Let's turn together in God's Word this morning to 1 Samuel 6. We'll look together at verse 17. Starting in verse 17 of 1 Samuel 6, we'll read through to verse 2 of chapter 7. Hear now the word of the Lord. These are the golden tumors that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the Lord. One for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, one for Ikron. And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines, belonging to the five lords, both fortified cities and unwalled villages. The great stone beside which they set down the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh. And he struck some of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck 70 men of them, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. Then the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up away from us? So 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. And the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord and brought it to the house of Binadab on the hill. And they consecrated his son Eliezer to have charge of the ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some 20 years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord." So far, the reading from God's word this morning. May he add his blessing to our hearts. Please be seated. A nation's flag can be a very powerful symbol. When you think about it, a flag is really different colored pieces of cloth sewn together to form a recognizable pattern. But a flag is not treated according to its raw materials, is it? A flag is treated according to what it represents. And in the case of the flag of a nation, it represents that nation and its sovereignty. So you can even think of moments where this is true. For example, in the United Kingdom, I believe this is true, you can check with Ollie after the service maybe, but I believe it's true that when the king is in residence in a palace, as the head of that nation, the flag of that nation is flown at that palace. The same thing can be said of our nation's flag and the significance that it carries. So think about that iconic photo of the Marines planting our flag on Iwo Jima. It's not a statement about the bravery of those soldiers primarily, although that's probably mixed into that picture. It's primarily, at that moment at least, a statement that says, America has conquered. Our nation has conquered this island, so it's representative of something greater. It's not just raw materials, it is that nation. So that also, when hostile armies come into a country and capture it, the first thing they do when they come to government buildings is what? to take down the flags of that nation and to replace them with their own flags. And so when we look at countries, we look at them in terms, at least in part, of the symbol of their flag. The symbol of their flag means this country is healthy because it's flying high, or this country is defeated when their flag is removed. And so we think about nations in that way. We use political metrics of power and who's in charge. But in Old Testament Israel, you have a nation which is unique in all of history, where the nation and the symbolism of that nation is tied uniquely, not to the state itself, but to the God of that state. The symbols of Israel are defined through things like the Ark, or the Temple. In fact, you can think of the identity of Israel tied up with the symbol of the Temple as a whole. The Temple is the representative place that says, The God of heaven and earth dwells among us. And unique in that temple, within the Holy of Holies, this one room where only the high priest could go, and that only once a year, is this further symbol, the ark with the mercy seat on top of it, where the blood was sprinkled, which said, uniquely that symbol said, not only does God dwell among this people, but he has reconciled this people. He has forgiven their sin. Well, now we come to 1 Samuel 6, really from 1 Samuel 4 on, we've been dealing with this whole account when the symbol of God's atonement and the symbol of the presence of God for Israel, in some sense, their flag had been removed from that nation. The Ark was in Philistia. God was symbolized as being absent from Israel. And from the account that we have as we conclude this treatment of the story with the Ark as the main character of sorts, what we see is that that Ark must be treated with respect exactly because it is a symbol of God. What we see in our verses that we're considering today is that God's judgment must be feared and his holiness must be remembered and revered so that the people of God can draw near to him. So there is a sense where in our text we're dealing with remembering God's judgment. That's what we're going to look at first. Next, we're going to look at this part where Israel forgets about the holiness of God, and we're going to be reminded to remember God's holiness. And then lastly, we're going to briefly take a look at what it means that Israel was lamenting after God. Lamenting after what? And so we're gonna remember God's judgment, we're gonna see that Israel forgot God's holiness, and we're gonna see what it means that they lamented after God's absence, all as we're trying to put all of those things together so that we can be directed in our worship of the Lord ourselves. So let's first look at Israel needing to remember God's judgment in verse 17 and 18. So again, from the beginning of chapter 14, The Ark has been the main character in the different accounts that we've worked our way through. In chapter 4, at the Battle of Ebenezer, both Hophni and Phinehas are slain, and the Ark is taken into captivity, an exile of sorts. And what we have to remember is this is part of a larger account that God is telling us, but it's evidence, this battle where Hophie and Phineas are killed, it's evidence of God's judgment against the house of Eli. But it's not only judgment against the house of Eli. Yes, they're being judged for their wicked and selfish use of the priesthood, but you also see Israel as a whole judge, and it's often the case that way. Remember when David numbers the fighting men. 70,000 Israelites die for David's sin. The sin of the king reflects the sin of the nation in some sense. Well, the same thing is true here. Hophni and Phinehas die, Eli dies, the judgment of God comes against the priesthood of Eli, but 34,000 Hebrew soldiers die in God's judgment of Eli. And so the people who are living through that experience, particularly Phineas's wife, who gives birth and dies in childbirth as a result of the news of her husband dying, Eli dying, the ark being captured, she declares that because the ark is captured and because God's judgment is so severe on the people of Israel, therefore I will name my son Ichabod. The glory of the Lord has departed from Israel. But what we've seen as we've worked our way through chapter five and six is that Phineas' wife made a premature judgment of sorts in the naming of her son, because God will not be robbed of his glory. God will not be set in second place. And that's really what we saw when God dealt with the Philistines. when they set the Ark of the Lord in the temple of Dagon, as if Dagon had conquered the God of the Hebrews, as if they themselves had won the victory through their bravery. And so the Lord sends on the people of Philistia plagues, boils, mice, illness, sickness. And what we see in our text today is just how vast the extent of God's judgment of the Philistines was. It's in some senses ironic, because if we go to the place where Israel asks for a king, 1 Samuel 8 and the second part of verse 19, they say to Samuel, no, there shall be a king over us. Why do they want a king? that we also may be like all the nations and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles. So the reason Israel wants a king is because they want a captain of the army. And here in our account so far, we have the nation of the Philistines who had enslaved Israel up to this point, brought to its knees without a single soldier of the Hebrews being involved at all. God alone wins the victory over the Philistines, and Israel forgets about it completely. When they ask for a king, they ask because they want somebody to lead them into battle. But when you think about it, and where our verses start in verse 17, there's this rehearsal. There's the five major cities that were in Philistia. There's Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. Those are the five city-states that formed the alliance that made up the Philistine nation. And for each of those city-states, they're submitting tumors and mice. because God afflicted the entirety of that country with these plagues as a way of judging them for their indiscretions, for their blasphemy in making the God of heaven and earth second. God lays all of Philistia low for their arrogance against him. And so the five Philistine rulers send their gift. And that this gift has been placed in a chest that was delivered to the people of Beth Shemesh next to the Ark. So there was a way of remembering what God had done among the Philistines. The people of Israel, all they would have to do is look at that chest with these gold tumors, Imagine being charged, being hired to sculpt that. But the five golden tumors that were that were sculpted by the Philistine craftsmen and the mice that were in the chest, they served as a reminder that God judged the Philistines and that the Philistines were completely defeated. It should have helped Israel to remember. But they didn't remember. And beyond that, God himself leaves another witness. You notice it in verse 18, where it talks about the great stone beside which they set down the ark of the Lord in Beth Shemesh. That is a witness at the very point when this book is written. That stone is still there as a testifier that God judged the Philistine, that God brought Philistia to its knees. So it says that the stone is a witness. The stone declares something. The stone testifies to an action of another. That's what witnesses do in court cases, right? They say, this is what that person did, or this is what I observed over there. Well, that stone, even though it can't speak, it testifies because that's where the ark of God was returned. That's where it was set down. That's where that box with the golden tumors and the golden mice was set down, and it declares, it speaks to Israel. This is what God has done for you. It's a sign. It is a symbol to remind Israel that they would never forget that God is with them, that his enemies cannot keep him away. That's the Old Testament. The Old Testament had those kinds of signs that God is present, that God redeems his people. You ever wish, wouldn't it be nice if we had signs and symbols like that, things that remind us of the work of the Lord, the things that God has done? If only there were signs that would help the church today. Remember that God is present and remember that God has delivered. Well, brothers and sisters, we do have those kinds of signs. We have signs that tell a far more glorious picture of God's working. We have signs that tell a far greater story of a plague in a nation with five city-states. We have signs and seals which tell us of the deliverance of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. And they remind us that God doesn't just give us symbols, that God doesn't just help us to remember certain events so that we can tell other people about it. But those symbols reflect a reality. They reflect something that God has done in time and space. By entering into this world, by the incarnation of His Son, He has proven that He is present and that He has delivered. In the Lord's Supper, We have a symbol that God has reconciled himself to his people by the death of his son. In 1 Corinthians 11, 26, listen to the language. As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. That's what a witness does. The witness proclaimed something. The stone at Beth Shemesh proclaimed that God had defeated the Philistines. In the eating of the Lord's Supper, we are proclaiming the death of Christ, and in the death of Christ, the death of death, as has famously been said by John Ohm. So we have in the Lord's Supper this symbol of a reminder that God is reconciled to his people through the cross. And the second symbol that we have is, of course, baptism, a reminder of the effect of Christ's shed blood in cleansing man from the filth of sin. Paul, when he tells the story of his conversion in Acts 22, he talks about baptism in this way, that baptism is this reminder of the washing away of the spiritual filth that is in our soul, that is in our heart, the sin, the guilt of sin washed away. Like we wash our hands to clean our hands that have gotten dirty by whatever we're doing. Two, as a symbol of the cleansing of our own hearts. So in Acts 22, 16, Paul says that Ananias said to him, so Paul is relaying what Ananias said to him, rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name. These symbols, baptism doesn't wash away your sin. It is a symbol of the washing away of your sin. And these symbols, they are given by God But is it not true that we can neglect them just the same as the Israelites neglected the stone at Beth Shemesh? They are graciously given by God that we might marvel at God's work But we have to take them up, don't we? We have to take advantage of the means of grace that God gives to us. We have to take up these sacraments and remember these symbols that God has given to us. We are to receive the benefits of the signs and symbols by taking them up and believing what is signified in them. Just think about these golden gifts that the Philistines gave, and the great stone in Josiah's field as a witness from God about his presence and reconciliation among his people. Well, we have that in the sacraments, and we must take advantage of them. What they represent has to be believed. You have to take them up and look at them. They do more than that. They do more than just remind us of something that God has done. They do more than testify. 1 Corinthians 10 tells us that there is a communion that happens when we partake in the Lord's Supper. But for our sake today, for the topic that we're dealing with, we want to think of these things, these sacraments, particularly as a testimony. That's the important part that we want to remember today. Now, so think about the testimony of baptism. If you are baptized as a believer, you have the moment of baptism that is crucial and intense, and you know what's going on in that moment. But if you're baptized in that moment, it's not the only benefit that you have. And likewise, if you're baptized as an infant, You maybe don't realize or remember when the sign of baptism was applied to you, but you can still take advantage of baptism as a sign of God's presence and his reconciliation to you. Subsequent baptisms form that use. In baptism, we are making an appeal to God that he would cleanse us of the guilt of sin. And every time another person is baptized, that same reminder is set before you. that in Christ Jesus, you have the cleansing of the guilt of your sin by the blood of Christ. Like water washes your hands, so Christ's blood purifies your heart. And in the larger catechism, it will talk about our experience of other people's baptisms as being useful in improving our baptism. Now, it's not that the baptism that you've experienced is deficient. That's not what it's saying, but it's saying that you can learn more and more to see the beauty of what is signified in baptism through your witness of baptism as a whole. Young and old alike consider time and again, or should consider time and again, in baptism what is symbolized. the sin of man, the cleansing of that guilt, the rebirth of the one receiving baptism, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that person. All of those things are symbolized in baptism. Baptism is not about getting a cute child up here so we can chuckle at their reaction when the water is put on their head. Baptism points to the Lord Jesus Christ and His work. It is a symbol that says God is not far away. You are not in a place where there is a curtain between you and God. Christ Jesus has cleared the way for you so that you are not will be, you are reconciled to God. It's a symbol. Do you think of that when baptism is happening? Are you taking advantage of that as a symbol? Or are you on an ox cart driving through Joseph's field in Beth Shemesh, and there's this big stone in the middle of that field, and you pay no attention to that stone at all? You just drive right by. It's always been there. It's always been here. I've lived in Beth Shemesh my whole life. I'm a priest's son. I grew up here. I've lived here my whole life. I don't pay any attention to that rock except for to climb on it every once in a while. No, God gives His symbols that we would know what they represent and that the representation of those things would be received by faith, that we would cling to those things by faith. The same thing, perhaps more obviously true in the Lord's Supper. We're not as confused by this notion of rethinking what God has promised in the Lord's Supper because we celebrate the Lord's Supper so regularly. It comes every other week in our congregation. So this regular repetition of the Lord's Supper, it has actually caused sometimes us to emphasize this part of remembering too much. And we've lost the other benefits that it gives. But we'll leave that aside for another time. Let's first think about how we can take up the Lord's Supper then. How do we take what is signified in the Lord's Supper and hold fast to it, that we don't forget? So that we don't neglect the signs that God has given to us. Well, first of all, and the most obvious way, of course, is that we should participate in the Lord's Supper. God, in the Lord's Supper, gives to his people what we would talk about theologically as a means of grace. That's another way of saying this is the way that God shares with his people the benefits that he gives to us in Christ Jesus. All of the promises that we would associate with the covenant of grace, that we are not saved by works, that we are forgiven, justified in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he makes us holy as God is holy, that he holds us fast, that we're adopted into his family. All of these things, they are part of our participation in the Lord Jesus Christ, and God shares these things with us in the supper. One of those times is in the evening service. Is that promise not important in the evening service? If it's offered to you twice in a month, and you take advantage of it 50% of the time, what does that say about your value of the reminders that God has given to you in Christ? The Lord's Supper is to be participated in to have the benefits of this sign. And not only, secondly, not only should we participate in the Lord's Supper, because you can participate in the Lord's Supper all your life, and it do you no good at all. More than just participating in the Lord's Supper, we are, in some sense, in all of life, to prepare ourselves for the Lord's Supper. Some people stress the need for preparation of the Lord's Supper, and I agree with it. But at the same time, I don't really like that language, because all of the Christian life is preparation for the Lord's Supper. If we say we have to prepare for the Lord's Supper in some sense that's saying, well, there's a part of your life when you don't have to think about what God has given to you in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's uniquely times when we're gonna have the Lord's Supper where you should think about what God has given to you in the Lord Jesus Christ. No, we do that every day. We should do that every day. Every day we should wake up again and say, isn't it mind-blowing that God Almighty, who is pure and holy, condescends to sinful man and says, I will dwell among you. And more than just, I will dwell among you, I will offer my son on the cross that you would be forgiven. We're going to think about that only for certain services? That is the Christian life. So when you prepare for the Lord's Supper, you're doing what you should be doing every single day. But if you're not doing it at all, you're participating in the Supper in vain. Because it doesn't mean anything to you. It's like climbing on the rock at Beth Shemesh without knowing what that rock was for. And so we are to participate in the Lord's Supper. We're to prepare for the Lord's Supper. And now for you kids in the church today, I want to encourage you also that you should desire to attain access to the Lord's Supper. I want to say something to you kids. Listen, it's important. Sometimes people come to me and they say, I want to be a member of the church. So I want to do my profession of faith. You are, as a baptized child, already a member of the Church. You are a member of the Church of Christ. You are called a Christian because you belong to the Church. Now, are you a Christian on the inside or not? That's a different story. But in your baptism, you are called by the name of Christ. But you should desire to have access to this other symbol that God has given to you as well. You should desire to stand up before God's people and say, the things that my parents believe about what Jesus did on the cross, I believe that too, and I want everybody to know it. That's what a profession of faith is. And then when you participate in the Lord's Supper, having thought about all that Christ has done for you all the days of your life, you with the rest of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ can take that bread and drink that cup and say, I believe this. I've thought about this. I've accepted this as truth in my heart. I'm living my whole life according to that truth. You should be thinking about that. It doesn't matter if you're two or three or four or five or six. You think about these things. You talk to your parents about these things. You learn what it means to place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You trust in him. all your days, because that's what God shows you in the Lord's Supper. And in the Lord's Supper and participating in it, we get to say amen to those things. And so, all of these things to show us that we have signs from the Lord as well, which are far greater than the signs of the stone of Beth Shemesh, which God gave as a testimony for Israel, and these golden articles that the Philistine kings gave as well. All that is to help them remember the judgment of God against Philistia that they would kept from behaving in such a way that God would judge them. But what we see next is that they forget. Almost right away, they forget what God has done. And you see it in verses 19 through 21. When the ark is returned to Beth Shemesh, it says in verse 19 that he, God, struck some of them. It's actually a stronger word. It's like smiting. To me, smiting is more like what Samson did when he had that jaw of the donkey and he smote the Philistines. Well, that's what God did to the Hebrews. That's what God did to the people of Beth Shemesh. He smote them. Same word as what Samson did. He smote them because they looked upon the ark. Now we have to understand that sin, because that seems a little odd to us, maybe at first glance, because if we go back to verse 13 of chapter 6, it says that the people of Beth Shemesh are reaping in the fields, and they lift up their eyes, and what do they do? They see the ark. Well, they're not struck down then. And also in verse 15, the Levites take the ark down from the... And it says, they set them upon the great stone. They must have seen the ark then as well, but they weren't struck down at that point. So what particularly is going on? Well, in reading this text, we have to see, okay, it can't just be them seeing the shape of the ark. There must be something else going on. And I think we can gain some clarity by looking at, we'll just look at one place in the Old Testament, in Numbers 4, where God forbids Israel from treating his holy things flippantly. It says there, they shall not go in to look at the holy things, lest they die. So God curbs man's curiosity and protects his holiness by setting extreme censures in place. If you look upon the things of God, the holy things of God, you will die. That's the prohibition that God has set in place. The people of Beth Shemesh see the ark in verse 13. They must have seen it when they put it on the stone in verse 15. But here in verse 19, they look upon the ark and they're struck down. there must have been an abandonment of the reverence of the holiness of the things of God among the people of Israel. They must have had an ungodly curiosity which rejected the boundaries which God has set in place. And so God strikes down 70 of them. Different translations, it's a difficult text, and we're gonna just gloss over that. Some translations say 50,000 and 70. In the ESV, they go with 70. And just for the, it doesn't affect the way we read the text because it's a large number of people. That's what we should remember. God strikes down a large number of people at Beth Shemesh for their indiscretion in how they look at the ark of God. Israel forgets God's holiness and it costs them dearly. What do you think of the holiness of God? Do you think it's something to be protected? Do you think you should deal with God and His holy things in a flippant way? Well, I think today's Christian culture says you can. I think in today's Christian culture, God is treated flippantly. Now, it's not that I can't understand how people end up there. Usually people are flippant about God because they take texts that describe God as familiar. And there are those texts in scripture. God describes himself as our father. That is, I hope, in your family, a familiar relationship. A relationship where children don't speak to you in a different way than they would speak to other people in many, many settings. But it is still different. In today's society, we say we can treat God casually. Maybe because of something like Hebrews 10, where it describes how Jesus opened the veil. Now the Holy of Holies is no longer a thing. And so we don't need to worry about the holiness of God as much. We can be flippant as we draw near to God. We can have chats with God. We can make jokes with God when we're praying to him. God is holy, people of God. The same book that says that Jesus removes the veil, the book of Hebrews, establishes that in Christ, we should not have a reduced sense of the holiness of God, but a heightened sense of the holiness of God. It's in Hebrews 12, verse 18 through 29, where there is this comparison between Sinai and today. And you remember at Sinai, God appeared right before the giving of the law in Exodus 19. And he appeared in fire and darkness. And there was the sound of the trumpets. It was terrifying. It was so terrifying that the people of Israel said to Moses, don't have God talk to us anymore because we're going to die if he does. You talk to God and then you talk to us, but don't let God talk to us. There was great fear. But in Hebrews 12, It introduces Jesus after its discussion of Sinai, and it says there that if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. The coming of Christ does not excuse flippancy about the holiness of God. Yes, Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant. And yes, his blood, his sprinkled blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. But because Christ comes with greater clarity, listen to how Hebrews 12 concludes in verse 28 and 29, because of the coming of Jesus Christ, what is there for the Christian? Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and let us offer to God the acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming God. You think of God in that way, with that sense of reverence, with that sense of holiness, that God is to be approached in reverence and awe because He is a consuming fire. I plead with you, do not despise the Lord because of the coming of Christ. Yes, He is your Father. Yes, you have a uniquely intimate relationship with him, but even in human relationships, we know that father and child is distinct. There's something instinctive when a toddler addresses his father by his first name that makes us say, There's something wrong there. And even if you don't think that, there is something that is being robbed in that relationship when a child addresses his father by his first name. Because of all the people in the world, I have one father. I'm a 53-year-old man, and I went to my dad's house on Friday and I called him Dad. I didn't call him Ron. I wouldn't think about calling him Ron. Why? because of all the people in the world. He is the only one, the only one that I can address in that way. And when I am flippant, hey, Ronnie boy, what's going on? I'm destroying that relationship. I'm destroying what is unique and beautiful in that relationship. how foolish it is to cheapen the holiness of God and rob ourselves of awareness that God Almighty condescends from heaven and deals with us as His adopted children in mercy and love and compassion. We should never make Him like anything else. We should not talk to him like he is like everyone else. He is the God of holiness, of glory, of mercy, of justice, of reconciliation. And we can address him in reverence and awe. Sadly, in Beth Shemesh, like in Philistia, rather than repenting before the Lord when they've gone wrong, all these 70 people have been slain in Beth Shemesh. Well, they do the same thing the Philistines did, don't they? Instead of repenting before God, they take the ark. Well, they're actually less courageous than the Philistines were. At least the Philistines had the decency to take up the ark and carry it to the next town. The Hebrews in Beth Shemesh, the priests in Beth Shemesh don't do that. They send a telegram to the people in Kiriath Jearim saying, hey, the Ark's here, would you come get it, please? They don't even have the sense of reverence to carry this Ark to Kiriath Jearim. They acknowledge the holiness of God without any indication that they're willing to see where they went wrong. They simply move it along. And then we see this lament right at the end. I don't want to rush too much, but let's just briefly touch on verses one and two in chapter seven, because at the end of chapter seven, it says that the ark was gone for some 20 years and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. A lot could be said, I'm sure, about those two verses, but I just want to make a closing observation about the spiritual chaos of Israel at this time. When Israel's dealing with the ark, it seems like they have no idea what they're doing. Even the priests in Beth Shemesh, they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. So instead of returning the ark to the tabernacle, where it belongs, where do they put it? They take it to Kirith Jeremiah and they put it in a house. And instead of bringing the ark to Shiloh, they bring it to Kiriath-Jerim. They put it in the wrong place in terms of structure. They put it in the wrong place in terms of city. And instead of allowing the ministry of the priests at the tabernacle to continue, they put it in the house of Eleazar ben Abinadab, the son of Abinadab, and they have him consecrated for the care of the ark. They're completely lost. Why are they lost? because they're not asking God for any direction. They're just doing. They're just doing what seems right to them. Israel is to worship the Lord at the place that He has set apart for that purpose. God gave particular instructions for the tabernacle to be built in a particular way, set up in a particular place in Shiloh, and Israel is ignoring all of that. The ark remains, even giving them the benefit of the doubt that this must have been overwhelming in the moment. How long is the ark in Kiriath-jearim? Is there for 20 years? They can't figure it out in 20 years that this is not where the ark belongs? Think about what that means. In 20 years, there are 20 occasions to celebrate the day of the Lord. The Day of Atonement, I mean. An annual feast. What happens in the Feast of the Day of Atonement? The high priest puts his hand on the head of a sacrificial animal. That animal is slaughtered and the blood is taken and sprinkled in the tabernacles, holy of holies, against the Ark. Where is the Ark? It's not in the Holy of Holies. For 20 years, they have not been able to complete the sign that says God forgives. And so here in verse two, it's no surprise that it says at the end of it that all of the house of Israel lamented after God. Either they're missing the tabernacle, I think it's more likely, that they're recognizing more and more the absence of the signs of the forgiveness of sins. Don't leave off reconciling to God as the Hebrews did. For 20 years, they could have picked up that ark any time and marched it up to Shiloh and had the Day of Atonement been restored. For 20 years, they leave off reconciling to God The symbol of the presence of the Lord is missing from the tabernacle. What about you today? Are you paralyzed being reconciled to God? Are you putting off being reconciled to God? We can spend a lot of time in grief. We can spend a lot of time pointing out that we don't feel that God is with us. Reconciliation is at hand, my friend. Reconciliation is at hand. The Bible teaches us, repent and believe the gospel. That's how reconciliation happens. Do you lack peace with God today? Take up, be reconciled, plead for the forgiveness of your sins. Do not wait. to be reconciled to God. The judgment of God is a terrible thing, and we must remember it. Israel should have remembered God's judgment against the Philistines to spare them their own judgments. But they didn't, and often we don't. We forget about how God has rescued us, and we're prone to wander into error, Error turns into sin, and when God brings about correction and discipline, we don't even recognize what that's for, and we hold off being reconciled to God. And the correction is in taking advantage of these symbols that God has given that should help us to remember these things. Whether it's a great stone in a field in Beth Shemesh, whether it's a chest full of golden tumors and mice, whether it is the bread broken and the wine drunk, or the water applied to the head of a confessor or a child. When we remember these things as pictures of the holiness of God, they say, draw near to the Lord. in reverence and awe through the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what they're symbols of. They give a promise that when you come through the Lord Jesus Christ. You are washed from the guilt of sin. Through his death on the cross. That is not a cause for less formality or flippancy. It is the cause for worship, worship that's given in reverence and awe. Let's pray it again.