Paradigm Bind and Lack of Faith: Daily Thoughts from 2 Samuel (2 Samuel 6:1-11)

I vividly recall, after graduating from seminary and being unable to find employment, that I became fearful that something I was failing to do was blocking God’s blessing. I settled on the fact that I wasn’t doing my daily devotions faithfully enough. Surely that was it. My paradigm for how God should act was that if I accomplished all that I was spiritually supposed to, God would come through and fulfill my desires.

David, newly crowned king and wildly successful, gets in this same bind.

David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale-judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the LORD of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim. And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart, with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark.

And David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the LORD, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God. And David was angry because the LORD had broken out against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez-uzzah to this day. And David was afraid of the LORD that day, and he said, “How can the ark of the LORD come to me?” So David was not willing to take the ark of the LORD into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. And the ark of the LORD remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three months, and the LORD blessed Obed-edom and all his household. (2 Samuel 6:1-11, ESV)

David has the idea that Jerusalem should be the one place Yahweh selects to be the resting place of the Tabernacle (in Deuteronomy 12 Yahweh says He will choose one city to which all Israel shall come to Him and worship). It makes sense that Jerusalem be that place since this city will be the new capital, a place in-between the tribes, a neutral ground, so to speak. So with great pomp and circumstance he begins to bring the ark of the covenant that sits within the holiest place in the Tabernacle up to Jerusalem from its current resting place. Despite David’s concern and care, he is not properly transporting the ark. In accord with Yahweh’s direction in the law of Moses it is to be walked by the Levites on their shoulders using the long poles provided, along with the Tabernacle and all its parts, never touched by human hands and certainly never on a cart. It is unclear why David and the priests are so ignorant of this procedure.

When Uzzah responsibly, it seems, keeps the ark from falling off the cart, and God slays him (had no one had used their hands at that point to put the ark on the cart?), David has two emotional reactions, anger and fear. Anger is a reaction to our goal of getting what we need being blocked in some way and anger seems to empower us to plow through the blockage. It is a mindset of self-preservation, taking care of ourselves as if we don’t need or want God to take care of our needs. It springs from the rebellion of our own hearts that don’t trust God to be good enough, loving enough, perhaps even powerful enough to guarantee our happiness. God was not acting according to David’s script. He needed the ark to show Israel what a wonderful king and spiritual leader he was. He was more concerned with his own needs than with how God required His own worship to be conducted. Here he was doing God’s will, so he thought, and God spoiled it. He was angry with God.

But he was also fearful of God because God acted outside of his paradigm for how God should be. God became too unpredictable. We want and think we need a predictable God so we can guarantee that we can get Him to do for us what we need done by knowing how to manipulate Him. God should have been pleased with David and instead He was angry. David’s only choice was to suspend his goal of moving the ark and it then rested in the household of Obed-edom and God’s blessing rested there also.

When you find yourself angry with God for not fulfilling one your needs, as you perceive it, you are never closer to real growth in your understanding of who He is and who you are in His kingdom. Anger may cloud your fear, so check to see if there isn’t also fear of God and how He does things and fear in your own heart about whether you will be able to guarantee your happiness. This is the time to come to understand a new paradigm of God, or at least an expanded or constricted one. We do not set the boundaries for God. He sets the boundaries for us. He is the one who knows all and is Himself the standard of all good and evil. Yes, He wants to use us to help accomplish His goals in the earth. But they are His goals and we must be in agreement with those goals, and just as importantly, how He wants those goals achieved. We are leaders under the leadership of God.