1. "Loss is a far truer summary of life than gain is. And when you realize that, you're seeing the world more clearly than all the shiny, happy people around you who have no idea."

2. "Brothers and sisters, if you want help from God, use the means God has given. If you want to know the will of God, study his word, search his word. If you want to know how to apply it to your circumstances, get godly counsel."

3. "This God will not be manipulated, this God will not be controlled. In prayer we genuinely ask God to hear and answer and all the while we submit to his sovereignty. And no, he's not at our beck and call."

4. "Some losses are self-inflicted and grasping for control only makes them worse."

5. "What happens when idols fail? So often, their worshipers work to restore and rebuild them. Idols demand more and more while giving less and less."

6. "This God, the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, is no prized trophy. He is no genie. He is no rabbit's foot. He is no divine vending machine. And if you treat him as though he is any of those things, then one day you will discover that he is an unbearable threat."

7. "If this is what God can do during his own exile, what can he do in yours?"

8. "To give God glory is to treat him with the weight he deserves. Is God your moral center of gravity? Is God the heaviest object that draws all your thoughts, your desires, your priorities to him in ever increasing measure?"

9. "He voluntarily checked himself into the prison of Dagon's temple so that he could break himself out. He willingly endured captivity and humiliation in order to say to the Philistines and the Israelites and all of us: watch what happens when it looks like all is lost."

10. "If it turns out that you and God can't very well live in close proximity, if an encounter between you and the one true God causes you problems, the question to ask is not how you can get rid of God but how you can get right with God."

Observation Questions

1. According to 1 Samuel 4:3-4, what did the elders of Israel decide to do after their initial defeat by the Philistines, and what sacred object did they bring from Shiloh?

2. In 1 Samuel 4:10-11, what three major losses did Israel suffer in the second battle against the Philistines?

3. According to 1 Samuel 4:21-22, what name did Eli's daughter-in-law give her newborn son, and what reason does the text give twice for why she chose this name?

4. In 1 Samuel 5:3-5, what did the Philistines discover had happened to Dagon on the first morning and then on the second morning after placing the ark in his temple?

5. According to 1 Samuel 5:6-12, what afflictions did the Lord bring upon the Philistine cities, and how did the people respond as the ark moved from Ashdod to Gath to Ekron?

6. In 1 Samuel 6:19-21, what happened to some of the men of Beth Shemesh when the ark arrived, and what two questions did the people ask in response?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that the Israelites chose to bring the ark into battle rather than consulting Samuel the prophet, and what does this reveal about their understanding of how to relate to God?

2. What is the meaning of the Hebrew word "gala" (translated "departed" in 1 Samuel 4:21-22), and why is it theologically important that this word is used to describe what happened to God's glory?

3. How does the defeat of Dagon in his own temple (1 Samuel 5:3-5) demonstrate the true nature of Yahweh's power, even when He appeared to have been captured and defeated?

4. The sermon emphasizes the Hebrew word "kavod" (glory/heavy) and its wordplay throughout these chapters. How does the concept of giving God proper "weight" or "glory" explain both the Philistines' afflictions and the judgment at Beth Shemesh?

5. How does the three-chapter movement of loss, exile, and homecoming in 1 Samuel 4-6 serve as a preview or foreshadowing of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection?

Application Questions

1. The Israelites tried to manipulate God by using the ark as a kind of good luck charm. In what specific ways might you be tempted to treat God as a "divine vending machine" or to use religious practices to try to control outcomes in your life?

2. The sermon asks, "What is God doing in your dark night?" When you face seasons of suffering or when God seems hidden and distant, how can this passage shape the way you think about what God might be accomplishing beyond your awareness?

3. Eli and his daughter-in-law valued God's presence above all other blessings, even above their own family members. What would it look like this week for you to prioritize God's presence and fellowship with Him above other good things you desire?

4. The people of Beth Shemesh asked how to get rid of God rather than how to get right with God. When Scripture or circumstances reveal uncomfortable truths about God's holiness, what is your typical response, and how might you respond differently?

5. The sermon challenges us to consider whether God is our "moral center of gravity" and whether His approval weighs heavier on our hearts than any human opinion. What is one specific decision or relationship this week where you need to give God's approval greater weight than the opinions of others?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Exodus 33:12-17 — This passage shows Moses declaring that God's presence is more valuable than any other blessing, echoing Eli and his daughter-in-law's response to the loss of the ark.

2. Ezekiel 10:1-22 — Here the prophet watches God's glory depart from the temple due to Israel's sin, providing a parallel to the "exile" of God's presence in 1 Samuel 4.

3. Mark 5:1-20 — This account of Jesus casting out demons and the people's request for Him to leave their region illustrates the same wrong response as the people of Beth Shemesh who wanted God to go away.

4. Philippians 2:5-11 — This passage describes Christ's voluntary self-humiliation and subsequent exaltation, paralleling how God willingly allowed His ark to be captured before demonstrating His sovereign power.

5. Revelation 6:12-17 — The sermon references this passage about the day when people will seek to hide from God's presence, emphasizing the urgency of getting right with God now rather than trying to escape Him later.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Inevitability of Loss and the Question of What God Can Do About It

II. Point One: Loss—Israel Suffers the Greatest Loss They Can Imagine (1 Samuel 4)

III. Point Two: Exile—What God Did During His Own Exile (1 Samuel 5)

IV. Point Three: Homecoming—The Lord Returns from Exile (1 Samuel 6:1–7:1)

V. The Gospel of Divine Self-Substitution and the Call to Trust in Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Loss is something we often try to ignore. If tragedy strikes someone far away, you might think to yourself, well, at least it wasn't me, and then move on with your life.

When loss hits too close to ignore, you might downplay it, say it's not a very big deal.

If the loss is big enough, you might initially respond with denial. This can't be true. This isn't happening. It must be someone else.

The New Yorker staff writer, Kathryn Schulz, has written of loss, We often ignore its true scope if we can, but for a while after my father died, I could not stop seeing the world as it really is. Marked everywhere by the evidence of past losses and the imminence of future ones.

You naturally want your life to be a series of gains that increase and accumulate and compound, but when you suffer a loss that's big enough, you come to realize that loss is a far truer summary of life than gain is. And when you realize that, you're seeing the world more clearly than all the shiny, happy people around you who have no idea.

As Schultz puts it, loss forces us to confront the limits of existence, the fact that sooner or later it is in the nature of almost everything to vanish or perish.

For some of us, loss has been recent, heavy, overwhelming. But if that's not you and loss seems safely far away, my question for you is, what will you do when loss comes knocking? Loss will come for you because in the end it comes for everything and everyone, here's Shulz again, entropy, mortality, extinction, the entire plan of the universe consists of losing. And no matter how much we find along the way, life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself.

Sooner or later, all of it drifts into the valley of lost things.

One of the hardest lessons of loss is that in the face of the worst losses, you're powerless. You can't prevent it. And you can't restore it. That hard lesson tempts you to seek refuge in either denial or despair.

The worst part about the worst loss is that there's nothing you can do about it. But what about God? What can God do about it? What can God do about the greatest loss that you can imagine. This morning we return to the book of 1 Samuel and we'll work through chapters 4, 5, and 6 and the first verse of chapter 7.

As we'll see in chapter 4, the people of Israel suffer the greatest loss they can imagine. The rest of the passage shows us what God does about it. What can God do about the greatest loss you can imagine. Point one, loss, loss. All of chapter four tells us the story of Israel suffering and responding to the worst loss they can conceive.

Look first at verses 1 to 4. This is on page 228 of the Bibles around you. 1 Samuel 4 starting in verse 1.

And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines. They encamped at Ebenezer, and the Philistines encamped at Ephes-d'or. The Philistines drew up in line against Israel, and when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men on the field of battle. And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, 'Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?

Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it 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. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were there with the ark of the covenant of God. At this point in Israel's history, Israel is dwelling in the land that God promised to make their possession, but they have a lot of strong and powerful neighbors, one of whom is the Philistines to their southwest by the coast. The Philistines are kind of on their way up in a military and political sense. So Israel is having these skirmishes, these battles with them and they lose this one.

The text doesn't tell us why God chose to inflict defeat on the Israelites but it does tell us in verse 3 that it was ultimately God who caused the Philistines to defeat them. They suffered a serious loss. So what should they have done in response? I don't know, maybe ask the prophet God had given them whose word was going around to the whole country. You know that guy with the direct line to heaven?

Who can just find out the will of God and tell it to everybody? Maybe we should ask him. But no. Instead of asking God, they ask themselves, why has the Lord defeated us? Brothers and sisters, if you want help from God, use the means God has given.

If you want to know the will of God, study his word, search his word. If you want to know how to apply it to your circumstances, get godly counsel. Seek out people who know the Lord well and who know you well. And ask for their help. If you want to know God's will, don't ask your feelings.

Ask his word.

So then, instead of seeking an answer from God, the Israelites answered their own question. Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord. This ark was a sacred, gold-covered, portable box. It was about four feet by two feet and it represented the Lord's rule It was his earthly throne, hence the phrase enthroned on the cherubim. It also represented his revelation since it contained the two tablets of the law that he'd given on Mount Sinai.

And it represented his reconciliation because it was the ark that was sprinkled with blood once a year on the day of atonement. So the ark was the visible, tangible sign of God's presence with his people. But here the people misdirect their faith. They trust in this picture of God instead of the God it pictured. They think if we can get this object out in front of us, it'll take care of us.

So the people thought they could guarantee victory by requisitioning the ark. They thought they could control God's presence and actions and thereby control the outcome of their conflict. But God will not be controlled, he will not be manipulated, he will not be strong armed into doing everything we want. Brothers and sisters, one way we as a church guard against treating God as a magic genie who just gives us all of our wishes is by the way we pray together. So in every Sunday morning service we have two whole prayers, two long prayers, in which we do not ask God for a single thing, except at the end of one of them, we ask forgiveness.

So in the prayer of praise, we simply declare how great God is. In the prayer of confession, we declare how wretched we are and we ask forgiveness. Of course, in other prayers like the one I've led us in, we do ask God for what we need and want. Pause if you're wondering why there's no prayer of confession yet this morning. It's because we're having the Lord's Supper at the end of the service and so there's a prayer of confession as part of that.

In any case, Two prayers in which we ask for nothing. Why? Because God is far more to us than a divine vending machine.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, do you view religion as a kind of belief in a lucky magic rabbit's foot? Right? Everybody's got their kind of good luck charm, everybody's got their kind of routines to try to help get a little bit of friendly juice out of the universe. Maybe you think I believe in God because, you know, if I think I just kind of treat him the right way, and do what he wants, he'll just give me everything I want and maybe that's what's sustaining my faith since I'm evidently a very religious person. Now, granted, there are many people who treat many religions that way but I just gotta tell you, that God is not this God.

This God will not be manipulated, this God will not be controlled. Hartmut Rosa is a German sociologist who, as far as I know, is pretty much secular.

But he has a better grasp on who Israel's God is than these Israelites did. He's written a very interesting book called the Uncontrollability of the World and Rosa points out that the God of the Bible cannot and will not be controlled. Rosa says that according to Scripture, humans are supposed to listen to God or hear God's word and God in turn can be reached through prayer. Although this precisely does not mean that he can in any way be controlled. In contrast to what happens in the practices of alchemy or magic, in prayer there is no attempt to manipulate the other side or to engineer a particular result.

That's well said. In prayer we genuinely ask God to hear and answer and all the while we submit to his sovereignty. And no, he's not at our beck and call. So what happened when Israel tried to manipulate God and tried to engineer the result they wanted? Verses 5 to 9.

As soon as the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout so that the earth resounded. And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shouting, they said, what does this great shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean? And when they learned that the Ark of the Lord had come to the camp, The Philistines were afraid, for they said, A god has come into the camp. And they 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. Take courage and be men, O Philistines, lest you become slaves to the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Be men and fight.

As the battle is set to begin, the Israelites are pumped and the Philistines are terrified. They've heard about what the Lord did in the Exodus and they don't want something similar to happen to them. Now, they are mistaken on a few points. A minor point, such as the fact that the plagues happened in Egypt, not in the wilderness. Also a major point, that this is not many gods but one God.

But still, the Philistines recognize God's power and they fear it. The Philistines were right to be afraid, but were the Israelites right to be so confident? Verses 10 and 11: so the Philistines fought and Israel was defeated, and they fled every man to his home. And there was a very great slaughter, for 30,000 foot soldiers of Israel fell, and the ark of God was captured, and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died. This is a resounding defeat.

Seven times more people died in this battle than in the one they lost before. And Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died on a single day, just as God said they would back in chapters two and three, and on top of all that, The ark was captured as plunder of war.

Some losses are self-inflicted and grasping for control only makes them worse.

What is God doing here? He's judging his people for their presumption. He's punishing them for trying to control him. But he's also fulfilling the prophetic word he spoke to Eli. He is at once judging his people and graciously setting his renewing work in motion.

In the rest of chapter four we get two accounts of how people back home responded when they heard the news about this terrible defeat. So first Eli in verses 12 to 18.

A man of Benjamin ran from the battle line and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and with dirt on his head. When he arrived, Eli Eli was sitting on his seat by the road watching, for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city and told the news, all the city cried out. When Eli heard the sound of the outcry, he said, what is this uproar? Then the man hurried and came and told Eli.

Now Eli was 98 years old, and his eyes were set so that he could not see. And the man said to Eli, I am he who has come from the battle. I fled from the battle today. And he said, How did it go, my son? He who brought the news answered and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines and there has also been a great defeat among the people.

Your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead and the ark of God has been captured. As soon as he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell over backward from his seat by the side of the gate, and his neck was broken, and he died, for the man was old and heavy. He had judged Israel forty years.

This is a tragic result of tragic news.

Eli's broken heart caused a fall that would break his neck. But what caused the broken heart? It wasn't the news of Israel's defeat or even the death of his two sons. Verse 18 says, As soon as he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell over backward. And the loss of the ark is equally important in the second report we get, which is in verses 19 to 22.

Now his daughter, Eli, the wife of Phinehas, excuse me, now his daughter-in-law, now his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant, about to give birth. And when she heard the news that the ark of God was captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death, the women attending her said to her, Do not be afraid, for you have borne a son.

But she did not answer or pay attention. And she named the child Ichabod, saying, the glory has departed from Israel, because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, the glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.

Like Eli, his daughter-in-law is crushed by this news. In her case, the tragic report brought on labor, and it seems to have brought about her own death. Like Eli, you might say she died of a broken heart. And like Eli, the fatal blow wasn't the defeat of the people or even the death of her own husband, but the departure of the ark. That's why she names her son what she does in verse 21, calling him Ichabod, or in Hebrew, more like Ichavod.

This name is the Hebrew word for glory, kavod, with a short little word e stuck to the front. That little e could mean where or alas. So, where is the glory or alas for the glory. She doesn't name her son after his father or in a way that commemorates his father's death. Instead, she names him after the departed ark.

That's what verses 21 and 22 tell us twice.

So far from denying her loss, this bold Israelite woman brands her son with it, turning him into a living lament.

What do Eli and his daughter-in-law's attitudes show us? On the one hand, the fact that the people of Israel took the ark into battle shows they wrongly trusted in it. But on the other hand, these responses to its loss show us that these two individuals, at least, rightly prized it. The Ark was the tangible evidence that God dwelt with his people, that he is their God and they are his people. Eli and his daughter-in-law's responses show us that on one level at least, they understood that the presence of God is more important than any earthly blessing.

It is more important to have God with you than to have anything else you could want. As Moses confessed to the Lord in his Exodus 33:15-16, if your presence will not go with me, Do not bring us up from here, for how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth? We need to take another close look at one word in these verses. This time it's departed, as in the glory has departed in verses 21 and 22.

This word is crucial to what's happening in all three chapters.

The Hebrew verb here is gala. In addition to meaning uncover and go away, it's the technical term for going into exile. That's why the ESV gives you the footnote that it does. But who's going into exile here? It's not the people, it's the Lord of the Covenant.

This is just like when in Ezekiel 8 to 10, the prophet watches the glory of God lift off from the temple in protest of the people's sins and head away to parts east. The Lord is personally forsaking his people. He is departing from them. He's withdrawing into his own exile.

So by removing the visible sign of his presence, there's a real sense in which God will now become an exile himself, the captive of foreigners and foreign gods. All of us need a home. All of us want a home. And for many of us, the longing for a lost home is one of those most painful ongoing losses we suffer. There are two ways you can lose home.

One is by leaving, the other is by staying, but having home turn for the worse right under your feet. That second one is what's happened to the Israelites.

The Israelites are now homeless at home. They're exiles in their own land. They are without God. In the world. So what loss could matter more than the exit of God into unknown exile?

Point two, exile, exile. Point one, loss. Point two, exile. The end of chapter four tells us that Yahweh himself went into exile. All of chapter five tells us what he did.

During exile. Look first at verses 1 and 2.

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. At this point, the Philistines were thinking, Aha, now we've got you. Poor pathetic little God of the Israelites. He can't protect his people.

He can't even protect himself. God himself is now undergoing shame, humiliation, degradation, captivity. It's not just Israel who lost, it's their Lord. To all appearances, the Lord himself has been defeated. He's now a prize in Dagon's trophy room.

But keep reading, verses 3 to 5. 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 the head of Dagon in both his 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 enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

Nobody was in that room. No priests were in there. The door was shut. There was no active agent besides Yahweh himself. So on the first morning, the people go into their temple and discover their God prostrate on the ground.

Now he's no longer the triumphant victor, instead his posture pegs him as a humble worshiper giving glory to Yahweh. So what do the people do in verse 3? They put Dagon back in his place. They lift him up and set him upright again. Maybe they even bolted his feet down for good measure.

What happens when idols fail? So often, their worshipers work to restore and rebuild them. They took Dagon and put him back in his place. In America today, many more people worship pleasure and power than more tangible physical idols. But sex and power and money are still false gods.

When's the last time an idol failed you? Have you ever put forth effort to restore an idol to its place? Have you ever said to yourself, maybe this time it'll be different?

Idols demand more and more while giving less and less.

I imagine the Philistines were thinking, maybe this time it'll be different on that second morning until they discovered their god not just prostrate but with his head and hands chopped off. Now Dagon is not just humbled before Yahweh but defeated, decimated, a casualty of war.

The victor has become the vanquished and the vanquished has become the victor. Dagon no longer has a head to think with, he no longer has hands to act with. He's done. The true God has effortlessly de-godded Dagon. But Yahweh is just getting started.

Look at verses 6 through 12 and notice the repeated word hand. Dagon has no more hands, but the hand of Yahweh is heavy against the Philistines. 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.

It's tough to be a hundred percent certain, but it seems that here the Lord is afflicting the Philistines with the Bubonic Plague. It's attested in other ancient sources. It would explain the tumors that broke out on them. That's what the Bubonic Plague is named for. It would explain why there was a deathly panic and so many people died because it's so contagious.

It would also explain what we're going to see later in chapter 6, that in order to send the ark back, they sent it away with golden tumors as an offering and also golden mice. Why mice? Well, the Hebrew word for mice covers a broader range of rodents. The plague is spread by rats, namely by the fleas that live on rats. So anyways, it seems like this is the plague.

Whatever the case, whatever the details are, the point is, unlike the chopped off hands of the impotent Dagon, the hand of the Lord is heavy. On the Philistines, he's judging them, he's humbling them. Despite his apparently captive position as a prisoner of war, he rains down plague. And he does this first on the people of Ashdod. They then wise up, they realize the Lord is doing this to them because they're keeping his ark, and so they do the kind and courageous deed of sending it onto a neighboring city.

The same thing happens in Gath, so the people send it to another city, Ekron, but by that point the people of Ekron wise up and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on a minute. We know all about the destructive deeds of the Ark of Yahweh. We know all about this kind of demolition tour through the Philistines. Yeah, we're not having it. Verse 11, 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.

The question that the Philistines ask in verse 8 is crucial. What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? Here's how one commentator paraphrased it. What shall we do with this prized trophy that has become an unbearable threat? This God, the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, is no prized trophy.

He is no genie. He is no rabbit's foot. He is no divine vending machine. And if you treat him as though he is any of those things, then one day, whether sooner or much later, you will discover that he is an unbearable threat. The great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?

This whole section is a sovereign parody of a victory tour. Yahweh's been defeated in battle, so you would expect the conquering king to parade the conquered king all around through his territory, showing off his power, but instead, The Lord is the one going on a victory tour through the cities of the Philistines. Unlike any of the false so-called gods, Yahweh needs no assistance. He needs nobody's help. He needs no one's power or permission to act as he sees fit.

When it looks like his hands are tied, he can shake off the chains in an instant. He is the self-starter, the self-mover, the sovereign initiative-taker.

He can turn every defeat into victory and every captivity into freedom. He can turn any night into day, any loss into gain, any sorrow into unending newness.

Now, we have to keep in mind where this is happening and who's not there. If you're one of those poor Israelites who's just been defeated in battle twice over and you're one of the survivors, You don't know anything about this. This is all happening in neighboring Philistine country. As far as they knew, Yahweh had simply withdrawn his presence. He had simply slunk away in defeat.

Of all that Yahweh was doing, Israel had no clue. Now, of course, God himself doesn't suffer. He can't literally be taken captive. But the point is he allowed his visible presence. He allowed what was most closely associated with him to suffer a defeat that ruined his reputation.

So chapter 5 shows us what God was doing during his own exile, during his own apparent dark night. It's what he did when he was distant and hidden from Israel. So the question is, what is God doing in your suffering?

What is God doing in your dark night? What is God doing when he seems hidden and distant from you? This text promises us, he's doing all kinds of things you have no idea about. And it will eventually turn out for your good and his glory. When you're in the midst of suffering and it seems like God isn't there, is he any less powerful?

Is he any less purposeful? If this is what God can do during his own exile, what can he do in yours?

But exile, whether God's or yours, is not the end of the story. Point three, homecoming.

Homecoming.

Who comes home? The Lord himself. How does he get back? That's what verses 1 to 6 show us. And this will take us from chapter 6 verse 1 all the way through chapter 7 verse 1.

Point 3, homecoming, starting in chapter 6 verse 1. The ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, 'What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place.' They said, 'If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you. '

and they said, 'What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him?' They answered, 'Five golden tumours and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for the same plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you must make images of your tumours and images of your mice that ravaged the land and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your lands. ' why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away?

And they departed.

These priests and diviners are priests of the Philistines' pagan gods. It's not like they'd somehow exported Israelite priests and Levites.

So, I don't think we're meant to understand that they have a kind of real or accurate knowledge of the true God. It's more just like they're doing their best guess. And God graciously condescends to play along, as we'll see. Like the Egyptians sent away the people of Israel with costly gold jewelry, so the Philistines are sending Yahweh himself up out of their land. Loaded with gold.

God has afflicted them with tumors that were spread by rodents, so they decided to send him back a costly sacrificial offering of the same, sacrificing like for like. The crucial rationale in verses 5 and 6 centers around glory. So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravaged the land and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts?

After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away? And they departed. So these Philistines know about the Exodus and they know what caused it, why the Lord was so severe in his judgment against Egypt. It's because Pharaoh and the people hardened their hearts. So the Philistines are saying, don't do that.

Give him glory as best you can, however you can. Don't make the same mistake Pharaoh did. Throughout these verses and the whole passage is a word play on the Hebrew word for glory, kavod. The word literally means heavy. That's crucial to its metaphorical significance.

So earlier in our passage, Eli is heavy, but we know that he treated God lightly. And so in judgment, God used Eli's heaviness against him. To give God glory is to treat him with the weight he deserves. The Israelites didn't do that and so the glory left. The Philistines haven't done it so far but they're starting to learn their lesson.

Because they didn't give him glory, God brought his hand down heavily upon him. Upon them, rather, all of them. So now the counsel is, give him glory and perhaps his hand will lighten. Treat him with weight and maybe, just maybe, in mercy, he will ease off. That's the trade, the reversal, that the Philistine priests are hoping for.

But this is not just a clever wordplay. This is the heart of the whole issue. This is the heart of what it means to relate rightly to God. You can't just treat him as a genie or rabbit's foot.

You can't just treat him as a vending machine to give you what you want. The question is how much weight does he have in your heart and life? That's the measure, the index of whether you are relating rightly to him. Is God your moral center of gravity? Is God the heaviest object that draws all your thoughts, your desires, your priorities to him in ever increasing measure?

Does his approval or disapproval weigh heavier on your heart than any human opinion?

That's what the Philistines are just barely beginning to discover. And then we see what they do to act on this council in verses 7 to 9. How do they do it? Now then, further counsel from the priests that they're going to take. Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, take their calves home, away from them, and take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart, and put it in a box, excuse me, put in a box at its side the figures of gold, which you are returning to him as a guilt offering.

Then send it off and let it go its way, and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth Shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm. But if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us. It happened to us by coincidence.

So the Philistines set up a test. These milk cows who have recently calved will have overwhelming natural urges to go back to their calves and feed them. So if against that instinct they go straight into Israelite territory, then the Philistines can be confident so they think that there's a higher power at work.

If the cows walk that straight path, it must be the Lord who's caused all these plagues and who we've now, by the way, have successfully gotten rid of. And if not, they all think it happened by chance. Again, this is not a model for how to discern God's work in the world but God plays along. And he writes his signature in the cows' straight footprints across those hills. That's what happens in verses 10 to 16.

The men did so, and took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh along one highway lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and when they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, they rejoiced to see it.

The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there. And they split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. And the Levites took down the Ark of the Lord and the box that was beside it, in which were the golden figures, and set them upon the great stone. And the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices on that day to the Lord.

And when the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned that day to Ekron.

So the people in this Israelite village, Beth Shemesh, are busy at the wheat harvest. They're in a valley. They're plucking all the wheat up. They look up from their work and what do they see? Well, physically, tangibly, they would have seen something that looked like a mini golden golf cart being pulled by some cows.

But they know what it is, they know what it is and they rejoice because there's something much deeper going on beneath that outward reality. Yahweh had been captured, Yahweh had been in exile, and now Yahweh has come home. The Lord returned from his own self-imposed exile, the Lord accomplished his own self-exodus. He voluntarily checked himself into the prison of Dagon's temple so that he could break himself out. He willingly endured captivity and humiliation in order to say to the Philistines and the Israelites and all of us hearing this right now, watch this.

Watch what happens when it looks like all is lost. Watch what happens when it looks like God himself has lost.

He won't stay lost for long. Maybe seven months, maybe three days, but the pangs of death will not hold him.

Three chapters, three movements: loss, exile, homecoming. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Death, burial, resurrection.

This is what God does when it looks like all is lost. Why does he do it? Who does he do it for? He does it for unworthy, undeserving sinners to save us. Think back to chapter four.

The people sin by trying to manipulate and control God. What's the biblical punishment for sin? Exile. Who goes into exile? Not the people who sinned, but Yahweh.

God himself went into exile instead of his people. He endures a kind of death and burial and being shut up in the temple of a false God. But then he defeats the false God, demonstrates his power to the nations, and delivers himself back into freedom. Fellowship with his people. This is divine self-substitution for the sake of salvation.

This is a preview of an even greater exile and new exodus to come. An even greater self-imposed captivity and humiliation and an even greater deliverance. All of us have sinned by rejecting God. All of us have sinned by treating God as if he's something we can control. All of us have sinned by putting false gods in the place of the true God.

And so what all of us deserve is to go into the eternal exile of hell. God would be absolutely right and just to do that. And he promises that those who persist in hardening their hearts against him will wind up on that last day crying out for a place to hide and finding none. But in his great mercy, he became incarnate in order to endure on the cross the ultimate exile that we all deserved. The ultimate covenant punishment for sin.

The ultimate captivity. Humiliation, degradation, and death. And he didn't stop there. When Christ rose from the dead, when Christ walked out of the tomb, death itself lay prostrate on the floor. When Christ got out of the grave, death itself lay decapitated.

The hands of death were cut off and they're never getting put back on. All who believe in Jesus will rise with him. All who repent and turn from sin will be united to him. All who forsake trying to be their own saviors and God controllers and God manipulators will receive this intimate fellowship with him. This unbroken life that will never end and will receive a true home that no exile can threaten.

If you've never turned from sin and trusted in Jesus, if your view of God has been like that magic rabbit's foot, then believe in him, come to him, forsake trying to be in control of God and acting as if he exists to serve you and learn what it means to trust in him alone.

Verses 17 and 18 give us a kind of record for posterity of what the Philistines sent back, a kind of memorial set up so the Israelites would remember what God did. And then verses 19 Through the first verse of chapter 7 gives us one more crucial step in the story. God himself has come back and it's cause for rejoicing. But what happened to God's people when he did?

Picking up in verse 19, and he struck some of the men. Of Beth Shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck seventy men of them, and the people mourned, because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. Then the men of Beth Shemesh said, 'Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up?

Away from us. So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim, saying, the Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord; come down and take it up to you. And the men of Kirjath-jearim came, and took up the ark of the Lord, and brought it to the house of Abinadab on the hill: and they consecrated his son Eleazar to have charge of the ark of of the Lord.

We might think this is going to be all good news, all deliverance, all joy, but then there is a sad and scary repeat of what happened to the Philistines. Verse 19 tells us that the people of Beth Shemesh failed to treat God's ark as holy. I think the best explanation for this is that Numbers 4:5 says the ark had to be veiled so that nobody could see it directly as a sign of reverence. Apparently, they didn't veil it. Apparently, they looked right at it and that failure to treat God's ark as holy was a failure to treat him as holy.

It was a failure to give him due glory, due heaviness. So what's happening here? God's people are acting like Philistines and so he treats them like Philistines. They show their hearts are no different from their pagan neighbors. So God treats them no differently.

There is no partiality with God. Do not think that having some outward identity or outward belonging to God's people will give you a pass with God.

Then the people of Beth Shemesh asked two questions, somewhat echoing the Philistines. The first is a very good question. The second is a very bad question. First question, who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? Good question, that's the question, that's the most important question.

If you're here and you're not a believer in Jesus, that's a question I hope will ring in your ears all day. That's a question I hope you would talk to somebody who you came with or just another believer sitting around here. Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And the answer is not you or me if we're trusting in our own works. Not you or me if we're trying to earn our way there.

Not you or me if we're doing anything other than relying on the salvation he has offered in Christ. Second question, to whom shall he go up away from us?

The Lord himself has only just come back and they're already asking how to get rid of him. This is like in Mark 5 when Jesus sends the group of demons into the pigs and the pigs drown themselves. People see all their prophets go up in smoke and say, Hey, Jesus, get out of here. Mark 5:17. They began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.

If it turns out that you and God can't very well live in close proximity, If an encounter between you and the one true God causes you problems, the question to ask is not how you can get rid of God but how you can get right with God. So often we could see God do something, we could hear something true about him and fail to let the truth of it penetrate our hearts. We could go away and ask exactly the wrong question.

One day, every person in this room will see the glory of Jesus Christ face to face. One day we will come to that scene that Jamie read to us in Revelation 6 where there will be no place left to hide.

And the only way you'll be able to bear the presence of that glory then is if you trust in him now.

The last couple verses tell us how the ark found a temporary resting place in Kiriath Jearim. It seems from Psalm 78 and Jeremiah 7 that in the battle that the Israelites lost, Shiloh itself was destroyed and the tabernacle was destroyed. And so the ark's going to camp out here until David brings it into Jerusalem. So now, end of the story, the Lord is back with his people. But the people aren't back with God.

God has returned from exile, but the people's hearts have not turned to God. They've regained his visible presence, but they're in danger of losing it all over again because their hearts are hard.

In her reflections on loss, Catherine Scholz recounts her father's childhood moves from Israel to Germany, to the United States. She says that he knew the abiding yearning for an unrecoverable home, the abiding yearning for an unrecoverable home. That's the condition of exile. And some people live that condition in a very literal sense, being displaced from their home and living out their days far from the place they know and love. But at a deeper level, we're all exiles.

Ever since Adam and Eve lost Eden for us, we've wandered far from home.

But God incarnate endured the ultimate exile in order to bring us home to him forever. That self-inflicted Exile in our place is what we taste in the broken bread. That divine self-substitution is what we drink in the cup. The exile of God incarnate is the end of exile for all who believe. It's why we can joyfully look forward to the day when our God shall live with us.

And be our steadfast light. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you because you've not treated us as our sins deserve. We praise you because though we cannot stand before you, the holy God, you have given us a mediator to stand in our place. So that we now stand in grace and have access and confidence and boldness to approach you. Father, we pray that we would treat you as holy. Pray that we would give you glory, both in our celebration of the Lord's Supper now and in the lives we live this week.

In Jesus' name, Amen.