Sermon 2 - David The Music Minister Series

Introduction:

A. Maybe you have heard the saying, “Music can soothe the savage beast.”

1. And maybe you remember the classic cartoon where Bugs Bunny is reminded of the statement “music calm the savage beast” and Bugs starts playing a violin in order to calm the aggressive gorilla with music.

2. Actually, that statement, “music can soothe the savage beast” is a misquote of William Congreve’s 1697 play The Mourning Bride.

3. The actual line is “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak,” meaning music can calm intense emotions of the heart, not literal wild animals.

B. In spite of being a misquote, the statement is true.

1, Music is a powerful force – it gets our attention; it grabs our hearts; it transforms our souls.

2. Why is this the case? Because God has made it so.

3. God is the one who has created music and God has created us in a way that music ministers to us deep in our hearts and our minds and our souls.

4. Not only that, God has also given certain individuals the ability to make music.

5. All the way back in the Bible’s first genealogical records we read that Jubal “was the father of all who play the harp and flute.” (Gen. 4:21)

6. Jubal may have been the first, but he wasn’t the last and King David was given the gift of music.

I. David The Music Minister:

A. David, the man whose life we are studying, the man after God’s own heart, was a man of music.

1. Right in the middle of the Bible we find the book Psalms, all 150 of them.

2. More than half of them were written by David, and some of them, no doubt, were written in the very context we’re going to look at today, in the threatening presence of a madman named Saul.

B. After Samuel anointed David with oil, indicating God’s choice of him as the next king of Israel, we read some disturbing things about Saul.

1. The Bible says, “Now the Spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.” (1 Sam. 16:14)

2. Before we talk about the misery of this malady that Saul wrestled with, I think it’s important that we notice that the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul before an evil spirit came.

3. It’s also important for us to understand that the indwelling of the Spirit is different for Christians than it was for the people of the Old Testament.

4. Before the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Spirit of God never permanently rested on any person, perhaps with the exception of David and John the Baptizer.

5. In Old Testament times, it was common for the Spirit of God to come for a temporary period of strengthening or insight or whatever was the need of the moment, and then to depart.

6. However, at Pentecost and from that time on, when the Holy Spirit comes into the believing sinner upon their baptism into Christ, He stays.

7. We remain sealed by the Holy Spirit, as Paul wrote, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of salvation.” (Eph. 4:30)

8. And as you know, for those of us who are Christians, our very bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God resides in us! (1 Cor. 6:19)

C. But what was happening in 1 Samuel 16 with King Saul was many centuries before Pentecost.

1. We should not be surprised to read that as the Spirit of God departed from Saul, a vacuum was created into which God sent an evil spirit to torment him.

2. No one knows the exact reason that the Lord did this, but we can certainly speculate.

3. What seems most probable is that the Lord was disgusted with Saul.

4. It’s as if God was saying to Saul, “You have not taken me seriously. This will teach you to do that, Saul.”

5. The Hebrew word used here for “torment” means “to fall upon, to startle, to overwhelm.”

6. Keil and Delitzsch (Kyle, Deh-Litch), two reputable Old Testament scholars, say this about the evil spirit that came upon Saul, “The ‘evil spirit from Jehovah’ which came into Saul in the place of the Spirit of Jehovah, was not merely an inward feeling of depression at the rejection announced to him, which grew into melancholy, and occasionally broke out in passing fits of insanity, but a higher evil power, which took possession of him, and not only deprived him of his peace of mind, but stirred up the feelings, ideas, imagination, and thoughts of his soul to such an extent that at times it drove him even into madness. The demon is called ‘an evil spirit (coming) from Jehovah’ because Jehovah had sent it as a punishment…”