This reminds us that things that are enormously popular, even among the people of God are not necessarily right. When discussing the subject of modern worship, somebody defended it and said to me ‘Yes, but this is now almost universal: the adoption of the rock scene among Bible believers.’ That was this gentleman’s argument. It isn’t actually; it just seems almost universal. But so what? It was practically total when they bought the ark out of Shiloh. It was so popular. It met with intellectual acceptance, emotional acceptance, every level of acceptance, but it was the most evil and preposterous thing they could possibly have done. What is popular is not necessarily right. That is an obvious observation, and it's here in the narrative.
I remember when I read that book ‘The purpose driven Church’ by Rick Warren, who is so well known these days. On first reading it, you think, what is the difference between this and creating a business strategy? What’s spiritual about this book? What's truly biblical? This is all human ingenuity, human method, human razzmatazz and motivational talk, and all this type of thing.’ Something is radically wrong when the people of God are behaving exactly as business people have in the world. That is what is going on here. The Philistines and the Israelites are indistinguishable in these verses.
Confidence can be our undoing. Evangelicalism is like this today; it won't learn. We have had nothing but decline, decline, decline, and yet today what are they advocating? What are these so-called soul winners doing? Exactly the same things that failed fifteen years ago, fourteen years ago. There is one thing that characterises them. Even though year by year they go down and down, their converts become increasingly worldly, and people last shorter and shorter periods, there is one thing grows, and that is their incredible confidence in the way they do it. Don't bother about the Lord's methods. Just be sublimely confident: that's how Christian work is so often done.