Text: 1 Samuel 4:1-5:11
Topic: Hope

We, as people, experience two kinds of hope:  Hoping for something vs. Hoping in someone. We're either hoping for some thing or putting our hope in someone. When we're hoping for some thing, we are hoping for a particular outcome—for a particular circumstance to turn out the way we want it to: I hope I get that job; I hope I get that house; I hope I get that girl; I hope I get that girl, and she gets that job, and we get that house.

Sometimes we hope for something, even though we know it's kind of a long shot with a remote possibility of happening. This week the baseball season started again. Millions of us who grew up in Illinois hope this is the year the Cubs will win the World Series. We've been hoping for ninety-nine years, because hope dies hard … but it does die.

Sometimes the thing we hope for is kind of like death: I hope she comes back; I hope we don't lose him; I hope it's not cancer. But one day it will be; if it's not cancer, it will be something else. One day, and this is the truth, every thing we hope for will eventually disappoint us—every thing we hope for. Every circumstance, every situation that we're hoping for is going to wear out, going to give out, going to fall apart, going to melt down. The question is then about our deeper hope—our foundational hope; it's about our fall back hope when all our other hopes are disappointed.

When we've lost the some thing we were hoping for—and it might have been really, really big—do we know the Someone we can put our hope in? The whole testimony of Scripture points to this One Man—not because he will give us this thing or that thing we were hoping for, as that thing will eventually give out—but to the One that we put our hope in.

I want to start with story in the Old Testament. It's early on in the history of Israel, after forty years of wandering around in the desert carrying the Ark of the Covenant with them. They get to the Promised Land, but they're struggling. They don't have a king. This is before the time of David and Solomon. Israel is fighting against the Philistines, and they are hoping for some thing, hoping for victory. They go into a battle with the Philistines, and they lose. Afterwards, they debrief, and they ask what happened. This often happens with people. They ask:  Where was God? We were counting on him. Why didn't he give us what we were hoping for? Then somebody gets an idea and says: Let's go into battle with the Philistines another time, only this time, we'll use our secret weapon. This time we'll bring the Ark of the Covenant into the battle.

The Ark of the Covenant was a box where they were keeping some of the manna (the bread God had provided during their time in the wilderness) and the Ten Commandments. But it was not just a box. It was like the Presence of God; from their perspective it was like "God in a Box." If they bring it into battle, God will not let the enemy capture the Ark of the Covenant. It would be like capturing God, and he would not let that happen. They then conclude: "He has to give us what we're hoping for."

There's a kind of odd theology behind this way of thinking. I'll give you a picture of it: There's an episode from the television show "The Simpsons" where Homer pledges money to a PBS telethon fund drive, because he wants the fund drive to end. But he doesn't actually have the money. When the PBS people find out about it, they force him to serve with a bunch of missionaries on a tropical island. The people with whom he's serving build a new church. Now Homer is not a theologically astute character, but he's proud of their accomplishment. He sums it up like this:  Well, I don't know much about God, but we sure have built Him a nice little cage.

The truth about God is this: You can't keep Him in a cage. He can't be tamed or domesticated. You can't force Him to give you the thing you are hoping for. That's what the Israelites try to do. They go into battle a second time, and it's a disaster. They lose seven times more soldiers in the second battle than they did the first time around. Worst of all for them, the Ark of the Covenant is captured. This is unthinkable. This is like losing the Presence of God that makes them distinct as a people.

It's when they've lost everything they've been hoping for that the story gets interesting. Now, God is going to do what they could not do for themselves. The Philistines carry the Ark of the Covenant off to a city called Ashdod. It's where the temple of their god is … their god called Dagon. The priests take the Ark inside and place it next to the statue of Dagon. Then all the Philistines cheer, because they think that Dagon has prevailed over Yahweh, the God of the Israelites. They have a big feast; they chant their favorite chants; they tell their battle stories. At night everybody goes home. When no one is present to see or hear what is going on, something happens in the temple.

The priests come in at dawn, and the text says: When the people of Ashdod came in early the next day, there was Dagon fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord (I Samuel 5: 3).  

The text does not tell us what the priests are thinking:  Maybe it was an accident? Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it looks suspiciously as if Dagon has bowed down to worship the God of Israel. Dagon's priests realize that it does not look good to have their god bowing down to the God of Israel, Yahweh. So they dust their god off and prop him back up.

All day long, on the second day, Philistines come into the temple to celebrate their victory and offer sacrifices and sing songs to great Dagon. Then it's night again, and the priests turn off the lights and they go home. They leave Dagon alone with great Yahweh. Dagon says to himself, "Here we go again."

The next morning when they come in, the priests find that once more, Dagon has fallen on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. Not only that, but this time his head and his hands have been cut off and laid neatly across the threshold of the temple, and all that's left of Dagon inside the temple is a stump.

Wouldn't you love to know what happened? The text doesn't tell us. All we know is that this is a "Three Day Story." The first day is a very dark day. It looks like the God of Israel is defeated and the glory is gone. In fact, after the battle there is a very poignant episode. When the Ark is captured, the priest of Israel, Eli, dies. His two sons die and his daughter- in-law dies. When his daughter-in-law, who is in childbirth, hears that Israel has lost, that everybody has died, and that the Ark of the Covenant (the Presence of God) has been captured by the Philistines, she says that she wants her son to be named Ichabad.

Chabad—the main word in this whole story—is the Hebrew word for "glory." When you put an "i" in front of a word, it makes it the negative, the same way that an atheist is the opposite of somebody who is a theist. "Ichabad" meant  "the glory is gone."  What she's saying is this: The whole thing is a pipe dream. Abraham was wrong. Moses was just wandering around in the wilderness. There's no God … no Yahweh. No glory. Life doesn't mean anything. You're born. You die. That's it. Our son might as well know that as soon as he's grown up. Ichabad. Glory's gone.

That's the first day. Heaven is silent. No hope. No glory. No one can understand why. Some days are like that. Then there's the second day, and the second day is a day of hidden combat. It is shrouded in mystery. It is a day of ambiguity and anxiety. Some days are like that.

But there's a third day. On the third day, the story takes a 180-degree turn. The idol is overturned. The time of captivity is over. God is going to come home to His people, because the third day is God's day. That's the day of hope. He's the "Third Day God."

This is kind of a pattern in the Old Testament. Often the people of Israel are told they are going to have to wait. They've been disappointed. Deliverance is coming. Rescue is coming, but the waiting period is generally three days. It's a time of anticipation.

When a hero named Joseph was in prison, he said to Pharaoh's cupbearer:  … In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your job … (Genesis 40: 13). When Israel was trapped in slavery, Moses asked Pharaoh: Let us go three days into the wilderness (Exodus 5: 3). When the Israelites arrive at Sinai, God says: Consecrate the people and make them ready by the third day, because on that day, the Lord will come down. And on the morning of the third day, it came to pass (from Exodus 19:10ff).  

When Israel was threatened with genocide, a harem girl, Esther, says that she will fast for three days. Then she will go to the King to seek deliverance for her people. When Jonah was swallowed and was in the belly of the big fish, he's there three days before he's released. When Israel was afraid to go into the Promised Land, God said to them: Don't be afraid. Don't be discouraged. Three days from now, you will cross the Jordan to possess the land the Lord has given you (from Joshua 1: 9-11).  

The third day was used so frequently in this way that it became kind of a technical expression meaning a time to wait for deliverance: Right now, things are messed up; right now, hope is being crushed; right now, hearts are disappointed; but a better day is coming. In the book of Hosea, the prophet says it like this: Come, let us return to the Lord. After two days, He will revive us. On the third day, He will restore us that we may live in His presence (Hosea 6:1-2).  

One day, deliverance came in a way that nobody was looking for. God came back to His people, not in a box, but in a Man: "The Word became flesh," the Bible says, "and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). All of this language is very evocative. The word for dwelt is literally the word that they used for "tabernacle" — "tabernacled (tented) among us." The tabernacle was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was. That was where they thought of God being: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) among us. We beheld His glory (His "chabad"), the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father" (John 1:14).  

But it was a funny kind of glory. It came in a strange combination of humility, loneliness, and fearlessness. Nobody could tame Jesus. Nobody—not the politicians, not the Zealots, not the religious leaders—nobody could use him. Nobody could manipulate him to get what he or she wanted. Nobody could shut him up. So in the end, those who were in power took him and lashed him with a whip and pierced him with a sword and hung him on a cross and laid him in a tomb.

That was the first day. That was a dark day. His followers were crushed. They had seen the glory for a while, and now it was gone. Now it was lying in a tomb. Now it was Ichabad.

The second day didn't look any better. On the second day, Pontius Pilate posted a guard to stand watch over the tomb. He wanted to make sure that nothing happened … nobody came in and did anything funny with the body. On the second day, Pontius Pilate posted a guard and said to himself: Well, I guess that's the end of that. Well I guess we won't hear any more about that movement. I don't know much about this Jesus, but we sure have built him a nice little cage.

But the thing about Jesus is, you can't keep him in a cage. They didn't know it, but death wasn't defeat for him. The Bible says that he died for our sins. He died to do what you and I, with all our little efforts at self-improvement—trying to do better, give enough, go to church enough, do enough nice things—could never do. He was setting everything right between God and us. He was dying the death that, by all rights, you and I should have died.

That was the second day. That was a dark day. But the story of Jesus is a "Three Day Story." You all know that some people maintain that the third day never happened. Jesus was never raised. His body is still lying in a cave some place. I want to say a word about this.

There was a documentary on the Discovery Channel quite recently, produced by James Cameron, the Titanic producer. It was called "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," and it caused a lot of conversation. The basis for Cameron's thesis was that a tomb with several ossuaries in it had been found in Jerusalem. Ossuaries are boxes filled with bones. One of the ossuaries in this particular tomb had the name "Joseph" inscribed on it; one of them had the name "Mary;" one of them may have had the name "Jesus," but the name was a little hard to decrypt. This documentary claimed that these ossuaries prove that Jesus was never resurrected, and that the third day never happened. This is a very important thing, because everything in our faith hinges on this third day.

Interestingly, scholars have actually known about that tomb for many years. The tomb was discovered in 1980. None of the scholars involved, including the Israeli archeologists who found it … none of them, Christian or not, thought there was even a remote chance that it was the tomb of the family of Jesus of Nazareth, partly because the names were so common in that day.

Furthermore, the tombs of martyrs in Jesus' day were always venerated, meaning followers of the martyrs would make pilgrimage to the tombs. If Jesus had a known tomb, it would have been venerated by his followers and would have kept anyone from claiming he had been raised from the dead.

Followers of Jesus had a claim to make. They said: You know, the first day was a very dark day. That's the day they laid Him in the tomb. The second day, the guard was posted. That was a very dark day; we thought it was done. We thought that the thing we were hoping for was never going to come true. What we found out was there was Someone we could hope in. That was way better news than anything we were hoping for. Because of him, the Third Day came.

The Third Day is God's day. The Third Day is the day when prisoners of Pharaoh get set free. The Third Day is the day the people come to the mountains, and the mountains shake, and rivers are parted, and people go into the Promised Land. The Third Day is the day when harem girls like Esther face down powerful kings. The Third Day is the day that prophets like Jonah are dropped off at seaside ports by giant fish. The Third Day is the day that idols like Dagon come tumbling down, and God starts coming home to his people. The Third Day is the day stones are rolled away. The Third Day is the day a crucified carpenter comes back to life.

You never know what God is going to do, because God is "God of the Third Day."

It is a matter of historical record that once there was a time when a little band of frightened, foolish men and women said: "We don't know how it happened, but the Third Day came." The Third Day is the only explanation for how that little band of frightened, faltering men and women became this church where people would, without fear, be hung on crosses, be pierced with swords, give up their lives. Nobody is going to die for a pile of bones, but people would give their lives for what lies on the other side of the Third Day.

I don't know what thing you're hoping for. Maybe it's a wonderful thing. Maybe you were hoping for health, for healing, for something good that didn't happen. The question is: What are you putting your ultimate hope in—your foundational hope? What do you build your life on?

A lot of people are putting their ultimate hope in some thing, some circumstance, some outcome or situation. Maybe it's a marriage. Maybe it's a job. Maybe it's health. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's success. Maybe it's security. Maybe it's power. Maybe it's affection. It's going to let you down.

Our kids are all home this weekend, and I was remembering when our oldest daughter was six or seven years old. I had a physical exam, because I was taking out a life insurance policy. They had drawn blood, and there was a bandage on my arm. My daughter asked me, "Why is there a Band-Aid on your arm?" I thought, Well, this is a chance to tell my daughter what I have done, and this will elicit some affection from her. She'll be concerned for her dad. It was kind of a foolish thing on my part, but said, "Honey, they took some blood out of my arm, because I've just taken out a life insurance policy, and that's to take care of my family. That's in case Daddy dies. Now if I die, because I have this policy, you'll get  $250,000." She got real serious, as I knew she would if I talked about my death. Her eyes grew real wide, and she said, "a piece?"

If you're putting your ultimate hope in being able to wheedle affection out of someone, or in a pile of money that's going to come your way some day, or in a scheme that's going to out-scheme aging or death … if you're putting it any thing, any circumstance, it will disappoint you in the end.

So Jesus' followers would say to you and me: Put your ultimate hope in Jesus. You can do that right now. Confess your sin, and ask forgiveness. Receive life. Put your life and your eternal destiny in his hands. And when you do that, you have put your hope in the one place on earth where no power can touch it—no circumstance, no disappointment, no accident, no guilt, no regret, no mistake … not even death itself.

One day, Christ died for our sins, and then was raised from the dead on the third day. We're Third Day People now, and you can be too.