The Ark of God’s Covenant
1Samuel 4:1-11
If I have to tell one main theme that is penetrating through all the stories and teachings in the Bible, I would say it is “God’s presence and His guidance.” That is, the word of God records how God dwelt among his people and led them through His ways. God’s presence and guidance is so faithful. It is always good, and wise, and merciful. God is mighty, creating something out of nothing, opening a new way through the wilderness, humiliating all the enemies standing against Him, and showing us His glory, only His glory. If we rejoice God’s presence and follow His guidance obediently, we will witness His glory and enter His glorious blessings. On the contrary, if we do not rejoice His presence and not follow His guidance, this will become our sins, and we will go through many trials instead of blessings. In this sense, God Himself stands on the boundary between our fortunes and misfortunes, between our life and death. In Deuteronomy 30:15-18, Moses says to the Israelites, “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.”
Moses says to the people of Israel, “I command you to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws.” This word is truly our life and prosperity. Our body has vital signs that indicate the health condition of the body. They are temperature, respiration, pulse, blood pressure, and so on. By monitoring these signs, we can find any problems in the body and take necessary actions to regain health. We need such devices also for our spiritual health. For our spiritual life, God put a certain device among us. Through the device established by God, we can examine our hearts and attitudes toward God, and if we find any problem, we may work for restoring a right relationship with God who is the source of our life and prosperity. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, the ark of God’s covenant, and Jesus and his cross are such devices that God set between God Himself and His people. In Genesis 2, God put the man he created in the Garden of Eden, and gave him the commandment: ““You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:16-17). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the middle of the garden, together with the tree of life. Standing in the middle of the garden, this tree would always preach the word of God to Adam and Eve. It was like God Himself was enthroned at the center of the garden, dwelt with His people, and talked to them face to face. That is, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was “a life-support system” through which God was present among the people, said to them, and guided their hearts toward God. However, the serpent used this life-support system as a bait to tempt the man and woman to commit the sin. What did the serpent do? It denied the word of God. The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die!” And it replaced the word of God with a lie. Then, strangely, her eyes were changed, and the fruit of the tree, which was prohibited by God, looked good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.
With regard to the ark of God’s covenant in today’s text as well, we can see a similar situation. The ark of God was a chest made of acacia, in which the Testimony was contained (Exodus 26:16). This Testimony was the Ten Commandments that God inscribed on two stone tablets prepared by Moses (Deuteronomy 4:13). Moses called the tablets “the tablets of the covenant” (Deuteronomy 9:11). God gave the people of Israel these commandments as the laws that they should keep before God, and established the covenant based on the commandments. “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). Inside the ark of the covenant were God’s commandments that the people of Israel should obey. Through the commandments laid in the ark of the covenant, God was present among the Israelites, and God guided His people. In Deuteronomy 1:33, Moses says about the Lord God who led the Israelites: “He (the Lord) went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.” Also, Numbers 10:33 says, “So they set out from the mountain of the Lord and traveled for three days. The ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them during those three days to find them a place to rest.” In this way, God, through the ark of the covenant, walked far ahead of His people in order to find the way to go and a resting place to camp. We can see the moving ahead of the God’s ark also when the Israelites were crossing the Jordan River to enter the Land of Canaan. Joshua 3:14 says, “When the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them.” When the priests carrying the ark of the Lord put their feet into the water of the Jordan River, the water stopped flowing completely and the people crossed the river on dry ground. And only when all Israel passed, the ark of the covenant came out of the river and the water began to flow again. God’s moving ahead of Israel through the ark of covenant was not for being their “king.” It was only for defeating and scattering enemies, paving a way, finding a safe place, and guiding His people safely and peacefully. God is truly humble and merciful, and his caring is so carful and unfailing. So there is only one thing that the people should do. “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant ……” What they should do was obeying God’s commandments in the ark of God.
After the death of Joshua, the ark of God was still among the Israelites, but the commandments in the ark were forgotten. 1Samuel 3:1 says, “In these days, the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.” This word is simple but clear to describe the spiritual condition of Israel just before Samuel’s rising as God’s prophet. Although the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel through his word, and Samuel’s word came to all Israel (1Samuel 3:21-4:1), the spiritual darkness was still covering the whole land of Israel. A fight broke out between the Israelites and the Philistines. In the battle, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, and about four thousand soldiers were killed on the battlefield. With this defeat, the elders of Israel said, “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.” The elders were very surprised at the loss in the battle. And they thought that this defeat came from God. Then, they should have asked why God inflicted this trial upon them. They should have sought God’s will and waited for God’s answers. They should have repented their past life without the word of God and returned to God. But they didn’t do so. Instead of asking and listening to God, they made even a bigger mistake. They brought the ark of God in Shiloh to the camp in the battlefield. And they let the ark fight for them and defeat the Philistines. What they wanted was not God. What they wanted was “victory.” For them, the ark of God was merely a “means” or “tool” for winning a victory. Truly they didn’t have the word of God in their hearts. So, they didn’t fear God. Even the priests Hophni and Phinehas were very disrespectful to God, taking whatever they wanted from the sacrifices offered to God and sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. And finally, they were so corrupted that they took the ark of God and let it fight for them.
Contrary to their expectation, however, the ark of the covenant didn’t fight for them. Rather, the ark of God was captured by the Philistines, and both Hophni and Phinehas were killed. In addition, Israel lost thirty thousand food soldiers. The ark of God, from which the Israelites had expected victory and salvation, rather brought them great disasters. Why did this happen? It is because the Israelites tried to lead God into their way, instead of following God into His way. The elders of Israel said, “Let us bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh……” (4:3). Here, the word for “bring” in the original text is the same as that for “captured” in “The ark of God was captured” (4:11). This suggests that how the Israeli elders were handling the ark of God was not much different from the Gentiles’ capturing of the ark. Interestingly, the same word was also used to describe Eve’s action to “take” the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. God set up the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the ark of God’s covenant in order to dwell among His people and guide them through His word of covenant. But the people removed “the word” from the devices, and they tried to use them for their own desires and in their own ways. And the consequences were sin, death, and destruction. God says, “The whole earth is mine.” But we want to have “the whole earth” without God. And in order to get what we desire, we, if it is needed, don’t hesitate to use God as a “tool” in our ways. We want to be God, and we want to be king.
This is applied to our religion exactly the same way. God gave us Christ Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant. Hebrews 9:15 says, “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” While the covenant God entered through Moses’ Testimony in the ark of God is “the first covenant” or “the old covenant,” God entered into “a new covenant” through Jesus. What is this covenant? How is the new covenant different from the first one? There is a word that defines the new covenant God established through Jesus Christ. Hebrews 8:10 says, “This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. ‘I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” This is from Jeremiah 31:33, and it is similar to God’s word given through Moses to the Israelites in Mt. Sinai. However, there is a fundamental difference. While God’s laws were inscribed on the stone tablets in the first covenant, they are “put in their minds and written on their hearts” in the new covenant. This word was fulfilled through Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice on the cross and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The “ultimate salvation” God had promised through his prophets came upon the people. This is a great blessing, but again, this can bring a disaster, even more serious than those we have seen in the first covenant. Why? It is because there is no more covenant, and no other salvation. Hebrews 10:26-27 says, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”
Jesus is the Word of God, and the laws written in our hearts. Then who writes the laws in our hearts? It is the Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 14:26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” John 15:26 also says, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me,” and John 16:13 says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” With all these words of Jesus Christ, we can say that the Holy Spirit is a “carrier.” He is just carrying the truth of God, which is Jesus Christ, to God’s people. The Holy Spirit doesn’t have his own truth. The Holy Spirit doesn’t say his own word. The Holy Spirit doesn’t testify himself. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work his own way. The Holy Spirit is a carrier, the carrier of the truth from God, which is Jesus Christ. In a sense, the Holy Spirit is like the ark of God that is carrying the Testimony inside. But like the Israelites who took the ark and let it fight for them, there were some people who tried to “use” the Holy Spirit for their own purpose and in their own ways (Acts 8:18). When it was leading the Israelites ahead according to God’s word, the ark of the covenant stopped the water flow of the Jordan River, and it fell down the Wall of Jericho. It was mighty. But when it was led by people according to their desire, the ark of God acted as if it was dead. This is the same for the Holy Spirit. We read many miracles Jesus performed through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is as mighty as God in every way. But the Holy Spirit works only God’s way, and is powerful only when leading us to the truth of God, which is Jesus Christ. Other than that, the Spirit of God may look silent and powerless, and even work against us.
God says, “the whole earth is mine.” “The whole earth” includes everything even my life, my prosperity, and my future. We can get there only through God and by obeying his laws. There is not a detour. Thus, our eyes should always look upon God and our ears should always hear His word carefully. If we keep our eyes on our desires and are obsessed with what we want, we will run ahead of God, and after all, we will lose God and lose everything. When God stops, we should also stop behind Him, and when God rises and moves, we should also rise and follow Him. God gave us such a wonderful device to examine our hearts, which is Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus is truly the Light of our souls that leads us to God’s presence and His guidance. May the Spirit of God make this Light brighter than ever in us! May the Spirit of God do only this job for our souls and nothing else so that we never fall away from this amazing grace of God, and we keep pressing on toward God day by day only through Jesus Christ!