Sermon text: 2 Samuel 6:1-11
Understanding this passage requires backing up to explain how the ark of the covenant ended up away from Jerusalem in the first place. Back in 1 Samuel 4, Israel’s leadership—spiritually compromised at the time—took the ark into battle against the Philistines as a kind of magic talisman rather than out of genuine reverence, and it was captured. What followed was a series of disasters for the Philistines: the idol of their god Dagon collapsed before the ark, their cities were struck with tumors, and eventually they sent the ark back to Israel on a cart pulled by nursing cows, along with golden images of tumors and rats as a guilt offering. When the ark arrived at Beth Shemesh, 50,000 men died after looking inside it, and it was finally relocated to the house of Abinadab, where it remained for decades—now, under David’s reign, finally in territory secure enough to bring it home to Jerusalem.