Handling God's Stuff

1 Samuel 6: 19-20: "But God struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they had looked into the ark of the LORD. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the LORD had dealt them, and the men of Beth Shemesh asked, "Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?"  

We are so quick to decide on how we will do things in our lives, so quick to set aside a slow, steady approach. We are so quick to want everything for ourselves, or as we put it "all that God has for us." But what does God really have for us? How do we avoid making the mistake of the people of Beth Shemesh?

The scenario in 1 Samuel was this: The Phillistines had the ark of the covenant. They suffered for stealing it. They returned it. The people of Beth Shemesh rejoiced to get it back, but then 70 of their people (in a rather small town) decided to look inside the ark. Why was this such a bad thing? If we have to ask this question (and most of us do) then we don't understand the concept of holiness...particularly of God's holiness. We reduce it to just our attempts to be good. This is not holiness.

God is holy. He is utterly without stain, sin, blemish, fault. For Israel, He appointed articles for the temple that represented Him in some way. These articles were to be clean and holy - the best man can provide, given the extra unction of God to become bridges between a sinful people and a holy God. We can only pretend to be holy. In Christ, we are imputed righteousness, and we are being sanctified, or made holy, because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. But we are not there yet.

So the Beth Shemeshites (?) took very lightly this holy artifact. They treated it like it was something that did not deserve the most reverent awe and fear...possibly because they did not have a concept in their hearts of that kind of awe and fear. I am afraid that I sometimes fail in that, as well. I take God's stuff less seriously than I should, and I wonder at times if it's because I, too, have lost - or have ever had - that kind of reverence for God and His holiness.

We are not a people of "things." We don't need to recognize stuff as holy. It will all burn one day - even our Bibles. God's Word is something much better than our stuff. But what then, is God's stuff? How do we treat it? How do we handle the Holy things He gives us? Are we cultivating in our lives and our hearts an understanding of reverent fear and of His holiness that will keep us from mishandling those things? Let us not become like the people of Beth Shemesh and take God lightly. After all, He will not be mocked. He is not "buddy Jesus."