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Welcome back to our study of First and Second Samuel. This is week seven, day
two. Yesterday we began a look at this chapter, chapter six, that talks about
understanding God's holiness through this experience that they had with the ark.

Yesterday we saw David taking God's holiness for granted and Uzzah seeing God's
holiness is common and then David reacting to God's holiness in fear, and
because of his fear he doesn't bring the ark to Jerusalem, he puts it in the
house of Obed-Edom. So then a fourth thing happens, Obed-Edom is blessed by
God's holiness. In verse 11, "The ark of the Lord remained in the house of
Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months and the Lord blessed him and his entire
household.

" It's the key teaching really in many ways of this whole chapter, that God's
holiness brings God's blessings into our lives. Of course it does. The closer
you get to God, the more you understand who God is, the more you live in his
presence, the more you enjoy God's blessings.

You can't enjoy God's blessings when you're running from God or holding God at
arm's length. The only way to enjoy God's blessings is to live in his presence.
And for you and I as followers of Jesus, we live in his presence because of the
grace given to us in Jesus, because of the Holy Spirit that he sent into our
lives.

We don't have to go and find an ark to live in the presence of God and the
holiness of God. But even as followers of Jesus, we can try to run from that.
It's when we run to him that we find this blessing.

And Obed-Edom found his house blessed and blessed and blessed. Now I don't know
if he wanted the ark there or not, but his king said the ark's going to be there
and he found many, many blessings that came out of that. And David sees what
happens.

And because he sees what happens, he realizes, a man after God's own heart, I
want those blessings as well. And so then he turns. David began this chapter
taking God's holiness for granted, and then he becomes afraid of God's holiness.

But now he turns and he celebrates God's holiness. That's the place we want to
live. Blessed by God's holiness and celebrating God's holiness.

Listen to what happens in verse 12 all the way down to verse 19. Now King David
was told, "The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has
because of the ark of God. " So David went down and brought up the ark of God
from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing.

When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he
sacrificed a bowl and a fattened calf. David wearing a linen ephod danced before
the Lord with all his might, while he and his entire household of Israel brought
up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. They brought the
ark of the Lord and they 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.
After he'd finished sacrificing the burnt offering and fellowship offerings, he
blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. Then he gave a loaf of
bread, a cake of dates, and a cake of raisins to each person and the whole crowd
of Israelites, both men and women, and all the people went to their homes.

So there's this great day of great celebration. Notice David has learned. It
says those who were carrying the ark of the Lord.

So you get the sense now they're carrying it on the poles like God had commanded
them to. He celebrates God's holiness by doing what God told him to do. That's
one of the ways we celebrate God's holiness.

Doing what God tells us to do should not be a burden. It should be a celebration
in our lives because it's living out who he is in this world. I understand, for
me too, sometimes it can feel like a burden, but when it does, I know I've got
it wrong.

I'm not thinking right. It's a celebration of God's holiness to live out God's
commands in our lives. Now notice David takes this almost too far.

When those who had carried the ark of the Lord in verse 13 had taken six steps,
he sacrificed a bowl and a fattened calf. It doesn't say here whether it was
just the first six steps or every six steps, but I get this picture. Every six
steps he made a sacrifice all the way up to Jerusalem.

He wanted to make sure that he did it right this time. He celebrated God's
holiness. And the scripture says that he danced before the Lord, David danced
before the Lord with all of his might.

That's celebrating God's holiness. This moment of joy that he got to be in God's
presence and he just exuberantly expressed this joyfulness in God's presence.
You see the celebration of God's presence in this passage in a number of ways
through the sacrifices that were made.

Sacrifices of bowls and sacrifices of burnt offerings and fellowship offerings.
Now you might think, "Well, that wasn't a celebration for the bowls. " I
understand that, but it was a celebration for the people.

It was what God had told them to do because that celebration, that sacrifice
looks forward to what Jesus is going to do for us one day. We don't make
sacrifices like this anymore, animal sacrifices, because those animal sacrifices
just look forward to the sacrifice of Jesus. And since his sacrifice has been
made, we don't need those any longer.

You and I, when we think of celebrating God's holiness, we celebrate his
sacrifice, the gift he's given us in Jesus. And we celebrate the sacrifices that
we can make for him, the offering of ourselves as a living holy sacrifice to
him. That's how you celebrate God's holiness.

I love this picture in verse 19, "He gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates, a
cake of raisins to each person. " You celebrate God's holiness through giving.
Every one of them, they had their needs met that day.

They celebrated this bread and the dates and the raisins. They celebrated that
day that God was there, that God's presence was with them. And all the people
went to their homes.

What a joyful day to come together and to celebrate together who God is. You
celebrate God's presence through keeping his commands. You celebrate God's
presence by rejoicing in his presence.

You celebrate God's presence by sacrificing, recognizing his sacrifice and
sacrificing for him. You celebrate God's presence through giving, giving to
others. But not everybody understood what happened that day.

Not everybody understood this celebration of God's holiness. When you celebrate
God's holiness, not everyone's going to get it. So, McCall, David's wife,
misunderstood God's holiness.

In verse 16, "The ark of the Lord was entering the city of David, and as it was
entering, McCall, daughter of David, watched from a window. And when she saw
King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart. "
Verse 20, "When David returned home to bless his household, McCall, daughter of
Saul, came out to meet him and said, 'How the king of Israel has distinguished
himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any
vulgar fellow would.

' David said to McCall, 'It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your
father or anyone else from his house, when he appointed me ruler over the Lord's
people Israel. I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more
undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.

But by the slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor. ' And McCall,
daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. " That last verse,
verse 23, shows how deeply serious this misunderstanding was.

What she should have seen as God's holiness, she despised in her heart. What she
should have seen as a celebration before God, she said, "Oh, you're acting
undignified. You're not acting like a king.

You're acting like a dancer. When you don't understand God's holiness, and you
see someone else celebrating it, the natural human reaction is to make fun of it
because it's so foreign to you. You just don't get it.

You don't get that kind of celebration. It's not a part of your life. You see
another example of this in Acts chapter 2, when God's holiness came down on the
day of Pentecost, and the people of God, the apostles, and all those in the
upper room that day rushed out into the streets, and they began to prophesy.

There were many who saw the miracle that day. Three thousand were saved and
baptized that day. You might remember in Acts chapter 2, there were others who,
although it was early in the morning, said, "Oh, these people have been
drinking.

They're just drunk. " It was one of the greatest works of God, but all they
could see was their cynicism. All they could see was maybe these people are
drunk.

Because it was so foreign to them, all they could do was make fun of it. When
you misunderstand God's holiness, when you struggle with the holiness of God in
your life, you can have some very negative reactions. I think sometimes it
depends on your stage of life.

I've noticed in my own life, in other people's lives, when you're younger and
you don't understand God's holiness, you tend to become cynical about God's
holiness. You tend to make fun of it. You tend to make fun of the people of God.

Because you don't understand it, you make fun of it. When you're older, you tend
to become more apathetic about the holiness of God. You get sort of a "been
there, done that, seen that" kind of a feel.

In either case, you're misunderstanding the holiness of God. You're
misunderstanding the greatness of God and what he is doing. We all struggle with
that at times.

You may be in the midst of that struggle, because you're holding God's holiness
at arm's length. You're scared of it. You've become cynical about God's
holiness.

You've become apathetic about God's holiness. I want to invite you today. Start
to celebrate it in a brand new way.

Stop taking it for granted or seeing it as common. Start celebrating, enjoying
the blessings of God's holiness in your life. Our Father, as we pray, we pray to
you as a holy God who has a holy love for us.

And we are grateful. We are grateful for who you are, the greatness of your
love, the greatness of your person, the greatness of your power. And we spend a
moment right now sitting in your presence, recognizing that even though we don't
totally understand the depth of your love, we never will.

We don't totally see the greatness of your character. We never will, because
we're not you, God. We get to touch it.

We get to have a sense of it, not through the Ark of the Covenant like they did,
but through the life of Jesus, through his miracles, through his teaching,
through his death, through his resurrection, through the Holy Spirit that you've
sent into our lives. So right now, Lord, let this be a holy day because we live
in your holy presence. Let us invite, let us celebrate your presence in our
lives, we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen.