Doing Life God's Way

My good friend, Sam, asked me about the Biblical account of emerods and what that was all about the other day.  It deserved a little research.

In I Samuel 4, the Israelites had lost a major battle with the Philistines.  About 34,000 men were killed and the Ark of the Covenant was taken.  This was a devastating defeat for Israel and a great victory for the Philistines, until they got back home.  They soon discovered that having the Ark under these conditions was a curse.  The image of their god, Dagon, was destroyed in the presence of the Ark and their people began to get miserable sicknesses, which included itching, sores, and probably worst of all, emerods.  A look at the Hebrew tells us that these weren’t just hemorrhoids, which are bad enough, they were tumors, rectal tumors.  They began moving the Ark from town to town and every place experienced the same thing.  Wherever they moved it there was disease and mice ravaging the land.  It occurred to them that this Ark was a problem.

The Philistine leaders finally, after seven months, consulted the experts, the priests and diviners, about what they should do.  Interestingly, these guys knew their history.  They recalled what God had done to Egypt under Pharaoh (I Sam 4:8) and how Israel was delivered so they immediately advised that they send the Ark back.  They also knew that one did not approach the Most High God without a sin-offering.  They did their best to fashion an offering according to their own knowledge and custom.  They made images of the curse that had come upon them, the mice and emerods, out of gold, a most precious metal, to be specific about their deliverance, but they somehow missed the fact that God required the shedding of blood for atonement.  They also put it on a new cart, so they were trying. 

For some reason, our human nature tends to hold us back from the very deliverance we need from God.  We see this in Exodus 8:10 with the Egyptians.  When Pharaoh finally decided he has had enough frogs, he asked Moses to pray that they would be taken away TOMMORROW!  Amazing.  “Please give me one more night of misery before my deliverance.”  I think it has something to do with our tendency to hedge our bet, so to speak, against God’s power in our lives, not really wanting to admit that we are powerless.

Here’s how they hedged their bet.  Just to make sure that it wasn’t just coincidence that everywhere the Ark went, the curse went, they hitched the cart up to two milk cows which had never been hitched up, and, who had just had calves.  They then set them free to leave it up to God to get the Ark back to Israel.  The tendency of course for cows that had never been hitched up would have been chaos to begin with.  They also would naturally want to return back to their home and calves, instead of heading out across the wilderness to some place they had never been.  “Just in case the curse was a coincidence, lets make it almost impossible for these cows to go the right direction.”  They didn’t want to give up the very thing that was causing their problems, and we are the same way today.  “Let’s just hang on to this a little longer and see if things will work out anyway.  A little bit of compromise won’t hurt.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that things are going badly.” (I Sam 6:9)

Interestingly, Israel had similar problems when the Ark came back.  Some looked inside it and died, the people panicked and sent it elsewhere.  It was some 20 years before the people finally determined that they needed to give up their idol worship and serve only the true God (I Sam 7:1-14).  Once they did that, and offered up the proper sacrifice, they were delivered from the Philistines and lived in peace.

We always want to do things our own way.  We want to deny that God is the only true power in our existence so we keep trying to prove we have control, hedging our bet against the possibility that our problems are more than just coincidence.  It was simple for the Israelites; you don’t look inside the Ark.  You know that!  You handle it correctly, according to the way God said, and you offer the proper sacrifices.  You do what God said to do and you prosper (Deut. 28:1-14).  If you don’t do what God said to do you suffer (Deut. 28:14-68).  He has set before us a choice, life or death, blessing or cursing. Choose life! (Deut. 30:19)  That choice is still ours today.

We can live our whole lives trying to prove we don’t need this Jesus, or God’s Word, or religion of any kind, but it doesn’t change the fact that the one true God, Jehovah, is the almighty one.  Even the Philistines knew that, they just rejected the truth.  Saul of Tarsus resisted God’s move also (Acts 9:1-2) and then when faced with the truth (vs.3-18), submitted to it and became Paul, the Apostle (vs.19-31).  It’s amazing what God can do in us if we submit to the truth and do what He says.  James 1:22-25 tells us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only and we will be blessed.  What if Ananias had not done what God asked him to do? (Acts 9:10-18)  What would have happened to Paul?  What if you don’t do what God asks you to do?  Who will be affected by hedging your bet that simple obedience to Gods Word will change your life as well as those around you?

Let’s stop hanging onto our comfort zones, traditions, pride, habits, laziness, and arrogance that keeps us from simply doing what God asks us to do today and becoming everything He wants us to be.  Let’s get rid of the emerods, itches, boils, and mice by doing life God’s way and then we’ll have life and life more abundantly! (John 10:10)