Samuel No.5 Incompatibility

Our reading is from 1 Samuel and chapter 5. 1 Samuel chapter 5. After the Philistines had captured the Ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then they carried the Ark into Dagon's temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod arose the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground, before the Ark of the Lord.

They took Dagon and put him back in his place. But the following morning, when they arose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground, before the Ark of the Lord. His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold.

Only his body remained. That is why to this day, neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter Dagon's temple at Ashdod step on the threshold. The Lord's hand was heavy upon the people of Ashdod and its vicinity.

He brought devastation upon them and afflicted them with tumours. When the men of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, the Ark of the God of Israel must not stay here with us, because his hand is heavy upon us and upon Dagon, our God. So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and asked them, what shall we do with the Ark of the God of Israel? They answered, have the Ark of the God of Israel removed to Gath.

So they moved the Ark of the God of Israel. But after they had moved it, the Lord's hand was against that city, throwing it into a great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumours.

So they sent the Ark of God to Ekron. As the Ark of God was entering Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, they have brought the Ark of the God of Israel around to us to kill us and our people. So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and said, send the Ark of the God of Israel away.

Let it go back to its own place, or it will kill us and our people. For death had filled the city with panic. God's hand was very heavy upon it.

Those who did not die were afflicted with tumours and the outcry of the city went up to heaven. Whenever you're setting out on some project, says Amos principally in his statement, ensure that you are agreed, ensure that you're compatible. Now our Lord takes the question of Amos and he fans it out further and gives even greater clarity as you would expect.

For he tells us that if we're to be his disciples, then our lifestyle has to be compatible. And he gives to us many an illustration of things that don't get on with one another, things that don't converge, that don't mix. For example, darkness doesn't mix with light, does it? For example, good doesn't mix with evil.

And our Lord makes it very clear in Luke's gospel that it's impossible to serve both God and mammon. The two are utterly incompatible. The Lord God can be served from the depths of your heart, but all the service you have to offer to him exclusively.

Why do marriages rock today? Well my experience is this, is this, that basically it's incompatibility. The two don't get on with one another. And sometimes you find a partner in one marriage trying to face two different directions and give allegiance to other parties and as a result the marriage starts to shake.

Now that's exactly the same my dear brothers and sisters in the Christian realm. I spend more time in this area of incompatibility and exposing it in endeavoring to help other believers and to show why they are spiritually so insecure than any other subject. So that's what's in view for us this morning, to think through this area of incompatibility.

Because if there's something in your life that's jarring, that's jarring the Lord, if there's something in your life that makes God take second place, then spiritually you will be, I prophesy, in trouble. Now it seems to me that when you come to this last very little preached from book of Samuel and you move into the fifth chapter of the first of those two historical books, you're immediately catapulted into a situation that speaks to the word incompatibility. And so I want to show you the contents of this chapter and explain to you pastorally and in a modern sense how to cope with the difficulty.

Here I argue in first Samuel and chapter five is visually demonstrated, that will be my first heading for those who take notes, visually demonstrated the nature of what it means to be incompatible. Let's go back on the story. The Ark of the Covenant was the most holy piece of furniture.

You remember I taught you that a couple of weeks ago, that the Jews had in the tabernacle and ultimately in the temple. It was really only a small box with a golden lid and within the box were contained amongst other things the ten commandments. There were two cherubim whose silhouettes you could see in relief as they were cast in gold on top of the box.

And there it was believed between the cherubim God's presence would sometimes hover as in a remarkable way he disclosed himself to those old-fashioned Old Testament Israelites. But on one occasion they did something very stupid. They were constantly harassed when they came back to the land that God gave them by the Philistines.

And they decided that the way to overcome the Philistine forces was to take the Ark of the Covenant and use it as a sort of lucky charm and as a result of that they would get God involved in the battle and they would be highly successful. It really was the most absurd notion and as a result they lost the Ark of the Covenant and that most holy piece of furniture was taken off into the territory of the Philistines. And you discover that it is deposited at a place called Ashdod.

That information is disclosed in the opening two verses. Now Ashdod is very important. Just plug in your concentration at the moment and then you'll see where we're going.

It's very important because there is a temple to another God, a God made famous in the ministry of Samson, the God of Dagon. Now Dagon was really a no-God. I mean by that he was an idol.

He stood for all that was erroneous, all that was impure. And so these Philistines, they decide this ultimate spoil of victory, the Ark of the Covenant, and they'll place it alongside the idol of Dagon in its temple. And overnight remarkable things happen.

The Philistines get to the temple the following morning and they discover that the idol of Dagon has been toppled and falls alongside the Ark of God. Visually demonstrated is the problem of incompatibility. It's all summarized for you, if you please, at the end of the third verse.

There was Dagon fallen on his face on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. They took Dagon and put him back in his place. You see you can't have the two together.

The idol of Dagon stands for what is untrue. It stands for error. The Ark of the Covenant, it stands for the law of God.

It stands for the nature of God. It stands for the revelation of God. And bringing these two contradictory elements together and what they represent creates a tension.

Now it's not my purpose merely to give you an historical excursion into Old Testament history, as fascinating as I discover that to be. It's rather my purpose to remind you of this. That when the beloved Apostle John writes the first letter that bears his name at the end of the fifth, the final chapter of that letter, his final verse is this, little children keep yourself from idols.

Why does John speak in such somber fashion? Well you see there are many modern representations of all that Dagon personified in Old Testament times. There are idols that you have in your life. There are idols that I have in my life.

And John is very concerned that those idols that we used to embrace, that took our time, that took our allegiance, are utterly crushed. We abandon them. We keep ourselves from idols in order to preserve ourselves for the living God and his worship.

You see it's incompatible to try to mix darkness with light, error with truth, mammon with righteousness. And some of us we fall foul on this whole issue. We're not what we should be exclusively given to the Lord.

Now don't let my preaching at this stage sort of find you out to the degree that you feel your exception. You know you're such a wretched sinner. Yes what he says is true, but it doesn't help you at all.

Well maybe it helps you if you begin to realize that the tabernacle is not a community of saints, it is a community of sinners. In other words we're all in the same boat. That should at least give you a measure of relief.

You see it seems to me that isolated in 1 Samuel chapter 5 is this principle that when a man, when a woman commits himself to the Holy God, the Ark of the Covenant, all that it stands for, the mercy of the Lord Jesus, the love of God enters within our personalities. And if that was all that the gospel implied, then my task as a preacher would be that much more easy. But you see when I became a Christian, Dagon wasn't eliminated.

The old nature, it remained sometimes far more firmly than I would like. And there is that inattention that I have known all the years of my Christian life between what I should be and what I really am. It's the fight of the Adamic nature over against the Holy Spirit coming into the believer's life in all his fullness.

Paul makes reference to this. It's the war between the spirit and the flesh. And there is within us all that tendency to compromise the incompatibility that rises within the hearts of Christian people.

Now let's just stay with the account for a moment because it's most instructive to see it as an illustration of the problem that you and I as believers face. You see, immediately, the Ark of the Covenant is brought into the temple of Dagon. There is difficulty, is there not? Look at the third verse.

When the people of Ashdod rose early the next morning, there was Dagon fallen on his face. You see, the tension was there at the outset of placing the Ark within the temple. And not only did Dagon fall, it was a deliberate fall.

It didn't just topple over. It wasn't an accident. He didn't trip.

He was pushed. He fell on his face. The Ark had been placed at the feet of the idol Dagon, as though the Ark was going to do obeisance to Dagon, the idol, but not a bit.

The God of the Covenant does obeisance to no other God because there is no other God, and he will humble any no-God that pretends to be supernatural. The idol falls on its face. The ancient way of worship is to be prostrate on your face, impossible in the tabernacle with the pews arranged as they are without doing yourself a mischief.

But nonetheless, the ancient worshipers would worship the Lord in that fashion. And the Ark is toppled, the idol is toppled. It falls before the Ark of the Lord in the position of obeisance.

And the problem that confronts you and me is further adumbrated, is further worked out in this respect, that when the Philistines come in and see what happens, they take Dagon and they reinsert him in the position that he held previously. As I find sometimes when I'm able to do battle valiantly against sin, and I believe the victory has been won once and forever, I discover that the idol is re-erected within my life. You see, this sort of thing, this re-institution of Dagon, it's illustrative of the Christian life all the way down.

When he feels that he has vanquished Satan and temptation, then the Philistines come in and reinsert that Adamic principle. And throughout the whole of our lives, this tension occurs of trying to deal with the tendencies towards incompatibility. Now, have you gathered what I'm talking about? I trust you have.

I have the problem of a rather difficult historical passage, and wanting to bring this up into New Testament context, so you have to concentrate, and that's one of the reasons why I would choose the tabernacle congregation over against any other congregation I've ever preached to, and I mean that. It's probably the reason why I stayed here so long. You see, we all have a Dagon.

I don't know what your Dagon is, I know what mine is. That thing which so reinserts itself within my mentality, within my psyche, within my soul, what's yours, my friend? What do you try and put alongside the Ark of the Covenant, where God has met you in his mercy? Is it your self-righteousness? The curse of evangelicalism is Phariseeism. It really is.

An understanding of this book, the Word of God, but little understanding of the character of the God of the Word is self-righteousness, your Dagon. Is it that you're seeking mammon in and of itself? You're more concerned about the pursuits of your business and so on and so forth than what you are about advancing the kingdom of God within your own family, within your own lifestyle. Are you enslaved to something? Something that binds you? Then that's your Dagon, and there's a tension between the Ark of the Covenant and the idol of Dagon that is bound to be, and that's the reason, my friend, why you're so unhappy at times.

That's the reason why you fail so much, and I don't speak directly from this pulpit to the four or five hundred people who are here. I address myself. This is the reason for, often, my spiritual unhappiness.

Visually demonstrated here in 1 Samuel 5 is the problem of incompatibility, but then let's go on and help those who want to jot down another heading. You can learn from this illuminating chapter about the problem being verbally articulated. That means put into words.

It's visually demonstrated. You see that the idol has been flattened. It's verbally articulated in the seventh verse.

Here are these Philistines, and when they realize what has happened twice, they say, the Ark of the God of Israel must not stay here with us because his hand is heavy upon us and upon Dagon our God. You know, Jesus once said, our blessed Lord, that the children of darkness are more wise than the children of light. What did he mean? That sometimes we're so dull, and those who are unbelievers can be more cute than we are.

The Ark of the God of Israel must not stay here. Why not? Well, look at the problems. Look at what is happening.

Now, these are unregenerate people, and they appreciate that they can't cope with the Ark of the Covenant. They can't cope with that that symbolizes God in their presence. No more could Herod cope with John the Baptist, symbolic of the presence of God when John tore into the court of Herod like some exploding meteorite and said to Herod, it's not lawfully for you to have your brother's wife.

Herod realizes that though he likes the presence of John, John cuts him. John causes pain, and verbally articulated here, it is the pain of those who have some knowledge of the holy presence of the Lord, and yet want to retain an ungenerate condition themselves. And so our verses fan round that particular statement, and they reveal the discomfort that they felt, the discomfort that they felt, and then the discussion that they had, these Philistines.

What was the nature of their discomfort? Well, look at verse 6. God brought upon them devastation, and afflicted them with tumours. You see, this again is emblematic of a man, of a community trying to cope with the presence of God, knowing something of His holiness, because God is essentially holy, and knowing nothing of His mercy. And let me push this through from the Old Testament to the New.

Here's Peter in his unregenerate days. The Lord has called him, and Jesus is walking down the seashore of Galilee. He gives Peter some instructions.

They turn out to be dead accurate, as you would expect from someone with the inspiration of the Saviour. He's a genius. He knows more about fishing than Peter.

And when the instructions of Jesus are carried out, Peter falls at his feet, and he says, Lord, depart from me, for I'm a sinful man. I love the presence of the Lord Jesus, but I only love the presence of Jesus Christ, because I am a committed Christian. There is that about Christ which frightens me.

Don't you feel like that sometimes? I'm all for deep-throated singing, and occasionally for an effervescence that flows from the personality of someone that's moved at the goodness and the greatness of God. But there are times when I'm frozen, when the words will not spill from off my lips, as I remember something of the holiness and the otherness of this Christ. And I realize that my life is so many times incompatible.

Oh, how I fear the living God, with reverential fear. You see, these people were afraid. Their fear wasn't reverential.

It was a fear of a victim about to be sprung on by a lion. It's a fear of a man whose, the adrenaline of whose body has gone into his bloodstream and caused the heartbeat to increase. They cannot stand this God in their place.

He has afflicted them. It's a painful experience. Hugh Latimer, who was burned in Oxford as a result of persecution centuries ago, said this, it is perhaps the greatest sin of the greatest number of Christians that in so many details they put God second.

And one of the reasons why sometimes you're uncomfortable as a Christian is simply this, that the life that you live and the character of God are utterly incompatible. And as a result, you're convicted. It's not the same conviction as these people had, but it's the hurt of someone who you love realizing that you have caused that hurt.

Here there was the discomfort that they felt. It was all in the articulation, in the verbal articulation with which they spelt out their problem. The ark of the God of Israel must not stay here with us.

Why not? Well, because of all these boils, of all these tumors, of all the displeasure that is now ours because God is here and we really can't cope with him. And then there was the discussion that they held. Verse six, so they, what is it, verse eight, so they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and asked, what shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? You see, they don't want this, this, this ark anymore.

They don't want this God anymore. They discuss what to do. But for you, my friend, the nature of your problem is not such that you ought to discuss.

You need to discard, discard those things which are causing you the difficulty. Discard those areas of compromise. Yours is not to have a conversation.

It's rather to cut off things in your life which cause God displeasure and you discomfort. So, so you see how this chapter opens up most marvelously as it explains to us the problem of incompatibility. It's visually demonstrated.

The idol is toppled. It cannot remain in the presence of the ark or the God of the ark of Israel. It's verbally articulated is this problem.

The ark of the God of Israel must not stay here with us because his hand is heavy upon us and upon Dagon our God. Same problem is repeated in the first verse of the sixth chapter, incidentally. Well, then you say, all right, here you are, you're coming, we trust, towards the end of your address and I appreciate you're not talking so much about Dagon but my God, my idol.

You're not talking so much about the Philistines but you're talking about myself. I've seen something of the incompatibility demonstrated. I've heard it articulated.

Now what am I to do? Well, I would suggest and here I move into my third heading. What you really need to do is to have your incompatibility eliminated. You need to have it eliminated and you need to have it vigorously eliminated and to continue to learn from the Philistines but to learn in a negative fashion.

You see, the first thing that I want to say as I wind this address up is this. Don't shunt your problem around. That's number one that you've got to remember.

Don't shunt your problem around. This was the theology of the Philistines. In one sense, they've been quite right.

They've been quite cute. The idol and the ark, they couldn't exist together but now they decide to move their problem, you see, and so the men of Ashdod, they shunt the idol, they shunt the ark of the covenant to Gath and then you discover that the men of Gath want to move the ark to Ekron and nobody wants it. It's almost like, where shall we have a centre in the United Kingdom for the disposal of nuclear waste? Well, you don't want it in Goring, do you? We don't want it anywhere on the south coast.

We might be able to argue for other areas where such a thing could be built but we don't want it here. Why not? Well, the fallout, the mistakes that could be made despite all that scientists may tell us as to the safety of this particular treatment of nuclear waste. Now, it's the fallout, you see, that dominates Philistia.

It's a fear that's raging all the way down those five coastal towns. When the ark comes, they can't cope because the ark brings with it the judgments of God on an unrighteous and on an unregenerate community. They shunted the problem around and nobody wanted it.

Now, the problem is your incompatibility. Don't shunt it around. I don't think, well, I'll deal with it on another occasion or I'll make this adjustment in my life but I'll leave that one completely untouched.

You can't do that, you see. The major problem that confronts you is 1 Samuel 5 is the exclusive nature of worship to God. Thou shalt have no other gods beside me and though that's Old Testament, it's also endorsed by our Savior in the New Testament.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. Lord, I want to come.

I've given this, I've done that, I've kept that commandment and Jesus said, now sell all that you have and follow me and the young ruler couldn't make it as a disciple. Why not? Well, you see, his problem was that of incompatibility, wasn't it? Jesus will not brook rivals. He will not settle for your compromise and if you shunt your problem around, you're doing what the Philistines did.

You're not curing it at all. No, you need to proceed. You need to get to the root cause.

The root cause. Charles Spurgeon prays, may God save us from an intermittent religion. An intermittent religion.

What is an intermittent religion? Well, it's the religion of compromise where on a Sunday you're so evangelical and now I preach to myself as well. I know what it is to be swayed by these modern and these old hymns. I'm very religious on a Sunday morning.

On a Sunday evening, I've got to be, I'm in front of you. But what about Friday and Monday through to Saturday? Somebody once asked George Whitefield if somebody that he knew was a Christian and he said, how do I know? I'm not married to him. There's something in that.

Those that we are closest to are best conditioned to evaluate our spirituality. You get to the root cause. The root cause, incompatibility.

Eliminate it wherever you find it. Deal with it ruthlessly. You say this is a harsh word.

No, my friend, it's not. You see, what I want to restore for you by the grace of God is a sense of joie de vivre, as a French would put it, the joy of living. If you want it in the New Testament, joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Why don't you have that? Because you're not like this. This teaching from the Old and the New Testament is not given us to make us miserable as evangelicals. Jesus said, I am come that your joy might be complete.

But you can't have the joy that our Lord had, an ecstatic joy, unless you reproduce in some measure what was dominant in his life. He was compatible and in him was no incompatibility at all. The purposes of God were the immediate thing that he discharged as he moved through his life and as a flint man he set his face to Jerusalem.

He wasn't a killjoy. He was a joyful man who wants his followers to know joy. But the basic prerequisite for the joy of the Lord is a lack and elimination of incompatibility, of compromise.

Don't shunt your problem around. Don't send it on to Ashdod or Gath or Ekron. There are already problems in those areas.

Get to the root cause. Finally, in vigorously eliminating the problem, get back to base. Get back to base.

You see, the ark wasn't part of the inheritance of the Philistines. That was a pagan territory. The ark belonged with the Israelites.

The ark was destined to be at Jerusalem. It was the holiest piece of furniture that there was. And ultimately, when the temple is built, the temple replacing the tabernacle, the glory of God falls down upon the ark of the covenant.

Now, my friend, here's the principle. Return to base. What's the base of the Christian life? Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come.

There's only one base. It's the cross of Christ, the original mooring from which you set out so foolishly, maybe a year ago or a month ago. Yes, you're still a Christian, but there's so much water between you and the original mooring, and I'm asking you this morning, in the name of God, to come back.

Why? So that you'll rediscover that in Christ is all that you ever longed for. By the imparting of His Spirit is all the power that you ever required. Jesus, you lover of my soul, let me hide myself in thee.

Thou, O Christ, are all I want, all my needs in thee I find. This is the base, you see, my friend. Move away from that and you're in trouble.

Move away from the base and you're into the areas of incompatibility with all the profound problems that they bring to you. Go back to the place of Calvary that the Ark prophetically speaks of, where the law of God and the mercy of God meet together, and where sinners are cleansed in that old-fashioned blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. You have a problem? It's the problem of incompatibility.

It's visually demonstrated back there in the temple of the Philistines. Dagon and the Ark, they can't have peaceful coexistence. It's an utter nonsense.

It's, it's, it's verbally, it's verbally articulated by the Philistines when they say that the two can't last together, and it's got to be vigorously eliminated. As you don't shunt your problem around, you get to the root cause, you come back to base, to our blessed Savior. May you do that for his sake.

Amen. Evelyn, let's change the last hymn to the one I just quoted, Jiju, lover of my soul. 286.

One of the greatest hymns of all time, but don't sing it unless you mean it. For those of you who, like me, are sick of being compromisers, who are ashamed of incompatibility, let's make this our hymn of free commitment to our great God and Father through his Son, and know the release of his Spirit amongst us. Amen.

And I'm suggesting that having sung that hymn, if it's possible at all, and only you know whether you can legitimately excuse yourself, you join with us around this table and take this bread and wine and say, yes Lord, I want the Ark, the God of the Ark, the law of God, the grace of God, to be the dominant factor in my life. I want to vigorously eliminate anything that beclouds all that you stand for, all your purposes. Help me as I take bread and wine to feel the presence of our Savior and by the inspiration of his Spirit to go on into another week, compatible in my lifestyle.

Father, the sentiments I've just mouthed, I accept them as a prayer from each one of us and enable us to know more the fullness of your blessing and to minister to you wholehearted, dedicated lives in the Savior's sake. Amen.