Holiness

If you have your Bibles with you today, turn with me if you would to 2 Samuel chapter 6 and we're going to start with the first four verses Heavenly Father, the passage of scripture that I'm preaching on today is hard. It's hard because it forces us to take seriously your holiness and our sinfulness. It's a shocking passage.

It's a slap in the face. It's a reminder that we have no right to view you as only a God of love. You are indeed a God of love and mercy and grace, but those attributes do not negate your holiness and righteousness. Father, this passage is not just a theological history.

It's a wake-up call. We take your grace for granted. We refuse to deal seriously with sin in our lives. We too often forget that it was our loathsome sin that sent Jesus to the cross. Please use this passage to increase our fear of God. We don't want to be scared of you, but we want to be so wowed by your holiness that we would despise our sin. Take this tough passage. Make us tender for Jesus. Keep my lips from error, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray.

Amen. You may be seated. In 1979, I received a call from Olive Grove Baptist Church in Creedmoor, North Carolina to be their pastor. I had been there for about a month, and one of the deacons came up to me and said, Doug, have you talked to Harvey yet? And I said, who's Harvey? He said, well, Harvey is the town atheist. And he said, all the pastors at Olive Grove have gone to him and tried to witness to him, and none were successful. He said, Harvey's kind of mean. He said, he smacked a Pentecostal preacher one time. And I thought to myself, well, I don't want to be out persecuted by a Pentecostal preacher.

And so I decided to take the challenge. And I prayed all that week, and prayed for Harvey's soul, and on that next Saturday, I went to see Harvey. I went to his house. He lived in an old country farmhouse. He was a farmer. He was a big guy, had white hair. He was about 65 years old, always was wearing overalls. And I walked up onto his front porch, and I could see him through the screen door. And he was cranked back in with his La-Z-Boy. He was sipping on a Budweiser.

He was watching a baseball game. So I knocked on the door, and he screamed, who is it? I said, it's Doug Agnew. I'm the new pastor down at Olive Grove. He said, what took you so long? He said, why hadn't you come earlier? And he said, which one of those hypocrites down at Olive Grove sicked you on me anyway?

And I said, well, my deacon Fred told me that you were an atheist. He said, alright, come on in. And so I went in, I sat down on the couch, and he clicked off the TV, and he said, alright, what you got? And I started sharing with him. I shared my testimony with him of how I came to know Christ as my Lord and as my Savior. Then I went through a gospel presentation with him. I shared with him about the atoning work of Jesus on the cross. I shared with him about the mighty power of the resurrection of Christ, and how he was resurrected to break the power of death over us. I shared with him about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that God changes hearts and brings us into a relationship with him.

Finally I got through. He said, okay, I got a passage of scripture for you. He said, Leviticus chapter 10. Well, I didn't have my whole Bible with me. All I had was my New Testament, and when he said that, I just kind of drew a blank. And he said, well, if that doesn't ring a bell with you, let me tell you what happened in this story. He said, Aaron had two sons, and these two sons were just little boys.

Their names were Nadab and Abihu. And he said they were nephews of Moses. And he said they came to the altar of God, and the scripture says that they offered strange fire.

They brought little torches to the altar. He said, now let me read you what happened. And he got up, and he walked over to his bookshelf, and he brought back a Bible. He opened it up to Leviticus chapter 10 verses 1 and 2, and then he read these words. Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took each his censer and put fire in it, and laid incense on it, and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. He looked me right in the eye, his face turned as red as a beet. Then he pointed his finger at me, and he said, that's your loving God.

That's your loving God. He said, here were two little boys, and they were just playing around. He said they hadn't murdered anybody, they hadn't raped anybody, they weren't guilty of child molestation.

He said they were just playing around. And he said, your loving God struck them down, and killed the two little boys that belonged to Aaron. I remember his hand shaking, and he pointed his finger at me again, and he said, I won't serve a God like that. He said, I won't serve a God like that, because this is not right. He said, this God did that which was wrong. He said, I'd rather go to hell myself for all of eternity, than to have to go to heaven with a God like that. He said, now you've had your say, so get out.

And I left the house that day, and I remember driving back home, and my head was just spinning. I had never seen that kind of animosity against God before. And I went right to my bedroom, and I got my scripture out, and I began to study Leviticus chapter 10. I found out that Nadab and Abihu were not little boys. They were priests, and the priests had to be over 30 years of age. I found out that the strange fire that they offered was not just what he thought. He thought they may have just taken some chemicals and put in it, and it was kind of going off like a sparkler.

No, this was much worse. What they were doing was they were offering probably fire to a false god on the altar of Jehovah. Folks, the Lord took their lives.

The Lord took their lives to show Israel that their God was holy and powerful and awesome, and that there was no hope outside of this God. Through my years as a pastor, I have heard countless people mock the standards that God gives us in His Word. And I've heard them say, well, my God would not condemn somebody for abortion. My God would not condemn somebody for homosexuality. My God would not condemn somebody for fornication.

Well, there's a problem with that. Their God that they're talking about is not the true God. It's a God that they've made up in their imagination. For the true God is the biblical God who tells us that He is holy and righteous and absolutely just. Is He a God of love?

Absolutely He is. For there's never been any display of love that was greater than what Jesus did for us on the cross. And I share that with you this morning because 2 Samuel chapter 6 is very similar to Leviticus chapter 10. God's judgment fell powerfully and quickly, and it was not immediately understood.

In fact, it was misunderstood. In fact, it even angered and frustrated David, and David was a man after God's own heart. Now, who am I to criticize David? Do I know the holiness of God better than David? Absolutely not.

Absolutely not. And that's why I praise God for this chapter. This chapter stings my heart. It makes me realize how weak and how sinful I really am. And it makes me realize this, that the God that we serve is holier than I ever imagined. Brothers and sisters, I'm here to tell you today, do not neglect the holiness of God. Let it humble you. Let it break you.

Let it convict you. And when you see it in its reality, when you realize just how holy God really is, then you begin to understand why grace is amazing and why Jesus Christ is our only hope. All right, three points I want to share with you. Point one is transporting the ark. Look with me again at verses one through four. David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30,000, and David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baal Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts, who sits enthroned on the cherubim. And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill.

And as Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark. I want you to notice that the scripture refers here to the ark and doesn't refer to it just as the ark, but as the ark of God. This was the ark of the covenant. It was placed in the Holy of Holies, which is the second room in the tabernacle of Moses.

It's about a three and a half foot long box that was gold plated. On the top of it was a lid called the mercy seat. On the top of the mercy seat, there were two sculptured cherubim that had wings that went back over their head.

They were pointed toward each other. On one day a year, and only one day a year, the high priest would go in to the tabernacle. He would go back behind the veil that went into the Holy of Holies, and he would approach the ark of the covenant. He would take with him a bowl of goat's blood, and when he went in, he would take a branch of hyssop, dip it down into the goat's blood, and then sprinkle it on the mercy seat. When that happened, the Shekinah glory would come.

The Shekinah glory is the bright shining presence of God in a cloud-like form. And it would come, it would hover between the wings of the cherubim, and when that happened, it assured the high priest that God had forgiven their sins for the year. Now, inside the ark of the covenant, there were three things that represent the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

There was the rod of Aaron that budded. There were the two tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments, and there was a jar of manna. The rod of Aaron that budded is a picture of the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus. Jesus is called what?

The Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one. Also then we have the two tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments. That is a picture of the righteousness and the holiness of our Lord and Savior. And then there's the jar of manna teaching us about the provision of Christ. The jar of manna is a picture of the Word of God that we need every single day.

Jesus said about himself, I am the bread of life. Now, the ark of the covenant was not God. The ark of the covenant is a representation of God. It is a prophetic picture of Jesus Christ to come.

Now, that's important. Now, in Psalm 24, when David was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God inspired him with words that were to be sung as the ark was to be brought in to Jerusalem. And I want to read you just some of these words. Picture this as the ark's coming in. Be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts.

He is the King of glory. So make no mistake about it, David is pumped up about bringing the ark of God into Jerusalem. He's excited about the people experiencing the presence of God in their midst. John Calvin said this, The ark was a standing witness that God wanted to dwell in the midst of his people.

So let me ask you something. Why is the honoring of the ark, why is that not idolatry? We are told in the second commandment that we are not to make into ourselves any graven images. So what's the difference between a gold plated three and a half foot long box called the Ark of the Covenant and a stone statue that was made by the Philistines that they called their god Dagon.

What's the difference? Well the Philistines would bow down before that stone statue and they would worship it as if it were a god. The Ark of the Covenant was not god and the people knew it was not god.

They knew it was a representation. Kind of like a sacrament. They worshiped it in the way we would use a sacrament like the Lord's Supper.

When we celebrate in the Lord's Supper we don't worship the bread and the wine but we use it to help us to focus upon Jesus. And folks that's what the ark did. It was a representation of god that was used to focus Israel on Jehovah. Alright when David became king where was the ark? The ark for 20 years had been in a town called Keirith Jerom or Baal Judas the same town. And it was in the home of a priest whose name was Abinadab.

And the priest had a son whose name was Eliezer that was his oldest son. And Eliezer was taking care of the ark. He was watching over the ark and he watched it with his very life for 20 years. Now why was the ark there at the house of Abinadab in Baal Judah? Because several years before this the Philistines and the Israelites got into a terrible battle. And the Philistines won that battle. And when they did they took the ark and they brought it back to their camp.

They were all excited about it. Until all of a sudden those that were around the ark broke out in cancerous tumors. And they realized man this is dangerous.

We got to get this thing out of here. So they built a cart. And they took the ark and they put it up on top of the cart. And then they hitched it to cows. And they put the cows in the direction of Israel and they sent the cows down the road. And the cows went down the road. They went to a city in Israel called Beshamesh.

There in Beshamesh the people got all excited. The Israelites did the ark of the covenant is back. And they got so excited that they went over and they looked into the ark.

70 people did that and their lives were taken right on the spot. And they said this is too dangerous for us. And so they called on Abinadab and they said you come and get this ark and take it to yourself.

We can't handle it. And so Abinadab got the ark of the covenant, brought it back to his house and it was there for 20 years. So David became king. And when David became king he set up Jerusalem as the new capital of Israel. And one of the first things that he wanted to do was to bring the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem. He had built a tabernacle and placed it up on Mount Zion and there's where the ark would be.

He was greatly excited about this. And so he said to his men go to the house of Abinadab, go to his house, get the ark and bring it back to Jerusalem. That takes us to point two. The holiness of God treated carelessly. Look at verses five through seven. And David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord.

With songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it. For the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah and God struck him down there because of his error. And he died there beside the ark of God. Folks it is a good thing that David wanted the ark of God to be in Jerusalem. He was excited about the presence of God being in the midst of his people. So he got singers and musicians and dancers. So as the ark of the covenant was being brought in, they could vocally and visibly be worshipping the Lord.

It was an exciting time for him. So he sent a message to the house of Abinadab that the ark of God was to be brought to Jerusalem. And Abinadab's two youngest sons, Uzzah and Ahayo, took the ark. They placed it on a cart. And they were taking the cart back to Jerusalem.

Ahayo was in the front. Uzzah was on the side of the ark. And they were marching with the ark all the way back to Jerusalem.

Now let me ask you something. Why was the ark transported on a cart? If you go back to Numbers chapter 4, you will see that in Numbers chapter 4, we have explicit directions on how the ark was supposed to be transported. First of all, the ark was to be covered over with goatskins so that nobody could look into it. And then it was to be taken, placed on the sanctified shoulders of the priesthood and to be carried. Now on the top of that ark, on each corner, there was a round handle.

It was made of bronze. And they would take poles, two poles, and they'd put them through those handles. And then the priest would get on, four priests, get on one corner of the ark, each one of them.

They would pick it up, put it on their shoulders, and then they would carry it wherever it needed to go. Folks, they had instructions here that were plain as day. There's not an option here. There's not a choice here on how it's to be done. They have explicit instructions.

God says this is how you do it. But how did they do it? They did it by putting the ark on a cart.

That blows my mind. Why did they do it that way? Who were they copying? They were copying the Philistines. Folks, they were getting instructions from the pagan world instead of from the Word of God. The Philistines put the ark on a cart driven by cows. And the cows took the ark all the way to Beshemesh.

What was going on? Well, the house of Abinadab said, let's do what's expedient. Hey, this worked for the Philistines, so surely it'll work for us. We here at Grace Church believe in what is called the Regulative Principle of Worship. And the Regulative Principle of Worship says that you can't just worship God in any way that you choose to worship Him. That you must worship God in the way that He prescribes for us to worship Him in Scripture. So you don't worship God just because this makes you feel good. You don't worship God just because this is a great way of entertainment. You don't worship God because this feels pragmatic.

It feels like it might work for us. No, no, no. You worship God only in the way that He prescribes us to worship Him. So what did David and the sons of Abinadab do wrong? They followed the world and they neglected the Word of God. John Calvin said this about this problem. He said this was simply a result of the negligence of the previous generation. This shows us what happens when people are not used to participating in the worship of God.

Calvin said the cause of the failure was that the people increasingly adulterated themselves and were not accustomed to the worship of God and were ignorant of the simple elements of it. I remember years ago someone asked me, he said, Doug, why don't we have Children's Church here at Grace? I said, do you not know that when you have people that are teaching the little children, those little children are getting all the teachers' attention and they love that attention and they get excited about it and they have a good time and they're entertained and it's kind of like preschool but it's on Sunday and it's just a great time for them.

They hear some Bible stories and so forth. And besides that, then the parents don't have to worry about their kids for that hour and they can just focus more on the sermon. And I said, no, we don't want to have the Children's Church here.

And the reason is this, we want our little children with their families. And we want those little children learning as little kids how important it is that on this particular day, on the Lord's Day, on the Christian Sabbath, that we get together and we worship. And that worship is important. That worship's not about us. That worship's about the Lord. And we get together and we enjoy just experiencing His presence.

And we get together and we realize how great and how powerful and how holy this God is. We want our children to experience that, to know that this day is not just about them. That this day is about the Lord. And you know, it has blessed my heart to see little children learning that from the time that they're just very, very small. And so that when they grow up, they know that this day is not about them.

That this day is about Jesus. We don't want to cheat our kids out of the privilege of deep, sweet, no-nonsense worship. So many churches in America have moved to entertainment instead of worship. They have moved from God glorifying truth and exposition of Scripture.

They have moved away from that in order that they might have motivational talks and self-help lectures. Folks, we're not too concerned about just pleasing people. We are concerned about glorifying God and helping you and helping me to walk holy before our Lord. I've said it many times over the last few months, but I believe the church in America is getting ready to experience persecution like maybe we have never experienced it before.

I think we're getting ready to be shaken. And if you're in a situation where you have just been subjected to entertainment as worship, where you've gotten self-help lectures instead of exposition of the Word of God, then I have a feeling a lot of those people are going to bail out and quit. I want this church to have the same attitude that Peter and James and John had when they were in Jerusalem and they were under great persecution. I want to read you from Acts 5, verses 40 through 42. It says, When they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for his name.

And every day in the temple and from house to house they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. That verse 41 blows my mind, for here they are under heavy persecution. Wicked men are threatening them. Wicked men are whipping them. Wicked men are beating them. Wicked men are restraining them.

And when they leave, what do they do? They rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ's sake. That makes me realize that I've got a long way to go, because often when I feel persecution coming on, my first response is not joy like it should be, but anger.

I need to get to the point where it's joy. Back to the text. The ark is being carried on the cart. It's going headed toward Jerusalem, and all of a sudden the oxen, one of them, steps in a hole. And the cart begins to shake, and the ark begins to totter. And when that happens, Uzzah reaches up and he steadies the ark to keep it from falling.

And as soon as he touches the ark, just like that, he kills over dead. Now what happened to him? Have a heart attack? Seizure? Stroke?

No, no. The scripture says that God struck Uzzah down. Now what do we think about that, folks?

I think most often times when we read that, boy, that's a little radical. Man, that's a little over the top. Uzzah was trying to do a good thing. Uzzah was reaching up and stopping that ark because he just didn't want it to hit the ground. He didn't want it to get dirty.

He was trying to protect it. What was God saying, folks? God was saying, Israel, you don't understand my holiness. Israel, you treat sin as trivial. Israel, you think justice is unnecessary. God was saying it would have been better for the ark to have dropped off in the mud than for Uzzah to have reached up and touched it.

Why? Because the mud's neutral. The mud's not sinful, but Uzzah is not neutral. Uzzah was sinful.

Uzzah was sinful. And he cannot treat God with such negligence. Folks, whether we understand God's holiness or not, we will not be allowed to mock it. Roger Ellsworth said this, In Scripture, God has clearly revealed His holiness to us, even as He did to Israel of old. Because of His holiness, He cannot dwell with sin and will not allow sinners to enter heaven.

He is on record as saying that nothing that defiles will be allowed to enter there. I tell you, that makes the gospel glorious, doesn't it? That shows us that we will never be good enough to please God.

That makes us run to the cross for forgiveness. My third point is servile fear, verses 8 through 11. And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah.

That place is called Perez-Uzzah to this day. And David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, how can the ark of the Lord come to me? So David was not willing to take the ark of the Lord into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. And the ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months. And the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and all his household. Dale Ralph Davis said, this passage is one of those passages that makes us know that the Bible was not written by human invention.

That the Bible is actually the Word of God. Because no human wanting to uplift God would have written this story out. When we read this story, we, like David, don't understand God's reaction. We think this story makes God look mean. Uzzah was just trying to help. So he reached up to steady the ark, and when he reached up to steady the ark, God killed him. Why?

Wow! We say to ourselves, that's over the top. That's just tough. Uzzah was just trying to keep the ark from falling on the ground. He was trying to do that which was right. And here David understands nothing. He doesn't understand why God reacted the way he did. He feels just like Uzzah. He would have probably done the same thing.

He would have reached up and tried to steady the ark. Now, he was afraid of God. Folks, aren't we supposed to fear God? Doesn't the Bible teach us that Christians are to have a fear of God?

Yes, we are. Let me tell you something about the fear of God that is true fear of God for the believer. Our fear of God ought to be an all-filled respect. It's the kind of fear that a little boy has when he looks up to a godly daddy. And he looks up to that godly daddy and he says, I love you and I don't want to disappoint you. And the little boy doesn't run away from his daddy.

He runs to his daddy. That's not what David was doing. David was running from God. He wasn't running to God.

He doesn't understand why Uzzah was struck down because he doesn't understand what God has commanded. Folks, this kind of fear is called servile fear. It is the fear that a slave has when he's scared to death of his master, a mean-spirited master who beats him and abuses him. And so every chance he gets, he runs from that master because he hates him.

He doesn't want anything to do with him. That's not how we're to fear God. We are to fear God as a little boy who loves his daddy and trusts his daddy and can run to him. So David, in fear, sent the Ark of the Covenant back to the house of Obed-Edom. He left it there instead of trying to bring it on into Jerusalem. He left it there so he could spend some time in the Word of God. And for three months, David went away, got off by himself, got into the Word of God to find out exactly what they had done wrong. I want to share something in closing with you that Richard Phillips said. And listen carefully to this. I thought this was great.

He said, C.S. Lewis' children's tale, The Silver Chair, provides a fitting illustration to conclude the lesson that David learned about the holiness of God. Using the biblical image of a great lion named Aslan, Lewis represents the holy majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. The girl Jill encounters this lion at a time when she is parched with a thirst in a forest. Approaching the bubbling sound of a stream, she is horrified to see Aslan's menacing form resting before it.

Like David, Jill was arrested by holiness. So she started to back away. To her surprise, the lion beckoned her to come forward. If you're thirsty, he said, you may drink. Jill was very thirsty, but the lion was simply too frightening. Afraid of his holiness, she stammered, I dare not come and drink. The lion answered, then you will die of thirst. Oh dear, cried Jill. But then she reasoned, I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.

To her shock, the lion replied, there is no other stream. So it is with the holy God who revealed his wrath in the death of Uzzah as through his holy son Jesus Christ. We must humble ourselves to come in the only way that God has offered, the way of salvation through the blood of the cross. We may set the gospel aside, but there is no other way to avoid the death experienced prematurely by Uzzah for his sin. We must be willing to worship God as he demands, a holy God who rejects the sinful inventions of man. And we must seek his salvation in the way that he offers. Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we've been studying David's life for months now. We have seen him filled with faith and victorious over wicked enemies. We've seen him writing psalms under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but today's episode is different. David is bewildered by your response to Uzzah touching the ark. He doesn't understand because he was not as grounded in the scripture as he should have been. David has always loved you.

He's always wanted to glorify you. But in this story, David is scared of you. This is not the right kind of fear.

This is not just awe and respect. This is debilitating fear, servile fear. Father, this story is recorded that we might not just see his dilemma, but that we would see his solution.

His solution came when he pushed his emotions to the side and began to devour God's Word. May we never forget that. The Word of God builds a godly fear of God, not a debilitating fear of God. Help us to fear you, Lord, as a godly father, not an angry judge. That is the privilege that we have as your children. For it's in the precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.