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March 22, 2015 |
| Breakthrough | ||
While Israel wandered in the wilderness, wherever they stopped they setup the tent of meeting, the objects of worship, and the enclosure around all of that. When Israel entered the Promised Land they setup everything one last time at a place called Shiloh. For many years that is where they went to worship.
But Israel fell into sin and especially sin in the worship practices at Shiloh. They carried the Ark of the Covenant into battle against the Philistines without seeking God's direction and God allowed them to be defeated and the Ark to be captured. The Philistines even came so far into Israel that they reached Shiloh and destroyed it.
This came upon Israel because they had lost respect for God and were trying to use the Ark of the Covenant as a weapon against their enemies. They wanted the Ark to serve the purposes they thought were right and thus they were trying to use God. They failed to respect him.
God brought a plague on the Philistines until they sent the Ark back to Israel. When it arrived there, some Israelites opened it up to see what was inside and they died. Once again they had showed their disrespect for God, God's law, and the things that God had declared holy.
The Ark was placed in the house of a man called Abinadab and stayed there for 20 years. The Bible mentions three sons of Abinadah, Eleazar, Uzzah and Ahio. Eleazar was consecrated to take care of the Ark1. Uzzah and Ahio grew up with the Ark of the Covenant in their house. In time, King David came to power and desired to bring the Ark to Jerusalem.
That event is described in 1 Chronicles 13 and it's also described in 2 Samuel 6 which are the verses we will work from.
1 Now 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 to Baale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God which is called by the Name, the very name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned above the cherubim. 3 They placed the ark of God on a new cart that they might bring it from the house of Abinadab which was on the hill; and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were leading the new cart. 4 So they brought it with the ark of God from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill; and Ahio was walking ahead of the ark. 5 Meanwhile, David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, and with lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets and cymbals.
6 But when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it. 7 And the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God. 8 David became angry because of the Lord's outburst against Uzzah, and that place is called Perez-uzzah to this day.
Many people think of God as a mean God because of this incident, because of the earlier incident where the Ark was opened and people died, and because of others like it. Without understanding, many people see these as trivial offences being punished by the maximum penalty - death - thus God seems unjust.
These verses are not just the description of the event they are actually an indictment, a list of violations and a punishment acted out. Israel, under King David, was actually doing a bunch of things wrong:
But more than anything else God struck out because their hearts were wrong. They didn't respect the things of God and they didn't respect God's word enough to obey it and therefore they didn't respect God enough to obey him. This is rebellion, disobedience, and arrogance, which is idolatry,
Uzzah had especially lost respect for the Ark. Probably the years of having it in is home had made it seem like just another box to him. As the saying goes "familiarity breeds contempt". The charge against him comes in verse 7, irreverence, which means lack of due respect. It had been a part of their home for 20 years and he may have become too familiar with it. He may have seen it as a thing and not as something holy. He must have felt he was protecting this box his family had cared for from harm. I'm certain his intent was pure - in his own mind - but it was absolutely wrong. He had forgotten that God needs nothing from man, especially protection.
It was the combination of all these things that caused God to lash out. God could see that they had lost respect for him and his holy things. They were doing a great wrong while believing they were doing a great good. They had people playing instruments, everyone was celebrating before the Lord … but they were all doing evil.
This is a very dangerous situation for mankind. We can get into a position where we believe we are doing good but we are really doing evil because we don't know any better. Then God needs to act. This is the situation Israel got into when Judaism collapsed into legalism and required the arrival of the Messiah and a new covenant. It is the situation Christianity will get into at the end of time.
It was wrong for Uzzah to touch the Ark, but not just because of the disobedience and disrespect. The Ark of the Covenant is not just a box, it is the earthly presence of God. Verse 2 above makes that clear when it says "the ark of God which is called by the Name, the very name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned above the cherubim." In touching the Ark he was entering the presence of God.
However, God's character is such that he cannot tolerate evil. We are evil and cannot come into his presence without expecting to die. In the Old Testament generally there was only one way to enter into God's presence, which was to have someone else do it for you, the priest.
But the High Priest would enter the inner tabernacle once a year by himself with blood, which he was offering in the place of his soul and in the place of the evil doing of the people. (Hebrews 9:7)
Symbolically, the priest was carrying the blood of the people's sacrifices and the sacrifice for the priests and temple into the Holy of Holies as an atonement (payment) for sin. In effect the blood he carried in with him was the blood of all the sacrifices of the previous year.
But there was a problem with these sacrifices of animal blood.
This was a symbol for that time in which gifts and sacrifices were offered, which were not able to perfect the conscience of him who offers them (Hebrews 9:9)
For every High Priest who has stood and served those [people] with those sacrifices every day was offering those things which were never able to purge sins. (Hebrews 10:11)
They could not make a person's conscience clean. They could not remove sin.
The blood of kids (young goats) and of calves and the ashes of a heifer were sprinkled on those who were defiled and it sanctified them for the purifying of their flesh (Hebrews 9:13)
Those sacrifices could only purify their physical bodies that they could be in the earthly presence of God. Spiritually they were still unclean. These sacrifices did made it possible, though, for the people to be in the presence of God in the temple's inner court, and for the priest to enter the Holy of Holies once a year to be in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant and God.
More precisely the sacrifice of the heifer for the sins of the priests was done immediately before he entered the Holy of Holies so that he would still be physically pure, or ceremonially clean. You see, we are sinful and it's just a matter of time until we do something evil again. Therefore this ceremonially clean state was not permanent and thus it was necessary for the people and the priests to continue to perform the sacrifices.
Not that [Jesus] should offer himself many times, as the High Priest was doing and entered the Holy Place every year with blood that was not his. (Hebrews 9:25)
Getting back to Uzzah now, we understand that he entered into the presence of God being evil, unclean and not authorized to be there, i.e. he was not a priest. Therefore he died.
King David understood what had happened. We can see that by how he named that location - Perez Uzzah - which means "the breakthrough of Uzzah."4 God's attack on Uzzah, when translated literally from Hebrew means "the Lord broke through a breakthrough"5 which means that Uzzah broke through to God's presence and God broke out against him.
In the Old Covenant there were many kinds of sacrifices but only two were required, those for sin and for guilt. The others were free will offerings.
The Messiah's sacrifice for sin made those two sacrifices un-necessary. Yet God still loves free will offerings and sacrifices. In fact the sacrifice that he wants the most is the sacrifice of ourselves, giving all we have and are, to him to use. God also loves free will praises, and songs, and fasts, tithes and many other good sacrifices.
The description in the lesson about the effect of the Old Covenant sacrifices brings up an interesting question. If their sacrifices did not make them spiritually clean then what happened to them at death? Many people have given the wrong answer here. The right answer comes a little later in Hebrews 11 which gets going like a freight train at verse 4, which says "By faith, Abel …" "By faith, Abram …" "By faith, Moses …".
The point of that chapter is that salvation has always been by faith. For those who had faith in God, even those who lived before the Messiah, his death was the atoning sacrifice. So his sacrifice covers those who came before and after him.
Some people, even those who should know better, say that salvation for the Jews was by works. They think that somehow those sacrifices earned their salvation. They are quite mistaken as Hebrews 11 and other scripture makes clear.
The topic of sacrifices brings up another interesting question. Who killed Jesus? Some people say it was the Romans, but they were just the executioners. The priests spearheaded it and whipped the people into shouting for the crucifixion of Jesus and Pilate into giving the order. The sacrificial system was a symbolic description of the process for the ultimate removal of sin. In that system it is the priests who slaughter the heifer whose blood was then taken into the Holy of Holies. This makes it clear that it was really the priests who killed Jesus.
The sacrificial system also shows us that the blood taken into the Holy of Holies carried the sins of all the people. In that system when a sacrifice for sin was slaughtered it was done by the sinner himself, not by the priest. Therefore each and every one of us killed Jesus.
He died as the individual sacrifice for each one of us. Therefore we, each of us individually, killed him.
This helps us understand Hebrews 10:26 "For if a man shall sin by his will after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there is no sacrifice to be offered afterward for sins"
1. What were all the things Israel was doing wrong with the Ark of the Covenant?
2. Why did Uzzah die?
3. Do we sometimes become too familiar with God and forget that he is God?
4. Why is it now possible for us, as Christians, to come into God's presence and not a priest for us?
1 1 Samuel 7
2 Numbers 4:15
3 Exodus 25:12-14; Numbers 7:9
4 Bible Gateway - NASB, 2 Samuel 6 comment g
5 Bible Gateway - NASB, 2 Samuel 6 comment f