Abide – 2 Samuel 6
The Ark Comes to Jerusalem
Welcome everybody, welcome to Abide. This is a time that we all set aside together to just show up, you know. There's many things that we do in a day to keep us healthy. Like brushing your teeth, washing your face, taking a shower, taking a walk, eating healthy, reading, going to class. And you know what? Prayer and connecting with God is one of those daily things. Maybe you don't always feel like doing it. But it's something if you give it time and space day after day after day, your heart stays connected. It gets purified it, it gets cleaned and washed and so this is a good thing. And so just showing up for these moments to listen to become available to God are so precious. So, thank you for making this time to be with me, to be with Heather, she's playing with us; to commune with the Father.
And so, let's settle into this space. Hopefully you've found a chair to sit on, a couch to lay down on, a bed. Or maybe you're on a walk. But it's best if you can be alone and just quiet down the outside world a bit. Let's take a deep breath in together through these lungs that God has given us and let's exhale that air out that life-giving presence, that air, out. And let's breathe in again and breathe out. And just become aware of your body. As we just gently observe the parts of our body, the head, the shoulders, the back, all the way down to our feet. You might just begin to notice where you might be gripping or feel tension or stress or weight. Now is a good time to just allow the places in the body where you're storing up stress, sorrow, fatigue, soreness – allow these places in the body to soften, to release, and to let go. Allowing the body to grow still in the presence of God, surrendering ourselves, body, heart and mind to this space and to this time.
Our gratitude practice today will be about awareness, and it often is. We often reflect back on moments of the day or the week. But today, we're going to practice being aware of the things right in front of our face. And it's so interesting that the things that are right in front of us are the things we actually don't see. These are the things we pay attention to the least in life. So, as you and I sit in our spaces in our rooms, what's in your room? Maybe there's a plant on the table, alive and growing. Maybe there's a window that you're looking out and it's a cloudy day, or maybe the tree limbs are swaying in the wind, or maybe the sun is bright. Maybe you're sitting in a pile of books and papers, or you look over and there's a blanket or a quilt that you've had for so many years. Maybe there's a tea stain on the couch, or there's footprints on the floor from dirty feet coming in. What is right in front of you? We spend most of our days straining to see God, seeing Him in a cloud, or in a song, or just beyond the dark. But what if we can see God right here in our room? What if we can see God through the glass of water that's next to us? God giving himself to us, God giving herself to us, pouring out our spaces for us to live and breathe and dwell in. One of my greatest friends, Julian of Norwich, who I've never met, but only read about a wonderful saint. She talks of God being as close to us as our clothes are on. So may your clothes that are holding your body, the environment that you're just sitting in here right now today, may it become alive, the colour, the temperature. May you know that this space is infused with God. So, let's spend a moment now just to be more present to what is right in front of us and sit in gratitude for this holy ground, this very ordinary holy space. Thank you for just sitting with me and allowing us to become more aware of how alive we are, and the gift of being alive.
Today we will be spending time in 2 Samuel 6. So, if you've been journeying with me in the life of David, he is now on the throne. And Saul has died, and David is beginning his rule. And so today we'll be reading about the Ark being brought to Jerusalem. And today, I'll read part of the Scripture and will have a time to reflect, and then another part of Scripture and a time to reflect. And then we'll read the Scripture in its entirety. So once again, we'll be in 2 Samuel 6:1-23 in its entirety, but we'll break it up into some parts, OK? Let's just take in another deep breath to settle in, to prepare ourselves for this living word.
David again brought together out of Israel chosen men – thirty thousand in all. He and all his men set out from Baalah 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 brought it from the House of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the Ark of God on it, and Ahio 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, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
This is such a huge time in history, as the Ark has been in storage for about 20 years. And now that David is king, he wants the Ark, which is a symbol of the throne of God. He wants that to come into the forefront of the people. This is how he wants to rule. This is what he wants to be the focal point. The Ark holds three sacred things. It holds the tablets, which were the instructions for God's people through Moses, it holds pieces of manna to symbolize God's provision for His people, and it holds the rod of Aaron, Aaron's staff, which symbolizes God making away, Him saving his people. So the Ark is a centering God structure. It's a reminder that God is not abstract, but that God has physical qualities, that He enters the affairs of His people. He's not a distant God, but that He's entered in. David desires that this Ark, this throne of God, that it would shape the way that Israel thinks, the way that the people live, and that as the culture might creep in, that the Ark would be a way in which people would be centered and know that God is our king, now and forever.
And so, I'd like us to just reflect. What would it look like for the Ark to come right up in the center of our lives? David desires to put this throne of God right in the middle, right in the center of his kingship, and what he's responsible for. This is what's most important. What would it look like for you? How would it change the way you look at a day? The way you prioritize a day? If God, and all that he stands for, provision, salvation, instruction, what if God and all his amazing qualities are what you centered your life around? So, I'm going to give us a moment to think how this structure, this Ark, can somehow make its way into the center of our lives. That this God, this king, that we worship, would take its rightful place. Take a moment. God's taking that center stage. We'll continue reading.
So, when they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and he took hold of the Ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because his irreverent act; therefore, God struck him down, and he died there beside the Ark of God.
Then David was angry because the Lord's wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah.
David was afraid of the Lord that day and 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. And instead, he took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. 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.
Now 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 and [he] sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
And as the Ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.
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. And after he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. And then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates, a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
When David returned home to bless his household, Michal 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!”
And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his household 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 these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honour.”
And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.
So, this story gets more and more exciting. We get to see as the Ark is being brought forth to be the center. We get a close look of of three people and how they respond to this Ark to this God: Uzzah, David and Michal. So, we'll spend some time with them and reflecting and wondering how we respond to God.
Uzzah doesn't seem to take very seriously that he is a part of carrying the Ark in. You've often hear it said ‘Fear the Lord’ or ‘He is holy’ or ‘Beware of God’. God is refiner’s fire, he is mystery. And it is said that if the Ark is to be carried, it is not to be touched by any human hands beside the priests and is to be carried on the shoulders. And here we see that Uzzah and David and the men have prepared a new cart for the Ark to ride on, and the cart is slipping, and Uzzah tries to catch it and he is struck down and he dies. Wow, David is really freaked out and he is angry, and he's confused and he says, ‘Hey? Let's stop this whole thing for a couple weeks. I don't know what to think.’ So it's important for us to know that being in the presence of a holy God is not something to take lightly. It's important to know who God is, to fear the Lord, and to know what we are doing and how we worship is a holy act. Uzzah is an example of wanting to contain God, or box God in, or ‘I sort of understand how this works here’. But we never will. And so Uzzah is a wonderful example of us to fear the Lord. This is holy ground.
We see David here, angry, he's crying out, he's confused. He's not sure how he should bring this Ark forward, and he rests and waits. And then he senses the Lord’s blessing to bring this Ark forward and we have the Ark being carried in its proper way. We have the sacrifices being done in their proper way. We have David setting aside his kingly robes to put on an ephod and worship. In David, we see that God in his divine revelation, as He reveals himself to his people, the people's response is to be worship. Our response is worship. And so, David dances, doesn't seem to care what other people think or keeping the kingly status. He looks nothing like Saul, the previous king. He gets lost in God, steps out of himself. You know there's nothing more advanced or more basic than just worshipping God in humility and honesty. God is God and we respond.
And in this response of David, in this atmosphere that David is in, the people are celebrating and there's a feast and you just sense this beautiful image of the holiness of God and the responding to God's provisions. As God is put into the center of people's lives, people are able to remember how God has been faithful to them in the past. The people feast and celebrate and rejoice.
And our final character, Michal, Saul's daughter, David's wife, she is an onlooker, she's observing this and she's embarrassed. She begins to criticize, evaluate, critique. I wonder how often in worship and in life, we just sit back and observe and make comments and not enter in. And so, I ask each of us today afresh, how do we want to respond to God? To his divine revelation, whether it's in the history of the Ark, whether it's in Christ himself sacrificing himself for us. How do we want to respond? What will our worship look like? Will we continue to try to manage God or keep him small in a box like Uzzah? Will we stand on the sidelines or up high above and look down and criticize and make comments and try to stay with the culture and what they would think. Or do we want to be on the ground and dancing and celebrating and forgetting ourselves and being consumed by who God is. How do we want to respond to God?
I'm going to read this passage through one more time for us and imagine yourself in the story.
David again brought forth together out of Israel chosen men – thirty thousand in all. He and all his men set out from Baalah 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 brought it from the House of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the Ark of God on it, and Ahio 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, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
And when they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and he took hold of the Ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because his irreverent act; therefore, God struck him down, and he died there beside the Ark of God.
Then David was angry because the Lord's wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah.
David was afraid of the Lord that day and 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. And instead, he took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. 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.
Now 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 bull and a fattened calf. David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
And as the Ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.
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. And after he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. And then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates, a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
When David returned home to bless his household, Michal 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!”
And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his household 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 these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honour.”
And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.
This is the word of the Lord. It is living and active. And so today as we close, Lord, we ask that you would guide each one of us to what it would mean to bring you all that you are into the center of our lives, how we respond to your divine revelation to us in our daily life. What will our worship look like? Maybe we physically dance outside. Maybe we dance in our hearts. Maybe we fall to our knees. Maybe we cry. But may we have a heart like David, where worship and being humiliated and undignified is more important to him than any worldly role. He acknowledges that you are the king of the universe. You are holy and meant to be praised and worshipped. So God, instruct us in this today. We love you. We're so thankful for this time to care for our hearts, to abide in you again. And so, we close by saying glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Spirit. As it was in the beginning, as it was with David in this story and it is now, living and active today. Glory be to you. Forever and ever, Amen. Go in peace, my friends to love and to worship.
