“Headless Gods” – FBC Morning Light (5/2/2023)

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Today we're reading in 1 Samuel 5 and 6, the 19th chapter of John, and the 87th

Psalm. Yesterday we talked about the mentality that the Israelites had of looking at the

Ark of the Covenant as a good luck charm. They were doing battle with the Philistines, and their thinking was, if we just have the

Ark with us, the Ark will save us from the Philistines. They got the Ark there, and they ended up losing the battle, and the

Ark got captured by the Philistines, and they took it away, and the

Israelites were humiliated, they went and hung their heads in defeat, and went on home.

When they went home, chapter 5 tells us in our reading today that the

Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant, and they took it back to their home and put it in the temple of their priest, of their god,

Dagon. Here it is in the city of Ashdod, is this temple or the shrine to Dagon, their false god, and they have an idol, an image set up of representing their god, and right next to it they put the

Ark of the Covenant. Their thinking is that the Ark of the Covenant is to Israel what

Dagon is to them. It's their god. They bow down to Dagon, and Dagon has now proved himself to be superior to the god that is represented by this

Ark. There it is, we've captured it, it's in our god's temple.

Therefore, their god is subservient to our god. When they get up the next morning, something astonishing has happened.

Dagon's head has rolled off his shoulders and is lying on the ground, and his hands have been lopped off, and they're lying on the ground as well.

What's going on here? God is sending a message. God is sending a message that Dagon, your god, is impotent.

He's not even existing. He loses his head, which tells you he doesn't have the ability to reason, to think, he doesn't have the ability to see or to hear or to speak.

He can do nothing without a head, and he's lost his hands, which symbolizes his impotence, his powerlessness to do anything.

Look at chapter 5 again, if you haven't read it. Read through this and notice. I think this is a fascinating contrast.

Dagon loses his hands and can do nothing, but then three times after that mentioning in verse 4 that both the palms of his hands were broken off on the threshold, and just Dagon's torso was left.

Three times after that, in verse 6, verse 9, and verse 11, you read about the hand of God, and verse 6 tells us that the hand of God was heavy on the people of Ashdod, and he ravaged them and struck them with tumors, both

Ashdod and its territory. Well, the people of Ashdod say, we got to get this ark out of here, we got to get rid of it.

They move the ark and move it to another location and send it to Gath, the

Philistine city of Gath. But here's the thing, God has a head, figuratively speaking.

Dagon has nothing, he has no head, he has no eyes to see, he has no ears to hear, he has no mouth to speak.

He's been rendered powerless. But God has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mouth to speak.

God sees every place that ark goes, and so when they move the thing from Ashdod to Gath, it's not that God doesn't know, he sees.

And in verse 9 says, after they had carried it away, the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction.

Well, they say, we've got to get it out of here. They take it from Gath and they move it to Ekron.

They bring that ark of the covenant to Ekron, and the Ekronites cried out, and they're scared to death because they brought this ark of the

God of Israel to us to kill us and our people. And so they're all fretting over that.

The end of verse 11 tells us, the hand of God was very heavy there.

Dagon has lost his hands, but not God. God's hands are very powerful.

They are destructive against those who would defy him, against those who would try to equate him with some pagan deity.

The hands of Dagon are cut off, he's impotent. The head of Dagon is cut off, he doesn't have the ability to see, hear, to speak, or know anything.

The Lord, however, the Lord knew all that was going on, and his hand was heavy against the people.

He saw everywhere that the ark went, and his hand was heavy there. Aren't you grateful that you know the

God of the Bible, that you know this God, that you know the God who knows you, who knows everything about you, every place you are, who sees you, who hears you, who speaks through his word to you?

Aren't you glad that you serve the God whose hand is not shortened, that it cannot save?

I'm grateful for our God. Father, we do thank you today for who you are.

We're thankful that you are a God of power, you are a God of might, you are a

God of authority, you are a God who sees, who hears, who speaks.

We thank you and praise you today, in Jesus' name, for his sake. All right, well, listen, you have a wonderful Tuesday, and I hope the