God First Everything Else Second

2 Samuel 6:20-23 ESV

20 And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants' female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” 21 And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will celebrate before the Lord. 22 I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.” 23 And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.

Today we are finishing up our series of messages on this wonderful account recorded for us in Scripture concerning David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to the holy city Jerusalem.

And I can personally say that in writing and delivering these messages, I have been profoundly affected.

And I think that one of the reasons why I have been so affected in going through this narrative is because of the overall flow of this narrative.

The narrative started with David desiring to do something godly, but to do it in a way that was ungodly when he sought to transport the Ark on a new cart that was pulled by oxen rather than having it be carried on poles that would be placed on the shoulders of four Kohathites as God directed.

In the course of this, the Ark was touched by a man named Uzzah, who sought to steady it and keep it from falling. And while Uzzah may have had godly intentions in doing this, still in doing it he disregarded God and violated His holiness. This was something that God would not stand for, so He struck Uzzah down right there to show His clear displeasure.

And the reaction that King David had to this was not one of fear, or of reverence, but of anger. He was angry at the fact that things weren’t going the way that he wanted them to.

He wasn’t repentant, he was angry. And because he wasn’t repentant, he just had the Ark sit in a priest’s home, rather than having it brought to Jerusalem.

But this priest enjoyed God’s blessings as a result of the Ark’s presence in his home which caused David to become jealous of the blessings that this priest was receiving and actually made him willing to repent of his wrong and to do things the right way, God’s way.

So, David returned to the Ark, but this time he transported the correct way, as he attached it to poles which were carried on the shoulders of four Kohathites. This time, David transported the Ark to Jerusalem in reverence and fear of the Lord.

At seeing that God had graciously favored David this time, David responded by worshipfully dancing before the Ark of the Lord, shouting and singing His praises.

So, David started off bad in this narrative, but then things started to get great. David was doing things God’s way, God was blessing David for doing things His way, and as a result, David was responding in grateful worship and praise to God.

Things were going great, but then his wife, Michal, the daughter of the former King Saul beheld David leaping and dancing before the Ark, willfully associating himself among the common folk of Israel, and she despised him in her heart because of it.

Now, in our message last week, we said that when we do things God’s way, we certainly experience God’s blessings, but what we will also experience is disdain and scorn from those who refuse to do things God’s way, and that quite often this disdain and scorn comes from people we wouldn’t expect it to come from, sometimes even those closest to us.

So, we finished our message last week by asking ourselves how we will respond when we face this disdain and scorn from others as a result of doing that which is right in God’s eyes.

And I also told you that today, we would look at how King David responded when this disdain and scorn came from his own wife of all people.

And we see how this disdain and scorn from his wife first apprehended David in verse 20 of our reading, where it says:

2 Samuel 6:20 ESV

20 And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants' female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!”

Last week in our reading, we saw how King David blessed the people of Israel after bringing the Ark into Jerusalem and making sacrifices and offerings to the Lord.

Now, we see here at the beginning of this verse, that it was now David’s desire to go and bless his own household. David had already been blessed, he then worshipfully and humbly asked God to extend His blessings to the people of Israel. Now he goes home in order that he may worshipfully and humbly ask God to extend blessings to his family as well.

But before that could happen, David’s wife, the daughter of the former King Saul, comes out to meet him. And she doesn’t come out to give him a hug and a kiss and welcome him home. She doesn’t come out to tell her husband that she is proud to be the wife of a man, the king no less, who humbly and reverently worshipped the Lord. No, she comes out to harass and ridicule her husband and king.

She sarcastically says, “How the king of Israel honored himself today.” So, right off the bat, she tells her husband the king that he has done something dishonorable, something that a king should never do.

And she continues to tell us what it is that she believes that the king should never do when she says that David uncovered himself.

Now, a lot of people think that this uncovering of David means that he stripped down his clothes to the point of being inappropriate, but like we said a couple of weeks ago, David was wearing an ephod here, which meant that he was wearing the clothing that is typically associated with priests.

In other words, David willingly set aside his royal robes in order to recognize and worship God as the true King of Israel in the clothes of a priest.

So, I believe that when Michal talks about David uncovering himself, she is referring to David removing his royal robe, recognizing God as King, and “descending his status to associating himself with regular folk.”

In Michal constantly being referred to in the text as “the daughter of Saul” it’s as though the author is trying to get across the point that she viewed herself as an advocate for how a royal truly ought to carry himself.

She, the daughter of a former king, saw her husband, the current king humbling himself and being one with the people of God, and it made her sick.

But then David responded to his wife’s harsh words by telling her Who it is that he was dancing and humbling himself for.

2 Samuel 6:21a ESV

21a And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord,

David quickly corrects Michal by telling her that he wasn’t out there dancing for the people, for her, or for anyone else. He tells her that what he was doing was an act of worship, an act of reverent worship, and this worship was for the Lord.

David then reminded Michal about a little piece of her family history, when he told her:

2 Samuel 6:21b ESV

21b who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—

Michal acts as though she has a right to try to “correct” her husband because her father used to be the king. But David reminds Michal that the reason why her father is no longer the king is because God chose David above him. In other words, it was God’s will for David to be the king, and when the time was right, God removed Saul from power and put David in his place.

And David even goes further to say that the reason why God chose David over Saul was because unlike David, Saul would not do anything “before the Lord” that is, Saul done nothing that was in the proper reverence for and worship of the Lord.

So, while Michal was angry that David was worshipping before the Lord, still, worshipping before the Lord is exactly what David should have been doing, and this is made evident by the fact that God removed Saul from power and put David in his place.

And because that was the case, this was the determination of David:

2 Samuel 6:21c

21c I will celebrate before the Lord.

This was the only possible correct answer. Saul was rejected by God for not recognizing God as King and properly worshipping Him. Therefore, the only logical answer for David was that regardless of what Michal or anyone else may think, he was going to recognize God as King and worship Him the way He’s supposed to be worshipped.

But that’s not all, David continues by saying:

2 Samuel 6:22 ESV

22 I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.”

David draws the line in the sand here by telling his wife that she is not his top priority, but that God, and the proper worship of God is his top priority, and that if having God as his top priority and properly worshipping Him causes him to be abased in her eyes, then being abased in her eyes is just the way that things are going to be.

But he goes even further in saying that while he will be abased in her eyes, he will be honored by those who also desire to truly worship the Lord.

And while Michal views herself as an authority on everything that is royal, what David is truly demonstrating is what both he and the people he rules over need to be most dedicated to.

Michal may have been most concerned about appearing as a “proper” royal, but what David was most concerned about here and what he was effectively demonstrating to the people that he ruled over was that he places God and his relationship with God not only as his top priority, but as the centerpiece of every decision that he makes.

Now, we would hope that David putting Michal in her place like this would bring about repentance on her part and she would respond by listening to her husband and placing God first, but the last verse of our reading tells us that she done the complete opposite of that, where it says:

2 Samuel 6:23 ESV

23 And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.

Because Michal rejected holiness, because she viewed serving and worshipping God as contemptible, and because she never determined to turn from this, she was cursed by God. And the curse that He gave to her was an inability to procreate.

Isn’t it kind of ironic how this narrative is mainly about David sinning, facing the consequences of his sin, but then repenting and enjoying God’s blessings, but then it ends with an account of how Michal, one of the wives of David sinned, refused to repent of her sin, and lived the remainder of her life under God’s curse?

Let me finish this series of messages by telling you, my friends, that a church that rejects holiness and views it as contemptible will also be cursed by God.

As we’ve been saying all throughout this series, so many churches all across our nation have been suffering terribly in so many ways, but they have been especially suffering spiritually.

And why is this the case? A lack of properly reverencing God, coming to church for the wrong reasons, and looking at God’s way and saying that we can do it better.

And the result is a curse! A God-given curse!

And the only way that we can recover from that curse is by looking at our worship and sincerely saying, “We haven’t been doing this right.” And then repenting by doing it God’s way.

The alternative is what happened to Michal. If we refuse to see that we are wrong, if we refuse to see that God is right, and if we refuse to practice what is right, then we will remain cursed until we cease to exist.

Let us not be among those churches’ brethren. May God give us the grace to properly worship Him.