Saga: The Story of David: A Song, a Prayer, and a Friend
June 12, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
1 Samuel 16: 14-33

Today we continue our series on Saga: The Life of David. Last week we heard about how he was called into ministry, and this week we’re hearing about David the Psalmist. We’ll be using Psalms in our prayers today. We’re going to sing some Psalms. We’ll also hear about David the lyre player and armor bearer. So let’s listen to the Scripture read from Samuel.
¹⁴Now the spirit of theLorddeparted from Saul, and an evil spirit from theLordtormented him.And Saul’s servants said to him, “See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you.Let our lord now command the servants who attend you to look for someone who is skillful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will feel better.”So Saul said to his servants, “Provide for me someone who can play well, and bring him to me.”One of the young men answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a warrior, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence; and theLordis with him.”So Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, “Send me your son David who is with the sheep.”Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a kid, and sent them by his son David to Saul.And David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer.Saul sent to Jesse, saying, “Let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight.”And whenever the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand, and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him. (I Sam. 14:14-33 NRSV)
Did you ever have an evil spirit? An evil spirit that comes over you? I have. In life there are external challenges, external obstacles, things you have to fight that are outside of you. I haven’t had too many of those, honestly. Life has kind of opened its doors for me most of the time, not always, but most of the time.
But internally sometimes those are some of the hardest ones to fight, those things in the soul, those struggles, those evil spirits that come over you. There’s jealousy, that green-eyed monster that someone got the job you should have had or the marriage you should have had.
Or depression. You just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. Or what about ambition? That evil spirit of ambition that takes you over and says, “I’m going to be at the top of the heap, and I absolutely don’t care if I ignore my family, if I put them aside, who I step on or step over. I’m going to make it to the top.” That’s the evil spirit that comes over you. Or that voice inside your head that says, “You can’t do that. Who do you think you are?”
There are lots of them. I could go on; I could do 20 minutes of just naming the evil spirits that come over us. What do we do about those? Our Scripture today begins with a comment about an evil spirit. And it begins right away with a thorny problem that if you were looking at the Scripture in front of you, you’ve probably seen it already. And you may have wondered about it.
I got emails from our staff about it when they were preparing for today. It begins, “Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, ‘See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you.’” Even at the very end it says, “And whenever the evil spirit from God came up on Saul…”
An evil spirit from God? Is that right? Does God send evil stuff? That’s a hard one.
I love people who actually answer the question. They say, “No.” I heard that. Listen, there are two ways you can deal with this. One is that you can recognize the context, the Biblical mindset, the understanding of the writers who wrote thousands of years ago, that they’d come out of a Canaanite culture in which everything that happened occurred because of one of the gods. You had good gods, and bad gods, and good gods sent good things, and bad gods sent bad things. So everything that happened came from one of the gods. And then as they took on the faith of Abraham and began to claim that there is one God, then everything good and evil comes from that one God. So God becomes this sort of cosmic video game creator, who makes things happen, and people move. And we’re sort of puppeteers, and if there’s an earthquake then God sent that earthquake to punish people. And if your child died it must have been something you did. You get that picture.
Here’s the problem. That is not consistent with the character of God we see in the Gospels and the New Testament. In the New Testament we see a God who says, “Yeah there are bad things that happen, but my desire for you is not to punish you. I’m a God of healing, and that’s what I want to do. I want to bring about healing in your life, wholeness.”
So what’s the other way that we might deal with this? This is the way that I tend to approach it. So life itself, our lives, are a gift from God. They’re a gift that comes from God. And those lives that we live have good things in them and bad things in them, times of joy and celebration and some evil spirits we have to wrestle with. And all of those are part of life, and that life is a gift from God.
Let me use an analogy that is not perfect but is timely so I’ve chosen to use it. Let’s talk about construction. We have a lot of construction going on. And if you’re going to have construction, you’re going to have inconvenience. You’re going to have “Pardon our dust!” signs. You’re going to have to work around things. You’re going to have trouble parking. You’re going to have all sorts of things that go with construction.
The people who are in charge of the construction, our building committee, our contractor, our architect, they don’t want us to have construction. They don’t want us to have inconvenience. They do everything they can to mitigate that inconvenience. But you can’t have construction without some inconvenience. That’s just the way it is.
So one could say appropriately and accurately that our building committee and architect gave us inconvenience. And you’d be right. But that isn’t their purpose. Their purpose is to build a building that glorifies God and is an amazing tool to reach our community. That’s their purpose and along with that purpose comes some not such good stuff. God’s purpose is to bring in the reign of God in the world around us.
I hate to be this blunt about it, but God’s purpose is not to make you happy. God’s purpose is not that your life would be easy. In fact the truth is, that in order for the kingdom to come in, the reign of God to come in, for God to be glorified, there’s going to be some inconvenience. There’s going to be some evil spirits, because it’s just part of life. That’s the way it goes. You can’t have one without the other. So when we say “an evil spirit from God” it’s just part of life. Here’s what I would tell you. Expect them. They’re going to come. So what do we do about them? I want to lift up three things, two from this Scripture and one from just David in general.
The first is this. When it said, “And whenever the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand. And Saul would be relieved and feel better and the evil spirit would depart from him.” Now this is a lyre – here it is right here. Sid has one. I wrote him this morning an email that said, “Lyre, lyre, pants on fire…” He did not even respond. He just let it lay there, thought it was a stupid joke. But I thought it was really good, frankly.
So David would play this lyre, and it would ease Saul’s pain. Remember the movie “Field of Dreams” where he heard the voice that said, “Ease his pain?” The music would ease his pain, it would comfort him. I think music can do that, but frankly I think music does more than that. David was the musician. I think there’s something about music that opens up our souls. That gets past all of the hard shell around us and opens up our soul. Every culture in the world has music as part of worship. Every one of them. Why do you think that is? Because it’s what gets inside us and draws out what we want to give for God.
It’s why after you broke up with your girlfriend, you didn’t want to go listen to country western music, because it would mess with you. Like all of a sudden you had all those hard shells, and you’d made it and survived it, and then all of a sudden you listen to the song, and you’re crying. It gets past and through down into the soul.
There’s a whole field being developed of music therapy. We used to have a music therapist on our staff as part of Bridges Academy. Because it is a way of opening up our hearts.
Pastor Steven Furtick from Elevation Church has this great illustration. He said that when he was in high school in their youth group they had a haunted house as a way of making money for their youth choir trip. He said it was his favorite part of the year when they’d have the haunted house. He would get to put on a scary mask and hide behind this casket that they brought into the middle of it. Then when people would come in, he’d jump out from behind the cask and go “Yaaa!” And they’d scream and run away. He said it just made his day, he was so happy.
I get that. At the end of the night though, they’d turn on the lights, and you’d look around. And you became aware that it was just a bunch of goofy teenagers in stupid masks and in a room that just looked silly. It’s funny how scary things are when they’re hidden and in the dark instead of in the open and in the light.
When we can open up our souls and expose them to the light, it’s not that those spirits go away. They’re still there. But they’re just not as powerful or scary anymore. We begin to think to ourselves, “I can deal with this.” So we open up our hearts. We open up our souls.
Now here’s the second thing, David as the Psalmist. Seventy-five of the 150 Psalms are attributed directly to David. He’s listed as the author, the composer. The Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible. If you came to me and said, “I really want to learn more about prayer,” I’d say to you, “I want you to go read all the Psalms. Read them over and over, and practice the Psalms.” The Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible.
And so what we do is we open up our hearts, but what are you going to do with that stuff in there? Are you going to close it back up, or repress it or push it back down? No, you’re going to offer it to God in prayer.
Listen to some of these Psalms. In the interest of time I’m going to share one with you and this is Psalm 55 – a Psalm of David. “Listen to my prayer, O God. Do not ignore my plea. Hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble, me and I am distraught because of what my enemy is saying, because of the threats of the wicked, for they bring down suffering on me and assail me in their anger. My heart is in anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen on me. Fear and trembling have beset me. Horror has overwhelmed me. I said, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert.’”
Oh, man. He is not in a good place. He says, “Here’s what’s in my heart, God. My life stinks right now, and I’m going to tell you about it. I’m going to share with you the evil spirit that has overtaken my heart.”
In Psalm 51 he prays his prayer full of guilt and confession after the affair with Bathsheba and sending her husband to be killed at the front. He prays a prayer full of contrition and confession. There are two ways you can pray. One way I call aspirational. It means that you pray things you want your heart to feel. You may or may not be feeling them at the moment. So you pray thanksgiving, and praise, and you discipline yourself to always be full of thanksgiving. Always be full of praise. So you say those things kind of whether you’re into it or not. So that’s a discipline of aspirational prayer.
But sometimes what you really have to do is honest prayer, just honest prayer. Just say, “God, I am so mad at that person over there, strike him down!” One of the Psalms – not of David, it’s a Psalm about the Babylonian exile – goes this way, “O daughter of Babylon, a blessing on he who takes your baby’s head and dashes them against the rocks.” Oooo –that’s a pleasant prayer!
“I am so mad at you! I hope something terrible happens to you. God, I am so mad, and I don’t know who to be mad at, so I’m mad at you, God.” Honest prayers.
Once when I was the youth pastor here at St. Luke’s a girl came into the youth group meeting, and she was crying. She was a freshman in high school and a bunch of girls were kind of huddled around her. As a youth pastor you think, “Am I going to go get involved in that drama or not?”
So I went over and talked to her. It turned out that she had not made cheerleader. I called her aside, and we talked for a bit. She said that she had not made cheerleader, and they’d come to her at the end and said, “You were so good, but we had to pick between you and so-and-so, and you were so close. But we picked her instead of you.”
We talked about that and at the end I said, “Do you want us to pray?” And she said, “That would be great.” Then I said, “Why don’t you pray?” I tried to do that, because it helps people express what’s inside them. She said “Dear God, please break the legs of the other girl.” I always try to echo their prayers back, but I couldn’t quite that do that. It didn’t seem quite right for me to be praying that. But it’s honest.
Look, God already knows what’s in your heart. It’s all about expressing it, about sharing it, about building that connection, that intimacy with God by telling him the truth.
Here’s the final part that this passage teaches me. This is verse 21: “And David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor bearer. Saul sent to Jesse saying, ‘Let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight.’”
In a few chapters we find that David and Saul aren’t getting along so well. In fact Saul tries to kill David. But at this point Saul loves David, and he wants him there with him. He is comforted not just by David’s lyre, he’s comforted by David.
When we are facing and wrestling with those evil spirits whatever they are, don’t do it alone. There are people that can come along side you and support you and encourage you and help you and listen to you. They’ll be your armor bearers.
Don’t find people who are, “This is what you ought to do ..,” the “What you ought to do” kind of people. Avoid them at all costs. When you have a difficulty, they have all the answers. “Here’s what you need to do. Have you thought of this? I suspect this is really what is going on in your life.” Just tell them, “Hush. I’ll go talk to someone who will listen.”
Find some people who will come along side you. When you’re going up, they’ll go up with you. When you’re going down, they’ll go down with you. But they’re going to be right beside you, and they’ll have armor for you when you need it.
When you need to put on the whole armor of God.. that’s Paul’s picture in the New Testament. When you need to put on the full armor of God, they’ll have it for you. When you need the belt of truth to buckle around your waist, they’ll offer it to you. When you need the breastplate of righteousness, turn to your armor bearer and say, “I need the breastplate of righteousness. Will you help me with that?” When you need the helmet of salvation, they’ll give it to you. You’ve got to ask for it. When you need the shield of faith, when your faith isn’t strong enough and you need to borrow someone else’s faith to get through the night, turn to your armor bearer.
This is why we want you to join a LIFT group. It’s why we have the Nick Finnegan Counseling Center. It’s why we have Stephen Ministry. It’s why we want you in a Small Group. Why we want you in a Sunday School class. It’s why we want you in the choir. We talk about worship plus one. We want you to have a plus one so you can find some people in the community of faith who will carry your armor, who will come along beside you, who when you’re wrestling with an evil spirit you don’t have to wrestle with it alone.
Last night I was called to a home where someone had passed away. This person’s daughter was there. When I came in she wasn’t alone. It was filled with friends, many of whom were members of St. Luke’s. And they were holding her up. I hope you have that, that you have invested in some armor bearers around you so that you can carry their armor when necessary, and they can carry yours.
So what we do is we open up our hearts, we look inside and expose those evil spirits, none of this saying, “You know if you’d just accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior of your life, all those evil spirits would go away!” It just isn’t true. It just isn’t true. You still have those, they’re part of life.
So we open up our hearts, and we acknowledge that they’re there. We don’t pretend that they’re not. We don’t pretend that we don’t have struggles. We don’t pretend that we always have this strong happy faith all the time. We open up our hearts. We offer them in prayer to God. We get some armor bearers around us who will help us through the night. That’s how you deal with an evil spirit.
Let’s pray together. Lord God, we confess to you that we wish it weren’t so, though we recognize that it’s part of life, that these challenges that we face externally and even especially internally are just part of this amazing gift of life that you’ve given us. So we pray that you would show us how to open up our hearts and souls to expose those spirits to your light, that we would share them with you in honest prayer and that we would gather some armor bearers around us to offer us the whole armor that you provide to get us through the night. In the name of Christ, Amen.