Paul versus Limas. Paul smote him blind for a while.
So my point is God is very protective of infant causes in his name at critical moments, and this is one of them. Paul writes to the Corinthians in the second letter. He says, Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Reverence is part of our faith. There's nothing wrong with Being solemn at times, and as much as grace and freedom that we have, we're not supposed to be sloppy and reckless with.
the kindness, goodness of God. Uh I'm sorry. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 2 Samuel.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio. Specifically, how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick with part 2 of his study called The Weight of Ministry in 2 Samuel 6. Verse 6, not an impressive instrument.
Somebody just had no musical skill, and they wanted to get them in the band, so they gave them this one. Anyway, I can't tell him he can't sing. We've got to give him something. Verse 6: And when they came to Nakon's. Threshing floor Uzza put out his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled.
It was the natural thing to do. It just wasn't a spiritual thing to do. And it cost everyone.
So the ark is on the cot where it doesn't belong. The oxen stumble. It shifts, the load shifts, like maybe it's going to slide off. God did not need Uzzah to do this. He needed Uzzah to be part of not putting the ark where it did not belong.
Verse 7. Then the anger of Yahweh was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error, and he died by the ark of God. This is horrific. It's a tragedy. You know, it's sort of it's worse than j a a job site death.
This is spiritual. The anointed king The anointed prophets, the anointed priests and Levites, and the people of God, all of them had good intentions, but still. Look what happened. Their intentions were wrong. I mean, you can have, you can be obedient and good intentions, and things still go the wrong way.
but to be wrong at the same time.
So, good intentions. One of the lessons from this, the weight in ministry is intentions outside of God's word can be fatal. There are people that have gone to the mission field that should not have gone to the mission field, and they either have died there or caused others to die there, or just. It ends in disaster. The word reverence comes to mind.
When we do things in God's name, is there that reverence? Or are we self willed? Just doing it because it's a good idea and it feels good to us, which is a hard sermon or a hard study. If you're an emotionally driven Christian and you just do everything by your feelings, You're probably a pain in the neck to other people, too, incidentally, if you're doing that. You know, the feelings are all over this chapter, but they need to be in line.
They need to be under the authority. of God And the host, Paul said the prophet. is not made subject to the gift. You can't just say, well, I've got the gift and I lost control.
Well, the fruit of the Spirit is self-control.
So maybe it's another spirit. That you're under in that case. They don't hold churches, that's how they run. They have people dressed like nurses, so you can pass out safely.
Well, anyway.
Some don't allow their results to be examined because they hide behind good intentions. But I meant well, so you can't say anything. I'm a sacred cow now. You can't touch what I, the mess I just created. You know, maybe somebody's having marital problems, and you want to stick your nose where it doesn't belong, and God is certainly not in your help, and you just make things worse.
And what I meant well.
Well You better have a little bit more care in that. I hope this scares all of us together enough to maintain reverence. We don't handle the presence of God. The presence of God is supposed to handle us. What about this man?
Uza oy. What about him?
Well, every indication he was a righteous man. We have no reason to doubt that we'll see him in heaven just because he broke a commandment here. Others have done far worse. And will be in heaven, King David 1. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.
The righteous, God always does right. If Luza is not in heaven, it won't be because of this act, it would be because of his unbelief in Yahweh. But he was a believer. And what if God allowed this negligence to go unaddressed on such a vital occasion as this At this delicate time in the history of the Jews, what if God just ignored this and they had a hard enough time? keeping the idols out of the land.
They didn't need any help. In their disobedience. And so God is very intolerant of this. The kings were not to violate the priesthood. The priests were not to violate the priesthood.
And that's true for us. We are a royal priesthood. That's a combination of the king and the priest together. And yet we're not permitted as Christians to violate Christianity. and kind of shrug it off.
King Saul learned that. Uzziah is l has learned that King Saul, Uzziah the Levite, and then King Uzziah, one of the best kings in Judah of all of Israel's history. 52 years he reigned as king. Is it the one that Isaiah Lamented when he had this vision of God. And the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.
And so, this Uzziah, he got too big for his britches. He decides he's going to go to the temple and offer incense on the golden altar, which is prohibited. And God smote him with leprosy. But before God smote him, those priests lined up, they were ready to die keeping him out of the holy place. It says here, and he died there by the ark of God.
Clearly, the presence of God was present. And saying this, I told you. You were warned, Numbers chapter 4 verse 14. And when Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, when the camp is set to go, then the sons of Kohath shall come and carry them, and they shall not touch any holy thing lest they die.
Well, he touched the holy thing and he died just like God warned. And in that little section, we have all of these rules. Oh, you're so uptight, you've got so many r why do you think they exist? We just had nothing to do over a cheeseburger and came up with rules. They come up for a reason.
And once you get into the rhythm of them, they're very beneficial. At least I have found it that way. It's amazing how many people want to name their kids after Old Testament heroes. They just don't want to have the order that belonged to those heroes and the times they lived in that came from God, such as there in Numbers 4, 15. We should not be afraid.
Of the things that keep our flesh in line, and that was one for the Jews. This was not too high of a price to pay, to lose one man in front of the nation to spiritually stabilize the nation. It was a very good thing. God is a history of being protective. of infant events In critical moments that are related to him.
One of the first one is Nadab and Abihu. The two eldest sons of Aaron, Israel's first high priest, the brother of Moses, they decided that they could just take anything into the worship. Act of worship. And they took strange fire, and God struck them dead on the spot. It's a very ugly scene, but it was necessary.
And then Aaron was challenged by Cora Who was a Levite and felt that Moses took too much authority on him?
So, you and your brother, who do you think you are? You think you're the only preachers and pastors of God's people? That's pretty much what happened. Of course, the ground swallowed him up. God got involved.
Moses was so gentle with this guy. I would have. I would have been gentle. And the CPR part. Peter.
When Ananias and Sapphire lied in front of everybody to the church, what happened to them? Both of them were smitten dead. Paul, verse Elimus, Paul smote him blind for a while.
So, my point is: God is very protective of infant causes in his name at critical moments, and this is one of them. Paul writes to the Corinthians in the second letter. He says, Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Reverence is part of our faith. There's nothing wrong with Being solemn at times, and as much as grace and freedom that we have, we're not supposed to be sloppy and reckless with.
the kindness and goodness of God. Verse 8. And David became angry because Of Yahweh's outbreak against Uzzah, and he called the name of the place Perez Uzzzah to this day. Again, I don't think they're very creative in renaming these places. Anyway, uh Before David was angry, God was angry.
God was the one that was wronged. He's the victim here. His word was just They neglected it and they had no reason to neglect it. Uh they they likely did everything else right. They covered the ark, the priests, not the Levites.
Then the priests come with the you know, lift the poles up and put it onto the cart. That's where everything started going wrong. And the Bible does not cover up. The blunder of the priest and the blunder of the king, and it doesn't cover up the reaction of the king. David was hot with anger.
What? But it doesn't say who he's angry with. Is he angry at God? I would go that way for me personally because that's a flaw of my character. That's the only flaw I have, though.
And lying is another one. That is kind of funny. Anyhow. I don't think David was angry at God. I think he was just angry at everything.
that went wrong. himself, the priest, Uza Just that kind of, you know, man, where, why, why? And the reason why, now, some commentators think he's angry with God and he collects himself. And here's why I don't think so. He never loses the passion to get that ark to Jerusalem.
In fact, he begins to somewhat fret. The hell am I going to do this now? And to me, that tells me He had his chance to voice his frustration. And he does not. In fact, as the ark gets to Jerusalem, he writes a psalm about it, and it never comes up.
He just writes, you know, touch not God's anointed, you know?
So anyway, verse 9 now, David was afraid of Yahweh that day, and he said, How can the ark of Yahweh come to me? You see, that day, he's like, they're talking about reverence and the weight of ministry. This is ministry. What is ministry? Ministry is serving God.
and usually includes serving people. and usually includes being inconvenienced at some point, God needs servants that have broad shoulders and Iron jaws versus narrow shoulders and glass jaws. You know, glass jaws and boxing, you know, the guy hits you in the jaw one time and you just shatter like glass, and that's the end of the fight.
So many Christians will just, we can be this way. You know, we get hit by something that hurts us, we just shatter. And everything is gone. All the work, everything is wiped away. The devil wins again.
Take the hit, take the pain. Ministry is weight. Maybe you serve in the children's ministry, and some parent makes some old snide remark, and you want to just, you know, do a little kung fu on them. But you can't because you don't know kung fu.
So Yeah. Uh You just take it. You leave it with God. And it won't always go away right away.
Sometimes it will stay for a long time for God to extract whatever lessons He's wanting, just take it. What's the alternative? Musical churches, that's the alternative. When the band stops playing, everybody be sitting somewhere else. All right.
Well, if these things don't get said, how will they ever get addressed? inconvenient as they are, Verse 9. David was afraid of Yahweh. That day We never read of Saul being afraid of Yahweh. We read of Saul being afraid of everything else.
And we never read of David being afraid of men. In fact, when David's old, he's going to be on the battlefield and he almost gets killed. And his men come and save him. He says, You can't come here. You can't fight anymore, David.
I mean, this beauty. And we know you've got this courage, but. You know, those You don't have the moves anymore. The mechanics aren't working like they used to. Leviticus 10, verse 3.
And Moses said to Aaron, This is what Yahweh spoke, saying, By those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy, and before all the people, I must be glorified. And God has never walked back from that verse.
Nowhere in our New Testament does God say, okay, we have graduated from that. When Jesus said, think not that I've come to destroy the law. But to perfect it. He meant every word of that, not a jot or a tittle. And we have it before us to.
To honor and to serve, and to bear the weight of the presence of God. Because you put that ark of the covenant, which was made of mostly wood except the lid, it would be light at first, but it would get heavy. Anything you bear over any length of period of time. gets heavy. How can the Ark of Yahweh come to me?
So David loses Uzzah, but he does not lose the objective. He still, that ark still kind of gets to Jerusalem. We understand that in the world. And in job sites, you know, people get killed. The building's still got to go up.
Everybody's back to work the next day. Verse you know, it's kind of morbid. Verse 10.
So David would not move the ark of Yahweh with him into the city of David, but David took it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. He suspends all operations because he doesn't know what to do. And I don't think anybody else touched the ark. Moving it from the cart to the to the house. It was no trivial matter to the man with the shepherd's heart.
King David, this was a serious matter. Obed Edom He is a Levite too. 1 Chronicles 15, I'm not going to read it now, but he later becomes one of the doorkeepers in the temple of God, which is like an usher in the house of God. As David said, I'd rather be a servant, a doorkeeper in the house of God than, you know, I don't. king anywhere else or anywhere else.
Anyway, the he being a Gittite means he's from Gath, but not Gath of the Philistines. Uh there were two Gaths, Gath Rimmon, which was for the Levites, and then there was Hephor, which was another one of the Jewish cities. He was from Rimmon, which uh which is um accounts. He's not a Philistine. Hopefully, we work.
God's work, God's way. And Deal with uh Avoid the consequences and deal with the hardship, the weight of ministry.
So inside David's heart, and just a traumatic experience, what is in his heart? Not his head. What is driving him?
Well, leading him is probably a more accurate description. Exodus 25, verse 21. Because it moves us, and when we read this verse as a Christian, you say to ask yourself, does this have any weight to you? Does it matter to you? God speaking to Moses for the people, you shall.
Put the mercy seat on top of the ark. And in the ark you shall put The testimony that I will give you, the tablets of the commandments, And there I will meet with you. And I will speak with you from above the mercy seat. From between the two cherubim, which are on the Ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel.
So God is saying to Moses, I'm going to speak with you from the Ark of the Covenant.
So David is like, Yeah, yeah, I want this. I'm the king of Israel. I love the Lord. I want his presence here. I want us to be able to hear from God.
This is what is moving him. And every believer knows how difficult it is to keep serving when you need to hear from God and you're not hearing from God. And you have to just comply with your last order as unpleasant as it may be. I need more information. I need confirmation.
I need to know you're still with me, and nothing. You get silenced. What do you walk by then? Faith. And that is something that no one else is supposed to pull off.
like we do. Verse 11 The ark of Yahweh remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months, and Yahweh blessed Obed-Edom and all his household. And all the prosperity teachers went out and bought arks. I want a blessing. I don't care what God wants.
I want the blessing. If I gotta love you to get the blessing, I'll love you. But I really hate you, but it'll get me there. I want that car so badly. If I just can rub the Bible the right way, poof.
Racket. The Bunko Squad needs to come visit them. Anyway Anyway. And vice and homicide. Verse 12.
Now it was told David, saying, Yahweh has blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him because of the ark of God.
So David went and bought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom, the city of David, with gladness. David said, What? That's why I've been trying to bring it to Jerusalem. And he's getting the blessing. It certainly wasn't, as I'm portraying it, a little caricature to go with it, but it is true.
I know it's true for me in early days, you know, I'm not going to do this. And God said, Well, then I'll get somebody else. Oh, no, you won't. No, no. I'm not built that way.
This is righteous pride. If you call me to do this, I'll do it. Just don't get somebody else. Yeah. A little possessiveness there that God kind of uses in his favor.
And I think some of that's happening there. Observed that Obed was doing pretty good. Hey, that's a new car. Where'd you get that? Just money showed up.
And they went, hey, David. Look what Obed's driving. It's better than yours. 2 Chronicles 5, nothing was in the ark except two tablets which Moses put there.
So by this time, The rod of Aaron and the pot of manna had been, maybe in the days of the judges. Anyway, David knew that the blessings were. Where the Lord dwells, and we do too. It's just that they're not material-based. They can be, but they're not, He's not obligated to do this.
As Paul said, but for these change, I wish you were just like me. And they said, you're right. They weren't giving that life stuff, lifestyle up. A reminder that God is gracious. Encouraging David.
to resume his West to bring the ark. to Jerusalem. By blessing O Bed Edom, And it's just another move of God. Who would have thought? David was probably thinking, you know, the prophet Nathan will come to me and say, okay, David, it's time.
Well, the priest was, hey, I consulted the Rumminatunum, and God said, yes, bring the ark. There was just nothing. It was just what do we do? And God, they just have this object lesson before them in that Elbed is blessed right in front of their eyes.
So now they're going to correct the error. By resuming the quest. David starts with, whose fault was it? At some point, He's got to get to the bottom. Whose fault?
was Uz's death. And the first people guilty were the priests and the Levites. They were the keepers of the law concerning the tabernacle before anyone else. They were line one.
So David points the finger with gentleness, though. He doesn't clobber them. 1 Chronicles chapter 15, verse 13. He says this, for because of you, Well, we go back. For because you did not Do it the first time.
Yahweh our God broke out against us. Because we did not consult him about the proper order.
So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the ark of Yahweh, God of Israel, and the children of the Levites bore the ark of God on their shoulders in its poles. And as Moses had commanded, according to the word of Yahweh, recovery. Instead of just, you know, abandoning things and giving up, but he includes himself, me too. I was wrong, also. That's what he says.
Because God broke out against us. Because we did not consult him about the proper order.
And it's amazing. You see, people come to the church and they hymn and haw because they can't bring water into the sanctuary. You know, could you not watch with me one hour? I have a medical condition.
Well maybe you should be in a hospital. I don't know. I'm sure there are serious ones. You can't adjust for everybody. What if, you know, you, you know, I like to use the Bubble Boy example.
Remember, Bubble Boy had to stay away from germs.
Well, what if he wanted to come to church? What are we supposed to take out a loan and renovate and get a bubble for them? There's just some things you just can't do. And you expect people to understand. They can be vicious, those people that call themselves Christians.
Sometimes they can be worse than unbelievers.
So Uh not me. Uh oh. I'm always I mean Um That's one of the beauties about driving with smoked windows. Hey, that's Pastor Rick. Hmm.
Is not true. I mean, it's true, but it's wrong, and I don't deal with that. But I mean, it's all right, let's. Go on. That's my break, my mental break for th this evening.
I don't know if other pastors need mental breaks because I don't listen to them. Because the whole time I'm listening to them, I'm saying they should be listening to me. Because I'm so humble. Anyhow, This graciousness that David approaches us with in correcting the error. And resuming the mission.
The ark has got to get to Jerusalem, and he learned the lesson that the death of Uzzah was supposed to teach. And I cute. This has been the latest edition of Cross Reference Radio. Pastor Rick Gaston is teaching through the book of 2 Samuel, which details the reign of David as king of Israel. There are so many life lessons to be learned during these years of David's life.
We're glad you've tuned in to hear more from God's Word. This radio ministry comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you're interested in accessing more messages just like this one, you can listen online or download these messages at crossreferenceradio.com. You can also subscribe to our podcast by going to your favorite podcast app. We can't wait for you to step into the next teaching that Pastor Rick has for us.
So come back next time for Cross Reference Radio.
