idolatrous heart does. They want God gone. They want
the light and truth of God gone because he keeps putting their
idols that they're trusting in face down in the dirt. And he
keeps showing that what we trust in by nature is a lie, it's foolishness,
it's folly, and it cannot save. Paul, writing of this in 2 Corinthians
2, 14, said, Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us
to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge
by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet saver
of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. You
see, the Lord by His grace makes Christ known to sinners, to idolaters. And by His grace, He smashes
down our idols, our lies, our falsehoods, our false hopes,
and He puts them in the dirt. that He may be gracious to us
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And all who believe Him, who
come to God in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting Him
in His work, that He is our righteousness, the Father receives such, and
clothes such with the righteousness of Christ, and fills their heart
with His Spirit and His peace and His joy and rejoicing. and
promises them I'll never leave you nor forsake you. You're mine
forever for I have loved you from the foundation of the world
and I did this for you to bring you to me this very day and my
most precious beloved son whom I've sent to save you from your
sins. God does that. God does that
for his people. To the one, this gospel, Paul
says, we are the saver of death unto death, and to the other,
the saver of life unto life. And who's sufficient for these
things? For we are not as many which corrupt the word of God,
but as of sincerity, but as of God and the sight of God speak
we in Christ. And so the sinner saved hears
and believes. and no longer worships and bows
down to that stump. But the dead idolater whom God
leaves to himself will continue to, it's death unto death, and
he'll drive that truth from him, drive himself away from it, and
keep himself from it, so that he cannot hear it, and will not
hear it, and refuse to hear it. But I hope better things of you,
my brethren, that the Lord has gathered us together to hear
this blessed word and to bless us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I pray he make that word profitable and blessed in your hearts. Amen.