You can be sure of God’s promises.
There are two main points I want to bring out in today’s message. Firstly the certainty of God’s promises – they are set in stone. And secondly the related problem of not knowing the word of God or taking it out of context, even with the very best of intentions.
It reminds me of a story of a mother who had the very best of intentions and I may have told it to you before but it’s worth it!
A child asked his father, "How were people born?" So his father said, "Adam and Eve made babies, then their babies became adults and made babies, and so on." The child then went to his mother, asked her the same question and she told him, "We were monkeys then we evolved to become like we are now." The child ran back to his father and said, "You lied to me!" His father replied, "No, your mom was talking about her side of the family."
The mother had the best intentions but lets start by delving into a story in the bible where I’ve thought to myself, Lord how can you do this, this seems so unfair. And that is the story of Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6. Let’s look at this story and see what we can learn .
About 20 years earlier in this story you will remember, Saul took the ark of the Lord into a battle at Shiloh believing that its presence would guarantee victory over the Philistines. It didn’t, Israel lost 30,000 soldiers in the battle and lost the ark to the Philistines. It was with the Philistines for about 7 months when they decided to send it back to Israel
1 Samuel 5:11-12
11 So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and said, “Send the ark of the god of Israel away; let it go back to its own place, or it will kill us and our people.” For death had filled the city with panic; God’s hand was very heavy on it. 12 Those who did not die were afflicted with tumors, and the outcry of the city went up to heaven.
So in 1 Samuel 6:7 we read that the Philistines put it on a new cart with two cows that had calved and sent it back to Israel. When it got to Beth Shemesh in Israel, the people rejoiced in getting back the ark of the Lord and made burnt offerings to God. But what happened next stopped the ark from moving any further because God struck down 70 men of Beth Shemesh for just looking into the ark
After that, Israel was so afraid of the ark that they sent it to a small mountain village in Judah called Kiriath-jearim. There it stayed in the home of a man named Abinadad, where it was cared for by that man and his son for the next 20 years. It is at this point that David decides to bring the ark of God back to Jerusalem.
Keep in mind without the ark in the Tabernacle the priests could not fully complete all their duties as prescribed under the Mosaic law and so from a religious point of view, Israel was not in a good place and David wanted to correct this. So David bringing the ark back into the Tabernacle was an extremely important event in the worship of God in Israel. David is very unlike Saul here in his motives. It is not out of personal interest or superstitious or symbolic purpose but out of a genuine desire to bring back God into the centre of Israel’s worship. His intentions and motives are absolutely spot on and without fault
So we pick up the story in 2 Samuel 6.
2 Samuel 6:1-5 The Ark Brought to Jerusalem
6 David again brought together all the able young men of Israel—thirty thousand. 2 He and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark. 3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart 4 with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals.
So you can see that David is really trying to honour God. He has a new cart, i.e. not used for common purpose, he has 30,000 men worshipping and praising God and as we read “with all their might”
But things quickly go badly for Israel, which must have brought all this worship to a sudden halt.
2 Samuel 6:6-7
6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.
You can imagine the reaction of the crowd- probably a silence before scattering! When the cart came to the threshing floor which is by necessity a hard surface often rocky so you can actually thresh the wheat, the oxen stumbled on this hard surface and I would surmise that just by reflex action to ensure the ark did not fall off the cart Uzzah reaches out and touches the ark. And God strikes him down! On the surface it just seems so unfair to do this to Uzzah . But to understand why God strikes him down we need to have a look at Numbers 4
(As we read this passage keep in mind that he Kohathites, Gershonite, and the Merarites were all Levites priest branches assigned to look after different parts of the Tabernacle and the ‘tent of the Meeting’)
Numbers 4:15-20
15 “After Aaron and his sons have finished covering the holy furnishings and all the holy articles, and when the camp is ready to move, only then are the Kohathites to come and do the carrying. But they must not touch the holy things or they will die. The Kohathites are to carry those things that are in the tent of meeting.………….
17 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 18 “See that the Kohathite tribal clans are not destroyed from among the Levites. 19 So that they may live and not die when they come near the most holy things, do this for them: Aaron and his sons are to go into the sanctuary and assign to each man his work and what he is to carry. 20 But the Kohathites must not go in to look at the holy things, even for a moment, or they will die.”
We can learn a lot from this
We can see from Numbers 4, and David realised this later, that God would have violated His word in Numbers 4 if he had spared Uzzah. And God does NOT break His promises- ever. While this is a bad outcome for Uzzah, it is at the same time a very very encouraging point for us. Because, if we think of God’s promises for us, we can know that no matter what happens God will not break His own promises. We would be tempted to think if God bent the rules for Uzzah would He bend the rules and promises made for us. God will not violate His word- ever. Just let’s think of some of those promises that we know now that God will not violate, no matter what the circumstance may be
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Just let’s think about that promise for a moment- God so loved the world- Paul prays in Ephesians 3:18 that we may know how…
“…. deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Then John 3:16 goes on and says”…whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”- a promise he will not break- no matter what because we know he keeps His word!
John 1:12-13 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
The promise is you are a child of God! Your father is the King and so this means in Ephesians 3:12 …”we can approach God with freedom and confidence”!
Isaiah 41:10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand
There are so many other promises, but this event with Uzzah just underlines how God’s promises are firm, they are eternal and they are not changed by circumstance. We should take great rest and comfort in that.
The second learning point for me is this. Having good intentions is all very well, but when they don’t line up with the word of God you’re in trouble. They worshipped with all their might, they had the best intentions in the world, but it all came unstuck when they did not obey the word of the Lord. And we have seen it in our own lives or families where people with the best intentions, but have this ignorance of the word of God, end up in the most difficult of circumstances
1 Samuel 15:22-23
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
We can worship and praise and sing to God all day, but if we don’t obey God, it’s meaningless. David thought he was obeying God- we think we are obeying God! The only way we can obey God is to know what he is saying to us, and the way to do that is to study and know His word.
And so we need to study the word of God - and that takes effort, it takes work. But it means that when we do come to the point of having to move the “ark”, our worship and our obedience line up to walk in the will of God. The “we’re cooking with gas”! David remedied his error in knowing only part of the law regarding the ark when he brought back the ark with oxen,by studying the whole law. In doing so he could then move the ark in a proper manner
I have regularly seen people with the best of intentions build belief systems based on one verse for instance some who would look to a verse like Paul used
1 Corinthians 7:27 (NLT)
27 If you have a wife, do not seek to end the marriage. If you do not have a wife, do not seek to get married.
And suggest we should not marry, but clearly Paul is not saying that. We cant all become monks! I’ll touch on this idea of taking isolated verses out of context a bit later.
Worshipping God must go with obedience to God.
The third point is this just because moving the ark in the most modern way- (using oxen and a cart) may seem to be quite reasonable in our own eyes, it does not make it right. In fact it brought the worship to a halt! Using oxen was probably a bit quicker- they did not get as tired as quickly as humans, it certainly was easier from a human point of view, it was the way you moved things in those days. In fact there was a precedent, the Philistines had done it before them!
Simply because it’s the modern way and everyone’s doing it, it does not make it the right way. This would apply to all aspects of our life
There is one final point I would like to touch on briefly.
David eventually does bring the ark of the Lord back to Jerusalem and we read in
2 Samuel 6:17-18
17 They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty.
We often pray something then say at the end …” in the name of Jesus”. I do –often!
When we do something in the name of someone we are representing them……their will. For instance if you have the authority to sign a cheque for a company and are authorised to have a cheque book to buy something in the company’s name, the cheque will be honoured when you buy that item. However it is not a blank cheque to use whenever you want to. The company has to be in agreement with what you purchase. When you have clearly heard from the company what you have to purchase you can confidently sign that cheque. The company will not authorise a cheque for anything you want, but only for what it needs you to do at the time. When that is God’s will and that is what He wants done, then we can confidently pray and ask in the “name of Jesus”. Even if it’s to move a mountain! But there is no special magic in these words. It’s rather like a rope analogy- Jesus may draw you with a rope in a particular direction in His name, but you can’t push on a rope in His name and get anywhere.
So when we pray in the name of Jesus we believe that God is leading us in this prayer. So don’t be like me and be tempted to pray for a Ferrari in Jesus name- I mean 6.3L V12, 600hp, 0-100km/h in about 3 sec- incredibly beautiful car- who wouldn’t want that? And I know my Father loves to give good gifts- and that’s a great gift- maybe? Sure we can pray and ask for anything in the name of Jesus, but until God draws you with that rope, it is only a request. But there is nothing wrong is asking! Until the company agrees they will not authorise that cheque.
As I mentioned before we need to be careful that whole belief systems are not built up on isolated verses that lead to this “name and claim” type of thinking. David could pray this in the name of the Lord, because the ground work had been done and he knew that the will of the Lord was to bless His people at that time.
In conclusion the success of David after moving the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem was the result of him learning from his mistakes, his repentance, his worship and sacrifices but mostly to his obedience to the word of God. We would do well to follow his lead in that. Especially me!