1 SAMUEL 6 - APPROACHING GOD
1 Samuel 6
In this Chapter, we have the return of the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines to the people of Israel. The Ark represented the presence of God to Israel, so both its loss, and its return, had a huge impact on them. The Philistines had been in possession of the Ark for seven months (v. 1), but they were quite tired of it, especially since its presence in their land had brought severe plagues and calamities on them. So, their leaders decided to send it away and give it back to Israel (v. 2-3).
The Philistines also recognized that they needed to send some type of offering with the Ark to atone for their own guilt (v. 4), so they made golden images of the items with which they had been plagued (mice & tumors), and devised a plan to send it back to Israel on a cart pulled by two cows (v. 7-8). The cows had never pulled a cart before, and there was no driver for the cart. The plan was to see where the cows went on their own to take the Ark. If it was to Israel, then they would know that these terrible plagues had indeed come upon them from God, but if they went somewhere else, then they would know that the plagues had just happened as matter of chance (v. 8-9).
Amazingly, these cows, under the sovereign power of God, took the cart to Israel, and as it entered the land, the people there rejoiced and offered up offerings and sacrifices to the Lord (v. 13- 14).
However, in doing so, they improperly handled the Ark by allowing unauthorized men to handle it, and by not carrying it in the manner that had been prescribed by God, and also by looking inside of it, all of which was prohibited by the Law. As a result, God struck 70 men dead on the spot. The men who remained then declared what really is the key verse of the chapter, and frankly one of the essential verses to truly understanding and appreciating the Gospel, when in (v. 20) they say “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this Holy God?”
What happened to the 70 men, seems like a harsh result, but it was to make a point.
You see, God, because He is holy and all powerful, gets to decide how He will be approached, and how we must relate to Him. We cannot stand before Him on our own, and just come to Him any old way that we wish or that seems right to us. This truth was seen way back in Genesis 4, where God accepted Abel’s offering of the shed blood of an innocent lamb, but rejected Cain’s offering of the fruit of his labors in the field. The ultimate revelation of this truth is found in Jesus, who declared in John 14:6 that no one can come to the Father, except through Him.
There may be many ways to come to God that seem right to us, and the religions of the world are full of them, but they all lead to eternal death and judgment. It is only in Jesus who has, by shedding His own innocent blood, completely paid the price for our sins which separate us from God, that anyone can stand before Him and approach Him.
The Philistines, for all their brutality, were still a religious people.
They knew that God was holy, and that their sin needed to be atoned for, but they wanted to do it their way, through their little golden images. The Philistines even recognized the power of God and His superiority over their own gods, for in (v. 5) they acknowledged that God could, if He wanted to, lighten His hand that was set against them and their own gods, and they seemed to even know that He could sovereignly direct the cart back to Israel. Yet, not only did they wrongly figure that they could appease Him on their own, but they really wanted no fellowship with Him, and instead tried to send Him away on that cart.
In a sense, they believed in God, but they would not submit to Him and worship Him as Lord.
Before we dismiss the attitude of the Philistines as the obvious lunacy that it is, we need to examine our own hearts for how we can sometimes be pretty much like them. God does not want us to merely acknowledge His presence and power. He wants us to acknowledge His person and desire fellowship with Him, and to submit to Him as the Lord of our life. He has manifested His person in Jesus, and offers us a loving relationship with Him through Jesus. Eternal life is described in John 17:3 as knowing God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. God can only be known through Jesus, because He is the only one who removes the barrier of sin that would otherwise separate us from God and His holiness.