The Glory of God’s Supremacy
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The Glory of God’s Supremacy
Turn in your Bibles to First Samuel chapter 5, and we will go through, actually, all the way to chapter 7:2 today. And you're probably not betting on that, seeing as how it took me two weeks to preach through chapter 4. So now I'm going to preach through two chapters in one week. Adds up. The reason I'm doing that is because the text that we'll see today from chapter five into six, and then just the first two verses of chapter seven is just really one amazing story about God's glory. It's one continuous tale of when it looks like God has lost, he actually reverses it completely. And that's where we left off last week, when the Ark of God had been taken captive at the end of chapter four. And it ends with the sad line, the glory of God departed, not the glory of God, the glory from Israel's departed because the Ark of God was taken. And that's where we ended, where we said, you know, God will risk his own reputation to drive the point home to his people, that his glory is not found in a box. It's not. It's not found in something that man wants to construct in his own mind that helps him to hold together some...in The case of Israel, some passed on superstitious view of where God's presence is to be found, and maybe clinging to some ideas from the past, because in the present they have no idea what the presence of God is actually about. It's about what we just sang about, which is an overwhelming sense of his holiness and our sinfulness. And so when God's people lose sight of that, he will not only risk his reputation, as we saw in chapter four, take on a loss in order to win. He'll do something different this week. And that's why we're going to see it all on display in one story from five, six into seven...is that God will display the supremacy of his holiness over our sinfulness in order to magnify his glory. That in three different cases, in three scenes, if you want to call it that is, we're going to look at today where God is putting his glory on display far and above what man is doing to show the insurmountable gap between a holy God and fallen man. And in the early cases, it will be between God and a pagan idol Dagon. And then it will move to God and the diviners, the priests of the Philistines who seem to have the answer, or so they think...by piecing together some superstitious view of God. As man tends to do in his own power and make up their own ideas. And then finally it'll land home back in Israel. And it's no better there because there's false faith even in Israel itself. But in all three of these cases, the single line, the theme that will be driving through all of these texts is one and the same. That when God wants his glory to be known, he'll stop at nothing to show it. And that comes at the cost of loss for the Philistines, for the Israelites to open their eyes, to see that he is supreme over all in his glory. That he will tolerate no rival. He will fly solo in these chapters. And so, if you're one of those people that still might have a bumper sticker that says, God is my co-pilot, I think you may be inclined today to peel that thing off and throw it in the trash. God is no man's co-pilot, and he needs no co-pilot. What God is going to show in his sovereignty in these next chapters is he can do it all himself. That's what makes him God and us...not. That he is independent of any of us in his workings in the world. He chooses in love, in grace to use us. And so we will see that today. So I'm just going to read the first few verses of First Samuel chapter five to get the ark moving again. And then we'll walk our way through these chapters.
"Now the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it to the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. When the Ashdodites arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord." Father, magnify your word according to your name, that all the weight of the glory of your name, all that it carries, and all that we can comprehend, would lay heavy on us this morning through the preaching of your Word. So lay it heavy on us in order to lift us out of our own burdens, to free us from our idolatries of the heart. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.
Chapter five, verses 1 to 12, will be the first scene in this extended lesson, and it's that God will show his glory over the false idols of man. The Philistines take center stage in chapter five. They were a polytheistic people going back over a thousand years before we meet them here, sometime in maybe 1050 BC. There's other ancient Near East texts, Akkadian and Ugaritic texts that talk about Dagon going all the way back to, uh, 23 BC. So over a thousand years earlier, you can find this God here mentioned as the supreme deity over the land, namely vegetation and crops, things that people would depend on for their daily sustenance. So rather than asking God to supply their daily bread, they went to Dagon. And, he actually is who the Philistines are worshiping. If you just turn back to Judges. Chapter 16...the Story of Samson many of us are familiar with and certainly familiar with the end. Here we see in chapter 16, verse 23, the lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their god. This is right before Samson is going to come out and literally crash a party to a false god. You would think maybe these idol worshippers would learn their lesson, that the man that they assumed by conquering him, Samson, they had conquered Israel, comes out, knocks the pillars over, kills thousands of Philistines. You would think that maybe within a hundred years of that, they would have moved on from Dagon. But, you know, we just cling to our idols so closely, don't we, that when we're convinced we've got what we need, we've got whatever little gods in our boxes. Pagans will stick with it to the bloody end. So this is the Philistines, and they return from conquering Israel. Remember, 30,000 soldiers of Israel fell on the battlefield in Ebenezer, and now they moved the Ark 30 miles to Ashdod. Ashdod is one of five major Philistine cities along the sea. The Philistines were sea people. That's what their name meant. They had the good posh land and living out towards the Mediterranean. And one of their five major cities is this place called Ashdod. And, um, they bring the Ark here and they bring it into, of all the Philistine temples, this one contained their god Dagon. And so they bring it here, because to defeat a rival nation is to show that your god is what?...more powerful or supreme over their God. So to celebrate that victory, they bring the Ark in in verse two and set it by Dagon. They don't understand that God threw the fight. Right? Psalm 78:61 talks about Shiloh and what happened when the glory of God departed. And it says in Psalm 78:61, he gave up his strength to captivity and his glory into the hand of the adversary. God threw the fight, but he wasn't going to roll over and play dead anymore. So the bell rings, round one, verse three. The Ashdodites arose early the next morning. They're ready to eat some breakfast. You know, because Dagon is the god of the land. He's got something good for them. And they walk in and there he is, fallen on his face to the ground, prostrate before the ark of the Lord. It's a knockout punch. So they drag him back to his corner. They put some water in his face and they send him out for round two. After, note, they set him in his place again. Because this is what you have to do when you worship a false god. You got to set him in his place again. It's kind of ironic. We use that language. Somebody needed to set that guy in his place here. They have to set their mighty god Dagon in his place. Bell rings. Round two. Same result. They come out early the nextmorning. Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord. Same exact language. So again, another knockout punch. But this time the gloves didn't just come off. His hands did as well as his head. Dagon's head and palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold, and the only thing still standing was the trunk. That was Yahweh making a very clear statement to these pagans. I let you take me captive, and now your God is captive to me. It was common in this time. If you conquered another nation and particularly conquered their king. You would take that king's life and you would dismember him. The Philistines are actually going to do it to Saul at the end of this book...spoiler alert. They cut off his head. They want to show not just the superiority of their army, but if anyone else would ever choose to mess with us again, this will happen to you. This is what we did to your leader. So God makes a very clear statement of his supremacy over their deity, that even though you thought I lost when you brought me to Ashdod, I won. And henceforth, verses six through 12, we won't go word by word, but you can follow along as I put it together. It's a game of pagan hot potato that nobody actually wants the Ark anymore. Though this was a sign of the Philistines dominance by defeating Israel and taking the Ark of God. Now they're trying to ship it out wherever they could send it. Verse six, the hand of the Lord was heavy. Remember that language of heavy on the Ashdodites, and so heavy he ravaged them and smote them with tumors. Ashdod, the city and all its territories. So they see it and they say, hey, we don't want this ark anymore. His hand is severe on us. Let's, uh, send it to our friends over in Gath. Now, remember, these are all, uh, a collective community of cities underneath Philistine country. They should be friends, not enemies. But they're trying to gift this Ark now to their neighbors in Gath. And the same thing happens there. And there is almost a poetic, flow to this, because God's hand is heavy and the people are smitten. You'll see that pattern in verse six, nine and 11. The ark shows up. God's hand is heavy. The people are smitten, they are laid low. Even down in in verse 11, there is a deadly confusion, a death panic. So you can imagine at the end of that section after it's been in the third town, Ekron, they're about to send it to the remaining cities that the arc hasn't made an appearance at yet. What do you think those cities were doing? They were building barricades at the entrances, saying no vacancy for Yahweh. They didn't want anything to do with them. They were saying, send the Ark away. Finally, Ekron says, let it return to its own place. Initially, they just wanted to send it to a place. They just wanted to get rid of it. Now they realize it needs to go back to where it belongs, so that it will no longer kill us and our people. So what's the lesson in this first section in God's glory on display over false idols? Well, we've said this book of Samuel, which means God is my name. The most important character is Yahweh. It's not Samuel who the book's named after, and it's not Hannah, and it's not going to be Saul, and it's not going to be David. Yahweh is the main character, and he gets top billing, if you will, in this scene. Because as I said before, he has no rivals. He needs no help. So he independently outside of any of Israel's help, is just showing who you are up against. When you take lightly his glory. He puts down his heavy hand. And sothe first lesson is, beware of thinking God is helpless without you. You know, to kind of read the scriptures in a way that you feel like, you know, I mean, we're, you know, he needs propped up by me sometimes. He needs my help. He needs defended. In moments like these, when you read your Bible, you read quite the opposite. Uh, you need propped up by him. You need held by his strong and mighty hand. You need defended by him. Otherwise, when we get it reversed and we read ourselves as the main character, it ends up being us that we worship, not God. We reverse Psalm 115, don't we? Not to God, not to God, but to my name be the glory, because we want the victory. The fact that our God is victorious, we just kind of appreciate we're on the right side. So now let me move on from victory to victory. We get fooled into the idea that we can handle the glory of God. Without first recognizing he alone is glorious. He chooses to use us. We are grateful recipients. We learn about ourselves in this section. How easily we protect our idols. How we want to keep them even when they get smashed. Go back to verse two and three. You know, even when Dagon had fallen on his face, they want to prop him back up. And God in his glory to show him holy and us sinful, will allow our idols in our lives and our hearts, even as followers of him, to be knocked over, just knocked over, just to show how light they sit. Something we think is our identity, maybe. And he'll allow it to get knocked over. And what do we do with it? Do we learn our lesson and say, you know what, God, that was about me? Or do we try to prop it back up like they did? And when they get dismembered, if you will, I mean, there's a progression here. Um, they try to deny the reality of what's going on in the place in which Dagon fell. Verse five, look back there. It said they wouldn't even tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day. The palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold. His head was there. And rather than them say, you know what, maybe we should abandon ship on this idol. They say, well, wherever his head and hands landed, that's sacred. Let's walk over it. You know, we can look back in our lives and see when God destroys our idols, we somehow, in our hearts, can still hold it as sacred ground, even when they're exposed as silly. What does that look like in our lives? It could be any number of things. I mean, hearing the testimony this morning of Chase and in sports, it reminds me of my testimony. You know, I had made an idol of football, thought I was defined by it, thought it was everything in high school. I mean, my life was going to be determined by a scholarship somewhere. So my glory could be known. And I was a believer, but little by little more of Adam and less of God moved that idol up. And so I get injured my senior year. And there goes that. No glory. This is the first time I remember really wrestling with, oh, God, if you're sovereign and good, why did you let this happen to me? Because he's sovereign and good. But you know, you cling to idols. So I don't let it go. And I take it into college, and I do the same thing in more of a cleaned up way, but still defining myself. And then even when that career is over, I could let it be dead on a threshold and try to live, live it out through my kids. Right? My glory. And there was really none to be had. Could be smashed there. But I could say, you know what? I'll coach and I'll make my sons into the football player I never was. Because now I have the wisdom to know how to do it and live through them and prop up an idol in their heart. You see how we do this? You know, just name the thing in your life. Maybe it's success in your career. Maybe it's been wealth and suddenly your idol has been knocked over with the tariffs...businessmen. Have you trembled because of the tariffs? Are you petrified when you look at your portfolio and you could be a follower of Jesus. But sometimes money and being set up for the future can become an idol, and it's not really exposed until we start to lose some of it. We can make an idol of our families, we can live for our spousesapproval, our kids approval, and really, when we're living for their approval, we just want their admiration. We want them to exhalt us, so, who actually is the idol...is it the kid or is it me? You go on down the list and the thing I can't do is open your heart up to see into it today. I could give you some ideas of where your idols might be, but really, you just have to look at sin in your life. And often when you sin, you can trace your sin back to something you're idolizing, something you want. And it could seem like a good thing. It could be life in the church. It could be service in the church. You love the affirmation. Somewhere along the line, as a Christian, you've found joy in serving the Lord. But now you define yourself by that. And now you got to out-serve everybody, right? Or somebody new comes along in HBC and they're moving into your territory and you're going to cling to that idol because why? That was your position. That's where everybody thought you were doing such a great job. We can become idol seeking in our own church as collective this week. Is our church going to out Easter all the other churches in in Hickory, you know, are we going to get the biggest crowd? Are we going to have the most people and do the best stuff? An idol of self, even in the church, among the people of God. When who's this week about? Who is your service to be given for? It's for Christ. So all those things can be ways in which we learn something about ourselves from the text today. But I think the main thing we see is how much we want to still hold on to them, even when God is clearly displaying his glory, saying that idol is nothing, I'm everything. And they say, no, no, no, we're going to keep it. Look where it ends in verse 12 in this section, very sad. The men of Ekron who did not die, were smitten with tumors and the cry of the city, the whole city goes up to heaven. It doesn't say it went to Yahweh, does it? It wasn't a cry of repentance, was it? They didn't get rid of Dagon, did they? They do what a lot of Syncretists people do. Polytheistic people. People that pick and choose which gods they want to serve. They might cry to heaven. They have a pseudo spirituality that might say, listen, I pray. I know there's a higher power. I know the big guys up there doing something. Friend, if that's the extent of the way you describe how you cry out to heaven, it's not moving the needle. I mean it may fly in the south in the Bible Belt because you know the right stuff to say to kind of, hey, listen, man, I pray I'm good. I cry to heaven. But if you don't see the connection between repentance and crying out to God to forgive you versus just a general cry of...what's God doing, I don't know? You might be as lost as these people in Ekron. So God's glory over our false idols. It's the first one.
Next we move into chapter six and the new territory. Now we're in the country of the Philistines, where the lords of the five areas come together. And the start of chapter six, to flex their power, they're going to come up with a plan. They're not turning to Yahweh and turning away from Dagon. They just want to get a plan to get God off their back. So they call for the priests. It says in verse two. I mean, things must get really bad when the powers that be call for the pastors of the land and say, hey, we can't figure this one out. We got ourselves into a jam. You know, when the president rings my phone, I'll know he's really, you know, out of luck. I mean, like bottom, you know? Wow. How did you find me? And that's essentially what these lords of the Philistines are doing. They call for the priests because they think maybe there's something they're missing here. What shall we do with the Ark of the Lord? Tell us how we shall send it to its place. They still just think the glory and the magic are in a box. So these diviners say, if you send away the Ark of God of Israel, don't send it away empty...penance, right? That's what we got to do, that that flexes our power, that shows our devotion. We got to send it with something. How about a guilt offering? They say then you'll be healed and it'll be known to you why his hand is not removed from you. So they kind of merge a little bit of their knowledge, maybe of the Old Testament religion of the Israelites, a guilt offering. But then they merge it with something, probably from their own pagan background, where you make...look at verse four. It makes some golden tumors and some golden mice according to the number of your cities, your lords. So they just patched together in their own plans and powers, this mashup of ideas. Okay, if Yahweh is the one who sent this. Because suddenly you have what looks like the bubonic plague going around, which is the connection between maybe rats and tumors. Why else would you pick such awful things to make golden idols of? And we know the bubonic plague was spread in Europe by a lethal bacteria from fleas that bit and infested rats. And those symptoms are swollen lymph nodes. So a lot of Bible scholars say it probably was a bubonic plague like thing. So their idea is make some images in the likeness of those to show to God that you understand your affliction comes from him, and you recognize he sent it. And, if you give it back to him, he'll be pleased...penance. Which is just spiritualized magic tricks, you know, just. I'm going to do something, and, God will leave me alone. I want to be left alone. I don't want to deal with this God anymore. I just want him to get out of my life. So what can I give him to leave me alone? And then verse five says. And perhaps he'll ease his hand from you, your gods, and your lands. Notice what the priests say in verse six, just to show that they weren't completely unaware of who this God was. They say, why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts. This is hundreds of years after the Exodus. And these pagan priests, they understand what happened back with Israel, how they got to where they were. They were delivered from Pharaoh. And Pharaoh had hardened his heart. How does Philistia know what was going on back in Exodus 15? The song of Moses, after they come across the Red Sea, has this line. "You stretched out your hand the earth swallowed them. In your loving kindness You have led your people whom you have redeemed, and your strength you have guided them to your holy habitation. The peoples have heard, they tremble. Anguish has gripped the inhabitants of Philistia." That was back in the Song of Moses hundreds of years before. Somehow word got around, predicted then, that even the Philistines would remember this to this day, that the God of Israel delivered his people from the powers that be. Hundreds of years later, God's Word endured. So they come up with a foolproof plan, verses 7 to 9 back in chapter six. What's the plan? All right, guys, here's what you're going to do. You got these tumors and these ugly rat golden things. You're going to take them and, you're going to take some milk cows that have never had a yoke on them, and you're going to hitch the cows to the cart and take their baby calves away, and then take the Ark of the Lord, put it on the cart, put the articles of gold, those ugly things, the guilt offering side by side. You see the whole theme of side by side. Let's mix a little Philistine pagan religion with some Yahweh side by side. God's not going to accept that. They don't come the whole way. Their plan is in their own power and their own wisdom. We've got this idea of what's going to get God off our back. Now, they devised this, verse nine, to put God to the test. So they say, watch if it goes by the way of its own territory. Own territory, meaning back to Israel...Beth Shemesh. Then he has done us this great evil. But if not, then we will know...if it doesn't go that way, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us. It happened to us by chance. Notice in pragmatist spirituality you still create the test, don't you? They still get to create the test. They create the boundaries of how they're going to know how this sovereign God who brought this affliction on their land, is going to make his next move. It's a pragmatism. I'll try a bunch of stuff, and whichever works must be the right way. They never thought to ask Israel and their priests what God's Word might say to do, right? If this is Israel's God and we're screwing up enough that he's wiping out 3/5 of our population and nobody wants the arc anymore. Maybe we should go to them and see if they have a word from God. But no, they have the idea. It's either going to be chance if the cows don't go or, it is God, he has done this great evil. Notice how the sinner wants to put the blame on God. Notice nowhere in verse nine is this test designed to reveal maybe we're the problem. Maybe it's our idols. Maybe it's our false worship. Maybe it's our false god. Dagon fell over. Dagon was dismembered. Our people are dying. Maybe the problem rests with us. But when you are in a false system of religion, that's always the last thing you bring up...your problems. It's everybody around you. It's the circumstances. So you could come up with your own test. One writer says "subjective signs of our own design, crafted out of the folly of our own mind, are no way to discern God's will. Instead, they invite us to divinize our own hunches and provide an opportunity for Satan to deceive us." Whew! You ever applied that to your own life? You ever divinze your own hunch by trying to read the tea leaves of the circumstances around you, and you plaster on a proof text from the Bible. Think about that. That's what they did. They're divinizing their own hunch. They're coming up with a solution that whatever the outcome is, they're not at fault. Either it's all chance or it's God's evil hand. But it has nothing to do with their what?...their own sin. The lost person only sees God in debt to them for the evil they perceive he does to them. They don't consider the evil they do to him in their lost rebellion every moment of the day. So God has to show his supreme glory over the false powers of men. Well, these cows, um, who should not have went the direction they went. The men did so they took these milk cows. They hitched them to the cart. They shut up their calves at home. Why does all that matter? Because, these mama milk cows, they would want to go back to their baby calves to feed them. And they also have never had a yoke put on them. So there's an amount of, if they had been yoked already, then just putting a yoke on a cow that's already been yoked and knows how to run through the farmlands is going to probably just go in a straight direction. They've been trained that way. Sowhat is happening here is there's no human explanation for why these cows would go the way they would go against all common sense. Not that I know much about cows. I read books about this stuff. So they go straight ahead. They went straight ahead. It says in verse 12 to Beth Shemesh. They went along the highway seven miles. Now they did go complaining, lowing as they went. They wanted to go back to their baby calves. They knew that. But the sovereign hand of God is keeping them straight ahead. They're not turning aside to the right or to the left. Maybe that's a good word for us...on what long obedience in the same direction looks like. We can learn from a cow. God uses animals often in the Bible to rebuke us. He used a donkey to rebuke a foolish prophet. He used a fish to rebuke a fleeing prophet. In this account, he's using cows to show the sinfulness of man and his holiness. But the problem with the Philistines as we leave off with them in this section is they never forsook their own powers to turn to God. Once he went away, the lords of the Philistines. Verse 12. It ends there. They followed them to the border of Beth Shemesh. And then verses 17 to 18, it reminds they went down, they gave what they had, and then they walked away. There was no warfare or fanfare for the Philistines. They just go back to their own lostness. That's not repentance, friends. Getting rid of God in your life...there is nothing to do with repentance. It's just running from him. It's ignoring him even when he is making it very clear who is in charge here. You know, if they had any sense of God's holiness in his sovereignty, they would have in that test they set up, seeing those cows go all the way against their own natural law, if you will, of being a cow mama and said, wait a second. That has to be this holy God that was just bringing his heavy hand upon us. Maybe we should think twice of getting rid of him. Maybe we need more of him because he's just shown himself glorious. But the lost idol seeker doesn't do that, do they? They stick to their guns and they go back to Dagon.
Last section. God shows his supreme glory over the false faith of the Israelites. Lest you think I was just picking on pagans today, he has one more way to show his supreme glory over the false faith of man. Last section of God's glory on display is in verses 13 all the way into chapter seven, verse two. The ark returns to Israel. Verse 13, the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley. And they look up, and there is the Ark, and they're glad to see it. The Ark comes into the field. There it is. They split the wood. There's a stone there to make a sacrifice. They split the wood. They offer the cows as a burnt offering. If you are writing a script, this is a happy ever after ending, isn't it? The Ark is back. It even ends up in, of all places, Beth Shemesh, which was Levite territory. We know this from Joshua 21 when God divided out the territories once Israel had conquered all the Canaanite lands. Joshua 21, the Levites, they were given various places to live, and one of the places it mentions by name is Beth Shemesh. So it was given to them. Sothere's clearly some Levites living here. We learn about them in verse 15. Then there's also just some regular people like you and I, verse 19, the men of Beth Shemesh. So it's a mashup, but it looks like a happy ending if we stop writing in verse 15. They take it down. They offer a sacrifice. I mean, the only person that probably would have a complaint here are the cows, because not only did they have to get a yoke put on them and lo, the whole way they get chopped up at the end and offered as a burnt offering. That's a bad deal for the cows, I guess. Verse 19, the blue skies...suddenly a cloud comes. Yahweh struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord. Notice that it doesn't say He struck down those Levite priests. The Levite priests apparently did what they were taught to do. In a moment of consecration dedication, they made a sacrifice that day to the Lord. As far as we could tell, that was the right move. Verse 19 here was the wrong move. The greater population of Beth Shemesh. They did what Eli and Hophni and Phinehas and the elders back in chapter four have been doing this whole time. They take God lightly. They don't listen to his word. They don't have some sense of the holiness of God in this moment to stand back far away...echoes of Mount Sinai, when only Moses is allowed to go up and he says, everybody else better stay clear of that mountain. Lest you die when you come near. But the men of Beth Shemesh, instead of maybe seeing the Ark as some magic talisman, now they see it as some cool relic. It's been gone seven months. I wonder you know what? Like nobody's around. Let's look in. Take God lightly. Suffer his heavy hand of glory. Same lesson, isn't it? We've seen it all along. He's trying to get through. He struck down, of all the people, 50,070 men. Now, if you have the ESV, it says 70 men. There's a discrepancy over ancient manuscripts. Is it 50,070 or is it 70? It would have been a scribal error in transmission. Why we have two different ideas. And my sense would be, from what we know of populations of towns around then, did Beth-Shemesh even have 50,000 people living in it? It's a pretty tiny town in the pasturelands of Israel. But look, debating over 50,070 versus 70 would miss the point, wouldn't it? The point being, God puts his glory on display. He shows the sinfulness of these men who should have known by having those Levites living in their own town the rules about approaching God's holy things if you are not set apart as a Levite. Back in Numbers, chapter three, verse six, bring the tribe of Levi near and set them before Aaron the priest, that they may serve him. They shall perform the duties for him and for the whole congregation before the tent of the meeting, to do the service of the tabernacle, to keep all the furnishings of the tent of Meeting. What were the furnishings of the tent of meeting?...the Ark. You shall give the Levites to Aaron and his sons. They’re the ones that do this. And now listen to Numbers 3:10. You shall appoint Aaron and his sons, that they may keep their priesthood. But the lay person who comes near shall be put to death. Now benefit of the doubt to this men of Beth- Shemesh...did they know numbers 3:10? Do you know numbers 3:10. We at least have copies of the Bible. They probably didn't. Those Levites should have known. I mean, they offered that sacrifice. They chopped up the wood, they burned up the cows, and they should have turned around and warned everybody like Eli should have warned his own sons. Guys, do not come near. This Ark belongs to God. Stay back. Well, it seems that God finally got his message across. Look at the response. Not of the Levites, but of the population of Beth-Shemesh. They say, who is able to stand before the Lord this holy God? For the first time in three chapters, an Israelite finally asks a relevant and a reverent question. If this is is what God's holiness is about dealing with our sinfulness. Who then can stand? And notice, they don't say before the ark. They've at least moved on past the...it's something magic about this box. No, it's something glorious about our God, something different, something holy. And who can stand before him?...this holy God... Entirely appropriate...the perfect question, the question that they should have been asking back to chapter four. And then they ask another bad question. Two steps forward, three steps back...sometimes in our lives. Look at the next question. I don't know if it was in the next breath. Somebody in the crowd asks the right question how can we stand before a holy God? And then somebody else says, and to whom shall he go up from us? As in, how do we get rid of him? Now, they sound just like what?...all the pagan people around them. They sound like the Philistines who, when they encounter the supremacy of God's glory, and his holiness is matched up against their sinfulness. Their idea is, let's get rid of God. How is it any different with these Israelites and their false faith? They run up against something fearful in God, in his holiness. They survive it, and rather than fall on their faces in worship, they say, let's find a way to get rid of them. We don't want Him hanging around here. You know, people did that with Christ. Matthew eight, Mark five and Luke eight all tell the same story of when Jesus cast the demons out of a man, sent them over into some pigs off of a cliff. And it says in all those accounts, everybody in the city comes to Christ. Everybody wants to see who did it. And then guess what they tell him. Get out of town. We don't want you around here. They're seeing the works of God on display, and they would rather than fall down and worship him, they say, would you leave us alone? It's almost like they were in that moment saying, hey, we'll take our chances with the demon possessed around here. Can you leave us to be?...just like the Philistines. Just like the men of Beth Shemesh. So how's that hit home for us today? Some people will want to get close enough to God. They may even come in through the doors of a church. They may do it on a regular basis. Because, you know, that's what Christians do. You know, life goes wrong. You show up in church and there's a little bit of spirituality, maybe just enough to get God on your side. But then whenever God actually wants to push and lean into your life a little bit through the Word of God preached through the people of God holding you accountable. What do some people do? They run. They find a new church, maybe one that doesn't take the Word of God so seriously and sin so seriously. Look, you don't want to take the Word of God serious. You don't want to take your sin serious. Then probably following in that line. You don't want to take God serious. You want him to be light, not heavy. But that means he's glorious, doesn't it? And when his glory rests upon us, that pushes our sin out to be seen for what it is. And here's the great news. Here was the answer to the question that they didn't come to. Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? The answer is no one. Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Nobody. Oh, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. Anybody here have that? So who can stand before a holy God. Just one. And he rode into Jerusalem. Zechariah 9:9 says he rode into Jerusalem as the long awaited righteous king. He is just and salvation comes with him, and he is humble. That's who could stand before a holy God. If you want to know how to be right with God today and not run from him and hope he leaves you alone. If you're lost in your sins today, you can't stand before a holy God. And showing up here today changes none of that. And you're trying to be really good this week and read your Bible all week and get really into Holy Week changes none of that. Recognize what Israel missed when Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, rode into town on a donkey. He was the king. Because he was righteous. He was just. That means he was perfect. He kept the law in all of its perfection. But what good would that have done if he didn't die to save? So he came to bring salvation with him. And yet, in all of that glory of the Son of God, living the perfect life and dying on the cross in your place, he was humble. So he can say to you that he could speak to you this morning. Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden. And I'll give you rest. That's the answer to the question that they missed. None of them were holy enough to stand before him. It's by grace alone. Through faith alone you come before God alone. In the name of the Son who stood alone and went to the cross alone, and died alone and raised from the dead alone. Christ is your only hope today. Trust in him. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your Word this morning. We thank you that there is no other way for us to be right with you, except through your righteous Son and the righteous Son who, healing came in his wings. He was perfect. Who could heal us to the innermost. Who could heal our broken soul, depraved and darkened sinner by nature and yes, by choice. But when we see our sinfulness rightly in light of your holiness, and we cry out, how can we then stand before you? We have the answer in front of us today. We stand alone in the righteousness of your Son by faith. We point to him, not to us. Our righteousness is in heaven and we praise you for it. A holy God who is loving and good enough to send his perfect Son. We thank you for Christ. Amen.
