DEVOTIONAL 43: PLAYING YOUR LYRE FOR YOUR ENEMY
I will also praise You with a harp, Even Your truth, O my God; To You I will sing praises with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. Psalm 71:22
What if someone were jealous of you to the point of reading wrong motives into everything you did? What if this person, your declared enemy, asked you to serve him or her in many ways? And how would you feel after you did every act of service requested in a sacrificial and generous way, but your enemy hated you even more for fulfilling the requests? What would be your response? Would you try to give him (or her) moments of beauty and peace and relief from his pain?
Because that is what David did for King Saul.
From the time David was a young boy, all he ever wanted to do for Saul was to serve him and bless him. At various times, David served as a personal musician, as the equipment manager for Saul’s troops, and as the most effective soldier in Saul’s army. Whatever Saul asked David to do, David put forth extraordinary effort and prayer to exceed Saul’s expectations. And therein lay the problem. Even though David only meant good toward Saul, the very excellence in David’s efforts incensed Saul and incited the king’s jealousy further.
Saul threw spears at the young man, gave orders to have others kill him, and banished him from his kingdom so that David had to leave his home and family and all that was familiar. Saul stripped David of all he had in return for the young man’s doing everything in his power to demonstrate his love, loyalty, and desire to please.
So what did David do? He continued to risk his life for Saul over and over again. When he was in Saul’s courts, he played the most beautiful music of any of Saul’s musicians in an effort to comfort the king and to give him peace. When the evil but brilliant Doeg told lies about David, the king never took a minute to consider David’s track record but immediately believed the gossip. Saul really needed no excuse to believe the worst of David, so the king drove him away from his native land. The hardest part for David was being driven away from the temple and the religious life of his community, a great loss to a man who loved the Lord with all his heart. It was during one of the times of being on the run that David said the words in Psalm 120:5:
Woe is me, for I sojourn in Meshech, For I dwell among the tents of Kedar! NASB
Matthew Poole in his commentary paraphrases David’s lament this way:
“Let us weep, because in this life we are forced to sit by the waters of Babylon, and are yet strangers and as it were banished and barred from being satisfied with the pleasures of that river which gladdens the city of God. Alas, if we did consider that our country were heaven, and did apprehend this place here below to be our prison, or place of banishment, the least absence from our country would draw tears from our eyes and sighs from our hearts, with David (Psalms 120:5):”
David, on the run and hunted as prey by Saul, had ample opportunity to end his banishment and persecution by ridding himself of this enemy Saul, yet opted to demonstrate his love and mercy to Saul time after time. Once when Saul took three-thousand men to pursue and kill David, the king left himself in a vulnerable position while relieving himself in a cave. David could have easily escaped a future of having a price on his head, but instead he cut off a piece of Saul’s cloak to demonstrate what he could have done if he had so chosen. David says to his murderous pursuer:
“12 May the Lord judge between you and me. And may the Lord avenge the wrongs you have done to me, but my hand will not touch you.” I Samuel 24:12
This episode ends with David giving Saul an assurance he will never wipe away the king’s descendants from the earth. That is what David gives his enemy instead of what Saul richly deserves.
Although Psalm 137 is about being taken captive by the Babylonians, the doleful yearning to be restored to home is timeless for God’s people. One of the most poignant scenes in the Bible for me is when the captives have been in bondage for some time and are asked to sing the songs of their native Zion for their captives.1 These are the holy songs, songs meant for reverent worship and not for the entertainment of the hedonistic Babylonians. At some point the captives cannot go on, and in grief and sorrow hang their harps on the trees by the river. They sit, which is a posture of dejection and futility. Psalm 137:1-4 portrays this heartbreaking scene.
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
There are scholars who believe that not singing for their captors was the right thing to do, but remember that Jeremiah had told them to make the best of the situation in their new land, to build homes, and have children. Who knows how winsome the songs of Zion may have been to at least some of the Babylonians? In the history of God’s people, those who did serve their captors, Daniel and Nehemiah in particular, were able to do great things for God’s people and to bring Him much glory.
Often in life, God asks us to be like David. He asks us not just to grit our teeth and endure those who persecute or challenge us; He asks us to pick up our harps and let them hear the music of Heaven through us. Few of us can play musical instruments, but all of us can be played like an instrument in God’s hands. Your soft response to a snappy neighbor or to a boss who is treating you unfairly may be a chord of a different kind of song their ears have never heard. Instead of hitting a wrong note, your refusal to demand your rights may make a pleasant sounding note in their ears, a refreshing song compared to the blaring cacophony they usually hear all day long.
The next time someone comes against you and you are undeserving of their unkindness, pick up your harp. You may feel dejected or angry, but demonstrate the harmonious and beautiful song God put in your heart the day you were saved.
It is good to give thanks to the LORD And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning And Your faithfulness by night, With the ten-stringed lute and with the harp, With resounding music upon the lyre. Psalm 92:1-4