2 Samuel 6

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. VI.—Perpetual visibility and splendour are no marks of a true church. The ark, the most noted symbol of God’s presence, continued long in obscurity. God can be graciously present with his people, even when they want his solemn ordinances; and it is his presence that renders his ordinances truly glorious. Such as have high thoughts of him will reverence all his institutions. The greatest need think it no disparagement to join with the meanest before the great God, their common Maker and Saviour. Singing of psalms to his praise is always esteemed when God revives a spirit of religion. God’s laws relative to the manner, as well as to the matter, of his worship ought to be exactly observed: and the authority of men, or bad precedents, should never weigh more with us than the express word of God. By rashness and intemperate zeal we are apt to give wrong touches to God’s ark: and no good intention will atone for our irreverence or presumption. Men are never in greater danger of ruinous mistakes than in dealing with God. How apt are the best to be displeased with God’s judgments, rather than with their own sins which procured them! The awful strokes of providence should move us to repentance and heedfulness, but never terrify us from our duty. None ever lost by their fidelity and kindness to God and his ordinances. It is a happiness to be in the family or place where God is duly respected. Duty may happily succeed at last, though our first attempts have been marred. Let us therefore search out and repent of our errors, apply Jesus’ propitiatory sacrifice for remission of sins, feast on him as our provision, and set about it anew with proper circumspection. Only base minds reckon God’s service mean or indecent: and ridicule, not reason, is the common weapon of the enemies of truth. But we must not be laughed out of our religious profession; but the more opposition we meet with, the more resolutely persevere. If God knows our heart to be upright before him, the censures of others may lie light upon us. We can never sufficiently humble ourselves before him. And if, in our service of him, we have the regard of good men, we need not fear the contempt of the irreligious or the great. While God shall mark the despisers of his service with infamy and wrath, we shall be had in glory and honour. 3 But let me here think of that solemn joy and triumph wherewith Jesus, our great ark of God’s testament, was carried up into heaven, and set down at the right hand of God: and of that joy and triumph with which his name is carried through the world by the gospel, in the times of his love and days of his power! O then what harmony and peace in churches—what familiar feasting on his flesh and blood! And how dreadful their case who disdain to concur in that solemn work!