David the Musician – 1 Samuel 16:14-23

Review: David the Shepherd – 1 Samuel 16:1-13

Last week we encountered young David, a shepherd boy, overlooked even by his father. David didn’t let his circumstances or other’s low opinions of him define him, rather his faith in God defined him. His circumstances, his work, was used by God to cultivate a heart of faith and prepare him for God’s future plan for him.

Music

Music has power. God created music to help instill an appreciation and communication of the good, the beautiful and the true. It’s a device that was intended to aid our desire and longing to worship our Creator. 

Like poetry, music can give a voice to our emotions. It can express our vulnerabilities, it can drive our anger, it can lift us out of our sorrow. It fills the gaps and brings meaning to the silence. Have you ever seen a movie clip without the music score? It is painfully awkward to watch. But you add the music and it becomes powerful.

We all appreciate music, although we may not all agree on the style of it. It is good to remember that music alone, is amoral, meaning that the music style isn’t good or evil on it’s own. It is the use and the lyrics that will determine the morality of the music. Some appreciate quiet, contemplative music. Others like a heavy, harder beat. 

I personally can read and studied to Chopan, The Gray Havens, the band RED, and Andy Mineo this week alone. Maybe some praise and worship music in there too. I’ve also noticed that I can listen rap, contemporary, heavy metal and drive just fine, but if I’m singing along to praise and worship while driving, I tend to speed more (that was actually what was happening the last time I got a speeding ticket – which was over a decade ago lol). 

What is your favorite music? What is your go to song? Maybe you have several songs that come to mind. What song do you listen to when you are sad? Mad? Happy? Depressed? 

Songs matter and speak to us. Have you ever stopped to think about the power your music choices have over you? Examine the lyrics of the songs, are they consistent with God's Word? Do they fit with the Philippians 4:8 grid? 

Perhaps a song that has endured the longest and maintains a level of popularity some 3,000 years later is Psalm 23. A song of Kind David about The Shepherd from the perspective of a sheep. 

Last week we talked about David the shepherd boy. It was a defining season of his life. It was hard work that would take him days away from friends and family. It was a job that was often looked down upon, although David saw the importance of what he did. It was job that David used to cultivate a heart for God and worship of God in his daily task. In that way, David continues to be an example to us of how to live our daily lives at school or work for the glory of God. 

This week we will be looking at 1 Samuel 16:14-23, where David is called by King Saul to play his instrument to calm his mood. Again, we see the power of music to move the temperament and attitude of the king. 

King Saul didn’t know at this time that God had chosen David as his replacement, later in the story Saul will try to kill David, but for now he doesn’t see David as a threat. In verse 13, David was anointed by God, or we could say blessed by God. The Spirit of the Lord came upon David, but what does it say about Saul?

In verse 14, it says the Spirit of the Lord left Saul. We could say that God’s blessing and approval of Saul was removed. God’s anointing being lifted doesn’t mean that nothing good ever happened to Saul again, for we see that he was blessed and encouraged by music. But it does indicate that his time as king was coming to an end and that the empowerment of the Spirit had departed. 

David, receiving the blessing of the Lord, meaning the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, found himself catapulted from the shepherd’s fields to the king’s court in an instance. How? Why?

David may have had the day job of being a shepherd, but he also became a singer/songwriter in his spare time. It is easy to consider the times he was off in a distant field with his sheep, his lyre (as stringed instrument) and his rhymes, sing old songs and writing new songs. 

At some point, others began to hear and notice his gifting with the instrument. We don’t know if David played in the local synagogues or competed in a battle of the bands, but somehow (we actually know it was God’s plan) he was noticed by someone close to the king. 

King Saul was being plagued by “a harmful spirit from God” and wanted some soothing music to help him. What is meant by “a harmful spirit from God”? Does that mean that God sent a demon to attack Saul? I suppose you could define it as that, but I think a better interpretation is understanding the effects of sin and the consequences of guilt and shame on a person’s life. 

Saul disobeyed God and therefore lost the kingdom. His disobedience, rebellion, sin against God severed his fellowship with God. Sin disrupts our peace. Sin corrupts our mind and our thoughts. It robs us of harmony with our Creator. 

When the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, His intent is to draw us to repentance and dependence on God. When our own shame and guilt bring conviction, it puts us down and pushes us away from God. Genuine conviction of the Spirit will draw you closer to God, unrepentance will drive you away. 

Saul didn’t want to feel guilty or shameful in his disobedience. Remember, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton). Saul was king, he could do what he wants, or so he thought.

Rather than doing business with God, humbling himself and repenting of his sins, where he would find peace with God. Saul wants to mask his pain. He brings David the musician who will play beautiful music to fill the void so he isn’t left with his own thoughts of condemnation.

Sometimes it is good to use music as a distraction to our endless thoughts. If we get into a pattern of negative thoughts, it is good to find something to disrupt the patterns. However, sometimes we are afraid of our thoughts and avoid silence so that we won’t have to deal with them. Saul didn’t want to deal with them so he brought in David. 

We might put ear buds in, watch Netflix or listen to music until we fall asleep because we are afraid of thoughts in the silence. This practice often leads to disrupted sleep and tiredness, which compounds our thought problems. 

Remember Romans 8:1 - There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When our thoughts are condemning us, we need to remind ourselves of the finished work of Christ and the freedom He has purchased on our behalf. Allow the Spirit of God to bring out the lies, the guilt and the shame you are holding onto so that He can draw you closer to the heart of God. It might sound like a scary process, but the judgment of God was poured out on Jesus on the cross, He won’t pour it out on you if you are in Christ. 

David, knowing God has called him to be king, went into king Saul’s service and performed his best for him. King Saul loved and appreciated David. And David became a refreshment to Saul.

David trusted God’s timing and didn’t try to take things into his own hand. Instead, he looked at every opportunity as a gift from God that he could use to benefit others. Here, he allowed the gifts and talents God gave him to be a blessing to the king. 

What talents and gifts has God given you? What song has God placed in your heart to be a blessing to others? 

You may not be a musician, I am not one, but that doesn’t prevent you from being used by God to bless others. In everything you do, do as unto the Lord, for you never know when God may call you into the kings court to be a calming presence and refreshment to others. 

David: Shepherd

Intro

This week we are starting a new series about one of the most beloved, revered and talked about Bible characters: King David: Shepherd.Warrior.King.Man.. On Sundays, we are going through the book of Psalms this year, and will be reading many songs written by King David, “a man after God’s own heart.” These next few weeks, we will be learning about the man behind the songs, and seeking to understand how we too can become men and women who are characterized by God’s heart. 

Read 1 Samuel 16 – David the Shepherd

Background

A little background to the story. God had selected a people group, the Israelites, who descended from Abraham and migrated to Egypt, God delivered them from bondage through miracles, led them into the wilderness wanderings, raised up leaders to guide them into the Promised Land. Due to their incomplete obedience, they went through several cycles of grace during the time of the Judges, a fractured people group made up of many tribes, but lacking national identity.

Then entered the time of the Prophets and Kings. Samuel was raised up as a prophet and last judge of Israel, who was guided by God to establish a king over the land. The first king of Israel was Saul, the peoples’ choice. He was a disaster and failed to obey God, which led to losing the kingdom. God send Samuel to anoint the future king of Israel, God’s choice, David.

Samuel doesn’t know that it will be David. All he knows is that there is a man who lives in Bethlehem named Jesse, and one of his sons will be anointed king. Samuel is obedient to God and makes his way to Bethlehem and to Jesse’s house. 

Man’s View is not God’s View 

Have you ever entered into a place knowing that you are looking to recruit someone to your team? Or maybe you were selected to be the captain of the team and you have to choose your team. What do you do? You scan those who want to be selected and you evaluate based on size, strength, speed, etc. for sports. But there is more to it than that. You have preferences and friendships. Part of your selection choice may be your friends, part may because you like the way someone looks, may your pass on someone because you don’t like how they look. 

If you had to make the choice of complete strangers and it was for something more important than a dodgeball game, how does that shape your choice? Most people pick the best looking, tallest, strongest person they can, based on their perceptions of that person. People are very easily swayed by their own perception and sometimes fail to vet the choice properly.

I’ve seen this in churches, and certainly we see this in politics. People are persuaded by a charismatic presence, a tall, strong appearance, and they make assumptions that this person is a good leader. That’s what the people did with king Saul. This is what Samuel was thinking when it came to Jesse’s sons.

1 Samuel 16:7

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

Praise the Lord for this truth! People are short sited and preferential. God is all-knowing and kind (and so much more…). God does not see us as others see us, or as we see ourselves (check out Psalm 103, 139 and 2 Cor 5:17). And God had other plans then what Jesse and Samuel thought.

How must David have felt when he heard that a prophet had come to see Jesse’s sons and he wasn’t even invited to the lineup? As the youngest child you kind of get used to missing out on some things. The first child gets all the attention, pictures, new clothes, etc. There is a novelty and a newness to life with a first-born child. In the excitement of everything being new, parents try to capture everything with their first born. 

Then each child after that the novelty of events, outfits and pictures wears off. Now it’s hand-me-downs and survival mode for parents. The over protection of the first child is now a knowledge of the resilience of the babies, so the older siblings care for the younger, etc. But that is all understandable. 

David’s dad didn’t think it was possible that Samuel would be looking for his youngest son who was off tending the sheep. Good thing God already saw him and chose him.

Sometimes this happens to our youth today. They are often overlooked because they are young. They think going to school is meaningless. They feel their voice is not heard and they are not taken seriously. But this isn’t how God sees them.

1 Timothy 4:12

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

God wants our youth to live like David did, to be bold in faith and set an example to others. God wants our youth to become men and women after his heart! David developed this while he was out tending sheep.

Out Tending Sheep

Have you ever cared for an animal? What did/do you have to do?

David was a shepherd boy tending his father’s sheep. In order to understand what that means today, we really only have to look at the Bedouin shepherds in the Middle East today. They pretty much are shepherding sheep the same way David did in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago did. 

The chore of being a shepherd shaped David and laid the foundation of what he was going to become in God’s plan. A Bethlehem shepherd cared for a flock of sheep in a wilderness land. Shepherds would lead their flock each day to find food and water through a rocky mountainous terrain, not lush rolling hills of rich grass that often comes to our midwestern minds. 

Shepherds would care for the sheep, talk to them and even sing over them. Spending countless days and nights moving the herd to new pastures, David had a lot of time to reflect on God, practice his instrument and write songs. Oh how much of the book of Psalms and the development of David would have been lost if he had a smartphone!

Here we need to be reminded of the fact that our daily responsibilities, whether that is our chores around the house, school or a job, is shaping the person we will become. What we do does matter. You might look at a task, a homework assignment or a job as not that big a deal, but how you approach it will shape you. Either you will develop an attitude of insignificance or you will see a building block to bigger things. 

Some looked down on the role of a shepherd. They thought it was a dirty job, a meaningless job and would pass on the opportunity. 

Not David. He didn’t look down on the job, he cared about the sheep and his family. He made the most of his time by growing as a person, learning life lessons, worshiping and developing as a person. He practiced his harp and his voice and was later called to serve the king by playing his instrument. We still read his words today in the book of Psalms. 

When we see Christ in the mundane tasks of the day, we have an opportunity to worship God and experience his presence in our daily tasks.

God is using our present circumstances to prepare us for his future plans. 

David didn’t know at that time that God was going to call him to be a king, he just knew it was his job to be a shepherd boy and he made the most of it. He had to protect his sheep from a wolf and from a bear. He learned skills to protect his sheep and it paid off. 

But he didn’t just rely on his skills, he learned to pray and ask God for strength and victory. So, when he defeated the wolf and the bear, he praised God for the victory. Seeing God work in his life early, gave him confidence in his future. 

David recognized that caring for his father’s flock was important and provided a means of income and hope for his family. Allowing a predator to destroy the sheep would harm his family, so David was willing to sacrifice his safety in order to protect his sheep.

At night, a shepherd would gather in the flock to a pen, and the shepherd would lay in the doorway. The only access to the sheep was through the shepherd, and therefore he would keep them safe. 

You see, the sheep’s only hope of safety and security was being in proximity to the shepherd. This is true of us and our need to be close to our Savior, Jesus. 

The Good Shepherd – John 10:1-18

Jesus, like his great, great, grandfather David, is a shepherd. David was a shepherd of sheep, Jesus is a shepherd of people, the church. Jesus is the door to the Father and he protects his sheep. Jesus has come to offer life to those who enter in by him, and he will watch over them as they come in an out to pasture. 

He will guide his flock to daily provisions. He will watch over his flock through the darkest of nights. He has laid down his life and raised it up again, so that we who believe in him will live. 

David’s time in the wilderness, in obscurity, as a shepherd was about to come to an end, but it provided opportunities for him to become “the man after God’s own heart,” and the future king of Israel.

Anointed

When Samuel had finished looking at Jesse’s sons and God did not choose any of them, he asked if there were any more sons. Jesse said his youngest was in the field watching over the sheep. Samuel said to send for them quickly for they will all stand waiting for him to arrive.

When David arrived, it describes his appearance as “ruddy, had beautiful eyes and was handsome.” Some scholars conclude that means that he was a red head. I think they are on to something! LOL

God directed Samuel to anoint David as the future king of Israel. Upon anointing him, the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that point on. God called David to a huge task, but like the wolf and bear, God didn’t leave David to do it in his own power. His Spirit empowered David to live each day to become the king.

God calls us to himself through his son Jesus, and empowers us with his Spirit to faithfully follow him. As the sheep of his pasture, we need to stay close to him and listen to his voice and follow him. Like David, God will empower you to be faithful if you trust him.

Next week, we will look at the shepherd boy who became a warrior.

Kingdom Priorities

Matthew 6:33

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 

The New Year is upon us and it is full of possibilities! That’s the exciting thing about a new year, is the hope that things can be different, things can be better, goals can be accomplished and a fresh start is to be had. 

Even though we may not have accomplished everything we wanted to last year, that doesn’t stop the hope and anticipation of a new year being different. And we are right to be hopeful, for God says in Lamentations 3:22–23:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Every morning, every day, every week, every month and every year, God’s steadfast love and mercies provide an opportunity for growth, for healing, for hope of the abundant life that Jesus promised us (John 10:10).

The reality is there is an enemy of our soul who does try to steal, kill and destroy our hope and our change that leads to that abundant life. And we should be watchful and mindful of his attempts. 

But the enemy we need to worry about in meeting our New Year’s resolutions and personal goals is closer than you think. It’s you. I mean it is ourselves that gets in our own way. We look forward to a new year, we make resolutions and promises of change and growth, but then we slip right back into the same old patterns, the same habits and nothing really changes. 

So the biggest changes we need this year is to reprioritize our values and time management. Trust me, I am writing this just as much to myself as I am to you. 

The problems is based in our own desire for comfort and pleasure. We may not want to admit it, but we are all hedonists at heart (a person who believes pursuit of pleasure is the most important thing). We want everything to be comfortable, enjoyable and pleasurable. We want change, but at our own pace. We want growth, but not if I have to give up my xbox, social media, music, toxic friendship, tv show, etc. 

Somethings we hold on to aren’t inherently bad, they are just distractions from the good. What we need is a perspective beyond our daily routine.   

Psalm 90:12

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. 

We don’t know how many days we have, but we all know they are limited. We each get 24 hours in a day, 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. How are we numbering those and making the best of those?

What would you do if you were giving $86,400 and someone stole $100 from you? Would you focus on the $100 so much that you miss out on enjoying what you could do with $86,300? Why do we get so caught up in a person cutting us off, or saying a something negative to us and let it ruin our whole day? 

So we need to learn to pursue a heart a wisdom with our days, minutes and seconds numbered.

Ephesians 5:15–17

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 

Here we are told that walking in a wise way is to make the best use of our time, to manage it with wisdom recognizing there is evil in the world. How? We understand what the will of the Lord is. What is the will of the Lord and how can we know it? 

God’s will is a large topic that we can’t fully unpack here, but a general statement is that God’s will is for you to love Him with all your heart, soul and mind, learning to be faithful to His words and treating others as He would treat them. 

It is so important that we understand that our relationship with Jesus needs to be our number one priority, for this life is temporary and our time is limited.

James 4:14

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 

On Monday night we saw something that never happens, the biggest football game of the week was stopped and postponed on national television. We are a NFL culture. It is the biggest stage and it pulls in a lot of money. But something happened this Monday that shifted everyone’s focus away from THE Game…LIFE.

Damar Hamlin, a 24 year old safety for the Buffalo Bills, after what looked like a routine hit, stood up, began to twitch and grab his chest, and collapsed in the middle of the field. The emergency staff acted swiftly and were able to have an AED attached, performing CPR for almost 9 minutes before stabilizing him enough to go to the hospital. 

Nobody was talking about football. Nobody was talking about Donavan Mitchell making NBA history across the state, scoring 71 points. The broadcast showed the players and coaches from both teams praying, worried, kneeling and hoping for the best. Broadcasters had no words to describe it, one saying, “we are not emotionally equipped to handle this, we can’t talk about football when a player’s life is on the line.”

One sports broadcaster openly admitted that he needed to pray and bowed his head and lead a prayer on national television. 

Something so startling, so upsetting, so much more significant than a game took over the attention of the nation, that is the significance of life. A brutal reminder of our fragility and temporary life. 

Your life is significant because it is a gift God has given you. What you do with your time will determine how you use that gift. Don’t get caught up in playing games and wasting time that life goes by without true meaning.

Jesus tells us that our number one priority needs to be seeking Him, His kingdom and living out kingdom principles (righteousness). Another way to say this is to love and obey God. A faithful life of obedience in the ordinary will lead to a significant life and impact on others. 

Sure we may have some big goals, and some will go on to doing big things. But for you and me, if we learn to prioritize God daily, to learn to love Him more today than I did yesterday. If I learn to Care for others, and treat them as I want to be treated. If I tell others about the goodness of God and the provision of grace found in Christ, then I will see God’s blessing in all areas of my life. Not only will I get Christ, but He will bless me with more than I could even ask or think. 

So this year, start with the big things, learn to prioritize your relationship with Jesus, your Bible, your faith. Allow Him to determine the values you hold to and the use of your time. When you start with the small stuff, you miss the big stuff. When you start with the big stuff, you get the small stuff thrown in!