Series: Youth for Jesus
Number: Vol. 8, No. 51
“Then David summoned Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and Uriel, Asaiah, Joel, Shemaiah, Eliel and Amminadab the Levites. He said to them, “You are the heads of the Levitical families; you and your fellow Levites are to consecrate yourselves and bring up the ark of the LORD, the God of Israel, to the place I have prepared for it. It was because you, the Levites, did not bring it up the first time that the LORD our God broke out in anger against us. We did not inquire of him about how to do it in the prescribed way.”” (1 Chron 15:11-13NIV)
Who said the words of our opening bible text? It was David. And what led him to say them? It was the experience that he and the people of Israel had when they first attempted to bring the Ark of God to the place they had prepared for it.Now what sort of experience did they have? It was a bad one. And it was bad because someone died while they were taking the Ark of God to the place prepared for it.As the account goes, they had placed the Ark of the Covenant on a new cart while moving it. But when they got to a certain place, the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. So, Uzzah, one of the two men guiding the Ark, reached out its hand to steady it, so that it might not fall off. But God got angry with him and killed him. (Cf. 1Chro 13:7-10
)That, of course, brought a sudden end to all the celebration of David and his people. They had to take the Ark of God to another place, to the house of a man named Obed-Edom. David asked them to do that because he was afraid of what might happen to him and his household, if the ark should be brought into his palace. But then, he later found out that the household of Obed-Edom was not harmed at all by the presence of the Ark of God there.
Instead, it was tremendously blessed. That prompted him to go and find out what went wrong when they were bringing the ark to the place he had prepared for it. And it was then that he realised that they did not carry the Ark of God at the time according to the prescribed way. (Cf. 1Chro 13:12-14)Now Solomon says this to us:“For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.” (Eccl 8:6NIV)
Did you see that? Just as there is the right time for everything to be done here on earth, there is also the right procedure for it. Otherwise, the effort, time, resources and even people expended on what we are doing may just go to waste. Not only that, we may get into trouble for using a wrong procedure for what we want to do, even though it is the right thing.David and his people wanted to do the right, something that naturally should earn them the praise of God. But they did not make enough effort to learn the prescribed way, the right procedure to follow in doing it.
So, a life was lost, even though their intentions were right.In like manner, time, resources, effort or people may be lost, if we will not learn the right procedure for anything we want to do in life. We may feel good about using the wrong procedure or feel bad about using the right procedure. But what matters in doing anything good and meaningful in life is not what we feel or how we feel; rather, it is our commitment to using the right procedure for doing it at the right time. So, always make effort to learn the right procedure for doing things, especially in areas of your ignorance. Otherwise, the consequences and pains that will follow may be irreversible.
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