1 Samuel 6:20-21 Put on a new self!

 ”And the people 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?” Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to your town.”“ 

1 Samuel‬ ‭6‬:‭20‬-‭21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

a. Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? In their disrespect for God, the men of Beth Shemesh offended the holiness of the LORD. Now they knew the LORD was holy, but it didn’t make them want to be closer to God. It made them want to distance themselves from God.

i. The primary idea behind holiness is not moral purity (though the idea includes moral purity), but it is the idea of apartness, of being set apart – that God is separate, different from His creation, both in His essential nature and in the perfection of His attributes.

ii. When men encounter the holiness of God, they are not necessarily attracted to it. When Peter saw the holy power of Jesus he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8). When the disciples on another occasion saw the holy Jesus shining out at the transfiguration, they were greatly afraid (Matthew 17:6). When we meet the holy God, we are excited and afraid all at the same time. It’s like going up on a roller coaster – you want to be there, but at the same time you don’t want to be there. Many of the thrill-seeking pleasures of our modern world are simply weak attempts to imitate the fulfillment we can only find by meeting the holy God.

b. Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? In one sense, the men of Beth Shemesh showed a bad heart in asking this question. Their question made God seem too harsh instead of showing themselves to be too disobedient.

i. “Here they seem peevishly [angrily] to lay the blame of their sufferings upon God, as over-holy and strict: of their sins, the true cause, they say nothing; but take care to rid their hands of the ark, which they should have retained reverently.” (Trapp)

c. Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? In another sense, the men of Beth Shemesh asked a good question. God is in fact holy and Who is able to stand indeed?

i. Holiness is not so much achieved through our own efforts, but it is received as we are new creations in Jesus. Holiness is part of the new man we are in Jesus (Ephesians 4:24), and we are invited to be partakers – sharers of Jesus’ holiness (Hebrews 12:10).

ii. Though God is holy, though He is apart from us, instead of building a wall around His apartness, God calls us to come to Him and share His state of being set apart. As it says in 1 Peter 1:16, God calls us to be holy, for I am holy. Holiness is not so much something we have, it is something that has us.

d. And to whom shall it go up from us? For the men of Beth Shemesh, the holiness of God was a problem, a problem that could be fixed by putting distance between themselves and God. Their question was not, “How can we be made right with a holy God,” but it was “Who can we give this problem to so the holiness of God is no longer a burden to us?”

e. They sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjath Jearim: We don’t know why they picked this village. Perhaps they had good relations with these men and thought they would take good care of the ark. Perhaps they had bad relations with them and wanted the LORD to curse them. Whatever the reason, the men of Kirjath Jearim received the ark and it stayed there for many years until King David brought it to the city of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6).

(Guzik)

”You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.“ Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭22‬-‭24‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Some people get angry at God, wanting nothing to do with Him like the people of Beth Shemesh. 

But as a Christian we are “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.“

We will never achieve this fully because of our sin nature but we are supposed to try to sin less because we cannot be sinless in a fallen world.

Do you try daily to put on a new self?

Blessings