II Samuel 6:7 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.
Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said, “You can fool all of the people some of time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” I think that is certainly true, but I will add a similar maxim, “You can please some of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.” If you have tried to balance the interests of everyone in your world, you have found yourself frustrated because sometimes that is just impossible.
David was a man who knew something of the frustration of balancing things in his world. This is literally in II Samuel 6, the story of balancing the Ark of the Covenant. David wisely wished to bring the Ark home to Jerusalem, and the Bible tells us that they transported the Ark back to Jerusalem by putting it on a cart pulled by oxen. When the Ark shook and began to tip off balance, a man named Uzzah “put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it.”
Now the Philistines had used a cart before and had not treated God’s Ark according to God’s prescription. Even other Israelites had done the same things in I Samuel 5 and 6. But, Uzzah was a Levite. He knew that this was not something that was to be done. The Ark of God was not to be touched the way that he touched it and he knew that.
Verse 7 says, “And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.” The Bible continues, “David was displeased…and David was afraid of the LORD that day, and said, How shall the ark of the LORD come to me?”
Just before this, David had been exuberant and was celebrating. After this incident, when they finally brought the Ark home to Jerusalem, David was enthusiastic again. But you find the impossibility of balancing a couple of things.
First, David had to balance two audiences. In verse 7 God was displeased because what was done was not according to His prescription, and near the end of the story Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s first wife, saw David celebrating before the Lord and she despised him in her heart. She belittled him. She was of royal lineage and she thought he was acting in a common way before the common people. She wasn’t pleased.
So, how can you please God on the one hand and Michal on the other? The answer is that sometimes you don’t balance, you harmonize, or you don’t balance them at all. Enthusiasm is no substitute to obedience to God, and obedience to God is no substitute for enthusiasm and love for God. So, in one case God was displeased and in the other case Michal was displeased.
You also have the balance of two cultures. Why was David bringing the Ark to Jerusalem on a cart when that was not God’s prescribed way? We don’t know, but we do know that David had made a habit of asking God what he should do. He had not done this in this case because if he had, he would not have brought the Ark the way he did. It is worthy of note that when the Philistines had captured the Ark of God, they had transported it in a similar manner. David had spent time in Philistia when escaping Saul so perhaps he was using the Philistine’s method instead of God’s.
Finally, you have the balancing of two priorities. One priority is enthusiasm. Michal was indignant that David would be so enthusiastic and lower himself in the eyes of his servants in his enthusiasm for God. On the other hand, God was displeased because even though David was enthusiastic, David wasn’t obeying God’s prescription for bringing the Ark of the Covenant the way it was supposed to be done. How do you balance your enthusiasm for God and your obedience to God? Well, all these factors, disparate elements that needed to be balanced, are clarified when we realize that balance is found by centering your actions around the interests of one person, God.
You can’t please all the people all the time. You can’t serve God and mammon. You can’t hold what the Bible says in one hand and what American culture says in the other. You can’t have more than one priority at a time. But the Lord of hosts, the God of the covenant, is the God Who is to be pleased.
Today, instead of trying to take everything in your world, people, ethics, and actions, and trying to balance them in some way by finding a median position between two extremes, realize that balance, if you belong to God, is found by centering our actions in the interest of One person.