Invite the Lord in!
Posted by Jeffrey Smith December 31st, 2015 2,277 Views 0 Comments
2 Samuel 6:11-18: The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed him and his entire household. Now King David was told, The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God. So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing.
Do you want to know how you become blessed, everything you own, your household? Look no further than this scripture. What did Obed-Edom do to receive a blessing from the Lord? Nothing at all. He allowed the Ark to rest in his house. You see Obed-Edom was given the Ark of God to stay at his house for three months.
While bringing the Ark back to Jerusalem, the cart carrying the Ark of the covenant which held the Lord between the Cherubim (2nd Samuel 6:2) was driven by oxen. The oxen stumbled and Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God (2nd Samuel 6:6). The Lord was angry with Uzzah and struck him down, and he died because his act was irreverent (2nd Samuel 6:7). What did he do that was irreverent? He tried to take hold of the Lord. Does the Lord need help? No, He needs nothing from us, ever. The Lord is more than capable of handling all situations, well more than anything we could do. When we try and do something that gets in the way of the Lord, we take away from the glory of the Lord.
Seeing what happened to Uzzah, David feared the Lord and sent the Ark of God to the house of Obed-Edom. While it was there for three months, scripture says that Obed-Edom's entire household was blessed, and further everything he had was blessed! What did Obed-Edom do? Nothing at all except allow the Lord to rest in his house.
This all took place in the old testament, when a sacrifice of bulls and lambs were needed to renew righteousness and forgiveness of sins. How much more with the blood of Jesus are we blessed when we invite the Lord to rest in our houses? How much more when we invite the Lord into our business, our bodies, our children? The same wrath that came down on Uzzah was extinguished once and for all in the body of Jesus at the cross. We have no reason to fear doing the right or wrong thing. I have no doubt that Uzzah thought he was doing the right thing by reaching out and taking hold of the Ark, especially seeing the oxen stumble. Nonetheless, he did something irreverent according to the Lord. The irreverent act was to take what didn’t belong to him. The act suggests that the Lord cannot handle a stumble from an Ox. The point is that we must rely and rest in the truth that God the Father does not need our help. If He asks you to do something, you do it, of course, but if we rely on what we do to be blessed than it would all be a tick sheet of who did what, and we would bypass the completed work of Jesus altogether.
Brothers and sisters, let us not be fooled by idea that we must do good works to receive big blessings. Look at Obed-Edom, he did nothing, and I am sure that David chose Obed-Edom with the idea that if God was still angry, that His wrath would be poured out on him, and not the house of David in Jerusalem.
Each of us has a call on our lives, and that call may include doing works, blessing others with the gifts that the Lord has blessed us with. There is no doubt about that, but we do not have a time clock that we punch on Monday and pick up our blessing on Friday. That is not God's way. His way is to bless us regardless of what we do. Invite the Lord to live with you. Invite the Lord into everything you have. Stay out of His way and have hope in the work of the Lord, and see Him larger than anything we could ever do to receive what He has for us.