My Sunday School classes today will be studying chapters 4-7 of the book of 1 Samuel.  This is that time in the history of Israel when the land was still ruled by judges and they had no king.  The ruling judge at that time was Eli the high priest of God.

Eli had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas.  It is ironic that Eli’s two sons are, by hereditary right as direct descendants of Aaron, next in line to the office of high priest of God in the tabernacle when they do not possess any of the spiritual qualities demanded by the office.  We must recall that the tribe of Levi was not given a definite territory Canaan for their inheritance but the care and upkeep of the tabernacle was given to them.  Of the tribe of Levi, only the direct male descendants of Aaron may ascend to the office of high priest.  While Levites take care of the grounds, the structures, the equipment and the objects inside the tabernacle, only the high priest can atone for the sins of Israel.

Once every year, on Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement, the high priest brings the blood of the sacrifice into the Holiest of Holies and sprinkles the blood over the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant.  The blood does not remove the sin of the people, the blood merely covers the sin before the sight of God.  The animal (usually a lamb without blemish) which died in place of the sinner is the substitute of the sinner.  The punishment of the sinner is laid upon the lamb which was sinless before God–this is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.

Israel had been occupying Canaan for about 600 years and during the time of the judges, the great sin of Israel was idolatry.  Israel had begun to religiously “acclimatize” with its surroundings.  We must remember that God had specifically instructed Israel to tear down the altars and temples of the idolatrous people who occupied Canaan before them.  God specifically instructed them not to intermarry with the former occupants of Canaan because intermarriage would lead to an intermingling of religious practices and spiritual ideas such that Israel will be lured away from the worship of Jehovah, the true and the living God to the worship of idols.

At the close of the book of Judges, spiritual decay was evident.  Spiritual decay has also triggered moral decay.  And when the book of Samuel opens, we see an ironic situation: Eli, the high priest is also the judge, but his sons, the heirs to the high priest’s office as well as to the office of judge were unbelievers: ” they knew not the Lord.”  Eli’s sons were greedy, taking the choice portions of the people’s sacrifices and offerings by force from the people who came to the tabernacle.  Eli’s sons were also sexual opportunists and sexual predators: they  had sex with the women who came to the tabernacle to pray.

It is no wonder that “the word of the Lord was precious in those days: there was no open vision.”  This meant that in the days of Eli’s priesthood, the shekinah glory of God, the visible sign of the presence and pleasure of God in the tabernacle was absent.  God was not pleased with the sacrifice of Israel which has become polluted by greed and sexual promiscuity of the offerors, the priests.

To further complicate matters, the Philistines, a war-like race of tall (even gigantic) men have raided Israelite towns and cities, they have taken those cities and have begun the invasion of Shiloh ( the place where the tabernacle of God was).

During the time of the invasion, after the first skirmish, Israel had a casualty amounting to 4,000 dead men.  In their desperation, the men of Israel went to the tabernacle and asked the sons of Eli to take the ark of the covenant from the Holiest of Holies and bring it out into the field of battle to embolden the Israelite army as well as to turn the tide of battle against the Philistines so that Israel might repel the invasion.

The ark of the covenant is just a wooden box overlaid with gold.  It is a piece of furniture that has no power by itself.  It’s only significance is that it has been set aside ( “sanctified”) for the sole purpose of being used in the tabernacle for two things: first, it held the tokens of the covenant between God and Israel: the stone tablets where the law was written, the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod which had budded; second, it had a cover which was called the mercy seat and this is where the shekinah glory of God remained when the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was made. The high priest alone can go into the holiest of holies, his sons cannot until the former high priest dies and the eldest son is consecrated to take his place.  Also, the high priest can only enter the holiest of holies once every year and only to bring with him the offering of blood to atone for the sins of the people.  On no other occasion can the high priest enter into the holiest of holies.

In those days when Israel was still wandering in the desert, and when Israel crossed the Jordan River to enter Canaan, the ark of the covenant of the Lord led the host of Israel.  But when Israel had begun to occupy Canaan, God instructed that the ark of the covenant should remain in the tabernacle which was to be built in Shiloh.  The ark of the Lord is to rest in the tabernacle in Shiloh.

Thus, we see that when Hophni and Phinehas took the ark of the covenant and brought it to the battlefield, they violated God’s command that the ark of the covenant remain in Shiloh.  They also provoked God when they took the ark of the covenant to the troops.  Hophni and Phinehas, as well as the men of Israel were of the impression that they would win because when the ark of the covenant arrived in their camp, to them,  God had also arrived in their camp.

We see here that Israel had no longer thought of the ark as just a piece of furniture used in worship.  To their mind, the ark had supernatural powers to repel the enemy and rescue Israel from military defeat.  Attaching supernatural powers to objects, venerating objects and attributing to these objects miracle-working powers is superstition. It is a practice resulting from ignorance and fear.

We see the same superstitious belief in the Philistines because they took the ark of the covenant as war booty and they displayed it the temple of their Dagon, their god.  Historic and archeologic sources teach us that Dagon, the deity of the Philistines was a man or a woman with the tail of a fish — a mermaid or merman.  The image of Dagon in the temple was a huge carved image, next to it, the ark of the covenant was just another small wooden box.  How impressive Dagon must have looked and how painfully ordinary the ark of the covenant may have looked next to Dagon.

When the Philistines brought the ark as a spoil of war into the temple of their god, it was as though they meant that their god, Dagon was greater than Jehovah, the God of Israel for through the power of Dagon, the Philistine army had defeated the Israelite army and taken captive their most prized possession, the ark of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel.

The ark of the covenant itself had no powers of its own.  However, the ark of the covenant was “holy” by association with God.  In the Hebrew language, there are two words for “holy:” <kadosh> which is used for God alone because only God is inherently holy, and <kodesh> which is used for objects which have been set apart to be used for and in the worship of God, these objects are only holy as they are associated with God. Of themselves, they are not inherently holy.

As an example, when Moses was in the wilderness and he turned aside to see the burning bush, God told him to remove his shoes for the ground on which he was standing was holy ground.  The ground itself has no holiness, it is only holy because the visible presence of God was there and that made the ground holy.  So also with the ark of the covenant and all other objects used in the tabernacle.  They are not holy or sacred unto themselves, they are only holy in reference to their intended and exclusive use, for the worship of the holy God, Jehovah.

Jehovah is a jealous God, he said so himself.  Anything associated with himself, he jealously guards and protects. Anything associated with his name, he maintains.  Thus, the morning after the Philistines put the ark of the covenant in Dagon’s temple, Dagon was found lying face down on the ground before the ark of the covenant.  The Philistines put up again the image of Dagon but the next morning, Dagon was lying face down once more, its head and hands cut off by the violence of the fall and only the stump remained.

Superstition, says Bishop Hall, is the ape of true devotion. Instead of turning from their worship of Dagon and repenting of their unbelief in the God of Israel, the Philistines sought to remove the ark of the covenant from their territories for fear that its presence brought curse and calamity.  True enough, God punished the Philistines with disease and death wherever the ark of the covenant was brought.  It was not the ark of the covenant that brought disease and death, it was God, but the Philistines refused to acknowledge God.  They were fixated on the ark of the covenant.

So too was Israel: Israel was fixated on the loss of the ark of the covenant, they disregarded the displeasure of God.  When the ark was taken, Eli had a heart attack and died on the spot where he fell.  Eli’s daughter in law, pregnant at that time when the news of the taking of the ark of the covenant reached Shiloh, went into premature labor and gave birth to a son before she died.  She named her son Ichabod which meant, the glory of God has departed for the ark of the covenant had been taken.

The ark of the covenant may have been taken but God had not been taken.  The ark of the covenant may be lost but God is not lost.  The ark of the covenant may have been destroyed but God endures, God has not left Israel. God is still God, the same omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and immutable God that he is.

We today use very few objects in our worship but this has not stopped us from superstition or superstitious behavior.  Every January, at the feast of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, thousands flock to the Quiapo church to catch a glimpse of the image of the Black Nazarene.  They jostle and even stampede to touch the statue or wipe a handkerchief on any part of the statue.  They claim that veneration of the statue brings health, healing and prosperity.  Some even say that the statue itself has granted to them the wishes and prayers offered to the statue.  This is superstition for we attribute divine power to an object and begin to worship the object instead of God whom it supposedly represents.  Superstition is idolatry.

A friend of ours came to the house just last Thursday and she expressed anxiety for her mother who was 75 years old.  She is afraid that her mother might be showing signs of dementia because she had begun attributing divine healing power to bottles of oil bought from a “pastor” somewhere in Kamuning.  She even bought a small card with a prayer to Jesus Christ and uses the card as a sort of talisman to ward off anything from headaches and stomach aches to obstinacy and stubbornness in her grandchildren.  She recounted how her mother would press the card to her son’s forehead whenever he refused to obey the grandmother.  Again, the prayer printed on the card might be sound in terms of doctrine or Biblical teaching, but to treat the written words as having divine healing powers is to treat spiritual things superstitiously.

In my class on Friday, a student was alarmed and asked me if I thought that he was superstitious because he always slept with his Bible under his pillow and how that now, he can no longer sleep without it under his pillow.  I asked him whether he attributed divine or healing power to the paper cover, the spine, or pages of his Bible, or whether or not he had just gotten accustomed to reading his Bible before he slept and it is part of his going-to bed ritual to put his Bible which he had just read under his pillow such that if his Bible is not there, he can’t sleep.

It’s a fine line between faith, spirituality and superstition.  Faith is based on Scriptural facts because Scripture is the revelation of God.  What passes for spirituality these days may be a mere obsession with supernatural things, things that cannot be observed or explained by science.  Superstition is attaching divine or supernatural power to objects. Of these three, only faith is pleasing and honorable to God, thus it says, without faith, it is impossible to please God. And faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Come to Sunday School today, come and worship at church today, hear the Word of God and grow your faith, only then can we please God.