And I ask you that you preach it through me. I pray for the boldness that I need. I pray that Father, that your name would be honored. And I pray that Father, that especially, that your people would know that I am just a messenger. It's not my message. It's not my word. It's God's. And so, Father, I pray that they will receive it as such, that the name of Jesus Christ may be honored. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Understand the consequences. Open flat first. Understand the consequences of violating the holiness of God. The Ark of God means worship. That's where you get the worship in the chapter, is the Ark of God. The Ark of God means worship. The Ark of God has been in the where? In the most holy place. That's the place where priests come in and they deliver their their work that is for atonement, but the ark of God means worship. Anywhere you see the ark of God, anywhere in scripture, it means worship. It means worship. And God commanded holiness in the tabernacle. Every aspect of the tabernacle was holy because God said that it was holy. When God takes common things and utilizes them in the tabernacle, and he says, these things are holy. So you regard them as holy. And he says, don't touch them, don't look at them until they're covered, unless you die. Now, I would say that's pretty serious, would you not? So you wanna be sure not to violate that. So, give you an example of what it means to violate that. There is a couple of priests whose name was Nadab and Abihu. Has anybody recognized those names? I'm sure that you did. Nadab and Abihu came before God with a strange fire. Now you ask, well, what does it mean by strange fire? That means they got the coals of fire off of either their camp fire or some other source, they got the coals of fire. And what they were supposed to do, what God had commanded them to do as priests is to get the coals of fire off the brazen altar. So they started off wrong already. And they're carrying a firepan of strange fire before God. Well, already they're in the wrong. Already they sinned. So God killed them. And he didn't just kill them, he burned them to a crisp. And you say, whoa, man, isn't that kind of severe? Yeah, but sin is ugly to God. And when you transgress God's holiness, God's gonna react. You say, well, I think that God has been showing me some mercy. I hope he continues. Moses, has been serving God for 40 years, mind you. 40 years, he's been serving God. One time, God says, go to the people and speak to the rock so that the rock will give forth water. One time out of 40 years. This scares me. This scares me about the holiness of God. Because God's gonna protect his word. And he's gonna hold true to the word of God more than he's gonna hold true to you. And if you violate the word of God, then God is gonna deal very severely with you. So Moses did not speak to the rock. He struck the rock three times. And this is what God said to him, because you have not believed me. You get that? Because you have not believed me. So you see disbelief is the opposite of that. because you have not believed me and did not treat me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel. You didn't treat me as holy and you didn't believe me. Consequently, you're not going into the promised land. So Moses begged to be able to go into the promised land. And God said, no, you're not going into the promised land. By not believing in the Word of God, you're ignoring the Word of God, you're ignoring what God had to say, and you're doing it your own way. You're going by it your own way. You have made the decision with an independent spirit that I'm gonna do it my way. That is not a healthy way to go. I believe that we all, from time to time, have gone our own way. Would you not say so? Do you feel like that you have the grace of God on you right now? That God did not take your life? You say, oh, no, no, wait a minute. God is, that's the God of yesterday. He's not the God of today. I beg your pardon. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He hadn't changed. Ezra touched the ark. He grabbed the ark. And it says very clearly in Numbers 4.15, as the camp set out after the sons of Coeth shall come to carry them, that's the Levites, but they must not touch the holy things, lest they die. Did not God hold true to his word? If God did not take the life of Uzzah, then God would have to apologize to himself. and to everybody else because he didn't hold true to the word of God. God is faithful to his word. Now, the era started way back up there at Abednadad's house. That's where the error started. That's where they decided to put the ark of God on a ox cart. Who told them to do that? Well, the Philistines are long gone. There was no Philistine that came up to David and said, hey, listen, Why don't you put it on the ox cart because it might be a little easier to get it over there too. They didn't know, now there's no Philistine there. Where did they get this from? Where did this ox cart type mentality get into the church? How did it get there? Well, they said, well, they chose to do that. Well, wait a minute. You look at the ark of God and you see poles in it, right? Now a child could walk by and say, oh, the poles are in the ark, well, that means you've got to carry it. But they made a decisive decision that they were not going to carry it by the poles, they were going to put it on an ox cart. That was their decision. That was a very dumb decision. Because it was a greater problem that they were going to have to deal with than just with the death of Uzzah. See, the oxcart got into it there because the oxcart is Satan's way of bringing something so easily into the church that doesn't seem to be noticed. It's just not something that's noticed. And so the ox cart is the ox cart religion. It's celebration. It's something that is not of God. This is not of God. Well, I began to wonder, what does this word celebration mean? I could not figure out what is the difference. Something didn't make sense to me. Why the worship was here and it was celebration and then at the end of the chapter over here, it was worship and God was pleased. Wait a minute, what's going on? I couldn't figure out what's going on. Until God impressed on my heart to look at the word celebration. So I did. And quite frankly, I was quite shocked. So when I looked at the word celebration, the Hebrew word is sakka. And what it means, now get this, what the word means is mocking. You get that? Who are they mocking? They're mocking God. This ox cart that is carrying the ark of God. How are you carrying God today? Are you using an ox cart? Now see, the ox cart is of Satan's ploy to put it into the church. Now you follow me here. It was his ploy to put it into the church. Why? Because it represents worldliness. Isn't that what the Bible tells us in 1 John 2, 15? Love not the world, nor the things of the world. If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. Is that not what he says? And this ox cart is a representation of the world. How is it a representation of the world? Because it's Satan doing it. It's Satan making it. It's something that has been put in. It was not an idea of the Philistines. It was an idea of Satan. So that's the reason why God became so angry, not just because us had touched the ark of God, but because they were celebrating and mocking God. They didn't know that. They had no idea, but God shut it down. No more. And so the ark goes over to Obed-Edom for three months. Now I want you to notice at the end of these, in 2nd Chronicles 6, 13 to 15, I want you to notice something just so that you know I'm telling the truth. I want you to notice that in verse five, it talks about the celebration. Do you see that? The celebration in verse five. Now I want you to go on down to verse 13 to 15, and there is no, nothing said about celebration. Isn't that interesting? And so it was that when the bearers of the ark of the Lord had gone six spaces, they sacrificed an ox of fatlings and David was dancing before the Lord, they had the same method of worship, but they didn't have the ox cart. They were carrying the ark of God, they were doing it, they were obedient. and their worship, true worship, is by obedience to God. The lack of true worship is a celebration because you're bringing sin into the assembly of God. Bringing sin into the assembly of God. Now, That's worldliness. And you say, well, what is this worldliness? What are you talking about? What do you mean by that? Well, I'd like to answer that question. Worldliness is carrying the ox cart of idolatry. Worldliness is idolatry. Worldliness is immorality. Immorality. And so anytime that gets into the church, it pollutes the worship. And you say, how is that? How can it pollute the worship? How can that do that? Let me ask you something. If I had a jar full of water, And I put a drop of Sinai in it, one drop, that's all, one drop. And you knew it. Would you drink it? Any volunteers? No, you wouldn't drink it. Why? Because it was polluted. And anytime sin gets into the assembly of God, it pollutes it. And you say, what do we do? Get rid of the ox cart. Get rid of that worship, that celebration. Get rid of the sin in your lives. Have a not just a confession of sin, but have the fruit of repentance of sin. So that when you come into the assembly of God, listen, what I do is that I pray and I ask God, please forgive me for my sin before I come into the assembly of God. Because I do not want to be part of polluting God's worship. It's so important for us to rid ourselves of sin. And if you are an immoral person, if you're living in some sort of immorality and you're still in that and come into the assembly of God, You are bringing your wicked immorality into the church. Now I told you, this was not easy for me to say, and it's not easy for me to preach. But we need to have an urgency for true worship. And that true worship must come from God. That true worship must be God convicting us, God dealing with us. So we would repent and get ourselves right. Listen, we've got people coming in from all walks of life. And I'm not pointing at anybody, but I know that if I've got sin in my life, you've got sin in yours. And so it's so extremely important that we get it right. The question that I asked the Lord, and I wondered, Lord, how are you viewing our worship? How do you view our worship? Of course, God didn't answer me a question because the question is already here. The answer is already here. So we don't, we have a great worship here. Oh, I agree. And it sounds good to our ears. But is there a pollution? Is there sin? And sometimes we never know. So pray that God will purge our worship. Even if those people don't do it. Amen. Let's pray. Father, there's so much more I could have said. And as you know, that's true. But Father, I know that you're a holy God. And you hate sin. And you hate the sin that is in our lives. And you want it changed. And I pray to Father that we would have pure, holy, glorious worship before you. And as everybody does their part, we will do that. But Father, I know that if we just pray that you would purge our worship, I believe you would. And Father, I pray that you would convict and bring upon those have immorality and have idolatry in their lives that father that you would cause them to repent. And father, we know that Satan wants to destroy this church. He hates this church. And I pray that father that we would shut him down by honoring you with true worship. In Jesus name, amen. Is there somebody that needs to come up here or is it just over with?