The Holiness of God

One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is the story found in 2 Samuel 6. It is the story of a man named Uzzah, who was struck dead because during the time David and the Israelites were moving the scared Ark of the Covenant, it was about to fall off the cart as the oxen stumbled. So Uzzah, just as I probably would have done, reached out his hand to stop the Ark from falling. Listen to the Word of God as it explains what happened.

1 Chronicles 13:9-10
And when they came to the threshing floor of Chidon, Uzzah put out his hand to take hold of the ark, for the oxen stumbled.  And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he put out his hand to the ark, and he died there before God.

I love this story. Why? Because it challenges me to know God on a deeper level. On the surface, at the risk of dishonoring God, His reaction seems extreme. Uzzah was just trying to take care of the Ark. God took his life, for what seemed the right way to approach the sacred Ark.

So, for years now I have pondered this story. I am blessed that God has given me enough faith to trust Him. I believe with all my being that God is good. God is always good and everything He has done, everything He is doing, and everything He will do is good. But my faith and my mind don’t always line up. Every time I read or hear the story of Uzzah, I still am tempted to question God on this. This past week I finished R.C. Sproul’s book, The Holiness of God. This is a must-read Christians. Understanding the holiness of God is paramount in understanding who God is and in understanding the Gospel. In his book, Dr. Sproul showed me something about this story I never quite grasped.

I knew that the reason Uzzah shouldn’t have touched the Ark was because God had clearly spoken on this matter. Numbers 4:17-20 was clear.

The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying,  “Let not the tribe of the clans of the Kohathites be destroyed from among the Levites,  but deal thus with them, that they may live and not die when they come near to the most holy things: Aaron and his sons shall go in and appoint them each to his task and to his burden,  but they shall not go in to look on the holy things even for a moment, lest they die.”

The holy things of God are to be treated with complete reverence. But even David and his men ate the showbread from the House of God and Jesus used that story to teach us about not using the law as an excuse for not doing what is right. Uzzah appears to be circumventing the law, for what we might describe as the greater good.

But then Sproul makes a point I never really thought about. Uzzah was forbidden by law to touch the ark and here is why it would be better for it to touch the ground than his hands.

The earth and its ground are not unholy objects. They are part of the creation. You see the earth is an “obedient creature”, as Dr. Sproul calls it. Everything God tells the earth to do, it does. Just as God established a moral law for man to obey, God established the laws of nature. The earth and all that is in and about it, obey God’s law, except one created being. Guess what? It’s man. Man is the only element of God’s creation that lives in rebellion to Him.

Uzzah, like each of us, was a man and had a sin nature. God set the law that called for Uzzah’s death, because to desecrate the ark was to desecrate God.

The reason we wrestle with passages like this one and are tempted to see God as unfair in His enforcement of this law, is that we do not understand God and especially in the following four areas; Holiness, justice, sin, and grace. Uzzah died because he failed to respect the holiness of God. Justice, sin, and grace are all best understand by first understanding what it means when we say God is holy. God is so holy that to violate the reverence He deserves, carries a sentence of death. It is only that we are living in an age of grace, that we get to live another day. We must make it our life’s passion as Christians, to know God more and more each day.

God never changes. He is still holy. How will we live out our lives in response to a God so holy, that men died because they did not respect that?

Seek Him today. Worship the only true and Holy God. Then spend time with Him in His Word and in prayer. Learn of His holiness.