1 Samuel 5 He Stands Alone

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in First Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in.

God Shows Us Himself in Scripture

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here. And I recognize that all of us have come together from different places throughout your week, different things that have gone on.

Some of you have had a week full of twists and turns and where you ended up at the end of the week, wasn't where you thought you were gonna be at the beginning and some of you had times of celebration and fun and this was kind of an upbeat week for you.

Others are just glad that you survived and you made it through. So I recognize that and as I have an opportunity to speak this morning and bring the word of God, I recognize that I can't personally speak to each person in the room, but that's the great thing is that I trust that the Holy Spirit can.

So the Holy Spirit knows where you've been this week. He's been along with you and guiding and directing you even to the point where he has you sitting here to hear from his word this morning, to gather together with people who have had a different kind of week from you, to rub shoulders with one another, to interact during the connection time and at the end of the service and all of that stuff that I see God's hand in all of that.

And that's one of the privileged things as a pastor is I get kind of a front row seat to the way that God interacts with people, the way that he changes lives. And so God has been faithful to draw us together and to bring us together and give us instructions through his word.

I hope that that's one of the reasons that you're here together this morning is to hear from his word. And I would just say that sometimes when we come to God's word, some passages of scripture seem to be full of instructions for life, right?

And if we're honest, sometimes we gather together kind of a little bit more centrally focused on ourselves going, God, I need your help to know how to live. I need your help to know what to do. And that can be all different kinds of circumstances that you're going through.

We want to know how to live. And we want to know in our best moments, the best moments of our lives, we want to know what God really wants of us. Sometimes if we're just honest, we don't really care that much in the forgetfulness of our week.

But in our best moments, we want to know, God, what do you want from us? But often when we come to scripture, I don't know if you've had this experience where you kind of just felt like I really need an answer on fill in the blank.

I had a rough week on this subject and God, I'd just like to open your word and have you show me what to do about that. And sometimes when we open God's word or when we study God's word, even in the sermon, in the message on Sunday mornings, we might be puzzled to find out that a lot of scripture is not interested in telling us what to do or how to live.

It's not a manual for life. I mean, it's been called that by many people down through the ages, but that's not its primary purpose. That's not what it exists to do. Instead, much of scripture exists to show us who God is, who God is.

And you might come to the scripture looking for an answer, and the best thing that could happen is you could find God there. The best thing that could happen to us is we turn to scripture for a specific thing that we had on our hearts and we find that the thing that we had on our hearts wasn't the thing.

The thing was that we're not acknowledging God, we're not living for him, we're not paying attention to who he is. And so, a lot of times, God in his grace brings us into his word so that we can know him better.

And I hope that that's the case for each one of us this morning. We need to know how God rolls. We need to know who he is. And that's the start of a life-giving relationship with our creator. In the pages of scripture, we find a God who willingly stoops down to communicate with his creation.

And in our text this morning, God is gonna show us some fundamental things about himself. He is a God who defends his glory. He's a God who defends his glory. He is a God who will not share his glory with others.

And he is a God who can defend his own glory with or without us. He doesn't need us to defend his glory. So let's open our Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter five if you're not already there. You can grab the Bible that's on the rack in the seat in front of you, under that seat.

And that's on page 131 there. If you wanna just grab that Bible, it's an easy way to find it. Otherwise, if you got your device or your phone or whatever, an app that you can navigate over to follow along with the reading this morning from 1 Samuel chapter five.

We are gonna read the entire chapter together. I believe that there's value and that there's even power available for us in the reading of God's word together. And so that's one of the reasons I take out the time to read the entire extensive passage together.

I think there's value in that. So follow along, recast 1 Samuel chapter five. And again, we have the privilege of hearing the very word of God together. When the Philistines captured the Ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.

Then the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the Ark of the Lord.

So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the Ark of the Lord and head of Dagon, and both hands were lying cut off on the threshold.

Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who entered the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day. The hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod and he terrified and afflicted them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory.

And when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, the Ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is hard against us and against Dagon our God. So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, what shall we do with the Ark of the God of Israel?

They answered, let the Ark of the God of Israel be brought around to Gath. So they brought the Ark of the God of Israel there, but after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a very great panic and he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them.

So they sent the Ark of God to Ekron, but as soon as the Ark of God came to Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, they have brought around to us the Ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people.

They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, send away the Ark of the God of Israel and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people. For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city.

The hand of God was very heavy there. The men who did not die were struck with tumors and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much that you are faithful to communicate about yourself to us, and even in these Old Testament passages where we might be a little bit confused about the history or the culture or the different things that we're seeing go on there, you are faithful to show us that you are a God who defends yourself.

You don't need us, you don't need your people, and actually you are the one that is defending even us. And so Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to see how glorious and how majestic and how kind and how merciful you have been to us.

And Father, I recognize that some are sitting here, even some are on the verge of tears in terms of what's going on in their lives and the heartache and the hardship that they're facing and the challenges that are ahead of them.

Some are right at the brink of despair. Others are just at a high point right now, and life is clicking along well for them. But Father, I pray that you would meet all of us right where we are at this morning, that you would speak your grace and your mercy and your kindness to us, and bring us all along in jubilation, celebration, enthusiasm, excitement, move on our spirits to recognize how glorious and how beautiful the future is for all of your children, and let that fuel our worship, Father.

I pray that that would be reality in our midst, that we would open our eyes to see how grand and how glorious our King and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ himself truly is, how much he has loved us, how much he has sacrificed for us, and how much it is his hand.

That has brought us together this morning.

Let that be the fuel of our worship this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen, yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. And I just wanna say a big thanks to Dave for leading us, and Rob, obviously being able to fill in with his voice, so just grateful for them. And I just wanna just point out, I don't say this every week, but it is a privilege to serve with Dave.

He is a guy who gets the vision of this church, and that's a privilege for our relationship as a pastor and a worship leader. We connect well, and yeah, he's, hey, Dave, right there, love you, bro. But we do, we get along super good, and it's just a privilege to serve with somebody who understands the growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service.

A lot of times, it could just be perceived that he's just an ax for hire, you know, but he really embraces, recasts, and has been here from the beginning, so just grateful for him. I would encourage you to get comfortable, and if you need to get up at any time during the message, you're not gonna distract me.

If you need to get up and stretch out in the back, or if you need more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that, and then please keep your Bibles open to 1 Samuel, chapter five. If you lost your place, if you shut down your device, open it back up again, and as long as you're not distracted, you know, by that thing, then take advantage of that, but so that you can follow along and see that what I'm saying is coming from the text, and everything in our text this morning follows, you know, when we're preaching narrative, when we're looking at passages of history, like 1 Samuel, everything follows on the previous week, so if you missed last week, you can go back and listen to that, but I just wanna give a recap once in a while at the start of the service, at the start of the sermon, rather, to just let you know where we've been in case you missed last week, so last week, quick recap, the Israelites went to battle against the Philistines.

The Philistines, by the way, were a seafaring tribe that settled on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea around 1500 BC. If you're into history, that's about the start of the Iron Age. Probably didn't matter to half of you, or the majority of you, but around the start of the Iron Age, the Philistines settled there.

The events of 1 Samuel happen about 500 years later, so we're talking about 1000 BC is when these things are happening, and the Philistines were more advanced than the Israelites. That's one thing that's kind of fundamental for your understanding is as far as culture and the creation of implements and tools and that type of stuff, they had a little bit more technology, even including chariots and things like that.

They were also idol worshipers who ascribed to a pantheon of gods. That's fundamental to our understanding of the text this morning. They worshiped idols. They bowed down and had temples with statues in them and all of that type of stuff.

Fundamental to understanding what polytheism looked like is that there wasn't always the notion that we have a very simplistic perspective on ideology. How could somebody be so stupid to think that you worship a stone or a wooden image, right?

Well, they weren't that thick. Okay, so they thought there was a god behind that and then the statue represented him or her. So it wasn't that they just thought, oh, look, it's shiny, it's bright, it must be God.

They knew that somebody made it. They probably knew the person who had crafted the statue. Some of them did. They still worshiped it primarily as an avenue to get to what they perceived to be the real God who was behind this statue.

So it's fundamental that we understand that. But the Israelites last week took the Ark of the Covenant that symbolized the presence of God into battle, assuming that they were gonna get victory because they carried God into battle and he was having none of it.

They were soundly defeated. They lost 30 ,000 soldiers. The two sons, wicked sons, Hophni and Phinehas, sons of the high priest who were priests themselves, were killed in that battle. The Ark was captured and further, when the high priest received the report, he fell off the bench that he was sitting on, broke his neck, and he died.

So Israel is in shambles. And at the start of our text, we've gotta remember that Israel has just endured one of the darkest days in its history. That's fundamental to our understanding of what we look at in our text this morning.

I just wanna consider briefly what then the text that we're looking at doesn't tell us. It doesn't tell us how the Israelites felt on this day. The events that we're talking about, we're gonna shift our focus, the text shifts its focus over to Philistia, what's going on among the Philistines during this time.

It doesn't focus in on Israel, how they felt, what was going on there, but I think it's beneficial for us to turn our minds there for just a moment. I think you've gotta be careful with hypotheticals and I'll let you know that I'm doing some guesswork here as to how the Israelites were feeling, but I would suggest to you that they had feelings just like you or I, they were real people in a real time and a real place with fears and concerns and despair and all of that at their beck and call.

So I would suggest to you that at this point in history, on this day, after the ark has been captured, the rout of their soldiers, 30 ,000 of their soldiers decimated, Israel is ripe for the picking. They just were dealt a sound military defeat, they have been spiritually demoralized.

Where do they make offerings? The ark has been taken from them. How do they interact with God when that's been the centerpiece of their religious behavior for decades? I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that one big push by the Philistines right now and Israel could be completely subjugated.

They could be subjugated after this day. As a matter of fact, Israel is in no position to defend itself at all, and in 1 Samuel 4, 10, in our passage last week, I didn't zero in on it much, but we saw that the soldiers of Israel, it said, all dispersed and went home defeated.

They fled to their homes and locked their doors behind them with their tails between their legs. The soldiers, this is their soldiers, ran home. So there is no army, there is no standing army for Israel on this day.

So all of that happens in our text this morning. Everything that we see here going on is set in the backdrop of the vulnerability of the nation of Israel during this time. I think it's fair to say, I don't think I'm out on a limb to say that Israel is crazy vulnerable during our text.

They're in no position to defend themselves. They are not in the good favor of God Almighty, and they are certainly in no position to attack the Philistines to get the ark back, which I would assume that they would kind of want.

Do you agree with me on that? You think that they'd kind of want to get the ark back? But they're in no position to take it back to the Philistines and get that and win that back. I believe the atmosphere in Israel when we come to our text this morning is despair, and maybe even a hopeless fear among the people.

They don't know what's going to happen next, but I imagine that as the soldiers flee and spread the word around about their defeat, that invasion is on their minds. When is the next battle coming, and we can't fight it.

But before a counter-strike, before the Philistines do a counter-strike and wipe out the Israelites or subjugate them and put them into slavery, the coastal tribe of warriors first settle the spoils of their first war, they've obviously taken spoils, as would be common, and they've taken the ark, and so they settle the ark 30 miles from Ebenezer to Ashdod, and they settle it there in the temple of one of their primary god.

Now, Ashdod was the most prominent of the five primary cities of the Philistines. There were five primary cities on the coast, or in the coastal region, rather, of Israel, on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and they took the golden box of God and set it up in the temple of Dagon, and they placed it right next to the big stone guy.

They got a big stone guy in there, and they set the ark just outside of the area of worship. We're gonna see that when Dagon falls, he's gonna break his neck off on a threshold. That threshold was the area considered of worship when the priests crossed, that only holy people could cross the threshold in these temples, and that's what's going on there.

So in order for Dagon to bow down to the ark and have his head cut off and his hands cut off outside of the threshold, that means that the ark was not an object of worship to these people. They weren't setting it up there to worship it.

They were setting it outside of the realm of worship, but like a trophy to their god. Look at the power of Dagon. Look at what he has done for us was the idea behind the setting up of the ark in that place.

And a word of introduction to Dagon might be helpful to us. How many of you ever heard that name before? How many of you know much about that aside from just having read it right here? Probably not many of us know a whole lot about Dagon.

Many scholars believe that Dagon was a god of the sea, was the perspective. He was depicted as a half man, half fish, and so the statues that we've uncovered of him, the bottom half a fish, the top half a man, and so it was basically, you got it, a merman.

Merman. His son, Baal, how many of you heard that name before? You've heard that one, right? That's a really common biblical name that we see the Israelites encounter regularly, the worship of Baal. And his son, Baal, was considered to be the god of weather.

He's the god of the sea,.

And of course, what springs up out of the sea? If the sea is to your west, if Lake Michigan is to your west, what springs up out of Lake Michigan? Weather, right? You end up getting a whole lot of lake effect stuff going on because of the water there.

And so it was literally, you can understand the logic in that ancient culture of going, well, there's the sea, and the god of the sea, and what springs up out of that? Well, the god of the weather. And so that was the idea of Baal, the storm god,.

So to speak.

And occasionally, we sing a song here at Recast. We sang it last week called Who Is Like You. How many of you remember that song, or you remember singing it from time to time? We sing that song, Who Is Like You, and a line in that song could be confusing, and it has been confusing to some people in the past.

The line is this.

We sing it regularly. It's who among the gods, lowercase g, who among the gods is like you? We're singing that to God. By the way, I love that song.

It's biblical.

It literally is singing scripture. I don't know if you realize that. You could look it up on Genesis, I mean, sorry, Exodus chapter 15 is exactly where you find that, a song of Miriam, and we sing part of that, and it's scripture.

But I had someone ask me one time if we actually believe, this was a genuine question from somebody who came and visited here, and we happened to sing that song. They said, now, so is this a church that believes in a lot of gods, and you just think your God is the best one?

Like, is that kind of what you're, is that what you're getting at here? You know, who among the gods is like our God? And so let me clarify what scripture says, because the text doesn't tell us, by the way, one way or another, you just read this, it doesn't tell you whether you're supposed to believe that Dagon is just a piece of stone that was chiseled out to look like a merman, or is there a real spiritual being called Dagon?

And I don't know if you've ever wrestled with that idea, like, are there other things back there? Are there other, is there other stuff going on? And it's a question that the text doesn't answer, but scripture does answer it.

Like, you might just go, well, there's no power in idolatry, right? There's no real, there's really no hocus pocus. It was just priests deceiving the people, and of course, when you left your milk and cookies for Dagon, it was the priest eating it, right?

I mean, that was what was going on there. So that was the, you know, is that what's going on? 1 Corinthians, Paul helpfully answers the question, he asks the question in the text of 1 Corinthians, is an idol anything?

He asks that question in the middle of his letter to the church in Corinth, who's struggling with some of these things. He says, is an idol anything? And he answers that by saying this. I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God.

I do not want you to be participants, still Paul quoting, still quoting Paul. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

In context, Paul is addressing the Greek practice in that different pantheon of gods, the one that we're a little bit more familiar with. Thanks, Percy Jackson. But we get that a little bit more, but he indicates that there is indeed a spiritual power that goes on behind these idols, that there was in history and that there is even today.

It's pretty clear that scripture indicates that there is power behind pagan practices of idolatry. They're not gods, but demons who would love to be worshiped by mankind as gods. I believe that Satan is quite powerful and the worship of idols has drawn many into the realm of worshiping him and his demons, even around the world today.

So what the Philistines worshiped here as Dagon was actually a piece of rock that demons were all too happy to infuse with fear and awe-producing power. I'm sure that they had their stories of things that Dagon had done for them, things that Dagon had done and the grandmothers would tell stories to their grandkids about his exploits and his power and that they saw him one time do this or this or this.

And the ark that represented the presence and power of God has been brought into Dagon's house. It's brought in as a trophy. Say, how powerful is Dagon? He can defeat this God who defeated the Egyptians.

Look at Dagon, look at how awesome and powerful he is. Probably brought in even as an offering to Dagon, as a sign of his power over this Israelite deity. It's brought in one day and the very next morning after the ark is brought into the temple, behold, the text tells us, behold, I love that word because it's the author's attempt to tell you, check this out, you're not gonna believe what happens next.

Every time you see the word behold, fill in the blank, fill in that word with check this out. The priests come in to find Dagon bowing on his face before the ark. The statue of Dagon has fallen and he can't get up.

Now as unsettling as this may have been to the Dagon worshipers, it could have just been coincidence, right? It might have just been, you know, just a thing that happened, you know, maybe there was a little bit of an earthquake, nobody, everybody slept through it, they didn't notice it or whatever, but the statue fell over.

So look at the end of verse three with me. You can go ahead and look at the text, but feel free to read it with all the dripping sarcasm that you can muster. I believe it was written with sarcasm, it was intentionally written to draw a little bit of a snide comment.

They took Dagon and put him back in his place. They picked up Dagon and put him back where he belonged, on his nice little pedestal there. I wonder if they had to buy a life alert for Dagon. You know, I mean, if he keeps falling and he can't get up, it would be nice for him to have a little button he can push just to get, you know, get his priests and everybody back in the room to help out.

Maybe they could come rescue him quicker. Wouldn't have to wait till the next morning, but Dagon needed help. Do you see that in the text?

He needed help.

He needed his priests and followers.

And maybe even some pulleys to get back on his pedestal. He needed assistance. But just in case it was assumed to be coincidence by the priests and those who worship Dagon, it happened again the next day, but behold, check this out, it's there again in the text, check it out, this time Dagon fell down and his head and his hands have broken off on the threshold and only his fishy body was left intact.

God would not share his glory. God will not share his glory. God will defend his glory and God doesn't need anyone to intervere for his vindication. God goes into Dagon's house and defeats him on his own turf.

Verse five tells us something significant, by the way, about human nature that I find kind of depressing and funny simultaneously. It sounds at first like an, just merely, when you first read verse five, it just sounds straight up like an explanation for why the priests don't do something in the age and the era of the author, right?

I mean, if you just read it at face value, this is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon and Ashdod to this day. It just gives it as a reason.

But there's two observations that are kind of disappointing regarding human nature. Our nature, the stuff that we're made out of. Not just the stuff that these pagans in the ancient world were made of, but the stuff that you and I are made of.

And that's just simply that this fall of Dagon isn't the end of Dagon worship.

It's not the end.

How many of you think that when this kind of, you know,.

Idol in the lives of the people is exposed for what it is,.

You'd like to just see it fall away and go away?

How many of you think that that might be the logical conclusion? Raise your hand if you think that that might be logical.

But we're not logical.

Our hearts don't follow the patterns that they ought to because we're broken. It's ironic that the worship of the statue continues on. And I would suggest to you that John Calvin had it right when he said that the human heart is an idol forge.

A forge of idols. We are constantly looking for something to worship, and in the absence of our looking around and seeing something good, we'll create something if we need to.

We make stuff to worship.

Inside every heart there is set the knowledge of eternity. It's in you and it's in me, and it's in every person that you've ever met. The knowledge that there is more. You know it. The atheists know it.

The atheists writing these books, they know it. They know that there's something more.

Every human heart knows that there is more. More meaning, more to live for, more to thank, more power, more hope. The human heart knows that there is more. So how in the world can the worship of Dagon go on, you ask?

Don't quickly dismiss the power of religious superstition. When superstition and religion and fear come together, particularly in a religious context, it forms a bond that is very difficult for our hearts to break.

Let's take that on as an application point for us all this morning. First and fundamentally, to beware of the place in your own hearts where you let religion and fear mingle. Religion, the hunger, the desire to please a deity, the efforts that we make.

So be careful where that is fueled by fear in your life. When you do religious things out of fear, not the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom kind of fear, because that's where it all starts, by the way.

The start to the pathway of freedom and grace begins with fear. That's where it all begins, but it can't end there. And that is not the fuel of your life. The fuel of your life isn't fear. The start of your journey to God was fear.

Do you hear the difference? But perfect love casts out all fear, and the fear in my life drove me to understand and recognize Christ and his perfect love for me that now drives that very fear of him out because now I know I'm loved by him.

Do you get that?

Do you see how that's different? It's not that kind of fear that I'm talking about here. It's the kind of fear that you base your life on. When you do religious things out of fear, you are not coming to God through his free gift.

And the fact of the matter is, nobody is saved by serving God. You can't be saved by serving God. That's a pagan concept. That's an idolatrous concept. We only truly serve God when we accept his forgiveness and love poured out through Christ on the cross for us.

When we let the fear have its way in our hearts to drive us to his mercy, to drive us to his grace. There was a point where we had a legitimate fear. Every one of us had a reasonable fear of falling into the hands of the almighty God, but now there's no fear.

For those in Christ Jesus, there is therefore now no condemnation over you. Anybody wanna say amen to that? There's no more condemnation for us. We have, how can we be called to joy in light of all the weight of the things that we've done against a holy God?

Because he's paid for it.

It's taken care of.

It's been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.

That's our hope.

Nobody is saved by serving God, not at all, but by coming to him for his mercy. The second ironic observation is that the worshipers of Dagon commemorated the humiliation of their God. Here, do you see that?

It's actually commemorated by an act that they continually do. They don't step on the threshold of the temple anymore. They jump over it every time. And instead of acknowledging the supremacy of the almighty God in this circumstance, they went on to avoid the material thing that cut off their God's head and hands.

Now, humans are weird.

We're weird in the way that we do things. And while Dagon has lost his head and his hands, there's a play that goes throughout this text. He has no more hands. His head has been severed off. But the hand of the true and living God was heavy.

Just one hand. The hand of the almighty God was heavy on the Philistines in Ashdod. It's heavy while Dagon sits with no hands. They were struck, the Philistines in Ashdod were struck with terror. They were afflicted with, swellings would be a better interpretation.

When we think tumor, we go to cancer, and that's not, then you're going, well, what's going on here? What kind of cancer do they have? It's swelling is what's going on here. And Dagon needed help getting up, but the almighty God is able to judge the enemies of his people here with emotional as well as physical infirmity.

And most scholars believe that this was probably the bubonic plague. You might even see that in, if you've got a study Bible, it might even mention that down there because of the nature of the swellings.

And we'll see next week that when the Philistines go to remedy the situation and to make it right, and they go to send an offering back to Yahweh, to the Israelites, they will send swellings. They send these basically like they take the tumors and they make gold casts out of them, and then they send a bunch of those.

And then they also send mice back. Why would they send mice? Because they are attaching and connecting the mice to the disease, which was obviously down through history, bubonic plague has been carried by rodents and a big problem down throughout history, and a notorious problem in coastal communities like Philistia, it's a coastal community.

Now, I'm not at all suggesting that there's only strictly some kind of a naturalistic explanation for this. At the end of the day, God uses natural things to accomplish his will. So I probably tend to, it doesn't necessarily matter what the disease was, but it probably was bubonic plague, and most people see consistency in that.

But the Philistines made the connection that the ark, the presence of the ark was causing this problem. And so, interestingly, ironically, somewhat funny, the ark begins its own personal battle tour around Philistine territory, decimating the population and weakening the Philistines wherever it goes.