Thurs.’s Devo -The Last Judge

Read: 1 Sam. 4-8
One of Israel’s enemies were the Philistines. Philistine means “to wallow” so I looked up “wallow” in the dictionary and one of the definitions was “to live or indulge oneself fully with immoderate enjoyment.” So these people had no restraints on their means of entertainment and no self-control. They had taken 5 cities from the Israelites and the ark of the Lord. On the day the ark was taken, Eli, his two sons: Phinehas and Hophni, and Phinehas’ pregnant wife died. As she was dying she named her son Ichabod which means “no glory” because the glory of God was taken. In their ignorance, the Philistines took the ark and put it in their house of Dagon thinking they would add it to their gods They didn’t realize that God is the only god and all other gods have to bow before him. So the next morning Dagon had fallen on his face and his head and hands were severed. The the people began to get tumors in their anus! They called it “emrods in their secret parts”. God was showing them that they thought their sin was hidden from him but it wasn’t. That is what the glory of God does. When His presence draws near, sin is exposed. The punishment makes me think they were involved in homosexual acts.
The ark stayed there 7 months till they were either dead or sick. They asked their own priests and diviners how to take the ark back and they told them they had to send a trespass offering with the ark. To appease for their sin they had to have a piece of gold fashioned in the shape of their tumors and five golden mice - one for each city they had taken and infiltrated with their sinful behavior. They put the ark and the offerings on a cart driven by cows that had never had a harness on them who had just had calves. I think the reason they did this was so that the cow wouldn’t be trained to go a certain path he was used to going. And if you take a mother away from her calf she will kill to get back to her calf. They wanted to see the power of God lead these cows and it did. God defied nature and led those untrained cows straight to Beth-shemesh. Beth-shemesh means “house of the sun”. Israel was where the Sun (God) chose to make his house. Joshua which is another name for Jesus was waiting for it. They took the wood from the cart, and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering. Jesus’ sacrifice made a way for the glory of God to into our lives.
Samuel called the people to return to the Lord and they did. They then went up and took the five cities that the five mice represented.
As Samuel was growing old the people didn’t want his sons to be a judge since they didn’t follow God so they asked samruil for a king like the other nations had. This grieved God and he had Samuel warn them what this king would do. They still wanted one. God will give us what we want sometimes even if it is not His best.
Lord, we want your best for us even if we don’t understand what that is. Help us not to want to be like the world. You are our king.