Beth Shemesh and the Ark of Mercy
StoryHistorical AccountAnalogy★★★★I wanna share with you a story that is a rather interesting story. How many of you remember when the Ark was captured by the Philistines?
Do you remember that story? You remember that the Philistines, wherever they kept the ark, it was bad news for them. And they realized they had to get rid of that ark. And so they put it on an ox cart, you remember, and the oxen took it to the land of Israel.
And they came to an area, one of the tribes of Benjamin known as Beth Shemesh. And if you remember when the Israelites saw it they got real excited and they had an offering and everything and it was wonderful and then they got a little disrespectful.
Do you remember? They got a little curious. They wanted to know what was in the box and they removed the lid and do you remember what what followed? 50,000 died at that very moment.
I used to wonder what in the world that was all about. Let me tell you what that was all about. The only thing that stood between them and That law was mercy. And when they removed the mercy, the inevitable event took place.
The wages of sin is? We need that mercy, don’t we, friends? We wanna keep that mercy there.
Baute, Jorge, “09 The Most Holy Place” (AudioVerse teaching 25309).
The point
The Philistines returned the Ark of the Covenant, and when it arrived in Beth Shemesh, some Israelites looked inside, resulting in 50,000 deaths. This illustrates that the mercy seat on the Ark was the only thing standing between them and God's holy law, and removing it brought the immediate consequence of sin.