Worship: Trembling and Dancing

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Don Filcek; 2 Samuel 6:1-15 Worship: Trembling and Dancing

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack is preaching from his series,
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The Warrior Poet King, Study of Second Samuel. Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filsack. I am the lead pastor here, and it is good to be gathered in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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How many of you would testify right now by the raising of your hand that Jesus Christ has been kind to you?
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Raise your hand if Jesus Christ has been kind to you. That's awesome. He has been so kind to us, church. He has drawn near to us when we were
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His enemies. He died for us. He has won us over by His great love. He has brought us to His Father, and He has done so by cleansing us of our sin, by paying the debt that our sins incurred, by shedding
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His own blood on the cross for you and me. Our goal together this morning is to worship the
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Father through Jesus Christ, His Son, in the power of His Holy Spirit.
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And we're going to do that through hearing His word and believing it. We do that as we gather together through praising
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Him by singing some songs together here in a moment. And we worship Him in the gathering of God's people through participating in communion at the end of this service, remembering that our only hope is based on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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But the goal of our gathering this morning is worship. The next couple of weeks, the message is going to be on the nature of true worship.
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The next couple of times we're in 2 Samuel. I'm actually going to be gone a couple of weeks here, but when I get back, the second message in this section of Samuel is going to be on the topic of worship.
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What we're going to be seeing over the next couple of weeks is David's bringing the ark of God into the city of Jerusalem for the first time.
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The historical significance of this is monumental in Jewish history. This is the account of the center of the worship of God being moved to the city of Jerusalem.
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And Jerusalem is going to remain the religious center of the Jewish faith extending all the way to 2022, all the way to where we live today.
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Jerusalem is the religious center for the Jews. But I've entitled this message,
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Worship, Where Trembling and Dancing Meet, because I think the two main movements of this text shine a light on a tension that is a tension in worship that existed back then and still exists today.
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It is a significant tension that remains here in our gathering this morning.
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Something that we need to keep in tension even as we're about to sing some songs together, as we're about to praise him.
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And I want to point out one thing that I, throughout this message, when I use the word worship, I am not merely talking about singing songs.
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Now how many of you would just be honest and say, when I hear the word worship, my mind turns to songs, turns to music? Well, often, four of us.
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I mean, being honest, I think that that's probably pretty much most of us are going to think, when we think the word worship, we're going to think singing, we're going to think songs, music, something like that.
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But worship in the Christian life and worship throughout the pages of Scripture is our entire lives lived out to God.
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How many of you know that you can drive your car worshipfully? Because you can drive it unworshipfully, right?
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How many of you know you can work for your employer in a worshipful manner? How many of you know you can relate to your kids, your spouse, your wife, your neighbor, your friends, in a worshipful way?
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Or in an unworshipful way? It all comes down to what are our thoughts about God and how are we trying to serve him in the day -to -day that he gives to us and brings to us.
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Well, the tension is this. True worship of the Holy One, true worship of the
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Almighty Creator God requires both trembling and dancing.
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Now, I'm going to define dancing a little different because some of you are going, if that's a requirement, I'm in trouble. Dancing, I'm going to explain over the course of the message what
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I mean by dancing. You're going to see that it is a lacking self -reflective type of worship on David's part in this text.
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So it is primarily, when I'm talking about dancing in this message, I'm not talking about literally cutting a rug, although in this passage it does take that form.
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It is that which is not thoughtful about self but rather thoughtful about God in our expressions. That's what
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I mean by dancing. But here's the thing. The true worship of the Holy One requires both trembling and dancing.
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What I mean by that is both fear and joy, both an intense respect of the Holy One and a jump up and down kind of gladness that He is for us.
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It is only right that we have these two responses in light of the fact that God is both holy, holy, holy, and faithful in His steadfast love toward His people.
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How many of you already knew that about God? How many of you think about that enough? I don't think any of us do.
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That God is both holy and we tremble before the holy, righteous judge over all the earth, and yet we dance and rejoice and celebrate with exuberance because of His steadfast love toward His people.
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We tremble before our holy God when we realize He is the rightful judge, but we rejoice with elation and dancing when we realize that He has rescued us from the guilt of sin and He has even rescued us from the law by which we would all certainly be condemned.
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So let's open up our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 2 Samuel chapter 6, 2
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Samuel 6, verses 1 through 15. If you have a device, if you have an app or something like that, you can use that.
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If you have one of those scripture journals, turn over in that. But again, 2 Samuel 6, 1 through 15. The text is all about two worship services.
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See if you can see the division as I'm reading it. See if you figure out where the two divide. They are both set in very similar contexts, both very similar worship sets, but they have very, very, very different outcomes.
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So 2 Samuel chapter 6, verses 1 through 15. David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30 ,000, 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
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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.
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And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark.
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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.
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And when they came to the threshing floor of Nachan, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it.
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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.
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And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah in that place that is called Perez -Uzzah to this day.
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And David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, How can the ark of the Lord come to me? So David was not willing to take the ark of the
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Lord into the city of David, but David took it aside to the house of Obed -Edom the Gittite. And the ark of the
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Lord remained in the house of Obed -Edom the Gittite three months. And the Lord blessed Obed -Edom and all his household.
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And it was told King David, The Lord has blessed the household of Obed -Edom and all that belongs to him because of the ark of God.
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So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed -Edom to the city of David with rejoicing.
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And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal.
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And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the
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Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you show us who you are.
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You are faithful and kind to warn us. Because when we look at this text, it's shocking to us.
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It affronts our sensibilities. We see even David who experienced these events in the text recoiling, withdrawing from you in anger and in frustration over what you do here.
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Would you remind us all to a person here gathered within earshot of your word, even those who are taking this in online afterwards,
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Father, all of us, that you are not our puppet. You are not our vending machine.
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You are not our homeboy in the sky. You are not the big daddy upstairs. You are holy.
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You are righteous. You will have your way in the realms of mankind.
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Every knee will bow and every tongue confess on that final day of judgment. We are your people.
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And so I pray that you would help us to reflect on that with trembling. Rejoice that you do not leave us in our trembling.
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But as we tremble before you, our mind is reminded of your kindness. Our mind is reminded of your goodness.
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Goodnesses we've already experienced yet this morning. Many of us have had some donuts that taste good to our taste buds.
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Many of us have had some coffee that perk us up in the morning. Many of us have experienced warmer weather this morning.
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That is a grace from you. Many of us woke up in houses with others around us this morning.
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Many of us, all of us in this gathering, have had a church to come to and gather together with this morning. Your grace upon grace upon grace is inconsistent with our unholiness.
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So Father, I pray that we would rejoice in you with both trembling and dancing this morning.
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With both a delight that gives up ourselves, that ignores what others around us think of ourselves.
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And to really focus on you. You are holy. And you have loved us when we didn't deserve it.
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So Father, I pray that you would inhabit our worship with those thoughts today.
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In Jesus' name. Amen. Make yourself comfortable. If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, that's available back there.
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If you need to use the restrooms, they're out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side. And if you need to get up and stretch out or whatever, the goal is to keep our focus as much as possible on 2
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Samuel 6, verses 1 -15 for the remainder of our time together. And so I encourage you to reopen your
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Bible, reopen your app to that place, so that you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming out of the study of that this week.
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And trying to bring to you the message that I believe God has for us in that text. I want to start off by quoting the great theologian
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Bob Dylan. He got it right when he mumbled the following lyrics into a microphone.
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You're going to have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the
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Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody.
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Well, the author of the second psalm in the Bible, who most scholars believe, was King David. The very
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King David that we're talking about in this text. The King David that we're walking through his life. He further defined the nature of worship and who you're going to serve in Psalm 2, verse 11.
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When he said, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
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That's going to set the table for our time together this morning. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
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How many of that sounds like a conflict a bit? Tremble and rejoice don't go together very well in the human mind, but they should if you encounter this holy
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God. The narrow definition of worship that I'm using this morning simply means to ascribe worth to something.
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It's not a very complicated definition. To ascribe worth to something.
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I point out to you that, of course, like Bob Dylan said, humanity is worshipful by nature. We are innately serving something.
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Innately ascribing value to things. We are constantly assessing, constantly ascribing value to things.
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We have multi -billion dollar industries centered on what I would say is worship. The ascribing of value.
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It's not by chance that it's called American Idol. Think about the worship aspect of that idea.
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We have People Magazine where we follow and all of these websites where you can follow the celebrities and ascribe worth to the things that they eat.
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Ascribe worth to the places that they vacation. Ascribe worth to the multi -million dollar houses that they purchase.
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And that's not even getting into the sports industry, right? NFL, NBA, NHL. All of these are big time centered on the human core of worship.
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We ascribe significant worth to athletes and actors and that's why they make so much cheddar, right? But our text is obviously interested in driving us toward the true worship of our
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God. Not towards the things around us. Not towards the created order. Not towards other people. Not toward ourselves.
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We are indeed going to worship somebody. And if you choose to worship the Holy One, the true and living
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God, then this passage has something to say about how we are called to go about it.
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So if we're going to choose to worship God, and I believe that all of us probably are gathered together this morning because we have the notion that that's who we should be worshiping.
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So the text is going to talk to us about how. It comes to us in two movements.
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Our outline this morning is going to be broken into two instructions for worship. I give it a very one word outline.
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The first is verses 1 through 11, trembling. And verses 12 through 15, dancing.
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There's your outline. Trembling and dancing. Both sections of our text take the form of Old Testament worship sets.
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We're actually observing a worship gathering of God's people. They are complete with musicians, musical instruments, and intense celebration in the ascribing of worth to God.
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And that's the breakdown of our text. Two distinct worship sets. They're praise services.
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And despite the fact that they both represent a procession like a parade, think like outdoor parade as they're walking and playing songs and celebrating and singing songs together.
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They are both the gathering of God's people for the purpose of praising Him. The first one, as I read earlier, how many of you caught that the first one's not going to end very well?
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Did you guys catch that in the reading? It doesn't end well. We read it earlier, but let's jump into the first aspect of worship, which is obviously
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I'm calling it trembling. And I believe it's a uniquely, trembling is a uniquely necessary component of the true worship of the true and living
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God. Let's start with trembling. Our text begins in verse 1, setting the stage for an epic worship service.
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I need to start off with the historical significance of what's going on here. The Ark of the Covenant is being brought into Jerusalem for the very first time.
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David has just recently conquered Jerusalem and made it his political capital.
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Made it the center. His throne is there in the fortress in Jerusalem. And now he is seeking to make it the religious capital of his kingdom.
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Now when we talk about the Ark of the Covenant being brought into Jerusalem, I think that that probably requires some explanation because I think it's important for you to know there's two very different kinds of arks mentioned in the
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Bible. This is not the massive Noah's Ark on rollers being brought into Jerusalem. That might be, and it's okay, that might be the only ark that some of us here are familiar with, but let me describe the other ark for you.
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The other ark is approximately 3 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot. Now that doesn't carry many animals.
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You're not going to get many animals in that ark. That's a different kind of ark. But it was a box that was built under the direction of Moses, really instructed by God, commanded for them to make this box during the
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Exodus. Some of you, if you've read through the Bible in the year, maybe you got stopped right around the time it was describing all of the building of these things in detail.
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But it's in -depth detail that gives you basically the blueprint of this box. It was overlaid with gold.
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We find out through history what was in it. The laws of the tablets that were given to Moses from the
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Ten Commandments are in this implement, in this piece of furniture, if you will.
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And it's important to understand what it does. It represented to the people the presence of God with his children, with his nation, with Israel.
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It represents, and that's important terminology, it represents the presence of God. It doesn't bring his presence.
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It doesn't force his presence. It's not like he lives in or on this box, but it represents his presence to the people.
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It was very fundamental that this box was not meant to be worshipped by Israelites.
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It was the center of the Old Testament worship, and the actual ark itself, the cover of the ark, was called the
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Mercy Seat of God. And in verse 2 makes clear, God was called the one enthroned on the cherubim.
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Now, why is it mentioned? Well, you see the picture there, those two angels whose wings are extending forward? This, by the way, is a relatively decent representation of what's described for us in...
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That's why you see it pictured that way, is because it's the way it's described in the book of Exodus and Deuteronomy when it's mentioned there.
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So, he's enthroned on the cherubim, and you'll notice what is absent there, and it's important what is not there.
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There's two gold cherubim facing one another, wings outstretched, and many scholars, I think, rightly identify and make much of the absence in the middle of those two cherubim.
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There was no image of God there. There's no idol there. There's no statue there. Do you notice it?
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All of the pagan nations worshipped idols, representations, physical representations and images of their God, but not
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Israel. It's unique. It's different. You see, we serve a God who refused to be imaged by anything else in all of creation, and I believe it's with significant intention that he did not have his image there on the mercy seat.
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The reason is because he had an amazing plan to send us his perfect image. What was his name?
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Jesus Christ. His plan all along from ancient times was to send forth his son that would be the perfect imprint of the
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Father, perfect imprint showing us in living flesh and blood what God is like.
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He wanted to show us himself, and no static, unmoving, lifeless idol or picture would do to show us who
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God is. When he chose to show us his image, he sent forth his son. That's why there's no
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God there. There's no image of him there. God didn't live on the ark. God didn't live in the ark, but he chose this box as a way of symbolizing his presence with his people.
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In this sense, the box is like, I would liken it to the tables of communion that we're going to take, and we're going to go to those tables this morning, and we're going to take the cracker, and we're going to take the juice together.
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God is not in the cracker. God is not in the juice. But they certainly are meant to remind us of him in his presence with us.
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Does that make sense? It's like that. It's an image. It's a symbol of his presence with his people.
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David is ready to make Jerusalem the religious capital, and so he gathers a massive entourage to lead the symbol of God's presence up into the city of Jerusalem.
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So he gathers 30 ,000 military and religious leaders, the who's who of the Israelites are gathered together for this great worship procession.
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It's a celebration, a bringing up of the ark into the city. And David went with this massive gathering of people down to Baale Judah, which is another name for Kiriath -Jerim.
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And the only reason I mention that is if you're a student of the Bible and you want to do a little bit of research in this, you're going to be a little confused because you're going to go, last time we saw the ark, it was in Kiriath -Jerim.
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Well, these places are changing names all the time, and we're going to see that in just a moment that David's going to literally change the name of another location.
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They change the names frequently. So, Baale Judah is the same as Kiriath -Jerim. The ark has been located there for 20 years at the time of this text that we're reading this morning.
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And you can find out if you're curious and you want to see kind of a good chunk of Scripture that explains a little bit of the history of how it got to Kiriath -Jerim.
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It's a very interesting account. It starts back in 1 Samuel chapter 4 and goes all the way to chapter 7, explaining how, in this amazing way, how the ark came to rest at the house of Abinadab in Kiriath -Jerim.
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The last time we saw the ark transported, by the way, it was transported on a brand new cart pulled by cows coming up from Philistia.
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The Philistines had captured it in battle, and every place that they tried to house it, the people got cancer.
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That's kind of what the text tells us. Every place, the people got ill, they got sick, they grew tumors, and God was judging them for taking the ark.
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And that's all that 1 Samuel 4 through 7 business that's going on. So they said, get it out of here. Get it out of here.
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We put it on a cart, just let the cows pull it towards Jerusalem, and whoever finds it gets to keep it.
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Get it out of our country, because everybody who was around this thing gets sick and dies.
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Well, okay, get it out of there. They make the connection. Every city they move it to, everybody gets the same thing.
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They make the connection, and these cows pull it that way. And that's going to be significant here in a second, because the last time that Abinadab's household, when it came to him, it was pulled by a cart.
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So the ark has been kept in the family of this guy, Abinadab, for 20 years, and now his sons are the curators of this ark.
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And one interesting observation by historians is that the victories of David against the Philistines in the previous chapter likely opened up free passage to bring the ark up to Jerusalem.
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So you might go, why wasn't it already there? Why didn't he already bring it up? When he took over Jerusalem, why didn't he just bring the ark? Well, the territory between Kiriath -Jerim and Jerusalem, though it's only two or three miles, was held by the
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Philistines until our text last week. And last week, those conquests and that pushing back of the
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Philistines all the way together, the last thing that we saw in the previous text, opens this area up so that now there's free procession up into Jerusalem.
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So preparations are made. Musicians and instruments are brought along. There's rehearsals and all kinds of activities surrounding this, and they get the instruments tuned up, and David plans things out.
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They have an unused cart to carry the ark on so that they can avoid defiling this sacred object. They've made all their plans and preparations, and they start up the winding valley from the house of Abinadab a couple of miles up into Jerusalem.
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The two sons of Abinadab, who have likely been the curators of the ark, as I mentioned, following in their dad's footsteps, are likely consulted in this procession about how to do it.
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The one son, Ahio, it says, goes before the ark, and by implication, Uzzah, his brother, walks behind.
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They're the ones driving the cart, and I would like to just point out that they probably kind of pride themselves in being experts in archaeology.
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Who's got dad jokes? And two thumbs? This guy right here.
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David, archaeologist, I like that one. I didn't read that. Whoa. Once in a while,
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I stumble on a gem. Is that enough? Have you had enough yet?
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My kids have had way too much. David and the massive parade are all celebrating, worshiping.
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They're praising God. They are singing with all their might. They're singing to songs led by harps and lyres and tambourines and castanets.
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This is a loud, raucous event going up into Jerusalem. No quiet and reflective hymns. This is a full -on loud worship gathering.
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People from around are hearing this procession as it goes down. There are 30 ,000 people singing and dancing and jamming out.
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It's a big deal. And when they come to the threshing floor of Nacon, which, by the way, we don't see anywhere else in Scripture, so I'm going to say the most significant thing you need to remember about Nacon is it rhymes with bacon.
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That's important. No, it's not really. Bacon is important. Something less than funny happens here.
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One of the worship leaders drops dead. One of the worship leaders there in this gathering drops dead.
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Now, I don't care who you are or how you were raised to worship or how fervent you were raised in your church. When a worship leader dies on set, it would get your attention.
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Am I right? Yeah. You see, one of the oxen pulling the cart stumbled.
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And so Uzzah reached out a helping hand to God to steady the ark to be sure that it doesn't fall in the mud and the defiling ground.
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And touching that which he was forbidden to touch by all of the law, he was struck down dead on the spot.
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And just in case we're tempted to see this as a strange coincidence of timing, the people who saw it all go down have no doubt about what was happening there.
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The text revealed by the Holy Spirit to the author here tells us in definitive language that this was the anger of the
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Lord against Uzzah because of his error in the English Standard Version, which would,
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I think, even be better translated because of his irreverent act. And this was not like he contracted the sniffles on the road and went home to convalesce, got sick, and never recovered.
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His corpse is right there in the midst of the procession. Right down there beside the cart that holds the ark of the covenant of God.
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He died suddenly on the spot for all to see. Why? Because he touched the sacred ark that nobody was supposed to touch?
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And some of you might learn from this without studying it. Your logical takeaway is, wow,
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God can be petty at times. If you're not careful and you're not thoughtful and you're not a student of God and you're not paying attention to who he is through the word, that would be a logical conclusion.
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Anybody with me? It's, wow, how in the world? Really? He reached out to steady this thing.
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It was going to fall in the dirt. God, did you want it to fall? He's just doing what, maybe even, to some degree, how many of you just have kind of a little bit of a reflex, something starts to fall, you reach out and grab it?
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Anybody? I think most of us. I mean, you can put yourself in other's shoes, you'd be toast too, right?
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I think we're supposed to think that thought. So let's think about what
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God is showing us about himself. Through what likely for many of us is a troubling passage.
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Go ahead and raise your hand if you find this to be a troubling passage. Hold it up for a second. It's troubling.
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Understandably troubling. We're going to see in just a moment that it was troubling to David. Extremely troubling to David.
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And if you're getting that feeling, then you're getting it right. So first of all,
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God is showing us, he is showing us definitively in this text, that he has no interest in hiring a public relations firm.
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He has no interest in spinning who he is. He does indeed care that we think about him rightly, and there is no room for us to spin the character of God on this.
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Because fundamentally, the second thing that we must grapple with in the text, is that God is holy.
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He is just, hear me carefully church, these are stern words, he is just to judge his human, named
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Uzzah. Now, I think in our arrogance and our pride, if we're honest, we think we know
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Uzzah better than God. Uzzah, just a normal Joe, doing his job. Just walking along behind the cart, reaching out, and starts to stumble, just impulsive.
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Oh, poor guy. What God says is consistent throughout scripture, and I bring in a passage from the
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New Testament, just to let you know that we're not talking about an Old Testament God versus a New Testament God here.
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In 1 John 5, the disciple John writes these words. He says, there is a sin that leads to death.
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And I believe he's speaking in that passage about physical death. And he knows where that line runs out.
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God knows where that line runs out. What I want to pose to you this morning as a question was, is
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Uzzah a really good guy who didn't deserve to die? Do you have a category of a human like that?
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There's only one that I know of. His name is Jesus. Do you have a category of person that's a really good guy that doesn't deserve death?
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Does that put it in perspective for us? Or was he a man that stands as a model of God's great patience, allowing him to experience delights like sunsets, and the smile of his baby child, and the pleasures of good meals, all while living an ongoing affront, sin after sin, against his maker?
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That's a category I know. Because that's me. Someone to whom
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God has demonstrated lavish grace while I keep sinning. Anybody with me on that?
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That's me. What about us?
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Are we good people who suffer unjustly at the hands of an angry God? Or is God the one who suffers patience with us, putting up with us while we keep heaping up sin against him, while he continues to send sunshine, he continues to feed us with the products of his hands, he continues to give us undeserved joys, undeserved delights, unearned favor, unearned grace, upon grace, upon grace.
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Is that your God? Is that Uzzah? It wasn't that Uzzah was a good guy who made an unfortunate mistake.
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It is that Uzzah was a man born under the curse of Adam. That God endured a single day with Uzzah, breathing his air, was nothing but sheer grace.
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That God has not judged us, for all of the sins we have committed is nothing, church, but sheer grace.
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I love the way that the late Rich Mullins, one of my favorite Christian artists from back in the day, wrote it. He said this.
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He didn't write it. He said this in an interview. He wrote down 1997. I don't know if that's the right year or not.
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I think that might be when it was published, but he said this in an interview back when he was living. He said this, quote, people say it's not fair that someone should die when they are 18.
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And I go, wow, it's unfair that we should be able to live until we're that old. Speaking of God's grace and mercy.
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How many of you, when somebody's cut down in their prime, it's like, man, that's tragic. So sad. Rather than thinking, wow,
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God was so patient to put up with them for 18 years. Do we have the right perspective, church?
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Do we have the right understanding of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of our own hearts? What we deserve is completely wrong.
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What we think we deserve is completely wrong. What we think Uzzah deserves is completely wrong. Well, David responds like we're tempted to respond as well.
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We're human. So this shows that we're getting a right understanding of what happened here when it ruffles our sensibilities in the text.
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In verse 8, David named the place Perez -Uzzah because the Lord broke out, the word Perez there, break out like when the waters breach a dam.
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We talked about that a couple weeks ago. Maybe it was even just last week. Perez -Uzzah, because the
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Lord broke out against Uzzah in that place like a dam, like water bursting out of a dam, a breach, and it breaks down.
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So let's bring this home for a moment. Church, who do you worship? Who do you worship?
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You tell me God. I say, another question, what God? Describe him.
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Define him. Is he tame? Is he good? Seeking hard to define,
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Church, for you, sermon after sermon, passage after passage, the God I present to you is the
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God of Scripture. It's what he says of himself, what he does to demonstrate himself.
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And so I preach to you this morning the God before whom we should tremble. The God before whom we should tremble.
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He is holy. He is different from you and me. Look at verse nine.
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What is David's response? Verse nine. David was afraid of the Lord that day.
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David. I think it could be said that if you are ranking people that are in your top five bravest people that you've read about or encountered,
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David should make your top five. David, who said that in his youth he killed lions out in the night in the middle of the pasture that were attacking his sheep, killed bears in his youth, and the dude didn't have a rifle.
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He faced off with a giant with a slingshot and his staff and a few stones just in case.
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I always love how he takes five stones. Nobody ever mentions he took a staff. What in the world was he going to do with his staff? No idea.
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He had it with him. He had a faith in God that carried him through many situations that would have had many of us changing our shorts.
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Yet the whole broken worship parade here has that brave man rattled at the face of his
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God. David passive aggressively. Any of you ever respond passively aggressively to anyone?
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How about God? Sidelines the plan. Fine, God. If you're going to act that way,
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I'm not taking your box to Jerusalem. Take that. We know his motivation.
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It says in the text what his motivation is here. He is angry at God. He's angry.
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That's the beauty, by the way. When we see David's heart, he had no difficulty expressing his frustration with God.
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Read his Psalms. He was honest. He was raw in the things that he wrote and the things that he discussed to God and the things he leads the people in in discussion of God.
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He's angry at God in the text tells us. What you need to understand is that he's not right in this.
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He's not right in this, but he's showing us true human emotion. David allows the fear of God to keep him from drawing near to God for a season.
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God hasn't gone anywhere. David has. If we only ever have, and here's my point on trembling.
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If we only ever have the trembling, we will remain distant from God. We need more than mere fear to lead us into worship.
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Here's a good starting point, but it will not be the ending point for those who find him. Ironically, I would suggest to you that many church traditions have leaned so heavily on fear.
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I feel like I was kind of raised in that kind of soup of fear of God. Some of you here are children of the 80s as well, and you watched the
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Thief in the Night video and scared an entire generation into the kingdom, right? I don't even know what
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I'm talking about, like fear driving the church in your youth, right? And I think that that prevents people from drawing near to God.
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All it is is fear. Like David, people can be left with an exacting judge who is ready to smite us without the relief of hope that comes from the second half of the equation.
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He is holy, church. Yes, but he loves us, and he has made a way for us.
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Amen? So David allows the ark of the presence of God to be housed nearby at the home of Obed -Edom the
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Gittite. I'm sure that just snaps to you. You're like, oh, wow, a Gittite housed the ark?
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How many of you, when you read it, you were just like, wow, I can't believe a Gittite would house the ark? Anybody? If you understand history, you would.
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Let me explain this to you. Gittite, for some reason, they don't like, like there's hard and soft letters.
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Gittite is a person from the city of Gath. Now, you know somebody from Gath.
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You just didn't know that you knew somebody from Gath. It's a big, tall guy that David killed with a sling and a stone.
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This is Philistine territory. This is enemy of God territory. Obed -Edom was born in Gath.
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What does that make him? A Philistine. Likely a foreigner in the midst of Israel.
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Now, he likely had some loyalty. There's a lot of crossover. You see that David actually lived in Philistine territory and ran one of their cities for a while.
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There's crossover between these peoples. They're close by. They're living in community, and often there's crossover, and some move over here, and some move over here.
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This guy was likely loyal to David, but here you likely have a foreigner to Israel housing the symbol of God's presence and, according to verse 11, being blessed by it.
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Being blessed by God because he's willing to house the ark. It's like passive aggressive.
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I'm not taking the ark up to Jerusalem, and God's like, oh, I'm going to bless the guy who does. Yeah, back at you.
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Before we move on to the second point of worship, let me clarify a couple of things for our application, a couple of things that are going on here in this trembling section.
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You see, this first section could be called When Worship Goes Bad. When Worship Goes Bad. You see, what's going on here in the text was disobedience thinly veiled as worship, and you don't see it at first.
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If you're a student of the Old Testament law, you would get a little bit more in here. There are eight passages that I identified.
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I think there's probably more, but eight that I was able to identify in the Old Testament law that state that the ark of the covenant was to never be touched.
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How many of you know that if it says it in one place, you should obey it? If it says it in eight, God is emphasizing it. Eight different passages that say don't touch the ark.
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Further, in many of those eight, it says don't even look at it. It's supposed to be covered by special cloths. They're not carrying this big gold box around so that everybody in the countryside can see it.
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No, it's supposed to be covered up and explicitly it's stated in Numbers 7 verse 9, the book of Numbers 7 verse 9, it is never to be carried on a cart.
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It's never to be carried on a cart. They're worshiping wrongly.
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There were four metal rings attached to the four corners of the top of the ark. Poles were to be carefully slipped through and hoisted on the shoulders of two men and they were to carry this box between them every place they went.
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When the ox slips and the cart begins to tip, the ark is never supposed to be on a cart in the first place.
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Further, and more to the point, I think that we need to grasp in our application is that when
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Uzzah reaches out to steady the ark, he misunderstands something fundamentally. He considers that his own hand is less defiling than the ground and he wrongly assumes that.
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That it would be better for him to reach out his hand and touch it than for it to fall in the dirt and he's wrong.
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Better it gets dirty. Better it falls in the mud. That would be less defiling than the hand of a sinful human.
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You see, am I saying that you're more filthy than dirt? In God's eyes, yes. The ground has no sin.
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The ground has no capacity to blaspheme him. The ground has never had an evil thought.
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But Uzzah and you and me? That's a different story. Worship goes bad on two fronts, church.
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It can fall on either one of these points. When we misjudge the holiness of our God, worship will go bad.
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When we misjudge the cleanness of our own hands, worship will go bad. He's done both.
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Misjudging the holiness of God, misjudging the cleanness of his own hands. The appropriate prerequisite to worship the true and living
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God is a healthy trembling, a righteous awe, and a desire to do things his way.
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Worship and praise are not things to trifle with, not things to experiment with, not things to just kind of go and attempt this or attempt that.
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In our praise, we are reflecting what we think about God. And church, he is indeed holy, holy, holy.
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But there's a second prerequisite for worship. If we ended here and wrapped up and closed our
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Bibles, that would be a devastating place. And I'm suggesting to you that some churches do that. Some churches want to just end here.
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So just tremble. Just be afraid of him. The second part I'm calling dancing, only because it's the form it takes in the passage.
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You don't want me to dance? You don't want to see that? Just herky -jerky movements. It's not very good, okay?
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But I'm going to be taking the word dancing as a form of elation and freedom. There is indeed a sense of exuberant, hear me carefully, church, with this next word, selfless expression.
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Selfless expression that is required in worship. Don't much care for what other people think.
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Only care about what my creator and the almighty God thinks. If our minds really and most truly are on God in our worship and praise, then we will be lost to the concerns of self.
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This will be a big part of the next message in 2 Samuel. I don't want to steal too much from the next time I preach on this, because that's going to be the centerpiece of that, is that selfless expression that David leans into in the second half of this chapter.
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But David becomes aware of the blessings of Obed -Edom in verse 12. He becomes aware.
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Somebody comes and reports and says, Obed -Edom's house is just, things are going well for this guy. Everything is coming up roses.
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Everything is clicking for him, because he has honored God in doing this thing of housing the presence, the symbol of his presence.
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But I want you to think carefully. What brings David back around from his anger against God? Passive -aggressive, saying,
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I'm not going to take that thing up to Jerusalem. How in the world can that thing come to me? Keep it to yourself. But what changes in David is when he remembers and sees
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God's goodness. Yes, he is awesome. Yes, he is holy.
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And he is good. Blessing those who honor him.
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He has experienced God in his stern judgment. He has gazed upon the holiness as it's burned in the minds of all who saw
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Uzzah fall down during worship on that day. They were well acquainted with God's severe, and yet,
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I would say, just response to sin. But what shakes David awake from staying in a place of distance from God?
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It is remembering his goodness, his undeserved kindness. And in this case, it just happens to be that God blesses this
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Philistine -born Obed -Edom. Does Obed -Edom deserve God's kindness? Does he deserve
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God's blessing? No. Does he deserve to drop dead like Uzzah? Just like all of us.
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But God chooses to bless Obed -Edom for his faithfulness to keep the symbol of his presence. And so David wakes up to the goodness and kindness of God.
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And we have worship procession 2 .0 in verses 13 through 15. Verse 13 makes it clear that David has now taken the time to get to know what
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God desires in worship. He's like, okay, what happened? What went wrong? Generically, we can say this, though.
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When it comes to worshiping God, I think it's generic, but it's biblical. We can say that to obey is better than sacrifice.
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I want you to take that on as a thought in your worship of God. To obey is better than sacrifice.
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That's actually stated by the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel to Saul. To obey is better than sacrifice.
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What this means is that God has a deeper desire for us to obey him out of love than to grudgingly offer sacrifices.
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You know the difference? To love him in your service, to love him in your giving, to love him in the way that you serve your family, to love him in the way you drive your car, to love him in all aspects of your life, which is worship.
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All over the Old Testament, we see prophets saying statements like this. Your sacrifices stink.
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Your sacrifices stink. Why? You honor me with your lips. You honor me with your sacrifices, says
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God. But your hearts, your hearts are far from me. You hear the difference?
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To obey is better than sacrifice. An obedience from love. Romans 6, 17 puts the standard of worship this way in our lives.
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A phrase that God keeps rolling over in my head. As your pastor, this is one of the things that God is teaching me.
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He's working into me. Romans 6, 17 says this. But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin, is that everybody?
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Get your attention, that's you. You who were once slaves of sin have become, now you're a new person, what's new about you?
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You have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
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I love that phrase. That phrase keeps rolling over my mind day by day. Obedient from the heart.
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I love how Paul puts those two essential components together, obedient and heart. And only the gospel draws us into an obedience from the heart.
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All else is merely obedience to the law. But are you obeying? Are you honoring? Are you following God? Are you giving of your time?
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Are you investing in others? Because of his love. That has won your heart over so that now you love him.
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Is that what you're doing? That's worship. That's the heart of worship.
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Obedient from the heart. I love how Paul puts these two essential components, obedience, heart, and keep those in your mind.
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Keep that forward in your thinking. It's the kindness of God that wakes up David from his angry stupor.
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It is remembering that he cannot quit his God because God has embraced him in love.
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And so the procession begins again. This time at the house of Obed -Edom. They've got less to travel.
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And the ark is now carried with poles. There's not an overt mention of it.
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It's in the text. It's every seven steps, or every six steps, as the men who are carrying it.
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You see it in the text? It's just subtly shifted. They're carrying it, and every six steps, according to the text, the sacrifice is made.
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So David is standing before the ark. I mean, rather walking before the ark, but not just merely walking. He's dancing before the ark.
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And here's the descriptor, with all his might. You'd think that that's probably ferocious dancing.
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I mean, David, if he's dancing with all his might, do you picture this guy being weak? He who slayed his tens of thousands?
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He's ripped, and he's dancing with all his might. He's dressed down to his linens, which is a way of saying he isn't wearing an overcloak, the outer garments.
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I don't even know if it's appropriate for me to say he's in his skivvies, but I just did. The rigor of his worship will be the topic for our next sermon.
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But the ark is brought into Jerusalem, and with it, the symbolic presence of God comes along too, and the center of worship is established there in Jerusalem.
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And the procession is welcomed with shouting and with sounds of the trumpets, in verse 15. This is a major day.
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The God -ordained instrument that represents the presence of God was brought into Jerusalem that day. God chose to center his worship on this box containing the words of the covenant between God and his people.
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And there's a new place of worship in the Old Testament. The crossover here to the new covenant of grace is,
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I would suggest you, fraught with misunderstanding and danger. How we apply this, we've got to be careful and nuanced.
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We have no new covenant equivalent to the ark. What do I mean by that? There's no building, there's no pulpit, there's no special locations.
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He is in all places. And we are individually his temples, as the
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Holy Spirit indwells us, both as individuals, but then also corporately, the church together, the people of God, are being built up into a temple of the living
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God. And what that means is very significant. Wherever we go, wherever the church gathers, there is the location of worship.
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There is the location of God in the midst of his people. The location on earth for his worship is shifted from a geographical location, like Jerusalem, or a temple, or a tabernacle, or centered on this box, to a redeemed people instead.
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So that wherever his people gather, his worship is offered. The application is pretty straightforward today, church.
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Seek to keep the dancing without forgetting to tremble. Without forgetting who it is that you're worshiping.
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Holiness, fear, joy, exuberance, those things mixing to a crescendo in our daily and weekly worship, church.
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And consider this as we come to communion this morning. In Christ, we can now draw near to God.
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No more veils, no more do not touch, no more do not steady, no more do not reach out.
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No more sacred furniture. Christ, who died for you, also fulfilled for you the entire law.
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At his death, the veil on the temple in Jerusalem was torn from top to bottom. And do you know, church, what would have been exposed there on that day when the temple curtain was rent into?
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Do you know what was in there? The Ark of the Covenant. That only the high priest was allowed to see one day a year on the holiest day, the
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Day of Atonement. Symbolic indeed. That now access is given to all who come to him by faith at the death of his son.
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Jesus has opened up the way for us to have a new type of relationship with our Heavenly Father. Don't lose sight of his great holiness.
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Do not lose sight of his kindness and his mercy and his blessing that should set our feet dancing. What we're about to do is serious, church.
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I don't know if I convey it in a way that makes you understand that it's serious, but I do ask you to skip communion if you do not have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
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I fear that we could make this merely routine every week or a flippant activity, but it is a dangerous thing to disrespect the
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Lord and the things that he has given for us in worship. Communion is an act of remembering as worship.
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And for this reason, if you do not yet worship Jesus Christ as your Lord, then you cannot in any reasonable way come to those tables in a way that is honestly worshiping
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God. So this is a serious thing for those of us who belong to Jesus as well, but I want you to take it on as serious in the dancing sense.
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For at the tables we remember how he has moved us from mere trembling to now trembling and dancing.
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He took away our sin, and he's declared us holy before his Father. We are washed in his blood.
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He took our punishment on himself. So let me encourage you all, church, dance a little this week. Recast, let awe and wonder and trembling give way to dancing in your heart this week.
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And let's end where we begin. A couple of those same quotes. You're going to have to serve somebody.
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Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. So then let's all go out from here to serve the
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Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Let's pray.
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Father, I recognize that even in the time that we've had together, there could be all kinds of confusions that the evil one wants to get into our hearts and minds.
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Are we supposed to be afraid of you? Are we not supposed to be afraid of you? Can we call you Abba? Can we not call you Abba? Is there a formality with which we are to approach you?
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Father, I pray that you would solidify in our hearts both what is different about you than us, but also your great mercy and grace.
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You are transcendent. You are high. You are exalted. You are above us. You are unlike us in all ways and capacities.
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You are the Holy One. You have reached down to love us.
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You have condescended in your Son to come here to this place to take our penalty.
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You have shown yourself gracious and merciful to me this morning in the taste of my coffee and in the delight of waking up next to a woman that I love, to be in a place where we can gather together in freedom to talk about these things.
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You have blessed us immensely. Father, I pray that you would help us to see the good that comes from your hand as blessing and to let that impact our hearts and our minds to both the trembling side of what we deserve, but equally the great dancing and exaltation of what has been given to us in Jesus Christ.
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Be with all of us as we come to the tables of communion this morning. Those who can go there and go to those tables because their heart is given to you,
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I pray that they would not go there with mere fear, but awe and wonder of you, your great justice, your great judgment that would have been over us and the condemnation that we all deserve, but that being washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ and by his sacrifice for us that leads us to exaltation, leads us to rejoicing, leads us to selfless expressions of gladness before you.