"Can't Touch This"

In his opening line MC Hammer thanks the Lord for blessing him with his lyric ability. I wonder if he got the title from God Himself. The Lord used that phrase when He was speaking about a holy artifact that represented His presence, for in fact from time to time He rested there. God gave the people specific instructions regarding the handling of His presence.

One time Israel went to face off against the Philistines and got kicked to the curb. Befuddled (not accustomed to loosing) they realized “oh yea – we forgot God (the Ark) we better go get Him.” Now we can get all spiritual and say “how could they” like how could Mary & Joseph misplace little Jesus? Truth be told, more people head off to work each day and forget the Lord than those who won’t leave home without Him.

So they send back to Shiloh for the Ark, born by two priests who were not the church’s best and brightest representatives. In short, they lost the Ark; let it fall right into the hands of the enemy. Now the Ark wasn’t a magical box that brought fortune to the beholder. But the enemy knew as long as God’s children didn’t have the presence of God with them, it leveled the playing field, and that it did (and still does today).

The enemy was amused by the special box but calamity struck everywhere they brought it. They surmised God might be angry with them for hauling Him all over town so they decided to make a peace offering and send the Ark back on an Ox cart. Imagine, this is the God of the whole earth we’re talking about. So they fashion gold mice & hemorrhoids (representing the problems they were experiencing) and sent the gold objects along with the Ark back towards a town called Beth-Shemesh. God has a sense of humor. “Hey what’d you get for Christmas? ….Ah….don’t ask.”

The milk cows pull into town and the children of God are happy to have their Ark back. They know something about handling the presence of God so they get the priests to remove the Ark from the cart. They burn the cart and sacrifice the cows as an offering to God. You won’t believe what happens next.

Some curious fellows want to sneak a peek inside the Ark so they slide the lid off – oogh can’t touch that. Half the translations say 70 men dropped dead. The other half say 50, 070 dropped dead. If you were one, it wouldn’t really matter how many others there were would it?

You see, the lid of the Ark is called the Mercy seat, that’s where the blood of the lamb was shed for the atonement of mans’ sin. The Mercy seat is also where the presence of God sat between the cherubim. When Jesus (the Lamb of God) shed His blood for your sin, it covered the Mercy seat. Your transgression was removed as far as the east is from the west. What is “under” the blood is off limits, paid in full. No one has the right to slide the mercy seat off and look into your past. You don’t have the right to let them or even help them.

So when someone approaches you with the obvious intention to lift the mercy seat and per into anything that is under the blood, back away just as if they were about to pick up a stick of dynamite. There’s dynamis power in the blood of Jesus. Tell them, “you’re own your own there bud, I wouldn’t touch that thing with a ten foot pole.” It’s just that serious to God! Mercy triumphs over judgment.