Bible Studies

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Do you remember seeing the Indiana Jones movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when you were younger? If so, you definitely remember the scene where the Nazis have found the Ark of the Covenant, and open it, and all of a sudden concentrated death comes roaring out and turns all of them into ex-Nazis. You may also remember having nightmares for weeks afterwards; I can't have been the only one.

The Ark of the Covenant, back in the Old Testament, was a relic that God ordered built to remind Israel of his presence with them. There was a symbolic seat on top, the mercy seat, where God (figuratively) sat with his people. It also contained a few things: the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, this mystery "manna" bread that God gave his people when they were wandering in the desert, and a staff belonging to Moses' brother Aaron, which God used to do a bunch of miracles. These were powerful artifacts, not in the sense of being magical, but in the sense of being incontrovertible proof of God's power and his love for his people. They were object lessons, visible reminders of an invisible God.

Also, because it was so holy (it was the resting place of God, after all!), it couldn't be touched. It had to be carried on sticks, kind of like when kings in Asian countries are carried around on their thrones by a bunch porters. And, of course, there was this rumor that anyone who touched it would die.

The poor fellow to find this out was named Uzzah. 1 Chronicles 13 records David deciding to move the Ark from one town to another. While the Ark was in transit, the oxen carrying it stumbled, and the Ark looked like it was going to fall over. Uzzah, meaning well, reached out to steady the Ark, and God blasted him.

On the surface this may seem really awful, and you might be inclined to feel sorry for Uzzah. I would point out two things, however, that ought to put some perspective to the situation.

1. Uzzah shouldn't have been anywhere near the Ark. The responsibility for moving it belonged to the Levites, the priestly tribes (this is explained in chapter 15). Uzzah was not a Levite. He was the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Probably you have personal experience with this kind of situation, or perhaps you did when you were younger. You're hanging out with friends, in a place you know you shouldn't be, and something goes disastrously wrong. Your heart starts pounding, your brain's going a million miles an hour trying to figure out how to cover it up and explain things to the people who are expecting better of you, and you feel like a total moron for ever sneaking out or smoking pot or going to a strip club or laying in bed naked with him/her, or whatever you did. The thing is, you KNOW. You KNOW that you shouldn't have even started going down that road. You KNOW that a few seconds of forethought earlier in the evening would have saved you hours of heartache and fines/jail time/awkward apologies later.

That's an Uzzah moment, and that was Uzzah's problem. The man knew he wasn't supposed to move the Ark, but it was a huge honor to do so. Who wouldn't be proud to move the most holy relic of God to Jerusalem, at the head of a giant parade, accompanied by the king? So Uzzah ignored the truth that he knew, he did something he wanted to do even though he knew he wasn't supposed to, and paid for it with his life. What his actions said was, "I know that God said I wasn't supposed to move the Ark, and I know he said I wasn't supposed to touch it, but I thought I needed to or else it would have fallen over." Look, it doesn't matter what anybody THINKS. It only matters what God SAYS. Is there ever a good reason to ignore what God says?

2. Uzzah trusted the wrong leader. King David was a very good leader, if a bit bloodthirsty (God even told him that he couldn't build the temple because he had fought too many wars). Almost all of his people revered him, and God blessed his leadership, even those wars he shouldn't have started. The kingdom prospered under him, expanded in size and wealth, and did a pretty good job of turning its collective eyes back to God. He was a good person to trust, most of the time, but in this situation he made a crucial error, and Uzzah caught the fallout.

See, at the beginning of chapter 13, David is thinking about moving the Ark, and it says that he "consulted with all his officials, including the generals and captains of his army." Then he says to his people, "If you approve of us, and if it is the will of God," then they would move the Ark. There is a problem here, one that a lot of church people today fall into.

David talked about doing this if it was the will of God, but when it came time to ask for people's input on it, did he ask God? Nope; he went to his army officials. He talked ABOUT God and what God wanted, but he never talked TO God. Please catch that crucial distinction. It's easy to go to church, to put on your Jesus face around your church friends, and talk about God until you're blue in the face, without ever bothering to actually have a word with him personally.

I don't know why a normally solid leader like David suddenly decided to omit the step of consulting God, but I do know from my own life that it's easy to ignore God when things are going well. It's easy to talk to God when things are hard and I need his help with things that are going to ruin me if he doesn't handle them. However, when life is good, the temptation exists to say, "I can take it from here for a while." That moment, when a person moves from reliance on God to reliance on himself, is called pride, and is a sin that makes God very, very angry. (In a sense, this is exactly what Uzzah did when he deliberately ignored what God said and did something that he wanted to do instead.)

So David didn't bother to ask God's opinion on what was going to happen. If he had, God would doubtless have said, "I've got no problem with what you're doing; just make sure you do it right. Have the Levites move it, like I told you to." Then David would have had to go to Uzzah and give him some bad news that would have hurt for a little while, but would have saved Uzzah a premature departure from the mortal coil.

Unlike Uzzah, who had no chance to learn from his mistake, David got the message. The very next chapter records him pondering an attack against the Philistines, and this time, he goes to God and says, "If I do this, will you give me victory?" And God, like God always does, answers him. David learned a critical lesson, namely that consulting God is not an optional step in any undertaking. Unfortunately, he learned this lesson at the cost of Uzzah's life.

Here's what I want you to learn from all this. God cares very much about our obedience to him. He knows that his plan for our lives is the best one, both for us and for him. It will bring us peace and joy, mature us, grow us, and make us into the kind of people that we ought to be. Failure to obey him means that we are dooming ourselves to lives as less-than-ideal humans, which offends God because he created us and wants the best for us, and also because he's God and it's really arrogant of us to ignore him in favor of doing our own thing. Disobedience to God is called sin, and it has a lot of very unpleasant consequences. There is never, ever, any good reason to lay aside God's commandment in order to do something else.

How do you know what God wants you to do? There are two ways, which are highlighted in each of the numbered points above. How did Uzzah know that the Levites were supposed to move the Ark? He read the Bible, or what of it existed at the time, which were the first five books. He read God's commands and learned them. How could David have known what God wanted to happen with the Ark? He could have asked God directly through prayer. Those two things may be simple, Sunday School answers, but they never stop being true. If God's plan for your life is really the best one, if he really does love you and want the best for you, why would you not do everything you can to find out what it is he wants from you so that you can do it?

Learn from Uzzah's mistake, and learn from David's mistake. Your failure to obey God might not cost you your life - who knows, perhaps it might! It will, though, cost you happiness, tranquility, and God's blessings among other things. God's way truly is the best; his plan is good, acceptable, and perfect. Why would you want to live any other way?

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