The Great God

God said that we must have no other gods before him. He commanded us not to make for ourselves any carved idol and not to serve any such thing. But even Israel, the people God had chosen, believed in the gods of the Gentiles and was steeped in superstition. People believe in superstitions because they feel secure only when they can see something, whether it is an image or a person. In America people consider Friday the thirteenth unlucky and take special care on that day, and in Scotland some believe it is bad luck to pass under a ladder or anything shaped like a triangle. In Japan, I am told, there is a superstition that a broken mirror foretells seven years of misfortune.

And what of our own country, Korea? People say that picking up a comb on the street brings bad luck, that cutting your fingernails at night shortens your mother’s life, and that sitting on a threshold ruins your health, so they will not let anyone step or sit on a threshold. All of these are superstitions. When I was a child, every time my mother told me not to step or sit on the threshold, I wondered why. Later, reading in the Bible that the head and both hands of the idol of Dagon lay cut off on the threshold before Yahweh’s ark, I wondered to myself whether this story might have been handed down.

People have a habit of heeding anyone who warns that harm will come to them, for they love blessing blindly. Tell them that something bad may happen if they do not hold a shaman’s rite, or carry a charm, or keep the Lord’s Day, and in their anxiety and fear they will try to do as they are told. Such warnings leave people uneasy without ever telling them why the trouble would come or how the problem might be solved at its root. The Lord’s Day, however, is not a day we keep to earn blessings. It is the day God’s word is proclaimed, a precious day when we can gather with the saints to worship God, and that is why we must come to church and give ourselves to his work.

God tells us why we must not do certain things, and when we defy his command he will surely discipline us. Wisdom is to obey at once the word of God, the Master of our lives, and it is true that he grants eternal blessing to those who obey his word. We should not, however, care only about the blessing; if we acknowledge that it is God who grants it, we will not be taken in by the greed of fortune-tellers. When his people truly repent and turn back, God puts away the rod at once. But if, after he has promised to bless us, we still cling to evil thoughts and deeds, he is also the God who withdraws the promise of blessing and trains us by putting us through the fire. That does not mean reward and punishment depend on our works. Still, those who know God’s word show their faith in what they do, and that is why knowing God’s will rightly matters more than anything else.

The God we believe in exists in himself. His very being is blessing and glory, so he has no need of anything people devote to him. But people in the church reckon that only by devoting prayer, offerings, and service to God can they win earthly blessings, and because they cannot let go of such worldly thinking, they end up with a faith that bargains for blessing. It is not that we must give God something before we can be blessed; rather, because we have already been blessed, we should be able to give gladly, with thankful hearts. He has given us our daily bread, and so we bring our offering as fitting thanks; he saved us by the atonement of the cross, and in gratitude for that grace we can give ourselves to him. Only when you have rightly settled the relationship between God and those he has saved will you keep from falling for Satan’s deceptions.

Genesis 1:3-4 records that at God’s word, “Let there be light,” light came into being, and that he divided the light from the darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night. This was the first day of the world God created. Not until Genesis 1:16 did he make the two great lights, the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night, and make the stars as well. God set them in the sky to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and the night, and that was the fourth day of creation.

What, then, was the light that shone on the first day? The Bible states clearly that light and darkness did not exist because the great lights had been made; God divided light from darkness first. The light that shone into the darkness on the first day is the Word, it is life, and it is the glory of God. Day did not begin when lights like the sun and the moon began to shine on the world. God’s light shone on the world before all things, and wherever that light fell he called it day. Those who stay in the light are like people who go about by day: they can discern soundly, and so they can keep eternal life safe. But those in darkness stagger like someone walking a pitch-black road at night; like the dead, they can neither plan nor decide anything.

God made light first and blessed us so that by that light we could see him fully, and this grace is a wonderful blessing for us, his creatures. Yet people do not live by following the eternal light; they commit the foolish sin of trusting and serving the lights they can see. When Jesus healed the eyes of a blind man, he said that while it was still day he must do the works of him who sent him, for the night was coming when no one could work. And he said that while he was in the world, he was the light of the world. With these words Jesus was explaining how God had made light and darkness, and he was revealing that he himself is the Word and the light.

John 1:14

14The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus is this Word, through whom all things were created, clothed in flesh and come to this earth. Before heaven, earth, and all things were made, God already had glory in himself, so he had no need of any other being to exalt his holy glory. And in that glory was Jesus, the one and only Son. When God had created man in his own image, he at last had someone to share his love with, and he rejoiced and said that it was good. Man, being a creature, must therefore believe in and depend on God alone, the Creator, who alone is sovereign over all. It also means that any idol on earth that people fear is, before God, nothing but a meaningless created thing. The fall of Israel, which had received such wonderful love, gives us much to think about today.

They carried God’s holy ark of the covenant onto the battlefield to win their war with the world. Holding their faith up as a mirror, we need to think seriously about whether God’s people today are making the same mistake. Israel kept the feasts at the tabernacle where the ark stood, and offered God countless sacrifices and offerings, even if only as a formality. But a sacrifice not offered in spirit and truth cannot be accepted by God. We, too, offer countless services of worship and countless offerings. Besides the dawn prayer service, the Wednesday service, the Friday service, and the Sunday service, we worship under the names and forms of countless others: cell group services, dedication services, revival meetings, and more. As for offerings, there are so many kinds that no one could count them.

Why is it, then, that with such an abundance of worship services, the faith of so many in the church fails to grow and they are not born again through the word? We live in an age when the word is so common that sermons pour out the moment we turn on the TV or the radio. Besides the flood of published sermon books, sermons by countless pastors are still pouring out without end. Why, then, do so many church members remain ignorant of the word, when a Bible lies before their eyes, within arm’s reach? Why do they still not know the heart of God, though they attend so many services and hear so many sermons? The reason is that their worship is a formality that merely fills the hour. They sit out the time of worship and feel satisfied with themselves, the way people feel after bowing to an idol or putting up a charm. But worship like that bears no fruit, even if we give it a whole lifetime.

The Israelites brought the ark of the covenant to the battlefield, yet they were routed, and they even suffered the shame of losing the ark. In the same way, if we go out onto the world’s battlefield with a faith that has not been born again, we will be robbed of our faith and lose our way. So I hope that you, the people of Watercourse Church, will never offer worship that is a mere formality. Worshiping every day matters, and serving matters, but you must know that worship offered in spirit and truth matters most. Only when God accepts our worship can we grow spiritually.

Israel, who lost the ark of the covenant on the battlefield, and the Philistines, who celebrated their victory over the capture of God’s ark and carried it into the temple of Dagon, both held the same mistaken faith. From the Philistines’ point of view, they had seized the ark of the great God as a spoil of war; what joy that would have brought them! We must remember, then, that when God’s people fail to be sanctified, that failure alone hands Satan a victory.

Joshua 15:47 shows that Ashdod was part of the inheritance Joshua allotted to the tribe of Judah. Although Judah received Ashdod as its share, the tribe never conquered it. When God allotted that land, it was as good as a promise that he would help Judah take it, if only Judah would give its utmost. Judah’s failure to conquer Ashdod turned the city it had received as an inheritance into the site of a temple of Dagon and the gateway the Philistines used for trade with Egypt. If we do not take hold of the gifts, the wealth, and the abilities God has given us by faith, Satan will turn them into weapons against us. He will make us use our gifts to exalt ourselves until we grow proud, and he will make us use our wealth to chase worldly pleasures. The tribe of Judah, having received Ashdod as its inheritance, should have trusted God and given everything to conquer it. But Judah failed, because it saw that the Philistines had stronger weapons than its own.

Dagon, the idol the Philistines trusted, was a god widely worshiped throughout Mesopotamia and Assyria. Dagon carried two meanings. The first, in keeping with a seafaring people, was the countless fruitfulness of fish. The second, once they settled on land, was that of a god of farming and plenty, standing for the richness of the soil and its harvest. In the same way, people everywhere make and worship gods to help themselves. But gods made for the sake of an abundant human life end up in Satan’s grip.

The house of Dagon, like the tabernacle, was made up of a holy place and a most holy place. In the middle of the most holy place stood a raised platform, and on it were set an altar and the image of the god. After capturing the ark of Yahweh in the battle at Aphek, the Philistines carried it into this house of Dagon and set it beside the image of Dagon. In the Philistines’ eyes, God’s ark was the almighty God himself, who had parted the Jordan for the people of Israel and brought down Jericho, a fortress thought impregnable. When they had taken that fearsome ark as though it were a worthless wooden box, they must have thought that Dagon was greater than God.

But the Philistines did not win this battle because God was weak. It was the means God chose to call Israel to account for its sins. Unable to understand this, the Philistines were now drunk with victory; they made light of God’s ark and, not content with mocking Israel, went on to mock God himself. In the same way, when God’s people do not live by faith, they give the world an occasion to mock God. But the saving of souls matters more to God, so he puts his people through the fire and permits them to suffer, even though it may expose him to mockery.

God entered the Philistine camp as a way of rebuking Israel’s sins, but the ark, where the glory of God was present, did its own work among the Philistines. The image of Dagon fell on its face to the ground before God’s ark, and its head and both hands lay cut off on the threshold. Only the body of Dagon was left. It was only to be expected that the idol of Dagon, which people served for their own blessing, would be shattered before God. Yahweh’s ark shattering the idol of Dagon mirrors the path Jesus took: of his own will he came into a dark world in the likeness of a sinner, yet that coming was not death but the beginning of new life. Just as Dagon could not stand before the ark of Yahweh, the world will be shattered like Dagon before the Lord when he comes again. For no one at all will be able to stand upright before Christ when he comes in royal power.

You are the children of God, who live with this great God as your Father. Even if you fall a little short, even if you lack a little, if you strive to live by God’s will, God will help you so that the world does not mock you. If you cannot believe that, then you too will end up carrying the ark of Yahweh out to the battlefield. If you do not live by faith and then, afraid of the world, carry Yahweh’s ark onto the world’s battlefield, God will never help you. May you fight the world’s battles with nothing but faith. In that faith the glory, the life, and the power of God will be with you. The ark you can see is not what matters; faith that trusts God is far more precious and far more important.

The Philistines must have been astonished to see the image of Dagon, the god they served and trusted in, lying fallen. They believed that the wars of men were the wars of their gods, so finding Dagon face down before the ark of Yahweh would have thrown them into confusion. Israel, too, when they heard the astonishing news that Dagon had been broken before the ark of Yahweh, could only have been ashamed that they had not wholly trusted so mighty a God. God had toppled Dagon, the god of the Philistines, in a single stroke, yet his people had failed to receive the help of the Almighty and had even lost the ark; their dread can hardly have been small.

Abandon faith, and you lose everything. Even if you fail, God is the one who does his own work, works miracles, and judges his enemies. If we are not receiving help from such a God, then the problem lies with us. If the Holy Spirit, who helps you without condition, dwells in your heart and still you receive no help, it is because of your unbelief, your failure to trust the power of the Holy Spirit. God helps with all he has whenever his people simply depend on him; if we trust that God, we can overcome this harsh world.

Do not take on Satan by yourself, who in this dark world leads people down the path of sin; stand against him together with the Lord, who leads us to salvation. Then you will not only lift up the glory of God but also win in this life and live in peace. May you live as God’s holy people, before whom even the idol of Dagon cannot stand, and triumph by faith. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 6:1-9

1Yahweh’s ark was in the country of the Philistines seven months. 2The Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, “What shall we do with Yahweh’s ark? Show us how we should send it to its place.” 3They said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, don’t send it empty; but by all means return a trespass offering to him. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.” 4Then they said, “What should the trespass offering be which we shall return to him?” They said, “Five golden tumors, and five golden mice, for the number of the lords of the Philistines; for one plague was on you all, and on your lords. 5Therefore you shall make images of your tumors, and images of your mice that mar the land; and you shall give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will release his hand from you, from your gods, and from your land. 6Why then do you harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When he had worked wonderfully among them, didn’t they let the people go, and they departed? 7“Now therefore take and prepare yourselves a new cart, and two milk cows, on which there has come no yoke; and tie the cows to the cart, and bring their calves home from them; 8and take Yahweh’s ark, and lay it on the cart. Put the jewels of gold, which you return him for a trespass offering, in a coffer by its side; and send it away, that it may go. 9Behold; if it goes up by the way of its own border to Beth Shemesh, then he has done us this great evil; but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us. It was a chance that happened to us.”