Don’t Trifle With the Power of God

27 January 2026  2 Samuel 6:12-15, 17-19

“So, David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing….” (2 Samuel 6:12)

So, what was the Ark of the Covenant doing at the house of Obed-edom, anyway?

Well, David had gone to fetch it from the house of Abinadab in Kiriath-jearim, where it had been for the previous 20 years. Only one of the attendants had touched the Ark irreverently, and was struck dead. People became alarmed, and the only safe place to put it was in the house of Obed-edom, a very pious Levite, where it stayed for three months (2 Samuel 6:1-12).

So, what was the Ark of the Covenant doing in the house of Abinadab in Kiriath-jearim for the previous 20 years?

There is a reason why we touch holy water on the way into Church, and bow every time we pass before the Blessed Sacrament, and make the sign of the cross when we approach God in prayer, and say “Oh my God” only in prayer. To avoid such signs of reverence turns God into a mascot, and we forget our place. Forgetting our place is the objective of the serpent.

Well, the Ark had been captured by the Philistines, who treated it irreverently by putting it in the temple of their god, Dagon, whereupon the statue of Dagon was smashed into pieces, and the people got sick with tumors while being overrun by mice.

They couldn’t get rid of the thing fast enough, and returned it to the Israelites at Beth-shemesh (1 Samuel 5:1-6:18). Some of the Israelites, however, decided to have an irreverent peek inside the Ark, and were struck as dead as the Philistines. People became alarmed, and the house of Abinadab, a very pious Levite, was the only safe place they could put it (1 Samuel 6:19-7:2).

So, how did the Philistines get their hands on the Ark?

Well, there was a battle at a place called Ebenezer, and the Israelites decided irreverently to use the Ark as a secret weapon. Hophni and Phineas, sons of thee High Priest Eli, and whose idea of reverence was picking up girls at the door of the Tabernacle, brought the Ark into the camp (cue ominous music); the Israelites were subsequently defeated, and the Ark captured, for thinking that the Ark was little more than Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum, or the empire’s Death Star (1 Samuel 4:1-10).

Perhaps you are seeing a pattern here.

God is good, but God is not safe. Holiness is not a power to be trifled with because holiness does not belong to us. Holiness belongs only to God. If we are holy, it is only because we reflect the holiness of God, and if we treat the holiness of God with anything less than utmost love and respect, we will find that holiness bears more voltage than we can possibly bear. There is a reason why we touch holy water on the way into Church, and bow every time we pass before the Blessed Sacrament, and make the sign of the cross when we approach God in prayer, and say “Oh my God” only in prayer. To avoid such signs of reverence turns God into a mascot, and we forget our place. Forgetting our place is the objective of the serpent: “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:4-5). Except we are not God, and forgetting that is spiritual death, sometimes physical death, too.

David took off all the signs of his kingship and danced before the Ark as it entered Jerusalem because he knew his place (2 Samuel 6:14-15). To grasp power is the danger of grabbing at a high voltage line. Reverence makes us conduits of power – we are not the power; it is never ours; we are merely the way it reaches others for the healing of people and nations.

Reverence, in short, is life.