1 Samuel 5:8: “Therefore they sent and gathered to themselves all the lords of the Philistines, and said, ‘What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?’ And they answered, ‘Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried away to Gath.’ So they carried the ark of the God of Israel away.”

May 14th, 2023 by Pastor Ed in devotional

The Philistines put the ark of the covenant into the house of Dagon, their god. The Lord loved the gentiles who lived in these cities so He performed an obvious display of His power over their idol, Dagon, a fish-god. They found the idol fallen before the ark 2 mornings in a row. The second morning the hands and head of the idol were broken off. The Philistine city leaders decided to get rid of the ark by sending it to one of the other 4 Philistine city-states. Gath was close, located about 12 miles east of Ashdod. (Gath was also the home city of Goliath, the giant David defeated, and where David fled twice to get away from King Saul.) After such a forceful picture of superiority over their god, why didn’t the Philistines quickly turn to the Lord?

Humanity hasn’t changed much. Still today, when men are confronted with the truth, they reject God despite the evidence not because of the evidence. Belief in God has not been tried and found lacking; it has been tried and found difficult, because surrendering is involved. To worship THE God rather than material gods, like Dagon, a massive change of perspective of who’s in charge is required. This was a change the Philistines weren’t willing to make, and, sadly, it’s a change many today still aren’t willing to make.

It is interesting that God never coerces or forces a person to believe. History has recorded this fact over and over again. Lord Kenneth Clark, a British author, who was internationally known for his television series Civilization, lived and seemingly died without faith in Jesus Christ. He wrote in his autobiography that while visiting a beautiful church, he had what he believed to be an overwhelming religious experience. “My whole being,” he said, “was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy far more intense than anything I had known before.” However, the “gloom of grace,” as he described it, created a problem for him. If he allowed himself to be influenced by grace, he knew he would have to change. He wrote that he worried his family might think he had lost his mind, and that maybe that intense joy he had felt would prove to be an illusion. So he concluded, “I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course.”

“LORD, we surrender anew to Your will for our lives this day.”

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1 Samuel 5 KJV

¹ And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Eben-ezer unto Ashdod. ² When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. ³ And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. ⁴ And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.  ⁵Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day. ⁶ But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof. ⁷ And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god. ⁸ They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them, and said, What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel about thither . ⁹ And it was so , that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts. ¹⁰ Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron. And it came to pass, as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying, They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us and our people.  ¹¹ So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to his own place, that it slay us not, and our people: for there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. ¹² And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods: and the cry of the city went up to heaven.