2 Samuel Lesson 54

David and the Ark, part II – 2 Samuel 6:12-23; 1 Chronicles 15:1-24; 16:4-42

 

Again going back to the theme of this book, that we have here politics by grace, we have God in a model in 2 Samuel 2-7 establishing the base of David’s kingdom. And I cannot emphasize strongly enough if you want the divine viewpoint of politics, it you want wisdom in considering these sorts of things, Samuel is the book for you.  This is the book that deals with every conceivable political situation and gives you God’s answer to it.  Chapters 2-4, God gave David the control over the 12 tribes; in chapter 5 God gave David control over the central land area; and now God is going to give David the ark. 

 

Last time we left off at 6:11, when the ark had not yet been brought into the city of Jerusalem.  The ark was desired greatly by David, but the ark was not yet in the city?  Why?  It goes back to a point of the cultists; this is not cult, it’s a different word.  The word “cultist” is the word that means the place where assembly worship occurs.  The word cultist is used to refer to the temple; it’s used to refer to the tabernacle, it is used in the English language to refer to assembly worship.  The cultist here is a national cultist.  In other words, this is a national worship, it would be as though we had a national shrine at Washington DC and God was worshiped there.  So the cultist is what is being established at this point in a more artistic way. 


I want you to notice several important points about chapter 6; beginning in chapter 6 we have art, human art, added to the Old Testament Law.  The Old Testament Law established the tabernacle; now beginning in 2 Samuel 6 you have human art form, i.e. music, is going to be added, instrumental music, is going to be added to the bare tabernacle worship.  There are lots of lessons in here and I’m just kind of throwing these out to start with and then you watch as we go through the text and pick these points up.  The Old Testament began its directive in worship with a very stringent set, given in Numbers and Leviticus.  Those books outline exactly what the worship is supposed to be like.  It goes and has a complete calendar for the worship; it has certain people doing this, certain people doing that, but nowhere are there directives about music.  The music is left, with the exception of a few ram’s horns and things like that, there’s not much development of music under the Old Testament Law.  Now, four to five hundred years later we have human art allowed to supplement what the Bible has told us. 

 

There’s a lesson here I think for us as Christians, and that is God’s Word lays out a certain minimum for worship; the minimum would be the coming together, the assembly of believers together to study the Word of God, to share in communion, to share in baptism and to pray for one another, and to share praises of God.  There are about four or five things that are the Biblical minimum of worship: praise, petition, communion, baptism and exhortation, these kinds of things.  These are things that are minimal, those are things the Word of God commands us to do.  And the Word of God in the New Testament again, like in the Old Testament, doesn’t command us to worship with instrumental music, but the Old Testament never commanded worship with instrumental music either.  The instrumental music and the development of music came four to five hundred after the nation had been trained, and after divine viewpoint had worked its way into the soul of the nation and from this we could obtain a divine viewpoint culture.  This is a long time in coming and there’s a little application at the very start to our contemporary situation in this country.  A divine viewpoint culture cannot be built overnight; a divine viewpoint culture, by that I mean an area where you have economics, where you have things like science, philosophy, where you have all the fields dominated and controlled by divine viewpoint.  That situation. which is the desire of the church in every age, wherever its locale should be, is that eventually men are won to Jesus Christ and built up strongly in the faith and then control, subdue the earth under the commands of the Word of God, “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” 

 

That byproduct of Christianity occurs very rarely in history.  Most of the time in most of the places in the last 19 centuries of history, Christians have operated on minimum type operations.  We have gathered together, sometimes in catacombs, some of our brothers in the past had to hide in their homes; some of them are doing it tonight behind the iron curtain where there’s freedom for everything except Christianity.  And these sorts of things have gone on century upon century.  But eventually somewhere in some places, for some time there’s a breakout.  And men who are strong in the Word of God, such as the Puritans, begin to establish a mighty culture that affects history.  Now the Puritans, as one example of this, developed a tremendous culture, but it was the product of the Reformation; it was a product of what had happened 100-200 years before; the Puritans didn’t have this overnight.  The Puritans struggled and struggled with this thing, it took at least one or two centuries for that to come about.  That’s what we’re talking about, we’re talking about time.  Today we have destroyed that culture; there is not one area left in this country that is run according to divine viewpoint.  We have cancelled out in approximately 100-200 years what it took the Puritans 200 years to build.  We have destroyed it.  Every major field is controlled, dogmatically totally, from one end to the other, with human viewpoint today.  That’s why the average man in the street is feeling the crunch, but the crunch has come from a long, long process.  In every one of these areas we’re suffering because of this process that has gone on. 

 

Now how do we reverse the process?  If we’re sane believers we don’t want our children to face this.  Now it’s too late to change the culture of America for us; we’ve lost the school systems, we’ve lost the colleges, we don’t even have a base to start with. There’s only one place there can come a change in this country and that is in a local church.  You cannot have the change happen in some evangelistic organization because it isn’t deep enough; those organizations can only win people to Christ and they can’t do anything from that point forward.  That is not where the change is going to be; the change is only going to come when we get local churches in many, many areas that are teaching the Word of God in depth, not just a little evangelistic service with everyone trotting forward to dedicate their life every two weeks.  We mean local churches that are going to consistently teach the entire counsel of God.  That’s the first step, local churches.  Probably after a generation of about thirty years of that kind of thing then you’ll have people trained enough to move out into various fields.  That’s the minimum amount of time that something like this could change, 50 to 100 years.  That’s the long range view.  And the divine viewpoint that we’re teaching here is capable of changing the country but not overnight.  It can only change the country as it is transmitted into the next generation. 

 

Now David has seen this and here in 2 Samuel 6 you’re going to see the result of 400 years of history.  There’s going to be something wonderful happen here and David is very excited about what happens, but it took four centuries to get to this point.  Let’s look what happened: remember the ark; the ark was brought up to the area and because Uzzah in verse 8 leaned over to touch it, he was killed. And the question was asked on the feedback cards about why it was, if God doesn’t like men to keep the ark from falling off the cart, why does He have men to bear the ark?  If He wanted to illustrate His autonomy, why doesn’t He use levitation to bear the ark?  The reason for this is the way that God operates in history.  God always, whenever He develops His cultists, the cultists must always be done with natural instruments.  For example, when an altar is made, you are never to take and hew a rock for the altar, you’re only to take a natural rock and put it there in the altar.  You must leave the creation the way God made it.  Now when the ark is carried, who’s it carried by?  People, made in God’s image; no human instrument is involved.  The cart that the ark was put on, like the Philistines did, is a human instrument.  It is a human instrument that man makes to help God lift and God does not accept those kinds of human instruments.  So God only wants that which is natural.  The Levites carry it in their hands; God made the hands, not man.  And this is a common theme, and if you’re puzzled on this read the book of Leviticus and watch every place where something is made and you’ll notice God is always relying on natural, not man-made materials.

 

All right, it’s left outside the city, David is separated from his blessing by probably matters of only thousands of feet, depending on where this location is, the house of Obed-edom. We don’t know exactly where it was, but it’s very conceivable that the blessing was just hundreds or maybe thousands of feet away from David’s palace.  And David can’t get the blessing because the ark sits out there day after day after day.  He can’t get it in the city. 

 

Verse 12, “And it was told King David, saying, The LORD has blessed the house of Obed-edom, and all that pertains unto him, because of the ark of God.” And this does something to David. Why does it do something to David?  Because apparently, verse 8, “David was displeased,” and verse 9, “David was afraid of the LORD that day,” in other words, David interpreted what had happened as that the Lord was unhappy with his attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem.  He didn’t reflect on why it was that God rejected. It’s like Cain and Abel, Cain’s offering was rejected and Cain got hostile at God because God did not accept his created religion.  And David here apparently thinks the same way.  And then it dawns on him, wait a minute, God’s blessing that guy down there and I could have that blessing. And so he begins to think and the process of thought is developed in a parallel passage, 1 Chronicles 15:1; now the book of Chronicles runs at this point parallel with 2 Samuel.  It is written from the priest’s point of view and therefore this historian or historians who wrote Chronicles are writing it, always emphasizing the role of the Levites. 

 

In 1 Chronicles 15:1 it picks up the narrative.  “And David built houses for himself in the city of David,” this is what he’s doing while the ark sits outside the city, “and prepared a place for the ark of God, and pitched a tent.”  Obviously after he was told in 2 Samuel 6 that there was a blessing there and he wanted it, so he begins to pitch for it a tent, so David is going to bring the ark to Jerusalem, the seat of the throne of his kingdom.  Now all during this story tonight I want you to notice, as I said last time, there are a lot of sub themes and every time I run through this I see another theme, and all I can say is there’s a bunch of themes and you kind of have to watch for them as we go down through here.

 

One of these themes is the theme of Saul versus David.  That’s also in the background of all this.  We noted that the song, the theme comes out of the song the women sang, Saul has killed his thousands and David has killed his tens of thousands.  And so whereas Saul has three thousand men chosen from all Israel David has thirty thousand men.  It’s always one order of magnitude greater to indicate a physical, political, social, literal blessing, not some ethereal abstract blessing but a real blessing that you can get your hands on.  David manifests the blessing of God by this superiority in numbers; he manifests it as it’s going to be developed tonight, the difference between Michal, Paul’s daughter and David, the difference in attitude toward the ark.  Now this difference in attitude is the key; all during Saul’s administration you have, part of the time, you had an ephod; part of the time it was missing.  You have the prophets and they phased out after a while, but no time during the administration of Saul did you ever have any concern for the ark.  Now why?  He could have done the same thing David did. 

 

There was only thing, apparently, that stood in the way of Saul; Saul as a believer in intense compound carnality was a man who had no respect for God alone.  In the Old Testament, over and over and over, it says God is a jealous God, God is a jealous God; I am jealous, I visit the iniquity upon the children to the third and fourth generations.  And the problem has often been, men have often asked this question, what does it mean God is a jealous God, that sounds like something evil in God’s character.  What the jealousy is in the Old Testament is that God refuses to have any associate.  God demands we worship Him, period; not God and something, He will not tolerate that.  And this is what separated Him from all the other gods of the ancient world.  You could have Baal and Ashtaroth, you could have Dagon and somebody else, you could have Mardok and somebody else.  But not with Yahweh, the God of Israel.  Yahweh plus zero, no other gods before Me He says, the first and great commandment.  No other Gods, I and I alone.

 

Now in Saul’s mentality, as in the mentality of every compound carnality Christian there is always the thesis, I like God but I need, God and something, God and this, God and that, God and my money, God and my security, but never God alone. And so God, when it comes to matters of the cultist is jealous, and He is going to see to it that whatever is done here, it is God and God alone, no help needed.  But there was in Saul’s household, we’ll study later on with Michal, she has a teraphiym, the teraphiym were images, and it shows that in Saul’s house there were teraphiym, idols.  It didn’t mean that Saul had completely sold out to Baal, it was rather that Saul was a believer in God plus something.  Now here’s where his problem came with the ark.  It was foolish to expend energy and time on the ark when the ark didn’t give Saul anything.  The ark is just the presence of God; Saul doesn’t need just the presence of God, what Saul needs is military victory, he needs some direction, he needs something practical, he just doesn’t want the presence of God. 

So Saul despises the mere presence of God.  That to him is not useful for his plan.  It’s wrong to expend all this energy and fanaticism on this.  It’s like the parents who’ve become worried about their children when they spend all their time studying the Word of God, as though that were a great unpardonable sin.  We must have the Bible plus something else.  As one parent told their daughter, you must have a balance between your Christian fellowship and your dating life; you want to be sure that you don’t study the Bible so much that you don’t get enough dates.  You must have God plus something, God alone is not sufficient.  We always must add something to the Word, the gimmick people, and the gimmicks are rampant inside even fundamentalism.  It’s always God plus a program, God plus this, and this would come under the anathema in the Old Testament, I am a jealous God, don’t put gimmicks before Me.  So there was no room for gimmicks with the ark, and so Saul despised the ark. 

 

And David, with his heart that is godly, that is mature, he doesn’t care about the gimmicks, just give me the presence of God, that’s all.  Forget the gimmicks.  Now it’s that mentality you’re seeing here as we develop this.  And it’s that mentality that becomes a violent, something that violently antagonizes Michal.  It’s something that antagonizes a lot of people, so let’s pay attention and see how this mentality of “God only plus nothing” comes out. 

 

In 1 Chronicles 15:2, “Then David said, None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites;” this is found in Numbers 1:50, 4:15; 7:9; 10:17.  And these four places in Numbers are places where God’s authoritative Word has said you will do it this way, period, no variation.  It’s not the Word of God plus something, it is the Word of God period.  And the Word of God says you will do it this way.  Now here is where David has a holy bigotry; here’s where David says it is to be done in only one way, period, and no other ways are acceptable.  And so it’s the Levites, and no one else who will bear the ark, and they won’t put it on a cart and cart it around like the Philistines do their idols.  And this is in accordance with God’s Word.  Now David could have said, as Saul probably did, well, you know, the book of Numbers, after all, was written four centuries ago, it’s kind of out of date for this late age, we’ve had the dark ages intervene between the time of Moses and today.  Don’t bother with those pre-dark age writings of Moses.  But you see, David goes back. 

 

It would be like today, the King James was written in 1600, this English is old, so therefore we just automatically chuck it when actually it’s very beautiful English, and actually is more capable of transmitting certain phases of the Greek language than our modern English. But because it’s old, therefore it’s unreliable.  David didn’t have that attitude; he went back and he interpreted Numbers literally, that when Numbers said the Levites were to carry it, isn’t it wonderful, it meant the Levites were to carry it; it wasn’t a symbol of something else, it was to be literally interpreted.  You could ask Uzzah, he found out what happened when you interpret allegorically. 

 

In verse 3, “And David gathered all Israel together at Jerusalem,” and this answers another question that was handed in:  If David had a prophet and the priest with the Urim and Thummim, he had the direct communication with the Lord, why must David ask the people whether it seems good to them to discern God’s will when he had his “telephone” to God?  It would seem that if God wanted His presence back in the land, He would not need the consent of the people.  Also, weren’t the people in compound carnality for an amount of time, and so on.  The reason that David always consulted the people was for the same reason that Jesus Christ made sure that He, when He marched to the throne, did it legitimately.  A king always must have the consent of the governed.  Jesus Christ is, without question, the right King for Israel.  It was God’s will that Jesus Christ reign.  And Jesus Christ legitimately presented the kingdom in the first parts of the gospel.  The Kingdom is at hand; Jesus wasn’t saying to the people, now you’ve got to crucify Me so then I can be crucified so then we can come back again. That was not His message.  At the beginning of the New Testament Jesus says I am here, you can have me right now, believe on Me, I am your right King and the people rejected, and Jesus went with the consent of the people.  The principle is that the King must secure the volition of the people.  It may be the Holy Spirit’s will, ultimately, but as to when, you have to read it through the volition of the people.  The people get the kind of government they want, as we’re finding out in this country.  Government only reflects the consensus of the people.

 

Now here David is securing the consent of the Levites, and it goes through in vast detail from verses 3-11, he consults with all the Levites, he discusses how it’s to be done, he appoints certain personnel.  And then in verse 13 he realizes his mistake.  He realizes his mistake here.  He says: “for, because you did it not at the first, the LORD our God made a breach [broke forth] upon us, because we sought him not after due order [in the proper way].”  That means according to the one way of the Word.  The Word gave directives in numbers, how to do it; we disobeyed, we got clobbered, it’s as simple as that.  In other words, by this time David had realized that God didn’t have it personally in for him, it wasn’t God picking on him, it was just that God said something and he enforces His Word, that’s all. 

 

Verse 14, “And so the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the ark of the LORD God of Israel.” It means they washed themselves in verse 14, sanctifying in the Bible always is a picture of washing dirt off.  [15] “And the children of the Levites bore the ark of God upon their shoulders with its staves, as Moses commanded according to the word of the Lord.”  Do you see that, put in there to emphasize, “as Moses” four to five centuries ago literally “commanded,” and ordered that it be done this way and only this way. 

 

And then in verse 16 we have a very interesting verse that tells us about the addition of music to worship, and why it was added.  “And David spoke to the chief [leaders] of the Levites to appoint their brethren,” now this is not ordained in the Mosaic Law.  It’s a very foolish argument that you run across the people who don’t like to use instruments to worship, always argue that well, in the Old Testament they had music but it’s nowhere commanded in the New Testament.  So since instrumental music is not commanded in the New Testament, therefore it’s wrong. But the fallacy in the argument is that instrumental wasn’t commanded in the Old Testament either.  Where do you have instrumental music commanded in the Law of Moses?  It’s not there, is it?  It is added by David; David did not have to do this.  This is an artistic edition, this is putting meat on the skeleton.  God built the skeleton, it’s up to man to make it beautiful by adding his art, making sure that the art is godly art of course. 

 

There’s nothing wrong with art, there’s nothing wrong with music; it’s just the normal culture.  People who say it’s wrong are people who are arguing that you have to give up part of your humanity to worship God.  If the argument that instrumental music is wrong is valid, this is what it means: that I have to destroy part of my culture to come to God.  It’s like the people who argue that you shouldn’t think, that you can’t think anything about God, so what they’re really saying is that you come to God after you’ve performed a frontal lobotomy so you can’t think, and after you’ve done that then you’re cleared to know God.  Now God accepts us with our whole humanity, He doesn’t like sin, but don’t ever confuse sin with part of your humanity, it’s legitimate to express yourself culturally, as long as it’s done along Biblical lines.  So here we have it done along Biblical lines.

 

Verse 16, “And David spoke to the chief of the Levites,” now this is the first time the Levites take up music as a ministry; up to this point it was teaching the Word, teaching the Word, teaching the Word, and up to this point it was the priestly administrations, the washings and s on, now a new duty is added: music, “to appoint their brethren to be singers, with instruments of music,” very clear, right, and it’s not commanded in the Mosaic Law.  This is a genuine and legitimate artistic addition.  And then he lists three musical instruments.  Now we’re not sure exactly what these three are like, but the psalteries would appear, the nearest thing if you want an American musical instrument that would correspond to it would be a guitar, that kind of a thing, it was a stringed type thing.  A harp, that means what it is, it’s a harp.  And the cymbals aren’t really cymbals, they’re.. they used to call the castanets, they’re things that you tap with and make noise.  And these are the three instruments that were used.  “…psalteries, and harps, and cymbals sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy.”  Now the Hebrew here is most interesting.  The first word is a hiphil, which means to cause to lift up, cause to heighten actually, and then is says “cause to heighten the voice,” but the word voice is a word that can be translated voice or noise.  So to heighten noise, it can be voice, or it can be noise, two legitimate meanings of that one word.  “…to cause to heighten the noise to joy,” and this means that the role of the instruments was not to perform to the people. 

 

The role of the instruments in verse 16 was to carry the people to worship in a louder, more consistent and clear way.  In other words, the music was to aid the people not perform at them.  This is one reason I feel that church architecture is wrong that has a choir loft  because what it’s saying is that you have a group of people performing at the congregation.  Now it’s all right to once in a while have people perform at, solos and so on, this is good, that’s a ministry of music, to perform at.  But the main thrust of music in the Bible is to perform with, and if you’re ever designing a church the place to have the choir is right in the pews with everyone else because they are simply there to help the people who, like myself, can’t carry a tune in a suitcase.  For those of us who are so musically deformed, we need your help and people with musical ability are there and part of the blessing to lead us and that’s the point of verse 16, to “lift up the voice with joy.” 

 

Verse 17, “And so the Levites appointed…” and here’s what the procession finally looked like.  Remember he’s got a division of soldiers mixed in here too, that’s thirty thousand men.  He’s got three choirs leading off, each of these choirs has one of those three instruments that you see in verse 16, there’s a choir, they have instruments and voices.  So there’s three units of the choir; then comes the ark, and surrounding the ark he has priests, seven with trumpets, and then he has what they call door-keepers.  We have the choirs, then we have the ark, then we have the king and the elders, they’re right behind the ark, even though it says David danced before the Lord, he is right next to that ark, in back of the ark, he’s facing the ark.  So he’s doing what he’s doing to the ark. So you have this tremendous parade, can you imagine what a parade this was, a massive thing.  Think of a whole division of soldiers coming up the street; battalion after battalion, regiment after regiment, over and over in front of you.  So that was the parade that David organized to escort the ark into the city. 

 

Now to most human viewpoint thinking people, all this expenditure of time and effort, all the expenditure to set up this choir, all that was a waste.  What pragmatic value is it to just celebrate the presence of God. David says that’s what I want to do and that’s what we’re going to do as a nation.  And so the procession moves. 

 

Now turn back to 2 Samuel 6:13, we’ll pick up the other narrative for this, and here’s where Saul’s daughter comes into the picture.  Now you have to understand Michal; Michal was like her father; like father like daughter, and she inherited her father’s human viewpoint.  Turn back to 1 Samuel 19:13 and you’ll see where she has those teraphiym, this is the verse that shows you that she actually worshiped images.  Now it doesn’t mean that she denied that Jehovah was there, it just means that it was God plus something, it wasn’t just God Himself, He always needed something besides God.  “And Michal took an image,” a teraphiym literally, images, “and laid it on the bed” and so forth; in other words, she has it right in her home.  So David’s girlfriend had teraphiym.  And it shows that in her mentality she was not an adherent to the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods except Me.”  Michal thought I shall have Yahweh plus the teraphiym, plus my good luck charms, plus my insurance policies that will get me over the crises, in case God doesn’t.  So this is the mentality of the self-righteous woman.  And we also have mentioned how God has humiliated her in various ways and now in chapter 6 she’s going to get it again; she never learns.

 

1 Samuel 6:13, “And it was, that when they who bore the ark of the LORD had gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings.”  Now I’ve not been able to determine whether verse 13 is talking about they did it every six steps or whether it was just done once.  I ran across a passage in Chronicles that seems to indicate they just did it once, contrary to what I said before.  So at least they did this thing once, they sacrificed this in the way of the parade, as it moved up toward the city of Jerusalem.

 

Verse 14 describes David’s ecstasy, he was dancing, not because he hopes to get something from God, this is simply celebrating the presence of God for no other reason than celebrating the presence of God; that’s all.  You’ve got to see it that way; David is not trying to get a blessing. H e is simply enjoying God for the sake of enjoying God.  “And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.”  It was very short, and apparently the text would have it that’s all he had on. And this bugged Michal.  First of all it bugs her that he’s gone to all this effort to just celebrate the presence of God.  And then he’s undignified, prancing around half nude in front of a bunch of woman, and this just doesn’t fit Michal’s concept of dignity. 

 

Verse 15, “So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet,” that refers to the parade described in 1 Chronicles.  Verse 16, “And as the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter,” and when she’s labeled as Saul’s daughter it means that the Holy Spirit wants us to know, see, look at this girl, there is her father’s nature coming out in the daughter; “Saul’s daughter, looked out of a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.”  This is the Canaanite, this is Cain again, the spirit of Cain that hates righteousness, that hates this passion to just look at God’s presence.

 

Verse 17, “And they brought in the ark of the LORD, and set it in its place,” let’s skip verses 17-19 for a minute and skip down to verse 20, finish with Michal and then we’ll come back to see what he did.  “Then David returned to bless his household.  And Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David, and said,” as only a woman could possibly say this, “How glorious was the king of Israel today, who uncovered himself in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the stupid fools [worthless] fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!”  In other words, she is not concerned with the parade, she’s concerned with whether or not her husband exposed himself.  This is an overriding passion.  This is one of those Scriptures where it gets right down to very frank facts and it is probable David did right here.  It’s probable that he did because David doesn’t deny the fact he did it.  The issue of the Holy Spirit isn’t whether he did it or not, the issue is the attitude involved.

 

Verse 21, “And David said unto Michal, It was before the LORD,” see he doesn’t defend the fact that he didn’t do it, he did it before the Lord, “who chose me before thy father, and before all his house,” see this is a real good marital spat that’s going on right here, you can see the digs.  You don’t use physical blows, you just use verbal blows, they cut deeper.  So David said what about your cloddy father, Michal, who is king now?  I am.  “…and He chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel; therefore I will play before the LORD. [22] “And I will yet be more vile [contemptible] than this and will be base in mine own sight; and of the maidservants whom thou have spoken of, of them shall I be had in honor. [23] Therefore,” the Bible says, “Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child unto the day of her death.”  She never had a child, she was rendered childless, and that is the end of this kind of attitude.  It’s fruitless, it never is going to produce a thing. 

 

And people with this attitude, this passionate concern, this self-righteousness, it is more important to be dignified, it is more important to do these things… now we’re not saying these things aren’t important, but it’s the priority you place on them.  It’s the priority.  You could have argued that John the Baptist was undignified, after all, not too many people make locusts a diet, not to many people dress in the weird costume of John the Baptist, not too many people were out in the desert, and it’s an awful place out there, it’s where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, it’s an awful place where John conducted his ministry.  Now that’s undignified, but in God’s point of view, human dignity is not the issue, the issue if the first commandment, “you will have no other gods before Me.”  John had not other gods in the wilderness; Jesus had no other gods in the parties and God didn’t condemn one over the other; one was a socialite, the other was an ascetic, it didn’t matter.  Both followed the first commandment.  If you learn that it’ll make your fellowship with believers much more relaxed.  If you can understand that what God sees in the human heart is whether or not that person is oriented to the first commandment, whether or not they are passionately involved with God alone, that’s the issue.


I’ll give you an example; as you know we have all sorts trot in here, and 3-4 years ago we started getting a little of a “hippie element,” (end quote) and they’re really not hippies but anyone that has a little long hair or something is a hippie these days, so we had these people come in. And I had a few people in the congregation expressed being ill at ease about this kind of thing, why couldn’t I just say something about it, why couldn’t I make this an issue, and I refused to make it an issue because it just turned out that those particular people came here for one purpose, for the Word of God, and I intend to let them come here to hear the Word of God, period. And if it offends other people’s dignity, that is tough.  The job is to communicate the Word, not to worry about how people look.  People look nice tonight, but the point is, we can’t make that the issue.  We are here to communicate the Word, and you, wherever you are, in the home, on the campus, in your neighborhood, on the job, you’re there as an ambassador for Christ.  And God is not going to have you make an issue of how people look, how people talk, the issue is the Word, the truth of God, whether they are or are not going to submit to his authority, that’s the issue, nothing else.  Now a strange fringe benefit, you’ll find when people submit to the Word of God these other things are taken care of sooner or later.  So just relax and just have patience, and just trust the Lord to work out those bothersome details that give you a hang-up, you’ll find God will take care of it.

 

Now in Michal’s case she couldn’t relax, she had to have dignity now and the presence of God later.  And so God gave her no children forever.  And it’s an expression of His intense displeasure.  In the Old Testament a woman could not have any worse thing happen to her; a woman could be assaulted, a woman could be beaten, a woman could be thrown out of her house, but in the Old Testament there was no worse punishment for a woman than to be rendered childless.  This was the  ultimate in punishment.  This is why Elizabeth, in the Christmas story, was so concerned that at last God had taken away her reproach among men. Why is that?  Because it was such an embarrassment not to have children.  This is the mentality of the Old Testament.

 

Now if you come back in the chapter we’ll see something else that explains a very interesting principle; in verses 17-19.  You want to understand this principle and then I want to direct you back to 1 Chronicles, but let’s look first at verses 17-19.  “And they brought in the ark of the LORD, and set it in its place, in the middle of the tabernacle that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD. [18] And as soon as David had finished offering burnt offerings and peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of hosts.”  Then in verse 19 he does a fantastic thing.  “And he dealt [distributed] among all the people, even among the whole multitude of Israel, as well to the women as men, to everyone a cake of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine [portion of meat, and a cake of raisins].  So all the people departed, everyone to his house.” 

 

Now I want you to notice in verse 19 how the Holy Spirit points out the women; why is that pointed out?  Because it’s unusual; never in these kinds of gatherings would the king offer the woman something, he’d offer the husband and the husband would give it to his wife, but the picture is that David, and his emissaries of course who distributed the food, when they distributed the food they did not go to the husband and have the husband give it to the woman.  They distributed it both to the women and to the men.  Now what’s that a picture of?  It’s a picture of grace, that God in His grace blesses through the institution, yes, but He can also bless independently of the institutions.  And in His sight men and woman are equal.  Now you can’t appreciate the fact, how this verse hit like a ton of bricks in the days in which this happened because in the ancient world women just simply were not qualified at all to do this kind of thing, to even touch the king’s emissary as he would hand out the food would have been an affront, and for David to do this kind of thing, where everything is equal in God’s sight, men and women, is a phenomenal thing that’s happening in this verse, absolutely phenomenal.

 

Now this illustrates the difference between paganism and we’ll just call it divine viewpoint in Israel.  In divine viewpoint the ritual is always grace; God does the doing, man does the receiving, and so when you have a ritual man celebrates, man celebrates because man receives.  In paganisms it’s not that way; in paganism it’s a works system so that the celebration is both with the gods plus man and together they celebrate.  And men give things to the gods and the gods need these things, so man and god work salvation out together in paganism.  Not here; here the men do nothing, they’re not giving the food to God, they’re giving it to the people. 

 

This was brought out very well by a very famous scholar of the Old Testament, [can’t understand name] of Hebrew University in Israel, and he wrote this, a very interesting point, (quote): “In Israel God does not participate in and is not affected by the festival; He’s not affected by the intoxication, He’s not affected by the enthusiasm. God is not among the throne of His devotees and he does not join their frenzy.  In Israel man alone celebrates.”  And this last sentence has it all together, “In Israel the rejoicing is not with God but before Him.”  Now there’s a world of difference between those who prepositions.  In Israel the rejoicing was in front of God; in the pagan nations, the gods an men rejoiced together, the gods participated in the process but not Jehovah; Jehovah stands and watches it but He was not part of it.  Jehovah is not dependent upon ritual. 

Now turn to see how David did all this; 1 Chronicles 16:4; here now is the classic passage in the whole Bible that tells us how assembly worship first began with music and psalms.  This also clearly establishes, in spite of all the higher criticism that David didn’t write the Psalms, the Psalms are written very late and all of the rest of it, this verse clearly teaches David is the author or most of the Psalms, including the ones that probably don’t even have his name on them. The reason is that in this particular chapter, 16:8-22, is equal to Psalm 105:1-5, and 16:23-33 is equal to Psalm 96:3-12.  So let’s first look at the setting and then we’ll go back to the Psalms and look at it too.

 

In verse 4, David “appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD, and to record and to thank, and praise the LORD God of Israel.”  You see, they’re not agitating the God of Israel, they’re praising Him for what He’s done.  [5] “Asaph, the chief, and next to him Zechariah,” and these are all the men specifically listed, “…Obed-edom; and Jeiel with psalteries and with harps, but Asaph made a sound with cymbals,” or these castanets.  [6] “But Benaiah also, and Jahaziel, the priest, with trumpets continually before the ark of the covenant of God.” 

 

And here’s your verse that shows you how the Psalms were used, verse 7, “Then on that day David delivered first this psalm, to thank the LORD, into the hand of Asaph and his brethren,” and that clearly shows you David wrote the Psalm, after he wrote it he gave it to these musicians, and he said here guys, you can put some music to it and go to work. Apparently David may or may not have written the melody but he wrote the lyrics anyway.

 

Now beginning at verse 8, turn to Psalm 105 and I want you to compare these two because we’re going to flip back and forth between the two.  I want you to see what is and is not recorded. They’re not exactly the same but they’re enough the same so you can see, for example look at verse 8 of Chronicles, “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people. [9] Sing unto Him, sing psalms unto Him talk ye of His wondrous works.”  Psalm 105:1, “O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples. [2] Sing unto Him, sing psalms unto Him; talk ye of all His wondrous works.”  And so we find davit giving Psalm 105, and by the way, if you look at Psalm 105 there’s no heading on it in your Bible, and since 1 Chronicles 16 tells us that David is the essential author, this also tells us that probably most of these Psalms without David’s name are also Davidic.  Now many of them with David’s name are Davidic because it says so, but we can’t be sure about these other Psalms, but this would tend to lead us that David wrote most of them anyway. 

 

Then if you’ll look at Psalm 105 it goes on and on and on, and verse 15 is the last verse of Psalm 105 that’s quoted in 1 Chronicles 16.  Now to see what’s happening here look at what’s happened after Psalm 105:15.  Verse 16, “Moreover, he called for a famine upon the land; he broke the whole staff of bread,” verse 17 he sent Joseph down, in other words, it goes into the whole history, all the way down to Moses, all the way down to verse 45.  Now all of that is left out in the 1 Chronicles 16 passage.  1 Chronicles 15 only takes verses 1-15; it only takes part of Psalm 105, it only takes these first 15 verses; verses 16-45 are left off. 

 

Now if you’ll turn back to 1 Chronicles we’ll look at the content of this.  This indicates that there was a standard format of these Psalms that probably was repeated time and again, but there’s an interesting thing of how David organizes it.  Notice the first Psalm that he gives into the hand of Asaph, what does it start with?  This is the whole apologetic for the faith of God’s Word, watch: “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people.”  Now what does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord, does it mean to get in some group where we all hold hands up and say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and keep on doing it until people start trotting up and down the aisle, etc.  This doesn’t mean that.  Calling upon His name is defined in the verse; what does calling upon the name of God mean?  It means to make known His deeds.  In other words, God’s character and His essence, attributes of God, God’s character is shown by His deeds and you have to have specific historical acts of God or you can’t know God.  You’re fooling yourself if you don’t know history.  How do you know anybody?  By what they say and do.  So how can you call upon God’s name and have no idea under the sun what God is doing. See, praising God in the Bible means knowing history and knowing it cold.  So you can think back, God did this, God did that, God did this, God that did that. 

 

That’s why in the family Framework literature we’re trying to tie doctrine to events so when you get through you’ll know, all right, doctrine of divine essence is associated with creation. Doctrine of suffering is associated with the fall.  Doctrine of judgment associated with the flood.  And so you may not remember all the doctrines but you think back to the event of creation, ex nihilo creation means that God is a transcendent monotheistic God, He’s totally different from all other gods.  You think back and you can’t remember all the areas of suffering but you know the fall and you know that evil was not always in the universe, evil started at a point in time at the fall.  And so you use the event to think, what did God do then.  What did God do in the flood? That’s how we know God’s essence. 

 

So verse 8 tells us what praise means.  And it therefore defines for us what worship is to be centered upon, notice: what is worship to be centered upon? Subjective feeling or objective historic acts.  According to this objective historic acts.  Do you read in verses 9, 10, 11, when I sought God I had this feeling in my heart?  Or I got this tingling sensation of great peace when I think of Yahweh.  I repeat his name 75 times before breakfast, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh and after this I hypnotize myself and I get this great feeling.  Nowhere do you read that in here.  What do you read?  Dull history, that’s all we’ve got is dull history.  History is not dull if you see it from God’s point of view.  Let’s look at it.

 

Verse 10, “Glory ye in His holy name; let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD,” in other words, this isn’t for all people, this is just for those who seek God. [11], “Seek the Lord and His strength, seek His face continually.”  Then he goes on in verse 12, and here gets into the meat, “Remember His marvelous works that He has done, His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth,” so what is the purpose of the hymns of Asaph?  To help the people remember, these people are not literate; if you know Hebrew you know why they’re not literate.  These people were not fluent in the language, many of them, but they had a fantastic memory, absolutely fantastic memory.  They didn’t have paper, they had memory.  “…His wonders, and the judgments of His mouth, [13] O ye seed of Israel, His servant,” and then what does he go on.  Verse 16, the framework for all of history; imagine that, that’s philosophical, so deed in the hymns, “Even the covenant which He has made with Abraham, and of His oath unto Isaac, [17] And has confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.”  And here’s the apologetic of the Bible.  The whole argument of the Bible is this, I don’t care what, if you’re going to argue with somebody about prophecy, argue with somebody about design, ultimately what you’re arguing about is God is known by His word and His deeds.  Or, His covenant and history.  You’ve got to have both or you don’t have an argument for Christianity.  You cannot just argue on the basis of the Word without God’s deeds.  It’s not enough to have a promise, the issue is did He keep His promise, and if He did, then you know He’s a trustworthy God.  So you have to know the covenant, what it promised and know history, the fulfillment of the covenant.  And so the hymn, not surprising, the hymn is all centered on this, all the way down to verse 22, “Saying, Touch not mine anointed,” and then David stops, verse 22, and at verse 23 he starts off on another tangent. 

 

And this tangent is Psalm 96, so turn to Psalm 96.  Again please notice that the heading doesn’t say David wrote it, which again shows that David probably wrote many of the Psalms that don’t have his name on them.  Psalm 96:2-12, if you compare it with Chronicles 16:23, “Sing unto the LORD all the earth; show forth from day to day his salvation.  [24] Declare His glory among the heathen, His marvelous works among all nations [peoples.]”  Now turn to Psalm 96 and look at verses 2-3, “Sing unto the LORD, bless His name; show forth His salvation from day to day. [3] Declare His glory among the heathen, His wonders among all peoples.”  Now the whole Psalm goes on, except for verse 13; Psalm 96 is repeated in 1 Chronicles 16 with one crucial omission, and the omission is verse 13.  Now why is verse 13 of Psalm 96 dropped in 1 Chronicles 16?  Because verse 13 gives you the reason to praise, it’s a threat because God is coming to judge, you’d better praise Him.  Now at the time that 1 Chronicles 16 occurred, David was not asking worship of God on the basis of a future advent.  He was commanding worship of God simply on the basis of God’s character alone.  This future element hadn’t entered in. 

 

So if you turn back to 1 Chronicles 16 you’ll see how he approaches it, beginning at verse 23.  “Sing unto the LORD, all the earth;” when you see these phrases, “all the earth,” if you went through the Psalm series, know that that means that there is universalism in the Bible, not that all men are saved, but that the message goes to all the world.  This is the basis for all missionary activity.  And it is present back here in the Old Testament, it says “all” the world is to praise, not just Israel.  Notice verse 24, “Declare His glory among the nations; His marvelous works among all nations [peoples],” not just Israel, this is missionary activity, evangelism.  And it means that what is to be shown is not testimony of a Holy Ghost baptism.  He doesn’t mean that you’re to go to Algeria or Jerusalem or South America and preach a gospel, Holy Ghost baptism and subjective experience.  That isn’t here either. What you are to do is go and do there what you’re supposed to be doing right now, and that is showing God’s objective historic works in history. 

 

Verse 26, “For all the gods of the people are idols;” in other words, you are to have a bigoted attitude, that only the Word of God is valid, all other religions are wrong, and all the nations are screwed up.  That’s why we have missionaries, and that’s why missionaries are hated by liberals.  Verse 27, “Glory and honor are in His presence; strength and gladness are in His place.”  This all addressed to the people of the world; verse 28, “Give unto the LORD, ye kindreds of the people… Verse 29, Give unto the LORD the glory due unto His name,” see, it’s an address to all the world.  What does that tell you about David?  It tells you when he set up the national cultists, David had his eyes on the whole world. David’s eyes weren’t just on Israel, David had Hiram over at Tyre bring the materials over; David had contact with [can’t understand word], David had contact, apparently, with the nations to the north.  David knew about the nations and David had ulterior motives in mind. That national cultist, according to David, was more than just a cultist to Israel; it was a cultist for the world, and he intended that the Word of God go to all the world, and he would not take or buy this relativistic stuff, well David, here you’ve got your religion and we’ve got ours, you believe your way and we’ll believe our way and then everybody will be happy. Right David?  No, you believe my way, period.  That’s godly humble bigotry. 

 

Then he concludes chapter 16 by saying, [34] Oh, give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good; for His mercy endures, [35] And say ye,” and that shows you that they had a response. Apparently as they sung this, the Levite choir sang this there was a response, “Save us, O God of our salvation,” that’s the word from which we get yeshua, for Jesus, “and gather us together, deliver us from the heathen, that we may give thanks to thy holy name, and glory in thy praise. [36] Blessed be the LORD God of Israel forever and ever. And all the people said, Amen, and praised the Lord.”

 

Verse 37, “So he left there,” and the people departed, and that’s how David set up the cultist.  Verse 43, “And all the people departed, every man to his house; and David returned to bless his house.”  When he blessed his house, we don’t have time to do it, he used Psalm 30.  If you’d like to read how David blessed his house, Psalm 30 was how he did it, and that Psalm gives you the content, that he had a ceremony at his own house after this ceremony was finished.

 

Next week we’ll deal with one of the harder themes of the book, the covenant of David, and this gets involved, a little theology, but I hope by now you’ve seen God give David the basis for his kingdom.  He’s given him the people; He’s given him the land; and now God has given him His presence.  Only one thing lacking; does David have a promise that God’s presence will always be there, and that’s the Davidic Covenant.