2 Samuel 6:1-23: A Proper Regard for God

2 Samuel 6:1-23: A Proper Regard for God

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 2 Samuel, and today the next passage we come to is 2 Samuel 6:1-23. Hear now the words of the Living and True God:

¹ David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. ² And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale-judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim. ³ And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart, ⁴ with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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. ⁷ 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. ⁸ And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez-uzzah to this day. ⁹ And David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” ¹⁰ So David was not willing to take the ark of the Lord into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. ¹¹ And the ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household. ¹² And it was told King David, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing. ¹³ And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal. ¹⁴ And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod. ¹⁵ So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn. ¹⁶ As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart. ¹⁷ And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. ¹⁸ And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts ¹⁹ and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his house. ²⁰ And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” ²¹ And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will celebrate before the Lord. ²² I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.” ²³ And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we pray according to Isaiah 55 that as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so would your word be this morning—that it would not return to you empty but would accomplish that which you purpose and succeed in the thing for which you send it. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

There are many things that various Christians today commonly associate with worship, and the worship styles these things represent are often quite diverse. When some Christians think of worship, they think of praise teams, stage lights, contemporary songs, guitars, drums, and the raising of hands, whereas other Christians think of of choirs, stained glass windows, traditional hymns, organs, and hymnals. This points to the fact that different Christians often have very diverse preferences when it comes to worship.

And in some cases, they even allow these preferences to play a very large role in their decision of which church they’ll attend. In their minds, a church’s worship style is more important than just about anything else—including the faithfulness of the pastor’s preaching or the soundness of the church’s beliefs. Some people start attending a particular church primarily because they love its worship style, while others decide to leave a church primarily because they don’t like its worship style. By the way, I’m not sure if anyone’s actually left our church because they didn’t like the worship style, but I do know that we receive way more anonymous Connection Cards offering unsolicited feedback about the worship than we do about anything else. We’re very well-supplied in that area.

My point, though, is that it’s in congregational worship where the wide variety of people’s personal preferences and cultural differences are most apparent. And that may be somewhat unavoidable. However, there’s something related to worship that I’d like to focus on today that goes a lot deeper than any of these external things I’ve mentioned—and that is where worship begins.

Picture a stream that originates from an underground spring. Even though that stream might seem to a casual observer like it just appears out of nowhere, it actually originates from a spring that flows for miles underground before the spring comes to the surface and becomes a stream.

So, then, what’s the underground stream from which true worship originates? I’d like to suggest that it’s a proper regard for God’s holiness. And that’s the main idea of the passage before us today of 2 Samuel 6:1-23. Worship begins with a proper regard for God’s holiness. Again, worship begins with a proper regard for God’s holiness. And we’ll explore that idea further as we walk through this passage.

So, let’s begin by looking at verses 1-2. It says, ¹ David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. ² And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale-judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim.

You may recall that David’s just been made king of Israel and captured Jerusalem and designated it as his capital city. So, David now organizes a huge national gathering of 30,000 chosen men in order to bring the ark of God—which contained God’s manifest presence—from the house of Abinadab in Balle-judah into the newly-designated capital city.

And notice that it’s referred to not merely as “the ark of God” but as “the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim.” Why do you think the biblical author goes out of his way to give us such an extended description of the ark? He could have just said “the ark of God,” and that would have been quite sufficient for us to know what he’s talking about. But he describes it as “the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim.” Why is that? It seems like, from the very beginning of this chapter, the biblical author is emphasizing God’s glory and majesty and holiness.

We then read in verses 3-4, ³ And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart, ⁴ with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark. So, we’ve got the ark being transported on “a new cart,” it says. Apparently, there was an old cart, but now there’s a new cart—perhaps one that’s been specially built for this very occasion. I imagine David and the Israelites must have thought this would contribute even more to God being pleased.

However, things take a turn for the worse in verses 5-7: ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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. ⁷ 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.

Obviously, this is quite the shocking turn of events. One minute, everyone’s having a great time getting their worship on, and the next Uzzah’s lying on the ground dead because God struck him down. I’m sure it seemed to everyone there that this outburst of divine wrath came out of nowhere.

And even as many of us read this story today, our first instinct is to view this act of judgment as incredibly harsh and perhaps even unjustified given the circumstances. I mean, Uzzah wasn’t in any way trying to disrespect God. In fact, he was trying to do the opposite. He was attempting to steady the ark so it wouldn’t fall to the ground and get dirty and perhaps damaged. You might say he was trying to help God out. Sure, God had told the Israelites not to directly touch the ark, but was this brief touch from Uzzah really that big of a deal?

To state the issue concisely, did the punishment God inflicted on Uzzah actually fit the crime? For many of us, if we’re honest, it might initially be difficult to see how that could be the case. At first glance, God’s punishment seems to be way out of proportion to the crime Uzzah committed.

Yet that’s where our initial intuitive assessment is simply wrong. And I’d actually like to camp out here for a little while and explain why that’s the case. In reality, Uzzah failed to show God the reverence God had clearly commanded. As I mentioned, God had clearly told his people not to touch the ark and even warned them in Numbers 4:15 that, if they touched it, they would die.

But Uzzah had apparently gotten used to the ark being in his dad’s house for the past 20 years and become a bit too comfortable around it. In verse 7, the word translated in the ESV as “error”—where it says that “God struck him down there because of his error”—is more commonly translated “irreverence.” Uzzah made the mistake of approaching God in a casual manner. In a word, Uzzah failed to recognize the holiness of God. And that’s likewise the reason many people today struggle with this passage. It’s because we struggle to grasp this concept of God’s holiness.

Now, theologians will sometimes use the word “holiness” to speak of God’s moral purity. God’s absolutely pure and righteous and is the sum of all moral perfection and isn’t in the least tainted by sin. That’s one very legitimate meaning of holiness.

But there’s also another meaning that’s more foundational. To say that God’s holy means that he’s utterly distinct from everything else. There’ no one like him. In the book of Exodus, when Moses asked God how he should describe him to Pharaoh and what his name was, do you know what God said in Exodus 3:14? “I am who I am.” The reason God said that is because that’s the only way he could describe the essence of his being to Moses. The only person to whom he could compare himself was…himself. Because there’s no one like him. That’s why a few chapters later, in Exodus 15:11, Moses praises God by saying, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” The answer, of course, is that there’s none like him.

A.W. Tozer put it well when he wrote, “We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God’s holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it. He may fear God’s power and admire God’s wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even imagine.”

When one of my sons was around three years old or so, I remember him asking me what a horse was. And I explained it to him in the best way I could think of on the spot. I told him that a horse is kind of like a big doggie that you can ride on. Now I’m sure any zoologist could absolutely rip that statement apart and explain to me a thousand and one ways in which horses and dogs are quite different. But, for the purpose of describing a horse to my three-year-old, comparing a horse to a dog seemed like a good idea. They’re both animals and walk on four legs and have a longer nose and a tail. They look sort of similar. And the reason I made a comparison like that was because that’s the way our minds work. We learn new things by relating them to things we already know. So, my son could think to himself, “Okay, I’ve never seen a horse before, but I have seen a doggie. So, in order to understand what a horse is like, I can just picture a really big doggie since a horse is similar.”

However, that doesn’t work when it comes to God. Because as soon as you say, “God is like this or that,” there’s a sense in which you’re already wrong…because, in reality, he’s not like anything you’ve ever seen. He’s entirely “other” than all you’ve ever known. That’s the most fundamental meaning of God’s holiness.

And that gives rise to the idea also implicit in the term “holiness” of absolute moral purity. As the prophet Habakkuk says to God in Habakkuk 1:13 (NIV), “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.” And if all of this talk about God’s holiness is starting to make you uncomfortable, that’s a good thing. It means you’re actually starting to understand what it means for God to be holy.

By the way, one reason I appreciate what the Bible teaches about God’s holiness is because it’s an indication to me of the Bible’s divine origin. A twentieth-century theologian named A. W. Pink once wrote that “An ineffably holy God who has the utmost abhorrence of sin was never invented by any of Adam’s descendants.” Again, “An ineffably [or unspeakably] holy God who has the utmost abhorrence [or hatred] of sin was never invented by any of Adam’s descendants.”

You see, if we were inventing a god, we would inevitably invent a god whose holiness is far below the holiness of the God of the Bible. Our god would be one who’s more tolerant of our sin and easier for us to feel comfortable around. So, the fact that the holiness of God is so uncomfortable and so downright unnerving is an indication to me that this is indeed the true God. No human would ever invent a God like this.

In fact, our natural response is to shy away from this holy God and create plenty of distance between ourselves and him. We’re about to see David do this in verse 9 of our main passage. Right after God displays his holiness by striking down Uzzah, verse 9 tells us, And David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”

And the ultimate reason God’s holiness makes us so uncomfortable is because of how unholy we are. The brilliant light of God’s holiness exposes the fact that we’re profoundly unholy. And that brings us face-to-face with the most fundamental reason why the punishment God inflicted on Uzzah was justified.

Perhaps no one has stated it more memorably than R. C. Sproul, who wrote, “The presumptuous sin of Uzzah was that he assumed his hands were less polluted than the dirt.” You see, Uzzah—in his pride—failed to recognize the infinite divide between himself as a sinful human and God as a holy God. So, even though he thought he was protecting the ark, he was actually defiling the ark. God’s main concern wasn’t to keep the ark from touching the ground but to keep it from being touched by sinful human hands. Human sin is exponentially filthier and more defiling than physical dirt could ever be. And the reason we struggle with this passage is because we struggle to understand that.

Now, maybe you’re here today and are thinking to yourself, “Well, I’m not sure I’m that sinful. Even though I might make some mistakes here and there, compared to other people, I’m not really that bad of a person.” But again, if that’s what you’re thinking, you’re still not grasping the holiness of God.

I once heard a preacher ask, “How much urine would have to be in a glass of water for the glass of water to be defiled?” Like, let’s say someone handed you a glass of water but told you that it had three ounces of urine mixed in. Would that be too much for you to be willing to drink it? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that there’s no way you’d want to drink that water. But…what if it was just two ounces or urine, or only one ounce? Obviously, I think we’d all agree that any amount of urine is too much for us to be comfortable drinking a glass of water. Even the slightest bit of urine defiles the whole thing.

And that’s the way the holy God of the Bible views us and our sin. Think of the revulsion and disgust you’d feel at even an ounce of urine in your water and multiply that by about a billion, and that’s the revulsion and disgust God feels at our sin.

So, the question we have to answer—which is really the central question of the entire Bible—is, “How can we as sinful people be in the presence of a holy God?” As we see graphically demonstrated in 2 Samuel 6, our sin prevents us from any contact with God. I once heard it said that coming into God’s presence as a sinful person would be like a piece of tissue paper trying to land on the surface of the sun. It would be incinerated in a fraction of a second.

But that’s where Jesus comes in. God knew that we were defiled by our sins and condemned in our sins, so he sent his own Son Jesus to come to this earth in order to cleanse us from every last of trace of sin. Jesus entered this world as a man, lived a perfectly sinless life, and eventually allowed himself to be crucified in order to take on himself the punishment our sins deserved. You might even say that Jesus died the death of Uzzah in our place. Even though Jesus was altogether holy, he took our sin upon himself and was therefore struck down as one who was unholy—just like Uzzah. And he did this so that we who are unholy can become holy through his work on our behalf.

Jesus was then raised from the dead in order to demonstrate that his teachings were true and his sacrifice was accepted. As a result, if we’ll turn from our sins and put our full confidence exclusively in Jesus to rescue us, that’s exactly what he’ll do. He’ll forgive us for all of our sins and make us holy in his sight. In the words of Colossians 1:21-22, ²¹ And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²² he [Jesus] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

So, it’s true that God, in his absolute holiness, requires absolute holiness in order to enter his presence in heaven. Yet the good news of the gospel is that God himself provides the holiness he requires—and he does so through Jesus. Jesus alone imparts to us the holiness that’s required to enter heaven. 

However, there’s even more for us to glean from what happens to Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6. The problem isn’t just that Uzzah touched the ark but why he was even in the situation that led to him touching the ark in the first place. You’ll recall that the ark was being transported on a “new cart” but that the oxen that were pulling the cart stumbled, resulting in the ark apparently being in danger of falling to the ground. It seems they had the same issue we have here in Pittsburgh of potholes all over the place that caused the oxen to stumble, but even that wasn’t the real problem.

Instead, we have to ask, why was the ark being carried on a cart? Because, in Exodus 25, God had given the Israelites very specific instructions to attach gold rings to the sides of the ark, insert two poles into those gold rings—one on each side of the ark—and only carry the ark by means of those two poles. So, how did the ark come to be transported on a cart? Well, if you were here for our sermon series on 1 Samuel, you may recall that it was the Philistines who came up with the idea to transport the ark on a cart.

Basically, the Israelites were going up against the Philistines in battle and decided to use the ark as a kind of good luck charm to help them win the battle. So, without consulting God, they brought the ark into battle with them. But God refuses to be anyone’s good luck charm and therefore allowed the Philistines to defeat the Israelites in battle and capture the ark. However, God then sent plagues upon the Philistine cities that housed the ark so that the Philistines eventually became desperate to get rid of it and therefore sent the ark back to the Israelites on...a cart.

And that’s how the ark came to be transported on a cart instead of being carried on poles as God had commanded. It was an idea that originated from Israel’s pagan neighbors instead of from the word of God. If the Israelites had been carrying the ark in the way God had told them to, Uzzah wouldn’t have ever been in the situation in which he found himself in 2 Samuel 6.

And I’d like to very briefly highlight two lessons we can learn from that. The first is that noble goals don’t justify unbiblical methods. David was pursuing a noble goal in bringing the ark to the capital city of Jerusalem. He wanted the worship of God to be central in his kingdom. Yet he made the grave error of not pursing that noble goal in a biblical way. Similarly, when it comes to our lives today, God cares just as much about the “how” as does about the “what.” And that goes not only for our lives individually but also for our church as a whole.

Many churches today seem to be driven more by a pragmatic mentality than they are by biblical convictions. This leads them to do just about anything to get more people to attend their church. Yet they seem to be unaware of the fact that whatever you win people with is what you’ll inevitably win them to. So, one takeaway from this passage for us as a church is to be on our guard against an overly pragmatic mentality. I’m sure transporting the ark on a cart pulled by oxen seemed to the Israelites to be much easier and therefore a much better option than having to carry the ark on poles. Yet the result was disaster.

Then, growing out of that, a second lesson is to do things God’s way instead of our way. We have all kinds of ideas about what’ll be best for us—and many times those ideas conflict with the Bible. For example, many people today think it’s advisable for a couple to live together prior to marriage. I mean, isn’t it a good idea to give things a “test run” before taking the more serious step of getting married? And there are also many other situations in which we’re tempted to do what feels right to us instead of what the Bible says is right. Yet, again, this incident with Uzzah shows us how disastrous that is.

The chapter then records David being afraid because of God’s judgment on Uzzah. So, David decides that instead of bringing the ark into Jerusalem, he’ll just send it to the house of Obed-edom. I’m not sure what Obed-edom did to get on David’s bad side, but David decides that the ark will be kept at his house. Yet God blesses Obed-edom during the time the ark is in his house. So, after three months, David decides he’ll bring the ark to Jerusalem after all. And he does so with great rejoicing.

Verse 13 tells us, “And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal.” Notice the reference to “those who bore the ark”—indicating that they’re now transporting it the proper way. We then read in verses 14-16, ¹⁴ And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod. ¹⁵ So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn. ¹⁶ As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.

Michal then gives David a piece of her mind in verse 20: And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” But David stands his ground in verses 21-22: ²¹ And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will celebrate before the Lord. ²² I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes….”

So, Michal despises David for dancing in front of everyone in his “linen ephod” and showing such joyful exuberance. You may recall from 1 Samuel that Michal’s father, Saul, also had the problem of caring way too much about what people thought of him. And Michal likewise has taken on that trait of caring more about appearances than about glorifying God.

Yet David won’t be hindered in his worship. And that’s a key takeaway from this passage for us as well—to be unhindered in our worship. 1 Peter 1:8 says that we should “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” Does that kind of joy characterize your worship?

Now, you might say, “Well, I’m just not a very expressive person.” I think we talked about this a couple of months ago, didn’t we? I understand that some people aren’t quite as expressive as others. But I find it kind of hard to believe that you can have the joy of the Lord in your heart and not express that outwardly to at least some degree.

I once heard a pastor suggest a simple thought experiment. Let’s say I walked up to you and gave you an envelope with a million dollars in it. How would you respond to that million dollars? Would you just have this expressionless look on your face and say, without any enthusiasm whatsoever, “Thank you for this million dollars”?

If you really are that lacking in natural expressiveness and really do have that flat of an affect, then I guess I could believe that would carry over into your worship. But if that’s not how you’d respond to receiving a million dollars, then you might need to re-think using your supposedly natural non-expressiveness as an excuse for not being at least somewhat expressive in your worship. I mean, does a million dollars really make you more excited than your eternal salvation?

So, do you engage in worship in such a way that people can see how much God means to you? Hopefully, David’s example here encourages you to do that to a greater degree. While the first half of this chapter reminds us to take God seriously, the second half reminds us not to take ourselves so seriously. Being reverent in your worship doesn’t mean not being wonderfully expressive and exuberant. It’s possible—and quite biblical—to be both reverent and exuberant.

In fact, I’d even say that the bigger of a view you have of God, the more exuberant your worship should be. It was after David was reminded of God’s holiness in the whole ordeal with Uzzah that he worshipped God with greater passion than we’ve ever seen him exhibit before.

And that’s a great reminder especially for every Reformed Christian who likes to speak of the lofty view they have of God and yet who isn’t very expressive in their worship. Those who have the loftiest view of God should actually be the ones who worship him most passionately. So, for all of our Reformed brothers and sisters who aren’t very expressive, maybe you have something to learn about God’s glory from some of our brothers and sisters who lean more Charismatic. Just a thought. You say you believe in a glorious God, but do you worship like you believe in a glorious God?