Thursday 20 December 2018

2 Samuel 6: 'How can the presence of God come to me?'


A famous Irish abbot was being interviewed on the Saturday Night Show with Brendan O’Connor.  Brendan asked the abbot, ‘do you think that there is a heaven … and will we be going there if we are good people?’  The abbot replied, ‘… the only question we will be asked when we get to the other side is, “did you love?”  “How much did you love?”  And that is the examination, and that is all there is to it.’  Brendan seemed to be happy with that answer!

Both Brendan and the abbot thought that they knew the way into the presence of God.  ‘Just love’.  The problem is that ‘just love’ is not the gospel.  ‘Just love’ does not bring us into the presence of God after our life, and it does not bring the presence of God to us in this life.

We must listen to God’s word to find our how to know God’s presence


The Ark of God was a gold-covered wooden box that contained the Ten Commandments, a golden jar holding manna from the wilderness and Aaron’s, staff.  Attached to the top of this box were gold statues of two heavenly beings, called cherubim.  The significance of the Ark was that God sat enthroned on the cherubim (2).  In other words, it was here that God made his presence manifest among the people.

For seventy years the ark has been in Baale-judah (earlier called Kireath-jearim).  Now King David wants to bring the Ark to his capital.  He wants God’s presence to be at the centre of his kingdom.  That seems like a good idea.  But David and his people ignored the instructions that God had given for moving the Ark.

God had instructed that the Ark was not to be touched, it was to be covered with layers of covering and it was only to be carried by Levitical priests using special poles.  However, there is no mention here of covering the Ark, it is then put on a cart (it was the Philistines who transported the Ark by cart earlier in the story) and the two men leading the way were not Levitical priests. 

Despite the fact that they were ignoring God’s clear instructions, the people sing and dance in the assumption that all is well between themselves and God.  A society of people doing things their own way and assuming that God is simply delighted.  Sound familiar?  We proudly sing, ‘I did it my way’, and assume that God is pleased.

When the oxen stumbled, and it looked like the Ark was going to hit the ground, Uzzah put out his hand to catch it.  Did he think that some dirt getting on the Ark was worth breaking one of God’s clear instructions for?  The people learned a painful lesson about the holiness of God that day!
Now don’t read this passage and think that God is more interested in rituals than the state of people’s hearts.  The fact that David and his people completely ignored God’s instructions does reveal something about their hearts.  They weren’t taking Him seriously.  They weren’t listening to what He had said.  You can’t ignore God’s Word and yet think that you know how to please Him.

God could have displayed his holy anger at any time in this story.  He could have acted when they failed to cover the Ark or when they placed it on the cart.  He acted when He did for a reason.  What happened is so striking and notable.  He wants all the gathered people to see this judgement.  He does so because He is love.  He displays His holiness and justice in order to call us to repentance.
This is something I need to remember.  You see I recently realised that I have been trying to share the gospel with my friends in a way that would not offend them.  But the gospel is offensive.  God reveals his holiness to call us to repent.  He declares people lost so that they might be found.  He says that people are condemned that they might no his forgiveness.  We should want to speak with tact, but it is not loving to avoid all that offends.    
We need to see God’s kindness so that we want to approach his presence
God draws us to repentance by revealing our sin, but he also draws us to repentance by showing us his kindness.  Don’t read this passage and forget that God is gracious.  What happens next in the story reveals God’s extra-ordinary gentleness.
The people don’t know what to do with the Ark, so they leave it with house of Obed-edom.  (I wonder what Obed-edom thought of having the Ark left with him!)  Obed-edom is a Gittite, which means that he was a Philistine.  The Ark was left with his household for three months, during which time the Lord blessed them.  God even uses His people’s disobedience to bless the people of the nations.  God exposes our sin and reveals His kindness, and that is supposed to lead to repentance.  When David hears of the blessing of Oden-edom’s household, he sends for the Ark, but this time David does not presume upon God.
We need the death of a substitute to be enabled to approach his presence
Now the people take God seriously.  There is no mention of a cart.  We read of those bearing the Ark, which we can assume were Levitical priests.  There is also the shocking fact that every six steps David had an ox and a fattened calf sacrificed.  
Why all those sacrifices?  Well, David had asked, ‘how can the Ark of God come to me’ (9)?  The answer is that the Ark can only come to him through the death of a substitute.  We can only come close to the presence of God through the shedding of blood.  David is seeing the gospel through a glass darkly.  Rather than the repeated sacrifices of this story, the once and for all death of our substitute, Jesus Christ, enables the presence of God to come to us.  The death of a substitute is needed for God’s presence to come to us. 
For becoming a Christian is like having the Ark of God come to us.  Jesus explains that, ‘if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home in him’ (John 14:23).  Now we need not fear the presence of the Lord of Hosts, but we are invited to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16).  The cross brings God’s presence to us and prepares us to enjoy His presence for ever.  
Conclusion:  The presence of God reminds us that there is only one king in town
How does David respond to the presence of God?  He takes off his robes.  I think he realises that before God his royal robes aren’t important.  For David there is really only one king in town.  But his wife Michal doesn’t share his humility.  She is identified as Saul’s daughter, and shows her father’s lack of spiritual discernment.  Her words drip with sarcasm.  ‘How the king of Israel honoured himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ (20).  She misunderstands David’s actions and thinks that he must keep on being somebody.  Pride keeps us from enjoying the presence of God.
I wrote to Brendan O’Connor after the abbot told him that all he needed was love.  I said that such advice is not good news but bad news.  The abbot presumed he knew the way to God, but he clearly hadn’t consulted the Bible for his answer. ‘Just love’ is not good news when God’s standard is to love him with all of our hearts and our neighbour as ourselves.  I go for hours without even thinking about God and my family will be able to tell you how imperfect my love is.  
In order to experience God’s presence, now and forever. we need to look to God’s word, we need to see that he is holy, and we are not, we need to allow his kindness draw us to repentance and we need to shed our robes of self-righteousness and put on Christ’s robes of blood brought righteousness.
 

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