The Old Testament Philistines captured the Ark of God from the Jews and brought it into the temple of their god Dagon (1 Samuel 5). Dagon was an idol cast in the image of a fish, but with a man’s head and hands. Next morning, the Philistines had to have a look at the trophy they had stolen from Israel and this strange pair of gods in their temple. What they saw was sobering. Dagon had fallen down before the Ark of God.
The Ark was a wooden box covered with gold and crowned with a mercy seat and cherubim [angel representations]. God had strictly forbidden any effort to make an image of Himself (Deuteronomy 4:15-19). He said that His invisible presence would be found between the cherubim above the mercy seat over the Ark, which had now fallen into Philistine hands. So it was deeply significant that men’s efforts to create a god (Dagon) now lay prostrate in the presence of the God of all the earth whose likeness could not be depicted by human art (Acts 17:29).
The Philistines picked up their lifeless, subordinate god and set him again in his place. Next morning they found him in the same posture of worship, but this time with his head and his hands broken off. All that was left of Dagon was the fishy part.
There is something “fishy” about our idols today, too — the singers, the sport figures, the actors, the writers of trashy novels, and even the more glitzy politicians. The unfolding revelations of performance-enhancing drug used by numerous sports figures is just the latest case of the fall of our idols. Their priests and worshipers scramble to restore them again to the place so many have made for them in their hearts. “Solutions” to the steroids problem are being debated on the floor of the Senate. Isn’t there something fishy about that august assembly concerning themselves with the transgressions of boys playing ball?
Steroids or no, the plot gets fishier. What business have preachers of the Gospel sporting professional football paraphernalia? Shall the servants of God appeal to celebrities’ fans by outdoing them in their own devotion to the gods of this world? How about contemporary “Christian” music? Should Christian churches offer performances rivaling a rock fest in every way except the “Jesus words” in the lyrics? The beat, the immodesty, the show, the low morals of the performers–it’s all there. It’s all in rather amateurish form, but it’s obvious who is following whom, and it isn’t the secular world imitating God’s way.
But God is still God, and every idol of man’s making will fall before Him. If we do not recognize and repent of our misguided devotion now, its fishy nature will be revealed at the judgment.
“I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images” (Isaiah 42:8)
The heathen god Dagon had no choice but to fall before God. We have no choice either, except for when we will fall. Let us fall on the Rock Christ Jesus, and be broken now, before He falls upon us and grinds us to powder (Matthew 21:44)
“At the name of Jesus every knee [shall] bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and … every tongue [shall] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10, 11).
-by Dallas Witmer