call your attention back to the text which we read 1st Samuel 16 verses 14 to 23 verses 14 to 23 and as the Lord would enable us this afternoon we hope to consider this text we come to a very sad situation. Saul, in the previous chapter, chapter 15, was told that on account of his disobeying God's word, his disobedience, and his stubbornness, that not only had the Lord rent the kingdom from him, but God had departed from him, that Samuel, God's anointed prophet, would no longer visit Saul. Saul was a dead man walking. And you can really think about this in two senses. One, in the sense of the kingdom had been rent from him in a temporal sense. He was no longer the king and would die. But secondly, and more significantly, spiritually, Saul is a dead man. But you see, Saul was actually never, dear congregation, a living man. That is to say, Saul never had a new heart. Saul was never begotten unto a lively hope by the Spirit of the Lord working in him. And this passage of the Spirit departing from King Saul and the ramifications of it, is likely in many ways very confusing and in fact helps shed light on much going on in our own modern context So I want to deal with this text obviously in three points Before I do that, I want to tell you what we're going to see this afternoon, what we hope to take away is we hope to understand better the spirit of God's work. We furthermore hope to realize that spiritual problems require spiritual solutions and spiritual treatments. And lastly, we're gonna see something of the benefits of the Lord Jesus and of his kingdom. So as we take up this text, on one hand we, We tremble when we see the state of Saul and how everything unfolds with him, but on the other hand, maybe rejoice at the entrance of King David or anointed, but not yet King David. And our three points are simple. God's spirit departs, a devil comes. That's our first point. God's spirit departs, a devil comes. Our second point is right diagnosis, wrong treatment. Right diagnosis, wrong treatment. And our third point is David soothing. David soothing. Beginning with our first point, God's spirit departs, and a demon or an evil spirit comes. We read in our reading, of course, verse 13, which is not technically part of our sermon text, but it illustrates a contrast. In verse 13, we have David anointed by Samuel and the spirit of the Lord coming on David from that day forth. In verse 14, we read that the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. And not merely the Spirit of the Lord departed, but an evil spirit came and troubled Saul. In fact, you can translate the word there for troubled as terrifying Saul. The picture that's painted in the opening of this portion of text is that God has chosen a new king and God's Spirit has been poured out on this new king. And in the pouring out of the Spirit on this new king, it has departed. The Spirit of the Lord has departed from the old king. Probably you might be thinking, and by the way, there's an evil spirit here that's making Saul act. Absolutely horribly. He was terrified, troubled, he was distressed. We read that his servants realized this is the case and they want to soothe him. He was a man that was already impatient and impulsive, and now it appears that this has likely been amplified. to irrationality, depression, anxiety, and bitter anger in his current state without the Spirit of God and with this demon tormenting him. there's a lot of questions that arise from the Spirit of God departing from Saul. And that's really where we need to begin. We need to look at this theologically, congregation, because if we understand what's happening here with King Saul and the Spirit departing from him theologically, we can understand so much of what's going on even in our own present day. So let's start with how the Spirit of God works. And theologians divide the Spirit's work typically into two categories. They're what we call common operations of the Spirit. Common operations of the Spirit, which includes things like conviction of sin. It includes things actually such as the gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy. It includes things such as performing miracles. It includes the enlightening of the mind to a certain extent, not fully, but it includes the revealing, if you will, and assenting to Jesus Christ and who he is as a historical person. Those are the common operations of the spirit. And when the spirit works in this way, the spirit is not working for the person's salvation. The common operations of the Spirit are just that, common. They can be done. The Spirit of God, He can bestow these gifts that we've spoken of. He can work conviction of sin. He can teach people of the Lord Jesus, but not save them to a certain degree, but they're common. Anyone can have them. But there's another class, if you will, of the Spirit's work. And that is what we call the saving operations of the Holy Spirit. That is when the Spirit of God enlightens you as to who Jesus is. He gives you a new heart. and you trust in Him by faith. The saving operations of the Spirit are the fruits of the Spirit. We read of in Galatians chapter 5, for example. It's a well-known passage, of course, beginning in verse 22. But the fruits of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. You see, the Spirit, in its saving operations, draws, or His, I should say, saving operations, draws the sinner to the Lord Jesus Christ, saves him, and begins to work that glorious work of sanctification within the sinner, and the fruits of that work are listed before us in Galatians 5. But what is in Galatians 5, what is what we call the work of regeneration as well, mentioned in John 3, that a man must be born again. These things are the saving operations of the Spirit. They're not common. They only are, they only take place, the Spirit only works these things, we should say, in the lives of the elect. Now I wanna make another distinction. And this distinction is equally as important and I'm gonna tie this all together. So you've got common operations, you've got saving operations. Now I wanna talk about the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit for a moment. And I wanna first talk about extraordinary gifts. And I've sort of already given you more than perhaps I should have, but the extraordinary gifts are things like tongues, prophecy. They are things such as healing and casting out demons. They're extraordinary. That is, they do not occur every day. They are, in fact, I suppose one could say special, God is revealing or doing something very special. They are a part, we say extraordinary, because they are extra, that is above the ordinary means that God is pleased to use. They are in some way beyond or above the ordinary means. So there's the extraordinary gifts. And If you actually study the scriptures for a moment, you'll find that many who were partakers of the extraordinary gifts were not partakers of the Spirit of God's saving operations. And you say, Pastor, what do you mean by this? Well, I wanna draw you for a moment back to the book of Numbers, specifically the chapter Numbers 23, where a prophet named Balaam is hired to prophesy against the Israelites. And what we find in Numbers chapter 23, beginning in verse four is we find that this wicked Prophet Balaam is met by God, and God says unto him, or sorry, and God met Balaam, and this is Balaam, he said, I have prepared seven altars and have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram, and we read in verse five, and the Lord put a word in Balaam's mouth and said, return to Balaam, this is the king that has hired Balaam to prophesy against the Israelites, and what proceeds is Balaam prophesying the true word of God, not against the Israelites, but for the Israelites. He's prophesying a blessing on the Israelites, but here is a wicked, unredeemed man prophesying. You could look likewise, dear congregation, at the example in the Gospels of Judas, All of the disciples we know were casting out demons. Judas would have cast out demons. But Judas did not have a new heart. He did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Saul, by the way, is in this category of those that were given by the Spirit, bestowed upon by the Spirit, extraordinary gifts. And we find this in 1 Samuel 10. And verse 12, really there's a longer portion, but in verse 12, we read at the very end, they're questioning, is Saul also among the prophets? Because Saul, in verse 11, had prophesied among the prophets. Saul was given this gift of prophecy. He was given this extraordinary gift, above and beyond, in a sense, the way that the Lord is pleased to ordinarily operate. Saul, Judas, and Balaam though, are all strangers to God's grace. They're all strangers to the gifts and the graces of the gospel. You might say, okay, well, what are you driving at, pastor? Well, that's the extraordinary gifts. Let me talk about what you could call the ordinary gifts, but I'm inclined to call them the ordinary graces. These are the gifts and graces that the Holy Spirit is pleased to work in the hearts of God's people. We already heard about them from Galatians 5 as part of the saving operations. You see, there are extraordinary gifts. Don't get me wrong, there are and they're wonderful. But there's the ordinary gifts and the ordinary graces and here's the distinction that you need to understand. And I'll bring you to Matthew chapter seven in order to drive home the point. The Lord Jesus in Matthew 27, sorry, Matthew seven verses 22 and 23 gives the famous famous quotation that many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? Have we in thy name, we not cast out devils and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then Jesus goes on and says, then I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. So here's the point. Paul or Saul, Well, he performed and had bestowed on him extraordinary gifts, gifts such as prophecy. Elsewhere in 1 Samuel, we read when he's battling the enemies of God, the Spirit of God descended upon him and seemed to give him great ability and great courage. Everything that Saul did, even though he had extraordinary gifts, these extraordinary gifts are part of God's common operations, or the Spirit of God's, I should say, common operations. So what am I driving at? I'm driving at this, my friend, that so often people want to see miracles, so often people want to see great signs and great wonders, but it's the ordinary gifts and graces that are actually the special, the saving operations of the Spirit of God. Do you see the distinction? To put it very plainly, A wicked and reprobate man can prophesy in God's name. A wicked and reprobate man can be enlightened by the Spirit of God to prophesy, to speak the truth out of his mouth. A wicked and a reprobate man can cast out devils. but a wicked and reprobate man will never have, as we read in 1 Corinthians 13, faith, hope, and love, or charity. A wicked and reprobate man will never have the fruits of the Spirit. A wicked and reprobate man will never have faith. So what's going on with Saul in our text is a man who had extraordinary gifts, worked in him by the common operations of the Holy Spirit, finds the Spirit of God departing from him. And what a dreadful thing this is. Because not only does the Spirit of God depart from Saul, but we read that the Lord sends, actually, an evil spirit on Saul. And that, I suppose, brings in another major question. We say God is not a God who delights in wickedness. God we know is not the cause of evil or sin. So how can it be that God would send an evil spirit on Saul in 1 Samuel chapter 16? Let me draw you to the first two chapters of the book of Job where I think we get the best picture of how God and the devil interact. You see, Satan, in a mysterious way that we cannot fully comprehend, enters, as it were, into the throne room of God. And Satan comes before the Lord and he tells the Lord that he has come from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down it. when Satan challenges the Lord about his servant Job. And we read in Job 1.12, that the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath, that is, all that Job has, is in thy power. Only upon him put not forth thy hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord. We further find in chapter 2, Satan again is coming upon Job, and he's able to influence a variety of things going on. But the Lord, He restricts Satan. This is Job 2, verse 6. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thy hand. that save his life. You see, my dear friends, the devil and all of his legions of demons are subject to God's authority and sovereignty. The Lord is not the cause of evil. The Lord, as it were, when we read he sent a demon or an evil spirit on Saul, what we mean is the Lord permitted a demon to attack a man that was now devoid of God's spirit. And this point should be driven home. This point must absolutely be driven home. Saul finds himself in the place where he is because of his own sin. Saul is the one who undid it all. We read in 1 Samuel chapter 15, Verse 23, David says, or forgive me, Samuel says, for rebellion is the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is iniquity and idolatry because thou has rejected the word of the Lord. He has also rejected thee from being king. Saul is to blame for all of this trouble. He's to blame for the spirit of God departing from him. He is to blame. for the evil spirit coming on him. You see, Satan is not the beginning. This demon tormenting him is not the beginning of Saul's problem. It's just an amplification of the problem that already existed in his heart. He rejected the word of the Lord. So what do we take away from this? What do we take away from this idea of common operations of the spirit and saving operations, extraordinary gifts and ordinary gifts? What do we take away from all of these things? Well, the first thing I wanna do is I actually wanna critique the charismatic churches. And I think this critique actually is spot on. So here's charismatics. And I think they're well-intentioned. They want to see God working, but they focus on gifts that are not part of the Spirit of God's saving operations and that are extraordinary. But the ordinary gifts and graces are what God works in his people. Do you see what I mean? So the Charismatics, they place a huge emphasis. They will tell you that if you do not speak in tongues, and you might not be a Christian, there's something wrong with you. They wanna focus on all of these extraordinary gifts, like prophecies and tongues, but what do the scriptures say? Well, the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 says, and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not love or charity, I am nothing. You see, my dear friend, the priority needs to be not the common and the extraordinary, but the saving in the ordinary. That's where the church must put her emphasis on the graces of God working in the heart, the Spirit of God, I should say, working graces in the heart of His people. And we look at our charismatic brethren many times who are well-intentioned, and we must say to them, my friend, You're putting your emphasis on the wrong thing. You want to see God work in extraordinary ways. So you talk about healings and casting out demons and speaking in tongues and prophecies, but really what you ought to be focused on is not what's common, but extraordinary. But what is saving and ordinary? The fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, faith, hope, and charity or love. You ought to focus, we ought to emphasize these things. We ought not to focus on the Spirit of God. coming and making us all speak in tongues, but rather we ought to focus on the Spirit of God working in His people to sanctify them so that they may be holiness unto the Lord. You see, Saul, he did not have the saving and ordinary. He had the extraordinary, but sadly common. And there's another point more personal, and that is this, and it comes from... Hebrews 6, verses 4-6, and it's a terrifying warning. It reads, For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him into an open shame. Remember earlier I said, that the common operations of the Holy Spirit can consist in an enlightening of the knowledge of Christ to an extent. These people that we are reading of in Hebrews 6 are not saved. They've been enlightened to an extent. The Spirit of God in a common way has worked in them, but they are not saved. But the thing is, is once they fall away, their hearts become hard. In fact, You could argue this and I believe it's likely true. What's being described here are those that commit the unpardonable sin because the Spirit of God has testified to them of the Lord Jesus Christ and they knowing better have rejected it. And Saul in our text, I believe, is in a similar case. The Lord had revealed much to them. The Lord had come upon him. The Lord had given him promise after promise, threatening and warning after threatening and warning, and he had rejected the Word of the Lord. My dear friend, as you sit here today, and I read the words of Hebrews 6, 4-6, did you shudder? Did you have any fear? You might ask, why would you want me to shudder? Why, pastor, would you want me to be in fear? Because we must take heed, lest we likewise fall. Saul to us is an example of one who had the Spirit of God resting upon him, but not in a saving way. And it happens in the New Testament church that the Spirit of God commonly works in people and does extraordinary things even by people. And they are not saved. So I have to plead with you. Don't be satisfied with the knowledge you have of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't be satisfied with the extraordinary and the common as it were. but make sure you close with the Lord Jesus Christ. My dear friend, I plead with you. Look in your own soul and see if you have the marks of grace. And you say, pastor, you're sending me to be introspective. You're sending me to look in my own heart. My friend, I'm telling you to do this, to look in your heart and find Jesus working in there. That's what the marks of grace are all about, is looking inwardly to find Christ at work. You're not looking at your own works. You're not looking at yourself. You don't have to contrast looking to yourself versus looking to the Lord Jesus. Rather, when you look to yourself, ultimately what you should be seeking is Christ's work within you. So do you know of Christ's work in yourself? Have you been made to hate sin? Do you love righteousness? Do you love God's law all the more? Do you lament when you break it? Is Christ made continually more and more precious to you? Do you long to see more of those ordinary but saving gifts and graces worked by the Spirit of God in your life? I want to move from this point into our second point, the right diagnosis, but the wrong treatment. You see, Saul is in this state where he's being tormented. He's being terrified by this demon and God has sent this demon Doubtless as a chastening and a punishment on the hardness of the heart of King Saul. And you can imagine how Saul would have acted. You see, everywhere that we find the devil in the Bible, there is destruction. You can think about our series in the Gospel of Mark and you look back at Mark chapter 5 and you find the Gadarene demoniac and in Mark chapter 5 verse 3 we find that he had his dwelling in tombs. This is the demoniac. No man could bind him not with chains and we read on in verse 5 that day and night he was in the mountains and the tombs crying out and cutting himself with stones. Jump ahead a few chapters in Mark's gospel to the gospel of Mark chapter 9. And there we find a boy who is possessed by a demon. And what do we read about that boy? We read that whenever this demon takes hold of him, this is Mark 9 verse 18, that it takes him and it tears him, that he foams and gnashes his teeth, that he tries even to cast himself into the fire. That's what the Father says in Mark 9, verse 22. If you read on, the Father says, and oft times it, that is the demon, cast him into the fire and into waters, trying to burn him or drown him. The devil is destructive in his operations. So King Saul would have been sitting in his court on his throne, absolutely and utterly beside himself, utterly destructive. And we read in our text that Saul's servants are concerned to your congregation, they're concerned. And they actually acknowledge. They say in verse 15, that an evil spirit from God troubles Saul. And so what do they want to do? Well, they want to find someone who can soothe Saul's pain. Notice this though, and don't miss it. What's the root of Saul's problem? It's his own sin. What's actually going on with Saul is Saul is spiritually troubled. He has the pangs of a guilty conscience, of a cold dead heart, amplified by a wicked and terrifying demon that was actively working to stir up destruction. And what is What is the court to do? Well, the court likely thinks that Saul does have a demon or he's gone mad and they don't really know how to solve this problem. And so they just want to sort of quiet it down. They want to quiet down. They want to numb. They want to soothe. But also you need to see this. There's no true healing here. Perhaps they realize that Saul, as in Hebrews 6, maybe some of his servants in his court are godly men, and they realize, as it is in Hebrews 6, that Saul was once enlightened, that the Spirit of God had departed from him. Maybe they'd heard what Samuel said and they worried that there was no hope for Saul, so they knew all they could do was try to keep the king calm. We don't know. But we do know this. We do know that right here and right now, If you have a spiritual problem, you need a spiritual solution. My dear friend, if you have a problem with sin, if you are one that has not obeyed the word of the Lord and the law testifies against you, commandment after commandment, you've broken, it doesn't even matter if you can't think of how I've broken all the commandments, I assure you, you have. But the law is like a chain. You break one link and you've destroyed the whole thing. The whole thing cries out against you. Dear friend, you're a sinner. You have a spiritual problem. And there's a solution for it. And that solution is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's taking God at his word. It's having this promise proclaimed to you that Jesus Christ came and died to save sinners, that he calls sinners to himself and says, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, if you're laden down. and laboring under your spiritual trouble, your soul's great anxiety, the repeated striking and striking of a guilty conscience. Can I plead with you to come to Christ? And by the sprinkling of his blood, have your conscience cleansed. By the shedding of his blood on the cross, have a way opened where you can have your sins forgiven and pardoned. Can I plead with you to come to that Jesus? And can I plead with you not to make the mistake that Saul's court and his servants make? And their mistake is what? They look at something that's very powerful, or look for something that's very powerful, and they seem to settle on music. And music is a wonderful thing. It soothes. It comforts. It, frankly, can also, on the other side of things, terrify and cause anxiety. But my point is this. They know that they've gotta do something about Saul. They seem to realize it's a spiritual problem, because they realize that an evil spirit is tormenting him. but they don't have a spiritual solution. Instead, they decide to numb out the pain. Maybe there's one in our midst today that is in fact trying to do this. And it's a heavy thing. And you probably, as you sit here in this pew and you hear me preach, you think it's such an intimate thing, and it is. But maybe you are laboring under a guilty conscience, under the anxiety and depression of your soul. And instead of coming to the Lord Jesus Christ and repenting of your sins, you're here in church, but in point of fact, you're actually striving as hard as you can through every other means to numb out the pain and soothe your spiritual problem. You see, that's what the servants of Saul were trying to do. They were trying to smooth. They were trying to numb. They were trying to cover over. And Saul, by the way, is willing to do this. He tells his servants in verse 17, provide for me now a man who can play well and bring him to me. Saul is willing to have this pain covered over and numbed. Is that you? By the way, we live in a world where we entertain ourselves to death. It's not just music that does this. Music is a powerful form of entertainment. Music can relax, it can depress, and we can talk about the various aspects of music that might be good or bad, but I want to focus big picture for a moment on entertainment, because ultimately what they are doing is they are entertaining Saul so he's not worried or anxious or depressed or angry or tormented. They're getting him to take his mind, as it were, off the pain, but they're not solving the actual problem. Maybe that's you. Maybe you use entertainment, whether it's music, maybe it's film, maybe it's the internet, maybe it's hobbies, maybe it's even exercise or something, but are you entertaining yourself in some way to try to solve your spiritual problems? Jeremiah chapter two, Jeremiah says, speaking for the Lord, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters. It's the first evil. And the second evil is they hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Maybe you this afternoon are one that has forsaken the fountain of living waters. And I pray that it's you that have forsaken the fount of living waters and not as it were the fount of living waters that has forsaken you. What I mean is I pray that you're the one fleeing from God and God is pleading with you to come to repentance and not like Saul, the spirit of God has departed from you, my friend. But have you forsaken the fountain of living waters and have you tried to build your own cisterns to sort of gather in whatever falls? Are you one that's trying to build something to gather in water that will satisfy and satiate your spiritual thirst? But you can't. And my friend, I'm not only gonna tell you you can't, I'm gonna tell you you won't. You can, to a certain extent, numb and soothe and entertain yourself to death, but one day it's going to absolutely catch up with you. And our world, I'm convinced, has this problem on a massive scale. I wanna be quite measured and careful in what I say here. We live in a society that is full of mental health problems. Mental health and some of the associated, I guess you could say disorders, they can be legitimate. No one's disputing that. No one is disputing the fact that there are people with hormonal struggles that cause them to behave in certain ways. No one is disputing that there are people with chemical deficiencies or even surpluses in the brain that might cause depression or mania. No one is disputing that. But what I would say is we probably need to give further thought into how much sin plays into our societal mental health struggles. I recently heard of a story of a psychologist who was meeting with a young lady and it's a very sad story but the lady was struggling with alcoholism and frankly she was having relations with many men that were not her husband, and she would seemingly go every weekend to parties and have multiple male partners, and she would wake up on Monday morning hungover and more depressed than the weekend before. And so she's seeing a psychologist, and she wants the psychologist to put her on a tablet. She says, I want an antidepressant. And she's just told him why, and he says, well, can I ask you a question? She says, sure. He says, well, grant me two questions. She says, okay. He says, one, do you think your drinking helps your mental condition? And she said, no. And he said, secondly, do you think every weekend, the fact that you're out sleeping with multiple men helps your mental condition? And she said, no. And he said, then before I prescribe you a tablet, will you stop sleeping around and stop the binge drinking for a month and come back and tell me how you're doing? She took that poor psychologist to the board. He lost his license. Because that's not what the world wants to hear. That's not what the world wants to hear. Now, I'm not here to tell you, my friend, about your necessarily, whether or not your mental health problems are truly a chemical imbalance, but I can tell you this. Sin makes men unstable. Guilty consciences and the furtherance of sin in lives makes people do some absolutely horrendous things. So what am I trying to say? I'm trying to say this, that maybe some of the problems we have as a society with mental health, are furthered, if not directly contributed to by the prevalence of sin in people's lives. And so we need to take that on board. We need to realize that not everything requires a trip to a doctor to get an antidepressant tablet, but sometimes there are legitimate spiritual problems. that a guilty conscience is not just anxiety, it's not just depression, the guilty conscience is actually God's deputy in the soul, witnessing to you that you have sinned, and instead of trying to numb it away, perhaps you should listen and repent and turn to the Lord Jesus. You see Saul's servants here, they know that it's a spiritual problem. but they want to entertain it and numb it away. And we, and you, my friend, must never be happy for that to be the case with you. And the third thing is David, who's soothing Saul. That leads us in nicely to our third point. David has just been anointed as the king. The Spirit has come upon him. The Spirit has departed from Saul. And after some interval of time, we're not sure how long, David ends up in the court of Saul as the one playing the harp in order to soothe Saul. And there's a very worthwhile contrast in verse 18 for us to consider for a moment of 1 Samuel 16. We read that they bring in the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, and we read that he's coming and playing. a mighty man of valor, a man of war. He's prudent and a comely person and the Lord is with him. You could go through this cunning and playing and a mighty man of valor who has shown himself to be utterly foolish and cowardly, Saul. You could go on and you could see that he's a man of war. Saul, in the last few chapters, remember that contrast. This is 1 Samuel 13 and 14, the contrast between Saul as the foolish, incompetent commander and Jonathan as the military man that the Lord uses. And now David is being shown in a sense already to be a mightier and a greater warrior than Saul. We read that he is prudent in his speech that he's a handsome man but lastly and most importantly of all the key distinction between Saul and David is the Lord is with David because David is truly the Lord's anointed But notice further in verse 21 that David comes and stands before Saul, Saul loves him greatly. That David in verse 23 took the harp and played and Saul was refreshed. So there's a lesson here for us. It might not be a readily apparent lesson, but what's going to come out very soon is there's going to be enmity between King Saul and soon to be King David. But right now, David is soothing Saul. And why do I make a point of this? Because we read in Matthew chapter five that God's people that the church is the salt of the earth. That's Matthew five, verse 13. We see back in Genesis chapter 19 with Abraham and he's pleading with the Lord Jesus for Sodom. And there's that fascinating interchange where Abraham has, you know, perhaps, perhaps or per adventure, there's 40 righteous. And the Lord Jesus says, if there's 40 righteous in the city of Sodom, I will not destroy it. You said, pastor, what's your point? What does all this mean? Well, it means this. David is soothing Saul in the same way as the kind of David, the man the Lord is with, is able to soothe this wicked, tormented, tyrannical king. So the followers of the greater than David Jesus so often are the ones that soothe society. They are the ones that are the salt of the earth. They are the ones that though the world hates them, Judgment is restrained on their account. Do you see it? The world might hate the followers of the Lord Jesus, but the world truly should be thankful for the Lord's people's presence, because they're the ones that have a soothing influence. Time is running short, so just let me conclude by saying, Our Christianity should have a soothing influence. We should be, as it were, public Christians. Christians should always be willing to testify in the public square against evil. Christians should be clear about what the truth is. And Christians, my dear friends, must be willing to put themselves forward so they may be solved. Christians must be willing, in a sense, to plead with the Lord and also to plead with their fellow man, even the magistrate, to restrain judgment. Christians must be. We must pray for opportunities where we can be like David and we can go into the court of a wicked king and we can provide a soothing presence. But we must not be content as Saul's servants were, merely with soothing and numbing. But the church of the Lord Jesus Christ understands that this country and the world, and maybe you this afternoon, have a spiritual problem. And so what we must do is we must declare the Gospel. So may I tell you there's one coming that's greater than David. David has entered into the court of King Saul. David is soothing the wicked king. But David soon is going to be at enmity with the king. And the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world and He was at enmity with the prince of the power of this world. But He came so that sin could be forgiven. And just as I close, direct you to that glorious King Jesus. And if you have a spiritual problem, if you are spiritually troubled today, if you have the pangs of a guilty conscience, it may be very easy after we walk out of this building for you to numb it away somehow, but I plead with you, don't. I plead with you, don't numb away, don't soothe away the pangs of your guilty conscience. but rather go to the Lord Jesus and plead that he would take away the burden of it, come to him by faith and confess your sins, because we know that he is faithful to forgive sins for those that confess them. Let's pray. Oh Lord, most high and gracious God, we've seen the wonder of David soothing Saul with the harp. We've seen that there's a contrast there. We also saw the terror, the fear of the spirit departing from the king. And we pray, Lord, that we would look in our own lives for the saving and ordinary operations, and we would not be taken up with the common but the extraordinary. We pray, O God, for holiness in the lives of our own lives, in the life of this congregation, and for spiritual growth. And we pray, Lord, that we would be those that take seriously and deal with spiritual problems and the problem of sin. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.