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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