The Great God

God said to have no other gods before him. He commanded us not to make an idol for ourselves and not to serve anything else at all. Yet even Israel, whom God had chosen, believed in the gods the Gentiles believed in and was caught up in superstition. People believe in superstitions because they feel at ease only when they can see something, whether an image or a person. In America, people consider Friday the thirteenth unlucky and are especially careful that day, and in Scotland some believe it is bad luck to walk under a ladder or anything shaped like a triangle. In Japan, they say, there is a superstition that a broken mirror is a sign that misfortune will strike for seven years.

Then what about our own country? People say it is bad luck to pick up a comb on the street, that cutting your nails at night shortens your mother’s life, and that sitting on a threshold harms your health, and so they forbid stepping or sitting on the threshold. All of these are superstitions. As a child, I too sometimes wondered what the reason could be whenever my mother told me not to step or sit on the threshold. Reading the Bible, I came to the passage where the head and both the palms of the hands of the image of Dagon were cut off before Yahweh’s ark and lay on the threshold, and I wondered to myself whether this event might have been handed down.

Because people love good fortune blindly, they have a habit of heeding without question anything said to bring them harm. If someone tells them that something bad may happen unless they hold a shaman’s ritual, or carry a talisman, or keep the Lord’s Day, they grow anxious and afraid and try to do as they are told. Such people make them anxious without telling them why it would happen or how to solve the problem at its root. But the Lord’s Day is not a day kept in order to receive blessings. It is the day when God’s word is proclaimed, a precious day when we can gather with fellow believers and worship God. That is why we must come to church and carry out God’s work.

God tells us why something must not be done, and when his command is defied, he surely brings discipline. Obeying at once the word of God, the master of our lives, is wisdom, and it is true that when we obey God’s word, he grants eternal blessing. But if, instead of being interested only in blessings, we acknowledge that the one who grants those blessings is God, we will be able to keep from being deceived by the greedy hearts of diviners. When believers truly repent and turn back, God withdraws the rod at once. But if, even after he has promised blessing, they do not put away their evil thoughts and deeds, he is also the God who withdraws the promise of blessing and trains them by putting them through the fire. That does not mean that reward and punishment depend on the deeds of believers. But believers who know God’s word reveal their faith through their deeds, so knowing God’s will rightly matters more than anything.

The God we believe in is the one who exists of himself. God’s very being is blessing and glory, so he has no need of the devotion people offer. Yet we calculate that only by offering devotion through prayer, offerings, and service can we receive the blessings of the world; unable to let go of worldly thinking, we end up with a faith that seeks blessings. It is not that we must give God something before we can be blessed. We have already been blessed, and so we should be able to give gladly with a thankful heart. We give offerings in fitting thanks because he has given us our daily bread, and we can devote ourselves because we are thankful for the grace of being saved through the redemption of the cross. Only when you have set the relationship between God and his saved people on a right footing will you keep from falling into Satan’s deception.

Genesis 1:3-4 records that at the word “Let there be light,” there was light, and that God divided the light from the darkness, and called the light day and the darkness night. This was the first day of the world God created. Only in 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 many stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth and to rule over the day and over the night, and that was the fourth day of his making the world.

Then what was the light that shone on the first day? The Bible clearly records that light and darkness did not come about because God made the lights; he first divided the light from the darkness. 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 moon began to shine on the world. God’s light shone on the world before all things, and he named the place where that light came upon the world day. People who are with the light are like those who go about by day: they can judge soundly, and so they can keep hold of eternal life. But people in darkness stagger like someone walking a pitch-dark road at night, and like the dead they can make no plans and no judgments.

God made light first and blessed people so that by that light they could see him fully. This grace is an amazing blessing to human beings, his creatures. But instead of living by the eternal light, people commit the foolish sin of believing in and serving the visible lights. When Jesus healed the eyes of a blind man, he said that since it was still day he must work the works of him who sent him, and that the night was soon coming, when no one could work. Then he said that while he was in the world, he was the light of the world. In these words Jesus was explaining God’s making of light and darkness, and he was telling us that he 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 the very Word who created all things, clothed in flesh and come to this earth. Before heaven and earth and all things were created, God already had glory in himself, so he needed no other being to exalt his holy glory. In that glory was Jesus, the one and only Son. After God created human beings in his own image, he had someone with whom to share his love, so he rejoiced and said that it was good. So human beings, as creatures, must believe in and rely on God alone, who is the Creator and who is absolute. This means that any idol in the world that people fear is, before God, nothing but a meaningless created thing. The fall of Israel, which received such amazing love, gives us much to think about today.

As we hold up to the light the faith of those who carried God’s holy ark of the covenant onto the battlefield to win a war against the world, we should think deeply about whether believers today are making the same mistake. Israel kept the feasts at the tabernacle where the ark of the covenant was, and though their sacrifices were a mere formality, they offered God countless sacrifices and offerings. But a sacrifice not offered in spirit and truth cannot be accepted by God. We too are offering countless services of worship and offerings today. Besides early-morning services, Wednesday services, Friday services, and Sunday services, we worship under countless names and forms: small-group services, dedication services, revival meetings, and more. There are so many kinds of offerings too that they can hardly be counted.

Why is it, then, that even with this overflow of worship, believers’ faith does not grow and they are not born again through the Word? We live in a time when the Word is so common that sermons pour out the moment one turns on the TV or radio. Besides a flood of sermon collections, it is an age overflowing with the sermons of countless pastors that keep pouring out even now. Yet with a Bible right in front of them, within arm’s reach, why are believers still ignorant of the Word? Why, though they attend so many services and hear so many sermons, do they not know God’s heart? It is because they offer formal worship that merely fills the time. Just as people worship idols or put up talismans, they simply fill the hour of worship and feel satisfied with themselves. But such worship bears no fruit even if one gives a whole lifetime to it.

The people of Israel took the ark of the covenant to the battlefield, yet they were utterly defeated and even suffered the disgrace of having the ark taken. In the same way, if we go out onto the battlefield of the world with a faith that has not been born again, our faith will be taken from us and we will lose our way. So I hope that you, the believers of Watercourse Church, will not offer worship that is mere formality. Worshiping every day matters, and serving matters, but you must know that worship offered in the Spirit and in truth matters most. For only when God accepts it can you grow spiritually.

Israel, who lost the ark of the covenant on the battlefield, and the Philistines, who celebrated their victory at having captured God’s ark and carried it into the house of Dagon, both had the same mistaken faith. From the Philistines’ point of view, how great their joy must have been at having seized the ark of the great God as spoil! In the same way, we must remember that the failure of believers to be sanctified is itself what hands Satan a victory.

According to Joshua 15:47, Ashdod was part of the inheritance Joshua allotted to the tribe of Judah. Though the tribe of Judah had received Ashdod as its share, it did not conquer it. God’s allotting that land was as good as a promise that he would help Judah conquer it if only Judah did its utmost. Because the tribe of Judah failed to conquer Ashdod though it had received it as an inheritance, the house of Dagon was built there instead, and the Philistines are using it as a gateway for trade with Egypt. If we do not wholly conquer by faith the gifts, wealth, and abilities God has given us, Satan turns them instead into tools to attack us. He will lead us to use our gifts to exalt ourselves and so make us proud, and he will use our wealth to make us enjoy the pleasures of the world. The tribe of Judah, which had received Ashdod as its inheritance, should have trusted God and conquered it with all its life. But the tribe of Judah looked at the Philistines, who had stronger weapons than they did, and so did not conquer it.

Dagon, the idol the Philistines believed in, was a god widely worshiped in Mesopotamia and Assyria. Dagon carries two meanings. The first, true to their character as a seafaring people, is “countless fertility” like that of fish. The other, from when they settled on land, is “a farming god of abundance,” symbolizing the fertility of the soil and its fruit. In this way, people all make gods that help them and worship them. Gods made for the abundance of 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 center of the most holy place was a raised platform, and on it stood an altar and the idol. The Philistines took Yahweh’s ark, which they had seized in the battle at Aphek, into this house of Dagon and set it by the image of Dagon. In the Philistines’ eyes, God’s ark was the Almighty God, who had parted the Jordan River for the people of Israel and even brought down Jericho, a fortress like iron. When they captured God’s ark, which they had feared so much, as if it were a useless wooden box, they probably thought Dagon was greater than God.

But they did not win this war because God was weak. It was the way God chose to hold the people of Israel to account for their sin. The Philistines, who could not know this, are now drunk on their victory, treating God’s ark as worthless and going beyond mocking Israel to mock even God. In the same way, when believers do not live by faith, they give the world an excuse to mock God. Yet saving souls matters more to God, so even though he may be mocked, he puts believers through the fire and allows them to suffer.

God went into the Philistine camp as his way of rebuking Israel’s sin, but the ark in which God’s glory was present worked on its own among the Philistines. The image of Dagon had fallen on its face to the ground before God’s ark, and its head and both the palms of its hands were cut off and lying on the threshold. Only Dagon’s torso was left. It is only natural that the image of Dagon, which people served for their own good fortune, was shattered before God. This event, in which Yahweh’s ark broke the image of Dagon, is like the path of Jesus: he came of his own accord into the world of darkness in the form of a sinner, yet that was not death but the beginning of new life. Just as Dagon could not stand before Yahweh’s ark, the world will be broken like Dagon before the Lord who is coming again. For no one can stand firm before Christ when he comes with royal authority.

You are children of God who live with this great God as your Father. Even if you fall a little short, even if you are a little lacking, if you strive to live according to God’s will, God will help you so that you are not mocked by the world. If you cannot believe that, you too will end up carrying Yahweh’s ark out onto the battlefield. If you do not live by faith and then, afraid of the world, carry Yahweh’s ark out onto the world’s battlefield, God will never help you. I hope you will fight on the battlefield of the world with nothing but faith. God’s glory, life, and power will be with you in that faith. For what matters is not the visible ark; the faith that trusts God is more precious and more important.

The Philistines must have been greatly shocked to see the image of Dagon, which they had honored and relied on as their god, lying fallen. They believed that the wars of men were the wars of the gods, so seeing the image of Dagon fallen on its face before Yahweh’s ark must have thrown them into great confusion. Israel too, hearing the astonishing news that Dagon had been broken before Yahweh’s ark, must have felt ashamed of themselves for not wholly trusting so almighty a God. They were the people of the God who had toppled Dagon, the god of the Philistines, in a single stroke, yet they had not received the help of Almighty God and had even lost the ark. Their fear must have been great.

If we abandon faith, we lose everything. Even if you fail, God is the one who does his own work, performs miracles, and judges his enemies. If we do not receive the help of such a God, the problem lies with us. If the Holy Spirit, who helps you without condition, dwells in your heart and yet you are not receiving his help, it is because of the unbelief that has not trusted the Spirit’s power. If you trust God, who helps with all he has whenever his people simply rely on him, you can overcome this harsh world.

Do not resist Satan alone, who leads you down the path of sin in this dark world; resist Satan together with the Lord, who leads you to salvation. You will not only lift up God’s glory but also be able to win in your life in the world and live in peace. May you live as the holy people of God, before whom even the image of Dagon dare not stand, and win 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.”