After God’s Own Heart-Part 9-A Living Sacrifice
2 Samuel 6:1-15
In 1 Samuel 4, the Israelites take the Ark into battle against the Philistines, but they had not been told by God to do it. They thought that if they had the symbol of God’s presence (the Ark) that God Himself would be there…but He was not. So, the Israelites were routed, and they (The Philistines) capture the Ark.
After that, there are some funny stories about what God does to the Philistines with the Ark in their presence (I’ll just encourage you to read some of them…they are good), so the Philistines decide to get rid of it, but they don’t want to be anywhere near it. So, they put it on a wagon, hitched to an ox, and send it into Israelite territory, where it winds up in Beth-shemesh.
Once it got to Beth-shemesh, the people looked inside the Ark (which they were not supposed to do). As a result, many of the people died. So, the people of Beth-shemesh wanted to be rid of the Ark as well.
At that time, the men of a town called Kiriath-jearim (this is Baalah) came to Beth-shemesh to get the Ark and bring it to a man named Abinadab where it stayed for over the entire reign of Saul, and to the point where we are right now.
The problem is that the Ark of the Covenant is not where David wants it to be, and that is in Jerusalem.
But David tries to be more efficient, and does not follow the instructions laid out by God in Exodus and Numbers. Namely, the Priests were supposed to carry the ark with two acacia poles covered in gold. David put the Ark on a cart pulled by two cows.
The judgment of God came on Uzzah because he touched the Ark of God when he was not supposed to. This made David react in three ways:
- He got angry.
- He got fearful.
- He quit.
So, when he came to his senses three months later, he decided to do things God’s way, and the Ark came back home.
In Romans 12:1-2, we’re given a formula for knowing what God wants us to do. It’s simple, but it isn’t easy. We are to submit our bodies to God as living sacrifices. We are to submit all of our will to God’s will. We are to allow Him to have rule and reign in our lives.
Second, we are to renew our minds on God’s Word. We are not to conform to the world’s way of thinking, but we are to become more like God in our thinking. This gives us the opportunity to know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what God’s will for us is.