Amen. And amen. Well, we're going to be in 2 Samuel chapter 6 this morning, continuing our study on the kingdom. And David has finally secured the throne for himself. He's taken Jerusalem as his new capital. He's had a beautiful house built for himself there. He is now the king, the sovereign, the one who is in control. Or is he? What he does next is important, necessary even, but it doesn't go according to his plan. This chapter in a nutshell is that beautiful simple cliché: man plans, God laughs. You've lived that out, right? More than once. "God, I got this great idea." He's like, "That's cute." This is a beautiful text about the sovereignty of our God, the one who is rightfully, truthfully in control. So let's dig in together this morning. It starts this way.
1 David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. 2 And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale-judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim.
David has a plan. He’s going to go get the ark. And that’s tragic in and of itself because for around at least 60 years the ark has been pushed to the side. As we’ve been walking through the history recorded in Samuel, the ark hasn’t been mentioned for a long, long time since the time of Eli and Samuel. The ark, which is the central symbol of God’s covenant presence with His people Israel, has been pushed to the side and neglected. If you remember back in 1 Samuel chapter 4, Israel was fighting with the Philistines, and the elders of Israel had a great idea. They were fighting the Philistines and they were losing. They said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go get the ark, and we’ll carry the ark in front of us like some sort of magical talisman, and then God will have to give us victory ‘cause we’ve got the ark.” If you remember, it didn’t work out so well for them. In fact, they got thrashed by the Philistines. And this is interesting—wait for it—thirty thousand Israelites died that day. We just heard that number. It’s not a mistake. Thirty thousand died as the ark was captured by the Philistines. Now, that led to one of my favorite stories in that early part of 1 Samuel. The Philistines take it to their city and put it in the temple of Dagon. And then the statue of Dagon starts falling down and his head gets lopped off, and then they start getting tumors all over. But it doesn’t go well for the Philistines. They’re like, “What do we do?” They’re like, “Give it back to the Israelites.” The Philistines load it on a cart and they take it to the town of Beth Shemesh, and they give it to them. And this is important for today’s text, because when it gets to the town of Beth Shemesh, some of the men there are interested in the ark, and so they open it up to take a peek at what’s inside, which according to the law is a no-no. And so seventy of them die. Seventy of them died just for looking into the ark, transgressing God’s command. That scared them so much—which is legit, right?—that they’re like, somebody else can have the ark. It’s like, “I don’t want the ark. Do you want the ark?” Nobody wants it. They enlist the house of Abinadab in Kiriath-jearim, and the ark is taken there. Kiriath-jearim literally means the city of forests or thickets. It’s a town on the Judah-Benjamite border to the west of Jerusalem. It’s also known as Kiriath-baal or Baalah, or as in our text today, Baale-judah. For 60 years the ark has been kept by Abinadab and his family, who—I mean there’s a little bit of controversy in this—were they Levites? Were they connected to the priests? I don’t see any convincing evidence that they were. They’re just willing to take it in and house the ark. And so for 60 years, the ark is there without the Levites, without the priests, without the spiritual connection between God and His covenant people. This is really a tragic thing. David coming up with this idea to go get the ark, on the surface, good idea, but it doesn’t really go according to plan.
1 David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand.
The word there translated as “gathered” is a marshalled gathering of soldiers. We just came out of chapter 5. The battle with the Philistines is still going on. This is in disputed territory. David is going to get the ark. He gathers together his army to go get it. Don’t think of this like a nice fun day trip to get the ark. There’s danger involved. In fact, in the parallel account of this in the scriptures, in the book of 1 Chronicles, what we looked at a couple weeks ago in chapter 5 is actually placed right in the middle of this section in Chronicles. This is a dangerous thing. He gathers 30,000—again there’s a connection there back to 1 Samuel 4—of Israel’s chosen men, the valiant warriors.
2 And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale-judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim.
The Name — HaShem — a title used for God in Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism, in place of pronouncing the divine name directly. In the ancient Near East, names are so important and so significant, and in the life and history of ancient Israel the name of God becomes this unbelievably important and significant fact. In fact, by the time we get to the day of Jesus, in Second Temple Judaism, many Jews of that day simply referred to God as HaShem—the Name. The ark is known by the name of the Lord of hosts. Now there’s an interesting detail in the Hebrew that you don’t see: name — שֵׁם — šēm — name, in the idiom of ownership (BDB 896) — appears twice literally in the underlying Hebrew of this verse. It says it is known by the name, name. Some people think it’s just a scribal error—the scribe was sleepy and accidentally wrote “name” twice. I don’t think so. I think it’s deeply intentional. It’s highlighting and pointing: whose ark is it? Is it Israel’s ark? Is it David’s ark? No. The author wants us to be clear on this. This is God’s ark. And David’s going to learn this lesson painfully. This is God’s, and it is known by His name. And then the name that is used is the Lord of hosts, the God of angel armies, the one who is sovereign, the one against whom no one can stand. And then it pictures the ark—He sits enthroned on the cherubim. If you remember or know how the ark was constructed, on top of it was a depiction of two cherubim with their wings coming towards the center. And this was to be the footstool of God’s presence. This is God’s ark, and now David had just gone and grabbed it.
I want you to notice something that we don’t see from David here that we have quite regularly. He doesn’t inquire of the Lord. He doesn’t ask. This is not God’s idea; this is David’s idea. He doesn’t seek the Lord. He doesn’t ask for God’s direction. He doesn’t ask for the blessing. There’s nothing like that going on. He does it for his own reasons. I don’t know what David’s reasons are. They could have been good—he could have thought, “Man, the ark’s been neglected. We better bring it back and get this right.” He could have been acting like the elders in 1 Samuel who wanted the magic talisman so that God would have to give even greater blessing. My guess is probably, like most of us—mixed. I don’t know about you; I’m not sure I’ve ever had a pure motive in my life, right? But it doesn’t really matter. And that’s actually kind of the heart of this text—it doesn’t really matter what his motives were.
Verse three says they carried the ark of God on a new cart. Oh, that’s interesting. If you know the scripture well and you’re familiar with how the Torah instructed the nation to treat the ark, that’s wrong from the jump. It’s not supposed to be in a cart. They put it in a new cart. That detail, I think, is intentional, given to us. Why? Well, a new cart wouldn’t be impure—it wouldn’t defile the ark. There seems to be some thought process going into how they should move this ark—well, we better use a new cart. But there wasn’t the thought process of, well, how did God tell us to carry the ark? That never happened. So they put it
3 And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart,
Uzzah and Ahio—not Ohio—Uzzah and Ahio, probably the grandsons of Abinadab as it’s the same word in the Hebrew. Just think about this: for sixty-some years the ark has been in this household. Uzzah and Ahio have grown up their whole life probably with the ark there. We don’t know what that looked like. We don’t know if it was in a hidden tent—we don’t know anything. They’ve grown up with it there. And maybe they became a little overly comfortable with it. And maybe they were never instructed in how the ark was to be handled and taken care of. Again, that doesn’t really matter. So they’re driving the new cart and
4 with the ark of God, and Ahio went before the ark. 5 And David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.
This is a military parade, right? You’ve got 30,000 armed warriors gathering together, taking the ark back towards Jerusalem, and they’re celebrating and they’re using the instruments that they would have on hand, and this is just a joyous, boisterous celebration. Everything seems awesome. Except it wasn’t, because the whole thing was wrong. Not only was this done at David’s initiative, not God’s, it was done in the wrong way. God had given specific, clear, unambiguous instructions about how the ark was to be treated and handled. It was not to be moved in a cart. It was to be carried on poles. And it was not just to be carried on poles by anybody—they needed to be Levites, they needed to be the sons of Kohath. And it was not to be touched. It was holy, set apart, separate. It was to be treated with reverence and respect—not because it was inherently magical in itself, but because it was representing the very real presence of God with His people. And God is not trivial.
This is the heart of my message today. We have a human tendency to trivialize God, to minimize God, to make God into something that we’re comfortable with. That’s understandable. But the next step is what’s tragic: we reduce God to make Him something controllable. Whether David was ignorant of the explicit command in the Torah about how the ark was to be moved or not, we don’t know. And again, it doesn’t really matter, because this is something that I’ve said many, many times to you before: when we do the right thing in the wrong way, it becomes the wrong thing. Right? We know this on so many levels. Ladies, let me ask you this: on your anniversary, if your husband shows up with a bouquet of flowers and just hands it to you and goes, “Here,” and you go, “Oh, that’s so nice,” and you’re like, “Yeah, it was my duty, I was supposed to do it, enjoy it”—how’s that going to go for him? Is he doing the right thing? Yeah. If he does it in the wrong way, is it really the right thing? Absolutely not. Right? We understand this relationally in our human relationships. Here’s the thing—do you think God is different? We believe in and serve a relational God, a personal God. And if something as silly as bringing flowers to your wife in the wrong way makes that a bad thing, coming to God with the right thing but doing it in the wrong way—how do you think God feels about that? It’s kind of what this text is all about.
When they came to the threshing floor—I don’t think there’s any wasted details in this chapter; there’s only 23 verses—they come to the threshing floor of Nacon. Threshing floors, of course, are where they would thresh grain after it’d been harvested to separate the wheat from the chaff. But threshing floors have more than an agricultural role and meaning in the life of Israel and in the scriptures. Threshing floors are often places of judgment. In a city, you do business at the gates—the elders and the leaders would gather at the gates of the city and business would be done there. Outside of cities, business was done, judgment was given, at threshing floors. I don’t think it’s a mistake that as the ark is being brought improperly, the whole thing comes to a tragic halt at a threshing floor. Right there, you got to prepare yourself—there’s some judgment coming. So they come,
6 And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled.
This is a really difficult Hebrew text to translate, and the Greek Septuagint doesn't really help us with this. Something happened. The ark is on the cart, and something weird happened with the oxen and with the cart, and a lot of commentaries have lots of ideas about what happened. Some people think that Uzzah actually tried to stop the cart from going because he didn't want it to leave his house and go to Jerusalem. I think what's happening is that God stopped this—I think God caused the ark to fall because His people were not honoring Him. And what happened is that Uzzah reaches out and does that which is explicitly forbidden and places his hand on the ark.
7 And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God.
I wrote in my notes, “that escalated quickly!!” You know, put yourself in it—they’re marching along, they’re celebrating, they’re rejoicing, and then all of a sudden something happens and the ark tips, and all of a sudden you’ve got a dead guy next to the ark on the ground on the threshing floor. And somebody better start asking some questions. We got to ask ourselves what’s going on here, because it seems like God’s being mean or capricious. Why would He kill somebody just for touching the ark? That doesn’t seem right. And I think what’s happening here is that Israel, and David as the king of Israel leading them, they’ve lost a sense of the holiness of God, of the distinctiveness of God, the otherness of God. Of course, with that comes the greatness of God, the strength of God, and the rightness of God. This is God’s ark. So how must it be treated? God’s way.
I think many of us, if we're honest, find ourselves in the same place very often. We love the grace of God. We delight in the kindness of God. We're so thankful for the patience of God. But we very easily begin to lose the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the sovereignty of God. Right? Now, we all love God's sovereignty when the wheels fall off and things are going poorly. When things are going bad, we're like, "God, I need You to help out." We want God to be sovereign—when we can't do anything. And we all have those moments. But most of us don't live life that way all the time. Most of us have a lot of experience in our life where things may not be going great, but they're not going terrible. And we deceive ourselves with the illusion that we're actually in way more control than we are. And so God doesn't become the sovereign that we serve—God becomes the genie in the lamp that we want to serve us.
This text doesn't pull any punches. God is unbelievably patient and gracious and kind and all of those things, and every once in a while He gives these really poignant reminders—don't mistake My kindness for weakness, and don't mistake My patience for an unwillingness or inability to judge. He is the king and the judge of the earth and everything within it. And unfortunately, Uzzah had to learn that lesson in a very hard way. Don't test God. Don't trivialize Him. Don't make Him into your own image.
The result—so he dies there on the threshing floor, the ark's down, and it says,
8 And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez-uzzah to this day.
The Hebrew there — break out — פֶּרֶץ — pereṣ — a bursting forth, a breach (BDB 829) — is where we get the name Perez, as in Perez-uzzah. We actually saw it back in chapter 5 when God was fighting for and with David against the Philistines. And if you remember, they named the place Baal-perazim, the place where the Lord broke out like a raging flood against the enemies. David really liked it when God broke out against the Philistines. When God broke out against David and Israel and Uzzah, David didn’t like it. There might be a lesson in there for somebody this morning.
Why was he angry? And it's interesting, because I think the grammar of the Hebrew makes it pretty clear—he's angry at God. Why is he angry at God? I think most of our anger comes from one place: it comes from fear. And that's certainly true with David. The text tells us David was afraid of the Lord that day. David the giant killer, David the valiant warrior, David the man after God's own heart, is now afraid of the very God that has called and established him as king. What's he afraid of? I think he's afraid of his own misunderstanding of God and the consequences that come from that. God is not to be treated lightly. And so he actually starts to ask questions. He
9 And David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?”
And I don't think he's just asking the pragmatic questions about how it's to be transported. I think he's asking the question: how do I stand in the presence of a God like that? How can the ark of the Lord, how can the presence of the righteous, holy king of the universe, judge of the earth—how can that come to me? I think the answer might be fairly simple: on the negative, not on your terms, David; and on the positive, on His terms.
It gets interesting here. It says,
10 So David was not willing to take the ark of the Lord into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.
Let that sink in. Just think about this—the ark, the symbol of God’s covenant with Israel, David’s too afraid to bring it into Jerusalem, so he gives it to a non-Israelite. Here’s where it gets beautiful and interesting—he takes it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.
11 And the ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household.
That’s something really beautiful happening here. When the covenant Israelite comes to that same presence of God, what happens? Blessing comes. The same ark that destroyed Uzzah blesses Obed-edom. Do you see the strange reversal? Let me just say it this way: the covenant Israelite is struck down while the foreigner is blessed. If you don’t hear the gospel in that—the covenant Israelite is struck down and the foreigner is blessed.
12 And it was told King David, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing.
I get David in this—I get his anger, I get his fear, and then I also get his jealousy, and probably greed. “Well, why should Obed-edom get all the blessing, right? I got to go get me some ark.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing.
13 And when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal.
Again, I don’t know what happened in those three months, but here’s what I know: David started asking the questions he should have asked the first time, right? And Samuel doesn’t give us that explicitly—it just says now there’s no cart, there’s just people carrying it. But Chronicles does give it to us. So in 1 Chronicles 15:11-15 it says,
11 Then David summoned the priests Zadok and Abiathar, and the Levites Uriel, Asaiah, Joel, Shemaiah, Eliel, and Amminadab, 12 and said to them, “You are the heads of the fathers’ houses of the Levites. Consecrate yourselves, you and your brothers, so that you may bring up the ark of the Lord, the God of Israel, to the place that I have prepared for it. 13 Because you did not carry it the first time, the Lord our God broke out against us, because we did not seek him according to the rule.”
This is one of the few times I think David’s not being completely honest and responsible, because you guys didn’t care—David, this was your plan, dude. But at least he’s owning it. He’s figured it out. So he says,
14 So the priests and the Levites consecrated themselves to bring up the ark of the Lord, the God of Israel. 15 And the Levites carried the ark of God on their shoulders with the poles, as Moses had commanded according to the word of the Lord.
Second time, they get it right. They get it right. It’s truly different. Instead of a military parade this time with 30,000 soldiers, now we’ve got the priests and the Levites. It’s not a military parade now—it’s a worship service. It’s what it should have been the entire time. The reality of God’s presence in the midst of His people, symbolized by the presence of the ark, is worthy of being celebrated.
And this gets us to probably the reason this text might be known by most people—the footloose moment. David danced before the Lord. You can just see Kevin Bacon reading this, can’t you?
14 And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod.
The Hebrew here is whirl — כָּרַר — karar — to whirl (unique form in this chapter; supported by Ugaritic comparanda — Hoffner; Ahlström; Avishur — no BDB or HALOT headword). If you’ve ever seen some dancing from that part of the world, especially the whirling dervishes—this spinning, whirling, jumping, leaping, ecstatic movement—that’s what David starts to do. And it says that he dances before the Lord. This is worship for David, and there’s an audience of one. He’s not doing it for the priests. He’s not doing it for the Levites. He’s not doing it for anybody else that might happen to be there. He is worshiping God. And how does he do it? I love this little phrase—with all his might. No half-hearted worship, no “yay, God.” This is David the warrior, the giant killer, the man after God’s own heart, finally oriented and in right relationship, celebrating the fact that God is with him. We spend so much time trying to get God on our side when in reality we’ve got to make sure we’re on His. He’s dancing before the Lord with all his might.
But I want you to notice this little detail—what he's wearing. He's wearing an ephod. And I'm sure you all have a few ephods in your closets, but the ephod is a priestly garment—it's what the priests would wear. And you're like, well, why is David wearing a priestly garment? Because the king's not supposed to do that. Let's go to verse 15 to 19. It says,
15 So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn….
17 And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. 18 And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts 19 and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his house.
Those of you that were awake, notice that I skipped verse 16. Yes, I did. We’ll come back to that in just a second. See, David brings in the ark, dancing wildly in a priestly garment. Then David offers burnt offerings—it’s not something the king’s supposed to do; that’s something a priest is supposed to do. Then David blesses the people in the name of God—again, a king can give a blessing, but this is a priestly blessing that’s given onto the people. What’s happening here? What’s happening here is deep and beautiful, and we’ve actually touched on this in the summer when we looked at Psalm 110 and the priesthood of Melchizedek. Melchizedek is this weird, strange, amazing character we meet in Genesis. Abraham comes back from a battle, and there he meets Melchizedek, the king-priest of—where is he from?—Salem, which is Jerusalem. And he brings Abraham bread and wine, he feeds him, and then Abraham tithes to him, and then Melchizedek blesses him in the name of the Most High. When David conquered Jerusalem, in the ancient Near East, when you conquer a city, you inherit all the titles and roles of that city. Now David is standing in the lineage and the line of Melchizedek. He’s not just the king of Jerusalem—he’s also the priest of Jerusalem according to the order of Melchizedek. And David can do some things here that ultimately Jesus is going to fulfill, right? He can bless the people, he can lead the worship, he can feed them. It’s beautiful, it’s glorious. The presence of God has brought unity and peace into God’s people in the city—to everybody but one.
Back to verse 16: as the ark of the Lord came into the city, Michal, the daughter of Saul—my heart breaks every time I think about Michal, the daughter of Saul. She's one
16 As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.
of the most tragic figures in this narrative. Michal—just what every husband wants to hear. This is so tragic, because it's quite a departure from Michal. When we first meet Michal, back in 1 Samuel 18, this is how we're introduced to her: Saul's daughter, Michal, loved David. She loved him. And that love was used and abused by her father. The very next verse says,
20 Now Saul’s daughter Michal loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him.
Saul thought to
21 Saul thought, “Let me give her to him, that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” Therefore Saul said to David a second time, “You shall now be my son-in-law.”
Her love for David was something that her own father used as a political tool to try to take out David, the one whom God had chosen. And as if you remember the story, it just gets worse and worse and worse—like when David finally has to run off, remember who warned him that Saul was coming to kill him? It was Michal. "He's coming right now to kill you," and David had to flee. And so then he's gone. He had to leave her. He had to leave everything. He's out in the wilderness, and he's out there for a long time. And Saul looks at Michal, his daughter, and he's like, "You know, I know how I can stick it to David again," and says, "You're no longer married to David. Now you got to be married to this guy." And so off she goes, married to this other guy. And she's with him for a long time. And David, because he's got a problem, starts marrying a bunch of other women. But then when he finally comes back—and we just looked at this a few weeks ago—when he finally starts to come back into the land and he's anointed the king of Judah, and then when he's getting ready to be anointed over all of Israel, he has one condition: he's like, "I want Michal back." But there's no indication that it's because he loves her so much—no, it's all political. He can't have Saul's daughter out there producing heirs somewhere that are going to threaten him. "So give her back." It's ugly, it's messy, it's tragic, it's right. And so now we get Michal looking out and looking at David dancing before the Lord, and she despises him in her heart.
After he sacrifices and blesses and feeds the people, verse 20 says he returned to bless his household. But Michal, the daughter of Saul—and again, every time in this she’s not called the wife of David, she’s called the daughter of Saul—the author wants us to see this through that framework. When Michal the
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!”
You can literally feel the sarcasm in this. She says, “Oh…” Could be that she’s resenting him taking on a priestly role. It could be that as he’s wildly dancing, the ephod is not covering him completely. Whatever it is, he comes to bless her and she meets him with disdain. Now I want to be clear, and this is really bad news for Kevin Bacon lovers in the room, but in the ancient Near East we have really no indication of mixed-gender dancing. Men danced, women danced, they didn’t dance together. This report of David dancing—maybe some of the other men might have joined in, but the women wouldn’t have joined in. That’s just not what they did, right? Michal comes out swinging—you can feel the sarcasm.
There’s more going on here than the marital strife between David and Michal, more than just her broken heart. Right? She’s the daughter of Saul, not the wife of David—the daughter of Saul—and her attack is on the worthiness of David as king. “How the king has honored himself,” she says. “Honored”—that comes from the root word honor, be heavy — כָּבֵד — kābēd — to be heavy, weighty; hence to be honored, glorified (BDB 457). It literally means heavy, weightiness. Things that are heavy and weighty are things that are substantial, things that are significant, things that are important. That’s why it gets translated as honor or glory, because it’s got so much substance to it. And so she comes out sarcastically: “Oh, you’ve been so weighty, you’ve been so awesome, so glorious, honoring yourself, dancing like a fool in front of everybody.”
David’s response—he says to Michal, “It was before the Lord.” I think there’s probably a little bit of snark here, too—when your wife comes to you with that kind of disdain, it’s hard not to snark back a little bit. I’m not excusing it, I’m just being honest here. “It was before the Lord who chose me above your father and all his house”—which includes her, right? “You’re going to judge who’s worthy? Oh, you think I’m not weighty enough? Just remember, it was God that said no to you and your house and said yes to me and mine.” And he
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.
"I will celebrate before the Lord." And then—this is interesting, I think often misunderstood—he says,
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.”
She says, “You look how you honored yourself, look how you made yourself so weighty,” and so she’s saying he wasn’t weighty. And his response is, “You know what? I’ll make myself even lighter.” That’s what the word there that’s translated as “contemptible” means—it means to be light. “Oh, you think I’m not heavy enough? You think I’m not weighty enough? You think I don’t have enough substance? If that’s what you think, I’ll make myself even lighter.” And “if I got to be abased in your eyes”—it’s a Hebrew word, be low, abased — שָׁפֵל — šāp̄ēl — to be or become low, be abased, humbled (BDB 1050)—meaning to become low or humbled—“if I got to be low and humbled in your eyes, just know I’ll be held in honor by those very people you’re worried about.” And that’s the word kaved again—heavy, weighty. As I make myself light, God makes me heavy. It’s absolutely beautiful.
And the difference between Saul and David is once again being demonstrated, now through Saul's daughter. Michal, like Saul, is more concerned about what the people think and see than about what God does. That was Saul's problem, and it's her problem. She's a tragic figure—I'm not trying to pick on her, but she's not a perfect figure. David here in this moment is not dancing for the people; he's dancing for the Lord. David doesn't have that problem that Saul had. He fears God more than he fears the people.
There's one other tragic detail for you Bible nerds in here this morning. The words and the sentence that Michal uses—these three words, honor, despised, and contemptible or light—these three words are all used in a singular sentence in 1 Samuel chapter 2, when Eli and his household are removed from the priesthood by God. Do you remember this? Eli was a good dude, but his sons were not good dudes. In fact, the Bible calls them worthless fellows. And they were using the priesthood for personal gain—they were abusing people, they weren't serving the people. And God comes to them and He says, "Nope." Listen to 1 Samuel 2:30.
30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.
I think the authors of the scriptures were brilliant and Spirit-inspired. This is not a mistake, that as one family of the priesthood is removed from their role, right now we see this exact same framing as Saul's family is removed from the kingship, and this is exactly how the chapter ends. Verse 23, and Michal
23 And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.
If David and Michal had a child, the house of Saul would have had a chance to resurge and continue. No heir of Saul, no descendant of Saul, even one fathered by David, will ever sit on the throne. I'm not sure after that greeting that David was that interested in that anymore anyway.
That’s chapter 6 of 2 Samuel. The ark comes to Jerusalem. God’s presence is once again with His people in this intentional, riotous way. It’s beautiful. For us—I’ve already expressed what I think the meaning of this text is for us—that the right thing in the wrong way becomes the wrong thing. That you and I must be careful not to get God wrong. It’s because in some sense—and A.W. Tozer writes about this—the biggest problem you and I ever have in life is the problem of God: that He exists, and what He’s like, and what we’ve got to do about that. And it’s so easy for us to imagine God to be like us, to think like us, to put us at the center of everything. I know I’m not the only one in the room that’s done that. Some of you are doing it right now. Stop it.
See, we have to be careful not to get God wrong. And because God is bigger than our images of Him, our imagination of Him fuller, what we tend to do is move to one side of the pendulum, right? Because God is both holy and God is gracious. God is both judge and God is rescuer. And we, just by human nature, tend to be drawn to one side more than the other, at our own peril. That’s what Uzzah teaches us. That’s what Michal teaches us in this text. Uzzah is struck down; Obed-edom is blessed by the very same ark. It’s the same presence of God. So God’s presence is both a terrible holiness to be feared and a beautiful blessing to be embraced. It’s both.
We live in a day and age, a culture, that tries to turn Jesus into this fuzzy little friend—not a king, not a lord, just love. And love means whatever you think love means, not what He thinks love means. Jesus becomes a tool to be used rather than a king to be served. See, it's easy for us, I think, to let ourselves off the hook with a text like this, 'cause let's be real—not many of us are going to have an opportunity to touch the ark. Except that we do, in so many different ways.
I always try to connect things to Jesus. And in John chapter 19, Jesus is brought before Pilate. And we've looked at this text even pretty recently, but not at these verses. In John chapter 19, Jesus is standing before Pilate, and Pilate says
10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?”
And Jesus's response—He says to him,
11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”
Whatever Pilate thinks he has, whatever authority he thinks he holds in his own hand, he is holding on loan—but he doesn't even know it. This is the whole argument of 2 Samuel 6 compressed into one sentence, spoken by the very presence the ark was only ever a shadow of. God will not be managed, moved, sentenced, or used by the hands that think they are in charge of Him. Not by a well-meaning grandson steadying a cart. Not by a governor with soldiers at his back. Not by a king who assembles 30,000 men and forgets to ask first. And yet, here is the turn that the threshing floor could never have prepared us for: this time, the One who actually holds all authority does not strike down the presuming hand that reaches out. Jesus submits to it. He lets Pilate's borrowed authority run its full course all the way to the cross, and turns the worst attempt in human history to use God for a purpose God did not choose into the very means by which God saves the people who keep trying to use Him. What a God we serve. What a God we serve.
We can’t let ourselves off the hook this morning. We all grab the ark in our own way. When we make our lives about us first, we’re grabbing the ark. When we pray asking God to bless a decision we’ve already made—I know nobody here has done that, but I’ve read about it—so when we go, “Oh, this is what I’m going to do, hey God, why don’t you bless this?”—we’re touching the ark. Why? Because we’re putting ourselves first. Every time we quote a verse to justify our desire rather than let ourselves be led and controlled by the word and the Spirit, we’re touching the ark. This one might hurt: every time we assume our good intentions are good enough, we’re walking in the footsteps of Uzzah, and we’re touching the ark.
The lesson of 2 Samuel 6, for David, for me, for you, is that there's only one sovereign on the throne. We should treat Him with the honor and respect that He, and He alone, is worthy of. And that if we want to do the right thing with God, we must come to Him on His terms, not on ours. The good news for us is that His terms are the gospel of Jesus—the One who paid our debt, died our death, that we might not be treated as our sins deserve, but might experience the lavish love and faithfulness of God. We come to God not through an ark made of gold with cherubim, but we come to God through the One that the ark pointed to—towards the true ark, the great ark, Jesus, God made flesh, the king of the universe, the one whom we are privileged to serve. Let's serve Him with all our might. Amen.
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