The God versus A god

"There was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth before the ark of the Lord"

1 Samuel 5:3

It is noticeable that for three or four chapters in this First Book of Samuel, Samuel himself is missing from the narrative. We have an account in chapter 3 of how Samuel was called by God to be his prophet, and to be his spokesman in this dark day and generation. And we are told at the beginning of chapter 4 that the word of God came to all Israel, but as we have already seen, there is then no mention of Samuel until we come into chapter 7.

Part of the reason for the absence of Samuel from the story is the fact that the people to whom Samuel so faithfully delivered the word of God were themselves slow to enquire of the Lord and to see what it was that God was saying to them. Samuel, they knew, was a prophet of Jehovah; all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba knew that God had set him apart to be a spokesman for God to them. And yet, when the Philistines pressed in on the Israelites at Aphek, the last thing the Israelites wanted to know was what Samuel would say to them, or what the word of God was to them. In fact, the first trouble they ran into saw the elders of Israel gathering together and saying, "Why has the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines?" Instead of asking for God's guidance and counsel, they decided that the best way out of this disaster was to get the ark of the covenant from Shiloh, and to bring it among them so that it would save them out of the hand of their enemies.

Now we know that they committed two sins in doing this. First, they moved the ark of God when they had no express command to do so. God gave the rules for the construction and placement of the ark, and God said that he would decide where his name would dwell, and where his ark would go and rest. God gave them no such command at this point, but they decided that it would be the best way to rid themselves of the Philistines by getting the ark and moving it from Shiloh and bringing it to Aphek.

Their second sin was to put their trust in this box of wood. It was a very important box. In it there were the tables of the law and the rod of Aaron and the pot of manna. Over it was the mercy seat of gold and the cherubim. It was one of the most potent Old Testament symbols of the presence of God and of the reconciling work of the covenant of God's grace, but it was only a box, only a symbol. They decided that if they got the ark, IT would save them. If they could get this great symbol of God's presence among them, they would be guaranteed deliverance from the hand of the Philistines.

Let us never forget that it is not the BOX of the covenant that saves, but the GOD of the covenant that saves. God has given us his gospel of grace boxed within the religious rituals given us in his word, but the danger we face constantly is that our trust will be in the ritual of our religion, rather than in the God of our religion. It is important that we attend to the needs of the ark, but it is a great sin for us to put our confidence in the ark as if it is enough for us to have the sign of God's presence. What use is that if we do not have the presence of which it is a sign? God gave his word to Samuel to deliver to the people. But the moment the Philistines came and threatened Israel, they forgot about Samuel and the word of God, and God removed Samuel out of the picture. In fact, he does not re-appear until chapter 7, when the people come to realise anew their need of God's guidance and God's salvation.

What we see here is the wrong solution to a very real problem, and as we read the story we see what a costly mistake they made in placing their trust in that ark. First of all they lost 4,000 people, and then when they got the ark of which they said "It will save us" they then lost 30,000 people. It is all to possible to look at the outward form of a religion and not have the power of the God of the Bible. It is possible to put our confidence in outward forms and not know the blessing and the power of the grace that saves. Time and again the Bible reminds us that it is not a religion that saves. It is a relationship that saves, and God's people had moved away in their relationship to the God of the covenant, and were placing their trust in this ark.

The Philistines came and the story unfolds in chapter 4. The death of Eli followed, the death of his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, the death of Phinehas's wife and the child whom she called Ichabod , "Where is the glory?" The glory was gone. The Philistines took the ark, which God had blessed so often, this means of grace whose purpose was to lift the eyes of the Israelites to the God of the covenant, and God permitted the Philistines to take away the ark, and it was in their country for seven long months.

Despite the fact that Samuel is missing from the narrative at this point, the effects of the word and the power of Samuel's God are evidenced in the story. God brings us to the land of the Philistines, and permits us to witness something that occurred in that land when the ark of the covenant lay there as a trophy of Philistine supremacy. The Philistines brought the ark to Ashdod, where they placed the ark in the house of their own god, Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines. There, before a magnificent statue of the Philistine deity, there was placed the ark of the covenant, the great symbol of Israel's deity. The statue of Dagon and the ark of Jehovah came face to face.

We are told that early the following morning the people of Ashdod came to their temple, only to discover their great god lying on the ground before the ark. Immediately they lifted him up again and placed him on his pedestal. The following day Dagon was not only fallen to the ground; he was also decapitated - only the stump of his fishy tail was left in place on the pedestal. What an inglorious end to such a glorious statue! But we are told that this explains why the priests of Dagon and those who came into the building would not dare walk over the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod afterwards. It was so obvious that before the God of the Israelites, the god of the Philistines was nothing at all.

What was the significance of this confrontation between these two gods? There is a great set-off between the God of the Israelites on the one hand, and the god of the Philistines on the other. As the ark is placed there in the temple of Dagon before the statue, we realise that the ark of God cannot be there and not have an effect. It has this great effect of bringing the god of the Philistines into the dust of the ground.

I have no hesitation in saying that what took place in Dagon's temple long ago is the very stuff of the Word of God, and the very essence of the Bible's story from beginning to end. You listen to Paul in Romans: God has given us a revelation of himself. He has revealed himself to us in his word of truth, as in the creation around us and in the Person of his own Son. He has revealed himself in his word, and give us an insight into his eternal majesty and power and glory. If you want to know about God, go to the Bible. If you want to know about the nature of God and the purpose of God and the attributes and the gospel of God, it is to the Word of God you must go. That is the source of our knowledge about God, because it is the place of revelation. Paul tells us in Romans 1 that men have taken the revelation of God and they have trampled it under their feet, and worshipped the creature instead of the Creator, who is blessed for ever. If you go back to the beginnings of human history, you will see that this is the very essence of sin. What happens in Eden? Adam and Eve are tempted by the devil into thinking that by taking and enjoying what God has forbidden they will be better than they ever were before. The same confrontation is there at the dawn of human history between the will of God and the will of man. Man is going to worship himself and place himself before Jehovah, the God of the Word and the God of Creation and Providence, and is going to set himself up against the God who made him, and the God who has revealed himself to him.

If you come through the Old Testament, with its great battles in which God's people face their enemy; Israel against the Egyptians, against the Philistines, against the Babylonians, you will see that there are two streams running their course through history. The work of God on the one hand and that of the devil on the other - the same confrontation between Jehovah and the gods of this world, that have eyes but no vision, ears but no hearing, who are made of stone and are powerless and impotent. But you can see the battle-lines drawn: Jehovah is against the gods of the world. See how Psalm 82 puts it: In the assembly of the gods, Jehovah stands supreme. Supposing you were to take every idol ever manufactured by the heart and hands of man into a great assembly of gods, there stands Jehovah supreme, and in the words of Psalm 86 we can say, "Lord, there is none among the gods that may with thee compare". I believe with all my heart that however much the world has changed over the course of the centuries, there is a sense in which the world has not changed at all.

Today, in our world, in our hi-tech, modern, cultured world, there is still the same confrontation in the experience of men between the claims of truth and the claims of error, between the God of the Bible and the gods of the nation, between the way of light, and life, and truth, on the one hand, and the way of death, evil and sin on the other. The Gospel of God's redeeming grace comes right in to deal with man's bondage to the gods of this world, the gods of his own making and choosing, and the Gospel is able to bring these gods low into the dust, and to liberate us into being free to serve and worship Jehovah, the God of the covenant.

Make no mistake about it - what happened in Dagon's house long ago is still happening in hearts and homes and lives and nations throughout the world - the great battle between the God of Israel, Jehovah, the God of the covenant, and the gods of this world that are worshipped by blinded nations. The Ark of the God of the Covenant is still facing Dagon, the god of the Philistines. It is into this battle that the Gospel comes in our experience, and the great issue for each one of us is this - to which god are we bowing? To the gods, the fashions, the philosophies of this world? Or have we come to bow personally before Jehovah-Jesus, the God of the Bible. The gods of the world have not let up in their effort to have as many followers as they possibly can; there is no shortage of idols in twenty-first century Britain, no shortage of idols. Whatever is occupying the throne of our heart - if it is not Jesus, then it is an idol that needs to be removed. Men are still bowing before the false deities that dictate the world's way of living and of thinking, gods of science that are telling us that God did not create the world, that it evolved out of some great primeval lump once, that are saying that morality does not need to enter into the area of medical ethics - abortion is not wrong, euthanasia is not wrong - gods that are saying we can ignore the law of God that sets a premium on human life and on God's glory in human life - gods that shape the thinking and standards of men, gods that have no place for Jehovah, who are driving out the thought of God fromthe thinking of young and old, and who are saying that if we bow before them all will be well; when all will not be well unless we are bowing before the only god that there is, before Jehovah, the God of truth, the redeeming, saving God, the God of the everlasting covenant.

Do you see that this great incident in Dagon's temple is a parable of the world in which we live, in its great battle between truth and falsehood, between grace and sin, between the gods of this world who have blinded the eyes of those who believe not, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who stands supreme and alone among the gods, and who will not give his glory to any other nor his praise to graven images.

Let's notice two things about this great confrontation between these two gods.

Let's notice first, THE WORLD'S ATTITUDE TO THE TRUE RELIGION

As we come into Dagon's temple and see him lying prostrate on the ground, let's bear in mind, first, that here we see what the world thinks of the religion of Jehovah. Obviously the Philistines knew that there was power here, in the God worshipped by those who possessed the Ark. They knew that there was grace there, from the God worshipped by Israel. So what did they do with the Ark? They took it, and placed it at the feet of their own god.

They did not move Dagon over so that Jehovah could share the platform with him; they took the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of Jehovah's presence and power, and placed it before Dagon, at the very feet of his shrine and statue. The world is still doing exactly this with the true religion of the Bible, taking the religion that God has revealed in Jesus Christ, and placing it at the feet of its gods. It is willing to tolerate the name of Christianity, and a token place for the Bible, and for Christianity as one faith among the many faiths of the world; but in reality the world is placing the true religion at the feet of its own gods.

Wherever you look in the world, or in this dark, godless, atheistical world of ours that has turned its back on the claims of truth and the standards of God's law, men and women are taking the Christianity of the New Testament and they are placing it in the service of the gods of this world.

What do I mean? There are many people, for example, who pay lip service to the claims of Christ and the doctrines of Christianity in our nation; at times of importance, such as state occasions and celebrations they will take out the Bible and read it and 'preach' a nice, short sermonette on some esoteric, mystical theme and they will wheel out the Bible and place it in the service of their idols, and then remove it and put it away without a second thought. Men will take Christianity, as they find it in the rituals and symbols of the Bible, at times of crisis in their lives - at death, bereavement they will take these features of the Christian religion, with all its comfort and blessing and consolation, and will derive comfort from them, and then they will go away and live as though they had never heard of Jesus Christ!

Why do men do this? Because they are placing the true religion in the service of their own gods. People will come to get married in church, choose a few psalms and a few passages for the minister to read, and will use these elements of true religion and then they will go away and forget that they have ever been in God's house. They are placing God's religion of truth at the feet of their own gods, and they will have that religion there as a standby, a hedging of their bets in case things go wrong; they will satisfy their conscience and give themselves a pat on the back, and they'll feel warm inside because they have paid lip service to the religion of truth and to the Word of God and the Bible. But all the time, they have taken that true religion and they have placed it in the house and in the service of Dagon.

You see, until Dagon falls, he will reign supreme in the lives of men. And until our hearts bow before the sovereign throne of Jesus Christ, they will be occupied and ruled by all the gods and fashions and atheistic philosophies of this world. However much lip service we may pay to the teachings of Christianity and the things of Christ and the statements of the Bible, it is only taking God's word and placing it in the service of these other gods. Is that what we are doing with the Word of God? Is that all the Christian faith and the claims of truth mean to us? Is that all that the teachings of Jesus mean to us? Some additional extra to the religion we already have in the service of the gods of this world who have blinded the eyes of men so that they cannot see the glories of Christ's gospel. Is it really possible for us to live as if we had never heard of Jesus at all? To attend a place of worship where Christ is honoured and where Christ is proclaimed and where the Word of God is held high as the one source of truth, and go away as if we had never heard the Bible?

Is it really possible for the religion of Jesus Christ to have so little influence in lives that have heard and known so much of the saving power of the Gospel. It is all too possible for men and women still to take the truth that they know and to place it at the feet of the gods of this world.

We are told in the Old Testament that the reason that Israel fell and the reason Samaria was captured on the eve of the Babylonian captivity was this: the people worshipped the Lord God but they served their own gods. That was why God took Israel into Babylon. The name of Jehovah was on their lips; they worshipped Jehovah, but they served their own gods. That was what the Philistines did - they took the Ark, but they served Dagon. They paid lip service to the god of Israel, but they served their own fish-god, Dagon. In the great spiritual battle for the souls of men, the gods of this world still reign supreme in many lives: men take out the Bible and pay lipservice to it, but their lives are in the service of this world's gods.

Never forget that the world will give a place to Christianity, but they will always place the religion of truth at the feet of their own deity. That is what the world thinks of Christianity. What, then, are we doing with the religion of truth? We can easily impress men with our religion, our church attendance, our public worship; but it will never impress God, because God is calling not simply for outward lip service, but for lives to be totally dominated by the claims of his truth and by the word of God revealed in the Bible. I am more interested in whether you have a Bible-shaped life, than whether you adhere to a Bible-shaped religion, whether in your heart of hearts you are bowing before the God of the covenant than to know your opinion of the Christian faith, whether the word of God has had such a course into your life and such an influence over it that it is your very life-blood and you cannot do without it. Are you saying tonight, "There is none among the gods that may with thee compare...".

But let us remind ourselves of GOD'S POWER OVER EVERY FALSE RELIGION.

You recall what happened in the temple of Dagon. They left the ark there and closed up the temple for the night, and expected the following morning that things would be the way they were the night before. But they came back the next day and saw Dagon, the great statue of the god of the Philistines lying in the dust with his face in the earth before the Ark of the Covenant. No human hand had done this. There had been no break-in to the Temple during the night; no; there was some One in the Temple but it was no mere mortal, but the presence of the living God, symbolised by that very Ark. And before that living God, Dagon fell. It was the last thing the priests of Dagon expected to see; the last thing they anticipated when they came into the temple that morning. But there it was - the indisputable and incontrovertible evidence of the power of Jehovah over Dagon.

In a moment, when they least expected it, Dagon had fallen before the Lord. Do you know that God has lost none of his power, and none of his ability to bring down the gods that we once served. There are lives that are consecrated to the Lord and that are following Christ for one reason only: that the power of Jehovah dismantled and toppled the gods that these lives were once serving. That was what Paul said of the Thessalonian believers, when he spoke of the great change grace had brought into their experience: you turned from idols to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for his Son from Heaven. Has this happened in our experience? Have we turned from idols we once loved and followed, coming to realise how powerless they were before the God of the Bible, and turned to worship the one true and living God, placing all our trust, faith, hope and confidence in Jesus, coming to experience for ourselves the power of Jehovah, stronger than that of any other god, or deity or idol that took the supreme place in our lives. The essence of conversion is to be found in the fall of these gods that once held sway over our lives and over our thinking so that now we have come to bow before Jehovah the god of the covenant.

When we least expect it, every one of our idols will fall. They will not stand for ever. The gods the world is running after - that men and women have made for themselves, that are so important, God says that they will not stand forever. One day we will unlock the door expecting to see them there, and they will have fallen to the dust. There is a day coming, says the Bible, when Jesus Christ will come again in the brightness of his glory to the sound of God's trumpet and God's voice, and the angels will be in attendance; he will come in a blaze of glory and the very elements of this world will melt before him, and the gods we serve will topple to the very ground before Jehovah, the God of the Bible.

But I want you to notice the madness of these priests. Do you know what they did? They went and gathered round Dagon; there he was, poor soul, in the dust with his face on the ground, and his priests went round him and picked him up and put him on his pedestal again so that they could worship him again. What kind of a god is this, that needs men to lift him up? The God of the Bible lifts up men - the god of the Philistines needed men to lift him up. It is part of the madness of sin that these priests of Dagon thought that if they put Dagon back up on his pedestal, he would never fall again. They thought that if they restored their idol to the place from which he had fallen, he would be there forever. Only 24 hours later, he is again in the dust, with his head and hands chopped off.

It is the same kind of madness that possesses men still when they think that having argued against everything in the Bible they have got rid of God, and they can lift up their own idols once again. It is the madness of the Pharisees in the time of Christ, after Lazarus was risen from the dead; many people believed and Lazarus sat at meat with them on that day when Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with oil and washed his feet with her hair. Do you know what the Pharisees were saying? They were plotting how to put Lazarus to death! Jesus had raised him from the dead - and there was Lazarus in front of them, sitting with them, eating with them, sharing in the fellowship of Jesus, having been dead and having been raised again, and the Pharisees are plotting and planning how they can kill him! It's madness - the gods of this world have blinded them to the truth that is before their very eye: that even in the face of death itself, God reigns supreme.

It is possible to pick up Dagon and put him on his pedestal, but of this one thing you can be sure - he will fall, and the ultimate victory will belong to Jehovah. The kings of the earth and the princes of the world are plotting against the Lord and his anointed. The atheistical, godless philosophies that have shaped the thinking of modern man are still plotting against Jesus, but still Jesus reigns supreme at the right hand of the Majesty on High, and he will remain there until all his enemies are made his footstool.

It is not better to belong with him, and the cause that is his and will ultimately triumph than to succeed in a cause that will fail and fall before Jehovah, the God of the Bible. Where are we? Who are we following? Who are we worshipping? Have we turned away from idols to serve the living and true God before whom the gods of this world are nothing, and at last the empty, vain promises of their religion will fall before the throne of Christ's glory. How we should pray that the Gospel would penetrate these dark areas of the world where men and women are still captive to the ancient, fearful bondage of superstitious, native religions that hold millions of people in the grip of darkness and in the grip of sin, when Jesus says "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me." One day he will vindicate all the claims of his truth; he will demonstrate the falsity and emptiness of every claim of these Christless religions, and they will bow in the dust without a head, and without hands, as Dagon did before the Throne of Christ's glory. ON that great day, only one thing will matter - have we bowed before the Christ of God? Are we his? Is he ours? Are we serving the living God, the true God, and waiting for his Son from Heaven, in whom is all our salvation, hope and confidence? Dagon will fall; he that sits in Heaven will hold in derision every one that plotted against him, that thought that it was possible to get to Heaven without him. He calls sinners in the gospel to put their trust in the one living and true God.

Are we serving Samuel's God?

© Iain D. Campbell 2001