June 27, 2025

2 Samuel 6:16-23  (HCSB)
16 As the ark of the Lord was entering the city of David, Saul’s daughter Michal looked down from the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.
17 They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent David had set up for it. Then David offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings in the Lord’s presence. 18 When David had finished offering the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of Yahweh of Hosts. 19 Then he distributed a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake to each one in the entire Israelite community, both men and women. Then all the people left, each to his own home.
20 When David returned home to bless his household, Saul’s daughter Michal came out to meet him. “How the king of Israel honored himself today!” she said. “He exposed himself today in the sight of the slave girls of his subjects like a vulgar person would expose himself.”
21 David replied to Michal, “I was dancing before the Lord who chose me over your father and his whole family to appoint me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel. I will celebrate before the Lord, 22 and I will humble myself even more and humiliate myself. I will be honored by the slave girls you spoke about.” 23 And Saul’s daughter Michal had no child to the day of her death.

BJ and Kim Stahlin
I need to go back a few verses so we can see what led to what we just read. A few months earlier, God struck Uzzah dead for touching the ark irreverently and in verse nine we read, “David feared the Lord that day.” The ark was then left in a nearby home for three months. Can you imagine how you would have responded if the King brought the physical manifestation of God into your home and told you it was in your care? Evidently the ark, and more importantly the Lord, were revered and the household flourished. God’s presence is a blessing, not a curse. So, we can see why David was so excited to bring the ark to his home, dancing and making a spectacle of himself, recklessly and unashamed. We might even wonder if David was part Baptist. I mean look, he did bring food. Then we see Michal’s disgust. What she perceived as a lack of dignity was David’s enthusiastic celebration of adoration to the God who had delivered him and his country from a giant and his army, who had elevated a mere shepherd to the crown of Israel. Interestingly, we see David stripped himself of his royal robes, wearing the garments of a priest. John, in Revelation chapter one, tells us Christ has “made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father...” 1 Samuel 13 and Acts 13 refer to David, a treacherous, lying, adulterous, and murderous man, as a man after God’s own heart. Perhaps these few verses provide a glimpse of what God saw in him and, hopefully through Christ, sees in us.