Believe

2Sa 6:3 And they set the ark of God upon a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab that was in the hill: and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drove the new cart.
2Sa 6:4 And they brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was in the hill, with the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark.
2Sa 6:5 And David and all the house of Israel played before Jehovah with all manner of instruments made of fir-wood, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with castanets, and with cymbals.
2Sa 6:6 And when they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen stumbled.
2Sa 6:7 And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.

The LORD is busy tonight and here I am, at one in he morning, wide awake because God awakened me with a task to perform or Him. When I was first saved there were a number of items that I, simply, had to accept on faith and nothing more. On some things, such as the Trinity, I still hold onto for no other reason than God revealed it in he scriptures, others, because I believed, the Holy Spirit is teaching me about... tonight has been one of those nights.

The 2Sam. 6 passage above, I must admit troubled me for the longest time... twenty-one years now. I know, from experience that this and other passages trouble millions of people to the point that they, instead of digging in to the Word of God, recorded history and the discoveries of the Archaeological Digs to see what is recorded, they begin to, on their own power, to help God by defining God in terms that they can understand! There is nothing more foolish than for the finite to decide to define the infinite and that is precisely what happens when we attempt to put the Creator, God, into any container that is man made.

So... why in the world did God strike a good man, Uzzah, dead for doing a good work? We must go back to the beginning from time to time and this is one of those times. Please read the passage below.

Num 7:4 And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying,
Num 7:5 Take it of them, that they may be used in doing the service of the tent of meeting; and thou shalt give them unto the Levites, to every man according to his service.
Num 7:6 And Moses took the wagons and the oxen, and gave them unto the Levites.
Num 7:7 Two wagons and four oxen he gave unto the sons of Gershon, according to their service:
Num 7:8 and four wagons and eight oxen he gave unto the sons of Merari, according unto their service, under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.
Num 7:9 But unto the sons of Kohath he gave none, because the service of the sanctuary belonged unto them; they bare it upon their shoulders.

The Ark of God was never to “ride” on a cart in the first place! In my NASB Bible I have highlighted the third and the seventh verses of the sixth chapter of 2Samual in red... red for sin. I have been permanently banned from several “Christian” web sites for what I am about to tell you but when I began to preach and to teach the Word of God I did not expect to win the Man of the Year Award and so far, I'm battin' one thousand! God must be listened to!

The Ark should have been carried, in the proper manner, on he shoulders of the Priests given that honor. Now, what in the world is the Life Application for the truth about this disliked and distrusted passage of scripture? The application is so wide and so varied that I or any other of God's teachers could preach for the rest of our lives on this one passage and never exhaust it. I'll default to the simple and just say that it applies to every aspect of your life, all the way down to getting dressed in the morning.

God, in His infinite wisdom, has given us the road map to Holy Living, it's known as the Holy Bible and if we intentionally disobey God, we run the same risk that Uzzah did and can be struck dead for it! It is absolutely true that God is the God of love... at the same time, it is absolutely true that our Loving God is the God of Righteous Wrath!