75. God is No Loser: 1 Samuel 5-6

G', day, Dave here.

Welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Hey, do you know that sometimes when God does his good plans, it makes him look like a loser.

It makes him look like he's weak and silly.

It makes him look like he's lost.

Sometimes you.

You might feel like God's weak or he's losing.

You might hear about really sad things that happen to Jesus followers.

Sad things might happen to you as a follower of Jesus.

And you might feel like, if God's the winner, how come it seems so bad at the moment?

How come he looks like a loser?

And there are certainly lots of people who laugh at Jesus.

They laugh at God and think he's a loser.

Why would you trust him?

Of course, looking like a loser and actually losing are two very different things.

And sometimes the path to God winning goes through looking like he's lost.

Take our story from the last episode, for example.

God wanted to teach the Israelites not to treat him like a tool from the shed.

They needed to start treating him as their God.

To teach them that lesson, God made them lose a battle, and he let the Philistines steal the Ark of the Covenant.

Of course, when the Israelites lost the battle in the Ark, it also kind of looked like God lost, even though his plans worked out exactly the way that he wanted.

In this week's episode, the Philistines make the big mistake of thinking that God's lost and they've won.

Now it's their turn to learn a very important lesson.

Get ready for our next episode of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

It was a terrible, sad day for Israel.

They'd lost their priests, they'd lost the battle, and they'd lost the Ark of the Covenant.

Of course, when there's a loser, there's also a winner.

For the Philistines, it's a really happy day.

They're thinking, we haven't just beaten the Israelites, we've beaten their God.

Look, we've captured the Ark of God to prove it.

Now he's our prisoner.

Oh, how wrong they are.

They take the Ark back to one of their five key cities, the city of Ashdod.

In Ashdod, there's a temple to their God who's called Dagon.

They think Dagon's really powerful, and so they give him the Ark.

They put it next to the statue of Dagon.

They don't think of it as just a statue.

They think of it as somehow a part of their God.

And in their minds, they're basically giving Dagon Israel's God as a prize or a slave.

They go to bed happy and proud.

The next morning they get up early and head to the temple of Dagon.

When they get there, they can't believe what they see.

Dagon, the statue has fallen face down in front of the Ark.

There God is actually bowing down to the throne of Israel's God.

This is so embarrassing.

They're like, dagon, what are you doing?

This isn't how things are meant to go.

Remember how powerful you are.

Quickly, they put Dagon back in his place.

Move along, move along.

Nothing to see here.

Dagon's still more powerful than Israel's God.

Ha ha ha.

What's that falling over?

Don't know what you're talking about, mate.

There he is, standing up in his usual place.

It's embarrassing, but hopefully they never have to talk about it again.

The day moves on.

They all go to bed and wake up the next morning.

They head to the temple of Dagon.

Aaaand.

It's happened again.

Dagon's fallen down on the ground in front of the Ark of the Lord.

This time though, it's.

It's even worse.

His head and his hands have been broken off and are lying in the doorway.

Just his body is left to lie in front of the Ark.

The head and the hands symbolise his power and they've been cut off.

They're gone.

Do you see what God's doing?

He's showing who's really powerful, who's really in charge.

Dagon is nothing.

He has no power.

The God of Israel, though, the one true God, he has all the power.

The Philistines didn't win because of Dagon.

They won because of God.

Unfortunately, the priests of Dagon don't give up on worshipping Dagon.

They don't repent and start worshipping the one true God.

They just start doing something really silly to.

To try and Honour Dagon.

In 1 Samuel 5.

5, we're told.

So even today, Dagon's priests and others who enter his temple at Ashdod refuse to step on the doorsill.

It's like they're saying, we don't care about that other God, Dagon.

We still love you, even though you're nothing.

Even though the true God has shown that he's the real go.

So God begins to punish the people of Ashdod.

They start getting sick.

They start getting weird growths on their skin and they work out what's happening.

They get it exactly right.

In verse seven they say, God is punishing us and Dagon, our God, that's right.

That's exactly what's happening.

Sadly, they get the solution wrong.

The real solution is to come to God and ask for forgiveness.

Get rid of Dagon, start listening to the real God.

He's so good, and it'll be so good if they come to him.

But that isn't what they do.

Instead, they want to get God as far away from them as they possibly can.

They say, the ark of the covenant of the God of Israel can't stay with us.

They could have learned a great lesson, but they just don't want to listen.

Each of the five Philistine cities has its own king.

And now they call all the kings together.

They ask in verse 8, what should we do with the ark of the covenant of the God of Israel?

Just like last time, they still think of the ark as a powerful tool or weapon.

They certainly don't want to give that tool back to Israel.

So what should they do with it?

They decide to send it to another one of the five cities, the city of Gath.

What do you think?

Do you think God can just be switched off like a light switch?

If they move his ark to another place, he'll stop caring about things?

Of course not.

So we're told in verse nine.

But after they had moved it to Gath, the Lord punished that city also.

He made the people very afraid.

God troubled both old and young people in Gath.

He caused them to have growths on their skin.

After a while, the people of Gath also decide they've got to get rid of the Ark.

They don't bother getting all the kings together because the kings might tell them to hold onto it.

Instead, they just send it off to one of the other cities, the city of Ekron.

Oh, and they might have just forgotten to tell the people of Ekron that it was on its way.

Well, as soon as the people of Ekran see it, they freak out.

They say in verse 10, why are you bringing the ark of the covenant of the God of Israel to our city?

Do you want to kill us and our people?

We're told the people of Ekron call all the kings of the Philistines together.

They said to the kings, send the ark of the covenant of the God of Israel back to its place.

Do it before it kills us and our people.

They were very afraid.

God's punishment was very terrible there.

The people who did not die were troubled with growths on their skin.

So the people of Ekron cried loudly to heaven.

Sa the ark ends up being in the land of the Philistines for seven months being passed around like a hot potato.

Finally, they realize they can't beat this God.

They haven't begun to trust and worship him.

But they at least realize that there's no way to beat Him.

He is way too powerful.

They get their priests and their magicians together, and in chapter two, verse six, they say, what should we do with the Ark of the covenant of the Lord?

Tell us how to send it back home.

Interestingly, even though these priests and magicians don't really know or trust God, they're the first ones to actually treat God as God.

Not like a weapon or a tool, but as the King and the judge, as the one who they've sinned against by treating him as less than he is.

They actually tell the Philistines, you guys need to ask God for forgiveness.

In verse three, they say, if you send back the ark of the covenant of the God of Israel, don't send it away empty.

You must offer a penalty offering so that the God of Israel will forgive your sins.

Then you will be healed.

When God has forgiven you, he will stop punishing you.

Do you see how that's so much better than what they've been doing?

They've been saying, the Ark is dangerous.

Let's move it over there.

Ooh, it's dangerous there too.

Let's move it over here a bit.

Like, you have to think about where you put the sharp knives in your house.

But as dangerous as the sharp knives are, they don't think, they don't feel.

They're just things.

And you certainly can't sin against them.

God is not a thing.

God is the real living God.

And while the Ark of the Covenant is not God, the way the Philistines have treated it is the same as the way they've treated God.

Like they're in charge of him, not like he's in charge of them.

When the Philistines ask what sort of offering they should give God, the answer sounds a little bit weird.

They decide to give God models of the growths that have been on the Philistine bodies and models of the rats that God's also sent on the land.

And you might think, what's God going to do with models of diseased growths and rats?

That's disgusting.

But that's not really the point.

The point is they're saying to God, we know that these particular things aren't just some random thing that happened.

We didn't just happen to all get sick at the same time.

We know these things came from you God as a punishment, as the priests encourage them to do this, they remind them not to be like another country that God punished.

A country that also had lots of things happen to them, but who refused to listen to God.

They say in verse six, don't be stubborn.

Like the king of Egypt and the Egyptians.

God punished them terribly.

That is why the Egyptians let the Israelites leave Egypt.

They also come up with a plan to make doubly, triply sure that it really is God doing this.

They build a new cart to put the ark on, and they get two cows to pull the cart along.

The cows have calves who desperately want to drink their mother's milk.

And of course, the cows would naturally want to give their milk to their calves.

The filstones lock up the calves who are going crazy, making all sorts of noise, calling their mums to feed them.

But when the cows are attached to the cart, instead of going to their calves, they pull the cart with the ark all the way back to Israel.

Only God could have made the cows do that in Israel.

In a town called Beth Shemesh, all the people are out in the fields gathering in the harvest, and they start to hear a noise.

One by one, they look up and they see something unbelievable coming down the road towards them.

There's a cart with the ark on it.

The ark they'd lost in battle.

The ark they'd lost because of their sin.

They haven't done anything to bring it back.

They haven't fought a battle to win it back.

It's God who's done it.

He's won a victory over the Philistines without any humans at all.

He doesn't need humans to protect him or fight his battles for him.

He doesn't need armies and swords.

He is the one true powerful God.

And even when it looks like he's losing, he isn't.

He can't lose.

And so on that day, the people of Beth Shemesh see the victory of their God coming down the road.

Do you know, there was another time when it looked like God had lost in an even bigger way than this.

When it seemed like he'd lost in the biggest way possible.

When the enemies of God didn't just steal away his special box, they stole the life of his one and only son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

When Jesus died on the cross, Satan, the Romans, the Jewish leaders, even Jesus, friends, they all thought he'd lost forever.

But looking like you've lost and actually losing are two very different things.

Because actually, Jesus was winning the greatest victory of all time.

He won victory over our sin, he won victory over death.

When he was raised to life, he won victory over evil and God crowned him as king of everything, everywhere, forever.

There will be times when it looks like God like Jesus is losing or like he has lost.

It'll look like he's weak and powerless.

When that happens, remember that what something looks like and what it actually is are two very different things.

Remember God's victory over the Philistines, who thought they were more powerful than him.

Remember his victory over sin and death when Jesus rose from the grave.

Remember that his power never fails.

Back in Israel, they're soon going to have to fight another battle against the Philistines.

Will they treat God like a tool again, or will they actually learn their lesson?

Well, that's a story for next time.

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Keep trusting Jesus.

Bye for now.