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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week 7 of our look through 1
and 2 Samuel. We're going to look at 2 Samuel chapter 6 the next few days. It's
a chapter.

It's all about God's holiness. It's all about God's presence in our lives. When
life gets difficult, I need God's holiness.

I need to understand the presence of God. When life gets good, I need God's
holiness. Holiness is who God is.

And even when I don't understand it all, I can trust in a God who does
understand it all. Now what does it mean for God to be holy? It means that he is
separate.

He is distinct. What does it mean for God to be holy? It means that he is
perfectly trustworthy.

He's different than you and I. He is a holy God. And you and I, we tend to
struggle at times with how we respond to God's holiness.

I think that before we become followers of Jesus, sometimes we're afraid of
God's holiness. We try to hold it at arm's length and then after we become
followers of Jesus, sometimes we become too familiar with God's holiness. We
tend to take it for granted.

When you look at 2 Samuel chapter 6, it's the story of the Ark of the Covenant
and something that happens with the Ark. And as you walk through this story, you
learn some things about how you and I respond to God's holiness, how we can
respond in a new and a fresh way to God's holiness in a daily way that makes a
difference in our lives. Now 2 Samuel chapter 6 talking about the Ark, if you
want the whole story, you have to go back to 1 Samuel chapter 6, which we looked
at in this study, which is really the beginning of this story.

You might remember back in 1 Samuel chapter 6, the Ark had been captured. The
people of God saw it go into the enemy lands, the Philistines' lands. They
became sick because the Ark was there.

Their idol fell down before the Ark. They sent the Ark back and eventually the
Ark comes to the house of Abinadab. Well now here in 2 Samuel chapter 6, we are
40 years later and David has become king.

He's king in Jerusalem and he goes to bring the Ark up to Jerusalem. As he does
this, we learn some things about holiness and how you and I deal with the
holiness of God. This is especially significant for those who are in ministry in
any way, who are helping others to understand God's holiness.

It's especially significant for those who are new believers, who are just
beginning to understand what it means to live in God's holiness, to live this
life that God has for us. We learn some things from David and from all the
people in this occurrence that happens in this chapter. They're going to get the
Ark.

They're going to take it back up to Jerusalem, but there are some problems. The
first thing that happens is, we learn this from David, is David takes God's
holiness for granted. Listen to what happens beginning in verse 1, "David again
brought together out of Israel chosen men, 30,000 and all.

He and all his men set out for Bala of 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 that are on the Ark. They set the Ark of God on a
new cart, and they brought it up from the house of Abinadab, which was on the
hill. Uzzah and Ahiah, the sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the
Ark of God on it, and Ahiah was walking in front of it.

David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before
the Lord, with songs and with harps and lyres and tambourines and cisterns and
cymbals. " This is a great celebration, isn't it, that we're reading about here?
It sounds awesome.

The problem is, this celebration that's happening is setting up the people for a
disaster. God is holy. He is a holy God.

He loves you. He loves me as a father. But that does not mean he is not greater
than anything I can possibly imagine.

And to take God's holiness for granted is to say, "Really? I mean, God said to
do this, but really? How could it be that important?

I mean, he loves me as a father. It would be okay if I did this. It would be
okay if I got involved in this.

" How does David take God's holiness for granted here? He does it by putting the
ark on a new cart and carrying it up that way. Now, the scripture says that the
ark, because it's holy, is to be put on poles and carried that way.

The scripture says very clearly no one is to touch the ark, and putting it on
poles and having people carry it that way made sure that they were kept a
distance from the ark so that it would not be touched. But David, he doesn't do
that here. He probably says, "Well, it's a new cart.

I mean, I did the best that I could," but he doesn't do what God told him to do.
How do you know when you're taking God's holiness for granted, when you've got a
better idea than God? Oh, it might be a godly idea, you think.

You might be doing it in God's name and for God's sake, but God said to do this,
but you're going to do it this way. People do that in relationships. They say,
"Well, God said to be married, but I think it'd be better for us to live
together, so that's what we're going to do.

I mean, we feel holy in doing this because we really love each other. " And so
they don't make the commitment of marriage a lifetime commitment that God tells
us to make. You're taking God's holiness for granted.

People do it in ministry all the time. God said that I'm supposed to have this
kind of integrity in ministry, but I'm working so hard for God. It's okay if I
slip a little bit in this area with finances.

It's okay if I allow myself this little sin in this sexual area. It's okay if I
allow myself this. And you're taking God's holiness for granted.

And whenever we do that, we're setting ourselves up for a disaster. It doesn't
always come immediately. And so you think, "Well, I'm getting away from what God
wants me to do, and I'm getting away with what I have decided to do, but it
doesn't work out that way," because the second thing immediately happens here.

The second thing that happens, it happens to Uzzah. Uzzah saw God's holiness as
common, and he faces punishment for that. In verse 6, "When they came to the
threshing floor of Nahor, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God,
because the oxen stumbled.

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. " Now we read
this, and it seems like such a huge punishment for such a small sin.

And yet God had been very clear, "I don't want you to touch the ark. " He'd been
very clear about how people handled his holiness, and he did not want it to be
handled as something common, as something common in such a way that you would
feel like it's much a part of life as anything else is a part of life in this
world. No, God is separate.

God is unique. God is close, but he's not common, and we have to be careful not
to confuse those two. Now you might remember from the beginning of this chapter,
Uzzah was one of Abinadab's sons, so he'd grown up with the ark.

It is easy to begin to see what has become familiar as something that is common.
One of the great challenges of faith is becoming familiar with the things of
God, the work of God, without seeing them as common. Becoming familiar with the
fact that God's going to work miracles when we come together to worship him
without seeing it as merely something common, as something that is merely a
matter of human emotion or human psychology, but realizing God is at work.

Becoming familiar with the miracles of God out on the mission field without
seeing them as something common, something that you might even become cynical
about. One of the great challenges of faith was a great failure for Uzzah here.
He reacted in such a way that he paid for it with his own life.

You and I, when we see God's holiness as common, we may not pay for it with our
physical life, but we pay for it with our spiritual life. We lose out on what
God wants to be doing in our lives. Never see God's holiness as common.

God is working miracles every day, and one of the ways I can keep my heart
refreshed is by reminding myself that they are indeed, they are miracles. So
Uzzah dies that day. And then we learn a third thing that happens, and how do we
respond to God's holiness?

Third thing that happens, David reacts to God's holiness with fear. In verse 8,
"Then David was angry because the Lord's wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and
to this day that place is called Peres Uzzah. David was afraid of the Lord that
day, and he said, 'How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?

' He was not willing to take the ark of the Lord to be with him in the city of
David. Instead, he took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom, the Gittite. " Now
it says Peres Uzzah here.

That means the breach of Uzzah, the sin of Uzzah. That was the name of that
place from that time on. And David sees this happen.

He wants to bring the ark up, but he says, "I can't do it. I can't have the ark
that close to me. It's something to be afraid of.

" He responds to God's holiness with fear. He tries to hold the holiness of God
at arm's length. We spend more of our lives living here, like David, than we
would imagine.

Afraid of what God might do in our lives. Afraid of what His holiness might mean
in our lives. Afraid of what I might have to give up, or afraid of what God
might ask me to do, or afraid of who I might become.

Afraid of how other people might respond to it. God's holiness is such a great
thing. It's very easy to become afraid of it.

In fact, most of God's servants, if not all of God's servants at one time or
another, have been afraid of His holiness. David responds with fear here, and
that fear causes him to go in the wrong direction. Instead of seeking God and
saying, "God, how can I balance out my fear with a sense of Your greatness?

" He tries to hold God at arm's length, and many of you are living there right
now. Right now in your life, God wants to do something great, but you're holding
it at arm's length because it's a scary thing. Well, just remember that this
holy God is a God who loves you.

Yes, you need to respect Him deeply, but you don't have to be afraid of Him. You
can fear God, have a deep respect for Him, without being afraid of God, without
trembling in such a way that you want to hold Him at arm's length. David didn't
learn that in this moment.

Tomorrow we're going to see how he does learn that. But as we end the day, I
want to just spend a few moments talking to this holy God that we've been
talking about today. Would you pray with me?

And just pray, "Lord, help me to respond and understand what it means for You to
be holy. " Not to be afraid of Your holiness. Not to think of Your holiness as
something common, but Lord, to invite it into my life.

To recognize that Your presence wants to be with me, that Your greatness wants
to be there in my life. And Lord, part of me is afraid of that because I know
how imperfect I am, but there's another part of me that wants to invite that,
because I know who You are, and I know that You want through Your grace, through
Jesus, to be a part of my life. So Lord, help me to learn how to invite that in.

And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, tomorrow we're going to continue to
learn about our response to God's holiness from this experience with the ark.