Sound Doctrine

Host: With an important reminder about who we worship and why, here's Pastor Jeff Johnson.

Jeff Johnson: Nothing is to be a substitute for the Lord in our lives. We must always seek the Lord. He is what? Our first love. Don't forget your first love. People gather together to have church and yet he's outside going, "Anybody want to let me in? What's going on in there? Oh, they're praising Jesus. Oh, but I'm not here. I'm trying to get, I want to come in. I want to do something."

And he's outside. You see, they're just into the program. They're worshipping worship. And where's the Lord? Let's not miss him.

Host: Thanks for joining us for another Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff. This program is presented each day by Calvary Chapel Downey.

We look forward to bringing you a timely message from God's word each day on the program. Pastor Jeff has an eye on 1 Samuel 4 today. God is about to remove his presence from the nation of Israel. Sounds severe, doesn't it? And it is. But what would lead the Lord to do this?

We'll look into that together and learn that it comes down to misguided faith. Here's Pastor Jeff with his study in 1 Samuel, chapter 4.

Jeff Johnson: Over in Zechariah, Zechariah, during this time, was giving a prophecy to Zerubbabel because he was just discouraged as all get out in what was going on as far as building the Tabernacle.

And this is the encouragement. He says, "Who art thou, oh great mountain?" And this is Zechariah's prophecy to Zerubbabel. "Before Zerubbabel, thou shalt become a plain. And he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, 'Grace, grace unto it.'" And so there's the shout, you know, in the time of defeat just to get you all just pumped up in the Lord.

But in this situation, I want you to notice it had a reverse effect. Instead of bringing fear on their enemy so they would flight and get out of there and run, it caused a whole reverse of thinking. Because I believe it was they that they didn't have a relationship with their Lord.

There was sin in the camp. So God's not going to bless their shouting because of where it was coming from. It was superficial. It wasn't from hearts that truly loved the Lord.

And so all of a sudden, we see the enemy fear to fight. They went crazy. They figured, "Well, if we're going up against their God, who we hear is a pretty mighty God, we better get crazy. And let's just go at it. Come on, you guys." And it encouraged them to go for it and fight like crazy men. And that's what they did.

Fighting for their lives. Look at verse 10. "And the Philistines fought. Israel was smitten and they fled every man into his tent. And there was a great slaughter, for there fell of Israel 30,000 footmen."

30,000 footmen. "And the ark of God was taken and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain." They got their clocks cleaned. You talk about getting beat up. Everything was taken from them. Their priests were slaughtered. It was a shock of shocks.

What is going on here? Okay, we lost the first, you know, 4,000 men. But now 30,000? The ark is taken? Some say that even the Philistines, after they took the ark, they just went right on up to Shiloh, from the area that they were fighting, and Aphaek and Ebenezer, and they went right up into Shiloh and leveled the place, tore it down.

Eli's two sons died. Now, that's no surprise to us, right? If you've been with us, chapter 2, verse 34. "And this shall be a sign unto you that shall come upon thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, in one day they shall die, both of them." He didn't know how that was going to happen, how the Lord was going to do it. But we see it happen right here. It's a prophecy being fulfilled.

Why? Because these guys sought to rip the people off. They sought for the best things in life, to get it all right now. You know, and that philosophy will kill you. There's a lot of people today in our society that figure, "I'm going to go for it and I'm going to get it all." But you know, you find out, especially when you go to your 25th high school reunion, who got it all.

And what was amazing to me is the board there of all of those that have died. And then to hear the testimonies of where people are and what they're struggling with and how many marriages they've had, and just how just wiped out they are, how confused and frustrated they are in this world. And that's the result of going for it.

Well, these two sons ended up, and they were killed on the battlefield. Why such a great defeat? The ark was only a symbol. It wasn't the substance of the Lord. And yet they said, "It will save us. It will give us victory." And so they looked to the ark of God instead of to the God of the ark. And there's the problem right there.

They said, "This box will give us victory," like almost like a good luck charm. It's amazing how superstitious we are as a people. In fact, I found out that in America, over 20 million are carrying a rabbit's foot in their pockets. 20 million rabbit's foot. Yeah, I got to have it, man. It brings me luck.

No 13th floors for us, right? Not in America. Crack a mirror, forget it. Break a mirror, you've had it. Walk under a ladder, no way. I mean, we are very superstitious people. We got a lot of weird stuff. You know, I was looking and I found another superstition that's interesting in Ireland, where if someone dies in this certain sect of people over there in Ireland, that they actually, instead of taking them out the front door when they die in the house, they actually bust out the wall in whatever room they died in and take them out that way and then patch the wall back up. And you say, "Well, why in the world would they do that?"

Well, it's to confuse the ghost of the individual that had died, so if they try to come back into the house, they won't be able to find the opening. Makes a lot of sense. I found out also that the Romans, they, they are so superstitious they would hire a little kid to be at the door, so when you walked up to the door, the kid would make sure that your left foot would enter the house always. Very important.

We as Christians, though, are also vulnerable to be deceived by superstitions and weird things that we get caught up in. But they called for a representation of God's glory, but not for the reality of his glory. Listen, God is omnipotent. That means he's all powerful.

Many of us face Philistines every day. We are fighting our enemy constantly, whether your enemy is fear, it might be finances, physical hurt that you're up against. It might be depression, it might be discouragement or defeat or whatever you're battling with. There's a battle that's going on and you're asking, "Where's victory?"

I'm trying everything. I even at last when it got the first of the year, New Year's, I said, "That's it, that settles it. I'm going to read the whole Bible in one year." And you ran over there and got the one-year Bible. You said, "This is it. This will deliver me." And you began to get into it. The first couple of months it was great. Now you don't even know where it is. It didn't work. My gosh.

So, what are we going to do? Well, I don't know. I gave the old shout at New Year's. And now I'm pretty frustrated. Jesus said, "Listen, you search the scriptures. In them you think you have eternal life. These are they that speak of me." Me. The Bible is only a vehicle. It is not an end in itself.

He is our victory. I know it's going to, it's got to be this, it's because I haven't been going to church enough, so I'm going to go to church Sunday, Sunday night and Wednesday night. And that's the key. That's what's going to deliver me. I'm going to start doing it religiously. And so you start going to church. And you start saying, "I'm going to pray because prayer is powerful. And it will deliver me. It will bring us victory." And so you begin to get down and you start praying like crazy.

Don't get caught up into superstitions. You know, so many say, "Well, the key is worship." And they begin to worship worship. There's a lot of people that worship worship. What is that all about? I don't know. It's Jesus. It's always been him. As we give our hearts and our lives to him, we experience then victory.

Remember how the children of Israel in the Old Testament got off and they began to worship the brazen serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness. And they started to look to it to deliver them. Finally, Hezekiah took that thing and he broke it in front of them and he said, "Nahushtan." And that means, "It's a thing of brass. What are you doing? Man, have you gotten off or what?"

Where is your focus? Where are your hearts? You're looking to this thing of brass? It's in a he, not an it. It's always been that way. If I can just get counsel. That's what I need, counsel. It is going to help me and I'll get delivered if I can just see the pastor. If I can just talk to him. I know I, if I just, it will, you know, no, no. You need the Lord. You need to cry out to him.

The children of Israel, I think, are a good example. In this situation, here they are, all boxed in with their little box. And they think this box is going to deliver them. It's like a guy saying, "Well, you know, you got your crucifix? Yes. You ready to go into battle? Yes. I'm armed."

And so they got these little crucifixes. And you know there's some people wearing crosses that care less about the cross. They care less about what happened on the cross, what is going on with the cross. And if they wear it, because they say, "It's going to bring me protection." It's like when I was a little kid and I was a little surfer boy. We had to have a Saint Christopher's little charm. And you had to wear it around your neck because then you were protected.

You would never drown. Saint Christopher was with you, you know. But the, you know, again, it's the same thing. Get the box here. We've got it all figured out, you know. We got God in a box. But he won't be put in a box. That's the thing.

He is omnipresent. He's everywhere present. You can't program God. You can't make him into a formal, you know, a formal way of presenting him or anything. He does what he wants to do. He is an awesome God. He won't be packaged. He's always doing something different. In fact, he loves to pop our little programs in our bubbles.

You know, we get it all figured out and I got it all figured out. If I just do this, this and this, then I'm going to have victory. And it just all blows apart. He's going, "Oh yeah, you're trusting in the it again, aren't you?" And so our theory goes out the window. Don't get hung up on outlines and seminars because then you'll be going, "Well, where's Bill Gothard when you need him?

We need another seminar. We need another outline. Take us through it. How many points is that again? Let me get it. I didn't get the last one." You know, like somebody's programmed it and got it all down for you to have the victory. And if you just do it their way, then you'll have, come on again, you're trusting in the it.

There's a lot of people that just have to copy those that have it together. They think they have to copy them. Oh, they had it together and there's this one guy on TV, man, if you just blow on them. Just blow on them, man. There's the anointing. And they'll go down. So, we have these pastors running back to their churches saying, "That's it."

He does it, it works. I'm going to do it. You know. And you eat a bunch of garlic and you got them. They're going down. They're going down all over the place. See, it works. No, that's not. It's not a program. It's not the way it's done. It gets down to a person, his name is Jesus.

Nothing is to be a substitute for the Lord in our lives. We must always seek the Lord. He is what? Our first love. Don't forget your first love. People gather together to have church and yet he's he's outside going, "Anybody want to let me in? What's going on in there? Oh, they're praising Jesus. Oh, but I'm not here. I'm trying to get I want to come in. I want to do something."

But he's outside. You see, they're just into the program. They're they're worshipping worship. And where's the Lord? Let's not miss him. Look at verse 13. "And when he came, Lo Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside." Oh, verse 12. "Then ran a man of Benjamin out of the army and came to Shiloh. The same day with his clothes all torn and with earth upon his head."

He looked a mess. "And when he came in, Lo, Eli sat upon the seat of the wayside watching." He was there, and remember, in front of the Tabernacle. "For his heart trembled for the ark of God." You can see right there that he wasn't quite sure about sending the ark into battle. His fear was something happened to the ark.

"And when the man came into the city and told it, all the city cried out. And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, 'What meaneth the noise of this tumult?' And the man came in hastily and told Eli. Now Eli was 98 years old. And his eyes were dim that he could not see. And the man said to Eli, 'I am he that came out of the army, and I fled today out of the army.' And he said, 'What is there done, my son? Tell me all about it. What's going on at the battlefield? Let me know.' And the messenger answered and said to Eli, 'Israel is fled before the Philistines. And there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead.' And the last thing he shared with him was, 'And the ark of God is taken.'"

Here I think you can see that Eli did care about the things of God. He had a love for God and for the things of God. But not enough, because if you look in between the lines here and read in between the lines, he knew it was wrong to send the ark into battle.

And the reason the people sent the ark into battle is because everybody, that's what they did. They copied the heathen. The heathen would all have their little fish man god right in front of them. And they'd have him all out there marching, you know. And they, everybody had their gods in front of them. So Israel said, "Hey, let's get our god, let's put him out in front of us. That's the key. That's victory." It wasn't.

You see, Eli knew it was wrong, but he had yielded too often and too long to be able to stop the evil that was taking place. He did not stand up for righteousness. He did not put his foot down and say, "You will not take the ark into battle. It's not supposed to be in battle. God never said for us to take it into battle. It's stopping now. You're not going to take it. And my two sons are going to stand by it. And I'm going to stand by it. You're not going to remove it."

He didn't stand up. He was too weak. He was feeble. He lost it. Verse 18. Look at this, and here's his reaction. "And it came to pass when he made mention of the ark of God," when the guy just mentioned the ark of God being taken, "that he, Eli, fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, his neck broke and he died. For he was an old man and he was heavy. And he had judged Israel 40 years."

This is true backsliding. He fell back, his life was over. The ark was taken. That was the big thing, not necessarily his sons' death, the ark taken. The ark taken was a blow to him that he couldn't handle. It's almost like somebody coming into your house taking all your Bibles, coming into our nation, confiscating all the Bibles. "You cannot have a Bible. You will not have a Bible in this country."

To not have God's word. You don't know what it's like not to have God's word until you don't have it. And then when you don't have it, you count it as very precious. And when someone gives you even a page out of it, you take it and you hold it to your heart and you memorize it and you get into it. God help us to see that there are countries tonight that do not have the word of the Lord.

And that we would start, those of us that have four and five Bibles in our homes, would start to look at it as something that is to be cherished and something that that is to be hidden within our hearts. But it blew him away. The ark of the Lord is taken. Verse 19. "And his daughter-in-law, Phinehas," well, let me go back for a moment.

I I want to touch on this because it says that he had judged Israel for 40 years. He was 98 years old. The last part of his years, he judged Israel. A very high position. But he had no qualities to do the work. So people can be put into high positions and not have the qualities to do the work.

We see that in our country, don't we? That happens all the time. The sins of omission ruined his family. The sins of omission destroyed the nation. It's serious. And what else do we see here? That God's judgment is impartial. Here's this priest, high priest, who had sinned in his life and was blowing it.

He was judged just like everyone else across the board. God has no respecter of persons. Now, his daughter-in-law, verse 19, Phinehas' wife. Here we have a wife of this ungodly priest who is a godly individual, the wife. Was seeking the things of God.

She was with child, near to be delivered, and she heard the tidings of the ark of God that was taken and her father-in-law and her husband were dead. She bowed herself in and travailed, for her pains came upon her. She was having premature labor and she began to have the child. And about the time of her death, she died birthing this child. And the woman that stood by her said unto her, "Fear not, for thou hast borne a son." But she answered nothing.

Neither did she regard it. She wasn't all, you know, happy. And she named the child Ichabod, saying, "The glory is departed from Israel because the ark of God was taken and because of her father-in-law and her husband." And she said, "The glory is departed from Israel, for the ark of God is taken." Ichabod, the name that Phinehas' wife named her child right before she died is interesting.

The name means no glory. She named her child after what was going on at that point. She realized there was a great defeat here that God was departing from the children of Israel. God's glory had been taken from them. A very terrible time for the nation Israel. And a very, I might add, a very terrible time for these United States of America.

For the glory has departed. The Lord's hand is not on this nation as it once was. We are under the judgment of God. And we will continue to be under the judgment of God. I know that's not good news, but it's the way the nation is going. And you know it, deep down inside, you know it.

It is time to realize the greatest victory is to have Jesus in an individual's heart and life. There is no greater glory than to have Jesus on your children's lives and see them loving the Lord as you love the Lord. Follow the Lord as you follow the Lord.

But again, the greatest tragedy of today is that Jesus is not in many of the churches throughout the nation. And just as Jesus warned, he said, "If you do not do these things, then I will remove my candlestick from out of your church. My presence will be removed." What a horrible thing to have church and Jesus not show up.

But the Lord would not be there to prick our hearts, to cause us to repent of our sins and to be sorry before God. Without God, without the fear of, they had no fear of God, no reverence of the Lord. And so there was no victory. You're without hope. Why? Because they did not tremble at the word. Listen, if you tremble at the word of the Lord to you this morning, if God's word causes you to tremble, you will never be afraid of the Philistine.

Never. Ever. Though a camp or a host should camp against me, the word says, I shall not fear. My heart shall not fear. Why? Because the Lord is with me. I fear him above everything else. Go ahead, world, try, do your best. Go ahead, flesh, try your best. Go ahead, Satan, try your best. But my God is for me, who can be against me?

I am more than a conqueror in Christ. He strengthens me. He lifts me up. He's got angels charge over me, so I do not fear. He is the kingdom, the power and the glory.

Host: Amen to that. Pastor Jeff Johnson will be back in a few moments with some closing thoughts as we bring today's study in 1 Samuel 4 to a close here on Sound Doctrine. 1 Samuel is filled with practical insights for Christian living.

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Want to claim victory in your life? There's only one sure fire way. Here's Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Johnson: There's no other greater victory than to know that the glory of the Lord is with you. But there is no greater tragedy than to know that the glory of the Lord has departed from you. David cried out and said, "Lord, take not thy Holy Spirit from me." And yet the Lord is saying, "You come to me and I'll rest upon you. You look to me and I'll give you victory. You seek me with all of your heart and I'll give you a joy unspeakable and full of glory. A peace that will pass human understanding. I will be with you through thick and thin. At times I'll have to carry you, but I'm going to be with you. My spirit will comfort you. I'll come alongside of you. I'll be with you through everything. I'll walk and talk with you. I want to be your savior and your Lord. God help us. The answer is not an it."

Host: Join us next time as we move along to 1 Samuel chapter 5. Sound Doctrine is listener supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Downey.