This week, as I was preparing the sermon and thinking about David and David’s songs that he has put together, it started making me go back in my life and think of the music that has impacted me so much in my life. I can’t think of much more that has impacted me musically than the fact that my mom used to play the piano. And we would just hear the piano in the house.
And I would stand by the piano as she was playing. She would have different books she went through. One of my favorite songs she played was called The Entertainer.
So in sixth grade, I had the piano teacher work with me on that so I could play it for a recital because it was on my heart so much. She used to play and I would dance and crawl under the piano like I was on an adventure, not in sixth grade, but earlier. And no, I’m not redoing the dance.
I have no idea what it was like. But when I would hear those songs and her play and her pour her heart through her hands on that piano, and I told you she was a home ec teacher. I don’t know if I told you.
She went to college to be a music major and decided she didn’t want to practice two to six hours a day. So she moved over to home ec and eventually to becoming a principal. But that was a lot of my exposure to music.
Of course, we had it in school and at church. That is something, those moments of her on the piano, that’s something that I remember from very, very early on. Even before I was, say, five or six years old, I remember just how that made a difference for me in my life.
We continue to talk about David and how he was anointed. He was anointed to be king. Anointing is something that is huge.
The anointing was, Samuel came and poured oil over him and that oil was signified of what David was anointed to do, was to be king. Here he was a shepherd boy and now he was supposed to be a king. So how that all played out probably isn’t how he would have expected it.
But you can see clearly in there how God guided his steps and how God made a pathway for him to become king. Now, on the way, there is a first transition that comes out of when David was shepherding. When David was out with the sheep and he was out there all day.
He apparently becomes a world famous shepherd because even the king calls him the shepherd. Will you stand? And we are going to look at 1 Samuel 16. We’ll pick up at 18 which we read last week and read through 23.
One of the young men answered, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, a Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence. And the Lord is with him. Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, Send me David, your son, who is with the sheep.
And Jesse took a donkey laden with bread and a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them by David to his son Saul. David, his son, to Saul. And David came to Saul and entered his service.
And Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor bearer. And Saul said to Jesse, said to Jesse, saying, Let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight. And when the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand.
So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him. The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Amen. You may be seated. David had a lot going on in his life.
I mean, he was busy with the sheep. I mean, you see where, you know, that’s a little bit too much government invasion for me to get a letter from the king that says, Hey, I know he’s out there with the sheep right now. If I was Jesse, I’d be going, How does the king know my youngest son is out with the sheep? Why aren’t they meddling with me? But he sent for him and he came and he had when they called him.
Now, I remember Saul was anointed to be king, too. We didn’t spend too much time on Saul, but we spent enough time to know that Saul was anointed. And when he was anointed, the Holy Spirit came upon him and it changed his heart.
Wish it would have changed it a little bit more, but it changed his heart. So he became king and he led as the king. And Saul did the Lord’s work until he started straying, until he started getting impatient, until he started making sacrifices himself instead of waiting for Samuel.
And then it all went downhill from here. And the spirit of the Lord departed from him and a troubling spirit from the Lord came upon him and he suffered mightily. I mean, in today’s world, if we would have seen him suffering, we would have been thinking he’s going a little bit crazy.
That he’s got some deep psychological issues. And that spirit just crumpled him and made it impossible for him to be king. And so one of his servants suggested that they get someone to play the liar.
And in that big group, they started talking and somebody had seen or heard David playing the liar. And they said, hey, let’s get this son of Jesse. He’s skillful in playing.
A man of valor, a man of war prudence in speech, a man of good presence and the Lord’s with him. Now, if David is going to be anointed to be king and you hear all of those, which one doesn’t sound like the other? You know, if you say a man of good valor, a man of valor, does that sound like a king? If you say a man of war, does that sound like a king? Prudence in speech, that would be a good quality for a leader. A man of good presence and the Lord is with him.
All those things sound so good. But how many of you, when you are voting for president, do you look back and see what their musical skills are? But here God used it. Not just to get him in the door of the palace.
I mean, David is in the door of the palace. Not just to get him into the close presence of the king who he was supposed to replace. But he got him in there to serve.
And when he served and when he used this gift of music, the troubling spirit departed from Saul. And when the troubling spirit departed from Saul, everything seemed to go back to normal. Now, David, in this sense, first of all, was sent by Jesse with the international language to reach Saul.
Now, as the international language, he sent him with food and wine. Does that sound like the international language? That he sent him there with that to show him they care? He went there and he was sent with the love they had for the king. The international language love.
And the last one was the music. Those are all things that people have called the international language. Ways that people from different worlds, whether you’re a lowly, smelly, I hope he took a bath before he went to the palace, but we’ll see.
Lowly, smelly, sheep herder, or whether you’re the king of all of Israel. Those three things are all kind of like an international language that brought them close together. And he sang to Saul.
And he played the harp. And it changed Saul’s world why he did this. And it didn’t just happen and then he would go away.
He asked for him to stay longer. Saul loved David so much at this point. There’s a point where he’s thrown spears at David and chased him all over the world.
But that’s not what we’re talking about today. Saul loved David so much because he soothed him when he played. Because he drove that spirit out when he played that he became his armor bearer.
Now of all the trusted positions for a king, an armor bearer was one of the most trusted positions. And he stood there in this humble place of playing music for the king. And of taking care of his armor.
Making sure it was all in good order. Making sure it was prepared. Making sure it shined like it was supposed to shine.
And in this humility, it was just another way God had David serve on his road to becoming king. The international philosopher and theologian who we’ll call Bono. Does anybody know Bono? Said this, music can change the world because it can change people.
Music has an impact. Whether it’s pop music. Whether it’s R&B.
Whether it’s rap. Whether it’s soul. Whether it’s… What’s that other kind of music you hear on the radio? I don’t know what that is.
What is the other kind of country? What’s the other one that kind of came out of soul? Hip hop. Hip hop. You guys look like you had some hip hop on the way into church today.
All of those things. You know, people go to clubs and they hear music and they dance and they get excited. Music can form us in many ways.
Some ways in which words alone cannot form us. Because music comes and it goes into our soul. It can be songs that are used for God’s glory.
Or it can be songs that are just of the world. Now, with that, we also want to note in Mark 14, 26, that at the end of the Last Supper, it says, and when they sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. The last thing Jesus did with his disciples at the Last Supper was to sing a hymn.
Now, some speculate they sang something from Psalm 114 to Psalm 118. Because that’s traditionally what Jews used in the Passover. It might be a more recent tradition.
We don’t know. But that’s the speculation of what they could have been doing. David had a lot of albums.
And the thing about having a lot of albums is it’s a comparison of a one hit wonder versus greatest hits albums. Where if you look at the top ten best selling albums of all times, for years and years and years in my life, the greatest selling album was, does anybody know? No. Dark Side of the Moon is number eight.
Good call. Pink Floyd, The Wall. If you really want to know, number ten is Hootie and the Blowfish.
Hold my hand. I got a hand for you. How many of you listen to Hootie and the Blowfish on the way? Oh, okay, good.
Number nine, thinking of that other kind of music. Garth Brooks. His double live album, his greatest hits.
Now, Pink Floyd, The Wall we talked about. Now, here’s a good one. Here’s one I just love this one.
Billy Joel’s greatest hits volume one and volume two. The Piano Man. Just the Way You Are, Pressure.
Number six is Led Zeppelin IV. Anybody know what the song would be? One of the biggest songs on there? Stairway to Heaven. The White Album, which notice a lot of these are not the original, but it comes back with the greatest hits.
The Beatles, Revolution, Back in the USSR, Birthday, Helter Skelter. Number four is probably one that if you listen to you’re not going to admit right now. It is called Back in Black, ACDC.
Okay, this is where it gets crazy. Number three, all time best-selling album is called Hotel California by the Eagles. Number two, which had been number one for decades, is called Thriller by Michael Jackson.
Beat it, Billie Jean, you want to be starting something. And number one is their greatest hits by the Eagles. The Eagles are on there twice.
Now, I read through that and I wanted to go as far back as I could to see why it wasn’t… Oh gosh, what’s her name? The one who’s like a billionaire because she’s sung… Taylor Swift. She was back in like 80-something. What’s the difference? Why would she have sell-out concerts all over the world, but only have 80-something compared to the Eagles, who have number one and number three? What’s the difference? Streaming services? I don’t know, she has a pretty wide audience.
Time. In 30 years, we’ll see how that goes. David wrote his songs 3,000 years ago.
And he wrote them so long ago, they were probably on vinyl. 3,000 years, and we heard one of the greatest hits from Deacon Dana this morning. How many of you have that as your favorite psalm, Psalm 23? How many of you have the King James on your heart? Yay, the one, I walk through the valley, the only time you see King James is through the 23rd Psalm.
And they are so powerful. But there’s something about a song that just gets in your heart and it can change your life and change the world. And then there are songs that just get stuck in your head.
And songs that are one hit wonders. What do you think is the number one song on Spotify that would be a song that just gets stuck in your head? Macarena. Songs have a big impact.
Music changes our souls. Music can change our lives. If the Holy Spirit works through that music, it makes all the difference in the world.
We worship God with our prayers, with our devotions. The sermon, I’m biased, but the sermon is a part of worship. How we come before God.
But we cannot underestimate the power of music. If you think about God’s songs, whether they’re hymns or they’re contemporary songs, think about the songs that really have impacted you, that the words are still on your heart, that where you go, if you hear a couple of words, you just start singing the rest of the song. That’s a great way to change the world.
Come Thou Fount is one of those for me. I mean, especially the part where he says, Lord, I wander. And he says he feels it.
And he did. The author of that song did wander. And the grace that God has to work with us through music and through worship is the grace that God had when he worked through David.
Now, there was a fight years ago. If you’re talking about a couple hundred years ago, there was a fight on whether or not we could sing psalms. Anything more than the psalms.
That’s how many years the church had been singing the psalms. And then there were these crazy people who came in and wrote these contemporary songs that drove some people crazy because they weren’t songs. These guys like Martin Luther, Charles Wesley.
They wrote these contemporary songs that people said were songs of the devil. Every one of those hymns we have in our hymnal were songs that had to fight a battle at one time or the other. The important thing we need to know about music is that the hymns can teach us theology and the modern songs are often straight out of the Bible too.
That’s why John would always say, John Wesley would always say, sing these hymns first. Because we learn about theology and who God is and how we serve through our hymns and our songs. We learn way beyond any story I can tell you.
Even when I tell you about my mom, which I love talking about my mom. The songs, we need them. We need the music.
We need God to work through the music. David worked through the music to touch Saul. I also say that because even if you don’t consider yourselves a singer or a songwriter or an incredible harpist like David, that you have something within you, that there are ways that you can humble yourself and let God use those things to touch others.
Because when we let the Holy Spirit work through us, to talk to anyone, to share with anyone, to lift anyone, it’s just like David. When the spirit, the tormenting spirit, lets Saul, we can do that every day. Let the music sing to you.
Let the music lift you. Let the music settle on your heart and think about how God can work through you like God worked through David.