Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Coming up next on Hope From the Word.

Bill Luebkemann: Any time we think we know better than someone else, we judge them, or whatever, we're the judge and the jury, we're stepping in on God's territory. The Lord works in our lives both to enable us, empower us, and help us and lead us to do the right thing and also probably to prevent us from doing the wrong thing. And who knows how many times we might have done the wrong thing somewhere, somehow, and something happened to prevent us from doing it?

Guest (Male): Today on Hope From the Word, we meet a woman who prevented a catastrophe from falling on her family. Pastor Bill Luebkemann will have the details for us momentarily. He's been taking us through the book of 1 Samuel, and we're up to chapter 25.

If you've been with us recently, you may recall how David beautifully handled his conflict with Saul. He had the perfect opportunity to retaliate against the man who was trying to kill him, but didn't. Now today, we find him in a similar circumstance, but this time, he tries to take matters into his own hands.

Rather than getting all worked up and seeking revenge, there was a much better course of action to take. Abigail gives it to us in 1 Samuel 25, and that's where we join Pastor Bill now.

Bill Luebkemann: I don't know if these guys when they left said, "We're going to be back with David and we're going to have our swords in our hands." I'm not sure how he knew that or if he just figured it out on his own, realized that they left in disgust, and figured that this was the only possible thing that could come back after they were insulted in such a way. It's interesting, though, this guy says to the wife about her husband, "He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him."

It's interesting he can get away saying that to the wife. Well, she must have already known it. They all knew it. They all could talk about it. It was no secret here. Everybody knew it. No doubt they talked about it previously, and he's just clarifying it here. It's a bad position to be in when you can't be receptive to anybody who has something to say to you.

We can learn a lesson from this as well today. We always need to be open and willing to hear. If someone comes to us, has some concern, wants to share something with us, the least we could do is listen to them. Here was a guy that was a fool. He was closed off. He was churlish and evil in his doings. He knew the right way. He always knew the right way. He didn't want to hear what anybody else had to say. He was always right and you were always wrong, and that was the end of it, period. No discussion.

Abigail here now, you can look at this two different ways here. In verse 18, Abigail lost no time. Look, on one hand, she's protecting her family. Her family's about to get wiped out. She's a good wife here, and I don't know if they had any kids, but possibly a mother. She's on one hand going to protect her family, but on the other hand, she's going out doing things not telling her husband. So there's kind of a plus side and a minus side here, kind of a pro and a con. But she didn't waste any time here.

Abigail lost no time. I don't think this is an excuse for any of us to be going out and doing things behind the backs of our spouses, although it certainly seemed to be called for in this case, and she seemed to know that it was necessary. Abigail lost no time. She took 200 loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, 100 cakes of raisins, and 200 cakes of pressed figs and loaded them on donkeys. In other words, she went to the Entenmann's store and just stocked up.

Then she told her servants, "Go on ahead. I'll follow you." But she did not tell her husband Nabal. Look, her husband had 4,000 animals, and she took five of them here. Five dressed sheep. If you have 4,000 animals, you probably have a pretty big size field. But she took five seahs of roasted grain. The best guess is that a seah was a little bit less than a bushel, so we're not talking about a huge amount of grain there. Two skins of wine, not an excessive amount of wine. 200 loaves of bread, it was kind of like pita bread. It was flat. It was not 200 loaves of Wonder Bread. It probably didn't take up as much room. What she took was a very modest amount of goods.

She told her servants, "Go on ahead. I'll follow you." But she did not tell her husband Nabal. You know, this reminds me of when Jacob was coming back and he's going to hook up with Esau. Remember as he was getting closer and closer and closer to his brother Esau, who he hadn't seen in around 20 years. Right? Seven years for the first wife, seven years for the next one, and then a few more years after that. He hadn't seen his brother in like 20 years. He had stiffed his brother, stole the birthright from him through some shady underhanded dealing.

When he's coming back to meet his brother, remember how after he wrestled with God that night, he put all the gifts at the front of the line? Actually, he did that first and then he wrestled with God that night. You kind of get the reminder of that here. He was trying to butter it up, butter up his brother. You kind of see it here. Abigail here doesn't want to waste any time. If there's any chance at all she can avert a disaster, she wants to do it.

You know, when we were looking at the Ninevites on Sunday in the book of Jonah and how Jonah didn't preach to them and say, "Repent or you're going to get wiped out." He just said, "You're going to get wiped out." He didn't say in 40 days, if you don't change your mind, he didn't give there was no hope, no possibility to be restored, no nothing. It was a message of condemnation only. In 40 days, you're going to get wiped out. The Ninevites said, "Man, if we can avoid this, we want to. We're going to repent and maybe God will relent."

That's kind of the same idea that you get from here. Abigail thinking to herself, "Maybe I can avert this tragedy that's going to happen." And she got right on it and she is out there on top of things immediately. As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them. You kind of get the idea she went around the bend or down and up, and all of a sudden, boom, there she is looking face to face with David.

David had just said, just prior to this point, he just said this: "It's been useless, all my watching over this fellow's property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him." This guy is really hot. And you know, God now here's an example of God answering a prayer in a different way than what you asked for.

You're reminded of when Peter said, "Lord, should we call down fire from heaven? We want to wipe them out." Well, that's what David wanted to do here. He wanted to wipe them out. And God answered the prayer here. "May God deal with me if I leave any of them standing, may God deal with me." Well, God dealt with him in a different way. So you kind of get the idea this is sort of like a prayer and God answered it because here's Abigail with this gift.

The fact that she has that gift is going to prevent this great tragedy of him killing all these people, most of whom would have been innocent. When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed down before David with her face to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, "My lord, let the blame be on me alone. Please let your servant speak to you. Hear what your servant has to say. May my lord pay no attention to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name. His name is Fool, and folly goes with him. But as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my master sent."

This woman's here is basically apologizing, and it's a little confusing to me because on the one hand she says, "Let the blame be on me alone." In other words, "Let me take the blame," but then a little while later she says, "I didn't know anything about it. I didn't see the men that you sent." So how can she take the blame for something that she didn't see or did not know that was happening? You get the idea, though, that she certainly is a godly woman, almost like she wants to substitute her own offering for what her silly husband didn't do.

You can see a picture of Christ in here and the atonement that He offers us and that He substituted Himself for us and that He died so that we didn't have to and that He shed His blood so our blood did not need to be shed. He stepped in place of us. Nabal here, disaster was hanging over the guy. It was about to fall on him and she stepped in the way and averted it. She says, "My own husband, he's a fool." Not a great way to talk about your husband, but certainly factually accurate in this case.

Now verse 26: "Now since the Lord has kept you, my lord, from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hand, as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, may your enemies and all who intend to harm my lord be like Nabal. And let this gift which your servant has brought to my lord be given to the men who follow you. Please forgive your servant's offense, for the Lord will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my lord because he fights the Lord's battles. Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live."

This woman here has a good grip on things. She says right off the bat here, "Look, the Lord has kept you, my lord," meaning David. "The Lord has kept you from bloodshed and from avenging yourself." She recognizes that the hand of the Lord is in this, and David also we're going to see he recognizes it as well. He got a quick answer to that prayer. "May God deal with me be it ever so severely if I leave any of them alone." Bang, go around the bend, boom, there's the lady there with an offering. And guess what? He leaves them all alone.

He said over and over again, "Look, the Lord will deal with Saul. I don't need to kill him." I think in the next chapter he says, "You know, he might get killed in battle or he might just die of old age, but one way or the other, God's going to deal with him. I don't have to." But somehow David here with this guy Nabal is doing the opposite of what he did with Saul, and he appreciates this wake-up call, if you want to call it that.

She says here that surely as the Lord lives and as you live, may your enemies and all who intend to harm my lord be like Nabal. In other words, anybody that you have that's an enemy or anybody that wants to harm you, let them all be fools. "And let this gift be given to your men who follow you." In other words, maybe what she means is, "This gift isn't even good enough for you. You're the king. This isn't much. It's not good enough for you, but at least it's a little something for your men for what they did."

"Please forgive your servant's offense." You see repentance in here, and you see a turning, which is the repentance is, "Please forgive," and the act there's an action that goes with it, and the action is, "Here's this gift here to help you." For she knows the Lord will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my lord because he fights the Lord's battles. There's no confusion over who David is. They know who he is. They know he's fighting the Lord's battles. She knows the Lord's hand is upon him. She knows he's not just going out and fighting his own battles. He's fighting the Lord's battles.

She knows, "Look, it's good that you didn't come in and kill this guy and all his innocent servants who also think he's a fool. Better off killing the Lord's enemies and fighting the Lord's battles." She says, "Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live." In other words, don't make any big mistakes, and we just avoided one.

"Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my lord will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the Lord your God, but the lives of your enemies He will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling." The Hebrews, the Jews take that phrase to refer to everlasting life, "be bound securely in the bundle of the living." May your life be bound up with the living, and Jewish tradition took that to be referring to eternal life, everlasting life.

Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, that's not what's going to happen. You're not going to get your life taken from you. In fact, even more so than that, you're going to live forever. But the lives of your enemies are going to be taken away and they're going to be hurled away just like the pocket of a sling, just like when David used that sling to hurl a stone and kill Goliath. Just like that, may the life of your enemy be hurled away.

Verse 30: "When the Lord has done for my lord every good thing He promised concerning him and has appointed him leader over Israel." Again you see here there's no mistaking that she knows what's going to be happening. She says it here very clearly. "When the Lord has done for my lord every good thing He promised and has appointed him leader over Israel." She knows he's going to be the leader. She knows all these good things are going to happen.

Then in verse 31 it says, "My lord will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. And when the Lord has brought my lord success, remember your servant." She's saying here, "Look, the Lord's going to do all these things and it would be better once He does them, it would be best if you didn't have on your conscience this needless bloodshed. Keep the bloodshed to the people who need to be killed and not to the innocent people. And by the way, remember your servant." I'm not sure what kind of a proposal that was, but David makes a proposal to her a little bit later.

David said to Abigail, "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. Otherwise, as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by daybreak."

David here recognizing the hand of God is in this. David here not arguing with her. He's not like Nabal, who can never be told that he's wrong, never be told that he made a mistake. Nobody can ever approach him. The servant said about Nabal back in verse 17, "He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him." There's a difference between a wicked man and a righteous man, between a fool and someone who's got a brain. A wicked man, no one can talk to him.

Here's a guy that's the king of the nation and can admit he's wrong. If we can't admit we're wrong every once in a while, then we're missing it. If we can't be open to hear. Well, David made some mistakes, but when the prophet Nathan came to David and said, "You are that man," David repented immediately. He didn't say, "Oh, well, you know, it really depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

He didn't pussyfoot around, dillydally, try to jump around, argue about words. "This is what this means" or "that's what that means" or, "We're going to say one thing and do another, make it sound a certain way or keep our fingers crossed and behind our back when we say, oh yes, we promise not to raise taxes at all, we would never do that." Not that way at all.

We see we got the Nabal guy here. He's a wicked guy. No one can talk to him. We got David over here on the other side. He's the king. He knows when God is speaking to him. "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me." He can see the hand of God in this.

Look, it's not a good idea to be off doing things behind your spouse's back as a general rule, but in this case obviously God moved on her to do this to prevent a lot of bloodshed. "May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands." In other words, she had good judgment and she prevented the bloodshed. She prevented him from avenging himself with his own hands. Here's the guy that says, "I don't need to kill Saul, God will avenge me there," and here he's recognizing he was about to do the opposite thing with regard to Nabal.

And he said, "Otherwise, as surely as the Lord the God of Israel lives, who has kept me from harming you, well, I would have wiped them all out. There would be nobody left. The whole household would be gone." Then David accepted from her hand what she had brought him and said, "Go home in peace. I have heard your words and granted your request."

You see there that David is changed and David recognizes the error of his way and he sees God's hand in this. He's accepting reproof here from a woman, no less, and from somebody who says she's his servant and who brought him not very much material goods, not very much things. But enough to see that David wasn't really not into it for the money. It wasn't like he was trying to get rich with it.

When Abigail went to Nabal, he was in the house holding a banquet like that of a king. So then he was just out of control. You get the idea the guy was out of control here. He was spending money like there was no tomorrow, spending more money than he had to spend. When Abigail went to Nabal, he was in the house holding a banquet like that of a king. He was in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until daybreak.

Then in the morning, when Nabal was sober, his wife told him all these things, and his heart failed him and he became like a stone. And ten days later, the Lord struck him and he died. You see there's an example how God does take care of things and that's all David had to do was leave things up to God. He didn't have to take it into his own hands. If David had stayed back with his 600 guys, if he hadn't strapped on the swords, if he hadn't been off ready to attack, she still would have come with all the goods. And she still would have gone back and told her husband and he still would have probably become like a stone and died, and David wouldn't have had to have been bothered marching with all his guys there.

When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, "Praise be to the Lord who has upheld my cause against Nabal for treating me with contempt. He has kept His servant from doing wrong and has brought Nabal's wrongdoing down on his own head." Look, we need to let God do the judging. Any time we think we know better than someone else, we judge them, or whatever, we're the judge and the jury, we're stepping in on God's territory. David always allowed the Lord to take care of things, and in a time like this where he didn't allow the Lord to take care of things, the Lord still took care of things and prevented it from happening.

The Lord works in our lives both to enable us, empower us, and help us and lead us to do the right thing and also probably to prevent us from doing the wrong thing. And who knows how many times we might have done the wrong thing somewhere, somehow, and something happened to prevent us from doing it? In this case here, certainly David acknowledges that, which makes him quite a man for doing this.

Then David sent word to Abigail, asking her to become his wife. His servants went to Carmel and said to Abigail, "David has sent us to take you to become his wife." Look, to take you, I think it says asking her in the verse 39. So you get the idea that he didn't force her. He invited her. She bowed down with her face to the ground and said, "Here is your maidservant, ready to serve you and wash the feet of my lord's servants." She said, "I'm not even worthy to be anything except a servant to the servants."

Now here's a woman who had great wealth. Her husband died, now she owns all that wealth. And she could have said, "Hey, I'm wealthy, major investments and whatever. Look up to me. I'm going to party and dress up and go to the parties with the high-falutin high life in town. You'll read about me on the society page and you'll see my name in there every week and what party I went to that week."

But she didn't see herself to be anything more than a servant to the servant. You sort of get a picture of Christ in that also. Abigail quickly got on a donkey and attended by her five maids went with David's messengers and became his wife. So she took him up on his offer and took her maids with her and she became his wife. David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel and they were both and they both were his wives.

But Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Palti son of Laish who was from Gallim. So he married another gal. Remember he had been married to he was Saul's son-in-law, his wife was Michal. She was the one that helped him escape from Saul. And now Saul, maybe Saul didn't like it being known that he was fighting his son-in-law. Maybe he didn't want him to be called the son-in-law anymore. I don't know why, but maybe just wanted to spite David or whatever.

But he took his daughter who was really already married to David and he took her, David had fled, she was still there in Jerusalem, Saul took the daughter and gave her to someone else. David gets her back, of course, later on. Meanwhile David had married this woman Ahinoam of Jezreel somewhere along the way, and now he marries Abigail. So now he really has three wives, or two if you don't count the one back in Jerusalem.

Look, yeah, that's called polygamy. Polygamy was never right. It was never acceptable. It was never God's will. Some people read the Bible and say, "God condones it." Obviously these people in Utah that do it, they probably read stuff like this approvingly. But way back in the very beginning of the Bible it says a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh. It doesn't say the three or the four or the six. People can look at this and say, "Look, this guy had multiple wives, so obviously that's okay now." But God said the two will become one flesh. There were people in the Old Testament that had multiple wives. It was never approved, never condoned, never acceptable, never the right thing, and it always caused problems.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of 1 Samuel. You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet.

Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope From the Word wherever you find your podcasts. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10 a.m. and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org.

And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study of 1 Samuel next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.