I. Look first at the connection between declension and defeat, at the root of the calamity which befell the nation and the dishonour to the cause of God. There was a deep moral apostasy. (1) The character of the priesthood had become thoroughly corrupt, and this is one of the most ominous signs that can appear in any society. (2) Another feature of declension in the people of Israel was that they had changed their religion into a formal superstition. After their first defeat by the Philistines they began to think of higher help. But it was not of God they thought, the living God, but only of the ark. The ark has been changed into a fetish; the name of it is to be their deliverer. When religion comes to this, it sinks into a hideous idol, and the petrified shell must be broken in pieces if the spirit is to be saved. (3) There is a further stage in the ark's history before it reaches its lowest fall. It has been dissociated from the living God, and has become not merely a common, but a desecrated, thing. To redeem the Israelites from their error, they must learn that the ark is powerless if God forsakes them, and that the symbol cannot save without the living presence. In this stern lesson God uses their enemies as teachers. In this case the Philistines were on the better side. It was not man against God, but man against falsehood under His name, and the battle ended as one might anticipate. Natural human courage proved itself stronger than corrupted religion, and hypocrisy was broken and scattered.
II. Look next at God's victory. It is when men think they have gained a victory over God that they are on the edge of sore disaster. What to do with God is the world's great trial, as what to do with Jesus was the difficulty of Pilate. For the world cannot make God to its mind, and in the end the world cannot do without Him. It carries His ark hither and thither, seeks to bring Him to the level of its own conceptions, to subject Him to its own idols, but finds in all its efforts no true rest till it suffers Him to take His own way to His throne. Notice: (1) The only obedience which God accepts is that which is given Him out of love, and for His own sake. (2) If the ark is to find its true place, it must be committed to the hands of men who love it.
J. Ker, Sermons,2nd series, p. 162.
References: 1 Samuel 4:10; 1 Samuel 4:11. Outline Sermons to Children,p. 37. 1 Samuel 4:12-18. J. R. Macduff, Sunsets on the Hebrew Mountains,p. 62. 1 Samuel 4:13. R. S. Candlish, Scripture Characters and Miscellanies,pp. 320, 336; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 365; W. Morley Punshon, Four Popular Discourses,2nd series, No. IV. 1 Samuel 4:21. Parker, vol. vii., p. 60.