Preached Mother’s Day Sunday, May 9, 2010
from
1 Samuel 25
Theme: The story of the Old Testament heroine Abigail exemplifies to us the ministry of encouraging others to leave vengeance in the hand of God.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
Mothers’ Day is, admittedly, a man-made holiday. But it’s one that is very appropriate for us as Christians to celebrate. In fact, I believe we who profess the name of Jesus ought to celebrate it with greater enthusiasm than anyone else in this world.
The Bible is filled with stories of remarkable women who trusted God and did great things in this world. The faith that the Bible teaches us elevates womanhood higher than any other philosophy, or religion, or movement in human society; and as evidence of this, all we have to do is read the Bible for ourselves and see how godly women abundantly adorn the record of God’s redemptive work on earth.
This morning, we’ll turn our attention to just one of those great women of faith. Her name was Abigail She lived in the times of King David—during the tumultuous days before he was enthroned over the people of Israel. Her remarkable story is told to us in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel 25.
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Now; before we look at that passage, I would like, first, to share from two other passages of Scripture. I don’t believe we can appreciate what Abigail’s story has to teach us unless we know what these two other passages have to say.
The first passage is Romans 12:19; where the apostle Paul wrote to his Christian brothers and sisters and said,
Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord (Romans 12:19).
What practical words! And there are a couple of important spiritual truths about God behind them. For one thing, they are based on the conviction that our God is a God of justice. Those who do evil in His sight don’t ultimately get away with their evil works, but will one day be held accountable to Him for them. And for another, these words are based on the idea that that same God of justice is also sovereign. He is able to work mightily through the circumstances of life to ensure that justice is indeed fully done.
Those two convictions about God are either true or they aren’t. You either believe them or you don’t. And what you believe about them determines what you will do. If you don’t believe God is just or that He is sovereign, then you will dare to take vengeance in your own hand, and seek to return upon others the evil that they do to you. That, of course, is something we should never do; because there’s no way in the world that we could ever execute justice in a just manner. Because we are fallen, we will always do justice ‘unjustly’; and thus, we will make ourselves guilty before the God of justice. But, on the other hand, if you truly believe that God is both just and sovereign, then you will do what Paul says—you’ll never seek to avenge yourself when others mistreat you. You’ll never need to. Rather, you’ll “give place to wrath; for it is written [in Deuteronomy 32:35], ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.” He alone is wise enough to know how to execute vengeance in a truly ‘just’ way; and because He is sovereign, He alone will do so perfectly.
Now; that’s a basic principle of the Christian life. It may not be the typical thing you hear talked about in a Mother’s Day sermon; but the fact is that true followers of Jesus are not a people who avenge themselves. They leave the matter of vengeance in God’s hand—knowing that, whether in the present age or on the great Day of Judgment yet to come, the almighty God will bring about justice for them. But all too often, in the heat of the moment, even we who call ourselves Christians forget those great truths about our mighty God. We easily become overwhelmed by our own anger; and we become tempted to avenge ourselves by the power of our own flesh.
And it’s because this is so that we need to note another great passage from the New Testament. In the last two verses of the book of James, we read:
Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19-20).
And this is why Abigail’s story has so much to teach us. She was a wise and godly woman who stepped before an entire army of men who—in the heat of the moment—had forgotten the sovereign God of justice, and who were about to take vengeance into their own hands. A horrific and sinful act of bloodshed would have resulted if they had done what they had intended. But she was used by God to remind this angry army that vengeance is His alone; and because of this, she was able to avert a horrific disaster, and was able to bring about the glory to God and the good of His people.
So; having those two New Testament affirmations in mind—that vengeance belongs to God alone; and that God sometimes uses humble people to remind us of this and turn us away from a rash act of self-vengeance—we’re ready now to read this remarkable woman’s story. And I pray that we’ll not only learn from it to leave vengeance in the hand of God—where it truly belongs; but that we’ll also grow to become more like this godly woman, and be used by God to turn others from the error of avenging themselves and to a confident trust in His sovereign justice instead.
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Abigail’s story begins with the nation of Israel in crisis. Verse one says,
Then Samuel died; and the Israelites gathered together and lamented for him, and buried him at his home in Ramah. And David arose and went down to the Wilderness of Paran (v. 1).
Samuel was a great prophet; and at God’s command, he had anointed Saul as king over Israel. But Saul was an unfaithful and disobedient man; and so, God had told Samuel that He would remove Saul from the throne and put David in his place—a man after God’s own heart (see 13:13-14). Saul was jealous of David and sought to kill him. And so, with the death of the prophet Samuel, we find David on the run from murderous King Saul. He and his small army of about 600 men had fled to Paran—the desert wilderness north of Sinai.
With that background information in place, the scene now turns to a sheep farmer in the land over which David was destined by God to reign.
Now there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel, and the man was very rich. He had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. And he was shearing his sheep in Carmel (v. 2).
Maon is just east of the Dead Sea. It’s still there; and so is the town of Carmel—just a short distance away. This man was shearing his sheep in Carmel; and as was often the tradition of that day, the shearing of his sheep was also accompanied with feasting and celebration. It must have been quite a celebration because he had accumulated a great number of sheep and goats.
It’s then that we’re told the name of this man and of his wife. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a more unlikely couple than they:
The name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. And she was a woman of good understanding and beautiful appearance; but the man was harsh and evil in his doings. He was of the house of Caleb.
Abigail’s name means “Source of Joy”. And we’re told of what an outstanding woman she was. But her husband’s name—Nabal—meant “Fool”. I doubt that his mother and father gave that name to him at birth. I suspect that it was the name given to him after people saw what kind of a man he grew up to be. And the idea wasn’t that he was a man of low intelligence. He couldn’t have been a dumb man and have become as successful and prosperous as he was. Rather, his name meant that he was a surly, sinful and disagreeable man. As we might put it in our day, this guy was a real jerk. It’s surprising too; because he came from the house of Caleb—a man of a noble history in Israel.
How in the world Nabal and Abigail ever got together was probably a mystery to everyone who knew them.
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So; with the introductions out of the way, David is brought back into the story—along with his poor, hungry band of men on the run. Before they had fled to Paran from King Saul, they had been in Maon. And throughout their time there, they were very good to Nabal’s servant and shepherds. David’s army defended them from surrounding bands of marauders that had sought to attack them; and was a ‘wall of defense’ to them constantly. Nabal’s servants knew this; and were grateful to David and his army for the protection they had provided.
And so, come ‘shearing time’, it would have been natural that David would ask for a favor in return. We’re told;
When David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep, David sent ten young men; and David said to the young men, “Go up to Carmel, go to Nabal, and greet him in my name. And thus you shall say to him who lives in prosperity: ‘Peace be to you, peace to your house, and peace to all that you have! Now I have heard that you have shearers. Your shepherds were with us, and we did not hurt them, nor was there anything missing from them all the while they were in Carmel. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day. Please give whatever comes to your hand to your servants and to your son David.'” So when David’s young men came, they spoke to Nabal according to all these words in the name of David, and waited (vv. 4-9).
Isn’t it interesting that the Bible tells us that, after speaking these words, David’s men “waited”? Why should they have had to wait for an answer to such a request. Given all that they had done, shouldn’t they have immediately been given some food by Nabal? But, as it turns out, Nabal seemed to walk around—kicking the dirt, rubbing his chin, and crafting a nasty answer in his mind.
Then Nabal answered David’s servants, and said, “Who is David, and who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants nowadays who break away each one from his master. Shall I then take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men when I do not know where they are from?” (vv. 10-11).
What a fool! What a jerk! And what’s worse, what a fateful answer!
So David’s young men turned on their heels and went back; and they came and told him all these words. Then David said to his men, “Every man gird on his sword.” So every man girded on his sword, and David also girded on his sword. And about four hundred men went with David, and two hundred stayed with the supplies (vv. 12-13).
And you can be very sure that David wasn’t going back to ask ‘pretty please with sugar on top’. If you were to look ahead to verses 21-22, you’d see what David had in mind:
Now David had said, “Surely in vain I have protected all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belongs to him. And he has repaid me evil for good. May God do so, and more also, to the enemies of David, if I leave one male of all who belong to him by morning light” (vv. 21-22).
David was on his way, with four-hundred armed men, to avenge himself. And you need to know that had David been able to do what he intended, there would have been nothing left of Nabal and his entire house but a smoking pile of rubble!
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Now; it wasn’t just that Nabal was a selfish and ungrateful man. He was certainly that; but he was worse than just that. One of the reasons Nabal’s answer was so evil was because he knew the truth about David. It was no mystery to him that God intended to set David on the throne. It was no mystery to him that he was on the run because Saul was wickedly jealous of him and wanted to kill him. That’s why he made the degrading comment about “servants” breaking away “each one from his master”. He knew the score. But Nabal’s hard heart was the heart of a fool.
But Nabal’s servants also knew the score. And there was someone else who knew very well what it was that God had purposed for David. And in contrast to her husband, she was “of good understanding”. The Bible goes on to say;
Now one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Look, David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master; and he reviled them. But the men were very good to us, and we were not hurt, nor did we miss anything as long as we accompanied them, when we were in the fields. They were a wall to us both by night and day, all the time we were with them keeping the sheep. Now therefore, know and consider what you will do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his household. For he is such a scoundrel that one cannot speak to him” (vv. 14-17).
My translation has it that the servant called Nabal “a scoundrel”. The New International Version has him say that Nabal was “a wicked man”. The English Standard Version has it that he was “a worthless man”. But it literally reads the way it’s translated in the old King James version; that he was “a son of Baliel”—that is, a son of worthlessness. Later in history, that name Belial came to be another name for the devil. This servant really dug up a strong name to pin on Nabal! And it’s worth noting that Abigail didn’t even bother to argue the point! She knew what kind of man her husband was!
But it’s then that we see what kind of woman she was:
Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep already dressed, five seahs of roasted grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on donkeys. And she said to her servants, “Go on before me; see, I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. So it was, as she rode on the donkey, that she went down under cover of the hill; and there were David and his men, coming down toward her, and she met them (vv. 18-20).
Isn’t that amazing? Given the kind of man her husband was, she might have been tempted to put her hands behind her back and do nothing at all—except, perhaps, to find a convenient reason to be out of town for a few days. But instead, she took immediate action to fend off the disaster that was on its way. And it wasn’t just because she wanted to protect her husband’s estate and save the lives of his servants. Much more; it was because—as we’ll see when we read on—she really wanted to protect God’s call on David, and to protect David’s reputation as the soon-to-be king of Israel.
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Now; David was already on his way to Carmel—probably muttering to himself all the things he was going to do to Nabal and to everything that belonged to him. So, it must have surprised him greatly to find some men with donkeys on the way—loaded up with a generous supply of food for him and his men. And it must have been even more surprising to him to find Nabal’s gracious wife following along immediately afterwards.
Now when Abigail saw David, she dismounted quickly from the donkey, fell on her face before David, and bowed down to the ground. So she fell at his feet and said: “On me, my lord, on me let this iniquity be! And please let your maidservant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your maidservant. Please, let not my lord regard this scoundrel Nabal. For as his name is, so is he: Nabal is his name, and folly is with him! But I, your maidservant, did not see the young men of my lord whom you sent” (vv. 23-26).
What a humble woman! She took the guilt of her scoundrel of a husband to herself. In doing this, she wisely softened David’s wrath. But look at how she then hints to David that, in seeking to avenge himself, he was daring to take up an act that only belonged to God. Look at how she helps him see that God is sovereign, and that He would certainly place David on the throne, and how this act of vengeance would be a dreadful stain of sin on his rule. She said;
Now therefore, my lord, as the LORD lives and as your soul lives, since the LORD has held you back from coming to bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hand, now then, let your enemies and those who seek harm for my lord be as Nabal. And now this present which your maidservant has brought to my lord, let it be given to the young men who follow my lord. Please forgive the trespass of your maidservant. For the LORD will certainly make for my lord an enduring house, because my lord fights the battles of the LORD, and evil is not found in you throughout your days. Yet a man has risen to pursue you and seek your life, but the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living with the LORD your God; and the lives of your enemies He shall sling out, as from the pocket of a sling. And it shall come to pass, when the LORD has done for my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you ruler over Israel, that this will be no grief to you, nor offense of heart to my lord, either that you have shed blood without cause, or that my lord has avenged himself. But when the LORD has dealt well with my lord, then remember your maidservant” (vv. 27-31).
I suspect that what really got David was her wish that God would act on his behalf; and “sling out” his enemies “as from the pocket of a sling”. That would have reminded David of God’s past grace to him in rescuing him from the hand of Goliath with just a sling and a stone. Abigail wisely ‘spoke’ David’s ‘language’ at that moment; and reminded him that the same God he trusted then could be trusted now.
And it worked. David’s heart was softened, his wrath cooled, his error revealed, and his heart rebuked.
Then David said to Abigail: “Blessed is the LORD God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! And blessed is your advice and blessed are you, because you have kept me this day from coming to bloodshed and from avenging myself with my own hand. For indeed, as the LORD God of Israel lives, who has kept me back from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, surely by morning light no males would have been left to Nabal!” So David received from her hand what she had brought him, and said to her, “Go up in peace to your house. See, I have heeded your voice and respected your person” (vv. 32-35).
I think everyone—Abigail, Nabal’s servants, David’s soldiers, and even David himself—all heaved a great sigh of relief at that moment; don’t you? How much better to leave room for the wrath of God! How much better to let the sovereign God of justice handle things in His time!
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And handle it He did! We read;
Now Abigail went to Nabal, and there he was, holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk; therefore she told him nothing, little or much, until morning light. So it was, in the morning, when the wine had gone from Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that his heart died within him, and he became like a stone (vv. 36-37).
That “his heart died within him” was another way of saying that, after his wife told him what had happened, the man suffered a debilitating stroke. And I can’t help but see irony in the fact that we’re told he “became like a stone”. Hadn’t Abigail already expressed the prayer that David’s enemies would be ‘slung out’ by God “as from the pocket of a sling”?
Apparently, because of this stroke, Nabal had been given the grace of a little time to reflect; and, perhaps, even to repent of his evil ways. But it was to no avail. We read;
Then it happened, after about ten days, that the LORD struck Nabal, and he died (v. 38).
But note carefully that it wasn’t by the hand of David. David had fully intended to bring an end to Nabal—and even to the innocent men who served him; but Abigail was used by God to bring David back to his senses. He didn’t avenge himself; but instead, gave place to the One who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.”
So when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the LORD, who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and has kept His servant from evil! For the LORD has returned the wickedness of Nabal on his own head.” And David sent and proposed to Abigail, to take her as his wife (v. 39).
Abigail had asked that, once the Lord had dealt well with David, that he would remember her. And clearly, he did! He couldn’t let such a wonderful woman slip away from him;
When the servants of David had come to Abigail at Carmel, they spoke to her saying, “David sent us to you, to ask you to become his wife.” Then she arose, bowed her face to the earth, and said, “Here is your maidservant, a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord” (vv. 40-41).
And apparently, given the kind of man Nabal was, it didn’t take Abigail very long to get through the grieving process . . .
So Abigail rose in haste and rode on a donkey, attended by five of her maidens; and she followed the messengers of David, and became his wife (v. 42).
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Nabal lived up to his name, “Fool”. But Abigail’s name means “Source of Joy”; and she clearly lived up to her name too. She lived up to it by reminding David that his God is the sovereign God of justice; and that he shouldn’t take vengeance into his own hands, but leave room for the wrath of Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” She was used by God to turn a sinner from the error of his way; and thus, she truly covered a multitude of sins.
On this Mothers’ Day, let’s learn from the example of a great woman of God. When it comes to our own hearts, let’s embrace fully the principle she held to—that our God is a sovereign God of justice; and that we should never do wrong in taking vengeance into our own hands but rather leave it to God to bring about perfect justice on our behalf in His own time. And when it comes to others around us in the body of Christ, let’s learn from her example to speak a timely word, turn them from the error of avenging themselves, and encourage them to place a confident trust in His sovereign justice instead.