And so we pick up with continuing this series on the life of David.

And what's happened so far? We've skipped a bit. Well, we see that David at this point has

been anointed as the king of Israel. We know that as a shepherd boy, he was anointed by Samuel

the prophet. But that was sort of a looking forward.

But now Saul has died, Jonathan has died, and the people come and anoint David as king of Israel.

And David takes the city of Jerusalem, he conquers it and kicks out the Jebusites who were occupying that city.

And then he defeats the Philistines in a big battle. And then we turn to chapter 6 and the events

that take place here, where David gathers all the men to bring up the Ark of the Covenant to bring it into the

new capital Jerusalem. And so we asked the question, what is the Ark? What is the Ark of God?

What is the Ark of the Covenant? What is the symbolism of this Ark? Why is it important?

You see, the Ark served as a representation of the presence of God with his people.

It reminded the people of who God was and what he had done.

And it was to go with the people of Israel everywhere they went, even into battle.

And we see that the ark had been captured by the Philistines at some point before the reign of

King Saul. Because of these two sons of Eli, the priest. If you remember, Eli is the one who takes

Samuel into his house and then judgment comes on Eli because of these two sons who the Israelites

are losing a battle and they think, let's take the Ark of the Covenant into battle so that we

can win. They're looking at the Ark of the Covenant as battle so that we can win. They're looking at the Ark of the

covenant as if it were a lucky charm. You can't treat or force God into an equation. You can't

take something of God and force it in there and make it do what you want it to do. That's not how

he works. And so, contrary to what

they thought would happen, the ark actually gets captured at this point, captured by the

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