Text: 1 Chronicles 15:1-15
Memory verse:
”For because you did not do it the first time, the Lord our God broke out against us because we did not consult Him about the proper order.”
I Chronicles 15:13 NKJV
Let’s go further in our meditation today to look at the second cause of God’s anger, which David later discovered. 1 Chronicles 15:13b says, “…because we did not consult Him about the proper order”. The NLT says, “We failed to ask God how to move it properly.” No detail of God’s instructions is too insignificant to be ignored. Our God pays attention to minute details, even as small as the strands of our hair, and demands total compliance.
God’s directive is that the ark should be carried on the shoulders and not on a cart. Rather, David and the Israelites put the ark on a cart pulled by an oxen. ”So they set the ark of God on a new cart…“ (II Sam 6:3). That could have looked more appealing and acceptable to the people than carrying it on the shoulders, but it wasn’t the way of God. Likewise, many are building the church today on modernism, which is appealing to our senses and what is acceptable to the public. It is no longer about what is His way but what is in vogue!
Note that it wasn’t obvious from the start of the journey until they got to Nachon’s threshing floor when Uzzah ignorantly touched the ark. The work may be progressing, and everyone is celebrating your new way now. It may only be because the oxen hasn’t stumbled. When it stumbles, your way will show to everyone if it’s approved or disapproved.
Also, their decision to carry the ark on the cart instead of shoulders could have been prompted by the method the Philistines used to convey it to Beth Shemesh. It was there that the Levites came to take over the ark (1 Sam 6:14-15). This kind of imitation is also taking place in the church today. Believers go into the world to copy the systems of the world to adopt in the church. This accounts for why the church has become so worldly and the world has become so churchy. The believers are supposed to be lights of the world. That is, we are to give directions and leadership to the world.
Friends, conforming with God’s detailed instructions is the secret to peace and fulfillment.
Prayer points
1. Father, help me to build according to Your ways and not by the world’s system, in Jesus’ name.
2. Father, please, let me never ignore any of Your instructions, as being minute, in Jesus’ name.
Today’s declarations
1. I take all instructions of God as important, and none of them is too small to be ignored.
2. I am the light of the world, so I don’t follow the world, but I give direction to it.
Contact: pastor@thf.org.ng