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Having slaughtered 30,000 Israeli soldiers the Philistines seized the Ark of the Lord, took it to Ashdod, and placed it in their temple, beside Dagon their false god.

The Ark had never previously been captured while under the care of those ordained and appointed to guard it.

The Philistines boasted, and they had much to boast about, but one salient lesson emerges.

If you start a fight with God, you are sure to lose!

The Philistines thought they had defeated Israel. It looked like it. What a victory they had, but then it all went wrong.

Did they think the God of Israel was finished?

God will never let His cause fail, or fall to the ground.

The mercy seat on the lid of the Ark was alongside an idol. The cherubim at either end of this chest now spread out their wings under the roof of a false god.

What follows is awesome. In the middle of the night God begins to work. The same house cannot hold both.

Dagon fell before God and smashed his face, a sign of beauty, and broke his head, a sign of wisdom, and smashed his hands, a sign of power.

Poor Dagon! How humiliating! There was nothing he could do and, of course, nothing he could do for his people.

Can you imagine men coming in in the morning, and having to pick up the pieces and set him up?

Worse followed, and these Philistines, panned off the Ark onto others, before rushing it back to where it belonged.

God can never be restricted nor limited to a golden box, but the God behind the Ark was a towering power, and one of the emerging lessons is, ‘Do not dare interfere with those issues which belong to Me!’

Sandy Shaw
Nairn Christian Fellowship

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