Open your Bibles with me to 1st Samuel chapter 4, 1st Samuel chapter 4, hear God's word. And Samuel's word came to all Israel. Now the Israelites went out to fight against the Philistines. The Israelites camped at Ebenezer and the Philistines at Aphek. The Philistines deployed their forces to meet Israel. And as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about 4,000 of them on the battlefield. When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, Why did the Lord bring defeat upon us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the Lord's covenant from Shiloh, so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies. So the people sent men to Shiloh, and they brought back the ark of the covenant of the Lord Almighty, who was enthroned between the cherubim. And Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God. When the ark of the Lord's covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook. Hearing the uproar, the Philistines asked, What's all this shouting in the Hebrew camp? When they learned that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid. A god has come into the camp, they said. We're in trouble. Nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us. Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert. Be strong, Philistines. Be men, or you will be subject to the Hebrews as they have been to you. Be men and fight. So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated. And every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great. Israel lost 30,000 foot soldiers. The Ark of God was captured. And Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died. That same day, a Benjamite ran from the battle line and went to Shiloh, his clothes torn and dust on his head. When he arrived, there was Eli, sitting in his chair by the side of the road, watching because his heart feared for the ark of God. When the man entered the town and told what had happened, the whole town sent up a cry. Eli heard the outcry and he asked, What is the meaning of this uproar? The man hurried over to Eli, who was 98 years old and whose eyes were set so that he could not see. He told Eli, I have just come from the battle line. I fled from it this very day. Eli asked, What happened, my son? The man who brought the news replied, Israel fled before the Philistines, and the army has suffered heavy losses. Also, your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured. When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man and heavy. He had led, or he had judged, Israel forty years. His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and near the time of delivery. When she heard the news that the ark of God had been captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she went into labor and gave birth. but was overcome by her labor pains. As she was dying, the women attending her said, Don't despair. You have given birth to a son. But she did not respond or pay any attention. She named the boy Ichabod, saying, The glory has departed from Israel because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. She said, the glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured. Before we jump into our passage here this evening, I thought it would be good to bring a few points of background, since we are kind of coming midstream in the story. And I thought maybe the first would be to talk about the ark. Now, I imagine you children out there, when you heard the ark, maybe you thought of, it's maybe a more famous ark, but maybe it's a more referred to ark, Noah's ark. And Noah's ark, we know, is a big boat. But here we read about an ark that they're carrying around, one that they could carry. So it's not that same ark. Instead, the ark of God was a box. It was a fairly good-sized box, and it was covered with gold. And it had a top also that was of gold. And on that top there were these two statues of winged creatures that are called cherubim. And so this ark, it was very beautiful, I'm sure. And it was most undoubtedly very expensive. But that wasn't what made it special. What was special about this ark of God was that God had commanded Moses to make it. And he had appointed it in many ways as the symbol of his presence with Israel. Now, it's not that God lived in the box. We know that that's not true. But it showed Israel that he was with them. And we find it referred to as his footstool elsewhere. And when God commanded Moses to make it, he told Moses also he would meet with him and talk with him from the ark, from the cherubim. So that's the first thing. The second is we read about Eli and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. And who are they? Who are these people? Well, if we go back and read the chapters coming before, we see that Eli and Hophni Phinehas, they are priests, priests of God. But they're not very good priests. Actually, they're downright evil priests, at least Hophni and Phinehas. And Eli, their father, he's not doing much better because he's not stopping their evil ways. And they've been so evil that God has told Eli that he will punish his family. And part of that punishment is that his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, would both die on the same day. Now, the third little element of background is, we should say, well, when does this take place? When does this account take place? And even though it's here in the book of 1 Samuel, we could almost better think of it as in the book of Judges. It's this time when Israel had no king, and so when Israel got in trouble, what would God do? He would raise up a judge, and the judge would deliver them. The judge would help them. But that's not what we find in our text. We do see that Eli is called a judge. We saw that there in verse 18. He had judged Israel. But Eli didn't bring any sort of salvation that we saw. Instead, it's his sons who are oppressing Israel. And Eli isn't stopping them. And there's no rest. Usually when the judge came, then there was rest. But we don't find that here. Instead, we find defeat. They're defeated by the Philistines. And as we think back on the judges' period, it was by no means a great period in Israel's history. They continually went into sin and God raised up these judges. But then they would go back into sin. And as you read through it, in many ways, they get worse and worse. And it's not only the Israelites that get worse, it's the judges. Just go back and read about Samson. He's not much of a role model. And so our passage is really, in many ways, the climax of this judges' period. When things had gotten so bad that God punishes Israel, With the worst punishment imaginable, at least to them. The capture of his ark. So with that background, let's look more closely at our passage here. And we'll look at the covenantal failure of the people and the priests. And how that leads to this covenantal curse of God against his people. And then we'll ask the question, now what? Where do we go from here? How can this relationship between God and Israel continue? So the covenantal failure. Now, as we look at our text, we aren't actually told that the Israelites were sinning at the beginning. But we can see that in the context. As we mentioned, we're in this judges cycle and Israel is always falling into sin. We could look a little later in our text to chapter 7. And there we find Samuel calling Israel to repentance. Calling them to put aside their foreign gods. And so they must have had those foreign gods here. We find also the psalmist in Psalm 78 talking about the sin of this period that led to this judgment that we find here. And so we have various places in the context that we know Israel was sinful. But we can also see it in our text. And one way to see it is in Israel's defeat. God, when He made the covenant on Sinai, the Mosaic covenant as we often call it, He said, if you obey, there will be blessing. You will defeat your enemies. They'll run before you. But if you disobey, there will be curse. And you will run before your enemies. And so, Israel, when they suffer a defeat, it should cause them to look. To look and search themselves. To see what sin is in them. And they get part of the answer right, we could say. We look in verse 3. When they come back, what do they say? They don't say, man, those Philistines were good today. Or, why couldn't we beat them? Right? They ask the question, why did the Lord bring defeat upon us today before the Philistines? But they don't follow that up with the soul searching that they needed. Instead, really their question here is an accusation. God, where were you? We went out to battle. Why weren't you there? Why did you cause us to be defeated? And we've seen similar questions like this. We could go back and Joshua, after the battle, when he went up with the men to try to take Ai the first time and was defeated, he comes back and he says, God, where were you? Why did you have us defeated? Everybody's going to laugh about us now. And God said, don't get so excited. Israel has sinned and that's why you were defeated. Go and find the sin. And then we find, right, Achan had sinned. And when they dealt with that, then they won the battle. Well, we have something very similar here. They accuse God. Why has he done this? He hasn't kept his covenant like he said he would. And so they have a bright idea. Continuing on in verse 3. Let us bring the ark of the Lord's covenant from Shiloh so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies. If God won't do it on His own, we're going to force His hand here a little bit. We're going to make Him come. We're going to prod Him into action by bringing this ark. And in their words there, you see this change that comes about it because it's no longer the Lord saving them. In that last part it says, it, referring to the ark, it will save us. Let's bring it and it will save us from our enemies. And what they've really done is made the ark into an idol. If we have the ark, we have God. We can bring him into battle that way. It's foolproof. He will have to fight for us. This will surely be different if we can do it this way. And they certainly believe their plan will help, don't they? They go up, they get the ark, they bring it back. And as it comes into camp, everybody is excited. This is going to make the difference, right? There's this big cry, this big shout. They are very sincere. They are very religious, we could say. They think this will be it. Well, our author critiques Israel, I think, by what he does next, by what he tells us next. Because as we read on here, we now move from Israel's camp into the camp of the Philistines. And we get their response. They hear this shout, and what do they do? Starting in verse 6. What is all this shouting in the Hebrew camp? And then it's told to them. Oh, the ark went in there. And so what do they interpret that as? They say, a God has come into the camp. And they know about this God. They've heard about this God. Woe to us! We're in trouble! Nothing like this has happened before. This is the God who defeated the Egyptians. We really need to be strong now. And I think we get this side looking into the minds of the Philistines because we're struck that it's really no different from what the Israelites were thinking. That's exactly the reasoning Israel had. If we have the ark, we bring God amongst us. And then surely he'll fight for us as if it's something new, as if God hasn't always been there, as if God hasn't always been involved in the battle. There really was no difference in their thinking. They had become like the pagans round about them. Now, as we look at this, we could say and pat ourselves on the back, it's a good thing we're not like Israel, right? We don't have golden boxes that we put our trust in. But do we treat things like idols? Do we put our trust in things that we should not? Maybe we think that God is with us. He'll be with us because we came from a good family. We go to a good school, belong to the right church. Maybe that's what's important. Something external like that. Or maybe it's because we're successful. God's blessed to have me that I come and I darken the door of his church. Or, it's because I don't do things that are that wrong. I'm better than that neighbor down the street. I'm pretty moral, pretty upright. Do we place our trust in those things, in those externals? Or do we make things into idols? What really do we chase in life? What things worry us, consume us? What takes up all our time and our energy? Is it money? Is it our reputation? Is it pleasure? What things can we make into idols? But certainly we don't ever manipulate God, do we? Say, if I do this, then I think God should do this for me. Or thinking that He really owes us because of what we've done, the service that we've done. We've come to church regularly, given regularly. We've done this and that. Or maybe we think we can manipulate God by having outward piety while still ignoring the sin inside of us. I think if we are honest, many of us, maybe all of us, would love to have God in a box. Have Him fulfill our wants, our desires, our goals, our plans, without all His demands and His rules. I mean, it is our time, our money, Our life, isn't it? It's what the world says, at least. So I think we often, we don't want a sovereign Lord. We would much rather have the genie in the lamp. Now, it wasn't only the people who were at fault in Israel. It was also their leaders. And chapter 4 is very much about that. very much about this judgment coming on Eli's house. Because God had raised up these priests. He had given them duties. They needed to intercede for the people. They needed to instruct the people. They had a duty. And one of their most important duties was to guard God's holiness. The tabernacle had been constructed and the ark was put in there and they were to guard it from anything unclean. And yet, what do we find with Hophni and Phinehas? They stole from the people. They slept with women. They desecrated God's altar. Perverted justice. And here, what do we find? The Israelites go up and they say, hey, we want to bring the ark down to battle. Hophni and Phinehas should have rebuked them. But no, sure, we'll parade in front of it. We'll be there. We'll be the heroes of this day. And Eli had not restrained his sons before. And we know from the latter part of our passage that Eli is worried about the ark. And yet again, he failed to restrain his sons as they took it down. And so I think we can see in here, as we see this judgment on Eli and his family, a good warning for those who lead God's church. How awesome of a responsibility and duty it is. And we all know those who have abused their position. We read it in the paper, in the headlines, The world loves to show us that. There's those who neglect their duties. And so to those of you who are pastors, elders, deacons, and those who aspire to that office, the Bible tells us it is a good thing. It is a blessing to God's church. But don't seek it for social status. Don't seek it for power or anything else. It is a position of service. Service to God and His people. And we must treat it as such. So we have the sin of the people, their covenantal failure, the covenantal failure of the priests. They try to manipulate God, force him into action, and act he does. The Philistines were worried about the striking of the Egyptians coming against them. But instead, in verse 10, we find that strike against Israel. Like we said, the Mosaic covenant, obedience led to blessing, disobedience to curse. And the loss of the ark was in many ways the worst curse imaginable. Curse of the greatest degree. God forsaking Israel. In Deuteronomy 31, God speaks to Moses how in the future Israel will forsake him and he will forsake Israel. And so this ark, this thing that symbolized God's presence, the only thing in the holy of holies, the ark of which it said God dwells between the cherubim, the focus of that most holy day, the day of atonement, when they spread the blood upon it. The capture of this, the destruction of it. For an Israelite, it was almost unthinkable. God had tied himself to it. He had placed his name there. How could anything happen to it? And in the second half of our text here, we see the story in some ways slow down to really emphasize Israel's perception. We have the picture of Eli, blind Eli, watching the road, worried about this ark. And when the messenger comes, he talks about the defeat. He talks about the death of his sons. None of that surprises Eli. None of that shocks him. He knew that was coming. God had foretold that. And yet, when he hears of the ark, he falls over backwards and dies. And as if that's not enough, we now see another story as his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, pregnant, near time to deliver, goes into her pains when she hears the news and dies because of those pains. And as she's dying, they try to comfort her. It's a son. That's a good thing. There's something good coming out of this. And yet she can see no good. She can see no future. She says, no name of Ichabod. No glory. Because the glory has left Israel. God has forsaken Israel. It looked like it was all done. Israel had failed. God had cursed them like He had promised. He had removed this symbol of His presence. It seemed like they were without God, without hope, without future. What now? Was there any way that Israel could be restored? Was it really so bleak? Maybe if God just gave them another chance and they tried a little harder, the people obey a little better, they give more sacrifices, they attend the tabernacle more often, then maybe they can be right with God. Maybe that's what we need. We just need to buckle down. Stop being selfish, more loving, less greedy, less lustful. Come to church more often. Maybe even the prayer service. If I said yes, I hope the elders would come take me away. Because that isn't how we are right with God. No, no matter how hard Israel tried, how hard we try, we cannot make ourselves right with God. Instead, God must do something, and He has done something. And so we can ask the question, was God really absent from Israel? The wife of Phineas, with her declaration, I would argue, was still partaking of this God-in-a-box theology. If the ark was gone, God was gone, it was all done. God must be gone. But we know the Bible doesn't stop at 1 Samuel chapter 4. We know it goes on. God was not done with Israel. And this is where we need to place our passage within this greater story, God's larger plan, what we call redemptive history. God wanted to show Israel, and by their example to show us, all who would read of it, that we cannot make ourselves right with God. Instead, we fail again and again and again, as Israel did. But even in our text, God had already been doing something new. We read in the first verse, something that many people take with what comes before, but it at least is the context for this story. We read about Samuel. There's a boy, Samuel. And we look back in the chapters that come and we remember his amazing birth to Hannah and how he's raised in the tabernacle with Eli. And if we go a couple chapters further in chapter 7, we find Samuel. Samuel leading the people in repentance. Leading them to victory over the Philistines. But Samuel had an even bigger role to play. We only have to go a few chapters more and we find him anointing kings. And we find him anointing a king after God's own heart, King David. And we see under David in 2 Samuel 6 that he restores the ark. The ark that had in many ways been in storage for many long years. And he leads Israel in obedience. And he receives this promise of an eternal kingdom. in which God's people will be secure. But yet, we keep reading on and we find that David has his faults. And his sons certainly have their faults. And in fact, we find history repeating itself again. We find near the end of the time of Israel and Judah that the people again thought of God in a box. They are being sinful. The prophets are coming against them saying, God will come and destroy you. And they say, no! We have a son of David. We have the tabernacle. God's tied His name to that. He'll never destroy us. And Jeremiah says, remember Eli. Remember the ark. Remember Shiloh. And God does come. And He punishes them with the exile. And our passage here, in the form that we have it, was probably written to those who were in that exile. Those who probably believed much as the wife of Phineas did. That the glory was gone. God was departed. They had no hope in the world. And so to those in exile, this account could give them some hope. Because even at this dark day in Israel's past, God was not done with them. God had a future for them. And God had promised to those exiles also a future. He had promised a coming son of David. A son of David that would be greater than his father. A son of David who would bring in that everlasting kingdom promised to David. And we know the fulfillment of that promise. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. God's plan was the same all along. And our passage and the exile both prepared the way. God's plan was to do for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. No matter how hard we tried. Only in Jesus are we made right with God. Only in Jesus was Israel made right with God. Only if we believe that He died for our sins. That His perfect obedience is our perfect obedience. That is the only way we can be right with God. And if we believe that, if we believe in God's work, and we have faith in Jesus Christ, we know we've been made right with God, that doesn't mean we don't try hard. That doesn't mean we don't strive, we don't yearn, but we do it in a distinct way. We don't do it to earn something, to get somewhere, wondering all along if we've done enough, if we've been good enough. Will God accept it? No, instead, we do it because of thankfulness. We know what we've been given. We have a promise that God is working in us. And so we work with hope. We work with confidence. We work with the future. So as we think about this passage, dear people of God, let it remind us that we approach God not with false confidence based on who we are, We approach Him not with our own agenda trying to force our will on Him. No, there's only one way to come. Broken, humbled, repentant. Knowing that we deserve for our God to forsake us. And yet, having that confidence that God never will because of Jesus Christ our Lord and our Savior. Amen. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we so often want our own way, thinking we can command our own ship, our own lives, But we think Your rules, Your regulations, they get in our way. And yet, You are our Creator. The One who made us and who knows us. And You have redeemed us in Jesus Christ. And so may we come to You in humble repentance. Knowing that you will work in us and you will do through us the good works that you've called us to do. And so may we strive knowing that we are yours. That we no longer have condemnation, but instead we live the life of the Spirit. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.