"The Embodied King" - Psalm 63:1-11, 2 Samuel 6

For many of you, this will be a familiar story.

We're going to jump into the middle of it in verse 12.

It says this, it was told King David, the Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him because of the ark of God.

Okay, so we've jumped into the middle of a story here.

The bigger story is this, David is the king in Israel.

And prior to this, the Ark of the Covenant, which many of you remember from Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? The Ark of the Covenant is like the physical manifestation of God's presence in the Hebrew Bible, in the story of the Israelites.

At some point, the Ark of the Covenant disappears, it's abducted by the Philistines, and then it's re-obtained by the Hebrews through a kind of military victory.

And then as they're bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, into the core of Jerusalem, which is called the City of David, because it's where David lives as the king, a tragedy happens.

One of the people who's accompanying the Ark of the Covenant, the text says, reaches out to try to stabilize the Ark while it's, you know, on a rocky trail.

And Uzzah is the name of the person, reaches out to try to stabilize it and is struck dead because in the Hebrew Bible, God's presence is dangerous, right? if you come into contact with God in a way that isn't safe because it's not circumscribed by certain sort of rituals or performances, then you could, like Uzzah, be struck dead.

Now, we're not going to talk about that.

This is just another example of how some of these texts can be weird for us, right? So let's just acknowledge that and then stick to the point, shall we? The point is that this tragedy happens.

Somebody close to David dies trying to bring the ark into Jerusalem.

So David kind of freaks out.

He says, I don't know what to do.

We've screwed up this whole endeavor.

And he sends the ark to the household of Obed-Edom.

Because for whatever reason, we don't know why, the text doesn't say it, he thinks this might be a good place for the ark to reside for a time while David tries to figure out what to do next.

Well, something interesting happens.

What happens is, is that the household of Obed-Edom suddenly begins to flourish.

It's blessed.

We don't know exactly what that means, but we can imagine that things go well for Obed-Edom's household.

So verse 12, it was told King David, the Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him because of the ark of God.

So the physical representation of the presence of God is in this household, and that household is blessed.

David's like, well, then I need that thing, right? This is exactly what happened.