“Why has the LORD permitted us to be defeated today
by the Philistines?
Here we have a paradigmatic experience that probably still finds representation in our own spiritual lives. We insist on a certain outcome, a victory in some battle we are fighting, and when we don't obtain it we blame God. We do this in spite of the fact that up to our defeat God may have been the furthest thing from our minds.
Let us fetch the ark of the Lord from Shiloh
that it may go into battle among us
and save us from the grasp of our enemies.”
We correctly realize that part of the problem was an omission of involving God in our circumstances. But now that we have been frustrated by defeat we don't do things the proper way but instead try to force them. This is a textbook example of a work of the flesh, trying to do by human effort what only God can do by grace.
When the ark of the LORD arrived in the camp,
all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth resounded.
Involving the Ark seemed like an impressive thing to do. In different circumstances it may have even been appropriate, for the Ark did sometimes go into battle with Israel. But the Lord had not asked for this. Neither had the people asked the Lord for it. They simply went ahead, pursuing what they thought God's plan should be, forcing him, as it were, to come along for the ride.
The Philistines fought and Israel was defeated;
every man fled to his own tent.
It was a disastrous defeat,
in which Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers.
Rather than risking disastrous defeat we can begin our plans in conversation with the Lord and continue to pursue them together with him. There may even be times when he does not intend to give us victory immediately or all at once. The more we resist and try to force things the worse it will tend to be for us. It is better to lose a battle in the Lord's way than pursue victory apart from him. A small defeat, leading to contrition, could possibly open the door to the Lord intervening in a new and dramatic way the next time as his people were more open and attentive to him.
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
This leper raised the question as to whether the Lord desired to make him clean, to heal him and give him the victory that he sought. The answer to whether the Lord desired it could only ever be yes. The leper, for his part, was able to receive it because of the way in which he entrusted his petition entirely to Jesus, including the how and the when.
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
It is admittedly hard, and meant to be, to keep silent about the victories of the Lord in our lives. When he really is the one at the center of healing and setting us free it is natural to want to tell others. Fortunately for us no one has enjoined silence upon us. We are free to boast, as long as we boast in the Lord (see Second Corinthians 10:17).
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