Today on Real Life Radio. They must repent of their sin. Confession of sin is always a necessity if we're going to grow. Always. Look at verses 5 through 12.
There's a sacrifice of honor. They make a sacrifice of honor. We have to do the same thing if we're going to repent. We have to make a sacrifice of honor. This is Real Life.
Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David Jay. thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible. You ever felt like something's missing in your life? Maybe you've been searching for answers, for peace, or a sense of purpose?
You know, the truth is those longings are there because you were created to know God. At jackhibbs.com, there's a tab called Know God. It's designed to help you discover what it truly means to have a relationship with God. This isn't about religion, It's about understanding who God is and why he loves you and how you can find hope and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. The page breaks it down in a simple, clear way, answering common questions and guiding you through the steps of faith.
It's a great place to explore and reflect whether you're just curious or you're ready to make that next step.
So don't miss out on the most important relationship you'll ever have. Visit that tab called KnowGod at JackHibbs.com and start your journey today. That's jackhibbs.com, because knowing God changes everything in your life for the better. Take that next step. Explore and reflect at the Know God section at jackhibbs.com.
On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called 1 Samuel with a message titled, This Holy God Part 2. Samuel of the Old Testament was the last judge of Israel and the first prophet.
So, in this second part of the message, Samuel warns Israel not to slip into religion, but to have a true relationship with their God. You see, God desires his people to be in fellowship with him. But as the generations continued on, they grew more and more distant from God.
Now, under the time of the judges, Israel goes astray.
So, today, Pastor Jack teaches us that when we do things that greatly displease the Lord, as did the Israelites during this time, both a warning and oftentimes a judgment will follow. But this can make us realize the holiness of God and the seriousness of staying in line with God's will for our lives.
Now with his message called This Holy God, Part 2, here's pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs. Father, we come and Lord, we ask that tonight you would open up our hearts and unlock, Father, our souls to what you have before us. Lord, we pray that tonight we might behold from your truth wonderful things.
So, Father, as we look to this chapter of Samuel, Lord, we pray that it would be meat to us and milk and honey and sweetness.
So, Father, bless now, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I want you to grab your Bibles and turn, if you would, to 1 Samuel chapter 6 tonight. 1 Samuel chapter 6. And it's been a while since we've been together.
But the last time we were together, we were doing chapters 5 and 6. We completed chapter 5, but we didn't get through chapter 6.
So the title of the message is the same, and that is this holy God. And he is a holy God, you know. Israel had lost the battle. Not only that, they lost the ark. Taken away captive.
The Philistines have got it and they're thinking, we've got the God of Israel. We've captured him. Remember, they take the ark in before the presence of Dagon, which in Hebrew, Dagon means grain. the god of grain the pagan god dagon was kind of a freaky looking funky idol he was kind of big and he had arms that were kind of outstretched like this and uh some say that he had a type that looked like a type of fish head or looked like a fish head a man's body kind of a lizard type tail goofy looking ugly idol and Dagon was their god of grain when they prayed at springtime for a good harvest they would pray to Dagon and he was their chief god and so all the astrofs and the Baals and And all these various pagan gods that the Philistines were involved in, they all kind of answered to Dagon. But you remember last time when they captured the ark, they took him into the temple of Dagon, remember?
And they were so, it's got to be comical. They put him in there and it was traditional. And it still kind of is in some cultures to where the army that you conquered, you would grab their goods, you know? And bring it in before your treasury. And you would add it to your storehouse.
Because this is what we did. And you would parade that about.
So what they're thinking is we've captured the Hebrew God. This ark. This God thing. And we've brought it in before our God. And it will be part of the war treasure of our great God.
And so they place the Ark of the Covenant before Dagon, and they go to bed. And it says there that they get up early in the morning to come and see.
Now that implies that they're excited. Come on, kids, get up. We're going to go see what our great God has delivered into our hands. And they go in there, and it's just the best because they open the doors to the temple, and they're face down before the Ark is Dagon, flat on his face. right before the ark.
And they go, well, that's really strange. And you could just see the moms covering the faces of the kids Um over there As they prop their God back up put him into position to be their leader again They go to bed. They get up the next day early in the morning. They come on out there and there's Dagon again. But this time in falling down, his neck is broken.
His head's fallen off. I mean, I'm sorry, but it's got to look like Mickey Mouse who gets broadsided by one of those ponies on Main Street in Disneyland. You know, he's stumbling about, his cardboard head's hanging off, the screen's hanging there, you know. I mean, it's got to look hilarious. Their God, the head's falling off.
Not only that, but his hands are broken off. All that's left is the torso of this God. And it's not a good deal. And they're thinking now, look, we've got to do something. And so they begin to move the ark away to other Philistine cities.
And with that, there's this terrible plague. And the plague is twofold. Number one, there's rats or mice, some of your Bibles say. A plague of rats or mice broke out.
Well, frankly, it may be that a bubonic type plague was in association with that. very possible because boils broke out upon the people, which is like bubonic plague. It begins with a boil. But these were very special boils. These were boils that the Philistines got in their private parts.
And some of your Bibles use the word hemorrhoids.
Some of your Bibles use the word tumors, politely, but it's actually hemorrhoids. Their worship of pagan gods became quite a pain to them, literally. And their failure to reverence the God of Israel haunted them. And a nation, a great enemy of Israel, now radically humbled as they can't do anything because they have been infected with this horrible plague of divine judgment in their private parts. That's got to be a bad deal.
Now listen, very quickly, I don't want to get too much into this, but it is amazing. And God is funny sometimes. sexual worship was highly recognized as their most desired worship there they had temples of various pornographic gods so what's funny to me about that is that God stops this pagan worship in a moment because they're all infected and their sexual deviant ways is immediately halted because they're hurting and God has got their attention. And they begin to actually, in chapter six, we learn they get actually wise about how holy the God of Israel is. And so it's very amazing.
It's very exciting to consider what's before us. And so in your note-taking, as we really wrap up what we started together, in chapter 6, beginning with verse 1, I should say, down to verse 21, in chapter 6, we see here regarding this holy God, we see here that there is a great fear that we need to be aware of, and that is the failing to repent of sin. God is working in their lives. They need to repent of sin. God wants not only Israel to repent of sin, but he wants all people to repent of sin.
And right here we see and we learn a very good example from this pagan group of people. Number one, watch this. In verses one through four, we see that confession of sin must take place.
Now these are pagans. They don't know anything. They don't have a Bible. They don't have the books of Moses. They have nothing.
They're pagans. But look what happens. They begin to think. And they're thinking spiritual thoughts. Verses 1 through 4.
Confession of sin must be made if we are going to repent. And it says in verse 1, Now the ark of the Lord was in the country there, and it was there for seven months. And the Philistines called for the priest and the diviners, saying, What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us, listen, how we should send it to its place. Seven months.
Let's get it out of here.
So they said, if you send or if you want to send away the ark of God to Israel, do not send it away empty, but by all means return it with a trespass offering. Then you will be healed and it will be known to you why his hand is not removed from you. Then they said, what is a trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, five golden hemorrhoids and five golden rats, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines or their chief leaders, ten of them. For the same plague was on all of you and your lords.
Okay, these were the priests brought in. They're pagan. But note what they know. You know what? the Hebrew God, he's upset.
He's holy. And what we are telling you to do is to generate an offering to give to him. This is smart thinking for pagan people. In other words, you better believe and say you're sorry to God now. And this trespass offering is a classic.
It is not just a sin offering. You know a sin offering? A sin offering is when you come and you confess to God and you repent of your sin because you've erred. And you know you and I sin in many ways during the course of a day We may not even intend to do it but we do it But a trespass that different A trespass is when someone, let's say, posts a sign and says, do not step on the grass. And you look at the sign, and you look right, and you look left, and then you run all over the grass.
You know you're not supposed to do it. You know that that's not what you're to be doing. But it's not a sin. It is beyond a sin, if I can put it that way. It is a trespass.
It is a willful, bold disobedience in the face of God. God, I know that you said not to do this. I'm going to do it anyway. And in fact, I'm going to plan on doing this the next time or next week.
Now, this is very frightening because the Old Testament tells us that God will not forgive the sin of the high hand, the old King James Bible puts it, or willful sin. Wow, that's strong. They said, what do we do? And their priests, who are pagans, say, well, number one, confess. Confess by offering to God of the Hebrews a trespass offering.
You not only sinned, or we not only sinned, we willfully sinned against him, and we went and captured this ark, and we killed his people. and we took captive part of their goodies, and we better say we're sorry. And that's an amazing thing for a pagan group of people to come to. We've sinned against a holy God. By the way, the Judeo-Christian view of God of the Bible, the God of the Bible announces that he's holy.
He says that he dwells in light, that he is not able to be approached by us. Did you know that? We so often think of him in a casual way. God says, I can't be approached. There must be one scent representing me to you, because God in his completeness cannot be seen.
That's why God has revealed to mankind in the person of Jesus Christ. You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And for now, let's get back to our teaching.
Once again, here's Pastor Jack. Because God in his completeness cannot be seen. That's why God has revealed to mankind in the person of Jesus Christ. Because the Bible says God is spirit, and that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. You know this.
And Moses, he wanted to see God, but God says, Mo, you can't see me. It'll kill you. I'm going to hide you in the cleft of the rock. I'm going to pass by. And after I pass by, you can see where I've been.
Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds kind of anticlimactic to me. I'm talking to you. I'm hearing you, God. I want to see you, but you're going to let me see where you've been? I mean, what kind of a thrill is that?
Well, God stuffs Moses in a crack of a rock. That had to be something. Just He passes by. After he passes by, somehow God releases his hand from Moses' eyes. And Moses sees what is called the afterglow of God.
And his face, his skin is somehow altered physically. The spiritual world crossing that line and into the threshold of the material world left its mark. and it left its mark. That is God left his afterglow on the face of Moses. And then he came down the mountain glowing.
He had to put a bag over his head because he didn't want to see or he didn't want the nation of Israel to see God's glory departing from his face.
So he covers his face. Isn't that wild? God is unapproachable. You don't play with them. Israel thought, remember in our previous studies, let's take the ark to war.
We'll win for sure. You don't treat God like that. He's not a trinket. Hey, give me a rabbit's foot and bring the ark. He's not like that.
He's not a sideshow. Yes, I know that the ark was about the size of this pulpit, probably. Not much bigger or smaller. Covered in gold, that's pretty. Covered in gold, that gets our attention.
Gold, wow. But that's not where God lived. but the nation of Israel put all of their identity on that ark, that piece of wood. It was a symbol of where God said, I'm going to meet you at. It was a model of what heaven spoke about.
But you see, these Philistines, they say, let's capture this God. Materialize the God. Doesn't work. But they learn something. They must repent of their sin.
Confession of sin is always a necessity if we're going to grow. Always. Look at verses 5 through 12. There's a sacrifice of honor. They make a sacrifice of honor.
We have to do the same thing if we're going to repent. We have to make a sacrifice of honor. Verse 5 says, therefore you shall make images of your tumors and images of the rats that ravage the land and you shall give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from you, from your gods and from your land? Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts?
Interesting what they know, isn't it? When he did mighty things among them, did they not let the people go that they might depart?
Now therefore make a new cart. Interesting, don't get an old one. These are, they don't know anything. They don't know any Christianese. They don't know any Hebrewese.
They just say, you know what? this God of the Jews is a heavy duty God. And we better say we're sorry. And we better make an honor in our worship to him. Go get a new cart.
Make one. Go get a new cart and go get two milk cows, which have never been yoked. Brand new cows. And hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves away home from them That meant that they were nursing these calves these two mama cows Oh you dairymen are saying some other word I don't know. They're mama cows.
They're nursing cows. Verse eight. Then take the ark of the Lord and set it on the cart and put the articles of gold, which you have returned to him as a trespass offering in the chest by its side. Then send it away and let it go. And watch, if it goes up the road to its own territory to Beth Shemesh, then he has done us this great evil.
So they're laying out a fleece before God. And by the way, God's going to honor this fleece. And, but if not, he says then, or they say, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that has struck us. It happened to us by chance. Verse 10.
And then the men did so and they took the two milk cows and they hitched them up and they put out the ark on the brand new cart. And they put the offerings there, the tumors and all that. The cows headed, look, verse 12, straight up the road to the first Jewish town. That's that town that's mentioned there. It's the first Jewish city outside of their territory.
So these guys are saying, look, put it on a cart. We're going to do this thing. We're going to get this God out of here.
now what breaks my heart is i'm wondering i'm wishing i'm hoping if i could have been there in real time i i would love to have somebody jump and say time out okay our big chief kahuna god fell on his face broke his neck and his hands in front of this thing now we know that this is just a thing we had to put it on the cart but the god that this represents i think we better worship him They're making the right steps. They've repented. They've made an honor. They made a sacrifice unto this great God, this holy God. I just wonder if any of them were converted to him.
I wonder. You think this is the end of the story? I bet you back then people talked about this, don't you think? It was on the front page of the Gaza Gazette, you know? Hebrew God, you know, whips our God and a priest winds up with hemorrhoids.
Film at 11, you know? I mean, it had to be amazing. And so verse 12 tells us that the cattle went lowing all the way as they went. The two mother cows are crying. And that's very powerful because they want to go back to their babies.
but God divinely watching over these two cows are pulling that ark down the road and those mama cows are crying all the way. They're mooing, wanting to go back to their babies. But you know what? Those cows were serving God Almighty and they were heading back into that first Jewish town so that that ark would be back amongst the people of Israel again. They didn't go to the right hand or to the left and the lords of the Philistines went after them to the border.
And I bet they're standing there like, we're not going to bed tonight until we know that thing is crossed into Beth Shemesh. There's no way. God's honor among the pagans.
Sometimes I wonder if God doesn't get sometimes greater honor among some pagans sometimes than some people who claim to know God. Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called This Holy God, Part 2. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called 1 Samuel. It's a series that highlights the prophet Samuel, who was called by God during one of Israel's darkest ages to bring the people back to a heart of true worship. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
Two things that you've made a major difference in my life. Can I throw this out in front of the audience right now? Two things.
Well, I think so, Davey, but it depends on what you're talking about. The kind of coffee that you like. Yes. I drink it every day. Yes.
I won't mention the name, but I drink it every day. Still, I think it was 10 years ago, maybe 20 years ago. Oh yeah, sure. Also around that same time, you turned me on to Charles Spurgeon. Absolutely.
He was the first guy that said the word Charles Spurgeon to me. Let me ask you something. Go ahead. Do you remember doing for, I believe it was for TBN. You did a Charles Spurgeon video series.
I did. You were Charles Spurgeon. That's exactly it.
Well, listen, I mean, Charles Spurgeon's worthy of anyone mimicking his sermons or his devotions. And so the resource for September, this wonderful book, Words of Warning, that's the title of the book. But Davey, I love the subtitle. For those wavering between belief and unbelief. Listen, all people waver at times between belief and unbelief.
It depends on what's going on in your life. I actually think everybody needs to get this book because who does not struggle at times where, is God going to show up? Am I going to get that new job? Is he going to heal my son? When I die, am I really going to go to heaven?
This is a great book by Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest communicators ever in human history, truly.
So for people who don't know much about Charles Spurgeon, why is he such a big deal to today's church? He will communicate in ways that your mind will just drive that devotion into your soul in the colors of the rainbow and beyond. I mean, it is high definition, articulation, and logic that truly glorifies God. I mean, he just raises the bar in your life to come up into the clouds where Spurgeon, I think, spent so much time with God. Get Words of Warning by Charles Spurgeon for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com slash real radio.
That's jackhibbs.com slash real radio. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word.
We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
