1 Samuel 7: Idols

So let's set the scene: The ark is returned after seven months in Philistine territory, where God wreaked havoc on every city the ark was in. After the Philistines decided they had enough, they returned the ark to the Israelites, with some gold for good measure. The Israelites were over-excited, and tried to look inside of the ark, to which God responded by killing 50,070 people Israelites.

The Israelites responded, and for twenty years, "all the people of Israel mourned and sought after the LORD." But it turns out, that after God had severely punished the Philistines for serving idols and the Israelites for disrespecting Him and twenty years to think about it, Israel had not yet gotten rid of their idols and were still serving foreign gods! Twenty years may sound like a short amount of time in a historical account such as 1 Samuel, but take a second and think about how long twenty years actually is for any individual. Twenty long years have passed, and the Israelites still haven't gotten rid of their idols! It wasn't until Samuel finally commanded them to rid themselves of idols (which I also bet he had done multiple times before) that Israel completely turned their sights on God.

Jonah 2:8

Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

"Those who cling to worthless idols"

A lot of times when we come to God, we come holding onto our idols that we refuse to get rid of. We come in front of the all-knowing God trying to hide them, like a child foolishly trying to hide things behind his back. We come to God hoping that he doesn't mind us cheating on him with the other gods in our heart, asking him to allow us to hold on to our idols. And sometimes he lets us. He let the Israelites hold onto theirs for twenty years, but it isn't until we genuinely burn those idols that we can come to God in full obedience with a clear conscience to accept the grace that he wants to give us. Keeping idols in our lives, we are often also too ashamed and guilty to want to confront God because engaging in relationship with God only brings out the filth inside of us, even though we know God knows the dirt we sweep under the rug anyway.

Getting rid of idols is hard. It sucks. We often need to destroy things that we have spent a long time making and have taken pride in. We need to adjust our priorities and the way we live our lives. Getting rid of idols isn't the one-time event of chopping down some Ashtoreth pole or burning Baal statues because our idols keep popping up, and we have to keep burning them down. Just ask the Israelites, even though they burn them down, for some reason those idols always reappear (Kings, Judges). I'm not great at burning idols, but luckily God's a pyromaniac that's always willing to lend a hand.

"forfeit the grace that could be theirs."

We are again presented with God's amazing grace that is so often overlooked in the Old Testament. The people were given twenty years to get rid of their idols by the holy and wrathful God, as we have just seen in chapter 6. Twenty years! Our human inadequacies are always overwhelmed by God's love and patience. Always. Not only did he rescue his people from the Philistines once, he delivered them for a lifetime.

"Throughout Samuel's lifetime, the hand of the LORD was against the Philistines. The towns from Ekron to Gath that the Philistines had captured from Israel were restored to her, and Israel delivered the neighboring territory from the power of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites."

Think about it. The Israelites had decades of disobedience, stop, burn their idols, don't eat for a little bit to pray, sacrifice one lamb as a nation, and God rewards them with a lifetime of peace and prosperity. At CMC 2004, they emphasized that you can never out-give God. How true. We give God a tiny little bit, and he rewards us a hundred-fold.

God has so much that he wants to do for us and give us, but we are too stubborn to cling on to worthless idols that we miss out on all that he has in store for us. We all have idols, and we need to think how those idols have been holding us back.

On the chapter heading:

On a somewhat unrelated note, in the NIV Bible, the header for this section is "Samuel Subdues the Philistines at Mizpah", which couldn't be more misleading. Despite the obvious fact that all battles won were because of help from God, this header makes it seem like Samuel himself used his walking stick (that all prophets seemed to have) and went Yoda on the Philistines, using kung fu and somersaults to physically "subdue the Philistines." I usually like the NIV headers because they make passages easier to find, but this one is just straight up misleading.

1 Samuel 5, 6 - Don't mess with God
1 Samuel 4 - Continued Disobedience and Using God 
1 Samuel 3 - Midnight Encounter with God 
1 Samuel 2 - For those stumbling 
1 Samuel 1 - "Because I asked the Lord for him"