He’s Not a Tame Lion
June 28, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
The story of the ark in chapters 4–7 is long. Were there any details that confused you? Any that struck you as strange or worthy of more conversation?
We could pick on the priest of Dagon for picking up their idol and putting him back in his place. But are there ways you can relate to this? Say more. Do you think this is something only non-Christians can experience? Or can a believer experience it too? (Benjamin briefly described a time in his life in college like this.)
The passage plays on the words “heavy,” “glory,” and “honor.” We see this particularly at the end of chapter 4, with Eli and the baby Ichabod. This leads Benjamin to ask whether the Word of God is heavy to you, so that you bend your life to God’s Word, not the other way around, that is, bending the Word of God to your life. What area of your life right now do you feel God pressing you to obey him better? Why do you think that is? In what ways are you resisting, and why?
There are parallels between Jesus in his first coming as a suffering savior and his second coming as a conquering king. Where do you see parallels to each in this passage? Did any of them particularly surprise or encourage you? How so?
Scripture Reading
1 Samuel 4:1-4
1 And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.
Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines. They encamped at Ebenezer, and the Philistines encamped at Aphek. 2 The Philistines drew up in line against Israel, and when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men on the field of battle. 3 And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.” 4 So the people sent to Shiloh and brought from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.
If you’ve come and gone a bit over the last few weeks at our church, I’ll mention that for a few weeks three churches are sharing pastors, partnering on a sermon series called “One God, One Story: How Jesus Fulfills the Old Testament.” The two other churches are Liberti and Midtown. I was at Liberti last week, and Greg who preached here is from Midtown. This morning we’re jumping into 1 Samuel. The book of 1 Samuel opens with a woman full of faith but also desperation. She has a son named Sameul. Early in the book, we also meet Eli the high priest, who raises Samuel, and we meet Eli’s two sons, who all appear briefly in this passage. None of these are the main characters this morning, and neither are the men who will come later in the book of 1 Samuel, King Saul and King David. Instead, this morning the main character is, in some ways, not a character at all. The main character is a wooden box covered in gold, called the Ark of the Covenant. This wooden box was the physical manifestation of God’s presence among his people; it was the closest thing Israel had to an incarnation. But they don’t treat God’s presence with reverence; instead, they treat God like a lucky rabbit’s foot or a magic box to be fetched whenever people want help. And that causes all kinds of holy chaos. Let’s pray together.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
We only read the beginning of the passage, so let me summarize what happens next across these three chapters. The story centers on God’s conflict with both the Israelites and the Philistines. The Philistines are one of several enemies of Israel in the Old Testament. Later in 1 Samuel, we read of David and Goliath; Goliath was a Philistine. Most likely the Philistines came from across the Mediterranean Sea, infiltrating the coastal regions. As they push in from the coast, Israel pushes out, causing war.
In chapter 4, there’s a battle that Israel loses. So, what do they do? They fetch the ark of God. Eli’s two sons bring it into battle. For context, Eli’s sons are bad men; they run the priesthood like organized crime bosses, sleeping with the women who work for them and stealing sacrifices.
So, as readers, when they grab the ark, you’re supposed to sense, as I think Eli does, that this is a bad idea. It’s like being somewhere and seeing kids at the top of a gravel hill on bikes, and one of them looks at the other, and says, “I can ride a wheely down the gravel hill with no hands and no helmet and wearing shorts and a tank top.” You’re supposed to react to reading this passage like you’d react to that scene: by making a scrunchy face, bracing yourself for the crash. And the crash is very bad. Though they fetch the ark, Israel loses again very badly. This time, all three religious leaders are killed, as was prophesied in chapter 2.
After the battle, the Philistines take the ark home, and God goes to war against them. When their god Dagon had had enough and when all their cities had had enough, they sent the ark away, back to Israel. When it comes back, sadly, Israel still mishandles God, and people die. Until they put it somewhere in safekeeping. That’s the story.
It will help to see some of the exact wording from chapter 5, so let me read 5:1–9.
5 When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. 3 And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. 4 But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. 5 This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.
6 The hand of the LORD was heavy against the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and afflicted them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory. 7 And when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is hard against us and against Dagon our god.” 8 So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” They answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be brought around to Gath.” So they brought the ark of the God of Israel there.
Now we have enough of the passage in front of us to outline the rest of our time. I only have two questions. First, what is our God like? Second, how should we respond to him?
1. What is our God like?
We’ll start with the first question. When I ask, “What is our God like?” I mean to talk about what this passage says in particular about God. I want to briefly highlight two attributes of God in this passage, namely that the real God is not tame but is good. Again, God is not tame, but he is good. When I phrase it that way, I’m drawing on the famous lines in the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.
Speaking of Aslan, the lion character and the Christ figure in the book, there is a conversation that goes like this: “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver . . . . “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” And then in another place, “He’ll be coming and going . . . One day you’ll see [Aslan] and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down . . . . Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”
Not tame, but God. Not safe, but a good king. So with Aslan, a symbol of Christ, so with the ark, a symbol, in some ways, of Christ. If we first ask what God is like, these are the two attributes we see about God in this passage: not tame but good.
God is not tame.
We see God’s wildness and untame-ness first in the title used to describe the Lord’s presence. Look with me at the statement in 4:4, “So the people sent to Shiloh and brought from there the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim.”
This is an exalted string of words: Lord of hosts, meaning Lord of armies. And the Lord of armies is enthroned, meaning he’s a king with a kingdom. God is the king of the whole jungle, and he has a strong, untamed paw.
Let me show you what I mean by an untamed paw. If you would read the whole sequence of the story slowly, you’d likely notice the repeated references to the “hand of the Lord.” There are eight of them (4:8; 5:6, 7, 9, 11; 6:3, 5, 9 [and 7:13]). For example,
They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.” For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there (5:11).
Again, that was just one. There are eight. God has a strong, heavy, untamed paw. And he’s not been declawed.
And consider the Dagon part of the story. Generally speaking, I’m leery of war and battle language in sermons because war language tends to be either overdone or domesticated. For example, I think “prayer warrior” can be too liberally applied, and rarely do people die in “worship wars.” However, the story of “the ark vs. Dagon” calls for such battle language.
The ark goes into the octagon, and in Round One, Dagon is knocked to the ground. He can’t pick himself back up, so his trainers do it for him. Then, in Round Two, Dagon suffers a technical knockout—no hands, no head, Dagon’s done. And like Humpty-Dumpty, all of Dagon’s priests and all of Dagon’s worshipers can’t put Dagon back together again. (I’m building on an insight from Davis, 1 Samuel, 60). It’s like God is giving both his people and the Philistines a demonstration of what happens when they break the commandment to have no other gods before the real God, which is what they had tried to do in a literal way. But it’s Dagon who falls prostrate before God.
Something I’ve wondered is how God knocked Dagon over. We can’t know, but what if he just breathed on him? In one of Paul’s letters, he describes the way that Jesus will destroy the Evil One when he returns: “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming” (2 Thess. 2:8). One day our Savior will destroy the Evil One with the breath of his mouth. The ease with which you and I blow dust off our laptops is how God will destroy evil. All of this is pictured here in Dagon’s defeat.
There is more about this untamed lion. Consider how the ark gets passed from city to city in something of an anti-victory parade. Look at it like this: If the Philadelphia Phillies win the World Series of Baseball, then a few weeks later, there will be a victory parade through downtown Philly to show off the spoils of war. That’s what happens here—but not really. In this story, the Philistines “win” the ark, but their victory parade becomes an anti-victory parade. Everywhere he goes, God’s hand is heavy. “Hey, we don’t want the World Series Trophy; send it to Baltimore!” Then Baltimore doesn’t want it. “Hey, send this thing to Pittsburgh!” And on it goes.
To be sure, from beginning to end, God shows that he is not tame, giving us a foretaste of the second coming of Jesus. When King Jesus comes again, he will crush all impostors to the throne. In the New Testament letter of Philippians, we read,
9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:9–11)
“Every knee will should bow.” What does this mean? It means that every Christian, every Muslim, every Hindu, every Jew, every secular atheist, everyone who has ever lived—including me and you—will one day bow the knee before Jesus, the Lion of Judah (Gen. 49:9; Rev. 5:5). Some will bend their knees joyfully as a continuation of joyful submission in this life. Everyone else will be in for a terrible surprise.
We can be sure, church, that God is not a tame lion.
But he is good.
But this, of course, is not the only attribute we see in our passage, and thankfully so. God is also good.
Now, when we speak of God’s goodness, we could mean many different things—true things, helpful things, biblical things. In these verses, when I say, “God is good,” I mean that God has a special love and care for his chosen people. Let me show you where I see this. You’re probably familiar with the Exodus story, right? The story where God, with a strong hand, delivered his chosen people from Pharaoh? It’s the story of when Pharaoh would not comply, God crippled the entire nation of Egypt with ten plagues and thereby delivered his chosen people from the most powerful leader of the most powerful nation on earth. You know this story, right? It’s famous, right?
Well, it’s famous to the Philistines, too. Twice in this passage, it’s mentioned. In chapter 4, the Philistine soldiers refer to 4:8. Then, later in the story, the priests of Dagon refer to it in 6:6. The gist of both references is this: let’s not let happen to us what happened to Egypt because even we pagans know that God loves his people, and God won’t let anything stand in their way. They basically say, God is good toward his chosen people.
And consider the goodness in how the cows bring the ark home. We didn’t read this part from chapter 6, but I’ll explain it now. The Philistines essentially say, “Let’s come up with a plan, and if it works, then we’ll know that God is God.” So they do. The Philistine priests say to take momma cows that have just given birth to calves and that have never plowed a cart before, and to hitch the ark along with golden gifts to the cows and see if they walk back to Israel, because momma cows would never leave their babies, especially if they had never before pulled a cart.
Not only do the cows take the ark straight to Israel, but they also go somewhere more specific. The cows go to a city called Beth-Shemeh. In the book of Joshua, this city is listed as one of the cities that is a headquarters for Israelite priests (21:16). Think about that. God could have gone anywhere. He could have left Israel altogether, as he left Philistine country. But where does God go? He goes back to his people, his priests. He’s saying, “Let’s try this again.”
Did they deserve him? No. And will they treat him the way he deserves when he gets there? Also, no. And we don’t either. But our God is good. He loves his chosen people.
It’s as though God is saying to us in this passage, even when it looks like my grace is harsh, even if I must let you flounder for a time, I will always come back for my people. I love my people. I love you. He’s not tame, but he is good. And in this way, we get encouragement about the return of Christ at the end of time. It may seem like God is not up to anything. But the New Testament tells us that right now, Jesus is sitting on the throne of the universe until God his Father puts the throat of every enemy under the heel of the King of kings until his enemies become a footstool (Matt. 22:41–45; Luke 20:41–44; Acts 2:34–35; Heb. 1:13; 10:12–13; cf. Ps. 110:1).
So, we first asked, “What is God like?” and answered, “He’s not tame, but he is good.”
2. How should we respond?
Next we say, “If this is what God is like, how shall we respond?” Mostly, we learn the right answer from how people respond wrongly to God. Repeatedly people practice superstition, and do not rightly esteem God’s heaviness, and they practice addition, not full submission. Let me say them again. The two ways the people respond wrongly to God in this passage are superstition, not rightly esteeming God’s heaviness, and addition, not full submission.
What do I mean? They treat God so lightly that they think they can superstitiously manipulate him. As for addition, what I mean is that rather than turning from all other gods to worship the real God, instead people try to “add God” to their lives, as though the Lord was “in addition” to their other gods.
Consider the statement in 4:3
3 And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the LORD defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.”
The King James Version of “Let us bring the ark” says, “Let us fetch the ark.” They are treating God like a rabbit’s foot that can be fetched. Rather than the hard, prayerful activity of individual and corporate repentance, they so lightly esteem God that they try to manipulate him into giving them what they want: victory. When they need to get into graduate school, fetch the ark. When they need to find a spouse, when they need a promotion, fetch God. When they need a victory or a breakthrough, when they want their political cause to win, fetch God.
The Bible tells us to call upon God in our day of trouble, yes, of course (Ps. 50:15). But there’s a difference between calling on God when we’re in trouble, when we want him and love him—which he loves—and when we call on him simply to get him to solve a problem and then get out of our lives again.
And consider the detail about Eli and his “heaviness.” I didn’t read 4:18, but I’ll do that now. When Eli is told about the capture of the ark, we read, “Eli fell over backward from his seat by the side of the gate, and his neck was broken and he died, for the man was old and heavy.” Did you catch that? He’s an overweight guy, and his own heaviness, in a sense, kills him. He’s crushed under the weight of his own glory. That might not seem like a big deal, but did you know that the words for “glory,” “honor,” and “heavy” are all the same? It’s the word ka-vowd. And the name Ichabod (4:21), which means, “Glory departed” or “glory exiled,” is Ick-ka-vowd. In Chapter 2, Eli is rebuked for not treating God’s word as holy and honoring himself above God. And so a heavy man dies under the weight of his own heaviness because he did not esteem God and his glory as heavy. (See the interplay of these verses: Honor: 2:8, 2:29, 30!, 9:6, 15:30 / Heavy: 4:18, 5:6, 5:11 / Glory: 4:21, 22, 15:29 / Ichabod: 4:21).
This leads me to ask: Is God heavy in your life? Is he a weighty thing? Or is his word something easily ignored? Is the Bible a light thing to you? Or is God and his word something you bend your life to? When he challenges you, do you bend to him, or do you bend him to you?
Finally, and this is my last verse to quote, look at 5:5, “This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.”
This, to me, is the saddest verse in the passage. Why? Well, we don’t know exactly what their motivation is for not stepping on the threshold, the place where Dagon was defeated. But we do know, as they knew, this: it’s the place where Dagon was defeated.
And every time they stepped over the threshold, they were in some superstitious way acknowledging that this was the place where their god was defeated. And in this strange way stop short of giving full submission to the “God of gods,” but rather they seek to add a totem of respect to this God—just like they pay a totem of respect to all their gods. That is, they go for addition, not full submission. They go for superstition, not esteeming God’s heaviness.
And this is so sad to me because of what the verse should say—or could say. It should say, “And to this day, this is why the priests of Dagon no longer worship Dagon, but they worship the LORD.” If I could talk to these priests, perhaps I would say something like, “Go deeper, Philistines! Press your worldview further! And when it fails you, when you must glue your god back together again, don’t! See the failure of your worldview as God’s loving invitation for you to have the real God!”
Often we can be content to add Jesus to our lives and give him superstitious homage. We try to live our own lives, adding just enough Jesus so we won’t go to hell. God offers us something so much better: full repentance. Church, if your god is letting you down, don’t pick him up. Replace him with the real God who will never fail.
I remember what this was like for me back in college when God got a hold of my life. I knew the Lord, but I had functionally been building my life on other idols. And one by one, God let them fall. And I’d pick them back up, gluing my idols together. I hated it then. And I praise God for it now. He brought me to the end of myself so that I could find him. Maybe that’s where you are this morning. Go further than the priest of Dagon went. Go all the way to the cross; let God smash your idols and give you himself.
Earlier, I noted parallels between this story and the second coming of Jesus. That’s true. Don’t you also see the parallels with the first coming of Jesus? Oh, church, as we close, let me encourage you with this.
Think about it: in this story, the king is surrounded by sinful, dysfunctional leadership and sinful, dysfunctional people. And this enthroned king—in the Samuel story—allows himself to be captured. He allows himself to be brought by force behind enemy lines and mocked in a pagan temple. And there, all by himself and all alone, he works a victory. And then, he returns to his people, forgiving them and starting fresh.
This is the gospel story. Jesus came to a sinful people, allowed himself to be captured, mocked in a purple robe and a crown of thorns. When he died on the cross, alone and behind enemy lines, he won a great victory, disarming the ruler and authorities, crushing the head of that ancient serpent.
And now, anyone and everyone who comes to God in faith can become his chosen people, his royal subjects. What a story. He’s not tame, but he is good. And he loves you.
Pray with me as the music team comes back up. Let’s pray…
