1
St. Luke’s UMC
June 22, 2025
David: A Man After God’s Own Heart
“The Importance of Reverence”
2 Samuel 6: 2-10
We are drawing toward the end of our series on David. Several people have told me how much they have, surprisingly, enjoyed this series. We are covering matters that speak to all of our lives, but we are also covering significant parts of biblical history. And this morning we need to fill in some gaps.
Let’s go back two weeks ago when David was coming out of his year and a half living among the Philistines when he was a fugitive escaping Saul. Today’s insert in your bulletin captures this history and how after the death of Saul David becomes king in Judah, and then all of Israel. One of the first things he did was capture the fortified city of Jebus and renamed it the City of David. This is what became Jerusalem.
To establish a sense that God is indeed with David, and perhaps to honor God, David wants to bring to Jerusalem one of the most important religious symbols from its past, the Ark of the Covenant. Remember the ark? It was a chest built by Moses out of acacia wood. Remember that. You’ll get that question on Jeopardy one day, “The Ark was Made of this…”And you’ll be able to say, “What is Acacia wood?” All because you came to church this morning. Just tithe your winnings!
Anyway, let’s recall a few things about the Ark. It contained the remainder of the Ten Commandments that had been written by God on slabs of stone. It also contained the staff of Aaron, Moses’ brother who was the first High Priest. The staff budded almonds long after it had been cut. And finally, the Ark contained a sample of manna, the bread-like substance the people ate in the wilderness. So, manna, staff, and tablets, symbols of God’s provision, power and precepts.
In the wilderness Moses built a tabernacle around the ark, careful to obey the details given to him from God. The ark sat in an inner chamber. It symbolized God’s presence with the people. The ark was covered in gold with two cherubim facing each other on the cover. This was called the Mercy Seat. It symbolized the very place where God’s presence would meet with Moses.
After Moses, the only person allowed in the inner chamber where the ark was located was the High Priest, and even then, just one day a year, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Whenever the people moved camp, they had clear instructions about moving the ark. Just the Levites were to move it and even then, they were only to touch the carrying poles not the ark itself. This was a holy object and was to be treated as such.
Once the Israelites settled in the Promised Land, the ark moved around. Mainly it became an important symbol of God’s help to Israel in times of trouble. Whenever they went to war with an enemy like the Philistines, someone would go and bring the ark. It was the rabbit’s foot. For Israel the ark symbolized the fact that God was with them. 2
Their record was like 242-0 when the ark was present in battle. The ark was Tyrese Halliburton times a thousand!
So imagine what a faith crisis it was when the Philistines one day captured the ark in battle. Not only did they defeat Israel causing them to go 242-1, they took their rabbit’s foot. They grabbed the magic box. Now, I’m not intending to demean the ark. Rather, I am demeaning people’s attitude about the ark. You see, they felt that when they had the ark, they won. The ark made them feel powerful. The ark became more about the greatness of the people than the greatness of God.
So the ark goes into the possession of the Philistines until a series of unfortunate events happened to the people. For instance they got a plague of hemorrhoids. And since no one had invented Preparation H by this point, the only thing the Philistines knew to do was send the ark back to Israel. So they consulted their “diviners” about the best way to do this. The Philistines believed in magic, black magic. They practiced the dark arts. So their diviners said to put the ark on a cart pulled by two cows and let them carry it back to Israel.
The ark came to the Israelite village of Beth-Shemesh. Some of the men of village were struck and killed because they looked in the ark. Remember, this is a holy object. You are to treat it as such. So the people said, “Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God?” (1 Samuel 6:20) So the people send the ark to another village and it ends up in the care of a man named Abinadab, where it stays until David comes to get it some 20 years later.
David wants to bring the ark to Jerusalem. His ultimate goal was to build a temple where the ark would be kept, sort of a home for God. He comes to Abinadab’s house to retrieve the ark. Abinadab’s sons, Uzzah and Ahio, take charge of the transfer. After all the ark has been at their house for 20 years. It is placed on a cart pulled by oxen. Where did they get that idea? That’s how the Philistines transported it.
Well, along the way, the oxen stumbled. Abinadab’s son Uzzah was walking beside the cart. Apparently the ark wobbled and he reached out his hand to steady the ark so it wouldn’t fall. He put his hand on the ark and God struck him dead.
And here’s where you ask, Wasn’t that a bit extreme?
Or was it?
You see, no one ever asked “What are the rules pertaining to the transportation of the ark?” There were, you know. In the Torah God gave explicit instructions. “You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on one side of it and two rings on the other side. You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, for carrying the ark.” (Exodus 25:12-14) And also this verse: “At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord…” (Deuteronomy 10:8) 3
So the Levites, and only the Levites, were to carry the ark using the poles put through the loops, so no one ever touched the ark and thus would keep it from falling to the ground.
So what’s the point of this story? Glenn McDonald wrote one of his Daily Inspirations a few years ago based on this story. He said, “This is a frightening scene. What kind of mean and capricious God would kill a man who is doing something so innocent—trying to keep the ark from splattering in the mud?” But then he goes on to point out how the ark had been in Uzzah’s house for decades and perhaps he had gotten used to the presence of God and maybe even taken that presence for granted.
Then Glenn relates this very transparently. He said, “Many years ago I called upon a man who had been active at my church, but had gradually decided to stop coming. I asked if there was anything I had done to cause his discomfort. There was a long pause. Then he told me something that was exceedingly hard to hear, and which I have never forgotten.
‘Glenn, there have been moments in which it seems that you don’t take God very seriously in worship.’ What did he mean by that, exactly? (The man) went on, “Think about the last time you served me communion.” That morning (Glenn wrote) we had invited our worshippers to come forward to receive the bread and the wine. As he walked to the spot where I was holding the cup, I remembered that he was on my list of things to do. I leaned forward and said, ‘Hey, that meeting on Tuesday night has been rescheduled.’
What was I doing? I was mediating the presence of God while getting a little administrative work done on the side… I had lost my sense of wonder at being in the presence of a God who refuses to be taken for granted.”
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian religious history professor who taught at the University of Chicago. In 1957 he wrote The Sacred and the Profane which examines how religions divide the world between the ordinary matters of everyday life, and the places and objects that are not ordinary, but just opposite, they are holy, sacred. The places of sacred rituals and items are important for the religious person because they connect us to God, and this connection is what brings definition and meaning to all of life.
In other words, if we just treat everything as ordinary, we lose a sense of God.
I grew up at the tail end of an era that treated Sundays and going to church somewhat differently. You didn’t go to church without a tie on. In fact, that’s the reason I am a Notre Dame football fan today. That’ll make you scratch your head won’t it! On Sundays my parents would get me dressed for church before they got ready. They would get my tie on with a little suit jacket and pants then sit me in front of the TV and say, “Now don’t move while we get ready.” Well, back then NBC showed a 30 minutes highlight of the Notre Dame game from the day before. So that’s why I’m a ND fan today!
I grew up in that time when church was meant to be different, special. You wore a tie. You polished your shoes. And I know that doesn’t work today. We want church to feel welcoming to people just as they are, and there is actually a good theological point in 4
that. But I wonder, and I realize this is where I sound like an old fuddy-duddy, that if we get too ordinary, too familiar with God, if it begins to treat God as something we can possess
David wanted to get the ark to Jerusalem as quick as he could. Load it on a cart and get moving! Who has time to carry it? He has a kingdom he needs to solidify. He needs to prove his authority. What better way to do it than to go grab the ancient symbol of God’s power to show everyone, God is on his side!
But God will not be possessed by anyone. God does not come to serve us. Oh, I know, Jesus said, “I didn’t come to be served, but to serve,” but realize Jesus said that to show us how we are to treat other people, not how we are to treat God. God is to be adored, made holy, put above all others. Because as we do that, we experience God’s true power and help.
But death? Did it really mean Uzzah had to die to make this point? Perhaps another way to look at this story is to realize that putting and keeping God first above all can be the difference between life and death.
Last week the New York Times had a story about Omer Shem Tov, a 20-year old Israeli man who grew up in a fairly secular home, was not religious, and living a fairly carefree life…until, he was taken hostage by Hamas at the Nova concert and party near the Gaza border. Living 130 feet below ground in a tunnel he started developing rituals of faith.
Little did he know that his mother started doing the same back in their home just north of Tel Aviv. Each morning she would stand in Omer’s bedroom and recite Psalm 20, a psalm written by David when he was facing some moment of crisis when he depended upon God for deliverance. It begins:
May the Lord answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion.
May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings
Notice how it says, “May the name of the God of Jacob protect you.” That recalls part of our story today where it says, “(David) and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark.” (v.2) The Name didn’t just mean what we call God. It was a reference to God’s sovereignty, God’s ownership. It meant that God puts his name on us. We belong to God. This Psalm of David is not just a plea for help, it is saying in a time of crisis, “God, I put you first.”
Shem’s mother, who was not practicing her faith, came by this Psalm quite randomly. A group supporting hostages families gave out cards with names of hostages on them and 5
different scriptures on the back. The card with her son’s name on it had Psalm 20 on the back. Well, little did Omer’s mother know, that as she recited this Psalm in his bedroom each morning, her son was reciting it down in a tunnel in Gaza.
His captives brought him reading material with religious writings on them left behind by Israeli soldiers. The captures wanted Shem to read it believing it might contain military secrets. One of the cards he read was Psalm 20. They let him keep it. So he would pray the words each day.
This was part of a whole set of practices Omer formed while in the tunnels. He began praying thanks over whatever scraps of food he was given to eat. When he got a small cup of some grape-flavored drink, he saved it for Friday night, the start of Sabbath, when worshippers pray the Kiddush, the prayer of blessing over the cup of wine. The captors would make fun of him when he placed his hand over his head like a skull cap as he said this prayer.
He began practicing kosher laws, being careful not to mix things like cheeses and meats together as the Torah prescribes. He made vows that if he got home, he would begin praying daily with tefillin, small boxes containing scriptures which, again, the Torah calls for people to tie to their foreheads and arms as they say morning prayers.
Of all places, in a tunnel where you don’t if you will live or die, he begins practicing these ancient rules of reverence for how to worship God. It just seems like nonsense, but not to Omer. He said, “You are looking for something to lean on, to hold onto. The first place I went to was God. I would feel his power enter me. Faith kept me going.”
In a time and place where religious rituals would seem a waste of time, Omer Shem Tov found just the opposite.
Our story today of the striking down of a man for not following right rituals is not easy. I’ll give you that. But maybe there is something to the idea, that there are times that feel like life and death, and its those moments where rituals and reverence connect us to the truth that while we look for something to hold onto, we remember there is Someone holding onto us.
So what might be some ways you can incorporate deeper reverence into your life? Consider these:
- • Regular scripture reading
- • Lighting a candle when you take time to pray
- • Making Sunday worship a little more special, perhaps by what you wear, arriving early to worship to get into a worshipful frame of mind, lighting a candle when you enter or leave the sanctuary.
- • Regular prayers you can say before meals.
Omer Shem Tov escaped and returned home in February a different, better man. And he has kept his vow and prays the tefillin everyday.