In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that the purpose of worship is not entertainment, but to draw people into the presence of God. He criticizes the modern church culture in the United States for prioritizing entertainment over true worship. The preacher also discusses the challenges and difficulties that arise when serving God, contrasting them with the consequences of rejecting God. He explains that Saul, in the Bible, experienced a distressing spirit because he resisted the Spirit of the Lord, not because God arbitrarily sent it upon him.

1 Samuel chapter 16. Now, we've been following the book of 1 Samuel verse by verse on Sunday mornings and we've been in it for quite a while because it's a long book, but we've seen just marvellous things from the very beginning of the book where God raised up this prophet Samuel who was called by God ever since he was a little boy and Samuel had a marvellous ministry among the nation of Israel, but then one day the people of Israel said, we don't want Samuel Leviticus anymore, we want a king to be just like the other nations. And God gave them a king and it was a king after Israel's own heart, not a king after God's own heart and he hasn't shown himself to be a very good king. His name was Saul. So as Saul was appointed king and developed in his royal capacity, he rebelled against God. He resisted God. And it came to the place where we saw a few chapters ago, God said, I've rejected you as being king. I'm going to find someone else, a better man than you to replace you. And just last week we saw how God went out and in a very unlikely way, chose a very unlikely person to succeed Saul as king over Israel. God chose a little shepherd boy, a boy named David who was despised in his own family, maybe anywhere from 10 to 15 years old. Yet God said, this is the man that's going to be the next king over Israel. And Samuel the prophet anointed David. And now you've got two people anointed to be king over Israel, don't you? You've got an old king who's grown corrupt named Saul. You've got a young boy who probably doesn't seem ready for the throne yet, but yet he's been anointed king. What's going to happen with all this? Let's see what happens next. Verse 14, but then the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him. Wow. Now stop right here. Go back one verse. Take a look at first Samuel chapter 16, verse 13. That's where we left it last time. It says, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel arose and went to Rama. You see what's happening? The spirit of the Lord comes upon David and the spirit of the Lord departs from Saul. Now, please don't think that there was a shortage of the spirit of the Lord and God had to take it off of Saul before he could give some to David. That isn't the case at all. God was doing something. He was accomplishing a strategy here. And when God took his spirit away from Saul, he was doing something very profound. He was actually giving Saul what he wanted. Can you imagine where Saul's heart had been for the past many years? Oh, when he started out and when he was first appointed as king, God was doing a work in his heart and he was softer and more tender to God. But as he grew in his royal capacity, as he grew in his ability to be a king and a general and a leader, he became more proud, more hardened, more resistant to God. And the Holy Spirit would speak to Saul's heart and say, repent, turn back, soften your heart. Saul would say, no, don't talk to me. Put his fingers in his ears and go la la la la anytime the Lord would speak to him. And he'd resist the Holy Spirit and he'd shut his ears to the voice of the spirit. And the Holy Spirit keeps speaking and Saul would keep resisting. I don't want to hear from you. And finally, God said, fine, I won't talk to you anymore. I'll take my spirit from you. He gave Saul exactly what he wanted. And that's a frightening thing, my friends. You can say no to God so repeatedly, so often that God will say, fine, I'll give you what you want. I'll take myself away from you. Now, Saul wasn't thinking, I want the spirit of God to depart from me and I want a distressing spirit to come upon me. That's why I'm resisting the spirit of the Lord. Saul wasn't thinking like that. I'm sure in Saul's mind it just went something like this. Why is the spirit of the Lord bugging me? Can't he just lighten up? I mean, I don't feel free. I don't feel at ease. I don't feel at peace. Holy Spirit keeps bugging me. Well, Saul, if you thought you were being bugged by the Holy Spirit, wait until you're bugged by a distressing spirit that troubles you. It's often how it is in our lives. Oftentimes we think it's hard to be serving God. And I'll let you know that there are certain problems or difficulties or challenges that come into our lives because you're serving God. You have problems in your life now that you didn't have when you were rebelling against God. Now you do certain things wrong and your conscience bothers you and you're troubled inside. Hey, before you'd do all those things all the time and who cares? But now there are problems, there's challenges in your life that you didn't have before because you're serving Jesus Christ. And probably sometimes you get tempted to say, you know what? Maybe it was better before. Satan's playing that violin in the background, trying to get you to remember the good old days and the fog goes over your mind. It's like, yeah, you know, remember how it was back then? And of course, he gives you that very selective kind of memory of the old days, right? You're not remembering the desperation and the depression and the discouragement and the loneliness and all that. You're not remembering that. And then that's silence and violence playing. Wow, maybe it was better. If you think it's hard serving God, you try rejecting Him. And that's where Saul was at. He kept resisting. The Spirit of the Lord departed from him. And did you see what happened when the Spirit of the Lord departed from him? Look again at verse 14. It says, "...and the distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him." Now, many people have a hard time with that. They say, well, that's not right of God. God's sending a distressing spirit. I mean, here's Saul just loving the Lord and serving Him and God just throws a distressing spirit upon him. No, that's not how it worked at all. For two reasons. First of all, don't think that Saul was saying, oh, I love the Spirit of the Lord. I just want to flow with the Spirit of the Lord. And God says, I'll send a distressing spirit upon him instead. No, Saul resisted the Holy Spirit and pushed him away and pushed him away and pushed him away. And finally, I said, fine, I'll withdraw the Spirit of the Lord. Then the distressing spirit came in. But secondly, notice this, please. There's no doubt that the Lord sent this distressing spirit. Verse 14 tells us that very plainly. God can send something either in an active way or in a passive way. But there are two ways or senses in which we can understand how God sends something. God can send something either in an active way or in a passive way. Actively, God can send something. It's directly from His hand. It's directly from His will. It's directly from His activity. God actively sends something. But there's another way God can send something. He can send it passively by just opening the door and allowing something to happen. Let me put it to you this way. Let's say you've got a dog in your house that loves to rush out the front door and go roam around the neighborhood. Now, you could open up the door and grab the dog and throw him out. That's actively throwing the dog out, right? Or you could just leave the door open and the dog runs out. Now, did you send the dog out? Well, yes and no. You left the door open and that's how the dog went out. But you did not actively put the dog out. Well, in this sense, God simply withdrew the Spirit of the Lord and the devil was more than happy to take advantage of that vacuum and rush in. Friends, we need to have our lives filled with the Spirit of God. Some of you may be thinking, boy, I hope the Lord doesn't do this to me. I hope He doesn't withdraw His Spirit from me and sending a distressing Spirit upon me. Friends, let me make something clear. If you are a Christian, and I mean a Christian in the Bible sense of a Christian, I don't mean in the modern American, none of the above kind of sense being a Christian. You understand what I mean by that? Well, for a lot of people, being a Christian is a none of the above kind of thing. They look at a list and they say, well, I'm not a Buddhist. I'm not a Muslim. I'm not a Hindu. I must be a Christian. Right? I'm an American. I'm a Christian. I'm not talking about that kind of Christian. I'm talking about somebody who is trusting in Jesus Christ for not only their soul's salvation, but their life's provision. I'm talking about somebody who's made an active choice to follow Jesus and has surrendered their life to His will. What the Bible calls being born again. If you are born again, then you have been given the Spirit of God as a permanent possession. And God promises He'll never take the Spirit away from you. Never. We live under a different covenant with God than Saul dealt with. Saul lived under arrangement with God known as the old covenant. That was instituted by Moses. We live under God under a new arrangement, a new covenant instituted by Jesus Christ himself. And under the new covenant, God has said, I'll never withdraw my Holy Spirit from you. Now, but there's another category of people. Let's say that you're not born again. Maybe right now the Spirit's dealing with your heart saying, surrender to me. Surrender to me. Give your life to me. I want to forgive your sins. I want to give you a new birth. I want to change your life. And the Holy Spirit's working on that. You can push the Holy Spirit away enough in that situation where He'll depart from you. But if you have trust in Christ, God says, I will never, never take the Holy Spirit away. So this work was going on in Saul. And if you notice here, verse 15, as it continues on, it says, And Saul's servants said to him, Surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you. Well, certainly that was the difficulty, wasn't it? And Saul's servants could see it so clearly. Yet Saul probably couldn't see it himself. Isn't it interesting? Sometimes our spiritual condition is even more apparent to other people than it is to ourselves. Sometimes we can be so in the flesh and so just rebelling against God, and we don't even see it. But other people look at us and just go, oh man, you see what they're doing? Man, if they only knew how much they were in the flesh right now, they'd be embarrassed. But we don't see it. That was the case with Saul. His servants said, look, it's obvious. They say in verse 15, Surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you. I wonder what Saul would have been diagnosed with if he would have went to a mental hospital today. I'm sure that Saul might have been diagnosed as being mentally ill, but his problem was spiritual in nature. It was not mental. It was not psychological. Now, there are many people in mental hospitals today that are really suffering from spiritual problems. Now, please hear me carefully on this. I want to make this point very clear. It's certainly wrong to assume that every case of mental distress is spiritual. Because things like chemical imbalances, things like physiological problems with brain chemistry, those things are real and they should be treated medically. And that's not necessarily a spiritual problem at all. They're real in our fallen world. Yet at the same time, we must say that there are certainly some who are diagnosed mentally ill in our society, but really suffer from a distressing spirit. And it's so sad that so many of those people will never find the liberation, the freedom they need in our modern mental health system because it's just not equipped to deal with them. So now, verse 16, they suggest a solution. Let our master now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who's a skillful player on the harp. It shall be that he will play it with his hand when the distressing spirit from God is upon you and you shall be well. So Saul said to his servants, provide me now a man who can play well and bring him to me. Well, essentially what Saul's servants suggest is you need a worship leader. You need someone to come and to minister songs of worship to you and let the healing power of God come and touch your heart. I think maybe they're thinking back to a time previously in Saul's life, soon after he was anointed being king over Israel, that in the context of music being all around, he was filled with the Spirit of God and Saul himself began to prophesy. That seems many years ago and a million miles away from the place where Saul is right now. But maybe the servants are thinking, maybe God can touch Saul's heart again through music. You know, God can touch our lives in a profound way through music. God has given to music, both instrumental and in song. God has given to music an amazing power to touch our hearts. He's given music the ability to do great good, but it can also be twisted into great evil. Music is such a powerful tool of communication to our inner being. God wants to use it and you can be assured that the devil wants to use it as well. I think it's especially precious to God when the power of music is used to worship Him. Did you know that in heaven, people are worshipping God, angels and redeemed men and women are worshipping God with songs and with music around His throne right now. I think God wants us to worship Him with songs and with music. Now, I'm not trying to say that all worship is music and song. Not at all. You can worship God by what you do. You can worship God in prayer. You can worship God in the quietness of your own heart. There's many ways that we can worship God, but certainly music and song are an important way that we can come and worship the Lord and God wants His people to worship Him. God wants His people to be brought into His presence and to offer Him a sacrifice of praise, worshipping Him in spirit and in truth. Might I say that that's very important to us here at Calvary Chapel. Not to have a song service where people are entertained by the music. The idea is not that people come up here on the platform and you're their audience and they're here to entertain you and they hope God will help them entertain you. So that's not the idea at all. No, the idea is that God is our audience and the people up here are here to help you and you know who the performers are? You. You're the choir. You're the ones performing unto the Lord and He longs to hear it. The goal isn't entertainment. This is one of the great difficulties with our modern church culture in the United States is that a lot of worship is oriented, or a lot of what's called worship is oriented towards entertainment. The idea is not to draw people into the presence of God. The idea is just to entertain them. I'm not talking about having good music. Some people think if the music is too good, it's entertaining. Everybody has a different opinion about music as well. I'm not talking about different categories or different classes of music. For some people, they think, you know, brother, what I really think, we need to get some of that thrash metal onto our worship team. Then other people would say, no, no, what we really need is we just need to sing hymns, acapella to the Lord. That's real worship. That's the purest kind of worship. And you get 10 different people, you have 10 different opinions on musical style. But it's important for the leadership of a church to say, no, this is what we want to do. And what we do musically may not appeal to everybody because you're not going to please every musical taste. But this is what we feel God's called us to. And we want the people on the platform to do it with a heart that says, we're here to worship God, not that we're here to entertain the people. Now, believe me, there is a place for music ministry in the church. And I make a distinction in my own mind between music ministry and worship ministry. There's a place for people to come up on the platform and say, OK, now you listen and I'm going to sing you a song and play you a song and you let it minister to your heart. And God can use that in a power of power way. How many of you have been touched by a song as you sat back and listened and something in your heart has touched you so deeply, something that the sermon couldn't reach you, something that somebody speaking to you couldn't reach you, but the spirit of God just moved in the midst of a song and it touched your heart. You've had that happen to you many times. There's a place for ministry and music like that. But there's also a place for worship. And worship is not let me entertain you. It's let's come before the Lord and bring to him a sacrifice of praise. And it's a beautiful thing when the worship ministry is working well. Years ago in our church, the worship ministry wasn't working well. Our worship ministry was OK, but it really wasn't what God would have it to be. You know, for the first four or five years of our church life, we we would only have one worship leader at any time. And I'm not just talking about one worship leader on the platform, although that was true many times. I'm talking about one person in the church who could lead worship. I'd get so mad at God sometimes and say, Lord, I know whole Bible studies that have four or five worship leaders. How come we only have one in our whole church? And then if worship really wasn't the way I thought it should be, I'd be annoyed with the worship leader. You know, why aren't they doing it right? Why isn't this? One day God really convicted me. I said, David, the problem is not with the worship leader. The problem is with you. You're not taking the kind of leadership in the worship ministry that you should take. Don't be blaming other people. You're not giving the worship leader the kind of vision, the kind of direction he should have. You're not pointing the right direction. Because it's very important that the pastor and the worship leaders have the same vision. Friends, the worship team is up here for about as much time as the pastor is preaching a sermon. Now, if they're preaching one message and the pastor is preaching something different, then you've got two competing things going on. The worship ministry needs to flow from the vision and the heart of the pastor. And the job of the worship leaders is to implement the vision in the heart of the pastor and worship ministry. And so we made changes and they weren't all easy and some were awkward and it took time. But as I look at it right now, God has done and is doing something really marvelous in our worship ministry. It's just exciting. I'm not trying to say that there's not room to grow and not more to do. There certainly is. But isn't it marvelous what God has done? I mean, now our bigger problem is giving enough opportunity for all of our worship teams to do ministry. You know, before it was just begging, oh, Lord, just send somebody. Now it's like, OK, we've got so many. How can we keep them all active in ministry? Lord, what are we going to do? And it's just a glorious gift from God. But it's not just the amount. It's the heart of our worship ministry that's precious before God. And God's going to keep dealing with it, keep growing it, keep doing his work. But you can see here what power there is in worship. And look at verse 16 with me. Look at what the end result would be from this person to come and minister in music. He says, and you shall be well. God wants to bring wellness into your life, healing into your life through music ministry, through worship ministry. And if the hearts and the vision of the people providing that ministry are right before God, and if they're where God wants them to be, you can open up your heart and God can bring wellness and healing into your life through worship ministry. So we don't see any reason why our church family shouldn't be strong in both areas. Why there shouldn't be strength in the preaching of the word and strength in the worship ministry. Why not both? Why should we pick one between the other? Why should it be said of any church? Wow, you know, boy, great preaching. Yeah, but the worship. Why should it be said, oh boy, oh, what worship at that church. Oh, it's just great. Yeah, but the preaching. Why should it be either way? Why not have both? Why not fulfill what it says in the Psalms? Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand. Why can't the high praises of God be in the mouth of God's people and there be ministry in the word, the two-edged sword of God? And so the end result of it is that people are made well. They're ministered to. They're touched. So Saul said, let's do it. Verse 18, then one of the servants answered and said, look, I've seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite. I love this. You see, Saul's servants came to him and said, you know, we think you should command this, Saul. And Saul says, I command that this be done. And they said, oh, we found the guy. I think they probably found him already. You know, and we said, I command this be done. The servant went out and had a cup of coffee for a half hour and then came back. Oh, I just found the guy. And look at the man they introduced to him here. Verse 18, then one of the servants answered and said, look, I've seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech and a handsome person. And the Lord is with him. Isn't that a great description of a worship leader, of someone who's a minister in music? You've got that. I think you've got that. That's God's profile for what a good worship minister should be. First of all, it says there in verse 18, they should be skillful in playing. That's important, isn't it? It's important because, you know, if you're all off key, if you're all out of tune, if you're not doing it right, then people aren't worshiping the Lord. They're saying, oh my heavens, do you hear what's happening up there in the platform? You know, and then you get all embarrassed. You just bring somebody to church that Sunday and you want them to just be blessed. And then it's like, oh, it's not like this usually. It's not like this usually. But it's important to be skillful in playing. Now, you know, there's a balance in everything. Skillful in playing is important, but we don't want to slip into being overly professional. You know, where the heart isn't important. Friends, the heart's important, but so are technical things. I think the most important aspect of being skillful in playing is that it reflects an attitude of heart. And that's an attitude of heart that says, I want to do this unto the Lord the best I can. You know, it's a shame when the pastor in the pulpit is too casual, too laid back, too I don't need to study, too unconcerned, too lazy to work hard to prepare a good message for the people. But it's a tragedy on the platform when the worship team has the same attitude. This is something important. We want it to be good for the Lord. So skillful in playing. Notice, secondly, it says there in verse 18, a mighty man of valor, a man of war. That means it's somebody who knows how to battle. And did you know that the worship ministry is always a big spiritual warfare battleground? Oh, it always is. If you want a great example of this, you should see the unguarded conversations that pastors have among themselves. You get a bunch of pastors together, and if they're talking for any amount of time, they'll start sharing their war stories about difficulties with worship ministry. And they're legion. You have them all the time. Pastors like to say, you know, when Satan fell from heaven, he landed in the worship team. Well, the old saying is actually the choir loft, but we don't have a choir loft. We have a different sort of setup. And, you know, what they're trying to reflect there is that it's a constant battleground. And if you're going to be involved in worship ministry, or in any ministry for that matter, you should understand that it's going to be a battleground. You're going to be attacked. You're going to be faced with hurt feelings, or pride, or self-focus, or wanting it to do your own way, or all these things are going to be facing you. And if you can't battle spiritually against those things, if you can't battle spiritually against the world and worldly attitudes that might infect your worship team, if you can't battle against temptations and seductions of the devil to stir up strife, and jealousy, and hurt feelings, and pride, and discouragement, anything else he can find. You know, Satan has a special regard for worship ministry. That's what he used to do in heaven before his fall. He used to lead the musical worship around the throne of God. And he knows the power of worship ministry. And so he wants to serve strife, and disunity, and contention, and suck out all the power of a worship ministry. He wants the worship team to be so concerned about strife, or contention with the pastor, or among one another, or with the congregation, that they're not focused on the Lord and doing the job they should be doing. Not only that, I think that a worship minister needs to have not only good spiritual warfare against the world and against the devil, might I say that a good worship minister needs to have spiritual warfare against the flesh. You know, a lot of what goes on under the name of the devil, it's not the devil at all. It's your flesh. Well, if the devil's really attacking us, it's not the devil. It's your flesh. Sometimes it's a lot easier to say it's the devil than to die to yourself and to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. My friends, the devil just doesn't have the time to do all the things we blame him for. It's the flesh a lot of times. And so to be effective in worship ministry or in any ministry, you have to die to self. If you must be on the platform, it's time to die to self. Isn't that the glorious thing about worship ministry? You know, I'm looking at a whole congregation full of worship ministers. People who can worship God. And they feel like, well, I can only do it if I'm up on the platform. What, you need an audience before you can worship God? There's something wrong there. If you must have the solo, you need to die to yourself. If you must have it your way, you need to die to self. So you've got to battle against the world, the flesh and the devil. A good worship minister is a person that's a mighty man or woman of valor and mighty in war. Look at verse 18 again. It says a good worship minister is prudent in speech. Oh, now this is important. On a lot of different levels. Prudent in speech means they know how to conduct themselves when they speak on the platform. We don't want worship ministers to be preaching sermons from the platform. Yeah, a word of scripture, an encouragement, just a prayer, whatever. That's great. Praise God. The Lord can use that in a marvelous, marvelous way in the context of worship. Praise God. Let there be more of it. But we don't want sermons in Bible studies when we should be worshiping the Lord. Listen, if the worship leaders insisted on preaching sermons, then the preacher's going to insist on singing songs. We don't want it that way, folks. Let's just let everybody do what they're supposed to be doing and God's work will be done. But a worship minister needs to be prudent in speech as well when it comes to handling things among the worship team, don't they? Oh, there's always strife. There's always contention. Ready to be stirred up. Satan's ready to exploit anything you give him. Somebody's singing a song and all of a sudden, they're not singing it right. They're off key. They're off pitch. Whatever you want to call it. And they're just not hitting it. Nobody wants to tell them. And all of a sudden, nobody's telling them, but everybody's whispering. Everybody's whispering. Nobody's telling them. And then the sound's funny. And then what's this? And then that. Nobody's being prudent in speech and just putting their arm around that brother and sister. Hey, you know what? It's just not working on the song. Either you shouldn't sing it right now until you learn it for later or we'll work on it or let's do it. But that's just being prudent in speech. That's just telling the truth in love. Worship ministers need to be prudent also when they're talking with the congregation. You know, as I said before, you get 10 people, you got 10 different opinions on music. And it's important that the worship ministry just not be like the request band for the congregation. Well, I think we sing this song too much. I don't think we sing this song enough. I think we should do this. I think we should do that. And it's not that your feelings or your attitudes are unimportant, but it's important that the worship ministers know how to be prudent in speech and talking with the congregation. Let them know that we have a vision, that we have a purpose, that we know where we're going with worship ministry. Anything the congregation says or suggests or wants, we'll pray about it. We'll take it before the Lord. Did you see the next one, verse 18? A handsome person. No, it's not a fashion show up on the platform for the worship ministry. We're not worried about getting models up here. That's not the idea at all. But your appearance is important. You shouldn't have an appearance that distracts people. If people are worried about how dressed up you are or how dressed down you are, then something's wrong. The worship leader should be invisible. Just say, look past me, look to the Lord. Our focus here is on the Lord, not on any person. And if you notice, the most important thing is at the very end of verse 18. Did you see that? And the Lord is with him. That's saving the best for last. That's what I want to know in a worship leader. There are some people who are very, very talented musicians and may have marvelous ministries in music, but the Lord is not with them as worship leaders. That's not a criticism. It's not a complaint. It's just that's not what God's called them to be. They should emphasize what God's called them. But there are other people who maybe they're weak in some of these. They're not that skillful in playing yet, but they got the right heart. They're trying to get better. Maybe they, you know, the other things, the prudence in speech. Well, that's coming along. You know, the other things are in development, but the Lord is with them. That's the most important. All these other things we say, hey, you know, grow along with us. Grow with us in these areas. You're not there yet. Fine. Praise the Lord. Grow with us. What I want to know is the Lord with you. Do you have a sense of calling? Are you submitted to the Lord? Are you submitted to the leadership? Do you have that kind of heart? Then God can use you. That's the most important. Well, see how it works out here. In verse 19, "...therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, send me your son David, who is with the sheep." Isn't that precious? David, anointed. Samuel, the great prophet of Israel, comes, pours oil over his head. He wouldn't pour it over his seven brothers. He wouldn't pour it over his dad. But he pours it on David's head. There's David, anointed with oil. And then what does he say next? Father, I can no longer go, tendeth, besheepeth. Send one of mine brethren. I've been anointed. Tending the sheep beneath me now, Lord, I have an anointing. Not at all. He's anointed and he goes, well, Lord, it's up to you to bring it about. David was anointed to be king over Israel. But he didn't start fitting himself for royal robes. He didn't go try on crowns. He said, Lord, you've made the promise. You've put it in my heart. I'll let you bring it about. Isn't that a precious thing? To give it up to the Lord. He says, I'll go back and tend the sheep. There's sheep that need to be taken care of. I'll do that. And when the Lord wants to call me to the palace, he's got my number. Well, he sure did have his number. Look at verse 20. And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent him by his son David, Saul. So David came to Saul and stood before him. And he loved him greatly. And he became his armor bearer. Then Saul sent to Jesse saying, please let David stand before me. He's found favor in my sight. So it was whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul that David would take a harp and play it with his hand. Then Saul would become refreshed and well. And the distressing spirit would depart from him. So it is a beautiful scene. Now we come to the end of chapter 16. It's great. There's Saul being ministered to. His soul is being refreshed and be made well by the music ministry of David. David's playing his harp. Don't think of one of those big harps you see in an orchestra. It's what we call a lute. It was the ancient version of the guitar. There's David playing his guitar and ministering to Saul. Saul's receiving ministry. His heart is being touched. Oh, that's a good thing. And there's David. Well, that's ordained by God. God called him to come up to the palace. You're not king yet, but you're going to learn the ways of the royal court. You're going to learn what it's like to be around royalty. You're going to be learning things that you couldn't learn out tending the sheep. Yes, this is good for David. Saul trusts David. You want to know how much he trusts him? He says, no, this isn't going to be a one-time thing. I want him full-time here. And not only that, he says, make him my armor bearer. Friends, that was a position of high trust and privilege. The armor bearer had his soldier's life in his hands. Saul trusted David. What a beautiful relationship. They loved one another. They trusted. They served one another. It was just great. Not David, not Saul, not any of Saul's servants had a clue what God was going to do next. Isn't that interesting? I guess that's where I want to leave it with you here this morning. We look at it at the end right here, and it just looks like one big happy family. Nobody knew what God was going to do. God was going to do some hard things. God was going to do some great things. God was going to do what He needed to do to accomplish His eternal will. But nobody here had a clue about it. Maybe Samuel, but I don't even think Samuel really knew. Friends, I want you to think about that in conclusion today. You think about the next five, ten years of your life, whatever. You've kind of got an idea, right? You've got some general... I kind of got... You know, you're not filling in all the details, but you've got a general idea how it's going to go. I tell you, you don't have a clue. You don't. God has so much in store for you, both to work inside of you and out through you, that if He were to reveal it all to you right now, you'd either stand back in total disbelief or you'd get proud. God has a work that He wants to accomplish in you. The important thing is that you just focus on what He's set before you right now. As He puts you to tend some sheep, you can tend them. That's fine, just take care of those sheep. God will take care of the rest. Let me say something else about that plan that God has for you that you can't see right now. It's good. Now, when I say God has things you don't even know about, some people say, yeah, God must have a whooping stick for me and I don't know where it's coming from. My friends, the things you don't know that God is going to do in your life, they're good things. Now, on the surface, they might not appear good, but believe me, He's going to show them to be good. And just like David, the promise and the destiny and the calling that He's given you, He's going to fulfill it.