There is a danger in getting too casual with God and forgetting that he is holy. When our response to him becomes predictable, when our praise is offered on autopilot, when our faith is expressed flippantly and when we begin to worship a “better” form of worship, we have committed the sin of Uzzah—growing so familiar with God that we loose a sense of wonder and reverence for his presence. When that happens, our worship is dying a slow, perhaps imperceptible, but sure death. So how do you arrest the dangerous drift of casual Christianity? Return to your first love!
Going Deep // Focus: 1 Chronicles 13:9-10
But when they arrived at the threshing floor of Nacon, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the Ark. Then the Lord’s anger was aroused against Uzzah, and he struck him dead because he had laid his hand on the Ark. So Uzzah died there in the presence of God.
Why did God kill Uzzah? That’s quite a title for an uplifting devotional, wouldn’t you say? But really, why did God kill this man? Doesn’t this story, if you have read it, bother you, at least a little bit? Seriously, wasn’t Uzzah doing a good thing by securing the Ark of the Covenant when the oxen that were pulling the cart stumbled, threatening to topple this most sacred object? And if God struck Uzzah dead, what does this say about how we worship God?
Well, as always, context is everything. So let me mention a couple of lessons we need to consider in getting our minds around this strange story of Uzzah’s death:
First of all, it is fatal to take charge of God. That is how Eugene Peterson describes Uzzah’s act in his book on the life of David, Leap Over A Wall. You see, Uzzah was a priest. He had been consecrated to oversee the care of the Ark of the Covenant, and he had been at it for 30 years. For three decades, he hung out with the holy. Most important to understanding this story, this priest knew the law of God and the regulations about moving the Ark.
So, Peterson points out, Uzzah’s reflexive act wasn’t a mistake of the moment, it was a piece of his lifelong obsession with managing the Ark and controlling the presence of God. This was thirty years in the making. He had become selective in his obedience to God, which had led to cutting corners in his worship. In his mind, the cart was a better, more efficient way to worship. Peterson writes,
A well-designed ox-cart is undeniably more efficient for moving the Ark about than plodding Levites. But it’s also impersonal—the replacement of consecrated persons by an efficient machine, the impersonal crowding out the personal. Uzzah is the patron saint of those who uncritically embrace technology without regard to the nature of God.
Do you think that’s a pattern in our day? Do you think we have a tendency to manage God into more convenient forms of worship? Do you think we sometimes approach worship in terms of what’s better for us rather than what’s preferable to God? Do you think we fiddle with worship in order to make it more attractive to potential worshipers than what makes it attractive to God? When we program worship in terms of what’s better, more comfortable, more attractive to us, with little or no consideration for what pleases the heart of God, we too, have moved from a passion for God to a pattern of control and convenience.
That leads to a second lesson: Our friend Uzzah should cause us to post some warning signs around the church: “Danger! Beware of the God.” Seriously, we need a constant reminder of the holiness of God generally in our lives and specifically in our times of worship because we all face the temptation of confining God to times and places and styles of expression that are good for us, but not necessarily honoring of God. God will not be controlled!
That is prescisely why we have signs posted along the way throughout Scripture: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” We need to take seriously the cultivation of the fear of the Lord. At all costs, we must avoid reducing God to our specifications.
Yes, beware of the God! There is a danger in our day of getting too casual with God and forgetting that he is holy. When our response to God becomes so predictable, when our praise is offered on autopilot, when we give ourselves to God flippantly and when we begin to worship a “better” form of worship, we have committed the sin of Uzzah!
If we think and act like Uzzah—so familiar with God that we loose a sense of wonder and reverence for the Object of worship and we begin to cut corners, sooner or later we too, will be dead, at least in our spirits. The church worship service is a breeding ground for this. If we are not careful, what begins as authentic worship erodes and shrivels, until finally, nothing is left but deadness to God. We become like the religious people that Jesus described in his day as “whitewashed tombs…full of dead men’s bones.” (Matthew 23:27) Uzzah’s death wasn’t sudden; it was years in the making. Years of managing worship and obeying selectively had suffocated passion and praise right out of his life.
So from this reading, here is the question for you today: Have you hung around the holy so long that, like Uzzah, you have lost your sense of wonder for worshiping God? If you have, the good news is that through repentance and returning to your first love, Jesus himself offers to restore your passion for the holiness of God.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. (Revelation 3:20)
Will you let him in so he can rekindle the love and passion he longs to receive from you?
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