When they came to Nacon's threshing floor, Uzzah reached out to the ark of God and took hold of it because the oxen had stumbled. Then the Lord's anger burned against Uzzah, and God struck him dead on the spot for his irreverence, and he died there next to the ark of God. David was angry because of the Lord's outburst against Uzzah, so he named that place an Outburst Against Uzzah, as it is today. David feared the Lord that day and said, "How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?" So he was not willing to move the ark of the Lord to the city of David; instead, he took it to the house of Obed- edom the Gittite. The ark of the Lord remained in his house three months, and the Lord blessed Obed- edom and his whole family. (2 Samuel 6:6-10 NASB)Sometimes God's behavior just doesn't make sense. Sometimes there is simply no explaining away something He chooses to do. So we need to make a choice. It's sort of like a 'crisis of faith', but in another sense it's also an acceptance of a very obvious, but often overlooked, reality. The fact is, there are no 'other alternatives'. That's all in our head.
In John six, Jesus basically offends the people until they leave. He then looks at his disciples left standing around, and says, "Will you leave too?" to which Peter answers, "Where will we go? Who else has the words of life?" Most of the time, we're not that smart.
It amazes me how people, including myself, believe that their obedience and faithfulness to God is somehow something we 'hold over him'. As if we can modify and influence or control Him and His behavior by either promising to follow Him or threatening not to. It's a behavior that, at its root, comes from a belief that the universe is all about me; and every 'me' is different, and all obviously wrong.
The inescapable truth is that there is only One God. So what other options are there? If we don't 'like' Him, it's not like we can simply follow another god or whatever. There aren't any. If we don't like Him or something He does, there's no sense in saying, "I'll never believe in a God who could do such things." Really? As if there are other options? What will we believe in if there's no God or we don't like the One speaking to us and doing these things? I can choose to believe anything, that what I see is merely the projection into my dimension of something with other dimensions of existence. I can choose to believe that blue is green, that read is black, and so on. I can choose to believe anything, but that doesn't change what they are. I can't change the nature of things through my belief.
God is. He is as He is, and He is as different from us as we are from the clay pots and trinkets we make with our hands. His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. If this doesn't sound like it matters or makes sense, or helps accept the situation it's because it's so simple and obvious that we miss something equally as obvious but which we refuse to accept.
We are not at the center of the universe and this is not all about us. God is not about us, He is for us. There is a HUGE difference, and until we can wrap our heads and hearts around this truth we're hopeless.
God struck Uzza and killed him when what he was doing appeared good and right. The whole thing was wrong though. The Ark should never have been on a cart (the Philistines did it that way and they were pagans). Uzza and his brother were not who was supposed to be tending it. Uzza's death was not a sign of God's displeasure with David over all, but rather His displeasure of what David was doing at the moment. David's response was to be angry, and to be afraid of God. He then thought God did not want him to bring the Ark to Jerusalem, so he put it aside. So, God blessed where the Ark was, just as He had previously blessed Kiriath Jearim where David was 'carting' it from.
The problem God has was with the 'mode' in which His Ark was being carried, and His solution was to strike Uzza for touching it. That seems excessive, capricious, makes God a bully, a brute, an 'angry child' and so on. The reality is that while we don't like the solution God chose, while such a Person may not be Who we would 'choose' to follow, believe in, or have faith in; He's the only One we have. You don't like that God struck this guy with good intentions? Tough. You don't think you can trust a God who strikes down those serving Him in ignorance? Get over it.
Face facts. Get real. What we are missing is that we're afraid of God when He does such things. We fear for our lives. And that makes us very uncomfortable, unsafe, and insecure. Part of God's point is exactly that, not to put us on the defensive; that's what we do because we believe we have a right to be safe, secure, and comfortable. We don't any such right. We should be uncomfortable, insecure, and afraid to stand in the presence of the One forming the universe out of nothing, creating stars, forming planets, and tracing the patterns of subatomic particles we haven't even found yet.
Doesn't it seem odd that creatures described in such a way that to see them would so terrify us we would loose control of our bowels, spend all eternity declaring God's glory? It does, but we don't pursue it. We simply leave it at 'odd'. If we were to pursue it we would be faced with Someone more magnificent than we can imagine. We would be confronted with the God Creator, Warrior, Destroyer, and Savior. If the creatures worshiping Him for eternity are frightening to behold, shouldn't we then consider that the One they worship would be terrifying? Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Yet we find all sorts of reasons to not be afraid. Well, good luck with that.
We are Uzza when we worship without fear. We are the ignorant servant well-meaning but doing the right thing wrong when we come so boldly before the throne of God we do so with contempt. We risk death to do so, and yet we blissfully go along our way as if God has some sort of obligation to maintain our physical existence.
So what do we do? Do we enter into worship like we're about to be killed? Do we walk around on 'egg shells', tip-toe around the One who may spontaneously obliterate us? Read the rest of the chapter. David dances in worship like a wild-man. He pours out everything in his expression of the value of God to him. God is all those things, including Savior. Think of it! The terrifying One worshiped by the frightening beings knows who you are, where you are, and sent His Only Son, Deity in flesh, to make sure we can have an eternal relationship with Him. Grace means that we can worship Him at all! So worship will all the power within us! That meager expression of worship to such a One is His desire. Every day, He takes a lunch for two and feeds 5,000; we just call it 'worship'.
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