I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 4-7.
The Israelites were battling the Philistines and they attempted to use the Ark of the Covenant as a totem to force God to give them victory. Instead, they suffered a crushing defeat. This is a lesson for us. God is not some totem we can call upon to bring us victory, or success, in pursuing our own agenda. However, there is more to this story as well.
The Philistines thought that their victory was an indication that their gods were more powerful than God. In particular, they placed God in a subservient position to Dagon, the lord of their pantheon. The Philistines would very definitely gotten the message of the imagery of the statue of Dagon falling prostrate before the Ark of the Covenant, especially after it happened a second time with the head of the statue breaking off. These combined with the outbreak of plague in Ashdod, and then in Gath when they moved the Ark there, made the Philistines realize that God could not just be integrated into their pantheon. While our attempts to use God for our purposes will fail, and lead others to question the power of God, God will subsequently display His power in a manner which shows that our failure was because our actions did not have God’s support, not because God was unable to grant us success.
When the Ark of the Covenant was returned to the Israelites by the Philistines, the reason and manner of that return inspired a revival in faith among the Israelites. Samuel then told them that if they wanted to return to the Lord they needed to do so “whole hog”. There could be no hedging their bets by continuing to worship other gods, or even by just holding on to the idols and paraphernalia of such worship. If they wanted to return to the Lord, they needed to commit themselves to serve Him alone. That is what God wants from us, that we worship and serve Him above all other things. In today’s world, it is less a matter of worshiping other things we view as gods and more a matter of accepting competing ideologies.