Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Mistakes of a Mechanistic Faith | Historical Books | 1 Samuel 4:1-11

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Are there sacred objects? Do you have a mechanistic faith? Do you treat God like a vending machine? In today's episode, Jensen shares how 1 Samuel 4:1-11 encourages us to fear God and enjoy his presence. If you're listening on Spotify, comment below one takeaway from today's episode! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Samuel 4:1-11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. My son Jude has a stuffed animal bunny and a blue sleep sack that he takes with him everywhere. A few weeks back, we were almost late arriving to a Bible study that I was teaching because Jude desperately needed us to go back home to get his blue sleep sack and bunny. They go everywhere. They are well worn. They've been through the wash. an unreasonable number of times. But he loves them all the same, even more for it. For someone who's three, there really isn't anything wrong with this kind of behavior.

They make him feel safe, make him feel comfortable. Now, we tend to associate this kind of behavior with toddlers and superstitious cultures. We all, quote unquote, know that totems and talismans and magic objects aren't real. But in my experience, the average adult is a bit more complex than that. There's a mug that you can't part with, a picture you can't let go of, an old shirt you'll hold onto forever, a coin that has some value. And of course, no one says these things have totemic power. Instead, we say they have sentimental value. In other words, they're somehow invested with emotional significance, and that metaphysical investment makes them more valuable than they

not to be. And there's also the inverse. Something about the object makes us feel good or safe or nostalgic or seen. No one admits this or talks like this because he starts sound crazy. We often don't even slow down enough to let ourselves notice the sensation, but it's true. I remember my first pocket-sized Bible. I got it when I was in college and carried it with me everywhere. It was the first Bible that I read cover to cover and it was covered with my writing and underlines. And that Bible was special to me. It was spiritually meaningful to me. It wasn't just a Bible. It was a thin place where the veil between the material and the spiritual, the rational and the emotional grew porous. My guess is that you also have objects in your life that feel porous, thin. And if you feel that way,

you're not crazy. You're actually quite rational. Because this world is not just material stuff. We know this because so much of life is not material. Our feelings are not material, but they impact the material world. If you were a purely rational materialist, you'd call all of this absurd. Our feeling about objects don't change them or make them worth keeping. And the objects themselves don't make us different. But we aren't materialists. We believe the whole earth is charged with the grandeur of God, that there is a spiritual presence that is arguably even more real than the material that permeates everything. And so there are thin places. In the sacraments, in worship, and I suspect many others besides that we can't fully understand. And this is born out

in the Old Testament. The tabernacle was a tent for God's presence, and inside of it was an ark with double cherubim, which was the material footstool of God's spiritual throne. It was the thinest of thin places, and was stored in the deepest room in the tabernacle, a place the high priest could only enter once a year, and even then, only after a sacrifice of atonement. It was called the Holy of Holies. But as time went on, the tabernacle, the tabernacle, and the Ark parted ways. We don't really know why, but they were still seen as thin places, places where the priests and the people encounter the living God in a special way. And of course, the question we want to ask is why? The mechanisms of how God's presence penetrates and intersects

with our reality is not something the Bible entirely explains other than to say this. It's not mechanistic. Here's what I mean. In the material world, things have have mechanical relationships. If you push the object, the object moves. If you pull the object, the object pulls. And this is precisely how many people, both ancient and modern, think exactly this way about talismans, totems, and sacred objects. If you give the god in the shrine X sacrifice, then it produces Y result. You could think of it like a spiritual vending machine, but the spiritual realm is not mechanical, because it's not populated by material objects that operate on mechanical principles. It's populated by persons, by beings that think and reason and

choose. They aren't vending machines, even if the demonic pretend to be to ensnare people with the promise of easy spiritual results. But I'm moving away from my main point, which is that there are few things more offensive to God than treating him like an object we can control and manipulate, like a mechanical vending machine. He's a person, not an object, and the reason why thin places exist have nothing to do with mechanical relationships, but as we'll see, with his grace. So let's look at a story from 1 Samuel 4, 1 through 11 that illustrates this exact point. Now the Israelites went out to fight against the Philistines. The Israelites camped at Ebenezer and the Philistines at Afec. The Philistines deployed their forces to meet Israel, and as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the

Philistines, who killed about 4,000 of them on the battlefield. When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, why did the Lord bring defeat on this today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the Lord's covenant from Shiloh so that he may go with us. us and save us from the hand of our enemies. So the people sent men to Shiloh, and they brought back the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord Almighty, who was enthroned between the cherubim, and Eli's two sons, Hopney and Phineas, were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. When the Ark of the Lord's covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook. Hearing the uproar, the Philistines asked, what's all this shouting in the Hebrew camp? When they learned that the Ark of the

Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid. A god has come into the camp, they said. Oh, no, nothing like this has happened before. We're doomed. Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness. Be strong, Philistines. Be men or you will be subject to the Hebrews as they have been to you. Be men and fight. Okay, so let's pause and reflect on what's happened. The Philistines and Israelites may worship different gods, but they agree about how those gods work. They're mechanical. If you bring their sacred objects to a battle and pray to them, then they'll bring about victory. This was a common idea in the ancient world, that when people groups fought,

their gods fought also, and the stronger God wins. Do you see how mechanistic it all is? Bring the magic arc and get a magic victory. So does it work? Verse 10. So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great. Israel lost 30,000 foot soldiers. The Ark of God was captured, and Eli's two sons, Hopney and Phineas, died. Well, not so much. Why? Was it because God was weaker than the gods of the Philistines? As we'll see in coming chapters, the answer to that is no. It's for a simple reason. The priests and the priests and the priests, Israelites think God is an object to be manipulated mechanically, and he will have nothing to do with it.

The reason he is with them is because he's chosen to be with them, because he is gracious and loving and kind, but he will not be used. How often do we do the same? Treat God as a vendor for blessings. Treat the thin places in our lives as things to be used for our benefit. But the inverse is also true. You can experience God in all of reality, not because you can control him or because you deserve it, or because you are righteous or special, but simply because he is loving and gracious and kind. Do you see that? Enjoy God's presence today.