When God Comes to Town: 1 Samuel 6:13-16
Introduction: The Untamable God
We live in an age that wants a domesticated God. We want a God who is safe, predictable, and, above all, manageable. We want a God who fits neatly into our worship services, our political agendas, and our personal therapeutic needs. We want a God who will ride in a cart of our own design, bless our harvest, and then sit quietly on a rock until we need Him again. We want the blessings of His presence without the terror of His holiness. We want the joy of seeing the Ark without the fear of looking inside it.
But the God of the Bible is not a tame lion. He is glorious, holy, and untamable. His presence is the most wonderful and the most dangerous reality in the universe. For seven months, the Philistines had learned this lesson the hard way. They had captured the Ark of the Covenant, the footstool of God's throne, thinking they had captured Israel's God. They treated it like a trophy, a talisman, a rabbit's foot. But they quickly discovered that Yahweh is not a tribal deity to be paraded around. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. Their idol, Dagon, was found twice prostrate and broken before the Ark. Plagues of tumors and rats ravaged their cities. The presence of God, when treated with contemptuous familiarity, is a consuming fire.
So the pagan priests, with more spiritual sense than many modern evangelicals, devised a plan to send the Ark back. They knew they couldn't just get rid of it; they had to honor the God it represented. They built a new cart, hitched it to two milk cows that had never been yoked, and penned up their calves. Every natural instinct would have driven those cows back toward their young. But supernaturally, they went straight for the border of Israel, lowing as they went, and headed for the Levitical city of Beth-shemesh. God was coming home. And the people of Beth-shemesh were about to learn the same lesson as the Philistines, but from the inside. They were about to learn that God's holiness is just as dangerous for His own people when they treat Him with casual, presumptuous irreverence as it is for the pagans.
This passage is a stark warning against sentimental, man-centered worship. It shows us the difference between initial religious excitement and true, biblical reverence. It teaches us that God dictates the terms of His worship, and to ignore those terms is to invite disaster, even in the midst of celebration.
The Text
Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and were glad to see it. And the cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite and stood there, and a large stone was there; and they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to Yahweh. And the Levites took down the ark of Yahweh and the box that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone; and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices that day to Yahweh. So the five lords of the Philistines saw it and returned to Ekron that day.
(1 Samuel 6:13-16 LSB)
Joyful Sighting, Flawed Worship (v. 13-14)
We begin with the initial, positive reaction of the Israelites.
"Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and were glad to see it." (1 Samuel 6:13)
Here we see God's people engaged in their ordinary work. They are reaping the wheat harvest, a sign of God's common grace and provision. It is into this mundane scene that the glory of God intrudes. They look up, and there it is: the symbol of God's presence and covenant faithfulness, returning to them after a long and shameful absence. Their reaction is entirely appropriate: they "were glad to see it." The Hebrew word for gladness here implies a bright, shining joy. This was not a quiet satisfaction; this was exuberant celebration. The glory of God had returned to the land. For a moment, all was right with the world.
This initial joy is good. It is right to be glad when the presence of God is manifest. When we see God at work, when His Word is preached faithfully, when His people gather for worship, our hearts should leap. A cold, stoic indifference to the things of God is a sign of a dead heart. But religious emotion, however sincere, is not a substitute for biblical obedience. What they do next reveals a critical flaw in their understanding of worship.
"And the cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite and stood there, and a large stone was there; and they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to Yahweh." (1 Samuel 6:14)
The cart, guided by an unseen hand, stops in a specific field, next to a large stone. This seems providential, a perfect spot for a spontaneous worship service. And their intentions seem pious. They recognize this is a moment for sacrifice. They take the instruments of the return, the cart and the cows, and offer them to God. They turn the pagan cart into firewood and the unclean animals, the cows, into a burnt offering. On the surface, this looks like zealous, heartfelt worship. They are improvising, yes, but their hearts are in the right place, are they not?
But this is precisely where the problem lies. Worship is not defined by the sincerity of our intentions, but by the clarity of God's commands. God had given explicit instructions about how He was to be approached. First, the Ark was to be carried only by Levites, using poles inserted through its rings (Numbers 4:15). It was not to be transported on a cart. The Philistines get a pass for this because they were ignorant pagans doing the best they knew how. But the men of Beth-shemesh were Israelites. They had the law. Beth-shemesh was a Levitical city (Joshua 21:16). They, of all people, should have known better.
Second, sacrifices were to be offered only at the tabernacle, by the priests, and with prescribed animals (Leviticus 17:8-9). While these cows had been part of a miracle, they were still female animals, not the prescribed bulls or rams for a burnt offering. They offered a sacrifice in the wrong place, with the wrong personnel, and with the wrong animals. Their worship was a mixture of pagan innovation (the cart) and human invention (the sacrifice). It was will-worship, worship based on what seemed right and good to them. It was an expression of their gladness, but it was not an act of submission to God's Word. This is the essence of all false worship. It starts with a human emotion and then builds a service around it, rather than starting with God's command and conforming our emotions to it.
The Levites Step In (v. 15)
Verse 15 seems to indicate a moment of correction, where the proper authorities finally take charge.
"And the Levites took down the ark of Yahweh and the box that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone; and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices that day to Yahweh." (1 Samuel 6:15)
Finally, the Levites get involved. They are the ones designated by God to handle the holy things. They are the ones who "took down the ark." This was their job. They place it, along with the Philistines' guilt offering, on the large stone, which now serves as a makeshift altar. The text then says that "the men of Beth-shemesh" offered more sacrifices. It seems that even with the Levites present, the proper order was not fully restored. The worship was still a chaotic, populist event, not the orderly, regulated service God required.
This verse highlights the importance of God-ordained authority and order in worship. Worship is not a free-for-all. God has established roles and responsibilities within the covenant community. The New Testament is equally clear about this. We are to worship in a way that is "decently and in order" (1 Corinthians 14:40). We have elders and deacons, pastors and teachers, for the building up of the body. When the people usurp the role of the ordained officers, or when the officers abdicate their responsibility to lead according to Scripture, the result is confusion and, as we will see shortly, judgment.
The great temptation in modern worship is to erase these distinctions. We want a democratic, "every man a priest" approach that flattens all authority. We want worship to be spontaneous, emotional, and driven by the congregation's desires. But this is the spirit of Beth-shemesh, not the Spirit of Christ. True worship is humble submission to the patterns God has revealed in His Word, administered by the authorities He has appointed in His church.
The Watching World (v. 16)
The final verse in our section shows us that this entire event had an audience.
"So the five lords of the Philistines saw it and returned to Ekron that day." (1 Samuel 6:16)
The Philistine rulers had followed the cart to the border, watching to see if the cows' journey was a sign from Yahweh or just a fluke. They saw the cart arrive. They saw the Israelites' joyful reception. They saw the sacrifices. They saw enough to confirm that the God of Israel was real and powerful, and that He had indeed been the source of their plagues. They saw it, and they went home.
This is a crucial point. The world is always watching how the church worships. Our worship is a form of public witness. When we worship God according to His Word, with reverence and awe, we declare to the watching world that God is holy, that He is to be feared, and that His claims are absolute. The Philistines saw a power they could not deny, and it sent them away in what we can only assume was a state of fearful respect.
But what happens when the church's worship is sloppy, man-centered, and irreverent? What happens when it looks more like a rock concert or a therapy session than an encounter with the living God? The world looks on and concludes that our God is not serious, that He is not holy, and that He is, in fact, just like them. Our casual worship domesticates God in the eyes of the unbeliever. The Philistines, in their pagan wisdom, showed more fear and reverence for the Ark than the Israelites did. This is a staggering indictment. When the pagans have a higher view of God's holiness than the covenant people, judgment is not far behind.
Conclusion: The Fear of the Lord
The story does not end here. The very next verses record a terrifying judgment. Because some of the men of Beth-shemesh irreverently "looked into the ark of Yahweh," God struck down a great number of them. Their joy turned to mourning, and they cried out, "Who is able to stand before Yahweh, this holy God?" (1 Samuel 6:20).
That is the question this passage leaves us with. Who can stand before this holy God? The answer is, no one in their own strength. Not the Philistines. Not the men of Beth-shemesh. Not you, and not me. Our best attempts at worship are tainted with sin, self-will, and foolishness. Our most sincere joy can curdle into presumptuous familiarity. Left to ourselves, our worship would not appease God; it would provoke Him.
This is why the Ark of the Covenant is so central to the story of redemption. For on top of the Ark, containing the law we have all broken, was the Mercy Seat. It was there that the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement, covering the sins of the people. That Ark and that Mercy Seat were a shadow, a type, of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the true Ark, the very presence of God dwelling among us. And He is the true Mercy Seat. It is His blood, shed on the cross, that covers our sin. It is through His sacrifice that we can stand before a holy God and not be consumed. He is the one who offers the perfect sacrifice, in the right place (heaven itself), as the perfect High Priest.
Therefore, our worship must be centered on Him. We do not come to God with the new carts of our own inventions or the unauthorized sacrifices of our good intentions. We come to God through Christ alone. We approach God on His terms, which are now terms of grace, established by the blood of His Son. And because of this, we can have a joy that does not lead to presumption, and a fear that does not lead to terror. We can, as the writer to the Hebrews says, "offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:28-29). The men of Beth-shemesh forgot the fire. Let us not make the same mistake.