"And when they came to Nachon's threshing floor, Uzzah put
forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the
oxen shook it. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died
by the ark of God" 2 Sam. 6:6-7.
There is undoubtedly a word or weight upon my heart, but it is
one of those words which naturally one would rather not speak. To
be perfectly honest, I have been wriggling with regard to this
word, for I know the kind of word that I would like to say. But I
am quite sure that the Lord has held me to this, and has a purpose
to fulfill, and all His purposes are good and all His ends are
right, and so we will just seek to let Him have His way, say what
He wants to say to our hearts, believing that receiving the Word
with meekness it is able to save our souls.
There are few more terrible things in the whole of the Word of
God than this statement which we have just read "Uzzah... died
there by the Ark of God". If you think about it for a moment
quietly, it is a terrible thing to die by the Ark of God. You can
think of people dying far away from the Ark of God, separated from
all that speaks of the Lord, dying in spiritual distance,
alienation; dying out of touch with the Lord, but when you think
of people dying there by the Ark of God, there is something about
that which is very terrible, and which comes back at us and surely
says that ought never to be. There is something very wrong when,
right in touch with the centre and fulness of the Lord, people
die; when that which embodies all the goodness, grace, love, power
and glory of God is right there and people die by it. That surely
is a very challenging thought, "Uzzah... died there by the Ark"!
To think that that is possible, that you and I should be so
intimately and closely associated with all that which we
understand to be meant by the Ark of God, should have such
proximity to it and die, and die there by the Ark of God. That is
not the Lord's thought for us; that represents something wrong,
something out of right relationship, even though in close
proximity.
It is not our thought to go over the ground again of what the Ark
stands for; we gather it up into a very few words. We must
remember that the Lord has very jealously expressed His will
concerning that Ark, as to its nature and its place, and its
transit and its content, and that what was in it spoke of this
wonderful Divine interposition for the sake of His people; the
interposing or intervening that is in His revealed will for their
lives, to save them from sin, as in the tables of the law; His
interposing to save them from death in their spiritual journey
through the wilderness, providing the manna; His interposing for
their special priestly relationship to Him on the ground of Life
victorious over death, represented by the rod of Aaron that
budded. These are grand, great, interpositions of the Lord for His
people. The Ark testifies to these great, these magnificent
comings in of the Lord for His people, and all inclusively it
speaks, of course, of the Lord Jesus, God's great intervention,
God's great interposition for man's full salvation, preservation
and fellowship - salvation, preservation, fellowship in Christ.
As we know, the blood was sprinkled upon the Mercy Seat on the
Ark. That Blood gathers up the whole testimony of the Lord Jesus,
to bring us into complete oneness and fellowship with the Lord.
The wonder of that Blood! The pillar of cloud and of fire rested
upon the Ark as they journeyed, and when it was in the Most Holy
Place, while they tarried, the Shekinah glory hovered over the
Ark, the glory of the testimony of the Holy Spirit with His people
as its focal point in the Ark. It is, "Christ in you the hope
of glory" - the full testimony of the Lord Jesus. Uzzah came
into touch with that; Uzzah had an association with that, and that
spoke of the Divine interposition and intervention for His people,
for their complete salvation, their complete preservation and
sustenance, and their complete fellowship with Him in Life, where
death is destroyed. That spelled death for Uzzah, that brought the
judgment of God upon Uzzah, and that is a very solemn matter to
contemplate. It is something which you and I will have to lay to
our own hearts quite solemnly, for we are in touch with that Ark.
You and I are constantly in touch with that Ark; we are in touch
with it today and every day, we are in touch with the testimony of
Jesus, we are in touch with God's Christ. We want to be quite sure
that ours is a right relationship to the Lord Jesus, an adjusted
relationship. While there are multitudes dying, perishing, far
away spiritually and literally from the testimony of Jesus, and we
have great pity for them and our hearts are stirred that they
might know the Lord Jesus and we are constantly speaking of them
dying without God and without Christ, it is possible for us to die
with God and with Christ. Just as solemnly true it is that we may
die there by the Ark of God, and I think, really a far more
terrible death, if there is any difference.
Well now, what was the matter with Uzzah, and what is it that may
have the same result in our own case? It is just gathered up, I
think, in one sentence: the infinite peril of familiarity with
holy things. The Ark had been in the household of Uzzah for a
great many years, probably seventy years. He had been brought up
with it, he had grown accustomed to it, it was commonplace in his
life, it was an accepted thing, it was taken for granted. Uzzah
was a Levite; he and his brother had charge of the Ark, and it had
become a bit of their profession, a bit of their business. It had
become an ecclesiastical matter, and so they performed the thing
from day to day until it truly became a performance, a matter of
course, a business affair. And when this movement of David was set
on foot to bring the Ark nearer to himself in Jerusalem, the cart
was made and the Ark was put on the cart, Uzzah and his brother
took charge, Uzzah stood by and his brother drove the cart, and it
came to the threshing floor of Nachor. The oxen became a bit
restive, and without any second thought Uzzah put forth his hand
and took hold of the Ark.
Now, a great many words are unnecessary, the thing speaks for
itself. Familiarity with holy things is a deadly peril. Uzzah had
lost God's thought and had dropped into his own thoughts about the
Ark; Uzzah had lost God's estimate and fallen into a man's
estimate, and now there he lies by the Ark - dead. His lifeless
body seems to testify to a spirit which was like this beforehand,
that is, lifeless to the value of the things of God. It speaks of
a previous inward state. The outward condition, now of death, seen
by all, is only the ultimate and the final manifestation in
expression of what was there before inwardly, that his inner life
was dead to the greatness, the holiness, the wonder, the glory of
that Ark and its meaning; the other in the course of time just
came to pass as the result of a spiritual state.
Now, beloved, those were, of course, days when God was forever by
examples establishing laws. We must remember that the Bible is a
book of laws, established by very vivid, outspoken methods to
control the ages. It does not mean that at all times the Lord will
employ the same methods, but it does mean that the laws hold good
for all time, and that the Bible simply says in a very vivid and
strong and demonstrative way that such and such things are
manifestly right, and such and such things are manifestly wrong,
but what matters is not that there should be an outward
demonstration of them, but there only needs to be an inward
condition which corresponds with them, and the Lord's attitude
towards that is the same as is manifested in these outstanding
cases. The state may be in us, and the Lord's attitude towards us
be exactly the same attitude as towards Uzzah. It may not be that
the Lord will strike us there dead on the spot literally, but His
attitude is the same. Death is bound to work, not necessarily at
once manifestly, but death is working deeply, hiddenly, perhaps
imperceptibly, but one day we shall be manifestly a corpse
spiritually and that has not come about all at once, that has not
taken place by an act, the Lord has been at work for some time.
That is what I mean.
The Bible is a book of laws, of principles which are
demonstrative in their conspicuous ways, but it is not the outward
demonstration that governs the ages, it is the inward law. We have
often said that the Book of the Acts is a book of principles laid
down for the dispensation. While we shall not always get the
outward forms by which those laws and principles were originally
established, they hold good just the same. I mean that an Ananias
and Sapphira may do exactly today what they did in the book of the
Acts; there may not be a breaking through of death on the spot,
but the law holds good, death works, and sooner or later the
outward expression will come - death. It is the principle
underneath. Uzzah's lifeless form only testifies to something
spiritual which has been going on, perhaps for a long time,
something hidden which now all can see, but oh! what do they see?
If they only see a lifeless form by an instantaneous action of
judgment, they have missed the deeper thing, they will have to
look deeper. And I believe David looked deeper, for in the ensuing
three months he was coming to see what that meant. And looking
deeper you see this is not something that is all bound up with the
immediate. It is something which reveals a spiritual state which
has been there all the time. Uzzah had been in touch with this
thing all these years and this very familiarity with it has made
him spiritually insensible. That does not come about all at once;
you never become spiritually insensible to the great things of God
unless you have contact with them. The judgment is not always
sudden or outward. What was literal with Uzzah may be spiritual
with us.
Now, you and I, being so closely related to the greater
magnitudes of the testimony of Jesus, the things of Christ, that
precious Blood are in danger of a familiarity with the Blood that
cheapens it. How jealous the Lord is for His Name, and there is
nothing more deadly than for us to have a spiritual cheap
association with the Name of the Lord Jesus, for example, and many
other aspects of His Person and His work. The peril for us is that
we, by continuous close association, should lose spiritual
sensitiveness and sensibility to the greatness of what is known to
us as the testimony of Jesus as embodied in that work. What I do
urge upon you, as I have to urge upon my own heart continually, is
that, in view of this peril, you ask the Lord with me every day to
keep the sense of wonder alive in our hearts of the greatness of
Divine love.
We should have a constantly renewed sense of the wonder of the
love of God. There is nothing in this world that can be compared
with His love. Never let us take the love of God for granted,
never let us for one moment become insensible to the love of God -
that is death. What can happen to us spiritually if we lose the
sense of wonder of the love of God! That is death, and how great a
death is that. The mighty efficacy of the precious Blood of the
Lord Jesus! Let us ask the Lord to keep alive in us the sense of
wonder concerning that Blood, ask the Lord to make known to us
more and more, day by day, the meaning of that precious Blood,
give us a constantly growing appreciation of the value of that
Blood. If we do not, we are in the way of error. The margin says
over against that word concerning Uzzah, "rashness", but it can
also be translated "error". You may use which word, you like.
"Rashness" speaks of presumption; "error" mistakenness, delusion,
and unless we have a growing appreciation of the precious Blood we
shall get into error, deception.
I was distressed the other day in a conversation regarding some
movement about which there is reason to have real serious
questions, that a servant of God, known to be a real devoted
servant of God who has now taken a place of leadership in that
movement, had said words like these, "We have now left the cross;
we came to the cross when we were saved and we had our transaction
at the cross then, but now we have left the cross behind and we
have gone on." And I cannot but put my finger upon that and say,
"That, my dear brother, is the secret of your deception, that is
what has led you astray." Oh! beloved, you and I have yet to
discover more value in the Blood of Christ than ever we have
known, infinitely more than ever anybody has yet known. I think
only in glory shall we discover the fulness, the value of that
Blood. Ask the Lord to make it daily more wonderful, more real,
more full: His Name, Himself, everything to do with Him. You and I
should have the sense of wonder, the sense of glory maintained. As
soon as we lose that, we have got into death.
I do not know that I have anything more to say. It is not so
terrible, and yet it is terrible. There are two ways of viewing
it. Uzzah died by the Ark, and I am just afraid that familiarity
may be one of the very signs of spiritual death. If these great
truths become a matter of teaching, of truth, that is, set phrases
used, and if there is not the due sense of the glory and the
wonder of Christ in it all, well what is the value of it? You may
be all the time dying in touch with it. There is a word, of
course, especially necessary for those who in this place week
after week, month after month, year after year are having the
things of the Lord in a deeper, deeper way presented, in touch
with things which a very great many are not in touch with. That is
not said boastingly or pharisaically, you understand. A lot of the
Lord's people would be glad to have the food that is available
among us. The peril for us is just this particular peril, that if
the testimony is in any larger measure with us, among us, (not
because we are anything more than others) ours is a greater
responsibility; ours, beloved, is a greater peril. And so I just
ask you, urge upon you, that you go to the Lord continually and
say, "Oh Lord, never let this truth become something of the mind,
which I take for granted, something with which I am so familiar
that it never provokes stimulation, wonder, praise in me. Keep me
very grateful for it, rejoicing in it; keep the whole thing
continuously fresh."
There are other phases in which this familiarity may be shown,
which means spiritual death, but I leave them. Do remember one
thing, that if you and I are touched by that precious Blood, if we
are Blood-sprinkled ones, then we are linked with the Lord Jesus,
and we are linked with the Mercy Seat, and we become very sacred
to the Lord, and to touch one another without due appreciation of
the fact that we are the Lord's, we belong to the Lord, may mean
death. I am feeling in my own heart more and more the Lord urging
to observe the sacredness of His own children. I lay that upon
you.
In that delightful book which some of us have read to so great
profit, Miss Carmichael's 'Gold Cord', there is a little paragraph
which runs something like this. Referring to the way Christians
talk about one another, she quotes from somebody who uses words
like these: "I can forgive him his exaggeration and his egotism,
but there is far too much of that about him which some Frenchmen
would call the essence of 'but' - he seems to have some exception
to take to everybody". And then she quotes from 'Punch' this, "Do
you know that girl?" "No, only to talk about!" That is enough. The
essence of "but"! "Oh yes, he is a dear fellow, but..."
"She is a real child of God, but..." And that "but" just
throws a veil over the whole. It is that reservation about
somebody, and it seems that you can hardly touch a person without
having a "but". Now, that may mean spiritual death. It may be just
touching something precious to the Lord: Blood-bought, sprinkled
with the Blood. That may be a kind of familiarity that does a lot
of harm. There is nothing more harmful to the Lord's children than
to talk them up hill and down dale, until they are a pretty fine
lot when you have done with them: all the good that there may be
there, has gone; it is overcast.
The Lord give us the grace to have a holy regard for holy things,
whether it be His children or His testimony, or whatever it may
be; where there is a sense of sacred, solemn, holy regard for all
that is precious to the Lord and especially a sense of wonder and
glory in our hearts in our relation to all that is of His Son, the
Lord Jesus.
"Uzzah... died there by the Ark". A terrible thing; the
result of familiarity with holy things. The Lord deliver us from
that.
Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.