How Do You Respond To God’s Presence

2 Samuel 6

When you get in your car, you put on your seatbelt and adjust your mirrors, and whenever you change the oil, your car gets a safety check to make sure all of the lights are working. Construction workers wear hard hats and steel toed boots and reflective vests. Skydivers check and recheck their parachute and harness. Airline pilots do a walkaround of their plane before every flight. Bicyclists put on gloves and a helmet, and if they’re riding on the road, they often add brightly colored clothing and flashing lights on their helmet or bike. Why do we do those things? Safety.

Athletes and people who like to be outdoors make sure they are hydrated and have clothing that reflects the sun on hot days, and adequate layers on cold days. Football and hockey players wear helmets and pads. Baseball players wear helmets and extra padding when they’re batting. Baseball catchers and hockey goalies wear a ton of extra padding. Why? Safety. It pays to be prepared when you’re heading into a dangerous situation.

In his book on the life of David called Leap Over A Wall, a author, pastor, scholar, and poet Eugene Peterson – the man responsible for The Message paraphrase of the Bible – says this:

Sometimes I think that all religious sites should be posted with signs reading, “Beware the God.” The places and occasions that people gather to attend to God are dangerous. They’re glorious places and occasions, true, but they’re also dangerous. Danger signs should be conspicuously placed, as they are at nuclear power stations. Religion is the death of some people.[i] What preparation have we done as we gather in God’s presence to worship him this morning? Are we aware of the glory and the majesty and the power of the one into whose presence we so easily walk this morning?

As we continue our journey through the life of King David, turn with me to 2 Samuel 6.

David is now king. King Saul’s sons, including David’s soulmate Jonathan, died on the battlefield fighting the Philistines. Saul, mortally wounded and surrounded, took his own life, to avoid the torture and humiliating death that would follow his capture by the Philistines. David has captured Jerusalem and made it his political capitol, and he has driven the Philistines back to their traditional boundaries. He didn’t seek to destroy them, and he didn’t seek to take their land. He simply pushed them back into their own territory. He has unified the tribes of Israel under his leadership as king in Jerusalem.

And now he wants to make Jerusalem Israel’s religious capitol as well. And to do that, he needs to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. Look at Vv. 1-4. What exactly was the Ark of the Covenant? God commanded the Israelites to build what basically amounts to a religious box when they were encamped at Mt. Sinai after God led them out of Egypt. It was a visible symbol to them, a reminder of God’s presence with them. And they built it and handled it according to the exact specifications laid out by God in the book of Exodus.

It was made of wood plated with gold inside and out – a little less than 4’ long and a little more than 2’ wide and 2’ deep. The lid of the box was called the mercy seat and was made of solid gold. On either end of the mercy seat was a golden cherubim – an angel-like figure, framing the central mercy seat, which was a grate. The mercy seat was an earthly representation of God’s heavenly throne. It was the place from which God spoke to his people through the priests.

Even the way in which they were to carry it from place to place as they journeyed toward the Promised Land was specifically laid out by God. There were rings made of gold on the four bottom corners of the ark, into which were inserted carrying poles plated with gold. And the Ark was to be carried on the shoulders of only the Levites, after they had been consecrated for the task. And it was to be carried a very specific distance out in front of the people of Israel as they journeyed from place to place before entering the Promised Land. No human hand was to touch it. Every detail mattered. This was a symbol of the presence of God, after all.

Inside the Ark were three items. The stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments which Moses received on Mt. Sinai, a golden jar containing manna from their wilderness wandering, and Aaron’s staff, which budded with flowers when laid in front of the Ark as an indication of God’s continued choice of Aaron as Israel’s high priest when the people rebelled. The stone tablets represented God’s authority over them as his people. The jar of manna represented God’s provision for them wherever they went, regardless of what they faced, and Aaron’s staff represented God’s salvation of them.

Over time, the people of Israel began to view the Ark as a talisman, a good luck charm of sorts, and at times they carried it into battle when they fought their enemies, usually the Philistines. On rare occasions God told them to take the Ark with them into battle. On others, they just did it on their own, hoping that it would bring them victory in battle. On one of those occasions, before David, before Saul, near the end of the time of the judges, they were defeated by the Philistines and the Ark was taken.

The Philistines were a confederation of five city-states. When they captured the Ark, they took it to Ashdod, one of the cities, and placed it in their temple to their false god Dagon, right next to the idol of Dagon. But when they came in the next day, the idol of Dagon had fallen over, face down, before the Ark of God. So they set the idol back up. A day later, when they came in, the same thing had happened, only this time the head and both hands of the idol were broken off. And the people of Ashdod were covered with tumors all over their bodies.

So they didn’t want the Ark in their city anymore and sent it to Gath. And the same thing happened. So they sent it to Ekron, and the same thing happened. God was reaching out to the Philistines, displaying his power and superiority over their false gods! So finally they decided to send it back to Israel. But no one wanted to take it. So they built a cart and hooked a pair of oxen up to it and put the Ark on the cart and sent the oxen on their way without a driver. They even included a guilt offering of gold as an apology! They figured if the oxen pulled the cart right back to Israel then Israel’s God was causing all of this calamity among them. If they wandered around, it was all just an unfortunate coincidence.

And the cows got to the intersection of the road and walked straight back to Israel, to a town called Baalah of Judah. It was also known as Kiriath Jearim. And that’s where it had stayed, in the house of a priest, for the past few decades while Saul was made king and fought the Philistines and then met David and got jealous of David and chased him all over God’s green earth. And now, David is king, and he wants to bring the Ark to Jerusalem.

But there was a problem. How were they SUPPOSED to carry the Ark? With poles on the shoulders of consecrated Levites, right? How were they carrying it? On a cart, pulled by oxen. Look at what happens next. Look at Vv. 5-11. Abinadab was a Levite. His sons were Levites. And the Ark of the Covenant had been IN THEIR HOUSE not for days, or weeks, or even months, but for years. They should have been well-versed in every word God had spoken about how to treat the Ark and how to transport it. But they weren’t. They had gotten comfortable with it, and had forgotten the power of the God it represents.

What happens when we get too comfortable? We get lazy. We no longer participate in worship when it isn’t convenient. We get sloppy, no longer preparing ourselves beforehand to worship God. And we get distracted. We lose our focus and no longer pay attention to the Word of God, to the living, breathing, powerful voice of God leaping off the pages of Scripture into our hearts and minds. And when we’re lazy, sloppy, and distracted, we’re no longer being transformed by the power of God.

One of my alma maters, Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky, was recently the birthplace of a powerful outpouring of the Spirit of God in 2023, and that wasn’t the first time this happened at Asbury. In a recent podcast, Dr. Kevin Brown, president of Asbury, had this to say about the outpouring, and about those who experienced it:

“There’s a sweeping desperation across the United States and our world that I think is most acutely felt by younger generations. They want something distilled and real to anchor into … It’s obviously easy to point out the challenges of Gen Z, like anxiety and depression, leaving the church, skepticism toward religion and of institutions, and the fact that they’ve been discipled by phones and social media. But I see sensibilities that have uniquely positioned them to be a corrective to the pockets of casual Christianity that have marked our church landscape over the last quarter century and have emptied the pews.”[ii]

Our younger generations are leaving the church in droves. Even the largest church have a very small number of young adults. Why? Because they’re looking for something REAL. And they aren’t finding it among us as we worship. Why? Because we’re way too comfortable. And it’s made us lazy, sloppy, and distracted. If we start preparing ourselves to come into the presence of God and expect to be transformed as we do, people will come in droves, because they’re thirsty for something real, not a show, a performance, something contrived.

Uzzah, one of Abinidab’s sons, a Levite who should have known better, was walking beside the Ark as it rode on the cart, and one of the oxen stumbled, and he reached out to steady it, and when he touched it, he died. We may not be physically dead, but we’re dead men walking, dead women walking. We’re too comfortable.

So they wind up leaving the Ark in the home of a man named Obed-Edom because David was now afraid to move it any further. Obed-Edom wasn’t even an Israelite, but the way. The Bible says he was a Gittite. That’s the word used for someone from Gath. As in Goliath of Gath. As in the Philistine city of Gath. Obed-Edom was a Philistine living in Israel! At one point when David was avoiding Saul, he fled to the Philistine city of Gath and actually fought as a mercenary for them for a time, and he amassed a following of about 600 Philistines while he was there. It’s probable that Obed-Edom, now living just outside of Jerusalem, was one of them.

But while the Ark was in his home, his entire household was blessed. So David, now having had time to do his homework on the Ark and how it was to be treated and handled, goes to bring it the rest of the way into Jerusalem. 2 Samuel doesn’t include this, but in the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 15, David says, “Because you did not carry it the first time, the LORD our God broke out against us, because we did not seek him according to the rule.” The passage goes on to say “So the priests and the Levites consecrated themselves to bring up the ark of the LORD, the God of Israel. And the Levites carried the ark of God on their shoulders with the poles, as Moses had commanded according to the word of the LORD” (15:13-15).

We ignore the Word of God to our peril, and the peril of those around us. And unlike the people of David’s day, we all have access to it. Most of us can read, and in today’s world, if we can’t read, we can listen to it being read. We have better access to the Word of God than any generation in human history, and we ignore it, especially when we don’t like what it says.

So the Ark is now being properly carried into Jerusalem, but it’s a slow procession. Why? Because every six steps, David has an ox and another animal sacrificed. And as they process, David, wearing nothing but a linen ephod, the basic robe worn under the more decorative outer robes, dances before the Ark as the Levites carry it. I love the words the writer of 2 Samuel uses. “And David danced before the LORD with ALL HIS MIGHT” (V. 14), and they “brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting and with the sound of the horn” (V. 15).

David was a very fallen man, but he was also a man who loved God, revered God, sought to align his heart with God’s heart, and worshipped God with everything he had in him. When it came to worship, David, king of Israel, didn’t hold back. When he brought things into alignment with the Word of God, it wasn’t restricting, it was freeing! Following the Word of God isn’t about developing a long list of do’s and don’ts. It’s about aligning your heart and mind with God’s heart and mind, and that’s freeing. David didn’t feel restriction. He felt freedom.

Freedom to worship God with abandon. Freedom to follow God with confidence, knowing that God would do what he could not. Freedom to face any situation in life confident in God’s provision for him. In obedience to our appetites and desires, we are enslaved to sin. In obedience to Christ, we are set free to live as God intended live to be lived, with abandon and in total, anxiety-free dependence on him.

But as David worshipped God with abandon, his wife, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked down on him with disdain. Look at Vv. 16-23. Bringing the Ark into Jerusalem was cause for a nationwide celebration. But Michal sulked. She sulked because it wasn’t as dignified as she thought it should be. She sulked because her husband, the great David, the king, wasn’t wearing his kingly robes. He was wearing only his underrobe. He wasn’t acting like a king should act. He seemed to be making himself a fool before God.

To her, as was true of her father and most of his family, God was a tool to be controlled and manipulated for political gain. Be very, very cautious, my friends, when someone in power, or seeking power, waves a Bible or a cross around without a heart willing to repent and without the fruit of a godly life. God is not a tool to be manipulated for personal ends. Just ask David. It had cost him a good Levite.

Michal wants David to act like a king. But her picture of how a king should act. David, having learned his lesson about being too comfortable in God’s presence, paid close attention to the Word of God, and it set him, and all of the people, free to worship God with reckless abandon.

How do we approach God? How do we respond in God’s presence? Are we careful to prepare our hearts and minds for an encounter with the creating, redeeming, holy God of the universe? Here’s the thing. That God … that God of majesty and awesome power and holiness, wants to be your friend. As Francis Chan says, “I hope you’re stunned by this.” Because it IS stunning.

But it isn’t designed to make us comfortable. Being too comfortable in worship leads to dead worship. We need to get uncomfortable. We need to pay close attention to what God is saying to us in his Word, realizing that it is in aligning our hearts and minds with God’s heart and mind that we are set free to worship with abandon. And that is the REAL, the ultimate reality, that people are thirsty for. Let us pray.

[i] Eugene Peterson, Leap over a Wall (HarperOne, 1998), p. 144 Eugene Peterson, U.S. pastor, scholar, author, and poet (1932-2018)

[ii] Dr. Kevin Brown, president, Asbury University, Wilmore, KY