Key Reading 2 Sam 6:14-23

14 And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod. 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. 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. 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. 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 honoured 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 make merry 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 honour.” 23 And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death. (2 Sam 6:14-23)

Introduction

The Bible reading for today comes from a 24 hour Prayer Vigil in Northbridge with a special focus on street people and others with intense needs. As the meeting progressed I had a growing sense of how much effort we put in as Christians into making sure that our lives are predictable and secure. However much we may be shocked by the moral changes in our society, when it comes to ease and affluence we have become thoroughly assimilated to the mainstream culture. Such compromise is rarely intentional but happens degree by degree. This reminds me of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s story of the wild goose.

There was once a wild goose that was hungry and cold and left the flock in search of food, it eventually landed in a barnyard with domesticated geese and food laid on. It ate until full and slept. When it awoke it was alone, no fellow wild birds in sight. Then he heard the sound of geese honking above. The sound stirred his heart, but the comfort and plenty of the barnyard kept him there. The next day he heard the birds in flight, the stirring was there but fainter. And again he resisted the calling of his spirit and stayed. One day the birds flew by in “V” formation honking their call in flight. And the wild goose felt nothing. It had become so content that it forgot that it was by nature wild. There is nothing extraordinary about a wild goose becoming tame, but no wild goose seems ever to have led domesticated geese back into nature.

Kierkegaard’s story was a parable about the institutionalised Christianity of his day, it is correct at one level, but mistaken on another. The majority of Christians in our nation are domesticated harmless folk, and the notion that the Christian faith is revolutionary is generally unthinkable to most Australians. Kierkegaard however is wrong when it comes to believers becoming so spiritually passive that they forget altogether that they are called by Jesus to live a radical, unconditional life of obedient discipleship. A genuine believer cannot be utterly indifferent to a life of risky faith because the Spirit of Jesus who risked life and limb for us lives in our hearts. The solution to the impotence of the Australian church is to return to a spirituality of a heart set free to serve God. In the Bible, the heart is not primarily the source of emotions but the central governing disposition of life[1]. The heart is the power centre that rules our lives. The place to begin understanding the true dynamic of the heart is creation.

Creation and Fall

As part of being in his image, God gave us a heart so that he might share his rule with us. The original command given to Adam and Eve to “have dominion” (Gen 1:27.cf. Ps 8) was the means by which God’s majesty would have filled all things. As God rules by his Word (Heb 1:3), humans were likewise to rule by the Word God spoke to them. To rule domesticated plants and animals in Eden was simple. The prohibition, ““of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Gen 2:17), was however fundamentally different. It was a challenge to Adam to rule his own life by obedience to the Word of God.

The original temptation was an invitation to rule by one’s own heart without the need to be ruled by the Word of God. Satan’s words concerning the tree of knowledge offered up a panorama of limitless rule without the need for God and beyond the threat of death. ““1. You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it 2. your eyes will be opened, and 3. you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (Gen 3:5) The Fall did open the eyes of the first couple (3:7) to the realm of knowing good and evil (3:22), but the devil’s central proposition, “You will not surely die” proved fatally untrue.

Immediately they sinned Adam and Eve “knew that they were naked” and covered themselves with fig leaves (3:7). Shame had filled their inner being, and they were completely impotent to abolish it. Having lost power over the state of their inner lives they became convicted that their physical days were numbered. Hopelessness entered into the human experience, for they had rejected the only power great enough to rule the heart, the Word of God. The human experience of shame is not only ineradicable but also intolerable, and endlessly generates substitutes for the power and holiness of God’s indwelling Word. Unable to rule themselves[2], people are driven to rule nature and one another by all manner of inventions in the realm of politics, religion, philosophy, psychology, marketing, and so on.

Priestly figures have always risen up through history offering to give humans access to the lost realm of the sacred or explain the final meaning of existence. The shamans of animistic religions, the leaders and mediums of New Age cults, folk like Osama bin Laden, who offer a clear route to Paradise, and even some of the visionary preachers of modern Christianity[3] promise us a new world. In recent years secular priests like Richard Dawkins proclaim authoritatively on the ultimate nature of reality and a host of environmental scientists speak of global warming as the new apocalypse.

God however has always been working to a plan to renew the human heart. This will involve the union of priesthood and kingship, holiness and rule, in one person. This is the importance of today’s story of David.

Kingship Restored

David had recently conquered Jerusalem, and had a vision to establish it as “the city of the great King” (Ps 48:2), a place from which the rule of God might shine forth into all the earth. Since God reigned from the midst of the ark of the covenant (2 Sam 6:2), it was essential that the ark be conveyed into the city. David’s passion for the kingdom of God eneared him to the LORD, who described him as “a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’” (Acts 13:22 citing 1 Sam 13:14). As the ark entered the capital David’s inner being was filled with uncontainable excitement as he sensed the LORD’S own delight in extending his rule.

David was a great king, but also more than a king. In “wearing a linen ephod … and blessing the people in the name of the LORD of hosts” (2 Sam 6:14, 18) David put on a priestly garment and performed a priestly function. Holiness and rule came together in David in a remarkable way.

Another figure however appears in the story, Michal, “the daughter of Saul” (2 Sam 6:20, 23)[4]. She is shamed that David’s cartwheeling before the ark has exposed his nakedness. David’s worship however is so intimate that he feels no sense of embarrassment[5]. This is the central point of the story, even whilst David’s body was exposed, because his heart was naked before God he sensed only the joy of the divine presence.

Prophetically, this story is about two sorts of rule. Michal and the house of Saul symbolise rulers who are insecure through self consciousness[6] in the place of. The house of David however is ruled by naked hearted men and women filled with God-consciousness and whose audacious and often socially disrespectful acts for God flow out for his glory.

Such a man was Aboriginal pastor Ronnie Williams, Ronnie was often seen entering and leaving the brothels in Hay St Kalgoorlie, no one however ever questioned what happened behind those doors, for Ronnie had about him the presence of a holy priest and king.

Decline and Promise

Following the death of David, Israel entered into a long period of decline[7] and then exile, all hope seemed lost. The prophets of the old covenant however had the key to God’s plan. Whilst understanding that in their time the heart was “desperately corrupt and deceitful above all things” (Jer 17:9), they spoke of a coming new covenant with the house of David administered by an endless priesthood (Jer 33:14-26), and a time when God would soften the condition of the human heart forever (Ezek 36:26-27; Jer 31:31-34). These are the promises fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus: the Sacred Heart of God

When in the introduction to his Gospel John states, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is in the Father’s heart, he has made him known.” (John 1:18), he explains that in Christ the heart of man and the heart of God are perfectly united.

This means (John 10:30; 14:10) that the kingly works of Jesus are the manifestation of the governing centre of the divine life. Power alone however, no matter how pure, cannot change the human heart. The Pharisees, for example, could not deny supernatural power was at work in Jesus, but attributed this to the presence of the devil (Matt 12:24). Herod also was amazed by Jesus’ “miraculous powers” (Mark 6:14), but was complicit in his death. In this sense, kingly power is powerless to remove shame; its inner stain can only be cleansed by the priestly action of sacrifice[8]. Jesus’ priestly sacrifice of himself as King will be offered in a unique way.

It is not easy to understand the agony of the cross. As sinless (Heb 4:15), Jesus could never share our experience of shame. The terrible cry, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34) tells us however that the very depths of Christ are shaken by a torment utterly unlike anything he has ever experienced before. Through all his life Jesus had experienced fullness of the Father’s joy because he was the perfect representation and expression of the Father’s rule (Rom 14:17). The experience of bearing our sin on the cross (2 Cor 5:21) means that Jesus’ heart feels a total absence of the ability to reveal the heart of the Father. It is as if only darkness reigns (Luke 22:53). This was utterly crushing (Isa 53:5) for the heart of the Son of God, the constriction upon his heart was totally unbearable. In his mind Jesus knew that God was active and powerful in handing him over to die (Mark 9:31; 10:33), but inside he had lost access to the heart of God as a ruling Father, this was the wounding he felt like he could not endure.

The great mystery of the death of Christ is this, “for joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2). Though he was stripped, beaten, tortured, rejected and abandoned by friends and countrymen Jesus never inwardly submitted to disgrace[9], he refused to accept any element of inner shame. The demonic power of accusation had no hold on him (John 14:30). At no point was Jesus’ heart anything other than naked before God and his Word (Heb 4:12-13)[10]. Unlike us, Jesus refused to turn inward in either self-blame or self-justification, but called out to God as his God with whatever strength his heart and soul could muster. This was the perfection of human love (Matt 22:37) that saves us by casting out all fear of punishment (1 John 4:17-18). This love was fully heard by the Father in heaven[11] and issued in the deliverance of the resurrection.

The resurrection (Rom 6:9) is the liberation of Jesus own heart; liberated from all earthly restrictions he has returned to the very heart of the Father in heaven (John 1:18) to reign as priest and king (Heb 7) with supreme access to the power and holiness of God on our behalf (Heb 9:24).

Our Access to God

The exclamation, “in this world we are as Jesus is” (1 John 4:17), teaches that my heart is as sacred to God to as the heart of his Son. Wherever the scripture speaks of a believer (or church) as the temple of God (e.g. 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:21) the word used refers the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, where the presence, glory and throne of God the King dwells. When Paul boldly prays, “that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father (1 Thess 3:13) he uses the word for holiness that is used only for God in the (Greek) Old Testament. The royal presence of the risen Lord in his kingdom dwells unashamedly in us[12]. Through the indwelling presence and power of Christ we are the fulfilment of everything the ark meant to David and the source of his irrepressible excitement.

It is a simple fact that the power that created the universe and raised Christ form the dead dwells in our mortal bodies (Rom 8:11), but unless we are liberated from introverting shame (cf. 2 Cor 7:1) such power will rarely be manifest. Deliverance from spiritual introspection is provided by the work of the cross. “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb 10:19-22)

Anyone who belongs to Jesus has had their heart washed clean from every element of guilt and shame by the power of his blood[13]. The proclamation, “because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”” (Gal 4:6), means that we share in the unblemished, infinite joy that the Father had in raising Jesus from the dead. We were “born again”, says Peter, “…through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” and granted a life “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Pet 1:3-4). We are a part of a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). The consequences of this are remarkable.

In our prayer meeting for Northbridge, the woman who first caused me to think more deeply on the naked heart spoke openly of her own shyness. As I prayed for her a scripture came to mind, “The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty sceptre. Rule in the midst of your enemies!” (Ps 110:2). I could sense that this quiet introverted girl was actually a royal daughter with full access to the divine majesty, as she boldly approached the throne of grace (Heb 4:16) I could see the sceptre of God’s rule being extended towards her (Esth 4:11; 5:2; 8:4), releasing her from self-consciousness and sending her forth with a new authority, the authority of the presence of the king.

Since, in John’s words, “Jesus Christ …has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Rev 1:5-6 cf. 5:10) why are we not as priest – kings manifesting the rule of God and access into his holy presence in every sphere of our lives? Confusion about who we are in Christ has penetrated the church because of a failure of the ministry of the Word of God (Heb 4:12-13) to open up things as they truly are.

Our Problem

I was in a meeting of a Christian ministry and the leader referred to our hearts as “desperately corrupt and deceitful above all things” (Jer 17:9), I pulled her aside later and corrected her, for in Christ we have no longer a heart of stone but a heart of flesh (Ezek 36:26-27)! Another leader he shared with me some things he was struggling with and that he didn’t really want to let go. He expected me to chastise him severely. His real problem however was not his stubbornness, but that he believed in his heart that he was still a rebel. He had not seen that his new identity as a child of God meant that he could not BE a rebel. He could think and so act as a rebel, but only because he was deceived about his true status as a child of God.

A little while ago I received a text message from someone, “Can you help me, I believe I am demonised.”” Then from another man, “Why am I so totally selfish Don’t think about anything but how I’m feeling….my flesh rules.” These men have a problem, but its not demons or the flesh, their problem is that they have once upon a time heard the Word, taken it into their hearts and then forgotten about what it says[14]. If you are in Christ, you have “authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you” (Luke 10:19), if you in Christ, “You …are not in the flesh but in the Spirit” (Rom 8:9) for “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20). The central problem of the church in its domestication is that we have forgotten about who Jesus is for us and in us. We are too like the daughter of Saul and too little focussed on the Son of David.

A scripture came to mind as I was speaking with a man who has been through a tragedy to do with leadership. It was addressed to Saul, ““Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. 18 And the Lord sent you on a mission…” (1 Sam 15:17-18). Every time, we see the fear of man, insecurity, timidity or control in the church, we know that we are dealing with a Saul mentality, we have forgotten our greatness and authority in Christ and turned inwards, judged ourselves to be nothing much at all and allowed our self-judgment to pour out on others by passivity or aggression.

The answer for our unbelief about our true identity in Christ is not self effort but faith. Paul prays, “I bow my knees before the Father, …16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph 3:14, 16, 17). Christ already lives in the heart of every believer, but he makes his indwelling tangible to us by the power of the Spirit as we believe in what his Word says about our identity as kings and priests to God.

Conclusion

The prophet Isaiah believed in a day when the human heart would “thrill and exult/tremble and grow wide” (Isaiah 60:5) at the greatness of the rule of God in the world. Through the priestly sacrifice of Christ we have access and participate in this kingdom. Through Jesus’ resurrection, God “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Eph 3:20).

Do we want to live in the liberating freedom of the kingdom of God are do we want remain harmless and domesticated folk at peace with a world that is in fact perishing. There are many folk hear today who have tight boundaries around their hearts- to do with relationships, financial securities, health, fear of rejection and failure. Christ took all these restrictions into himself on the cross and took them away in the resurrection.

At the Governor’s Prayer breakfast on Friday the speaker concluded with a prayer from the great English mariner St Francis Drake, written as he was about to out on the high seas on a voyage that would make him the first Englishman to circle the globe. It is a prayer that we can choose to make our own.

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.