How To Derail Part Two
How To Derail A Bible Study
(Intentionally, This Time)
There came a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came into their midst. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from? ”Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming the earth and walking around on it.” Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a man who is blameless and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil.”
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1&version=EHV>
This devotion is not about Job, it is about Uzzah. Then again, it is about Job, and Uzzah, and me, and you: bearing in mind God’s grand design. Consider if you will, sometime in God’s conversation with Satan: Hey Satan, keep your eye on this rock that I am putting in this road. You’re going to have to wait a bit, but just wait… And Satan waited until 2 Samuel 6 when King David gathered 30,000 men to bring The Ark of God along that road leading to the City of David. There the oxen stumbled on that rock and Uzzah “put forth his hand to the Ark of God, and took hold of it ” (KJV). Satan probably laughed.
Jesus said of sparrows, “Not one of them will fall to the ground without the knowledge and consent of your Father.” (Matthew 10:29 EHV) A rock in the middle of the road to the City of David, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle of Eden: the foreknowledge of God pit against the freewill of mankind. God knows the ending before the beginning. There is a difference between predestination and fatalism. God created man, man sinned. Did God create, knowing man would sin? Did God set us up for a fall? Did got set a rock for an ox to stumble?
We love to site the Law of God when it suits our purposes. We love to cry out for mercy when we are crushed by that Law. God’s law on moving the Ark:
Appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all its furnishings, and over all that belongs to it. They are to carry the tabernacle and all its furnishings, and they shall take care of it and shall camp around the tabernacle. When the tabernacle is to set out, the Levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up. And if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death. The people of Israel shall pitch their tents by their companies, each man in his own camp and each man by his own standard. But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the people of Israel. And the Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the testimony.”
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+1&version=ESV>
The Philistines seek to appease God for mercy by returning the Ark (after they had captured it):
The ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place.” They said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you.” And they said, “What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him?” They answered, “Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for the same plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away, and they departed? Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home, away from them. And take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put in a box at its side the figures of gold, which you are returning to him as a guilt offering. Then send it off and let it go its way and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by coincidence.”
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%206&version=ESV>
David and 30,000 men tried to move the Ark in the manner of the Philistines. When we look back to 1 Samuel 6 and the Ark returning to Israel, we see God “struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. (v 19) In a footnote, it is stated that the Hebrew texts give the number as 50,070 men. Shouldn’t David and his 30,000 men have suffered the same fate? Yet, the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah. Let’s take a look at another time the anger of the Lord burned.
The Lord spoke to Moses: “Hurry down, because your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves! They have quickly turned from the way which I commanded them. They have made a calf for themselves out of metal and have worshipped it. They have sacrificed to it and said, ‘This is your god, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”
The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and they certainly are a stiff-necked people. So now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn hot against them, so that I may consume them and make you into a great nation.”
Moses begged the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your anger burn against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He brought them out for an evil purpose, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn back from your fierce anger and change your mind about inflicting disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self. You said to them, ‘I will multiply your seed like the stars of the sky, and I will give all this land that I have spoken about to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.’”
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2032&version=EHV>
Moses acted as an advocate for Israel. Uzzah, well intentioned, acted on what he thought best for God. Uzzah thought to safeguard the Ark with sinful, unclean hands. Men put the Ark into a situation that God had never intended. Moses reminded God of the promise of saving his people. God reminds us, through Uzzah, of the need of the advocate. Jesus is our advocate. (1 John 2:1 EHV, Job 16:19 EHV) More than that, Jesus is the Ark who invites us to touch his wounds (John 20:27), heals the unclean (Luke 17:11), raises the dead (John 11). God shows his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 EHV) Christ’s salvation is God’s grand design. God foreknew the ending from the beginning, the completeness of the life, death, resurrection, and return of Jesus: for you, for me, for Uzzah, for all who believe.
Trust the Promises,
Steve Skiver