Order and the posture of our hearts.

Text: 1 Sam. 7:1-2; 2 Sam. 11:1-15

Study Points

There are seasons  that a man who lacks order will a great liability to the execution of God's purposes on the earth. He is already a trouble waiting to happen but if there is no battle, the gravity of his wrong heart posture will not be felt so much by the people around him.

1. God is not committed to act on behalf of men who violate Divine order. He did not act when the Philistines carried the ark because of the men who bore the Ark -1 Sam. 4:4;11

2. Why did Abinadab house the ark of God for twenty years  with no record of the blessings that Obededom saw in just 3 months of doing same? Abinadab's son Uzziah was killed when the ark was being transported out of his house(1 Sam 6:3) and the son, that he sanctified to tend the Ark; did not lead the procession.

Does it mean that in twenty years he never understood the protocols of bearing the ark?

3. Obededom ran a risk of accommodating the same Ark that had just killed the son of a man that housed it for twenty years. He had no assurances of being blessed by the ark but he yet housed it.

4. God was inactive in one man's house but so blessed another that the people of Israel noticed. The Ark that was impotent in the hands of Eli's sons became powerful without any priest in the land of the Philistines.

5. A man who works in rebellion is first a rebel at heart before his deeds follow. 

   Isaiah 14:11; 2 Sam. 6:16.

6. A man who is not under authority can not legitimately wield the power of God.

7. Uriah held God and his people in the highest regard and was recorded as one of the mighty men of David. His name was also included in the lineage of Jesus. 2 Sam. 23:39; Matt. 1:6. The posture of his heart became something that brought him as a man to be reckoned with by heaven.