The sermon opens in 1 Samuel 4, where Israel loses the ark of the covenant in battle, Eli’s sons are killed, and Eli’s daughter-in-law, dying in childbirth, names her son Ichabod, “the glory of God has departed,” because the ark had been captured. From there the message follows the ark into Philistine territory, where God topples the idol Dagon before it and afflicts the Philistines, until they must decide whether their trouble came from the LORD’s hand or was merely a chance calamity.
Against every temptation to explain God’s dealings away as coincidence, the sermon insists that nothing that happened — Israel’s judgment, Dagon’s fall, the plagues, even the timing of events — was left to chance, but was foreordained and governed by God himself. Whether in judgment or deliverance, the God who let his glory seem to depart from a disobedient people is still sovereign over every event, and worshipers are called to see his hand rather than luck behind their circumstances.