I was reading through Exodus last week. I was just past what I often think of as “the good parts.” You know the “good parts,” those chapters that tell us about Moses and the things God did through him to get Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. I love the accounts of the Passover, and the parting of the Red Sea. I love the giving of the commandments on Mount Sinai too.
Even when I get into the laws and ordinances I do okay. Where I bog down is in the instructions for the building of the Temple and all its furnishings. All those cubits and overlays and where to fold curtains and how many rings. Sadly, where I should pay attention, I drift.
But then, last week, I read a sentence that I have probably read many, many times, and I saw something I had never noticed before. In the giving of the instructions for the building of the Ark, God included instructions for the poles that would be used by the priests to carry the Ark.
“Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark in order to carry the ark with them. The poles are to remain in the rings of the ark; they must not be removed from it.” [Exodus 25:13-15 HCSB]
The part that leapt off the page is that instruction that the poles were to remain in the rings of the ark and not be removed. Wow. What a small, seemingly insignificant instruction. Yet not following that instruction may have caused an incident that people still puzzle over, an incident that caused a king to become angry with God, an incident which included the loss of a life.
That incident is in 2 Samuel 6 when King David attempted to bring the ark to Jerusalem. Was it because the poles were not left in the ark as God instructed that the Ark was placed on a cart, oxen stumbled, Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the Ark, and God struck Uzzah for his irreverence?
What if the priests had followed the instructions? What if they left those poles in the rings on the Ark? Would they have been reminded when they decided to move the Ark to Jerusalem of what God said so long ago … the Ark was to be carried on the shoulders of the priests?
Wow. A simple instruction about poles and rings. I think that there are no small things in God’s instructions.
