2.9.25 – 1 Samuel 6

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Welcome to Add Bible, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. We join Alan J. Huth as he shares Bible passages and comments from over 30 years of his personal Bible reading journals.

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Today we are in 1 Samuel chapter 6. We will listen to the 21 verses of this chapter as recorded by Faith Comes by Hearing.

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1 Samuel 6 The ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, What shall we do with the ark of the Lord?

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Tell us with what we shall send it to its place. They said, If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you. And they said, What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines. For the same plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away and they departed? Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home away from them. And take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put in a box at its side the figures of gold which you are returning to him as a guilt offering.” Then send it off and let it go its way and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth Shemesh, then it is he who has done us his great harm. But if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us. It happened to us by coincidence.

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The men did so and took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh along one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. 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 the 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. These are the golden tumors that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the Lord. One for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, one for Ekron, and the golden mice according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both fortified cities and unwalled villages. The great stone beside which they set down the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh. And he struck some of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck seventy men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. 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? So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you.

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We’re back in that first journal back in 1983, the first journal I ever recorded. I was very brief, pretty sparse, as you’ve probably already heard. I had a one-liner once again on this chapter. I said, Return to Israel, cows pulling carts. Head straight for Israel. Men of Israel look into Ark and die. Well, I guess that’s the Reader’s Digest version of this chapter, isn’t it? Let’s go on to my journal in 2007, where I fleshed out this chapter a little bit more. I wrote, Chance or Sovereignty? The Philistines took two cows who had just given birth and pointed them toward Israel. The cow’s natural instinct would be to go in the direction of their newborn calves. The Philistines wanted to know if God had caused them these plagues, or was it just by chance? The cows, according to verse 12, took the straight way to Israel and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. I continued to write, God used cows to reveal himself to the Philistines, but it still wasn’t good enough for them to turn away from their false gods and worship him. Let’s look at what the Philistines are really doing here. In a way, they are testing to find out what has really happened. Has this happened from God or is it just by chance? So if we look at verses 8 and 9, it says, Send it off and let it go its way and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land to Beth Shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm. But if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us. It happened to us just by coincidence. Do you think that things happen in your life by chance or by coincidence? Or are they sovereign acts of God Almighty? I suppose most of us think that a lot of things that happen in our lives just happen. They just happen by chance or they just happen by coincidence. But is that really what’s happened here with the Philistines? God knows what’s in the hearts of the Philistines. So he’s going to give them an illustration. Now it would be the natural instinct of cows that just had calves to turn to go back to where their calves are. And that was the test that the Philistines are doing here. What do the cows do? Verse 12 says, And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh, along one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor to the left. The Philistines are watching this, and yet, remember what I wrote in my journal. God uses cows to reveal himself to the Philistines. But it still wasn’t good enough for them to turn away from their false gods and worship him. We see this today, don’t we? People test God. They want to see if something happening in their lives is really from the Lord. So often He shows us, yes it is, but it’s not enough to turn us back to Him. Look at your life. Is it by chance, coincidence, or is it by the sovereign will of God the things that are happening to you? In 2002, I wrote in my journal after reading 1 Samuel 6, looking into God’s presence or obeying God’s word. The Jews were excited about the Ark of the Lord. They probably had never seen it, but they disobeyed God’s laws. And either 70 or 50,000, depending on which translation you’re reading, are slain. The Philistines understood God’s presence and suffered for it too. So they got the ark out of their possession. In doing so, God gave them testimony as well. He is God. There is no other. So as we listen to God’s word on these podcasts, I hope our tendency is to obey the things we’re hearing from God’s word. I’m not living under the circumstances. I’m living under the sovereignty of God. How about you? Now, I have an interesting journal entry about mom on this day, so let me read that. Mom is improving ever so slightly, but she is still with us. Maybe God did give me that verse last Monday, 1 Samuel 20, verse 2. By no means you shall not die. I read that and I applied it to her, but I did not have the faith or boldness to share it. Later in the week, I shared it with one of my nephews and his wife, and now it’s coming to pass. So mom is improving ever so slightly, and Terry and Shannon, well, they’re in St. Louis today. As you might remember, they were on their way to Charlotte, North Carolina for Shannon’s relocation. So in the direct circumstances that I was in with mom laying in intensive care, I was still reading my Bible each and every day, and I had read that verse about, “‘You shall not die.'” And I didn’t know whether it applied to her or not. Was God speaking to me through his word or wasn’t he? I didn’t know. But as she began to improve, I started to think, well, maybe. Maybe that verse was a little bit of prophecy about mom. Well, we’re going to see. As we close out 1 Samuel chapter 6, let’s pray. Lord, we take a moment to pause in our lives. Do we see our lives by chance or by circumstances or coincidences? Or do we see a sovereign God working in our lives? These Philistines tested you and you proved yourself faithful. You gave a great testimony to them that you were in control of the circumstances and you were the one directing the problems that they were experiencing. You showed them and yet they still didn’t believe you. Help us, Lord, as we see you work in our lives that we believe in the things we see and give the glory to you. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to AdBible today. You might wonder how I became a daily Bible reader. When I was 15 years old, a buddy and me stole his father’s car. We could steal his father’s car because his father was in Vietnam, serving in the war. So he was never home. So we took the car that day, Neither one of us with a driver’s license, and we took off out east of Colorado Springs on a dirt road. We were flying down this dirt road at 60 miles an hour, and he lost control of the car. We began to spin and we were going down the road, fishtailing, and he spun the wheel of the car, 60 miles an hour. The car tumbled, crushed the top, tucked the wheels under, totaled the car. I was on a dirt road. I don’t know if I was thrown out of the car or crawled out of the car, but I looked at that car and I thought, am I even alive? Am I broken? Am I bleeding everywhere? And I began to pat myself down, and I felt like I was okay. So I stood up, and I was uninjured, amazingly. The sheriff came to draw up the accident. He said, it’s a miracle you guys are alive. I got home that night, went down into my bedroom. My mother came to me and said, you ought to thank God you’re alive. I was laying on my bed, and I was thinking about the day’s activities. And I just thought, wow, I could have been dead today. I wasn’t the driver. I was the passenger. I wasn’t in control. But God was. At that moment, I figured out at 15 years old, God could take my life any time. He could have that day. So as I laid there, I thought, okay, you could take my life any day. So you saved my life today for a reason. For whatever reason that is, I’m going to live for you and that reason. As I said that, I heard a voice say to me, there’s a Bible on your bookshelf. Get it down and read it. I must have heard something, because I got up, I went over to the bookshelf, and I pulled down a Bible. I opened it to the first page, just like I would any other book, and I began to read God’s Word. I read Genesis chapter 1. The next day I read Genesis chapter 2. The next day I read Genesis chapter 3. And a chapter a day, I began to read God’s Word at 15 years old. If you do that, by the way, it’ll take you about three and a half years to finish reading the Bible a chapter a day. And that’s a good plan. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader. And when I finished going through the Bible the first time, at 18 years or so, I just started over because I thought that’s what Christians did was read their Bibles every day. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader.