To Encourage You

2 Samuel 6:5-7 “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.”

Every once in awhile a person may get a reality check.  They are going on their merry way, doing this or that, thinking that all is right in their world, and then it all changes in a moment.  It can happen for anyone, but it’s perhaps most shocking when such things touch the life of a believer.  It’s a result of being out of touch, careless, or presumptuous in our faith.  But God will not be presumed upon. God is no one’s fool.  God would have us to know that “to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48).” 

You see, an unbeliever thinks and acts like they do because they have no relationship to the God who made them.  Though they are just as responsible to God for their lives as anyone else, they are blind to this and they live like it.  In other words, they are simply BEING like they ARE.  Paul was one such person. He went about persecuting the church of God thinking all the while that he was actually serving God.  But then he got a severe wake-up call, and thankfully, for his sake, he repented of his sin and turned the other way.  He tells us that “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). 

But what about a person who does not act ignorantly? What about one who claims to be a Christian yet flagrantly violates the Word of God?  It is that person who is setting himself or herself up for a reality check.  It is that person who may be, however unwittingly, asking for the chastening of God.  We have one such example in the passage above from 2 Samuel 6.  It’s an account of the time early in King David’s reign when David acted to take the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, the new place for his throne.  He was thrilled to take what was the holiest symbol of God’s throne there to be with him. He wanted to conduct his reign in the acknowledgement of the presence of God.  He was joyous on this occasion, celebrating and worshipping with all manner of musical instruments. But then the reality check.  He allowed the ark to be carried to Jerusalem by an oxen-drawn cart, although he knew that God’s command was that the ark was always to be carried on poles on the shoulders of the Levites.   As David and his men rejoiced before God, one of his men, Uzzah, reached out and touched the ark, an even more flagrant violation of the Law of God.  The result? He was immediately struck dead.  How the mood changed in that instant!  Now David greatly feared the Lord his God (2 Samuel 6:9). 

In the New Testament we have the example of Ananias and Sapphira in the early church. “All” they did was sell some property and bring some of the money to the apostles to be used in service to God.  However, in this act of “worship” they lied to the Holy Spirit by saying that they had brought all the money to the apostles. The truth was that they had kept back some of it for themselves. The result? They, like Uzzah, were struck down dead by the wrath of God (Acts 5). 

Another example: in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for participating in the communion ceremony in an unworthy manner. Although this ceremony was to be conducted in remembrance of Christ and His sacrifice for sin on the cross, they were actually sinning in how they implemented it.  The result? Paul tells them that because they had been partaking of the Lord’s supper in an unworthy manner, they had been eating and drinking judgment on themselves. And then he makes this shocking statement: “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” 

You see, believers are held to a much higher standard than the world. Unlike those who don’t know the Lord, Christians, when they sin, are sinning against knowledge. They know better. They are expected by their Lord to DO better.  And if they don’t, they invite chastisement in various ways that can be up to and including death.  It is in such chastisement that the church can receive a reality check.  They are to walk in the way of obedience. They are to think and act in submission to the One Who died on the cross to save them from their sin.  And so, again from the lips of Paul, we are told, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2). The answer is, “We can’t!” That is, we can’t and get away with it. 

May God help us to avoid a severe reality check. May he help us who say we know the Lord, live as if we actually do.