When Gods Fall

When gods Fall

1 Samuel 5:1-5

{Audio: https://mega.nz/#!WJ8jyCCD!MQ1ezq95mWV4EG9ta63rxpa3hoo2g5tjCbzDkRJG0wM}

How many of you remember Steve Urkel’s signature phrase from the TV series, Family Matters? “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Well, I think that’s the signature phrase of the false gods of this world.

Several days ago I received a text that had the following.

“In three short month, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God as taken away everything we worship. God said, ‘you want to worship athletes; I will shut down the stadiums. You want to worship musicians; I will shut down Civic Centers. You want to worship actors; I will shut down theaters. You want to worship money; I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You don’t want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you can’t go to church.”

Now the issue of the sin of idolatry is present in this statement, but for me there is some aspects that I think goes against God’s word, which makes me think that this isn’t a “Thus says the Lord,” but more from someone’s point of view, and possesses a little bit of a spirit of religiosity.

And while I could be wrong, what I do believe is that this is a teaching moment.

Now, there’s a Japanese proverb says a man learns little from victory, but much more from defeat, and someone else said, “There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”

Now, on the surface it sounds like these statements are more defeatist than they are. But their truth is graphically played out throughout history and science, and is particularly seen in today’s story from the life of Israel in the Old Testament.

Today’s story is set in the time frame of Israel’s history that was sad indeed, because it was a time of Israel’s continual disobedience to God and how God’s grace and mercy had to rescue them time and again from the consequences of their disobedience.

At the time of our story, Israel was in a state of spiritual decline; and the Lord had been all but forgotten and relegated to religious traditions and to a piece of property known as the tabernacle where He lived inside a box known as the Ark of the Covenant.

And at the time of this story, Israel felt that it was now the time to get rid of their pesky neighbors and constant enemy, the Philistines. So they gathered together an army and challenged the Philistines to battle, which they ended up losing, to the toon of 4,000 men. Afterwards they gathered together trying to figure out what went wrong, and someone came up with the brilliant idea “Let’s go get the Ark at Shiloh, and then God will come and fight for us and defeat our enemy.”

Now this was just the start of their problems, because they didn’t have a clue as to who God was, and that He wasn’t someone to be relegated to a box. But there was another problem and that was their not going to God in the first place, instead they thought that they could bring God to them, or that they could insert God when and where they needed Him. They never asked God “Why did we get our rear ends handed to us?” Instead they just jumped at the first thing they thought of.

And I truly believe this is the beginning point of many of our own problems. We don’t go and ask God what is the cause of the problems we are facing. Instead we go to others and ask them for their advice, and some of these people don’t even know God, or they know Him about as well as we do. And that’s not all that encouraging.

Instead, we need to be going to God and His word to find the solutions to whatever is plaguing us today.

But here they are, and now they have the Ark of God with them; taken from the tabernacle, something that should never have been contemplated in the first place, and done in the second place. And even worse, they took with them two corrupted priests, Hophni and Phinehas, Eli’s, the high priest, sons.

With such an action on the part of the people, what we see is that they regarded God and the Ark as some sort of lucky rabbit’s foot. In other words, if you took it with you, you’ll probably have good luck. You’ll probably succeed in your quest.

This happens a lot today as people think that they can take God with them in such things as crosses around the neck, or beads in their pockets or on the rearview mirror or their car. Many think if they have a Bible on the table, a picture of Jesus on the wall, or a crucifix hanging over their beds that God is there with them. But that is an attempt on our part to bring God with us, that is, we believe that God is in this or that item or religious relic.