Heavy Hands and Broken Idols (1 Samuel 5)

Good morning…if you have a Bible, go ahead and meet me in 1 Samuel 5.^[1]   

Several years ago, I coached a middle school soccer team that was…fine. Not terrible, but definitely not great. Meanwhile, the best team in the league was called the Voyagers. Just a great name for a team. They were so good they would make you hate the game of soccer. I mean, they just crushed everybody they played 10-0.  

When the Voyagers came to town you felt a little sick inside. Our boys were no different. They were terrified to play them, and who could blame them? Nobody likes getting crushed.  

Well, I’m not sure what was going on in the Voyagers huddle before the game, but the whole first half, we were competitive. When I tell you our boys came in at halftime, with the score 0-0, you’d think we’d won the game. 

What’s even crazier is that we looked like the better team. I told our boys at halftime: Look, I know how dominant their team has been all season, but I’m telling you they’re afraid of you. They haven’t been in a close game all season. All the pressure’s on them. So let’s go take this game from them. 

And honestly, you’d expect the sleeping giant to wake up in the second half and crush us. But they didn’t. Our boys went at them, and we beat them. It was one of the most satisfying wins I’ve ever been a part of. 

On another day, that same team beats us 10-0. That’s a story that’s not relevant to this one. But that’s why you should always have a healthy fear of your opponent. It would be a mistake to forget who you’re up against and what they’re capable of. And that’s the mistake the Philistines made. 

See, last week, we heard how the Israelites brought the Ark of God into their camp before battle—as if God were some kind of good luck charm that would guarantee their victory.  

On paper, the Philistines didn’t stand a chance. But whatever happened in the Israelite huddle that day didn’t work out for them because the Philistines came and beat them and took their Ark.  

But the Philistines left thinking their victory over Israel meant they had defeated Israel’s God. And they could not have been more wrong. The Ark of God was not the trophy they thought it was. 

1 Samuel 5 picks up where we left off. It tells a story about the sovereignty of God. But it’s also a story about us and all the ways we serve broken idols instead of bowing the knee to the Lord.  

Pick up with me in [v. 1] – When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon.  

The Philistines were originally afraid of God. They had heard how the Lord brought devastation on Egypt and rescued his people from slavery. 

So they think victory in battle means they’ve defeated this great God. Just like we assume, when things don’t go our way, God must have failed us. Which is a very pragmatic way of looking at religion. We’ve all heard stories of people accusing God of being weak because of what He could’ve done but didn’t.  

Some missed opportunity. Some unanswered prayer. Some ongoing hardship.  

Do you know why we do that? Because the gods we make always look like us. And we constantly judge ourselves based on how useful we are. I mean, just think about it. How much of your mood this past week could be measured by your usefulness?  

I was at a pastor’s retreat in the States all last week. We landed back in KL on Thursday morning, and I was feeling so jetlagged. Come Friday morning, I had hardly done anything for the sermon this week, and I was feeling the stress. I was praying, God, make me productive and give me some clear thoughts, because if you don’t show up here, this ain’t happening. It was that kind of work stress.  

Or how about the parents in the room? How many parents said this week, I’m a bad parent because something I’m doing isn’t working. My parenting isn’t parenting good enough, and my kids need to get parented or move out or something.  

We base our lives on how useful we are all the time. Well, we do the same thing with God. We’ll say, All I want is for God to do what I want, when I want, how I want, and then to mind his own business.  

But if God refuses to play that role, we start wondering what use He is to us. And that helps explain the Philistines’ attitude toward God here. See, if the Philistines have heard how great God is, why don’t they turn and worship him? Seems like a funny thing to ask after they just beat God in battle.  

1. We want to worship the gods that work.

From the Philistines POV, they didn’t need God because they already had gods they trusted. And so far, that’s worked out for them.  

Dagon was the god of the harvest, and every season the crops came in, so why change? The Philistines could’ve sang songs about how their god never fails. Religion makes so much sense when it’s practical. If we do these rituals, the gods will provide all that we need. Like, I’ll worship god if it works. 

And honestly, people still think like that today. Christians make such a big deal about worshiping Jesus, but what does Jesus have to offer that I don’t already have? I’ve seen this level of rejection play out in two different directions: 

First, there’s those who reject Jesus because he doesn’t work for them. There’s people who’ve grown up in cultures and families who would say we worship what we’re born into. There’s many ways to know Truth. If you find truth through Jesus, that’s great for you, but I find truth in other ways. Through other religious texts and traditions. Through other gods.   

Plus, worshiping Jesus is impractical for me because it would mean giving up everything I’ve come to know and love. My family would disown me. I’d lose my culture. I’d have to go against the values my whole life is built on, and I’ve had a good life. Why would I give that up? 

But then there’s a second category of people who reject Jesus, and they can be just as difficult to reach with the gospel as the first group. And that’s people who find Jesus useful but not beautiful. People who call themselves Christians when they’re not. 

I’ve encountered so many people call themselves Christians because they were born into a Christian family. They were raised in the church, but their lives never reflected a life of surrender. So when life gets hard, when following Jesus becomes unpopular, or when they no longer benefit from being associated with Christianity, they walk away. 

But the truth is, you can’t walk away from something you never gave yourself to in the first place. Both groups base their worship of God on how functional He is in their life. One rejects Jesus because their life works without him. The other rejects Jesus because he doesn’t serve a purpose for them anymore. See, we want to worship the gods that work.  

The antidote to functional worship is beholding God for who He is, not just what He does. God is a relational God. He wants us to relate to Him based on who He is. The Lord our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.  

All of life is defined by how we relate to God, and he’s kind enough to show us that our lives don’t work without Him.  

See, the Philistines don’t think they need God. Their lives work just fine without him. That’s why they put the Ark of God in Dagon’s house…what can this God do that the mighty Dagon can’t do? But they don’t really know the Lord. 

[v. 3] — And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.  

Isn’t it funny that when God gets put in the house of someone else’s god, he humiliates it?  

[4] — But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. 5 This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

We worship what works, but what happens when our gods fail? See, the Dagon’s in our lives have a way of making us believe we can’t live without them. That’s why, even when our gods break, we still want to serve them. 

2. False gods don’t just fail us, they expose us.  

When you compare the gods we create with the God who made everything, there really is no comparison. It’s like comparing a stick figure to the Sistine Chapel. 

Dagon’s supposed to be the great god of the Philistines, but with no effort at all, God makes him bow before him. Dagon’s so weak his worshipers have to prop him back up. The next day, it happens again, only now his head and hands are broken off. There’s no wisdom without the head, and there’s no power without the hands. See, false idols are useless. They don’t work the way we think they do.  

But notice, the response isn’t to stop worshiping Dagon. It’s not even to turn and worship the Lord. They just stop using that part of the temple. And honestly, that’s what we do when our idols fail us. We don’t stop worshiping them; we keep trying to prop them back up.   

See, the problem with idols is that we think they’ll serve us, but eventually we end up serving them. And over time, we become just as broken as they are.  

I learned that the hard way years ago. I’ve mentioned before how God did some incredible work in my life during the years I spent at the University of North Carolina. I gained so much, and I learned so much. But I think just as important as what God gave is what he took away.  

See, during those early days, God was burdening my heart for the nations and opening my mind to overseas work. To the point I was convinced I would be called to do some kind of overseas ministry someday.  

But at the time, I was seriously dating this girl—let’s call her not-Sarah—and I was pretty enamored with her. We had dated for years, and I really thought things were going to work out with her. But when I started talking about the potential of going overseas one day, she didn’t feel the same way. She actually seemed upset that I would even consider something like that. 

I probably should’ve taken that as a sign things weren’t going to work out. Instead, I started reshaping God’s calling around the relationship. If I could go back and counsel myself, I would’ve said, “You should serve God and not man,” but I just had no idea that relationship had become a functional idol in my life.  

And so God took it away. I mean, within months, it was over. It happened so fast, it felt like whiplash. I was stunned. But do you know what my first thought was after everything fell apart? How can I get it back? How can I prop it up again in my life?  

The failure of false gods reveals a lot. It’s not just that they’re broken. Their failures show us that so are we. We don’t just want them to work; we need them to work. We need them to fix us; to satisfy things in our lives that they just can’t. What broken idols do you keep propping up to worship?  

I mean, just insert any false god into your life—sex, marriage, money, fame, influence, family—it’s all the same story. They all run the same play. Any idol you serve will punish you when you fail and require even more of when you succeed. And even when you do get what you want, it’s never enough. The more you gain, the more you have to sacrifice, the more exhausted you become. 

Everybody has their own little gods they turn to for security, identity, and hope. And even when these false gods fail, we run back to them because we need them to work.  

When we give people or positions that kind of control over us, they become our functional gods. We give them a level of weight they can’t sustain, and eventually, something breaks. We break. 

But this sets up the contrast of the whole chapter. See, where Dagon has no head and no hands, the Lord is said to have heavy hands, and in [v. 6] the weight of his hands shifts from our idols to us.  

[v. 6] – The hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and afflicted them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory. 7 And when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is hard against us and against Dagon our god.” 8 So they sent and gathered together all thelords of the Philistines and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?”  

Back in chapter 4, the Israelites were wrong to presume that God’s presence guaranteed he would do whatever they wanted. Don’t do that. You don’t get to manipulate God into doing what you want. Just because you do the rituals—you pray the prayers, you sing the songs, you give your money—doesn’t make God obligated to serve you. That’s why God’s presence left them.  

But here, the Philistines see the presence of God as a problem. That’s why they start playing hot potato with the Ark.  

[v. 8b] – They answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be brought around to Gath.” So they brought the ark of the God of Israel there. 9 But after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a very great panic, and he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them. 10 So they sent the ark of God to Ekron. But as soon as the ark of God came to Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, “They have brought around to us the ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people.” 11 They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.” For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there.  

Here’s what’s going on: The presence of God becomes a terror wherever He goes. Wherever the Ark of God is, people experience tumors, panic, and death.  

Why is being in the presence of God such a big problem? Because… 

3. God’s presence brings judgment to those who oppose Him.  

Let’s imagine for a moment that the Ark of God came to Ampang…and everybody in Ampang gets sick. Tumors all over our bodies. There’s a direct cause-and-effect relationship between God’s presence and our sickness. 

So what do we do about it? We have a town hall meeting, and we all decide it’s in our best interest to hire Lala Move to ship the Ark of God over to Damansara. And when it comes to Damansara, everybody from young to old gets sick just like the people in Ampang. And the people in Damansara are like, yeah, that thing can’t stay here either. Let’s ship it over to PJ.  

And the same thing happens in PJ. So the people in PJ are like, let’s send it over to Cheras. You know, I know some people in Bandar Sri Permaisuri who would love to take this thing off our hands. But as the Ark’s on its way over to Cheras, the news has spread all around the city about what’s going on, so the people in Cheras start to protest. Like the presence of God is not welcome here. We need to get God out of Malaysia before he destroys us all. 

This is the problem with a relational God. He is who He is. You don’t get to change Him. You don’t get to control Him. You don’t get to make God in your image. Either He makes you into His, or He crushes you by the weight of His hand.  

See, the Philistines were experiencing what it’s like to be proximate to a God with real power, and they don’t like it. So they send Him away.  

What about you? What’s your heart posture toward the presence of God? Is he welcome with you or not? Because it’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing. See, I fear that many of us assume that we can limit God’s control in our lives. He can have say in my parenting, but not my marriage. He can have say in my job, but not how I spend my money. I’ll serve God on Sunday mornings, but he better not ask me to do anything for him the rest of the week. 

And I just think, do we really know the Lord? I don’t want any of us to leave this morning not having the chance to encounter the glory and terror of this great God for themselves. How dare we come to the living God and leave unmoved!  

See, one of the best ways to know God is by listening to His Word. So let’s just take a moment to do that:

[Psalm 115:1] says, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!

2 Why should the nations say,

    “Where is their God?” 3 Our God is in the heavens;     he does all that he pleases.”

What kind of God does that sound like to you? Does that sound like a weak God? Does that sound like a God who will do whatever you want? 

Read it again (v. 1). Who gets the glory? Who gets the praise? When God shows up, the whole world notices. He has that kind of aura. That kind of presence. Do you know this God?  

Read it again (v. 3). Who gets their way? Us or Him? Is that good news or is that dread? God does whatever he pleases…for the sake of his love and faithfulness. That’s who He is. That’s who we worship.  

How about this?  

[Psalm 32:2] – Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away    through my groaning all day long.

4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;     my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

Do you feel the weight of those words in your life? Let me ask you this: Do you sound more like the blessed man whom the Lord counts no wrongs, or like the man who’s wasting away under the heavy hand of God?  

That’s what the Philistines experienced. The Lord’s hand felt heavy upon them. It was like an unbearable weight with no relief. And that’s the experience of every sinner who stands before a holy God. That’s not a problem we solve by pushing God away.  

But in the Psalm, the blessed man and the broken man are the same man. But how?  

How do we escape the judgment of God’s heavy hand? You stop pushing Him away and believe His Word.  

[Ps. 32:5] – I acknowledged my sin to you,     and I did not cover my iniquity;

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”     and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

The presence of God is a terror to any person or place where He’s resisted. But He becomes a refuge and strength to any person or place where He’s received. That’s why… 

4. The only safety we find from God’s judgment is in God Himself.  

The answer to God’s judgment isn’t to run away or to push him away. It’s more counterintuitive than that. The solution is actually to surrender.  

That’s the one thing the Philistines would’t do. Their solution was to get rid of God. And honestly, that’s often what we do too. When someone challenges the way we’re living, we avoid them like the plague because we don’t want to change.  

But the invitation of the gospel is to run to God in Christ. 

See, if you look at [v. 12] – The men who did not die were struck with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

Now, I take that to mean our God is a God who hears. He hears all the cries of this broken world. Now, crying out to God says a lot about who you think He is. Like, how do you expect God to treat sinners desperate for a savior? What kind of God is He? That will determine whether or not you cry out to him.  

What we find throughout the Bible, is that when people cry out to this God, He responds with mercy and rescue. 

That’s what happened in the book of Exodus. When the people were slaves in Egypt, [Exodus 2:23] says, “[the people] groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.” And their cries reached the heavens and God heard and he knew and he came to them. He provided a way for salvation.  

And in these last days, he’s done an even greater work by sending His Son, Jesus. See, just like the Philistines, we stand under the heavy hand of God because of our sin. It’s a weight we cannot lift.  

And the truth is, God is right in his judgment of us. We can’t save ourselves. 

But listen, last week we talked about God’s glory departing. But here, the same word that means heavy is the word for glory. And God makes his glory known by letting the full weight of our sin fall upon Himself.  

See, this is the work of the mighty hand of God, that in his death and resurrection, Jesus overcomes the weight of sin. That what brings God the most glory is his power to heal those who can’t save themselves. 

Way before we ever thought about welcoming God in our lives, he did everything necessary to welcome us into His.  

See, Jesus is not some functional god that breaks over time. He’s not some old model that needs an upgrade. No, he’s the only God who ever could save.  

[Romans 10] says, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Listen, if you’re tired of empty religion or weary from running from God, the invitation today is to call upon the name of the Lord.  

See, these broken idols, they take and they take and they take until they run us dry. But when we learn to surrender to the Lord, he gives and he gives and he gives. He fills us up and he sends us out to make his glory known to those who would otherwise drive him away.  

It makes me think of the story in Mark 5 where Jesus comes and heals a demon-possessed man. Jesus sends the legion of demons into a herd of pigs that get drowned at sea. That’s a lot of money lost in that transaction, so the people beg Jesus to leave. And he does.  

But as he’s on his way out, the man who’d been set free comes and begs Jesus to go with him. But Jesus tells him no. “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you.”   

So the man went and told the people who drove Jesus away all that he had done for him, and “everyone marveled.” And Jesus says, I want you to go do the same thing in all the places I’ve sent you to. Go and make people marvel at God’s ability to lift the weight of sin from their lives, so that the presence of God would be welcomed in this city.  

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^[1] Works Consulted:  

The First Book of Samuel – Tsumura; “Dagon and the Ark” – Keller; “The Heavy Hand of God” – Begg; “Dagon’s Killer App” – Atwood