The Weight of God’s Glory

God’s enemies are unable to withstand the crushing weight of God’s glory, and as the Ark returns to the Israelites, we see that God’s own people are equally unable to stand in God’s presence. It is only in Christ that are we able to stand before the Lord.

[00:00:01] Good morning Calvary. My name is Jamie Robinson. I have the joy and the pleasure of serving here as worship pastor. And for those of you who don’t know me, and maybe you can tell by my voice, I’m a Brit living here in the US and therefore right at the beginning, I need to get something off my chest. Something I need to say to you all. And it’s this I say Philistine, not Philistine. I also say garage instead of garage, and I say aluminium instead of aluminum. But those two words don’t appear in our passage today so you’re safe from any confusion there with those pronunciations. There are many things around us that can either be a blessing or a curse, depending on how we interact with them. For example, think about fire. There’s nothing more comforting on a cold winter’s evening than sitting in front of a roaring fire. Or because we’re in the middle of June and you don’t want to be thinking about winter. Think about a summer campfire gathered around with friends. The heat in our homes comes from a furnace that’s powered by burning natural gas. Many of us cook our food on gas stoves. The engines in most of our cars are still powered by the internal combustion engine, and the jet engine has enabled us to travel vast distances in just a few hours, all because of the way that fuel is burned. Without fire, our world would look and feel very, very different.  When it’s handled properly and carefully, fire is a great blessing, but the opposite is true if we mishandle. It without proper care and attention, that log fire on a cold winter’s evening could easily get out of control and spread out of the fireplace onto the furnishings close by, igniting in seconds and setting fire to the house within minutes. Fire causes devastating damage to our bodies in seconds. The Great Fire of London in 1666 that started in a small baker’s shop, ended up destroying nearly 14,000 buildings and displaced over 70,000 people. Or for a more recent example, just think back to last year’s wildfires in California and the devastation that was caused that destroyed so many neighborhoods. Or take electricity. We use it to power our homes, our devices, our mobile devices, and increasingly, our cars. Without it, we’d have no television. We’d have no computers. We’d have no internet, no lights. There are thousands of ways that electricity has revolutionized modern life, but all it takes is one loose cable or one wiring error, and everything changes. Anyone who’s been electrocuted will know firsthand the power of an electrical current and how that is able to bring instant pain and injury to our bodies. And many thousands of people have unfortunately lost their lives, either due to careless mistakes or freak accidents involving electricity. I do happen to know of a couple people at Calvary who found themselves on the wrong end of a taser as well, but I won’t tell you who they are just to protect their innocence.

[00:03:20] In our passage today, we will see how something that should have been a huge blessing, that is God’s glory in the Ark of the covenant became the very opposite to a blessing. We’ve heard from Josh over the past two weeks about how Israel went into battle against the Philistines and suffered defeat, despite their efforts to sway the outcome of the battle by using the Ark of the covenant as a kind of magic talisman to try and guarantee a win. The Philistines captured the Ark and took it to Ashdod and placed it in their temple of their god Dagon. However, it quickly becomes clear that this captured treasure is going to be the cause of a whole lot of trouble. First, the statue of Dagon falls down before the ark, and after they put it back up, it falls again and then breaks into pieces. Soon after, the people of Ashdod start to experience plagues of tumors breaking out, so they move the Ark on to other towns and other cities. Each time, the tumors and the plagues follow, creating what the Bible refers to as a deathly panic among them. We heard how the cry of the city went up to heaven, and how the heavy hand of God is upon them. And what we’ve seen in this story so far is that the presence of the living God, the glory of God Himself, is just too much to bear for those who are opposed to God, for those who belong to God, people who submit to him and follow him and love him,God’s presence and glory should be a blessing and an honor. But for God’s enemies, those who worship idols and false gods, those who oppose the people of God, the physical presence of the ark is just too much to handle. God’s glory had fallen upon the Philistines and is crushing them under its weight. And so in our passage this morning, we’ll see how they plan to get rid of the Ark, and how they plan to return it to Israel. And just in case we make the mistake of thinking that as soon as the ark is returned back with God’s people, all is well. The story takes a dark turn. The weight of God’s glory and presence is also something that can fall just as heavily on God’s own people. There’s no hiding the fact that our message this morning is a sobering and stark reminder that God is not to be messed with. He’s not someone that we can casually disregard without consequences. He’s not someone that we can approach in our own way, on our own terms. He’s an awesome, holy, powerful, majestic God whose presence and glory is more than anyone can bear both his enemies and his own people.

[00:06:12] So I encourage you to have your Bibles open with me this morning and follow along if you can. Our passage this morning is First Samuel chapter six, and it’s a fascinating story that plays out more like a movie. It’s full of drama and twists and unexpected turns. And because I’m a child of the 80s, I was really tempted to title my message this morning, return of the Lost Ark, in reference to two classic Harrison Ford movies, return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I resisted. So I’ve entitled it The Weight of God’s Glory. So as we pick up at the beginning of chapter six, we read that the Ark has been in the Philistines possession for seven months. That’s a long time, considering the calamities that have fallen on them from the moment that they captured it. But seven months later, they’ve decided enough is enough, and it’s time to get rid of the Ark. It’s been causing too much anguish, too much pain, too much devastation. We read that they gathered their priests and their diviners together to figure out what should be done. Now, these priests are not the same as Israel’s priests. These aren’t men who worship and serve the one and only true living God. These are men who serve as intermediaries between the Philistines and the gods of the Philistines. You see, they were a polytheistic people, meaning that they believed in many different gods, unlike the people of Israel who are monotheistic, who just believed in one God. These priests were experts in divination we read. A practice that involved attempting to predict the future using supernatural and occultic means. These were not godly men. They were men who were blinded by false religion and pagan rituals. But as we read here, we see they’re not dismissing the idea that actually Israel’s God does actually exist. In verse two, they refer to the ark as the ark of the Lord, they’re open to the idea that the plagues and the calamities are the work of the God of the Israelites. And so, just to be sure, they recommend that the guilt offerings should be sent back along with the ark. This thinking would have been right in line with their understanding of what a pagan deity wanted. In their polytheistic worldview, the gods they worshipped would have required offerings and sacrifices to appease them, just to make them happy. In their mind, the God of the Israelites was unhappy with them, and therefore the way simply to make him happy again was to return the ark and include some gifts and offerings made from gold. They thought this would be enough to placate this foreign God and remove themselves from his judgement, and from under his wrath. And so we read the offerings. They recommend a golden tumors and mice. It’s very likely that the tumors represented the plagues that God caused among them. And the mice could have been the method by which these these plagues moved around them, or at least a plague of mice could have been one of the afflictions that they experienced.

[00:09:30] Either way, the inclusion of a guilt offering would, in their minds, release them from any further punishment from God. I’m sure most of you here this morning will have known somebody who would describe themselves as a spiritual person. They wouldn’t go as far as to call themselves a Christian, but they are open to the possibility of a higher power. According to a Pew Research survey conducted in 2023, nearly three quarters of Americans say that they are spiritual. 86% believe that they have a soul or a spirit, and 83% believe in some kind of universal spirit or God. Spirituality seems to be on the rise, especially in the younger generation, as they look to see what’s what’s beyond the material world. And in one sense, this is encouraging. This is encouraging that people are open to the existence of God but it’s also troubling when we look and delve into what they’re actually believing.  in the vast majority of cases, they’re looking to nature itself as the higher power, or they’re the looking inside themselves. They’re looking into the the hidden powers of love and kindness and learning how to be a better, a more caring human being. Or they end up looking at creation itself and mistaking creation for the creator. Or perhaps they place their belief in some mysterious cosmic power that’s unknowable and impersonal. Often people who describe themselves as spiritual or keep their options open, they don’t go as far as committing to believing in the one true, knowable God of the Bible, but instead they choose to acknowledge a distant higher power without submitting to its authority. They often end up moving from one belief to another to another. As trends come and go and spiritual practices come and go based on how they benefit their own personal life and how they make their quality of life better. And maybe even some of us here this morning used to live in that way, with that kind of spirituality. But this kind of spirituality is not new. It’s been around for thousands of years, and we can clearly see it in the Philistines. They worship various deities and gods, and yet they’re open to the existence of another god, another god to add to their list the God of the Israelites. They have some belief that Israel’s God could exist, and therefore, if he does exist, they should probably try to make him happy as best they can. In verse five, we read that the priests advised their leaders to give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. They say they even refer to Israel’s history, to their captivity in Egypt, and the plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians in order to release his people.

[00:12:35] They see the similarities between that situation in Egypt and their situation here and now. So they’re open to the existence of Yahweh. And yet there’s still some doubt in their minds. And we know this because of how they decide the Ark should be transported back to Israel. They come up with a plan to place the ark on a new wooden cart, and then yoke two cows to the cart. Cows that that have never been yoked before. And in addition to that, cows that have just given birth to young calves. The calves will then be removed from their mothers and the cart will be set on its way with no human guidance. The plan is just to to wave the cart off and let it go on its own way. And if you’re thinking this isn’t a very good way to return a sacred object, then you’d be right. Surely it would make much more sense to use experienced oxen to pull the cart, and have men who know the terrain really well, to guide the cart back to where it should be to make sure it gets there in one piece undamaged. But the Philistines have a reason for doing it this way, and their purpose is this they’re stacking the odds against the Ark, making it back to the people of God. If the Ark doesn’t make it very far, then it would seem that Israel’s God doesn’t exist after all. That’s why they want to use inexperienced cows who have just given birth. And the cows are just going to want to return back to their young as soon as they can. But if the God of Israel does exist, he will then guide and direct the ark back to his people. What they’re trying to determine is, does the God of Israel really exist? Is he really the one who’s been behind the plagues and these calamities that we’ve been suffering, or has it just been one big coincidence? So we read in verses 10 through 12 that the Philistines follow the plan of their priests and their diviners. They mount the ark onto a cart and yoke two cows to it and lock up their calves. They then take the golden tumors and the mice, and they place those on the cart along with the ark, and they send it on its way. And so the glory and the presence of the living God leaves the Philistines and heads off into the distance. We read in verse 12 that the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh along one highway, turning neither to the right nor the left, and following some distance behind the lords of the Philistines were looking on to see where the ark would end up. We’re told that the Philistines were as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. So after seven months, without the presence of the Lord, the people of Israel suddenly see the ark of the covenant coming over the horizon, heading towards them. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley. And when they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, they rejoiced to see it. The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there, and they split up the wood of the cart, and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. And the Levites took down the ark of the Lord, and the box that was beside it, in which were the golden figures, and set them upon a great stone. And the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed sacrifices on that day to the Lord. And when the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned that day to Ekron. It’s not difficult to picture the scene, is it? The joy and the celebration that must have broken out among them, as they saw the ark of the Lord appearing on the horizon? Their season of mourning had suddenly come to an end. God had sovereignly brought the ark back to them, and were told that the people of Beth Shemesh rejoiced to see it, and so they removed the ark from the cart, and they took the wood, and they broke it up, and they made a fire, and sacrificed the two cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. They placed the golden carvings on the great stone that would have been used as an altar. And they celebrated, and they gave thanks to God for all that he had done. Their very first instinct was to give thanks to the Lord and to worship him. God, in his great mercy, had returned to his people. What a powerful image of God’s grace. The Israelites had foolishly tried to misuse the glory and the presence of God for their own purpose, and they failed. They thought that they knew best. They tried to force the outcome of this battle instead of trusting God would give them victory. God was justified in leaving them, and he could have abandoned them for good. But he didn’t. He was being faithful to the covenant he had made with them. The people of Israel had failed and broken their covenant. But God remained faithful and upheld the promises that he had made to his people to be their God and to dwell with them. The Old Testament is full of these kind of moments when God’s grace is clearly on display. His people continually drift away from him, and yet he remains true to his word. We see this pattern over and over and over again in the Old Testament. God’s people sin against their God and then calamity comes upon them.

[00:18:11] They cry out to God in repentance, and he graciously hears their cry and sends messages or helpers or he intervenes in some miraculous way. We see it in the Exodus story as they escape captivity in Egypt, and then quickly forget God, and they spend decades in the wilderness. We see it in the book of Judges as they drift into idol worship and adopt the practices of the tribes and the nations around them. And each time, their sin leads to suffering, which in turn leads to repentance and humility, and God faithfully delivers them and saves them every time. And we know this to be true in our own lives, I think as well, don’t we? We’re sinful people who continually miss the mark. Many of us here can identify with the Israelites. Those times of closeness with the Lord often then turns turn into deserts when we forget him. Times when we’ve cried out in prayer to God, and we’ve looked to him, and we’ve seen him provide an answer or a way through those times and fade in our memories. And then the next time that we face a challenge, we end up just trusting our own plans and our own ideas. When life is tough, we press into God. But when things are going well, we return to our old ways. But as the song says, as we sung earlier, our sins, they are many but his mercy is more. What a joy it is to know that God will not leave us to our own ways, but his grace and mercy will find us and bring us back to him.  And so God is reunited with his people. They’re celebrating his goodness. And like a good movie at this point, we’d expect the credits to roll and the end to come. But there’s this twist. There’s this twist that comes, which is challenging, and it’s challenging to say the least. Their joy turns into mourning in just a matter of hours. Right in the middle of their celebration, the weight of God’s glory and presence falls on them in a devastating way. Look at what happens in verse 19. And he struck some of the men of Beth Shemesh because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck 70 men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. This is a gut punch, if ever there was one. This is it. If you’re like me, this promotes a question. It provokes a question rising in your mind. And the question is something like this. Why? Why would God do such a thing? Why would he be so harsh on these men when they’ve just been celebrating his goodness and his mercy? Where did the grace and the mercy suddenly disappear to? They simply look at the ark the wrong way and God kills 70 of them instantly. But we have to catch ourselves and realize that these questions arise from the part of us that doesn’t always want to acknowledge God’s sovereignty and his power and his holiness. These questions arise from the part within us that wants to question God’s ways. Why? Why did you do this, God? Why did you allow this to happen? The reality is that in our sinful, fallen state, we just can’t fully comprehend the full extent of God’s glory and his holiness. It’s hard for us to see. But in that moment, God was protecting and he was upholding his glory. God had given very explicit and detailed instructions and laws to his people on how to handle the Ark. He gave clear rules and regulations about how it should be approached, who was allowed to touch it, who was allowed to see it. There were laws governing how it should be moved from place to place. The ark was way more than a sacred object. It was the very resting place of God, God’s glory on earth. And violating the ark was a direct violation of God himself and the people of Beth Shemesh should have known this better than any other people, because the people of Beth Shemesh were were predominantly Levites. These were men who had the priestly responsibility to look after and care for the tabernacle and the temple and the ark itself. They knew the laws, and yet they disregarded them.

[00:22:48] They understood the correct way to approach God in worship, but they ignored it, thinking that they know best. Now, if I’m being honest this morning as I read this, I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were just checking to see if the Ark had been damaged or desecrated in some way. Maybe they wanted to check inside to see if the sacred objects in the ark had been stolen or damaged. It’s really plausible that they meant well, that they may have genuinely been concerned for the ark and for the glory of God, But all that goodwill and all those good intentions aren’t enough to bypass the law and approach God as they pleased. And it wasn’t just their handling of the ark that caused God’s judgment to fall on them that day. They also disregarded the law of God when they offered the two cows as a burnt offering. You see, the Old Testament laws clearly stated that male cows, not female cows, should have been used as burnt offerings. Just like fire and just like electricity when approached and handled correctly, the presence of God is a blessing. To have the living God, the creator of the universe, dwelling among you, would have been a blessing that no other people group on earth would have had. But when handled incorrectly and when approached casually, without proper regard or respect, the blessing of God’s presence quickly becomes a heavy weight pushing down upon them. God’s holiness is hard for us to comprehend, isn’t it? We tend to view God in our own likeness. We imagine him to be mostly like us, rather than seeing him for who he really is. Often we bring him down to our level and we make assumptions about what he will or he won’t do based on our own limited knowledge or experience or perspective. We fall into that trap of making God too familiar, and then we lose the awe and the wonder and the respect that we should have for the God who brought everything around us into existence. God’s holiness means that he is completely and totally other. There is no one and nothing like him in all of creation. Another way to say it is that he is totally separate from us. There’s a huge gulf of separation between us and God. He is pure and without sin and without blemish. Perfect in all that he says and all that he does with no error. He is omniscient, meaning that he knows all things. Nothing is outside of his control and his knowledge. He’s omnipotent, meaning that he is all powerful. There’s nothing that he cannot do if it’s in accordance with his perfect will. He’s infinite. He has no beginning. He has no end. He’s immutable. That is, he never changes. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever. He never improves or gets better for his perfections cannot be improved upon. He’s totally self-sufficient. He has no need of anything outside of himself. He possesses infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite goodness, all within himself. He’s everywhere at all times. He has no limitations. He’s perfect in faithfulness. He’s perfect in justice and he’s perfect in goodness. And it’s these attributes of God, these qualities of God, and an infinite number, more that we are yet to even discover this side of eternity. It’s these attributes that come together to form the glory of God. They shine forth in his glory. John Piper defines God’s glory like this. He says, the glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections. The infinite beauty, all of his perfections and greatness are beautiful as they are seen, and there are many of them. And I love that definition. The way he uses the word manifold to remind us there are many, many, many qualities of the Lord that come together, but also he’s picking up on the beauty. These are not abstract qualities. These come together in such a beautiful way to display who God is. And so we can only come to the conclusion that God was right to do what he did to the men of Beth Shemesh that day. His glory cannot be messed around with. God is good and he is also holy. A mortal man cannot interfere with the glory of God without the weight of that glory crushing him.

[00:27:40] In the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, Lucy and Susan are asking Mr. Beaver about Aslan, the king, the one who’s going to come and rescue them. And thinking that he’s a man, they’re surprised to find out he’s actually a lion. And when Susie and Lucy ask if Aslan is safe, Mr. Beaver responds with this. He says, safe? Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you, God is a good God. He’s loving and kind, and he’s gracious and he’s compassionate. But in a very real sense, he is not safe. He isn’t a domesticated pet that we can control. He’s the living God who is to be feared with awe and respect, and he’s to be approached in worship on his terms, not on our own terms. Too often, we can make worship more about ourselves than we do about God. We settle for what seems right to us, rather than humbly coming before Almighty God with a healthy understanding and respect for who he is. We make the act of worship into an activity that pleases us, and then we seek to fashion things to our own preferences and our own likings, rather than seeking to uphold God’s glory above all else. And so it would be good and right for us this morning to ask ourselves, how much awareness do we have of God’s glory? How much thought did you give to the glory and the presence and the holiness of God this morning as you came to church? How much was it on your mind? Do you know that each time we do this, each time we meet together as God’s church and worship him, that our feet are standing on holy ground? And so as we approach the end of this chapter, we read these haunting words in verse 20.

[00:29:48] Then the men of Beth Shemesh said, who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up, away from us? You see, the Israelites realized that in some sense they are no different to the Philistines. God’s enemies can’t bear the weight of God’s presence and his glory. And now neither can his own people. And so they asked the question, if they can’t stand in the presence of the Lord, who can? Who is able to bear this weight that seems to be crushing everyone around them? The end of this passage sees them sending the ark off, away, up the hill. They don’t want it anymore. They want to move it on to another place because they’re unable, or maybe unwilling to live with it in their midst. Instead of seeking repentance from the Lord, they decide to move the ark on and make it somebody else’s problem. Who is able to stand before the Lord? This question might even be on some of your minds right now. Some of you might be thinking the same thing. How can anyone stand in the presence of the Almighty God without fear and without trepidation? Without fear of being struck down for the smallest of transgressions? Well, the good news is that there is one man who is able to withstand the full weight of the glory of God. One man who approached God the Father with a perfect heart without defect. A man who didn’t attempt to use God as a lucky charm to achieve his own outcomes. A man who didn’t seek to do things his own way, but who sought only to do the will of the father at all times. Jesus lived his life in full obedience to every one of God’s laws. He showed us what a life of perfect worship looks like. And more than that, because he is fully man and he is fully God, he was the perfect representation of God’s presence on earth. Long after the ark was lost and forgotten in history, God’s presence was once again found walking on the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, and the glory of God was never displayed more powerfully and more clearly than on the cross when Jesus freely gave his life up for us. There he felt the full force of God’s wrath and judgment as he took the punishment that we deserved upon himself. The cross of Christ is the place where God’s glory was displayed most clearly for us. It’s the place where holiness and righteousness and judgment are intertwined with grace and mercy and love and compassion. It’s only because of Christ that any of us today are able to stand in the presence of God. If it wasn’t for Christ, none of us would be able to bear the crushing weight of God’s glory. Like the men at Beth-shemesh, God struck Christ. But here’s the difference, Christ was only struck for a brief time, three days, and then he rose again. And in Christ’s case, he didn’t get struck because he transgressed the law, it’s because he chose to stand in our place and take the punishment that we deserved. This glory of God did not crush him. Instead, it shone even brighter through him. And it’s by him and through him that those of us today, that we’re able to approach God with confidence and boldness without fear of being struck down. Christ became the ultimate guilt offering far better than any golden idol or statue. In Christ, our guilt is removed once and for all. In Jesus, the presence of God and the guilt offering come together perfectly. And so we can answer that question today. The question that they asked, who can stand before the Lord? And we can say, anyone who is in Christ is able to stand in the presence of the Lord without fear, without condemnation, and in full assurance of God’s grace and his mercy. Let’s pray.

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