Mon.’s Devo - God’s Presence Restored

Read: 1 Samuel 5:1-7:17; John 6:1-21; Psalm 106:13-31; Proverbs 14:32-33 The Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant and placed it in their Temple of Dagon in Ashdod. Dagon means “little fish” and is the statue of a fish with man’s hands and head. It was the official god of the Philistines. In the morning they found the statue of Dagon face down before the Ark. They stood him up but the next morning they found him on his face before the Ark and his hands and his head broken off lying at the threshold. The people of Ashdod and its surrounding towns were overran with rats and the men started getting tumors. Ashdod means “I will spoil.” God was spoiling the town without a fight. The elders of the towns got together and decided that their curse came the day the Ark came so they decided to send it to Gath. Gath means “a winepress”. They were about to be pressed through God’s grate also. The people of Gath experienced the same curse and panicked. They sent the Ark to Ekron. Ekron means “uprooting”. They were about to experience that. They begged the Philistine rulers to send the Ark back to Israel or it would kill them all. God had unleashed a deadly plague and land were dying. After the Ark had been in Philistia for 7 months they called their priests and sorcerers to ask them how they should send the Ark back. They told them that they had to send a guilt offering with it. Each of the five rulers should put a golden rat and a golden tumor in a chest and construct a cart to carry them and the Ark. They should take a mother cow who had just had a calf to pull the cart while the baby was locked in a barn. Naturally the mother calf would hav knocked down the barn to get to her calf, but this was a supernatural act. Then they were to just watch and see where the cows took the cart. They did all of this and watched as the cows took the ark to the land of the Israelites. It went to the border of Beth-shemesh where the people were harvesting wheat. They rejoiced when they saw it coming. It came into the field of Joshua and stopped at a large rock. The people took the wood of the cart and made a fire, killed the cows and sacrificed them to the Lord. Several Levites lifted the Ark of the Lord along with the golden objects and placed them on the rock. The five Philistine rulers watched from afar, then returned to Ekron. God killed 70 men from Beth-shemesh who looked into the Ark. This made them afraid to have the Ark. They sent messengers to the people at Kiriath-jerim and told them to come and get it. The men of Kiriath-jerarim came and took the Ark to the home of Abinadab, a Levite. They ordained Eleazar, his son, to be in charge of it. It remained there for 20 years. Samuel addressed the people and told them that if they wanted to return to the Lord, they needed to get rid of their idols and rid their nation of the images of Baal and Ashroreth. They could only worship the Lord. They did this, so Samuel told them to meet him in Mizpah and he would pray for them. They fasted all day and confessed their sins to the Lord. The Philistines found out they were meeting in Mizpah and set out to attack them. They arrived just as Samuel was offering the sacrifice to the Lord. God thundered down his response to the Philistines which threw them into such confusion that the Israelites were able to defeat them. Samuel took a huge stone, the stone that had been named Ebenezer when they lost the Ark and set it upright and renamed it Ebenezer “a stone of help”. Ekron and Gath and the rest of the territory the Philistines had taken was restored to Judah. Samuel judged Israel from Ramah but traveled to other towns to judge them also. The Ark was returned during the season of Pentecost which represents God giving his Spirit to man. The return of God’s presence was a fulfillment of this feast. He fulfilled it again on the Pentecost in Acts when the Holy Spirit came down and rested upon man once again. In John, Jesus had been teacher by the Sea of Galilee. Over 5,000 people had come to listen. Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread to feed them all. Phillip couldn’t fathom the cost of feeding all of them. Andrew spoke up and said he had found a boy with a lunch of five barley loaves and two fishes. That was all Jesus needed. He told his disciples to have them all sit down. He took the loaves and fish and blessed them and gave thanks to God. Then he distributed them to the people. They all ate and there were twelve baskets full. When the people realized what had happened, they wanted to make Jesus their king right then and there. Jesus slipped away into the hills. The disciple couldn’t find Jesus so they got into their boat and sailed for Capernaum. A storm blew up while they were out in the middle of the lake. They looked up to see Jesus walking across the water. He told them not to be afraid. They helped him into the boat and the storm immediately died. Thank you for your presence that is always with us. We need never be afraid.