When a Traveling Worship Service Turned into a Traveling Circus

As the Israelites travel toward the promised land, they vow, “What the Lord has said, we will do.” As it turns out, they didn’t really mean it. What the Lord said, they did . . . for a little while. Of course, there were some clues before God filled the tabernacle with his presence that the Israelites were a fickle bunch. The golden calf incident in Exodus 32 stands out. While Moses stood on the Mountain of God communing with God, they were busy blaspheming.

Later, when they are on the cusp of the Promised Land, the people hear an ominous report about what awaits them when they get there. So they grumble. They moan. They reminisce about Egypt with a serious case of revisionist history. And they even talk about replacing Moses with a leader who will guide them back into slavery.

Two guys who put together the Promised Land report—faithful Israelites named Joshua and Caleb—stand up and rebuke their countrymen for their lack of faith. They mean for their speech to be inspiring. It’s not. Here’s how Moses records their reaction: “Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel” (Numbers 14:10).

When the Lord shows up this time, he’s about this close from cutting them off and starting over. Ultimately, he renders a different judgment. He sentences them to wander in the wilderness for forty years until the disbelieving generation dies. Those who rejected God won’t ever step foot inside the Promised Land.

This sentencing might seem harsh, but it’s merciful. A punishment in the form of a “pardon” (Numbers 14:20).

What happens to the Israelites also happens to Korah’s rebels (Numbers 16). I realize that “Korah’s rebels” sounds like something out of a Star Wars movie. Well, the intergalactic resemblance continued when the splinter group who tried to usurp Moses’s authority was ultimately swallowed up in the closest thing the Old Testament has to a Sarlacc pit.¹ Some survivors accuse Moses and Aaron—and, by implication, the Lord—of unrighteously stopping a coup. But it’s clear that Israel doesn’t fully understand the weight of this kind of rebellion. This episode warns against the presumption of believing yourself to be both wiser and more merciful than God.

Nothing has changed since the garden of Eden. Those who reject God’s Word cannot sit idly by in his presence. Their faithlessness disqualifies them as God casts them out. The take-home lesson also hasn’t changed: We must listen to God’s Word. If we persist in rebellion and disobedience, he will make good on his promise to cut off those who reject him (Numbers 14:10; 16:19, 42). Sometimes, God makes good on this promise immediately (as with Korah and his rebels). Other times, the Lord’s promise seems more protracted (as is the case with Moses’s generation who wandered in the wilderness for forty years). But the principle remains the same. Just because we don’t immediately suffer the consequences of our sin, doesn’t mean the consequences aren’t coming.

The construction of the tabernacle offered a solution to this problem. Thankfully, the tabernacle came attached to an instruction manual that explains how sinful people can persist in the presence of a holy God. But the construction of the tabernacle by itself could never fix the problem of sin. It was a temporary, impermanent solution, like a Band-Aid on an open wound.

Unfortunately, as we move further in Israel’s history, they forget about God’s instructions for the tabernacle. How do they treat this traveling temple of God once they finally do enter the Promised Land? What should be traveling worship becomes, over time, a traveling circus. All rules go out the window for a time.

Let’s try to follow the path this circus took. As we do, we’ll see how God’s people treated the tabernacle. What was supposed to be the sign of God’s presence with his people became a distraction, an afterthought, and sometimes even worse.

Stop #1: In the Promised Land

Once Israel gets to the Promised Land, things start off quite well. In Joshua 3, the Israelites are no longer sojourners in a foreign land. They’re no longer servants who, in addition to hard labor, receive room and board from their hard-hearted masters. They’re home.

Did you notice what leads the way in this promise-fulfilling procession? What’s the tip of the spear as God’s people enter their enemy-occupied home? It’s the ark of the covenant (Joshua 3:14). It’s the Lord himself whose presence is carried along by his priests. His people follow from a distance.

God’s presence, as manifested by the ark of the covenant, is integral to Israel’s immediate success. If you’re using an ESV Bible, the word “ark” shows up seventeen times in Joshua 4–6. It’s there when the people fully and finally cross over the Jordan. It’s there when they enjoy their miraculous victory over Jericho.

Even after Achan’s sin in Joshua 7, Joshua and the other elders of Israel fall before the ark of the Lord (Joshua 7:6). Whether before victory or after sin, clearly the Israelites are treating their relationship with the Lord seriously, so much so that they renew their covenant. They build an altar and offer burnt offerings, and Joseph writes a copy of Moses’s law on new stones (Joshua 8:30–32). Joshua concludes this beautiful, sobering scene with this detail:

And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.

~ Joshua 8:34–35

Again, how beautiful. How sobering. This is the last time the ark shows up in the book of Joshua. In fact, we don’t read about the ark again until Judges 20, a few hundred years later, when Israel is mourning in the midst of a civil war.

The authors of Joshua and Judges never explain what happened to the ark in all the intervening years (or centuries, more specifically). Instead, they allow the ark to recede into the background.

How do we explain this? Thankfully, the book of Judges gives us a clue in this repeated refrain, which doubles as an indictment against Israel: “In those days there was no king in Israel.” This gets repeated four times (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). Twice the author includes this sour addition: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (17:6; 21:25).

So not long after Israel enters the Promised Land, they descend into a period where they have no Moses or Joshua-like figure to lead them. As a result, chaos reigns. Because Israel didn’t have a king, they didn’t have someone to do one of the king’s main jobs: study and obey God’s Word and transfer it to the people (Deuteronomy 17:18–20).

As we read through the dark book of Judges, if we’re following the author’s interpretive perspective, it shouldn’t surprise us that obedience has receded into obscurity—and the ark with it.

The covenant ceremony in Joshua 8 signaled a renewed desire—albeit a temporary one—in God’s people promising to take their relationship with God seriously. Their covenant is reminiscent of Exodus 20–24 or Deuteronomy 27–30. It’s a return to form.

But from that point forward, basically until the end of the era of the Judges, Israel’s relationship with their God deteriorated, and his dwelling in their midst became more and more diluted. In other words, they began to look just like the surrounding nations. Their light had been hidden under a bushel of their own disobedience and disinterest.

Stop #2: On the Battlefield

In 1 Samuel, which records the tail end of the judges era, the author paints a picture of both the good and bad in Israel. Let’s start with the good:

Despite Israel’s consistent rebellion against God as a nation, certain individuals remained faithful to him. For example, Elkanah and his wife, Hannah, who committed their son, Samuel, into God’s service. Samuel later became the final judge of Israel and anointed the nation’s first king, Saul.

But trouble was never far away during this time. The high priest, Eli, lacked discernment, and his priestly sons abused their positions in greed, lust, and rejection of God’s tabernacle instructions. We can read about this in 1 Samuel 1–2.

This picture is messed up because Israel is mixed-up. They have the outward appearance of conformity to God’s law—there are priests, and the tent of meeting, and the ark; there are sacrifices, and people praying, and being dedicated to the Lord’s service. Indeed, all the constitutive elements of obedience are there; the ark and all the appropriate apparatus are there. But it’s hollow, empty, dead inside.

With the exception of one desperate, faithful woman (Hannah) who begs for the Lord’s mercy, and for one miraculous son (Samuel) who loves the Lord so much that he sleeps at his feet, everything in Israel is rotten to the core.

So the Lord promises to reject Eli’s house entirely. By now, Samuel is grown up and becomes “established as a prophet of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:20). Israel is about to face the Philistines in battle. At first, it doesn’t go well. Israel gets routed and loses four hundred men. The leaders are flummoxed. Here’s how 1 Samuel 4 describes their response:

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.” 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.

~ 1 Samuel 4:3–4

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture? The author of 1 Samuel has already established for us that Israel is hollow and unholy. Only Samuel stands above the fray. And yet, in the face of bloody defeat, they think to themselves, “Wait a second! Why don’t we trot the ark out here to help us win?” Clearly, Israel is treating the ark of the covenant like a lucky rabbit’s foot. The author stacks the ark’s honorific descriptors in 1 Samuel 4:4 on purpose—“of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim”—as if to say, you can’t treat this God so flippantly.

What happens next is predictable. The Israelites parade the ark to the battlefield, thinking it will be a token of good luck. But the Philistines rally to defeat Israel, kill thirty thousand soldiers and Eli’s wicked sons, and capture the ark.

The lesson here is not that the Lord failed them. It’s that the Lord will not be trotted out as a talisman to superstitious people with skin-deep faith. Later that day, a straggling, wounded soldier survives and manages to give Eli the bad news: Israel lost, his sons are dead, and the ark has been captured. Then the author of 1 Samuel closes the story by saying: “As soon as he mentioned the ark of God, 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. He had judged Israel forty years” (1 Samuel 4:18).

The Lord has kept his promise. Eli and his sons are dead. Notice that the author frames the story as if the ark itself finally deals the fatal blow. Eli, a man who sat idly in God’s presence for so long, a man who got fat on ill-gotten sacrifice, now dies at the mere mention of the ark. The Lord always keeps his promises.

Stop #3: Behind Enemy Lines

Once it’s in Philistine hands, the ark’s journey becomes increasingly comical—in a tragic sort of way. First Samuel 5 is like a scene from a Charlie Chaplin film, or The Three Stooges. As it sits silently in a false god’s temple, the ark keeps knee-capping the master of the house. The Lord keeps disarming Dagon, the Philistine’s god. Of course, he does—he doesn’t want the Philistines to believe their victory over his faithless people meant a victory over him. The whole ordeal is hilarious to us, but it scares the Philistines so much that they pass the ark from city to city for seven months until they finally send it back to Israel where it belongs (1 Samuel 6:10–16).

Stop #4: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

But the ark’s busy journey doesn’t stop there. The Israelites, scared after seventy of them die “because they looked upon the ark” (1 Samuel 6:19), ship the ark yet again to Kiriath-jearim. They essentially say, The Philistines sent this thing back to us, but would you please take it off our hands so we don’t keep dying? (6:20–7:2).

This might seem like a small detour, but the ark stays there two decades. The author of 1 Samuel understands the sadness of Israel’s new reality: “From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord” (7:2).

Do you know who doesn’t get mentioned even once from 1 Samuel 4:1–7:2? I’ll give you a hint: The book is named after him. That’s right! Samuel vanishes while Israel vaults itself from superstition  to stupidity to suspicion to sad indifference. When Samuel finally reappears, he has something to say:

“If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”

~ 1 Samuel 7:3

Yet again—à la Joshua 8 and Exodus 34—the people repent and return to the Lord. How long will it last?

Stop #5: On the Ground

To summarize 1 and 2 Samuel: Israel’s hand-selected king, an impressive man named Saul, is bad. Israel’s second king—an overlooked, unim-pressive man named David—is (while still a sinful human) much better.

By the time we get to 2 Samuel 6, Saul is dead and David is king. David routs the Philistines on his way to be established as king in Jerusalem. But before he gets there, he wants to retrieve the ark from Kiriath-jearim after its two-decade stay.

But there’s a problem: The men he sends to retrieve it don’t know God’s law. They don’t know that Exodus 25 gives very specific details for how the ark is to be carried: on poles. So, when they “carry the ark of God on a new cart” (2 Samuel 6:3), we should hear the author’s audible groan. They’re doing the right thing but in the wrong way. So we shouldn’t be surprised at what happens: The ark begins to fall and the Lord strikes Uzzah down for trying to stabilize it with his hand (2 Samuel 6:6–7). None of this would have happened if they’d followed the Lord’s instructions.

Uzzah’s mistake is the second offense, not the first. The first offense is treating the Lord’s command and therefore his presence—here’s that word again—flippantly. Uzzah is just as much a victim of the country and king’s ignorance of God’s Word, as he is a victim of his own over-eager presumption.

God’s Work in Exile

Stop #6: Finally at Home

It takes a while for David to get it. At first, he actually gets angry with the Lord for what happened (2 Samuel 6:8). Like the Israelites from the previous generation, he relocates the ark out of fear. But this time, rather than causing chaos and curses, the Lord blesses Obed-edom, the Gentile who takes him in (6:11).

Once he hears about Obed’s blessing, David calms down and retrieves the ark. At long last—after centuries of unease and distrust, after generations of unbelief and disinterest—the king and his people finally usher the ark of God into the city of David.

Immediately, David notices an unrighteous contrast, that his home is nicer than his God’s:

Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.” And Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you.”

But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, “Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord: Would you build me a house to dwell in?’”

~ 2 Samuel 7:1–5

God was about to significantly upgrade his special dwelling place among his people. But not yet. It would be in a time, place, and manner of his own choosing.

God Wants Our Hearts

Yet as the anticipation builds in the Davidic reign—the short-lived pinnacle of ancient Israel’s history—there are dark undertones. God’s people repeatedly disobey God’s Word. Every moment of spiritual triumph seemed to be sandwiched between bouts of tragic rebellion and disregard. The people often conformed outwardly to the tabernacle regulations, but their hearts were far from their righteous King.

God doesn’t want lifeless, outward conformity to rules. He wants joyful, inward renewal of our hearts. In his mercy and grace, he chose to dwell among a stiff-necked and rebellious nation—a people very much like ourselves. He knows we—as spiritually dead wanderers—cannot bring about the radical heart-level change we need on our own. We need inner transformation that leads to outward change. We need a Savior. We need God to permanently dwell with us—and within us.

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^1. See Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi, directed by Richard Marquand (20th Century-Fox, 1983), film.

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Excerpted from Nomad: A Short Story of Our Long Journey Home © 2025 by Alex Duke. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.

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