'The ark of the Lord continued in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite
three months; and the Lord blessed Obed-edom, and all his household.'-2
SAMUEL vi.11.
Nearly seventy years had elapsed since the capture of the ark by the
Philistines on the fatal field of Aphek. They had carried it and set it
in insolent triumph in the Temple of Dagon, as if to proclaim that the
Jehovah of Israel was the conquered prisoner of the Philistine god. But
the morning showed Dagon's stump prone on the threshold. And so the
terrified priests got rid of their dangerous trophy as swiftly as they
could. From one Philistine city to another it passed, and everywhere
its presence was marked by disease and calamity. So at last they
huddled it into some rude cart, leaving the draught-oxen to drag it
whither they would. They made straight for the Judaean hills, and in
the first little village were welcomed by the inhabitants at their
harvest, as they saw them coming across the plain. But again death
attended the Presence, and curiosity, which was profanity, was
punished. So the villagers were as eager to get rid of the ark as they
had been to welcome it, and they passed it on to the little city of
_Kirjath-jearim_,'the city of the woods,' as the name means, or, as we
might say, 'Woodville.' And there it lay, neglected and all but
forgotten, for nearly seventy years. But as soon as David was
established in his newly-won capital he set himself to reorganise the
national worship, which had fallen into neglect and almost into disuse.
The first step was to bring the ark. And so he passed with a joyful
company to _Kirjath._ But again swift death overtakes Uzzah with his
irreverent hand. And David shrinks, in the consciousness of his
impurity, and bestows the symbol of the awful Presence in the house of
Obed-edom. As we have already noted, he was probably not a Philistine,
as the name 'Gittite' at first sight suggests. There is an Obed-edom in
the lists of David's Levites, who was an inhabitant of another Gath,
and himself of the tribe of Levi.
He was not afraid to receive the ark. There were no idols, no
irreverent curiosity, no rash presumption in his house. He feared and
served the God of the ark, and so the Presence, which had been a source
of disaster to the unworthy, was a source of unbroken blessing to him
and to his household.
I have been the more particular in this enumeration of the wanderings
of the ark and the opposite effects which its presence produced
according to the manner of its reception, because these effects are
symbols of a great truth which runs all through human life, and is most
especially manifested in the message and the mission of Jesus Christ.
Let us, then, just trace out two or three of the spheres in which we
may see the application of this great principle, which makes life so
solemn and so awful, which may make it so sad or so glad, so base or so
noble.
I. First, then, note the twofold operation of all God's outward
dealings.
Everything that befalls us, every object with which we come in contact,
all the variety of condition, all the variations of our experience,
have one distinct and specific purpose. They are all meant to tell upon
character, to make us better in sundry ways, to bring us closer to God,
and to fill us more full of Him. And that one effect may be produced by
the most opposite incidents, just as in some great machine you may have
two wheels turning in opposite ways, and yet contributing to one
resulting motion; or, just as the summer and the winter, with all their
antitheses, have a single result in the abundant harvest. One force
attracts the planet to the sun, one force tends to drive it out into
the fields of space; but the two, working together, make it circle in
its orbit around its centre. And so, by sorrow and by joy, by light and
by dark, by giving and withholding, by granting and refusing, by all
the varieties of our circumstances, and by everything that lies around
us, God works to prepare us for Himself and to polish His instruments,
sometimes plunging the iron into 'baths of hissing tears,' and
sometimes heating it 'hot with hopes and fears,' and sometimes
'battering' it 'with the shocks of doom,' but all for the one
purpose--that it may be a polished shaft in His quiver.
And whilst, thus, the most opposite things may produce the same effect,
the same thing will produce opposite effects according to the way in
which we take it. There is nothing that can be relied upon to do a man
only good; there is nothing about which we need fear that its mission
is only to do evil. For all depends on the recipient, who can make
everything to fulfil the purpose for which God has sent him everything.
Here are two men tried by the same poverty. It beats the one down,
makes him squalid, querulous, faithless, irreligious, drives him to
drink, crushes him; and the other man it steadies and quiets and
hardens, and teaches him to look beyond the things seen and temporal to
the exceeding riches at God's right hand.
Here are two men tried by wealth; the gold gets into the one man's
veins and makes him yellow as with jaundice, and kills him, destroying
all that is noble, generous, impulsive, quenching his early dreams and
enthusiasms, closing his heart to sweet charity, puffing him up with a
false sense of Importance, and laying upon him the dreadful
responsibility of misused and selfishly employed possessions. And the
other man, tried in the same fashion, out of his wealth makes for
himself friends that welcome him into everlasting habitations, and lays
up for himself treasures in heaven. The one man is damned and the other
man is saved by their use of the same thing.
Here are two men subjected to the same sorrows; the one is absorbed by
his selfish regard to his own misery, blinded to all the blessings that
still remain, made negligent of tasks and oblivious of the plainest
duty. And he goes about saying, 'Oh, if thou hadst been here!' or if,
if something else had happened, then this would not have happened. And
the other man, passing through the same circumstances, finds that, when
his props are taken away, he flings himself on God's breast, and, when
the world becomes dark and all the paths dim about him, he looks up to
a heaven that fills fuller of meek and swiftly gathering stars as the
night falls, and he says, 'It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him
good.'
Here are two men tried by the same temptation; it leads the one man
away captive 'with a dart through his liver'; the other man by God's
grace overcomes it, and is the stronger and the sweeter and the gentler
and the humbler because of the dreadful fight. And so you might go the
whole round of diverse circumstances, and about each of them find the
same double result. Nothing is sure to do a man good; nothing
necessarily does him hurt. All depends upon the man himself, and the
use he makes of what God in His mercy sends. Two plants may grow in the
same soil, be fed by the same dews and benediction from the heavens, be
shone upon by the same sunshine, and the one of them will elaborate
from all, sweet juices and fragrance, and the other will elaborate a
deadly poison. So, my brother, life is what you and I will to make it,
and the events which befall us are for our rising or our falling
according as we determine they shall be, and according as we use them.
Think, then, how solemn, how awful, how great a thing it is to stand
here a free agent, able to determine my character and my condition,
surrounded by all these circumstances and the subject of all these wise
and manifold divine dealings, in each of which there lie dormant, to be
evoked by me, tremendous possibilities of elevation even to the very
presence of God, or of sinking into the depths of separation from Him.
The ark of God, that overthrew Dagon and smote Uzzah, was nothing but a
fountain of blessing in the household of Obed-edom.
II. Secondly, note the twofold operation of God's character and
presence.
The ark was the symbol of a present God, and His presence is meant to
be the life and joy of all creatures, and the revelation of Him is
meant to be only for our good, giving strength, righteousness, and
peace. But the same double possibility which I have been pointing out
as inherent in all externals belongs here too, and a man can determine
to which aspect of the many-sided infinitude of the divine nature he
shall stand in relation. The glass in stained windows is so coloured as
that parts of it cut off, and prevent from passing through, different
rays of the pure white light. And men's moral natures, the inclination
of their hearts, and the set of their wills and energies, cut off, if I
may say so, parts of the infinite, white light of the many-sided divine
character, and put them into relations only with some part and aspect
of that great whole which we call God. The man that loves the world,
the man that is living for self, still more the man that is embruted in
the pig-sty of sensuality and vice, cannot see the God whom the pure
heart, which loves Him and is purified by its faith, discerns at the
centre of all things. But the lower man sees either some very far-off
Awfulness, in which he hopes vaguely that there is a kind of good
nature that will let him off; or, if he has been shaken out of that
superficial creed, which is only a creed for men whose consciences have
not been touched, then he can see only a God whose love darkens into
retribution, and who is the Judge and the Avenger. And no man can say
that such a conception is not part of the truth; but, alas! he on whom
the form of such a God glares has incapacitated himself, by his misuse
of his powers and of God's world, from seeing the beauty of the love of
the Father of us all, the righteous Father who in Christ loves every
man.
And thus the thought of God, the consciousness of His Presence, may be
like the ark which was its symbol, either dreadful and to be put away,
or to be welcomed and blessing to be drawn from it. To many of us I am
sure--though I do not know anything about many of you--that thought,'
Thou God seest me,' breeds feelings like the uneasy discomfort of a
prisoner when he knows that somewhere in the wall there is a spy-hole
at which at any moment a warder's eye may be. And to some of us,
blessed be His name, that same thought, 'Thou art near me,' seems to
bathe the heart in a sea of sweet rest, and to bring the assurance of a
divine Companion that cheers all the solitude. And why is the
difference? There are two people sitting in one pew; to the one man the
thought of God is his ghastliest doubt, to the other it is his deepest
joy. Wherefore? And which is it to me?
Then, again, this same duality of aspect attaches to the character and
presence of God in another way. Because, according to the variety of
men's characters, God is obliged to treat them as standing in different
relations. He must manifest His judgment, His justice, His punitive
justice. There is a solemn verse in one of the Psalms which I may quote
in lieu of all words of my own of this matter. 'With the merciful Thou
wilt show Thyself merciful, with the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure,
with the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward.' The present God has
to modify His dealings according to the characters of men.
And so, dear friends, for the present life, and, as I believe, for the
next life in a far more emphatic and awful way, the same thing makes
blessedness and misery, the same thing makes life and death. The
sunshine will kill and wither the slimy plants that grow in the dark
recesses of some dripping cave; and if you take a fish out of the
water, the air clogs its gills and it dies. Bring a man, such as some
of you are, into a close, constant contact with the consciousness of
the divine righteousness and presence, and you want nothing else to
make a hell. The ark of the Lord will flash out its lightnings and
Uzzah will die. That great Infinite Being, before whom we stand, holds
in His right hand blessings beyond count or price, even the gift of
Himself, and in His left His lightnings and His arrows. On which hand
are you standing?