She was obviously tired of discussing the issue. The wrangling had gone on long enough. Neither side was about to give in to the other. It was time for somebody to settle this matter.
So she drew herself up to her full five feet two; she threw her shoulders back; and with that certain toss of the head and that rising tone of voice, she flung it out there, "You all can do whatever you want to. But my God tells me to do this."
"My God tells me to do this." That’s one way to settle an argument: bring in the heavy artillery! But I confess to being a bit scared of people who drag in God by the hind legs. I confess I am skeptical of people who claim to have such a handle on God that they can declare with no uncertainty whatsoever what God is about. I get uneasy when someone tells me that the Spirit told her to say this or that God has led him to do that.
I get uneasy, not because I don’t think that the Spirit speaks or that God leads. I get uneasy because I have noticed that when we get into tight spots, we use God, we define God, and we put God into a corner. Have you seen that? When things get tough, and we feel like we are losing, then we start talking pointedly about what God will do and about what God wants. Defining God.
One of our great expectations, in chaotic times, is that, "I can define God." When everything that’s not nailed down is coming loose, we hope that we can at least nail God down.
But that’s elusive at best and idolatrous at worst. It is elusive to try to define God. It’s something like the old puzzle about what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Like the fellow said about his forceful mother-in-law interacting with his stubborn son, he didn’t know what would happen, but he wanted to watch it at a safe distance! Defining God is elusive; the story is that years ago Dr. Dale Moody, who taught systematic theology at Southern Baptist Seminary, gave a final exam that consisted of one and only one question: "Discuss God". What would you do with an exam question like that? Maybe you would answer it like the Sunday School student did, who was told by his teacher to go sit in a corner and draw a picture of the Holy Spirit. Well, he thought and he thought and he rummaged around his Bible for a little while, and came up with the answer, a perfectly blank piece of paper! May be a very good response. Defining God is elusive.
And defining God gets to be idolatrous, too. Some years ago, J. B. Phillips wrote a fine little book called, "Your God Is Too Small". He said that in the crunch times of life we try to define and limit God, and, bottom line, we make a God who serves us.
The armies of Israel had suffered defeat at the hands of the Philistines. They had so often been victorious, but now they had to contend with a disastrous defeat. How could this have happened? And what could they do now?
I
Have you noticed that when things go sour, we are tempted to turn to religion? I did not say, turn to God; I said, turn to religion. We are tempted to turn to religion, when we feel that everything is coming apart.
When the battle with the Philistines had been lost, the leaders of Israel gathered for a post mortem. They said, "Why has the Lord put us to rout today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, so that he may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies? So the people sent to Shiloh, and brought from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim."
The ark of the covenant, that portable shrine, had been made as a device in which to carry the tablets of the law. It was created to be a symbol of the presence of the liberating God. It was designed to remind them that at special times, their God had come forth and had fought for them.
So what were they about to do? They were about to confuse the symbol with the reality. They were about to say that it was the ark that had won the battles. They were about to bring in the ark, thinking that this box would fight for them. They thought they could define God in a box. Religion was more interesting than God. It’s like taking a piece of fruit and peeling it, then eating the peeling and throwing away the fruit! We miss the reality because we are so enamored of the package!
Think about how we use prayer. We pray for what we want, and expect it to happen just because we’ve prayed it. We think that if we use the right package, we’ll get the goodies. That’s not faith in God. That’s faith in faith, and ultimately that’s faith in ourselves.
Think about how we use the church. Some join the church and participate in it, thinking that that earns us a special place in God’s favor. God has to be nice to us, because we have been so nice to Him! But that’s defining God by religion.
That’s using the ark to box God up and make Him do what we want Him to do. I assure you, God is greater than our imagining, God is more free than we suppose, and God is beyond our prayers, beyond the church, beyond Christian tradition, beyond anything else we might corner Him in.
The first mistake Israel made was to define God as religious practice. As a box. And we cannot define God that way, anymore than we can contain the ocean in a five-gallon bucket. God will do what God will do, not what we try to make Him do.
II
In fact, so often, when our lives are going wrong, the real issue lies in our own integrity, not in what God is doing. The fault lies with us and not with God. Sometimes, not always, mind you, but sometimes, life comes unglued because we have played fast and loose with truth, we have acted as though morality doesn’t apply to us, and we have acted as though God did not matter.
There are some intriguing characters who are mentioned in this story. The sons of Eli, the high priest: Hophni and Phinehas. Hophni and Phinehas were tending the ark while it was off in Shiloh. But we know more about Hophni and Phinehas than that. If you read back two chapters earlier, you find out that these were two first-class scoundrels. They would steal the sacrificial offerings that people brought to the shrine; they would extort larger gifts from the people who came to worship; and they would seduce the women who worked around the shrine. They were thoroughly despicable, horribly distorted young men.
And so when the text throws in this little statement about the two sons of Eli being there with the ark, well, the plot thickens. The plot thickens because not only do you have the leaders of Israel defining God, hoping to control Him for their own cause, but also you have two men, posturing as the servants of God, who are really hypocrites, liars, and cheats. Are you beginning to see why Israel lost the battle?
I can see a nation which ignored the sin and the faithlessness of its leaders and still wondered why it lost the battle. I can see a people, blessed with knowledge and resources, going down the tubes because they looked aside when morality was being flaunted. And they lost the battle. Bring it home: I can imagine a church, filled with educated people and knowledge and finances and lots of good things, but if it acts as though God’s law does not matter, it will lose the fight against the world. I can see us, given many advantages, given many privileges, but if we pretend that the sin in our lives does not matter, we are forfeiting our lives. If I throw away my integrity, I am not going to be victorious.
Mrs. Clara Scott and I had a good conference this week. She spoke of what she sees here and there. She said, "A lot of folks just go to church because that’s what they think nice people are supposed to do. But they don’t have the first idea what they are committing to when they join a church." Amen, Clara. And thank you. You are right on target. The name of the game is integrity. It’s about truth and consistency and living up to God’s standards. It’s not about posing and posturing and being a nice church person. Hophni and Phinehas cut a good figure; they knew how to do that religion thing. But they lost their lives in the battle, for this Bible says, "You can be sure that your sins will find you out."
The issue is that I think I can define God. I think I can limit Him so that He will not care about sin. But I will be horribly surprised to find out that it is not so, not so.
III
So watch what happens next. Look at the response of the enemy. Look at what the Philistines did with this situation. "When the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded. When the Philistines heard the noise of the shouting, they said, ’What does this great shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean?’ When they learned that the ark of the Lord had come to the camp, the Philistines were afraid, for they said, ’Gods have come into the camp.’ They also said, ’Woe to us! For nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness."’ Wow! These Philistine guys know their Bible! They’ve almost got it right. Oh, they speak of gods instead of God, so, like lots of people out there in the world, they don’t know all our religious language. But, do you get the flavor of this? They think that the divine is really there! They believe that power has entered the fray! They haven’t defined God; they know that God is unleashed! They think He is powerful! The world respects what we stand for, sometimes more than we respect it ourselves! The world admits what we won’t, the power of
God!
But ... did that settle anything? Did that make the enemies of God’s people wither up and run away? Not on your life! Instead it put some extra steel in their spines! Instead it made them work all the harder! "Take courage, and be men, 0 Philistines, in order not to become slaves to the Hebrews as they have been to you; be men and fight." The world respects what we stand for. But it does not give up its destructive agenda. It does not back off. In fact, it builds, it strengthens and deepens, it widens and intensifies, because the world knows that God cannot be defined and that therefore it will have to work all the harder to do its deadly deeds.
Isn’t it interesting that we as God’s people are so careful and cautious in our witness, and the world is so powerful in its witness? Isn’t it intriguing that we, who are supposed to have access to the very throne of God, soft-pedal what we have to say, because we wouldn’t want to offend? So we piddle around in the trappings of religion, while the world goes for the jugular. The world goes for the real thing, the hearts and minds, souls and bodies of people, because the world knows it’s up against power. How do we do our witness? IF we do one at all, we never going to go up to someone and say, "You need Jesus Christ in your life." That would be intimidating, that would be gauche, that would be tasteless. Instead we will say, "You would enjoy our church. The music is very lovely." Or "You ought to come check us out sometime. Everybody is so friendly and they won’t put you on the spot." "It will only be an hour and a half a week." But, you know, the last time I looked, the liquor ads said, "we want you", and the casino posters said, "come get rich" and the special industry that lives on lower 14th Street advertised its wares quite brazenly. They don’t seem to care whether anybody is offended. They know, like the Philistines, that they are up against God, and must fight all the harder to win.
We His people define and limit God! The world knows He is powerful and sets powerful strategies. And so the world wins the battle. No surprise, is it?
IV
What are we going to do about all of this? How are we going to change it? How are we going to get out of the mess of evil that is swamping us? The story doesn’t get better. It gets worse. The efforts to limit and define God just get more intense and more depressing. I hope you can make it through the rest of this Scripture; I may need to pass out euphoria pills at the door! What God’s people do to themselves is beyond belief!
The first battle had been lost, so they brought in the ark. They thought they could get this God in a box to fight for them. But the enemies of God’s people just intensified their efforts, and this second battle was lost too. The losses were huge. 30,000 soldiers fell, among them Hophni and Phinehas, the corrupt sons of Eli. And the ark of the Lord was captured. The box that they thought contained God was in the hands of the enemy. Things can’t get worse than this, or can they?
The news began to spread through the towns and villages of Israel. A breathless messenger made his way back to Shiloh, where Eli sat waiting. 98 years old, sick and blind, overweight and overburdened, Eli heard the terrible news. Thirty thousand soldiers are dead, Eli. That’s bad. Your two sons are dead, Eli. That’s real bad. And the ark of the Lord has been captured. The text says; "When [the messenger] mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell over backward ... and he died."
When you lose your idols, it’s fatal. When you have given yourself to a limited God, and that false God fails you, as it will, it will kill you. When you care about your privileges and your image more than you care about people, you are already dead, spiritually. Eli took the shock of the deaths of thirty thousand soldiers. Ho-hum. Eli dealt with the loss of his sons; after all, he as much as anybody knew how rotten they were. He dealt with that, too. But what knocked the old man over was the capture of his idol, the loss of his illusions, the failure of his limited and quite carefully defined God. You may live to be 98 or 198, but you may have been dead for most of those years, because your faith was in something other than the living God. Your faith was in your own goodness. Your faith was in your own decency. Your faith was in your education, your wealth, your attainments, your reputation, your contributions to society. In everything but the true and living God Himself. And when the education cannot be remembered, the wealth is dwindling, your attainments are unknown, your reputation is forgotten, and your contributions are exceeded by others, well, then, what is left? Might as well keel over and die. False gods, defined gods, will fail us.
By contrast, let me take you with me to a bed not far from here, where today a woman of almost the same age as Eli lies. When you speak with her, out of her heart comes praise for a living Savior. When you start quoting a Scripture verse, her mind, though clouded by bleeding and the passing of the years, comes alive, and she finishes your quotation. Mrs. Sallie Burwell will tell you today that she trusts in Christ and in Christ alone. No false gods for her. No gods that fail and are captured. No death, either. No death for those who let God be God. False gods kill; our God gives life abundantly.
V
This Bible story ends on a tragic note. But the tragedy is, there was hope, and they missed it This story ends as desperately as it began, but the issue is, they didn’t see what God, our unlimited God, was doing.
Not only did the thirty thousand fall. Not only did the two sons of the high priest taste the bitter harvest of justice. Not only did the God-box get taken away, and not only did the high priest break his neck. But also a young woman, Eli’s daughter-in-law, gave birth to a child. Before she too died she named him, "Ichabod". It means, "The glory has departed." It’s all over. It’s done. My family is ruined, my life is gone. Israel is finished, God is finished. "Ichabod". The glory has departed.
The trouble is, she missed what God was doing. She missed the answer that God gave her! For God gave new life in the aftermath of death, and she didn’t see it as a sign of hope. The tragedy is not that there was another death, but that when God sent life, she didn’t see what it was. God gave a life full of new possibilities, and she didn’t catch what God was doing. You see, when we define God only by the measure of what we have experienced, it’ll be a sad, sad tale. But God is so much more than that. God is so much greater than that. And God is so much more gracious than that. And if you limit Him only to what you feel in the tummy, you’ll miss out on what God really wants to give you.
A child, a child is a sign of hope. His mother saw only "Ichabod", the glory departed. But a child is a sign of hope. It was only a few centuries later that God spoke to the prophet Isaiah and through him said, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, which means, God with us." Immanuel.
You can be Phinehas’ wife and see only lchabod, the glory departed. But you can also look for Immanuel, God with us. You can be trapped in the past and see only defeats and difficulties, and even when there is a sign of hope, you can say, lchabod, the glory departed. As for me, I don’t want to go there. I want to be caught up in the future, I want to be captivated by the coming victory of our God. I want to see Immanuel, God with us.
I have bet my very life on Immanuel, not lchabod. I have bet my life on a God who will not be limited by the defeats I may have suffered in my struggle with myself. I will not say lchabod, the glory departed; I will say Immanuel, God with us.
I will bet my life on a God who will not be defined by the battles our church may fight and lose, lchabod battles. I will bet it all, all of it, on the Christ whose church will prevail against the very gates of hell. I will bet it on Immanuel.
lchabod folks think there will never again be anything to live for. Immanuel people know that the best is yet to come.
lchabod folks squeeze God down into so small a package that they believe that nothing can get better. Immanuel people know that they can never give up on anybody, any time, because you can never rule out what God may do.
lchabod people come to church and say, it’s not what it used to be, poor old God and His poor little church. Immanuel people fairly shout with every victory, every new believer, every baptism, every dollar for missions, every new ministry, every new thing that God brings to birth. Immanuel people do not limit God!
Which God will be your God? The Ichabod god you have defined, whose gifts you don’t even see? Or the Immanuel God whose very life is poured out for us, for his church and for his world, poured out toward victory. Immanuel, God with us, the hope of glory.
Come on, come on. We’re marching through Immanuel’s ground.
