The Death at Perez Uzzah

1David again gathered together all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. 2David arose, and went with all the people who were with him, from Baale Judah, to bring up from there God’s ark, which is called by the Name, even the name of Yahweh of Armies who sits above the cherubim. 3They set God’s ark on a new cart, and brought it out of Abinadab’s house that was on the hill; and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drove the new cart. 4They brought it out of Abinadab’s house, which was in the hill, with God’s ark; and Ahio went before the ark. 5David and all the house of Israel played before Yahweh with all kinds of instruments made of cypress wood, with harps, with stringed instruments, with tambourines, with castanets, and with cymbals. 6When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached for God’s ark, and took hold of it; for the cattle stumbled. 7Yahweh’s anger burned against Uzzah; and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by God’s ark. 8David was displeased, because Yahweh had broken out against Uzzah; and he called that place Perez Uzzah, to this day. 9David was afraid of Yahweh that day; and he said, “How could Yahweh’s ark come to me?” 10So David would not move Yahweh’s ark to be with him in David’s city; but David carried it aside into Obed-Edom the Gittite’s house. 11Yahweh’s ark remained in Obed-Edom the Gittite’s house three months; and Yahweh blessed Obed-Edom and all his house.

In the war with the Philistines, God made the angels gather first in the tops of the mulberry trees, so that David and Israel would not have to shed their blood. With God’s help David won a great victory and took a wide stretch of land, from Geba all the way to Gezer. God granted this miracle, with angels joining the battle themselves, to show that those who live by faith are always under his protection. He was telling David that if he revealed God’s glory by faith, God would move heaven and earth to help him, and so he was to fear no one.

Now there was no one left to hunt David down and torment him. He no longer had to sleep in fields and caves and go hungry; he could live at ease with the people he loved, in a palace where he was safe. A life spent in fear of the world and its people had become a life of peace. All he had to do now was serve God as his King, love his people, and live in peace. The nations submitted to David of their own accord, and he had no worries, because whenever trouble came, God had already stepped in to help. Yet people have a very harmful habit: once they are out of hardship and life grows comfortable, they start looking back toward the world. When people suffer, they pray earnestly and lean on God to find a way out. But once the hardship has passed, they take the peace they now enjoy for granted, and because of that it is human desire, not gratitude, that comes to the surface.

Being set free from hardship is God’s grace, given by him alone, and we must never forget it. That is why we need to be more careful in times of ease than in times of trouble. If we do not give thanks when life is peaceful, we cannot discern what is right. With our discernment clouded, we ask God for more and more, and when we do not get what we want, we decide we are unhappy. Faith like this is sheer folly: it comes out into the light, then crawls back into the cave and seals the entrance with a stone. The wise are those who know how to enjoy the blessings God has given, and it is they who have room to receive still greater blessing.

Once everything was settled, David, in a very human way, wanted to do more for God. But that zeal did not come from doing God’s will; he decided on it out of his own devotion. He longed to bring the ark of God into David’s city. After turning over again and again how he might bring the ark of God to his palace, he called together thirty thousand of the people.

The man who had prayed even over small matters now went ahead without prayer. Humanly speaking, he might well have felt sorry that he lived in a beautiful city while the ark of God sat in a humble tent. So he could easily have wanted to move the ark into the palace where he lived.

David made a new cart and planned to bring the ark into the city with praise on every kind of instrument, while thirty thousand people welcomed the splendid ceremony. When he thought how glad God would be to see the ark brought into David’s city with such grandeur, his heart swelled. He must have been proud of himself for pleasing God. Until then David had acted according to God’s commands and ordinances, which is why the nation and its people had been blessed with peace. Yet this same David, who had once searched God’s heart so carefully, was now weighing everything by his own thinking and deciding God’s work as he pleased. His thought — I am this glad, so God will be glad too — was nothing but human reasoning.

So in the church, too, we must throw away the idea that because I am working hard and my thinking is right, I may handle things as I please. Before pressing ahead with anything, the right course is to hold it up to the word and to pray first, asking whether it is merely a human idea. I am not saying it is wrong to give God our very best. But because God’s holy power and glory were present on the ark of the covenant, God had made it plain that anyone who came near it carelessly would die. So the people lived with the holy ark at the center of their life.

Only the sons of Kohath among the Levites were permitted to carry the ark on their shoulders. Even so, David, wanting to show God his devotion, prepared a new cart and decided to move the ark on it. Perhaps the people were moved as they watched David giving his all. They likely wanted to follow his fervent faith, and David must have been pleased with himself, thinking he was doing well. As he watched the ark being carried on the new cart, David was full of joy, picturing how glad God would be and how highly God would praise him. He was listening to his own thoughts in a darkness where God was not. Had he thought back on the God who had worked for him all along, he would have realized that God is not one who wants human devotion and zeal. He could also have seen that Satan had deceived him.

Human devotion of this kind begins in an evil heart turned toward idols. David knew from experience that God never accepts human zeal, and yet he fell into the sin of approving his own faith. God’s people today also claim they did it because they love God, but such behavior is nothing more than idolatry with one’s own zeal as the excuse. David looked as though he loved God, yet he could move the ark this way only because he thought of God as a god who existed to help him. Thirty thousand people, a newly built cart, and instruments loud enough to hurt the ears filled the crowd with delight. Without a thought for how the holy God would see this celebration, they set the ark of the covenant on the new cart, satisfied with what they had done. One can almost see how the whole nation was stirred and carried away with joy.

When David had an upright faith, he saw the miracle of angels joining the battle, and with a single stone he brought down the giant Goliath. Now that same David had set out to serve God in his own way. Though the sons of Kohath were there, he broke the ordinance and put the ark on a new cart; he set instruments and singers before the ark and rejoiced as if he had done all that was required of him.

2 Samuel 6:6

6When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached for God’s ark, and took hold of it; for the cattle stumbled.

The verse says that when they reached the threshing floor of Nacon, the cattle stumbled — that is, the oxen slipped and very nearly fell. As the oxen lost their footing and the ark was about to fall, Uzzah grabbed hold of it on the spot, and when God saw it, his anger burned and he struck Uzzah dead. In such a moment anyone would naturally take hold of the ark to keep it from falling, but that is not the faithfulness God wants. God had already commanded the sons of Kohath, who carried the ark, not to touch it or look into it. When Uzzah touched the ark, then, he committed the grave sin of defying God’s command. In other words, putting the ark on a new cart was wrong from the start. David, who had begun something wrong from the very beginning, deserved a heavier rebuke than Uzzah; it was David who should have been lying where Uzzah died.

We say this because Uzzah was the victim of David’s decision, a decision that stepped outside God’s law. At a celebration that was wrong from the start, anyone at all was bound to sin. The fault was not Uzzah’s alone; David and all the people there were sinners. In God’s eyes, everyone from David down to Uzzah deserved to die. When a church does not proclaim the truth, the pastor bears the greatest blame, but those who sit there listening to what is not the truth must also answer for it. It is wrong for them to say they bear no blame because they merely attended church; in the same way, everyone who took part in this celebration was responsible.

Once David was at ease, he sinned by deciding things his own way. What is truly sad is this: God, who never changes, always works in the same way, yet people change so easily. As a result their lives are uneven, with rebuke and praise taking turns. What decisions have you made in order to push through your own righteousness and your own will? God, who looks at the heart, does not accept zeal and loyalty that are merely human. If, like David, you grow angry because you are not recognized, you must repent.

David had done his utmost to bring the ark to David’s city, but when Uzzah died, he grew angry with God for not understanding his heart, and he called the place Perez Uzzah. How sad is the faith of a David who flares up because his zeal goes unrecognized! Had he not worked so hard, he would not have been this angry. He forgot the God who had never once taken his eyes off him, guarding him all the way to the throne, and he looked only at himself. When God fought Saul on his behalf and raised him up until the nations bowed, David was deeply thankful; but now that he was king, he judged God as he saw fit and no longer sought his will.

David felt hurt that God did not recognize his zeal, though he had gathered so many people and instruments and given his very best. But God works according to the law he has laid down, and he does not commend zeal that breaks the law as faithfulness. People who do not understand this about God sometimes cling to him, demanding blessing because they have worked hard; when no answer comes, some resent God and walk away. Foolish and wicked human thinking ends up bringing shame on God himself. When did God ever say he was disappointed that the ark was not in the palace, or command that it be moved to a splendid palace? Since when had he told them to carry the ark on a new cart? This is how human zeal that defies God’s command becomes sin.

David had loved God so deeply, and yet here he is, raging against God. That alone shows how little human faith and loyalty are worth. God’s rebuke of the new cart David had made was, after all, love meant to save David’s life. But once David stepped outside God’s fence, he could not restrain his anger, and his senseless outburst ended in misfortune for him. When we give in to Satan’s temptation, we forget all the grace we have received and become fools who treat with contempt not only God but also the fellow workers who kept the faith alongside us.

If you have served with the same thinking as David, you will be the death of those beside you, the people under your influence, as David was of Uzzah. Only when David saw Uzzah die under God’s wrath did he become afraid to bring the ark into David’s city. The humble David of earlier days, seeing Uzzah die, would at once have torn his clothes with the people, put ashes on his head, and repented with everything in him. But David, loved by God more than anyone, had let his faith go sour, and the result was that he handled God’s work however he pleased. With his relationship with God broken, a very human fear swept over him. Satan whispered that it would be safer to keep the ark at a distance, and once David was led astray by that, he decided to abandon the ark.

We do the same thing without a second thought. We act as we please because we are sure our thinking is right, and when we are rebuked, we decide to abandon God and the people of faith — a foolish choice that pours out every blessing we have received. So in verse 10 we read that David did not bring Yahweh’s ark into David’s city but sent it to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. He sent the ark to Obed-Edom because he was afraid that disaster would strike him too, as it had struck Uzzah. Behind this act lay a wicked thought: as long as he himself escaped discipline, it did not matter if Obed-Edom came to harm. It is strange indeed that a person can change like this, for the David we know was never such a man. God is rich in mercy, and if David had truly repented, he would have forgiven him. But David, eager to settle the matter quickly, ended up moving the ark into Obed-Edom’s house.

David’s faith teaches us that people do not change all at once. When they fail to weigh events and circumstances by faith, they change little by little and drift away from God. The attitude that his own suffering mattered but Obed-Edom’s did not was not the David who until then had given himself up for others and cherished their lives. Had the ark brought disaster on Obed-Edom’s house instead of blessing, David would have concluded that his choice had been right. When people grow wicked, they want even God’s work to fail, just to prove their own decision right. Yet even though David forced the ark on him, Obed-Edom obeyed gladly and was blessed, for he knew what kind of God he was.

Obed-Edom knew that because of the ark the Philistines had died and the people of Beth Shemesh had suffered a great disaster, and he had watched Uzzah die before his eyes. Yet because he had served God sincerely all along, he saw this moment, a hardship for everyone else, as an opportunity. Within three months of receiving the ark, his household was richly blessed, and that tells us how faithfully he had served God day by day. If his faith had not been genuine, God would not have blessed his family like this. As a gatekeeper, Obed-Edom had never had the chance to come near the ark. The judgment of God that the whole nation feared became, for Obed-Edom, who longed for the ark of God, the chance to keep it close.

A moment the world calls a crisis can become, for people of faith, a wonderful opportunity to be blessed. If the word opportunity made you think of money, your faith has not yet matured. What I mean is that this is a good time to bring the gospel — the good news — to people who have lost hope because the economy is hard and life is a struggle. If believers labor to spread the gospel, God will bless them with material things and health, and he will help them save still more souls. This is the wisdom that turns crisis into blessing. When the troubles of the world become nothing but hardship for God’s people, it is because they have not discerned them spiritually and have not turned them into opportunities.

Here, with the ark at the center, God pours out blessing on one man and wrath on another, and in this way he shows us what kind of faith receives his blessing. My hope is that you will remember that in this event David was grieved and Uzzah died, but Obed-Edom was blessed down to his descendants. When anyone, like Obed-Edom, seeks God’s will and stays faithful even in small things, God blesses not only them but their children after them.

God’s blessing is not David’s alone to receive, because God pours out the blessings of heaven on anyone who lives by his word. If, even after hearing this so plainly, you do not let go of human righteousness, you will probably miss many opportunities.

1 Chronicles 15:16

16David spoke to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers with instruments of music, stringed instruments, harps, and cymbals, sounding aloud and lifting up their voices with joy.

So as not to repeat his earlier mistake, David gathered the Levites instead of using a new cart, and he made them sanctify themselves. Having learned once more that human life and death are in God’s hands, he took care to act according to the ordinance rather than by his own devotion. David saw his error and turned back quickly because he had wisdom. To know you are wrong and not turn back is the same as Uzzah breaking the law and grabbing the ark, and it is the same sin as David’s when he raged at Uzzah’s death.

David asked the chiefs of the Levites, men who knew the word of God, to appoint those who had faith as singers and to have them praise God with instruments. This was not singing and playing carried away by his own delight; he had the Levites offer praise that God could accept. In the same way, the church must appoint people of faith and wisdom and entrust the work to them. God’s work must be handled with care, because if it is entrusted to the proud, to those who do not know the word, or to those with a strong sense of their own righteousness, everyone may die. Only when those who have grown in faith work humbly and honestly, with patience, can many lives be saved. Yet even they can go sour in a moment, as David did; they keep from sin when they know this, stay on guard, and serve with a heart that fears God.

Once his faith was restored, David was so overjoyed at the ark heading toward David’s city that he danced without noticing his clothes coming off. Set the David who raged because his zeal went unrecognized beside the David who has laid down his own righteousness and serves God with a sincere heart, and the difference is plain. When he was full of his own ideas, he listened to no one’s counsel. The leaders of the tribe of Levi had always stood at David’s side and told him what was right, but David did not call them or ask them, because they thought differently from him. When he repented and turned back, however, the first people he sought out were these Levite leaders, and with their help he moved the ark of God according to the law. This is how differently a person acts when humble and when proud.

Keeping the commands and ordinances to the letter may look foolish to human eyes, but one thing is certain: keeping them is wisdom. Even if you seem to be moving a little more slowly than others, if you act according to the ordinances, God will raise you up in his own way, by the fastest road, to the highest place.

Friends, I hope you will never forget what a great blessing it is to be led by God in God’s own way. As you looked at the proud David and the humble David, what went through your mind? Disobedience and obedience, pride and repentance — truly, only a sheet of paper separates them. Does it not frighten you that a single moment’s choice divides eternal life from eternal punishment? Could it be that you are being swayed by the world and by people? The world and the people who hinder your faith are themselves under the influence of evil spirits. If you walk the path of truth boldly and without fear, God will protect your life. May you have no anxiety.

Let us do what God desires rather than what our own thoughts and desires urge. If you do not doubt God but lean on him with steadfast faith, he will make your work his own work and give you help and reward. May you always live out God’s will, just as he desires.