Music for a Troubled Saul

      Vincent Van Gogh wrote some insightful words in a letter about the different ways people experience God.  He wrote, “One man will love Rembrandt and that man will surely know there is a God, he will really believe it.  Another will make a thorough study of the French Revolution – he will not be an unbeliever, he will see that there is a supreme authority that manifests itself in great affairs.  Yet another recently attended a free course or lecture at the great university of sorrow and has heeded the things he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears and reflected upon them.  He too will come to believe in the end and he will perhaps have learned more than he can tell.   Try to grasp what the great artists, the serious masters say in their masterpieces and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting. Just read the Bible and the gospels and that will start you thinking about everything that will lift your thoughts above the humdrum despite yourself. We know how to read, so let us read!”

       Well young David knows how to play the harp so he plays.  As we see in the Psalms, music is where David both finds and celebrates God.  We are looking at some of the psalms as a counterpoint to this sermon series on David’s life – a mingling together of poetry and prose.

       Two weeks ago we saw in the first half of this chapter about how young David is anointed by God’s prophet Samuel to be the next king of Israel .  God’s call, God’s invitation, always causes a crisis of faith.  Will we follow or won’t we?  The response to that call will cause a serious dislocation of your life and priorities. 

       That happens to David.  But not right away.  It happens as God gradually shows David the next step and then the next. 

       David doesn’t push it.  It’s interesting to note what David does not do after he is anointed by Samuel to take the place of Saul as king of Israel . He doesn’t go down to the mall and try on crowns.  He doesn’t order business cards that proclaim him “king elect.”   He doesn’t wear a badge that read, “I’m the new man.”  He doesn’t shine up a chariot and ride through Bethlehem proclaiming, “I’m the chosen one!” 

       What David does do is to turn around and go back to his sheep.   That’s where the emissaries of King Saul find him when God arranges for David to connect with Saul.  That’s suitably humble. 

       But in some ways, David on sheep duty seems like a big waste.  Saul’s advisors describe David as a Renaissance man – just waiting for his Michelangelo to carve him in marble. David can play the harp in a way to melt the fiercest hearts.  But he’s also a brave warrior.  He’s good with words. He’s good looking.  And God is with him. 

       That’s quite a résumé for a young man.  So the fact that David is out with the sheep despite this impressive résumé suggests that Israel has a few things to learn about career guidance or human resource management.  But God, at least, knows how to get people where they ought to be.  In 1 Samuel 16, He does it by the giving and withholding of His Spirit.  Verse 14 reads, “Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.”

       Were any of you bothered when you read that?  That’s one a hard verse to understand.  I want to focus on it for a few minutes. 

       On the surface, the verse seems to say that not only does Saul lose the Holy Spirit because of his disobedience but that God replaces the Holy Spirit with an evil spirit. That sounds pretty rough.  That bothers us.  It looks like God is really pouring it on. 

       Well the good news is that this verse doesn’t suddenly betray an unpleasant side of God’s character that we haven’t seen before.  We don’t need to believe that God uses demons to do His will.  We don’t need to start to worry that God might even send an evil spirit to torment us – as suddenly has that airplane crashed into those houses in Corona yesterday.

       That isn’t what this verse is saying. 

       In the New Testament gospels and Book of Acts, we see demons possessing people without regard to their character as people.  For example, the boy possessed and tormented by the spirit of epilepsy in Matthew 17:14 seems to have done nothing to bring that on.  That demonic presence is completely foreign to him.

       But demonic attack in the Old Testament is described very differently from what we see in the New.  The Old Testament doesn’t talk about people being overwhelmed by demonic spirits the way we see in the gospels.  What the Old Testament describes is people being possessed by such things as a jealous or deceptive or perverse spirit.  But, here’s the point, that spirit has always been there in them already as potential.  Given the right trigger, it bubbles to the top.

       We experience the same thing the Old Testament describes.  We all know people who can seem to become consumed by an attitude that is genuinely part of them but is also somehow way “over the top.”  It’s an expression of who they are but it’s somehow bigger than they are. 

       Now it’s not always negative stuff like jealousy and rage.  It can also happen in positive ways.  A person can seem to be overcome by a spirit of generosity or forgiveness.   A soldier on the battlefield can suddenly be possessed by great, self-sacrificial courage.  They always had the potential.  Now it is brought to the fore.

        In Romans 1, our New Testament passage, we see people exchanging the truth of God for a lie and engaging in a downward spiral of sin. The result, Paul says, is that God punishes them simply by giving them over to the full consequences of their behavior – their willful denial of God and their subsequent descent into sin.  Paul writes that they “receive in their own beings the due penalty for their error.”  Paul says several times in Romans 1 that when God punishes, he doesn’t often send a lightning bolt.  He simply withholds His protective grace and allows things to run their natural course.

        That’s what we see in Saul and 1 Samuel 16:14.  We see that God no longer protects Saul from his own self.  Saul doesn’t suddenly get a demon whispering in his ear or sticking pins in his back. God just allows Saul to experience his own most negative self. 

       In other words, Saul’s bad spirit is a natural outworking of the kind of person Saul already is.  It happens when the kind of person Saul is by nature is subjected to some extreme stress. Yes, the bad spirit is “from the Lord” -- but only in the sense that God no longer protects Saul from Saul.  In the words of Romans 1, God gives Saul over to the full outworking of his own sin.  That’s all the demon Saul needs.

       Now some people think of Saul’s evil spirit as being like a profound depression.  But, as we will see later, the specific way Saul’s bad spirit reveals itself is sudden violence.  He tries to kill people including David.  So if we are going to psychologize, it sounds to me like Saul has a borderline personality disorder that God allows to have full sway in Saul’s life.

       But get this.  The reason God allows Saul to experience the full consequences of his own shadow side isn’t just to punish Saul – although Saul has done wrong. It happens because of God’s sometimes hard providence.  Saul needs the dark times because God needs Saul and David to be brought together.  The way that will happen is through music.

       David is out playing the harp to an audience of sheep.  David never suspects that God will use his music as any more than a tool in flock calming. David probably sees his music as a minor skill – one that might give him a place in the theater but not in the palace. 

       But don’t underestimate anything in your past.  God can use it.  You never know when something that happens years before will open the door of opportunity to the future.  

      When I was at USC Medical Center a few months ago with the Rankin family, I picked up this flyer advertising a free concert by a string quartet in the Main Lobby at 10, in 3^rd Floor Pre-Op at 10:20 or 7^th floor Medical/Surgical at 11.  The concert isn’t just for fun.  It is based on a belief in the healing power of music – that music brings relief and joy.  The flyer is titled, “Music Heals.”

       Well this wasn’t discovered at USC.  The power of music has been known for millennia. 

       Saul’s advisors see Saul’s black moods.  They want to help him.  They also want to avoid the spear-throwing violence that follows.  They don’t have many options.  Drugs and alcohol will only fuel the problem.  Television sitcoms – bubble gum for the eyes – haven’t been invented yet. 

       The only way to go is music – not heavy metal or violent rap lyrics but the soothing sounds of the harp. That’s what Saul’s advisors want for the unstable king.  They very carefully suggest, “Let our Lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the harp. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes upon you, and you will feel better."  So Saul said to his attendants, "Find someone who plays well and bring him to me."

       And like all good advisors, they already have a candidate.  They say, “It’s Funny you should tell us to do that.  I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the Lord is with him."

       Saul sends for David.  He has the qualities Saul needs.  Not only is he a skilled musician and warrior.  He is also prudent in speech.  In other words, David isn’t going to run to the tabloids with what he experiences in the palace.  He’s not going to write a tell-all book called, “I Was Saul’s Armor Bearer.”  David knows how to keep his mouth shut.

        The only people who don’t seem to recognize David’s quality is his family. You’ll remember how Jesse initially left David out of the parade when Samuel came to anoint Saul’s successor.   Now, when Jesse gets a message summoning David to the palace his first instinct is that David isn’t enough to send by himself.  Jesse just doesn’t see the stuff other people see.  So he loads up a donkey with bread, wine and a young goat as presents for the palace – just in case David disappoints. 

       I love the addition of the goat.  Moses Pulei told me a story about how he went to a children’s petting zoo on a school trip with his daughter Charis.  Charis has been raised in two worlds – in the tribal world of the Kenyan Masai where goats are raised to be eaten and in Pasadena where goats are raised to be petted.  Charis walked over to the goat and examined it.  Then, in the full hearing of the other children and their moms, she turned and announced to Moses, “This one’s almost ready to eat!”  Moses said he’s never been so glared at in his whole life.  Moms were covering their children’s ears so they wouldn’t have to hear where meat comes from. 

       Well I’m sure the goat and the wine and the bread don’t disappoint at the palace.  But David doesn’t disappoint either.  Saul’s advisors give David a good bath to wash the smell of sheep off him and send him in to meet the king.  Saul falls for David’s charisma. He makes him one of his armor bearers – a soft enough job except when the army is on campaign.  And from then on – whenever Saul gets into a black mood – David brings out his harp and plays soothing music until the king calms down.

       Saul loves David greatly.  I think that, in David, Saul sees what he might have been – and was when the Lord was with him as He is now with David.  Part of Saul’s torment is the realization of the man he had been and the man he could have been.

       Earlier in the service we sang the hymn, “Come, Thou Font of Every Blessing,” by Robert Robinson. Robinson became a Christian as a young man after living a pretty wasted life.  Interestingly, he was led to faith after he and his friends had tormented a drunken Gypsy fortune teller.  She told him that he would live to see his children and grandchildren.  He decided that if he was going to live that long, then he’s better clean up his act.  He went to hear the great preacher George Whitefield and came to faith. 

       But Robinson still knew the dangers and instability in his own heart.  At the age of 22, he wrote the hymn we just sang.  In the third stanza he makes this confession, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” 

       Apparently that youthful tendency to move away from the truth stayed with him.  There is some evidence that he became a Unitarian – denying the deity of Jesus Christ and reducing God to an abstract philosophical proposition. 

       When we lived in Oroville we had trouble with a Unitarian Ku Klux Klan that went around burning question marks on people’s lawns.  That’s an old joke but one that rests on the fact that there is no cross and no salvation in the Unitarian church – simply a need to think better thoughts.

       But Robinson still knew that he needed a savior.  According to a widely told but unverified story, one day as he was riding in a stagecoach a lady sitting across from him started to hum “Come Thou Font.”  Robinson looked at her with a shocked expression on his face.  When she asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming, he relied, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."

       That is also Saul. He would give “a thousand worlds, if he had them, to enjoy the feelings he had then."  Once Saul had celebrated before God.  Now he feels cut off from God and often in the depths of blackness. 

       That’s why David is there.  David would take the harp and play it with his hand and Saul would be refreshed.  The Hebrew word translated “refreshed” or “eased” is ravach which means “to be wide, to be spacious, and to give space so as to bring relief.” Moffatt translates this verse, “He played for Saul till Saul breathed freely.” 

       The trouble is that, like medication, music sooths on the surface.  But it doesn’t deal with the volcano beneath which is left to erupt again, and again and again.  What Saul needs isn’t a musician like David. He needs someone to reconcile Saul with God,

       Saul wasn’t a worse person than David.  In fact, David’s sins will turn out to be bigger and more spectacular by far.  But there is a great difference in their ability to be reconciled. 

       As we will see later, when the prophet Nathan points the finger of judgment at David for his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, David doesn’t try to hide his guilt from God or the people.   He publicly admits his guilt.  He sets his repentance to the music we know as Psalm 51 and sings it in public worship. 

       Saul has also had that opportunity.  When the prophet Samuel confronts Saul with his sin, Saul finally says, “Okay, you got me.”  But then he suggests to Samuel that they go lead the people in worship as if nothing has happened – because it’s important to keep up appearances if you’re king.

        But David knows what keeping up appearances will do.  He writes in Psalm 32. “When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”

        That heavy hand of God sounds like the “bad Sprit from the Lord” Saul experienced.  But David handles it very differently.  He doesn’t turn to music to drown his pain but to the God who can heal all pain.  “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord — and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

       David knows the consequences of hiding stuff from God.  He’s seen it in his own self.  He’s seen it in Saul.  He doesn’t want to look back and see that he’s become a wreck through unconfessed sin – longing to feel the feelings that he felt then.  He goes to God in Psalm 51 and asks God for a new heart, a new spirit.  Unlike Saul who lost God’s Spirit, David begs that the Holy Spirit not be taken from him.  He begs God to restore the joy of his salvation – the joy he had when he first came to faith. 

       How about you?  How do you deal with the stuff in your life when God’s Spirit brings it to your attention?  Do you try to stuff the stuff back down?  Like Saul, do you try to maintain a good public face and act like nothings happened?   Do you try to distract yourself from the pain with music, medication, mixed-drinks or marshmallows?  Or do you confront the pain and bring it to the God who pardons so abundantly?

       Don’t deny it.  Deal with it.  That’s the only thing that works in the long haul of life.