2 Samuel Lesson 54
David and the
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
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
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
In 1 Chronicles 15:1 it picks up the narrative. “And David built houses for himself in the
city of
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.