Hey everybody and welcome back to I just want to talk about the Bible.

If this is your first time joining us, then let me just welcome you and say that I am so glad that you're here.

My name is Christian Keeter and I live in the southeast of the United States of America with my amazing, beautiful, godly wife

Lacey and our two wonderful daughters of Felicity and Serenity. So today we're going to begin by

looking at a passage from 1 Samuel chapter 4. Now just to give some super simple historical context,

this takes place near the beginning of the ministry of the prophet Samuel,

and therefore before Israel's first king, Saul. And if you want more context than that, then you can,

of course, go read 1 Samuel chapters 1 through 3. But for the sake of our conversation today,

we're just going to keep things primarily focused on what we're going to be looking at today because if we were to get too

detailed with a lot of the things that we're going to be talking about today, it would actually

probably obscure what we've been talking about. So we're just going to have kind of a very

specific focus today. So having said that, 1 Samuel chapter 4, beginning part way through the first

verse says,

Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines.

They encamped at Ebenezer and the Philistines encamped at Afeck.

The Philistines drew up in line against Israel.

And when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines,

who killed about 4,000 men on the field of battle.

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.

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