We continue today in 1 Samuel.  Yesterday we saw how the Israelites found defeat when they tried to manipulate and misuse and abuse the ark of the Covenant of the Lord to achieve their battle challenges.  Not only did they suffer a great defeat they also saw the ark captured by the Philistines.  It was a humbling lesson to learn, that the God of Israel cannot be manipulated by or for man’s own plans. 

Now the Philistines have the ark of the covenant of God and they see the God of Israel as one of many gods.  They take the ark and place it in the temple of Dagon their own pagan god.  They place the ark beside a statue of Dagon.  The next morning, they find the statue of Dagon face down on the floor in front of the ark.  They put the statue back in place and come back to the temple the next morning to find the statue’s head and hands broken from the standing torso and place on a nearby threshold.  This was not an accident, something else was going on.  Something else indeed, the Septuagint adds that mice invade the city bringing about a plague, that included tumors.  The Bible says it was heavy on the people.  Their city rulers got together and said what should we do with the ark and they agreed, send it to Gath, another Philistine city.  Guess what went with the ark, the tumors and all included with them.  Gath had enough and sent the ark on to Ekron and yes, the Hand of the Lord was against them as well, tumors, mice invasions, and death followed to each city. After 7 months of dealing with God’s judgement on the Philistines because they were trying to use the ark as an access to the God of Israel, the Philistines summoned their priests and diviners to find out how to get the ark back to the place it belongs. They are given directions of how to send the ark of the covenant of the Lord back to Israel and it included a “guilt offering” with it.  Even the first recipients of the ark among the Israelites lots 70 people who looked inside the ark. Finally, the ark reached a designation where it was taken care of properly by a consecrated priest named Eleazar.

If there is anything, we can learn from this story about our God is that you cannot use God for your own purposes.  You can only submit yourself to God’s purposes.  God cannot be invited into your life to sit among other idols you may hold onto and think it is good or think it will grant you spiritual blessing.  That will not work.  You must yield yourself to the Lordship of Jesus alone, there should only be room for Him in your heart.  Anything else is simply trying to use God as one among many.  It helps us hear the first commandment a little more clearly,

“Do not have other gods besides me.”

Exodus 20:3