A Love for God

The love life of David is a somewhat complicated pathway to follow, but I would like to focus on one particular part.  David’s first wife was by the name of Michal, daughter of King Saul.  She was a prize for him resulting from the killing of Goliath as well as another 200 Philistines.   This daughter of the king love and protected David even from her own father, but lied that David had threatened her if she didn’t help him (this may have played into what happen next).  Saul sought to kill David and so hated and feared him that he gave Michal away as a wife to another man.  It would be many years before they would be united again.

Fast forward several years later, Saul is now dead and David is king.  David has two other wives by this point as well as some children.  He demands Michal back as his wife.  She  finds herself pulled from her second marriage.  We aren’t given much information of this marriage, only that her husbands follows after her mourning until he is ordered home.  We don’t know where Michal’s affections really lie at this point, but she is back in her rightful place as David’s wife.

David from the start is called “a man after God’s own heart”, he is a man who loves God more than anything else.  A man of flesh that still struggles with sin, but a godly man still.  It is now that we pick up the story.  The Ark is being brought into Jerusalem, and David dancing before the Lord – notice not before men and women even though they were present, but before God.  The scripture tells us that Michal despised David when she saw his actions.  That is a very strong hateful word.  This isn’t just ticked off but hateful.  So why this attitude towards David? 

John 15:18 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

I believe the answer is found here in this passage from the gospel of John.  Michal has never had the same love of God that David or her brother Jonathan had.  Notice in 2 Samuel 6:16 Michal is referred to as the daughter of Saul not as David’s wife.  Her actions and attitude were reflective of her father Saul not of her husband David.  She seems to have no understanding of the significance of the event at hand, only that David’s actions seemed very un-kingly to her thus embarrassing to her.  She had missed the essential character of David, the very thing that made him a godly man.  It seems she could see beyond position and prestige. 

David rebukes her attack on him.  Even reminding her that it was because of Saul’s own pride and profane attitude toward God that cost him the kingdom and that he was only king by the grace of God.  Michal's superficial attraction to David was not enough for a happy marriage.  She seemed to care only for the external trappings of his office and not the man himself, and because she did not share his love for God. Any marriage based solely on externals will always be disappointed.   In the end her hatred of David was really as reflection of her hatred toward God.  She would be barren – as if cursed and cutoff from any future generations.

How is your love for God?

^{Matthew 10:34} “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; ³⁶ and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household. ³⁷ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. ³⁸ And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. ³⁹ He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

sherman