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Christians Who Hurt Themselves |
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Man's Strength
Before the shed blood of our Messiah, the Ark was the place where God met man for personal communion. God gave very specific instructions on how it was to be built, what materials were to be used, how it was to be handled and moved and by whom, etc. It was designed both as a temporary provision so that God and man would not be cut off from fellowship before the Messiah's time, and as an exact foreshadowing of what the Messiah's role would be when He came.
For reasons that are not pertinent to the question at hand, there was a time when the Ark resided at the home of a private individual. That something so central to God's plan for humanity could not be the private preserve of any one household is obvious, so in the passage above King David made plans to move it to Jerusalem where it could take its place as the centerpiece of both the Jewish nation and its government. Great fanfare and celebration accompanied the procedure, and I'm sure all who saw the procession regarded that it must certainly be God's work.
And it was God's intent to move the Ark to Jerusalem. David, though, did not consult God nor the Torah, and he sat the Ark on an ox and proceeded toward Jerusalem. God had prescribed poles carried by Levites, but David saw only the goal, not the method and so he paid no heed to the manner of movement commanded by God. As a friend recently pointed out to me, in this he was just copying the Philistines and thus bringing God's testimony forward according to the world's methods. Inevitably, the Ark teetered and began to fall. Knowing that this would be a disaster, Uzzah reached out and steadied the ark with his hand, whereupon he was immediately struck dead by God.
Seems a little harsh, doesn't it? Why would God deal so severely with someone who only intended to protect the primary testimony of the Lord on earth from being destroyed? Is it really so important that the Ark be carried exactly by the rules? It's the ultimate destination that matters, right?
Well, the name "Uzzah," in Hebrew, means "strength." Seeking to protect God's testimony in man's strength and according to man's plans is never acceptable. God would have preferred to see the whole thing destroyed rather than have it preserved by the flesh. At first reading it sounds legalistic, but it's just the opposite. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord." God has no use for man's work. If man's strength is mixed with God's Spirit it is ruined, for God wants work that can survive eternity, which flesh and blood never can. To most of us it appears that Uzzah did a very noble and sacrificial deed, but God saw that He was about to ruin everything, and He acted as He did to let it be known to all that such mixture of man's strength with God's was a place where He intended to draw the line very tightly.
Uzziah is a variant of the name Uzzah with the same meaning. In Isaiah 6:1 we see, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord..."When our strength finally dies we see the Lord. This Uzziah was the same who finished his years as a leper because he took the priest's job upon himself. Until then he had a heart for the Lord and sought the spiritual restoration of Israel. One wonders if he didn't become frustrated with the slow pace of revival and take the priestly role for himself just to get things finally moving forward. Man always thinks that his own strengths can and will accomplish great things for God. Be that strength physical, intellectual, emotional, artistic or whatever, we think it is marvelous what such things can do for God. And so we do not understand when God deals harshly with us, because our understanding is entirely rooted in and focused on man's strength. It may be religious, it may be righteous, and it may have exactly God's ultimate goal in mind, but it is only man's, and that simply is not good enough for God. We do not understand God's dealings in these matters, but the experience we gain is always "When King Strength dies, we see the Lord..." Not even our absolute best intentions can ever accomplish that.
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