Can’t Touch This

This morning I want to get right into the written word.

I want to encourage you to flip with me to 1 Samuel chapters 5 and 6.

I'm just going to be skimming through that, hitting some high points to offer up a little context of the subject matter today, going over the story of Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant.

And to touch base on that context, I want to talk a little bit about the Ark of the Covenant.

So You don't have to be a Christian or Jewish, for that matter, to have ever heard of the Ark of the Covenant, right? There's movies out there that cite it.

I think of, like, Indiana Jones and the Rage of the Lost Ark, right? Is that the right title? Whatever, right? There's media out there, search parties that are vlogging their attempts to find the Ark of the Covenant out there.

Heck, if you go to sleep watching the History Channel, you wake up at 2 a.m. in the morning to some weird guy explaining how the Ark of the Covenant is buried under the Vatican, or that the government has it, or this or that, and you quickly come to realize that nobody knows where the Ark is, or even really what its meaning was, and losing that point.

But what you do come to terms with is, you know, after all this time since its inception, the reason the Ark of the Covenant is still in conversation today is because of its intended weight and purpose and holiness.

You see, the Ark of God was designed and purposed by God himself, so that way, he could dwell amongst the people of Israel.

Very holy, very holy peace that was.

And it was to be the physical manifestation of God.

Can you guys remember what was kept inside of the Ark of the Covenant? Ten commandments.

Was that all that was inside of the Ark of the Covenant? Manna.

Aaron's butted rod, also very, very important.

And these were all central to the Israeli identity.

And if I were smart, I probably would have had a picture of the Ark, so forgive me for that, but crudely, I'll explain that the Ark of the Covenant is an acacia wood chest.

all right, made by the finest craftsmen, plated in gold, inside and out.

On top, you had these fixtures of cherubim that overhung and overlooked the very presence of God.

Very important and very, very holy.

In fact, so holy, it's untouchable.

Now, just as wild as its inception was, its history is also equally as wild, right? It was intended to empower the Israelites and bond these people to God, but unfortunately, it was often misused.

And when it was misused, you'd see a side of God that wasn't always pleasant, right? And so I think back to when the Israelites would use the Ark of the Covenant as sort of like a lucky charm, right? When they went to war against the Philistines back in 1116 BC, around that time era.

You guys remember what happened when they did that? Yeah, Philistines captured it.

The Philistines understood that the Ark of the Covenant was an important piece to the Israelites.

And so...