Why Has the Lord Defeated Us? • 1 Samuel 4
20:59 Teaching begins
Notes
We’re starting a new year. I hate new year messages because I feel like I have to discern what the mind of the Lord is. I always feel inadequate. But God knows what I need, and He supplied exactly what I need and what you need.
We’re in 1 Samuel chapter four today, because in it we see God refusing to do what His own nation wants Him to do. They want freedom, He not only refuses, He gives them over to defeat, mourning, chaos, oppression, and death.
He is not with them because they are not with Him.
A relationship with God supplies everything good in life, therefore, our first priority is to maintain our relationship with God.
1. Israel goes out to meet the Philistines in battle.
A. We’ve seen so far that the worship of God is at a real low point in Israel. This is the first indication in 1 Samuel of how Israel is doing as a nation.
B. Israel is fighting to free themselves from the Philistines. You can see in verse 9, that Israel is enslaved to the Philistines. The Philistines dominate Israel politically, economically, and emotionally. They hate Israel and they like being dominant over Israel.
C. The only way out that Israel sees is to fight for freedom. Throw off the yoke of oppression, establish their autonomy and determine their own destiny.
D. But this fails terribly. The Philistines are stronger than Israel, they fight better. Israel loses 4,000 men. There’s no freedom today. There’s mourning and defeat, orphans and widows. People are ruined. The situation has gotten worse, not better.
2. The elders of Israel consider their next step and take it.
A. They ask a good question. The rule in life is: ask a good question, get a good answer.
B. But the elders don’t wait to answer their question. There’s no soul-searching, no questioning, why are we in this mess? What does God want? What is God doing?
C. They have an inspiration: we need the presence of God. Let’s get the ark of the covenant out on the battle field that it may deliver us from our adversaries. What a great idea! That has to work!
3. And it seems as if it will work.
A. They get Hophni and Phinehas to bring the ark of the covenant into the camp at Ebenezer. These are the worthless sons of Eli, the high priest who is also the judge, or ruler, of Israel at this time. They’re priests, but they don’t know the Lord, they don’t trust in Him, they despise His worship. Now they have to carry the ark into battle. Who knows what they’re thinking now? “I hope this stuff works.”
B. When the ark comes into the camp everyone shouts till the earth shakes. Every single soldier and commander thinks: “This is it! We’re finally going to be free! This is going to end all our oppression, our poverty, our humiliation. This is the day we pay back those Philistines for how they’ve shamed us and messed us over all these years. No one can beat the Lord!”
C. The Philistines hear the news and they’re scared to death.
1. They keep saying, “Gods have come into their camp!” That is, the name Elohim is a plural form that refers to at least three or more gods. When applied to the Lord, it is a plural of majesty that always takes a singular verb. There is only one God. But the Philistines are used to multiple gods. Oh no! Gods came into their camp!
2. They think, oh my gosh! What if it’s true? They seem to know something of Israel’s history but what they recall is garbled. Yes, God plagued Egypt, and Israel was in the wilderness, but the Philistines run it all together. What if it’s all true and those gods are in their camp?
3. They keep saying, “Nothing like this has ever happened before! We’re facing gods in battle! Fight like men, because everything is on the line. There’s no tomorrow! It’s all or nothing!”
4. Against everyone’s expectations, Israel is completely defeated before the enemy.
A. The Philistines keep fighting and Israel keeps losing.
1. 30,000 Israelites die. Over seven times the losses of the last battle.
2. Worse, Hophni and Phinehas get killed. No armor, no protection. The Philistines run them through and the ark falls to the ground and they say, it’s just a box! We were scared of a box!
B. Israel completely loses control. There’s no hanging together and fighting together. It’s every man for himself, run any which way you can, I have to get out of here alive.
C. So a runner comes to Shiloh to give news of the battle. One reason is that the Philistines are right behind him. They are coming to level Shiloh to the ground. It’s not stated here, but God alludes to this in Psalm 78:60 and Jeremiah chapters 7 and 26. He destroyed Shiloh as completely as He would later destroy Jerusalem.
D. Eli the priest hears the commotion of the people. He was worried anyway for the ark going in to battle. And now he hears the worst news possible: Hophni and Phinehas are both dead and the ark has been taken by the Philistines. He falls off his chair, breaks his neck, and he’s dead.
E. But then Phinehas’s wife hears that her husband is dead and the ark is taken and her father in law is dead. The emotional shock sends her into labor. She dies in childbirth.
F. As she sinks into death she keeps saying over and over, “The glory has departed from Israel. They have taken the ark.”
5. Let’s go back to verse 3 and answer the question asked by the elders of Israel: why has the Lord defeated us before the Philistines?
A. Judges 13:1 Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, so that the LORD gave them into the hands of the Philistines forty years.
B. Doing evil again refers to forsaking the Lord and worshipping other gods.
1. God is not with them because they are not with God. They ignored their relationship with God. They refused to take notice of, failed to give proper attention to, dismissed it as of little importance.
2. They went after the blessings they desired directly, without seeking them through seeking the Lord. Serving God can seem like a roundabout way of getting what you need and what you want. Why not go after what you want directly? Because that is me determining what is good for me. I’m in charge. It is ignoring the One from whom all things come and who is greater than all things. That is to seek other gods and to expect good from these other gods. That is idolatry.
3. When the elders of Israel asked the question, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?”, they are ignoring the bigger issue: their sin before God of seeking other gods. When they say, “Let’s get the ark,”, they’re not saying what do You want, God? They’re saying we are going to make God do what we want. They don’t want God, they want freedom to do their own thing.
4. They didn’t trust in God, they trusted in a golden box. They were continuing to commit idolatry with the very things of God. And they were defeated because God was not in that box. He was not with them, He was against them.
C. This is the judgment that God said He would bring on the nation.
1. It’s one of the curses from Leviticus 26:14 But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, Leviticus 26:17 I will set My face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you.
2. It’s also the judgment that God said He would bring on Eli and his sons. 1 Samuel 2:31-34 Behold, the days are coming when I will break your strength and the strength of your father’s house so that there will not be an old man in your house. You will see the distress of My dwelling, in spite of all the good that I do for Israel; and an old man will not be in your house forever. Yet I will not cut off every man of yours from My altar so that your eyes will fail from weeping and your soul grieve, and all the increase of your house will die in the prime of life. This will be the sign to you which will come concerning your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: on the same day both of them will die.
3. God brought that about on one day. He gives warning and time to repent, and then He executes judgment. Israel is disintegrating as a nation. Eli was their judge, their political leader. He’s gone and so are his sons. Now what? Obey the Philistines. It’s worse than ever now.
6. So what? We’re about to start a new year. Here’s something to consider: Your relationship with the Lord is crucial.
A. Judgment is coming upon the world for idolatry. Seeking other gods. Gods of economics, prosperity, material abundance. Gods of pleasure and satisfaction. Gods of peace and safety. But people are not seeking relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That’s not how you get good stuff. You go after it directly. But God says, “We have a problem. You have forsaken and ignored Me. You have no relationship with Me. You are dead in your sins and transgressions. Therefore your life can’t run right. I cannot bless your seeking after false lying gods. Be reconciled to Me and receive forgiveness and eternal life, and then we can talk the little things that you need.”
B. The continual tendency in our lives is to go after the good thing we need directly and not think, what does God want? What is God saying? Am I listening to Him? Am I praying to Him? How is my relationship with Him? Am I close to Him? We tend towards idolatry and going our own way. Either your relationship with the Lord is the source of your life or you are ignoring it and pursuing your own will and another god.
C. Let me challenge you this year to press into your relationship with Jesus like never before. Make sure you have eternal life with Christ in your life. Seek His will for you. Then let Him work out your needs according to His good, acceptable and perfect will.
1. James 1:17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
2. Matthew 6:31-33 Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
3. Psalm 84:11-12 For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in You!
Let’s pray.