Where Do You Keep Your God?
Psalm 42:1-3
Warren Keeting tells this story: "There once was a rich man who was near death. He was very grieved because he had worked so hard for his money and he wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth with him.
An angel hears his plea and appears to him. ’Sorry, but you can’t take your wealth with you.’ The man implores the angel to speak to God to see if He might bend the rules.
The man continues to pray that his wealth could follow him. The angel reappears and informs the man that God has decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man gathers his largest suitcase and fills it with pure gold bars and places it beside his bed.
Soon afterward the man dies and shows up at the Gates of Heaven to greet St. Peter. St. Peter seeing the suitcase says, ’Hold on, you can’t bring that in here!’
But the man explains to St. Peter that he has permission and asks him to verify his story with the Lord. Sure enough, St. Peter checks and comes back saying, ’You’re right. You are allowed one carry-on bag, but I’m supposed to check its contents before letting it through.’
St. Peter opens the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind and exclaims, ’You brought pavement?!!!’"
What do you consider “precious”? Isn’t it amazing what we consider precious? What we would not let out of our sight.
David considered God to be precious.
Psalm 42:1
1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
(NIV)
David knew that where God is, there is blessing. God, being present, means that God’s blessing is present. We need to quit praying for God to bless what we are doing and begin to do what God is blessing!
Where is your God?
Psalm 42:2-3
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
(NIV)
That may sound like an odd question: “Where do You keep your God?” But is it really? Can God become lost to us?
God got away from where His people were keeping him. 1 Samuel 4:10-11, 19-22 tells us of the battle and defeat of the Israelites and how God got away,
1 Samuel 4:10-11, 19-22
10 So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great; Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers.
11 The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.
19 His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and near the time of delivery. When she heard the news that the ark of God had been captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she went into labor and gave birth, but was overcome by her labor pains.
20 As she was dying, the women attending her said, "Don’t despair; you have given birth to a son." But she did not respond or pay any attention.
21 She named the boy Ichabod, saying, "The glory has departed from Israel"-- because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.
22 She said, "The glory has departed from Israel,
for the ark of God has been captured."
(NIV)
The loss of the ark meant that God’s presence, His glory, was gone.
The ark was a boxlike object that was the center of the worship for Israel, both in the tabernacle and later in the temple. It was enshrined in the Holy of Holies. Only the High Priest could minister before the ark and that only one time a year. Where the ark was, God was. The Phillistines didn’t keep the ark for long – there was power in the ark because God’s presence was with the ark. Yet although the ark was returned, yet it was not returned to it’s proper place, the Tabernacle. For more than forty years, the ark was kept at the house of a man named Abinadab.
When David became King over all Israel, he was troubled that God was not in His proper place. God could not bless His people without being present. The ark being in the house of Abinadab meant God was being kept at arm’s length from the people of Israel.
Where do you keep your God? Is God involved in the daily of your life or just on Sunday? Not only do you know where you keep your God but others recognize it when God gets away:
Psalm 42:3, 10
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
(NIV)
How do we let God get away?
- By treating that which is most precious as if it were least important.
He became lost to Samson. Little by little, Samson lost God. Delilah kept digging and digging at the foundation of his soul until finally Samson and his foundation crumbled as the locks of hair fell.
Judges 16:20
20 Then she called, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" He awoke from his sleep and thought, "I’ll go out as before and shake myself free." But he did not know that the LORD had left him.
(NIV)
God got away! Samson found it more important to keep Delilah than to keep God. That can happen with any of us when we replace what should be most precious with what is least important.
QUESTION: Where is God on your priority list?
“ ‘E’re you left your room this morning,
Did you think to pray,
In the Name of Christ, our Savior?
Did you ask for loving favor
As a shield today?
O how praying rests the weary!
Prayer will change the night to day;
So when life seems dark and dreary,
Don’t forget to pray.
When you met with great temptation,
Did you think to pray?
By His dying love and merit,
Did you claim the Holy Spirit
As your guide and stay?
When your heart was filled with anger,
Did you think to pray?
Did you plead for grace, my brother,
That you might forgive another
Who had crossed your way?” (Ma¬ry Kid¬der)
- By treating God as if He does not exist. This happens little by little as well. We start to run out the door without pausing to pray, we hurry through our day without a word of thanksgiving to God, we lose God in our laziness.
Christians can fall into this trap, too. The Apostle Paul says in
Romans 1:21-22
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
(NIV)
David would agree with that. He said:
Psalm 14:1
1 The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
(NIV)
QUESTION: When was the last time you just stopped and thanked God?
How do we find what we we’ve lost?
Revelation 2:5
5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
(NIV)
So David does something about it.
2 Samuel 6:1-5
1 David again brought together out of Israel chosen men, thirty thousand in all.
2 He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark.
3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart
4 with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it.
5 David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the LORD, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.
(NIV)
