Soft Music for a Hard Heart, Part 1

Today, on Insight for Living, from Chuck Swindoll. I want to say that the only hope for the child of God is the power of the Holy Spirit. And even as a child of God, we can out of the controls of our own flesh say no to the Spirit's control and perform all acts of evil and debauchery. If you do not know Christ, there is no power that you can find that will overcome that kind of overwhelming evil presence. Have you ever been in a place of rebellion or perhaps in a sour mood when it was music that reached into your heart and calmed you down?

Well, most of us can remember a time or two when that's happened. Soothing music has a way of lowering our blood pressure. Today, on Insight for Living, we'll be reminded about the power of music as we continue Chuck Swindoll's study on the life of David. And to help set the stage, he'll begin with helpful context.

Chuck titled this message, Soft Music for a Hard Heart. Before David fell the giant, Goliath, and ascended to the throne of Israel, he distinguished himself in Israel as a skillful musician. We can see from the last half of 1 Samuel 16 that David acted as a soothing influence in Saul's life. That happened during a time of extreme difficulty for the king. David's willingness to use his skills for the Lord provided refreshment and relief for those around him, especially for the weary king.

Young David's example of service helps us to see how we can make a positive impact in our world. Please open your Bibles and read along with me from 1 Samuel 16, beginning with verse 14. Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him. Saul's servants then said to him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. Let our Lord now command your servants who are before you.

Let them seek a man who is a skillful player on the harp, and it shall come about when the evil spirit from God is on you, that he shall play the harp with his hand, and you will be well. So Saul said to his servants, Provide for me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me. Then one of the young men said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is a skillful musician, a mighty man of valor, a warrior, one prudent in speech, and a handsome man.

And the Lord is with him. So Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, Send me your son David, who is with the flock. Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread and a jug of wine, and a young goat, and sent them to Saul by David his son. Then David came to Saul and attended him, and Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David now stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight. So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand, and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him. This is Insight for Living.

For resources designed to help you dig deeper into today's topic go to insight.org. And now let's begin Chuck Swindoll's message titled Soft Music for a Hard Heart. I want to share with you this evening an old statement I drew from the 18th century writings of a man named William Congreve who was an English dramatist. And he was the first who used these familiar words, Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, to bend a knotted oak.

Isn't that true? I was interested in reading in Sports Illustrated the pastime leisure activities of many of the great hulks of masculine humanity called the professional football players, and to my surprise over half of the men spend their leisure listening to music. So do a lot of us. Most of us love to turn again to music when our savage breast needs to be soothed. I came from a musical family. My fondest memories aside from summers spent down at a little bay cottage with a grandfather that I dearly idolized are the memories of singing with a family that gathered around a piano with a brother that could play like crazy and a mother that sang good soprano and a sister that could handle a little alto and then I'd bring up the rear in whatever was left and we would just sing through the evening. I remember the Bloodworth family that lived next door, very tragic home. They had a lot of bucks. They were very affluent. They were into regattas and all of this. They had a big sailing vessel but they often left their kids at home for a weekend as they had their fun which ended tragically in the mother's suicide and the father's departure. The kids sort of left to raise themselves. I remember around a Christmas time one season we were singing through the hours of the evening and as it got late we decided we wouldn't bother the neighbors anymore and we pulled the window down.

Our phone rang in less than a minute and it was the oldest of the four children who asked, would you please pull the window back up? We haven't heard singing like that and I remember lifting the window up and looking out across the little area between our homes and there they were sitting like little ducks in the window alone that evening finding music to soothe their hearts. That's the ministry of music.

It can be duplicated with nothing else. Cynthia recently bought an album of Tchaikovsky and boy I was listing the other. It was just yesterday afternoon and I thought I could study while it was going on and after a while oh it was marvelous and whatever might be the taste. There's something about music that soothes and ministers. It goes all the way back to the first genealogical record where a man was gifted on the pipe and lyre. And a little later on we find in the Bible a whole book of songs right in the middle as if God is saying sing them often and learn them well. These are my songs over twice the length of any other chapters or any other book of the Bible.

150 of them, half of them are more written by David who put them together on the hills of Judah. Who knows, maybe in the very context we're looking at in 1 Samuel 16 in the threatening presence of a madman named Saul. Saul's strange melody starts these verses beginning at verse 14 and carrying us down to the end of the chapter we're going to see the part that music played in soothing his savagery.

Let's look at the 14th and 15th verses to start with. The spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him. Saul's servants then said to him, it's obvious that they could see the maddening results, and they said to him, behold now an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. Unfortunately, with mindsets like we have, we get hung up on the spirit of evil from the Lord and we don't enter into the misery of this malady that Saul wrestled with.

We'll talk about that in a minute, but you'll notice that first of all the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul before an evil spirit came. Christians read those words and they fear that could happen today. I've heard evangelists use that as a tool to shock people that are Christians walking in the flesh.

You continue to walk in the flesh and God will lift his spirit from you and you won't have that life you once had. And they'll quote this verse or the verse in Judges 16 where Samson is in Delilah's lap and it says, he knew not that the Lord had departed from him. Or in Psalm 51 11 that says, take not your Holy Spirit from me. Those are fearful verses. Had a man stop me right behind the church building this evening and just needed assurance that that wouldn't happen today. It's a fearful thought that God could lift his spirit from us and and we'd be lost having once been saved.

Let me clarify that tonight. Let's go on record in understanding a good dose of theology right now. Before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, prior to that time the Spirit of God never permanently rested on any believer. It was not uncommon 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 and then to come back for another surge of the need of the moment, then to depart. The exception rather than the rule was that the Spirit of God came to stay. However, at Pentecost and from that time all the way through our present era when the Spirit of God comes at salvation, he never leaves. He comes to baptize us into the body of Christ. That happens at salvation.

We're never exhorted to be baptized by the Spirit. We are baptized into the body. We will never be unidentified with the body of Christ. We are placed by the Spirit into the body. That's baptism. We are sealed until the day of redemption.

That's the day we die. The last verse of Ephesians tells us in chapter 4 that he seals us until that day. So he's there. He never leaves. Furthermore, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and as long as we as Christians have bodies, we have the temple in which the Spirit of God dwells.

He permanently resides within us and will never ever depart. Now we're reading in 1 Samuel before Pentecost of course and we are not surprised therefore to read that in this moment of severity in the life of Saul, the Spirit of God departed from Saul and there was a vacuum created and God sent an evil spirit to terrorize him. I don't know why.

No one knows why. No one can explain God's permission in this place except for the fact that he was put out with Saul. It was as if to say, I will punish you for presuming on your office as a king and walking against my will. You have not taken me seriously. You will learn to do that, Saul.

I'm jealous for my name. And so he departed from Saul and an evil spirit came to terrorize him. Let's look at that for a moment. It was so obvious that the servant said, an evil spirit is terrorizing you. The Hebrew word is ba'at and it's interesting, it means to fall upon, to startle, to overwhelm. Job uses it in chapter 3 to refer to his date of birth and in the misery of the boils, Job says, let the blackness of the day terrify it.

Same word, ba'at. Let the blackness of my day simply envelop and overwhelm the day of my birth. He's saying, oh, that I'd never been born. Now, when this evil spirit came on Saul, it began to terrorize him. Kyle and Dalitch are some of the most reputable of Old Testament scholars and they write this about this evil spirit.

Listen to the paragraph. 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, imagination and thoughts of his soul to such an extent that at times it drove him into madness. The demon is called an evil spirit coming from Jehovah.

It was visible to others. Forgive me for lingering longer than maybe you think I should on these two verses, but there's something here in application that I don't want us to miss. We're living in a demonic era. I don't know where you're reading, but the periodicals I'm reading are revealing awful, unbelievable facts. Take one child battering. Newsweek had an article on it just this past week and I was just shocked to read what I read and to see the sights that were portrayed of the parental beatings and torturings of children. Often the parents declare, something overcomes me, something overwhelms me. I sat in a jail separated only by bars from a man who took the life of one of his own babies a number of years ago right here in this area and I heard him say, I don't know what happened, but I struck the child and something came over me. It overwhelmed me and I couldn't quit. The legal world calls it temporary insanity.

Maybe you have a temper like that. Leo Held did. The article reads that he was a paragon of respectability. He was a middle-aged, hardworking lab technician for 19 years at a Pennsylvania paper mill, had been a Boy Scout leader, an affectionate father, a member of the local fire brigade, a regular churchgoer, knew many hymns by heart. He was admired as a model in his community until the image was shattered in a well-planned hour of bloodshed one brisk October morning.

Held decided to mount a one-man revolt against the world. He inwardly resented a proficient marksman. He stuffed two pistols into his coat pockets, a.45 automatic and a Smith Wesson.38. Before he drove his station wagon to the paper mill, parking quietly, he gripped a gun in each fist, then slowly stalked into the shop and started shooting with such calculated frenzy that it resembled a scene out of gun smoke. He filled several of his fellow workmen with two and three bullets apiece, firing more than 30 shots before he was through, killing in cold blood some of the men he had worked with for over 15 years. When a posse was formed to capture the man, they found him standing in his doorway, smiling defiantly.

I could go on and on. The neighborhood couldn't believe it. Interesting that when Time magazine put together a caption, they said, underneath his picture, responsible, respectable, and resentful. He lived in the powder keg of resentment so long until explosions happened. And like the husband who admitted to me a number of years ago, that's when I punched my wife.

And she had left him. As he talked about something coming over him, and before long he's swinging his fists, and there's a maddening sense of presence, and he's lost control. Now this is no theoretical comment.

This is real. This is, Saul went through what many go through. We just cover up for it. I want to say before going any further that the only hope for the child of God is the power of the Holy Spirit. If you do not know Christ, there is no power that you can find that will overcome that kind of overwhelming evil presence.

And even as a child of God, we can out of the controls of our own flesh say no to the Spirit's control and perform all acts of evil and debauchery. We just don't know what happened. It just overcame me. Well, that was Saul's malady.

Strange, and yet not really that strange. They realized he needed help as your friend would if he saw you in that condition. And so the friends said to Saul, verse 16, let our Lord now command your servants who are before you. Let them seek a man who is a skillful player on the harp. Before I go any further, I think that is interesting that the first description of David is a skillful player on a harp. The word skillful in the Hebrew is an intensive verb originally, and it has in mind the idea of knowing fully.

David knew fully his instrument, and his instrument was called the harp. That's a rather unfortunate rendering. The word is kinor, and it means liar, L-Y-R-E. The liar of that day is described by Merrill Unger in these words. An instrument that consists of strings made from the small intestines of sheep stretched across a sounding board over a blank space, then attached to a crossbar. Did that go by too fast for you to identify it? What does it sound like? Strings stretched across a sounding board over a blank space, then attached to a crossbar.

What does it sound like? A tennis racket. Oh, my.

Go to your room. What do you mean? That's terrible. I just knew she would say guitar. I'd say right. She's tennis right. I think it is interesting that one of the earliest instruments mentioned in the Bible is the liar, and yet do you know there are many churches that absolutely will not have a guitar in the presence of the place of worship? And that will have a piano that is a rather recent invention as compared to a liar, or the old ancient strumming instruments, or certainly an organ. We adopt them, and yet to bring in a stringed instrument is seen as a travesty against theology or against biblical truth. That's the earliest instrument mentioned.

Not a tennis racket, but a liar. He played it. He was proficient with his guitar. In fact, I can picture David on the hillsides of Judah strumming along, working through as only you that compose know, thinking of his notes, and working on the fingering, and just coming through with that pick and that sound. And he would write something down as he soothed the savage breast to that young shepherd's heart. He's putting his music together.

Now, I want you to see the perspective. He's a shepherd in the field strumming a guitar. He's destined for the throne. There is no way on earth a shepherd will ever see the inside of the courtroom of the king, unless God does it. Now, I want you to see how God worked to get this man some exposure in the protocol of the king's court. It's beautiful. Just beautiful how God used the gift of music to put him right into the very presence of the king's chamber. The king fell in love with him. Okay? Let's go.

16. Let him seek a man who is skillful on the harp, and it shall come about when the evil spirit from God is on you, that he shall play the harp with his hand, and you will be well. So Saul said to his servants, Provide for me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me. It's an unlikely picture, David the shepherd boy standing before King Saul while strumming his harp.

One day this humble servant would hold the highest office in the land. Now, if you notice that Chuck Swindoll's voice sounds a little different on today's recording, that's because his study on David was presented many years ago. But it speaks to the treasure we have at Insight for Living, and that is thousands of timeless sermons that go back many years. To learn more about Chuck Swindoll and this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org.

Today's message is titled Soft Music for a Hard Heart. And to make the most of this comprehensive study on the life of David, remember that Chuck has prepared a study Bible. It's a wonderful resource because Chuck has written summaries for each book in the Bible, including the ones he referenced during today's program. In addition, the Swindoll Study Bible includes keen insights on difficult passages, an explanation of complicated cultural issues, and even helpful charts and outlines. To purchase the Swindoll Study Bible, call us.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org slash store. Then as we continue to pray for the safety of Ukrainians and all the surrounding countries, we'll remind you that Insight for Living has been speaking into this part of the world for many years. In addition to having field pastors in strategic countries surrounding Ukraine, we've also translated Chuck's Bible teaching into languages such as Polish and Romanian. These ministries are part of our long range strategic plan to make disciples for Jesus Christ in all 195 countries of the world.

We call it Vision 195. When you give a gift, you're helping us provide Chuck's teaching in your own country and a portion is applied to going beyond our borders as well. So thank you for supporting the ministry of Insight for Living. To give today, call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or to give a donation online, go to insight.org slash donate.

I'm Bill Meyer inviting you to join us when Chuck Swindoll continues his study on the life of David, Friday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Soft Music for a Hard Heart, was copyrighted in 1977, 1988, 1997, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.