La and dance in His presence. Let's talk about it on this edition of Key Life. That was Steve Brown. Life isn't a dress rehearsal, and that's why this program Key Life is around. Honest, practical, and sweet, smart Bible teaching for the business of living. Here's Steve. In my opinion, if you have your Bible, turn to first and second chronicles, we have done the basic spade work that one needs to do in order to understand these books. And by the way, you can go to our web page, which is just keylife.org, and you can listen and get updated on where we are in our Old Testament survey. You can hear today's broadcast and the previous 30 broadcast. And so you can kind of get caught up to speed if you're new to Key Life. At any rate, we have talked about first and second chronicles who wrote it when it was written, why it was written, some of the major themes. And what I'm doing now is simply taking you through these two books and showing you some interesting sights along the way. In fact, I'm a biblical tour director, and that's what we are doing. Now, if you were listening yesterday, we looked at first chronicles, 10, 13, through 14, and let me read it to you, because I want to say a little bit more about it. So Saul died for his unfaithfulness. He was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the commandment of the Lord, and also consulted a medium seeking guidance and did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore, the Lord slew him and turned the kingdom over to David, the son of Jesse. Now, we saw yesterday that, in first and second kings, when you read about Saul, there are some redeeming social values. But as you move into chronicles, which was written after the exile, you find there are a lot of good stuff about Saul. Saul needed a public relations expert to talk to Ezra to say at least something good about him, but notice what it says about him. It says that his advisors were not God, that he went to the wrong place, that he did the wrong thing with the wrong kind of people. Now, I want you to know that specifically here, and you can apply this generally in so many other directions, it's good to have advisors, and it's good to listen to what people say, but make sure that you have a connection with God because he is always right. I gave you Bill Bennett's quote that you can tell when an educational advisor or consultant is wrong, whenever you don't understand him, he's wrong. And that's true in a lot of different directions, but not particularly here, that Saul went to consult with a medium. The scripture is very clear on that, by the way. When I was a pastor in South Florida, there was a lady and she's home with the Lord now. Her name is Jane, and somebody told me after I've been there a couple of weeks that Jane was involved in the occult, and I said, no, she's a Bible teacher, and they said, no, no. She uses to wrote tarot cards, and she likes to tell people's fortunes, and I said, no, no, not Jane. And as Saul called her in, and I remember her sitting across from me in the study, and I said, Jane, somebody told me something about you and I told them they were wrong, I said that you read tarot cards, and she grand, and I thought, oh, spit. She really is. And I said, Jane, you can't do that. That's wrong, the Bible is really clear about you. She says, it's just fun. It's just games. I started doing it at a party from somebody, and I said, let me taste them. I want you to burn those cards. I don't want you to ever do that again. And if you do it again, I'm going to take you off my prayer list, and you're going to, something really bad is going to happen, and she laughed and said, well, I don't agree with you. But I promise I won't ever do it again, and she went out and threw the tarot cards away. And she said something to me that day. She said, you know, Steve, it's just kind of fun, but it was really amazing how often things that I would say about people through those cards were turned out to be true. What was she doing? She was messing with something that wasn't good, and that's what sold it. Listen, don't you go to anybody except God for ultimate truth. That includes the occult, but it includes a lot of other places too, and I just wanted to say that. Now, if you have your Bible, turn to 1 Chronicles 1525 through 28. This is what the text says, so David, and the elders of Israel, and the commanders of thousands, went to bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from the house of Obedem, and you remember the Ark of the Covenant was the resident place for God both symbolically and really, and this was very, very important. The temple hadn't been built yet, and they were going to bring the Ark back home, and then the writer Ezra probably says with rejoicing, and because God helped the Levi to were carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, they sacrificed seven bulls and seven rams. David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, as also were the Levites who were carrying the Ark and the Singers. Teniah, the leader of the music of the Singers, and David were a linen effod. So all Israel brought up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, was shouting to the sound of the horn, the trumpets and the cymbals, and made loud music and harps and liars, and as the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came to the city of David, Michael, the daughter of Saul, looked out the window, and Saul saw a keen David dancing and making Mary, and she despised him in her heart. Now, I don't want to appeal to your pure and interest here, but there's more to this story than what I just read to you. When they brought the Ark of the Covenant back home, if you want a little bit more detail on that, you have to go back to Second Samuel and the sixth chapter, where you find the same characters with some more detail. Michael looks out the window, and I guess Israel was trying to be proper in his relating of the story. And David took off the white linen thing, and he was dancing in the buff. I don't know any other way to say that. I mean, he was naked. And Michael, the one referred to in this text, is not pleased at all. And so David said to Michael, I'm reading now from Second Samuel, the sixth chapter. It was before the Lord, who chose me instead of your father and all his house to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel. Therefore, I play music before the Lord, and I will even be more undignified than this, and will be humble in my own sight, but as for the made servants of whom you were spoken by them, I will be held in honor. Therefore, Michael, the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. In other words, God was not real happy with the proper, uptight, critical, angry Pharisee. And I'm not advocating doing what David did. I think probably there was some imperfectity in what he did. But I want you to know there was a freedom, and there was a joy, and there was a happiness about him that was so humble and so wonderful that we ought to emulate it. Laugh and dance in his presence. Now I'm a Presbyterian, and Presbyterians don't do the dance thing very well. We do things decently and in order. Not today is something if God brings revival in our country, it's going to break out of the moles. Let me give you a confession. Some of you guys just started listening. And I'm not proud of this. I never prayed for revival in the churches that I served when I was a pastor. You say, Steve, you're supposed to pray for revival and stuff like that. I never did. And I'm blushing those of you in our television audience can see that. I didn't pray for revival because I couldn't control it. It's pretty scary. I remember one time we had a guest preacher in a pulpit where I was the pastor, and some really good things were happening. One young man stood up and said, I think God is moving in our midst. And I think we ought to go to prayer right now, and I remember standing up and saying, son, sit down. We'll have a prayer time in the library after the service. My fear was that I couldn't control it, and I'm not proud of that. And I'll tell you something, when God does something with His people, it's not controllable, and it's free, and it's joyful, and it's right, and it's good. And it probably won't be proper. It probably won't be decent. It probably won't be in order. It will be people. And you remember what happened in the book of Acts at Pentecost? Everybody said, you know those folks are drunk. And remember what Peter said, we're not drunk. And he had to explain what was going on. Sometimes quit being so religious, religiously. Kill you. Quit trying to do everything right. There doesn't just have to be three points in every sermon and a poem. You don't have to add exactly a hymn that was written in the 17th century before it was proper to sing in the church. As a matter of fact, God breaks out, and when he breaks out, good things happen, and people forget about themselves. Let me tell you something. Pride isn't thinking too much of yourself. Humility is not thinking of yourself at all. And that's what happened with David. David forgot himself. He forgot himself in the joy of being before God and what God was doing in the midst of his people, and David danced with great freedom. I want you to, and I may be talking a little bit more about this tomorrow, but I want you to see Michael and how miserable she was. Let me tell you something that will help you understand the world. It's dangerous to laugh because those who mourn will hate you for it. It's dangerous to be free because those who are bound will hate you for it. It's dangerous to be saved because those who are lost will hate you for it. It's dangerous to be beautiful because those who are ugly will hate you for it. Now you know something that's really important about human nature. What's going on with Michael? Michael was talking about propriety and religious things and being godly, and that isn't what was going on. She saw his freedom, and she was bound, and she hated it. So, if you're going to know God, and if you're going to be free, watch it. You think about that. I mean, well, we'll talk more about that tomorrow. Hey, listen up. I got something so good. You're not going to believe this. If you've got teenagers, you have friends with teenagers. You have friends who are teenagers. They ought to be taking the best magazine, I believe, for teenagers ever published. It's called Campus Life Magazine. 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