What’s the Cause of Your Problem?

1 Samuel 5:1-5 (NIV)  After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. 3 When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place. 4 But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained. 5 That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter Dagon’s temple at Ashdod step on the threshold.

Verse five is what stuns me. Okay, so the Philistines had captured the Ark of God and placed it in the temple of Dagon, their idol (who was a merman with upper part man, and lower part fish). For two consecutive nights, Dagon fell on his face before the ark of God. After the second night, they found Dagon fallen again. His head and hands were cut off and lying on the threshold of the temple.

So what did the Philistine priests do? Admit that the Lord is God, abandon their idols and serve Him, right? WRONG. Did they see and acknowledge that their God was far inferior to the God of Israel? NO. Did this incident jar them free of pagan idolatry and cause them to seek the true God, the God of Israel? NOPE. Were they in any way humbled or challenged to abandon the false god who was helpless before the Ark of God? Nope. Nope. NOPE.

What they DID do was stunning! We read in verse five, “That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon, nor any others who entered Dagon‘s temple at Ashdod step on the threshold.” What?! Huh?! The blindness of unregenerate man is absolutely astonishing! They made some crude connection between Dagon‘s fall and the threshold on which his parts rested. What?! Never once did these Philistines consider departing from their impotent idol. Instead, they invented some strange connection between stepping on the threshold and experiencing misfortune. This is what our enemy, the devil, will do – try to give us some twisted notion of cause and effect. In this instance, stepping on the threshold would bring misfortune, so they made it a tradition to avoid it.

Superstitions and religious rituals that border on witchcraft are spawned from this kind of reasoning. Rather than submit yourself to the true God, you develop mystic systems of cause-and-effect, systems of requirements to keep superstitious rules that you think will protect you from evil. In reality, these ideas are hatched by the evil one and your believing them is dragging you deeper into the enemy’s grip and blinding you to the truth.

OK, let’s look at some practical examples that might hit closer to home. These are the ridiculous rules that we establish as Christians. We don’t realize we have much in common with the pagans of the Old Testament. Suppose you are having trouble sleeping, and one night you decide to pray the 91st Psalm at bedtime. You sleep well and so conclude that, unless you pray the 91st Psalm every night at bedtime, you will not sleep. You have left the leading of the Holy Spirit and sunk yourself into bondage, relying now on your ritual rather than the Lord.

Or, suppose you were assigned to serve the Lord in some capacity, and you fast in a certain way before this assignment. Soon you feel that you cannot serve the Lord well unless you fast the same way each time. Again, you have left the leading of the Holy Spirit and sunk yourself into bondage, relying on your ritual rather than on the Lord.

Suppose you asked the Lord to fill you with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking other tongues. You didn’t receive, so you conclude that this experience is not one for today’s church. It must have been something only for the early church, and it faded away after the apostles. That’s twisted.

Or one glaring, disturbing error, especially in Charismatic circles, is to piece together a prophecy here, and a dream there, and a confirming circumstance here and an accusation there, to establish some deep, cryptic, understanding about a brother or sister’s character. They are prophetic whimsies fashioned by one’s own imagination, with only the loosest connection to scripture. I myself was the unfortunate victim of this kind of reasoning.

Do we not reason like this in innumerable ways? You get a head cold the day after you missed church. Then of course! Missing church is the cause of your sickness, and you can’t miss church again, or you will get sick. We think we will short circuit our prayers if we pray them more than once. Worship leaders might think that they will jinx the worship set if they don’t start with a fast song. Pastors might think they will ruin the church service if it lasts more than one hour. We think we won’t get an answer to prayer unless we pray at 3 AM while standing on our heads and fasting. We should learn from this ridiculous example supplied by the Philistines to make us see the great error in this type of reasoning.

Believe just this: Jesus is the Lord. We believe what He says in His Word. We know and trust His character. He is loving, faithful, good, and merciful. This is enough.