‘Epiphany’ means ‘revelation’. The Christian feast of Epiphany today celebrates Lord Jesus’ Presence being revealed, not only to His chosen people, but to foreign magi. God’s presence among us –how wonderful! Yet, as manifest in the Old Testament, it can also terrify with lightning bolts –dangerous, unpredictable, and inexplicable phenomena. Today’s story disturbs me. Philistine enemies had seized Israel’s sacred Ark of the Covenant where, it was believed, God had taken residence. Now that the Philistines were sending it back in fear, the Israelites, out harvesting Beth Shemesh’s fields, rejoiced and worshipped God by sacrificing their working oxen and used the wood from their harvest-carts to burn the offerings. But then God slaughtered 70 of them for ‘looking into’ His ark! Why? For daring to pull it apart, trying to pry into God’s secrets and seize His ‘magic’ power for themselves. ‘Quick!’ they said. ‘The ark is too dangerous for us –let someone else have it. They’re welcome to the lethal presence of God!’ Through Lord Jesus’ sacrifice, by contrast, God invites us to draw ever closer to Him without fear –but do we sometimes become a little over-familiar, taking His astounding presence for granted, as we might that of a dear human friend? It’s appropriate to feel awe in the presence of the most holy God, the Lord and creator of everything. That’s what I’ve learnt from this story. His holy presence manifests not only His moral perfection but also His power. He’s set apart, utterly superior to us. Having grasped that, I can only wonder the more at His love constantly reaching out to us even when we are ignorant of who He really is! This is the exact reason that whenever we are gathered for His worship and I keep seeing people and children being allowed by their parents to wonder and loiter about in the church hall, His house, I quickly warn such parents to please run after their children and try to keep them where they are suppose to be before the Lord God terrify us by dealing with such stubborn children that lacks home training and parental care and guide. The Lord God we serve is terrifying powerful fearful but merciful, loving and gracious God but let us never take Him for granted whenever we are in His presence! Always know this and act accordingly whenever you are in His presence and particularly making sure children are guided and controlled appropriately when we come to worship Him. And as from today let me not see a parent or parents whose child or children are loitering around the church hall without such parent or parents chasing after such child with all seriousness to keep him or her under control, where such child is the naughty type and cries, the parent should take him or her outside and far from where their cry will constitutes a disturbance to the worship procedure; the officers as from hence should be up and about with this instruction. Peace!

Now let us read 1 Samuel 6:13-21 13 Now the men of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it. 14 The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there; and the men split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the box beside it in which were the figures of gold and put them upon the great stone. And the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices that day to the Lord. 16 When the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned that day to Ekron. 17 And these are the tumors of gold which the Philistines returned for a guilt offering to the Lord: one each for Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron; 18 Also the mice of gold was according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both fortified cities and country villages. The great stone, on which they set the ark of the Lord, remains as a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh. 19 And the Lord slew some of the men of Beth-shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; He slew [a]seventy men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had made a great slaughter among them. 20 And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall He go away from us? 21 And they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you.

What does it mean to fear the Lord God Almighty? The book of Proverbs says, “The reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord is the beginning (the chief and choice part) of Wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight and understanding. Do you see and hear that! Meaning that anybody who does not have this reverent and worshipful fear of God has not started to have the wisdom and knowledge of the Holy God and thus such a person lacks insight and understanding of the Lord God no matter how you pretend and hypocritically claim you fear and know God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10) But a lot of people get confused by that. They say, “But I thought God loves us. Isn’t He our Father? And aren’t I supposed to love God? How can I love God if I am afraid of Him?” Those are good questions, and our passage today helps answer these questions. In today’s passage we meet three groups of people who responded to the ark in three different ways. 1. We have the Philistines who sent the ark away; 2. The people of Beth Shemesh who received the ark gladly; and 3. The seventy men who died after looking into the ark. These three groups of people illustrate three different attitudes towards God and His presence with regard to:– 1) fear, 2) reverence, and 3) disrespect. And they also illustrate for us how each of these attitudes produces a different result or consequence. Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away; they do not want Him to be with them. Those who have reverence for God’s holiness receive Him gladly. Those who show disrespect for God’s holiness provoke His anger and He deals with them accordingly. Remember that the ark is the visible symbol of the Covenantal Presence of God when God was dealing with man in man’s infant knowledge of God. Today after many years of the Lord’s living on earth with man, man’s knowledge of God is not suppose to still be in its infancy! Please take note of this fact so that you do not take your wilful decided ignorance of God to be God’s fault but your fault because you wilfully decided not to know and reverence Him in spite of His love for you whereby He gave you everything in providence and in His word to guide your knowledge and understanding of Him but you rebelliously rejected to reciprocate His merciful and gracious love towards you! So let’s take a look at each of these attitudes towards God and see what we can learn about our own attitude towards God this morning: I. Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away. (1 Samuel 6:1-12): The first attitude is that of fear. Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away. That is those who cannot believe and accept that God is Holy and as such know that they have to approach Him with reverence and holiness by they too being holy in other to be close to Him, tends to run away from Him and avoid Him. That’s what we see happening with the Philistines here in chapter six. They are afraid of God’s holiness, and they do not want Him or the ark around them any longer. Look at verses 1-2: When the ark of the LORD had been in Philistine territory seven months, the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the LORD? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.” (1 Samuel 6:1-2) If you remember, the Philistines captured the ark, brought it back to their own territory, and put it in their temple. As a result God sent tumours among the Philistines, possibly a form of the bubonic plague carried by an infestation of rats. Buboes are plague that occurs as painful swellings in the thighs, neck, groin or armpits; they are caused by Yersinia pestis the bacteria that causes bubonic plague and it spreads from flea bites through the bloodstream to the lymph nodes, where the bacteria replicate, causing the nodes to swell. The Philistines moved the ark from one city to the next, but the plague followed the ark wherever it went and even got worse. After seven months of this, the Philistines finally had enough and called their priests and diviners and asked them, “What shall we do with the ark of the LORD? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.” We find their answer in verses 3-6: They answered, “If you return the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it away empty, but by all means send a guilt offering along to Him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why His hand has not been lifted from you.” The Philistines asked, “What guilt offering should we send to Him?” They replied, “Five gold tumours and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumours and of the rats that are destroying the country, and pay honour to Israel’s God. Perhaps He will lift His hand from you and your gods and your land. Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When He treated them harshly, did they not send the Israelites out so they could go on their way?” as seen in 1 Samuel 6:3-6. Did you hear that, meaning that the enemy knows so much about your Lord God and how He deals with people and situations even more than you know Him; no wonder the Lord Jesus asked His disciples saying have I being with you this far and long and you do not know Me, who do men say that I am, and who do ye say that I am? Until an individual is able to answer these questions rightly...there is still a long way for him or her to go with the Lord God Almighty! The priests and diviners encourage the Philistines not to send the ark away empty-handed but to include a guilt offering of five gold tumours and five gold rats; meaning that they know they are guilty by interfering with God whom they know not how to worship. Now I am sure they meant well by this, but there is just so much they get wrong here. First of all, God didn’t want a statue for a guilt offering. He wanted a sacrifice. Do you see that right from the beginning God desired a sacrifice from man which started with items because man’s knowledge of God in this (wise) in this issue of sacrifice was still in its infant stage until they now understand that God wants who will go for Him to save His people from erroneous understanding of issues and Him whereby the Lord Jesus came and has given us the model telling us that we too can sacrifice ourselves for use by God in service to our fellow man! The Philistines attempted to pay honour to God through the gold images, but only a sacrifice would work as a guilt offering. According to the book of Leviticus, you were supposed to sacrifice a ram for this type of offering as seen in Leviticus 5:15, “15 If anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unwittingly in the holy things of the Lord, he shall bring his trespass or guilt offering to the Lord, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued by you in shekels of silver, that is, the shekel of the sanctuary, for a trespass or guilt offering.” And secondly, these images they made would not be pleasing to God anyways. Tumours were a form of unclean skin disease as seen in Leviticus 13, and rats were unclean animals as seen in Leviticus 11:29 “These also are unclean to you among the creeping things [that multiply greatly] and creep upon the ground: the weasel, the mouse, any kind of great lizard” God would not want images of things that He had declared unclean. Besides, the second commandment forbade the making of images for worship anyways. But, of course, the Philistine priests and diviners didn’t know any of this. They just wanted to get rid of the ark, so they made their plan according to their own wisdom and knowledge. This is the type of wisdom and knowledge like the Philistines which we apply today! They the Philistine priests and diviners urged the Philistines not to harden their hearts like the Egyptians did, but to send the ark back to Israel. Now, apparently there were some who were still not convinced that God was the cause of their suffering. Even though the plague had followed the ark around Philistine territory for seven months, some still thought this might all be a coincidence. So they devised an ingenious test to see if God really was behind all this. Look at verses 7-11. This is the priest and diviners still speaking here: “Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. Take the ark of the LORD and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to Him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the LORD has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not His hand that struck us and that it happened to us by chance.” So they did this. They took two such cows and hitched them to the cart and penned up their calves. They placed the ark of the LORD on the cart and along with it the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumours. (1 Samuel 6:7-11) The plan here is simple. They put the ark and the gold objects on a cart, and they hitch the cart up to a pair of cows. These are cows that have never been yoked before, which means they should fight against each other rather than walk smoothly in the same direction. Not only that, but these two cows have just given birth. The Philistines take their calves away from them and put them in a pen, which means the cows should be trying to get back to their calves rather than walking the other way to where they are sent Israel’s territory. Not only that, but there is no one to lead or drive the cows towards Beth Shemesh. They will just hitch up the cows, let them go and see what happens. In other words, they have stacked the deck against these cows ever heading back into Israel with the ark. So if they do head back into Israel with the ark, then the Philistines will know for certain that God’s hand was behind all this. So what happened? What did the cows do? Verse 12: Then the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh as seen in 1 Samuel 6:12. The Lord God showed Himself in the simple litmus test, which is exactly what we ought to be doing with God with all sincerity of purpose and definitely He will manifest Himself; a thing He longs and cherish to do for His people that are called by His name. God “passed” their test, and the Philistines finally got rid of the ark. The Philistines were afraid of God’s holiness, and they pushed Him away. Instead of submitting to God and worshiping Him, they sent the ark back to Israel. This story reminds me of the New Testament story of Lord Jesus and the pigs. Remember Lord Jesus cast the demons out of the man in the graveyard into the herd of pigs, and the whole herd stampeded over the cliff and into the water? The Bible tells us that when the people saw what had happened, they were afraid and they pleaded with Lord Jesus to go away as seen in Mark 5:15-17. Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away. Are you one of them, instead of striving to know God with fear and reverence and love, cherishing everything that He does and remaining with Him; are you tempted to push Him away, examine yourself! Are you afraid of God? If you do not know God’s forgiveness through Christ, then you are still under God’s judgment for sin and, yes, you should be afraid. But if you simply stay afraid of God, then you will continue to push Him away, and you will never be close to Him. So what do you do? There is a different attitude that we must take towards God, and that is moving from fear to reverence and worship.

Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away. But those who have reverence for God’s holiness receive Him gladly. We see this illustrated for us by the people of Beth Shemesh. Look at verses 13-16: 13 Now the men of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it. 14 The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there; and the men split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the box beside it in which were the figures of gold and put them upon the great stone. And the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices that day to the Lord. 16 When the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned that day to Ekron. How did the people of Beth Shemesh show reverence for God’s holiness? First of all, they put God first in their lives. It was wheat harvest, which was a busy season. You had to work hard every day to get all the wheat harvested in time. And yet as soon as they saw the ark, they immediately stopped what they were doing which was harvesting wheat and took care of the ark instead. And they were glad to do it. They showed reverence for God by putting God first in their lives. You and I are expected to do similar thing when duty calls! Secondly, they made a sacrifice. They chopped up the wood of the cart that had carried the ark, and they sacrificed the cows. God gave Israel the sacrifices to teach them that you cannot approach God on your own. God is holy. We are sinners. They didn’t know it at the time, but the sacrifices really pointed forward to Lord Jesus who would give Himself as a sacrifice for our sins that we might approach God without fear. They showed reverence for God by approaching Him through a sacrifice. Thirdly, they followed God’s laws. The Israelites made sure that only the Levites handled the ark. Beth Shemesh was one of the cities that had been given to the Levites as an inheritance as seen in Joshua 21:13-16 “13 Thus to the descendants of Aaron the priest they gave Hebron, the city of refuge for the slayer, with its pasturelands (suburbs), and together with their suburbs, Libnah, 14 Jattir, Eshtemoa, 15 Holon, Debir, 16 Ain, Juttah, and Beth-shemesh; nine cities, each with its suburbs, out of those two tribes”, so there were plenty of Levites around. The people did not presume to take the ark down from the cart themselves, but they let the Levites handle it according to God’s law. Do you see that, everybody around seem to have a good knowledge of what God want and how to handle the things of God but today do we know? If we are to be the ones that are confronted with this issue will we know what to do? That is the problem! The people of Beth Shemesh showed reverence for God’s holiness. They put God first, they approached Him through a sacrifice, and they obeyed His laws by not touching the ark and left it as a duty for the Levites. Today do we know who is to enter the altar and who is not especially when worship is ongoing? And what was the result? They rejoiced, they offered burnt offerings, and they made sacrifices to the Lord. They had reverence for God’s holiness, and they received Him gladly. This is what the Bible means by the fear of the Lord. It is not simply being afraid of God. It is drawing near to God in reverence through the sacrifices that He has ordained. In the Old Testament that meant drawing near through the sacrifice of animals. But now that Christ has come, we draw near to God through the sacrifice of Lord Jesus on the cross. The book of Hebrews says, “19 Therefore, brethren, since we have full freedom and confidence to enter into the [Holy of] Holies [by the power and virtue] in the blood of Jesus, 20 By this fresh (new) and living way which He initiated and dedicated and opened for us through the separating curtain (veil of the Holy of Holies), that is, through His flesh, 21 And since we have [such] a great and wonderful and noble Priest [Who rules] over the house of God, 22 Let us all come forward and draw near with true (honest and sincere) hearts in unqualified assurance and absolute conviction engendered by faith (by [a]that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness), having our hearts sprinkled and purified from a guilty (evil) conscience and our bodies cleansed with pure water” as seen in Hebrews 10:19-22. How many hearts are sincere? Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away. But those who have reverence for God’s holiness receive Him gladly and offer Him their sincere heart in worship. III. Those who show disrespect for God’s holiness provoke His anger. (1 Samuel 6:19-7:1) There is, however, a third attitude that we find in the text this morning that is neither fear nor reverence. That is the attitude of disrespect. Those who show disrespect for God’s holiness provoke His anger. We find this illustrated for us in the seventy men of Beth Shemesh who looked into the ark. Look at verses 19-20: But God struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the ark of the LORD. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the LORD had dealt them, and the men of Beth Shemesh asked, “Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?” (1 Samuel 6:19-20) The people rejoiced when the ark first arrived and the Levites handled it properly, but now these seventy men decided to look into the ark. The people were not even supposed to look at the ark, never mind into it. Nobody saw the ark except for the priest. The ark was kept behind a curtain in the innermost room of the tabernacle. When it was time to move the ark, the priest first covered it, and then the Levites carried it to its new destination. So for these men to look into the ark was an act of complete disrespect for God’s holiness. What happened? Well, if you have ever seen the Indiana Jones movies then you know that bad things happen when you look into the ark. (I even thought about calling this message “Raiders of the Found Ark.”) Seventy men looked into the ark, and seventy men died. They showed disrespect for God’s holiness, and they provoked God’s anger. How do we show disrespect for God’s holiness today? I can think of several ways. One way is when we show a lack of respect for God’s Word. The Bible is God’s Word and therefore holy. When we disobey God’s Word in our lives, we show disrespect for God’s holiness. Another way we can show disrespect for God’s holiness is during communion or the Lord’s Supper. The Bible says we should examine ourselves before taking communion. When we take communion without focusing on Christ and repenting of sin, we show disrespect for God’s holiness. The Bible tells us that some of the people in the early church actually got sick and died because they took communion in an unworthy manner as seen in 1 Corinthians 11, this is why whenever the Lord is attending to you either in healing, revelation or offering you His drugs (the sachet water) and you take it from Him with one hand, He cautions you! But the main way we show disrespect for God’s holiness today is simply by rejecting Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. The book of Hebrews in Hebrews 10:28-31 says, “28 Any person who has violated and [thus] rejected and set at naught the Law of Moses is put to death without pity or mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse (sterner and heavier) punishment do you suppose he will be judged to deserve who has spurned and [thus] trampled underfoot the Son of God, and who has considered the covenant blood by which he was consecrated common and unhallowed, thus profaning it and insulting and outraging the [Holy] Spirit [Who imparts] grace (the unmerited favor and blessing of God)? 30 For we know Him Who said, Vengeance is Mine [retribution and the meting out of full justice rest with Me]; I will repay [I will exact the compensation], says the Lord. And again, The Lord will judge and determine and solve and settle the cause and the cases of His people. 31 It is a fearful (formidable and terrible) thing to incur the divine penalties and be cast into the hands of the living God!” God sent His Son as a perfect and holy sacrifice for our sins. What greater disrespect can we show for God’s holiness than rejecting His Son as Saviour? Seventy men from Beth Shemesh looked into the ark and died. The people’s rejoicing turned to mourning, and they asked, “Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?” They suddenly found themselves in the same position as the Philistines. They were afraid of God’s holiness, and they wanted to push God away too. Is it not exactly what we do today? One time the Lord did good things for us, the other time we get carried away and do a thing we ought not to do and He punishes us by allowing one calamity or the other to befall us and we cry but instead of realizing our self in our error we get angry with God and thus incur more calamity the next is that we push Him away we do not want Him again, the type Elemuwa did and in a moment we realize our self we begin to seek Him; but who knows if He will welcome us! So what did they do? Look at the last verse of chapter 6 and the first verse of chapter 7: Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the LORD. Come down and take it up to your place.” So the men of Kiriath Jearim came and took up the ark of the LORD. They took it to Abinadab’s house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar his son to guard the ark of the LORD. (1 Samuel 6:19-7:1) The people of Kiriath Jearim came and took the ark. The ark would now stay at Kiriath Jearim until King David finally brought it to Jerusalem. The people of Kiriath Jearim showed reverence for God’s holiness, and God blessed their city as a result. God is only seeking for who will handle Him as He God want! Not people who will presume and people who will keep Him as long as the going is good. No! So you have got to make efforts to know God’s Dos and God’s DON’Ts for you not to be in trouble with Him! You must maintain the balance.

What is your attitude towards God this morning and in your life? If you are afraid of God, you will only push Him away. That’s no good. If you have no fear of God, you will show Him disrespect and provoke His anger. That’s no good either and even dangerous. So what’s the answer? God wants you to come to Him with an attitude of reverence and respect. Recognize that He is God. Submit yourself to Him as Lord and Saviour. Acknowledge His holiness. Come to Him confessing your sin, and trusting in Christ to help you rid yourself your sins and its consequences. Those who are afraid of God’s holiness push Him away. Those who show disrespect for God’s holiness provoke His anger. But those who have reverence for God’s holiness receive Him gladly. “Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.” (Psalm 95:6-7)