Ichabod

Eli’s daughter-in-law gave birth to a son, and as she lay dying she left him the name Ichabod. When she heard the news that God’s ark had been taken and that her father-in-law, her husband, and his brother were all dead, the shock brought on her labor, and no sooner had she given birth than she died. Samuel had delivered the word of judgment, but Eli and his sons did not believe it. Before Samuel, an unnamed man of God had come and spoken the word of judgment, and after him Samuel heard God’s voice himself and passed on exactly what he had heard. But because Eli and his sons were content with the life they were enjoying at the moment, they cared nothing even for the word of God.

Phinehas’ wife knew that Samuel’s prophecy had at last come to pass, and she named her son Ichabod, meaning “The glory has departed from Israel.” Look closely at what happened here. The glory of God did not depart because the ark was captured by the Philistines. It had no choice but to depart because the priests, who above all should have honored and served God from closest at hand, did not wholly believe and follow his word. Perhaps this woman, knowing God’s wrath, would have urged the proud Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas to turn back. But her pleading had no force, which is why it made no difference to them. In the same way, the words of Jesus left no mark on the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, men who held worldly power, though he preached the gospel to them. To the wicked, the truth is only a sound they would rather not hear.

Yet the Bible has not forgotten her. It hands down to us today the faith of a woman who paid no heed to the son she had borne, and who died grieving for Israel because the glory of God had left it. Where the Bible places its focus matters a great deal. An Israel from which the glory of God has departed is no longer God’s people. Hophni and Phinehas died in the war with the Philistines, but the prayers and the faith of a woman with no earthly power at all left behind a treasured line of descendants.

1 Samuel 14:3

3including Ahijah, the son of Ahitub, Ichabod’s brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the priest of Yahweh in Shiloh, wearing an ephod. The people didn’t know that Jonathan was gone.

Between the account of Saul offering sacrifice to God without Samuel’s consent and the account of Jonathan’s raid on the Philistines, the Bible suddenly introduces one man. Ahijah, the priest who was wearing the ephod and serving God, was the son of Ahitub, and Ahitub was a son borne by the wife of Phinehas. Ahitub had another son, Ahimelech, who appears in 1 Samuel 22:9. Ahimelech is the priest whom Saul slaughtered together with eighty-five priests, because he had given David bread and the sword of Goliath. The descendants of the woman who bore Ichabod carried on a line of upright priests, and in the face of Saul’s threats they chose to die with integrity. That tells us she raised her children in faith. This passage shows how much it matters for a mother to live rightly by faith as she brings up her children.

In 1 Kings 2:26-27 we meet Abiathar. He had seen the holy deaths of his father Ahimelech and the other priests, yet to advance himself he sided with Adonijah instead of following Solomon. Though he made the wrong choice, Solomon forgave him and told him to go back to his home in Anathoth. The faith of one frail woman caused her descendants to be forgiven again and again.

Amos 9:7 records that the Philistines, who were at war with Israel, had come up from Caphtor. Caphtor refers to the region of the island of Crete. Around BC 2000, in Abraham’s time, the Philistines lived on Crete, but in the period of the judges they gained complete control of the southwest of the land of Canaan. From then on they never stopped harassing Israel. They were a people with an advanced civilization and highly developed skill in working iron, and so a corrupt Israel was no match for them.

In its first battle with the Philistines, Israel suffered a crushing defeat in which four thousand soldiers were killed. The battle belongs to God, so when the Israelites were defeated, they concluded that God had caused their defeat, rather than looking at their own sin and repenting of it. When a battle ends in such a rout, we must examine our own faith before we complain that God did not help us.

After the defeat, the elders thought that if they brought the ark of Yahweh’s covenant to the battlefield, God would drive off their enemies. Such thinking might look like great faith. But the elders’ belief that taking the ark into battle would guarantee victory was possible only because they did not understand what the ark was. And indeed, when the ark that had always worked miracles for them came into the camp, the Israelites rejoiced, sure that their victory was now certain. The Philistines, for their part, knew the power of almighty God, and they were seized with fear that they would lose.

Both reactions came from looking at the ark from the human side alone. If we look at the ark, or at salvation, only from the human point of view, we may end up like Israel, who suffered a terrible defeat with the ark right there among them: sure that we are saved, yet without eternal life. To put it simply, it is the same state of faith as the careless idea that God will protect me as long as I wear a cross on a chain around my neck. Holding a worship service in a car after buying it, carrying a Bible in the car that is never read, or hanging a cross in it may show what religion a person belongs to, but none of it is a measure of faith.

The battles of this world are not decided by weapons or by the number of soldiers. A faith that trusts God wholly, and a life lived by that faith, are what bring about God’s help, and that help is what leads to victory in those battles. In the end, every battle fought on earth is decided by the help God gives in answer to the whole faith of his people. My hope is that you will stand in the place of a sinner to the very end and look to God. Only then will you see your sins, though they are as scarlet, made white as snow; though they are red like crimson, God will forgive you and bless you.

As the conduct of Hophni and Phinehas makes clear, the priests and the people wanted to use God to make their earthly lives rich. Blind to their own sin, they thought that if only God’s ark was on the battlefield they would win, but instead they suffered a great defeat. Thirty thousand more soldiers died, even with the ark among them. The Philistine troops not only captured the ark but came all the way into Shiloh and carried out a great slaughter. In the midst of it, Hophni and Phinehas were killed.

From the time Moses had the ark of the covenant made, it was a holy sign confirming that God himself ruled as Israel’s king. Countless miracles took place because God was present there. But an ark that God’s presence has left is nothing more than a wooden box. Many churchgoers today, too, treat God as though he were an idol, and that is not faith but superstition. Any form of religion practiced in the belief that disaster will strike unless something is offered is a gravely mistaken faith that has nothing to do with God.

It is true, of course, that people who miss church have no interest in the word, and true as well that those who agonize every time they give an offering begrudge it because they love money more than God. But if we keep the Lord’s Day and give offerings in order to receive bodily blessings, that is a faith that seeks only blessing. A true offering expresses thanks to God, who has supplied everything we need for this life, and true worship is what we offer to our King as his people, because we long for the eternal Kingdom.

Hebrews 9:4

4having a golden altar of incense, and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which was a golden pot holding the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant;

Inside the ark, overlaid with gold, were the golden pot holding the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the two tablets of stone. All three were given at times when the people of Israel grumbled against God, complained, and rose up against him. What lay inside God’s ark were not confessions of faith offered to God but symbols of the utter sinfulness of man.

Deuteronomy 4:13 tells us that the two tablets held “his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even the ten commandments,” written by God himself. In the Ten Commandments God told them to make no other gods and to serve none but him, yet at the very moment God was giving the commandments in his grace, the Israelites were sinning by making a golden calf and worshiping it. While God was showing them the everlasting way, man sat in the very seat of sin. When Moses saw it, he was furious and threw down the first tablets and broke them on the spot. He then made a second pair of tablets and went up to God again, and it was these tablets that lay inside the ark.

Deuteronomy 8:3 records that God “fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth.” God had worked supernatural wonders to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, and yet they sinned by grumbling against him and demanding food. To a people who complained and grumbled against God because there was nothing to eat in the wilderness, he sent down manna.

The word “manna” means “What is it?” It was not grain that people had sown and harvested in the ordinary way; when they went out into the fields in the morning, the dew that had fallen from heaven had turned into manna they could eat. By sending down manna, God wanted to show that his people do not live a life confined to this world. When Jesus had fasted, Satan tempted him to prove that he was the Son of God by commanding “that these stones become bread.” Jesus answered that man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth. Of course, people must eat to live. But we must keep in mind that if we live with our eyes fixed only on food for the body, we may fall to Satan’s temptation and sink into spiritual death. Only when we live by the word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth can we live by God’s will and receive spiritual power and life. Only those who live by faith will have the glory of seeing heaven’s miracles.

Numbers 17:8

8On the next day, Moses went into the Tent of the Testimony; and behold, Aaron’s rod for the house of Levi had sprouted, budded, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds.

Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, together with two hundred fifty men chosen from the congregation, once rose in rebellion against the authority of Moses and Aaron. When God saw what they were doing, his glory appeared, and in his anger he told Moses and Aaron that he would destroy the whole congregation. Moses and Aaron prayed earnestly that he would hold back his wrath, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who had opposed them, went down alive into the split ground and perished, along with their households, everyone who belonged to them, and all their goods. To obstruct the work of a leader God has appointed and to challenge that leader’s authority is the same as obstructing God’s work; it is like the sin of resisting the Holy Spirit. This holds true, of course, only on the condition that the leader lives by God’s word. To those who would not submit to Moses and Aaron, whom God had appointed, God gave a command: take the rods of the twelve tribes and lay them in the Tent of Meeting. The rod of the one God chose would sprout, and by this they would know that he was God’s chosen, and God told them not to oppose him. When the twelve rods were laid before God’s ark, only the rod of the tribe of Levi blossomed with almond flowers and bore fruit.

So the ark of the covenant held three objects that stood for the sins of Israel. Forgetting the forgiveness won by the sprinkling of blood, the Israelites used the ark as a tool for their own greed. If we, like Israel, try to use God, that alone would mean we are no longer his people. Faith that gives thanks for the love of God and the sacrifice of Christ becomes a power that can experience signs and wonders, but if we use our faith to pursue worldly comfort, we will not have God’s protection.

God did not strike the Philistines; he caused his own people to be defeated. That being so, the Israelites should have sought God’s will as though their lives depended on it and borne fruit worthy of repentance. Had they repented of the sin of treating God as no more than a pagan god, the God of love would have forgiven and protected them. I hope you will never take God lightly as the Israelites did, for he is the Creator who made the world.

Hebrews 10:19-20

19Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 20by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

Jesus came to this earth to give himself as a ransom for many. By his precious blood Christ opened the holy place, which no sinner could ever enter, and because of that we have been given the blessing of entering it with boldness. The heart of every sacrifice offered to God lies in “receiving forgiveness of sins.” Today we no longer offer sacrifices of blood, because Jesus Christ made atonement for the sins of mankind once for all. Those who believe this will never come under judgment. So the task now for the children who have received God’s favor is to keep making the word the heart of their lives, so that they never forget they are sinners. We must believe as surely as the people of Asia Minor who heard the apostle Paul preach and believed, as surely as the Ethiopian eunuch who heard Philip preach and believed. Such faith is a blessing from heaven, given when we understand the word and turn back.

Verse 18 tells us that when Eli heard that God’s ark had been taken, he fell from his seat, broke his neck, and died. Eli had served as priest for the long span of forty years, yet he died miserably of a broken neck. Seeing his end, we too must take care that our faith does not grow fat and heavy. In that desperate hour, with God’s ark out on the battlefield, the priest did not pray; he sat on his seat and merely waited for news. Seeing that, we must ask ourselves whether we too, on the fierce battlefield of this world, are living without prayer and simply hoping for a lucky break.

If we leave the place of prayer and act just like the people of the world, how are we any different from Eli? Eli carelessly assumed that, since he was one of God’s people and a priest, God would take care of everything for him. The people would keep bringing offerings to sacrifice to God, and he already knew how the sacrifices were done, so he fulfilled his office without fear, merely going through the forms. This is the idea that one can make a living by trading on God’s name, and it is the same sin Adam committed when he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To think that we can secure heaven by going to church as a formality, worshiping, and giving a modest offering is to commit the sin of eating that forbidden fruit every day. Only when we know that God is almighty and reads every hidden thought of the human heart can we keep sin at a distance.

Our descendants can stand upright before God only if we become like this daughter-in-law, who never stopped warning of judgment, though her father-in-law Eli and her husband Phinehas would not listen to her. Eli and Phinehas left God no choice but to bring a curse upon them, but because of the prayers of Eli’s daughter-in-law, who prayed so earnestly, God’s heart was moved. Out of Eli’s house, which was bound for ruin and judgment, he raised up holy descendants like Ahimelech, who helped David. If you hold a faith like hers, the stream of life will flow through you to all the fruit that is born of you, in spirit and in flesh. The whole faith of one person bears the fruit of salvation, because it becomes a power that carries God’s grace to their children and to the people around them. But when someone lacks a whole faith, as Eli did, not only the sons at their side but the whole people end up suffering with them.

May the faith you hold now be the faith of this woman, who even as she was dying grieved that the glory of God had departed from Israel. Only when our faith knows that the departure of God’s glory means judgment and ruin can we keep a whole faith.

May you always be precious ones who see the glory of God. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 5:1-5

1Now the Philistines had taken God’s ark, and they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2The Philistines took God’s ark, and brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. 3When the people of Ashdod arose early on the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before Yahweh’s ark. They took Dagon, and set him in his place again. 4When they arose early on the following morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before Yahweh’s ark; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold. Only Dagon’s torso was intact. 5Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any who come into Dagon’s house, step on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod, to this day.