What's Not Forgotten
Notes
Transcript
1 Samuel 25 (ESV)
Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah. Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran. And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich… He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite… So David sent ten young men. And David said to the young men, “Go up to Carmel, and go to Nabal and greet him in my name. And thus you shall greet him: ‘Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time 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 you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.’ ” … And Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?” So David’s young men turned away and came back and told him all this. And David said to his men, “Every man strap on his sword!” And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword. And about four hundred men went up after David… But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them… Then Abigail made haste… and she said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them… When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt… I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent. Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal… Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live. If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And when the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.” And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! … And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, 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… when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And about ten days later the Lord struck Nabal, and he died… Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife.
“Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.” - Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, 18th century missionary (description of his ministry)
I gotta tell you, I'm good with that.
Because the goal of my ministry is to point people to Christ. It is to magnify Him.
And while I appreciate all the encouragement from you all and I like when you share how the messages on Sunday impact you, I never want anyone walking away from a message thinking about me or the rest of the teaching team and what we do. I want you all walking away thinking about all that God has done and is still doing.
And the same should be true for all of us, no matter our ministry. It should be true for all of us, in all we do. Every word we speak, every action we take, every plan we make should be for Christ, because only then will what we do have a lasting impact.
And I say that not because I think any of you are out for glory for what you do. I say that because I want us all this morning to realize that everything we do for Christ, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant - every word we speak about Him and His goodness, whether or not we see it have any impact - every thing we do for Him and for His glory and for His kingdom is important.
It is infinitely valuable. And it has eternal impact.
In other words, I want to encourage you this morning, because what you do matters, even if you don’t see it. You and your love for God and your service to Him matter - even the seemingly smallest act, if done for Him, matters.
Because in the end, when our race is complete, and we go home to be with our Lord - the odds are that not too long after that, within a few generations, we will be forgotten.
Come see me after service if you know the first names of all eight of your great-grand-parents.
But here’s the thing, though we may be forgotten, all that we did in service to Christ will continue to have an impact, forever.
And that is what we are going to see in our passage today. We are going to see a great woman of faith act out of love for God, and then be all but forgotten. But we will see how her simple act of faith had a lasting impact.
So we’ll pick up right where we left off last week. David has just spared Saul even though he could have easily killed him and ended all of his own suffering. And then, we don’t know how long after, but:
Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah. Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran.
Samuel died. Samuel the prophet. The priest. The judge of Israel. He dies.
And this is a real turning point in the history of Israel here. Samuel is the last judge of Israel. Leadership of God’s people now falls on the monarchy alone.
God’s people will now be ruled by their king. The refrain of the time of the judges, that “in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes,” no longer applies. Now, the king, as God has already said, will bear the responsibility for the people
As the king goes, so will Israel.
And, we’ve already seen, with Saul at the helm, things aren’t going so well. For him or Israel.
And actually, we can read right by what it says here about Samuel and miss how bad things actually were in Israel. We are told that Samuel is buried in his house.
Why is this significant?
Because people were not usually buried in their house in Israel. We read in the Bible of tombs and mausoleums and burial grounds - sometimes mass graves - and this is where people - depending on who they were or how they died - were placed to rest.
Israel did not bury people in their house.
Why? Because that’s what the Canaanites did. They buried people in their house, because they believed it would allow them to stay in contact with them. In Canaanite religion, you still sought counsel from your dead ancestors. You would hire a medium or a necromancer, and ask dearly departed grandpa what he wants you to do in any given situation.
So those that the living wanted to keep in contact with would be buried in their ancestral home.
God, expressly forbids Israel from doing what the Canaanites did:
“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.
Samuel being buried in his house was not Samuel’s choice. It shows that Canaanite religion had influenced the religion of Israel, and those left behind wanted Samuel buried there because they believed it would keep him available for contact.
I wonder if someone is going to try to contact him later in the book...
And as the king goes, so Israel goes.
But we know that David is really the chosen king. He isn’t on the throne yet, but even Saul knows that David is the one who will be. We saw that at the end of the last chapter.
But think about this from David’s point of view. His greatest and most powerful ally is now gone. We have seen how Saul pursued David and when David was with Samuel God protected him.
But what now? What is David going to do?
Well, David runs. He flees to Paran. He goes far away. The wilderness of Paran was the northeast part of the Sinai peninsula. He is on the very southern border of Judah - as far as he can go without actually leaving Israel.
Now think about this - we saw at the end of the last chapter that Saul seemingly repented. He pronounced a blessing on David, acknowledged that he will be king, and even asked David for mercy on his offspring when David becomes king.
On its face, it appears that the danger from Saul is behind David.
But David isn’t buying any of it. As soon as Samuel dies, he hightails it as far away from Saul as he can.
We will see in the next chapter that David was smart.
So now David is living in this wilderness, and while he’s there, he and his 600 men spend their time protecting the people of Judah.
David continues to do the job of the king even though he isn’t technically king yet. He devoted himself to protecting God’s people.
Including the man we are introduced to next:
1 Samuel 25:2–3 (ESV)
And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail.
So here is this man, Nabal. He’s a business man. He raised sheep and goats and sold wool and mohair. And he had a lot of sheep and goats. And he is already very rich. And here we see it was shearing season. It was time to cash in again. It was profit time for Nabal.
And note the name: Nabal. I don’t believe this was actually his name, it is the name by which we was remembered because of this incident and what his wife says later. This kind of thing happens in the Bible often, as we’ll see when Saul’s son Ish-bosheth - never mentioned before - tries to take the throne.
This man is remembered as a fool. And that’s what Nabal means: foolish.
What we have here, is a rich fool. I think Jesus said something about such people...
But we also introduced to Nabal’s wife, Abigail. She is the hero of this account. Her name means “my father is delighted.” It turns out to be a very prophetic name.
Notice the contrast in names, but also notice the contrast in character and quality.
1 Samuel 25:3 (ESV)
The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite.
Quite a contrast here. A woman who is pleasant to behold and who is discerning or wise, married to a man who is unpleasant in every way who acted like a jerk. It has all the makings of a good old American sitcom.
Also note that Nabal was a Calebite. Who was Caleb? He was one of the faithful spies from the book of Numbers, and is named as the chief of the tribe of Judah.
We also know from the book of Joshua that Caleb inherited the land of Hebron. Write that down, we’ll come back to it.
For now, notice that Nabal comes from good stock. He would have been a very important man in the tribe of Judah because of his ancestry and his success.
Can you imagine a world where you are considered important just because of who your family is or how much money you have?
But that’s part of the contrast. We have a rich, worldly, obnoxious, fool - and we have a discerning, wise, and beautiful woman.
This is a contrast between an unbeliever and a believer. Someone who held himself and material possessions the world’s ways in high regard, and someone who held God in high regard.
That is the contrast we’re going see between these two in this chapter.
So, David has been in the south of Judah protecting the people, and that includes Nabal’s flocks and workers. And it’s shearing season. It’s profit time. And David sends some of his men to Nabal, and he tells them to say:
I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time 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 you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.’ ”
What David does is send his men to get their share of the profits for the work they have done. They have protected Nabal’s interests - his business. They have protected him from the loss of sheep and men, and therefore his profits.
I know here in northern New Jersey, when we hear of men coming to collect “protection money” we probably think more of Tony Soprano than king David, but what David was doing here was commonplace in the ancient world.
Protectors like this got paid for their protection. It kept business running for Nabal, so he should share his profits. So David says, “give me whatever you can and want to.”
But Nabal, as it turns it, is like my old boss. He loved the hard work people did until it was time to pay for it. And he could rationalize in the most ridiculous ways why he wasn’t giving people what was rightfully owed to them. The man was an artist, seriously.
That’s what Nabal does here:
And Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?”
He dismisses David. “What? Who’s this David guy? Oh, because he left Saul’s service he wants to be the big man on the block? How do I know he’s even done anything? He ain’t getting nothing from me!”
This guy has absolute contempt for David.
Now notice a few things here. First of all, “who is David?” - really??? Everyone knew who David was.
And then Nabal talks about David leaving his master. He’s talking a out Saul. Nabal actually respects Saul, and not David.
Nabal would rather align himself with the unbeliever. And he was refusing to acknowledge David for who he was - God's chosen king. And this was obvious to everyone, even Saul as we saw last week.
This is an outright rejection of David. Nabal wants nothing to do with him. And it is an outright rejection of David’s God. Nabal - the obnoxious fool - he ignores David’s kindness in protecting him and his business, and he returns evil for good.
Nabal doesn’t care about doing what’s right.
So the men return to David and tell him what Nabal said, and David has an immediate reaction:
1 Samuel 25:13 (ESV)
And David said to his men, “Every man strap on his sword!” And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword. And about four hundred men went up after David
David takes the majority of his men, and he is going to repay Nabal. David did him good, and he returned evil. David is going to repay Nabal what he deserves.
And we know what David’s repayment of Nabal includes, because we are told a few verses later:
Now David had said, “Surely in vain have I guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him, and he has returned me evil for good. God do so to the enemies of David and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.”
David basically vows to kill Nabal and every one of his sons.
This cutting off of the offspring is often used in the Bible as a picture of final judgment. Cutting off all males essentially removes the person from among the living, cutting off even his memory. His name is gone forever.
This is what Saul just asked David not to do when he becomes king. Saul asks David for mercy on his offspring. And David promises he would show them mercy.
Now think about what David is doing here. David has spent a long time running from Saul, defending his life against Saul - he lost all that he had because of Saul. And David refused to take vengeance on Saul. He trusted that God would judge justly and preserve him and provide for him, so he shows Saul mercy.
Here, Nabal refuses to give David a small amount for his work, and David is ready to kill off the guy’s whole family. David didn’t name a price. He asked for whatever Nabal wanted to give him. And because he gave him nothing, David decides a full scale slaughter of all the males is in order.
I don’t know about you, but David’s reaction to Saul and his reaction to Nabal seem very disproportionate to me.
This guy tried to kill me multiple times, chased me from my home, separated me from my wife, and hunted me like a dog. I’ll trust God to handle that.
This guy didn’t give me some bread and some wine - death to his whole family!
You know, we tend to have this idealized view of King David. And there’s a reason for that. He’s the great king! Probably the greatest earthly king the world has ever known. And he’s a pointer to Christ. He’s a man after God’s own heart. There’s a lot to admire.
But when we read the story of his life, David was far less than ideal. He often acted impetuously. Like here. He lied. He doubted. He complained. He was needlessly violent. He had a major lust issue.
And yet, he had great faith. And he often did trust God and rely on only what God wanted to give him. And he often was merciful and forgiving.
Seem’s kind of disproportionate yet again, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s called being an imperfect human. I can relate to that.
And that’s what makes the Bible different from so many other religious books. There is only One Who is held up as perfect. Everyone else - even the giants of the faith - are flawed to the core.
The Bible is very honest about our struggle with sin. It is honest about failure. It is honest about how we can be all faith and trust in one situation, and fear and overreaction in another.
And I thank God for that.
Because I see me in the pages of he Bible. I see God’s salvation for very imperfect people played out in history through very imperfect people. So I can expect that to be my experience as a Christian - that God will work His salvation using, not perfect people, but people far from perfect.
People like me.
Hallelujah!
And here, we see that in David. He is a giant of the faith. He showed patience and mercy. He showed a trust in God I can only strive for. We saw that in the last chapter.
But he also got emotional and acted without thinking. He struggled with and even fell prey to sin. That’s what we see here.
But just like in our lives, God is going to work this out.
And that’s why the story now turns to the hero. The focus now turns to Abigail:
But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them. Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them. They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. Now therefore know this and consider what you should do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his house, and he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.”
He tells her - “David was right! They protected us and Nabal’s business.” And note that he calls Nabal a worthless man. This is used throughout the Bible of those who are disobedient to God. Who are rebels against God.
This is how Eli’s sons were described back at the beginning of the book: as worthless men.
And it would appear by that “one cannot speak to him” remark that this man tried to talking to Nabal - tried telling him what David did - and Nabal wouldn’t listen. But this man also knows the character of Abigail, which is why he comes to her.
And he is even protecting Nabal in the process. Even though he knows Nabal doesn’t deserve it. Even though he knows that Nabal is an evil man. This young man is doing what’s right.
And Abigail knows Nabal won’t listen to her either. So she decides to do what’s right.
1 Samuel 25:18–23 (ESV)
Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared and five seahs of parched grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys. And she said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them...When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground.
As David is about to act on his anger and sin, here comes his sister in Christ. She comes to protect not just her household - remember, even if losing Nabal wasn’t her primary worry, her sons were in danger here.
But God uses her to protect David from committing sin. Through the seemingly insignificant Abigail, God was protecting the extremely significant king of Israel.
What she is doing, is what neither Nabal nor David were. She was doing what was right.
She does what's right and it benefits everyone. It benefits Nabal. It benefits her family. It benefits David. That’s quite an impact.
What Abigail is, is a mighty instrument in God's hand. Through her simple desire to do what’s pleasing to God, He works His purpose through her.
She gives David what Nabal should have. She is acknowledging what and who Nabal wouldn't. She is acknowledging David, and David’s God.
And her prostration before God’s anointed points to the inward state of her heart. She is surrendered to God and lives her life accordingly.
She, too, is a hero of the faith.
Man, do you see what a great storyteller the writer of this book is. If the book of Samuel doesn’t get you excited about how God works, than don’t know what will.
And then Abigail addresses the king:
1 Samuel 25:24 (ESV)
She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt...”
Abigail is asking for forgiveness for her obnoxious husband. She is actually placing herself in harm’s way to get forgiveness for her husband.
She is saying that if David wants to assign guilt here, that it should be put on her.
Can there be a more Christlike act than what Abigail did here?
And she does it knowing Nabal doesn’t deserve mercy. Look at what she says:
Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.
There’s that “worthless” talk again. There’s that foolish talk. She is telling David that he got from Nabal what he can expect to get from Nabal. You can’t expect goodness and justice from someone who is wicked and unjust.
And she apologizes for not knowing David’s men came. She would have been good and just and done what’s right.
She is trying to appease David and keep him from doing what she knows he came to do.
And God is doing it through her for David’s sake.
Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal.
She tells him: “God has intervened here to stop you from sinning, and He will intervene again to judge the guilty.”
She reminds David of what he has forgotten between chapters 24 and 25. David needs to leave it to God to judge.
David should remember what happens when he acts impetuously. Like he did when he lied to the priests of Nob.
David should remember those words he wrote while hiding from Saul:
Psalm 57:1–3 (ESV)
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me; he will put to shame him who tramples on me.
Abigail tells David - this is for God to handle. Rather than take matters into his own hands. Rather than take what might even be rightfully his. Rather than take revenge on his enemy...
…David needs to remember God. He is in control. Everything is His and He will provide for David like He always has. Judgment belongs to Him.
And she offers to David what Nabal should have. She recognizes what he has done and gives him his due.
And then she helps David remember who he is:
Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live.
Abigail knows like everyone else that David is going to be king. She has faith that God will keep His promise.
So she tells David: “you’re the king. God has made a promise to you and He is going to keep it. And His plan for you is not to take revenge on an inconsequential fool. God has called you to fight His battles.”
And that’s what David had been doing. Even in hiding in the wilderness of Paran, David was still protecting the people of Judah. He was doing the king’s job. Abigail is reminding him of that.
And she tells him - the one who has been chosen by God for this cannot commit the sin you came to commit.
She tells him to remember that God will take care of it:
If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.
And there is more in view here than just physical battle with physical enemies.
Abigail tells David that his life “shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of YHWH your God.”
The “bound in the bundle” can also mean to bind a document. In particular, tying up a scroll and sealing it. I believe what Abigail is referencing here as the “bundle of the living” is the scroll or book of the living.
This is the book of life.
Do you see what she’s saying?
Yes, in this life your enemies will rise against you and even seek your life, but remember, your name is written in the book of life. In the end, you already know for sure how it works out for you.
And we know how it works out in the end for the enemies of God and His people. So David doesn’t need to do anything. The lives of his enemies will be slung out by God like a stone from a sling.
And of course, David knows something about stones and a sling.
What Abigail is doing is reminding David of who he is in Christ. She says: remember the promise God made you to build you a house. That is a promise of the Messiah.
She says - I believe in that promise, and so do you.
She says - if we believe that, why wouldn’t we trust God to handle something and someone as insignificant as the insults of an unsaved fool?
And you know, like David here, we all need that reminder.
Sometimes, when we face a real trial - like David did with Saul - when our lives are altered significantly or we have a realistic fear of losing what we have including our life - we are in those moments, almost forced to turn to God.
In those moments, we feel so powerless. There isn’t anything we can do to help ourselves, so we place ourselves in God’s hands and pray for help.
But in those moments that are nowhere near as dire. When we face the smaller things and we appear to have the power to change them - in those moments, we are far less likely to realize there really is nothing we can do because God is in control of even that, and so we don’t just rely on God and pray for Him to have His way.
Instead, like David, we tend to act on emotion and decide to do what we can do to change the situation. To “set things right.”
And that, brothers and sisters, is when we are most susceptible to sin. Like David here.
Like we saw last week, when we are put in a situation and we see an easy way out, that easy way often involves sin. David resisted sin with Saul. He didn’t here.
How human.
But God is in control. And when David - the king, the giant of the faith - couldn’t see clearly and was overcome by anger, God stepped in, and used an otherwise unknown and soon to be forgotten woman to be His hands and feet and mouth - and through her obedience He kept David from sinning.
And when Abigail reminds David of who he is - that He belongs to God and has no reason to fear what man can do to him and that he has a just Judge looking out for him - David repents:
And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.”
David tells her: “you are absolutely right. I forgot Who is in control of this situation.”
And David knows that God used her to protect him from sin. Through her selfless act of doing what’s right, she saved David from sinning against God.
And David leaves, and Abigail goes home, and we have the parable of the rich fool played out in history.
Jesus tells the parable of a rich man who grew a buster crop and had more money than he knew what to do with. And he decides to build storehouses for all of his goods. And he was so satisfied with earthly riches that he decided to eat, drink, and be merry.
And then Jesus says:
But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Replace the crops with wool, and this could be a story about Nabal:
And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, 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. So she told him nothing at all until the morning light. In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And about ten days later the Lord struck Nabal, and he died.
Nabal - the rich man who just got richer - finds out that Abigail gave David some bread, some wine, some meat, and some fruit.
The guy who is having a feast fit for a king and drinking so much wine that he is described as inebriated - not just drunk, very drunk. He is using all of these same things - the food and the wine - to celebrate for a single night because he made so much money.
But when a little of those things are given to David - without whom Nabal would have made as much, mind you - but when just a little is given away, Nabal literally has a stroke over it. That’s what’s being described here.
And then, ten days later, YHWH strikes Nabal dead.
Abigail was right. Judgment belongs to God. And God would provide for David.
And David knows it:
1 Samuel 25:39 (ESV)
When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.”
And as we will turn back to the Saul vs. David saga in the next chapter, and we will see history repeat itself, what is implied to the reader here is that just like God judged justly with Nabal, He will do the same with Saul.
And note that David recognizes that God saved him from sinning through Abigail.
What she did mattered. It mattered greatly.
All’s well that ends well, I guess.
But then we read this:
1 Samuel 25:39 (ESV)
Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife.
And Abigail marries David. And while this may just seem like a love story in the vein of so many Hallmark movies - seriously, like a third of them end with a woman marrying into royalty after knowing the guy for two days - what we see here is that realness of David I spoke about.
That realness that reminds me of me.
That realness that means sometimes David was fully reliant on God and totally obedient, and sometimes he acted based on emotion and got himself into trouble.
This marriage to Abigail is not a good thing. David already has a wife.
And as we saw when we considered what kind of king Saul would be, God gave some very specific instructions for the kings of His people, including:
Deuteronomy 17:17 (ESV)
And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away…
And maybe we say - “well, that’s two wives. Considering how things worked in the ancient world, that’s not so bad.”
And we read in the last verse of this chapter:
Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim.
So we can even justify this as - David’s first marriage was over, and it was through no fault of his own, so now he’s just remarrying.
You could make that argument, except for verse 43:
David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives.
We see that realness in David, because he struggled with sin. And his sin was lust. We will see this sin ultimately change David’s life for the worse.
But for now, I want to point out that, after this chapter, Abigail is only ever mentioned when a reference to David’s wives or a list of David’s wives is given. No other words, no other actions of hers are written for us to remember.
And yet, her simple act of faith - doing what’s right and reminding David of God’s truth - kept David from sinning. Her simple actions mattered.
How much did they matter?
Well, remember how I said to write down where Caleb was from? Hebron. And we saw that Nabal was a Calebite.
I wonder what would have happened if Abigail did not have such faith. What if she didn’t act on that faith?
What might have been different if David had come, and slaughtered a very powerful and very respected family of Calebites like he intended to?
Would this have happened?
2 Samuel 2:1–4 (ESV)
After this David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?” And the Lord said to him, “Go up.” David said, “To which shall I go up?” And he said, “To Hebron.” So David went up there, and his two wives also, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David brought up his men who were with him, everyone with his household, and they lived in the towns of Hebron. And the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.
David is first anointed king in Hebron.
What if Abigail hadn’t acted in faith that day, and did what was right? What if David and his band of men slaughtered the offspring of Caleb whose inheritance was Hebron?
Would this have happened?
Well, we don’t need to wonder, because God worked it out.
And He did it through a woman of faith, who acted on her faith, came and in faith spoke the truth of God, and then was forgotten.
I can only pray that God would use us like that.
Which brings us back to where we started this morning.
What you do matters, even if you don’t see it. You and your love for God and your service to Him matter - even the seemingly smallest act, if done for Him, matters.
Every time you act on your faith, it matters.
Every time you pray for a brother or sister, it matters.
Every smile and warm greeting on a Sunday morning matters.
Every offense forgiven matters.
Every time you choose not to hold onto anger, or to gossip, or insist that your opinion must be shared by all - it matters.
Every encouraging word matters.
Every time you speak the truth of God - it matters.
Every time you take the time to tell someone that they have been a blessing to you - it matters.
And we see what an impact that one woman honoring God in word and deed had.
How much more will 150 of us doing the same have an impact for Christ?
So I encourage you, remember - even if you don’t see it - if what you do is from faith, it will have a lasting impact.
Long after we’re gone. Long after we’re forgotten. God will continue to use what we did for Him to magnify Christ, save souls, and encourage the saints.
In other words, God will use what we do to carry out His plan of redemption.
He does every time we act in faith.
So if what we do matters, what are we going to do now?
Encourage a start today (Gospel, action)
