1 Samuel 6:1-12 God Still Rules… Over His Cause
After Yahweh’s seven month victory parade around Philistia, they can take no more disease, death, and dread. They devise a test. By putting gold images of tumours and mice in a box they plan to appease God in the hope he will lighten his hand. It is a costly offering, intended to give glory to God. The ark is to be put on a cart pulled by nursing cows, who would not be used to pulling a cart, and whose calves are removed from them. Their natural tendency would be to return home to their calves. The Philistines will sit back and watch. It is, “a situation devised in which the probability is so strongly stacked in one direction that only the power of God could bring about a different outcome.” If the cows and cart head for Israel, then clearly it all has been Yahweh’s doing (v9). And any more messing with him risks a similar fate as Egypt (see Exodus!), v6.
So was Dagon’s demise, the disease, death, and dread of the last seven months simply bad luck, or the power of God? Re-read v12. It could hardly be any clearer!
God vindicated his own name when there was no-one else there to do it. He didn’t need his people’s help. He ruled over his own cause. The Philistines saw his glory, without their help.
God doesn’t need us. He doesn’t need you in Cloughmills, Cork, Colorado, or Cairo. God can glorify his own name in his own way. Your service in your church – it’s not doing him a favour. He doesn’t owe us anything, he doesn’t need us for anything. If we packed up and turned off the light, he wouldn’t be stuck.
And sometimes too, God has to bring us to a pretty dark place before we realise this. When we find ourselves most helpless and inadequate, we see most clearly that he does not need our help, and he is more than adequate. And then we can spiritually relax. For he is our helper, and we are adequate for all things in him
Questions
- What area of God’s cause that you are involved with would collapse if you pulled back from it immediately?
Prayer Points
- Repent of believing that any aspect of God’s cause would collapse without your involvement.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.