Those Human Moments!

By:

Stan Moody, Ph.D.

1 Samuel 25:1-8, 10-12, 18-25

This story of David and Abigail is almost impossible to cover without reading the entire 25^th chapter of 1 Samuel. We do not have time for that in a single worship service. I would invite you to read that chapter yourself at your leisure, admittedly a limited commodity these days. It is a remarkable insight into David’s human foibles and how Abigail was used by God to correct him.

Last week, we spoke of Jonathan’s friendship with David. David needed to have his spirit strengthened at a time when Jonathan’s father, King Saul, was possessed by a compulsion to kill him. Jonathan’s message to David was that God would prevail and that his father was rebelling against what he knew to be true – that David would succeed him to the throne of Israel.

Because David was a “Man after God’s own heart,” he could be instructed by those whom God sent to correct him. Jonathan was such a person; the Prophet Samuel was such a person; the Prophet Nathan was such a person – you will remember that Nathan condemned David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, Uriah. Over and over again, we are confronted with the teachable nature of David – how he could change course once he recognized God’s truth in what another person was trying to tell him.

In this story, God uses Abigail, the wife of Nabal, to make the correction in David’s course of action.

Saul, on the other hand, was unteachable, as was Michal, his daughter.

At the time this story takes place, David is married to Michal but has been away from her for several years while fleeing from her father, and Michal is married by now to someone else. Michal was a consolation prize when Saul reneged on his offer of her older sister, Merab, to David. His younger daughter, Michal, was a replacement to David, a proposition that Michal herself very much wanted because she was in love with David. David eventually got Michal back, by the way, causing her new husband to be grief-stricken.

Saul’s motivation was to get David killed, knowing that Michal was loyal to her father. :

"And Michal, Saul's daughter, loved David; they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. And Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." (1 Samuel 18:17,19,20)

In the meantime, David began his own history of marrying at will. The 25^th chapter of 1 Samuel has David marrying two women, Abigail and Ahinoam of Jezreel.

It appears that things have not changed a whole lot down through history. It reads like tabloid trash in Hollywood!

The point of this story in 1 Sam 25, I think, is to highlight the human condition. That is, that we are in constant search for some sort of godlike qualities that enhance our self-esteem. At the very moment we get beaten down, we search for instant relief. That is why people in power seem to go off the moral compass. It is a great irony. We work hard to become like gods, and when we get there we begin to act out because we are struck by how unlike gods we really are. We drag our sinful natures with us up the ladder of success.

Political conventions are designed to raise people to god-like status and then watch them fall apart under the pressures. Being a god is not an easy business. Adam and Eve thought it was just a little jump of exercising their own power over a thing known as the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.” Once you have a grip on the knowledge of good and evil, however, you are smack up against your own impotency, and you seek other ways of affirming your power – usually sex or war.

David was no exception. In fact, he was up against enormous object lessons of his own impotency. He had just defeated Saul by being kind to him. This happened in the wilderness of En Gedi, a mountainous ravine on the Western shore of the Dead Sea. Some years ago, I actually climbed up through that ravine that is thought to contain the very cave that housed both Saul and David at the same time. You cannot look up at those caves without that whole scene unfolding before your eyes.

Saul has 3000 men; David has around 600 men. Saul slips into this cave to rest himself. David cuts off the hem of Saul’s garment, slips to the back of the cave again and waits for Saul to leave. He then cries out to Saul, “My lord the king!” Saul repents because David could have killed him. Saul goes back home, and David goes down to the wilderness of Paran in the northeastern region of the Sinai Peninsula – near Hebron. It was the staging point where the Israelites waited after leaving Sinai. It is the place from which Moses sent in the spies to Hebron to scope out the Promised Land.

Maybe David was feeling a little pleased with himself. He had gotten the King of Israel not only to back down but to repent in tears. It looked as though his fears and trials were coming to an end. He was being given a moment of respite, and perhaps he was preparing himself to take over the throne when God was ready to move. Or maybe he was thinking that he was a “Man after God’s own heart.” Who knows?

At any rate, there he was, a stone’s throw away from Hebron, where he eventually took the throne as king over the ten tribes.

Apparently, David had been in Paran for some time – perhaps for a season, at least. He knew of this man, Nabal, a wealthy sheep farmer and descendent of Caleb, the faithful spy and a leader with Joshua. In fact, David was waiting for a payoff from Nabal, who was not even aware that he owed David anything. It was a protection racket, you might say. David had protected Nabal’s shepherds from any harm by the marauding Philistines. That would have been news to Nabal, as this was not a real active involvement. Just by being there, David had kept the Philistines from stealing the sheep.

David waited until the sheep were ready to be sheared to collect his protection fee. It all falls under the category of the assumption that Nabal should have known what David had done for him. It’s one of those co-dependent “should have/could have” moments to which we are all inclined. We decide what other people should be doing and make our own moves based on our warped opinions, without even checking with the other person. “You should have known this; you should have done that; you should be doing this! Because you failed me, I’m writing you off!” No room for the grace of God there, I guess.

In fact, Nabal was probably too busy with himself even to be aware of what David had done.

It doesn’t help that Nabal was a scoundrel – “churlish and evil in his doings,” the Bible tells us. On the other hand, his wife, Abigail, was a “woman of good understanding and beautiful.” This is what would be considered to be a good marriage. How often we have seen a churlish and evil person married to a good woman – or vice versa.

David is preparing to make his move toward power and is beginning to feel his oats. He decides to use his smooth talk to get what he wants, but Nabal is not hearing him. That enrages him, and he decides that Nabal needs to have his clock cleaned, so to speak.

What we have here is one sin leading to another. David runs a protection racket by sending 10 young men to greet and remind Nabal and then gets murderously angry that he is not paid off. These are the typical words you would expect from a mafia boss:

Go up to Nabal at Carmel and greet him in my name. Say to him: “Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours! Now I hear it is sheep shearing time. When your shepherds were with us, we did not mistreat them, and the whole time they were at Carmel nothing of theirs was missing. Ask your own servants and they will tell you. Therefore, be favorable toward my young men, since we come at a festive time. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can find for them (vs. 4-8).

In other words, “Hey, Nicky! I hear youse been doing good! How’s the little woman and the kids? I been watching out for youse and am happy for youse! I come to give you a chance to say thanks!”

You know what the response was – “Who the H is David?”

It appears that David is getting a little full of himself, now that Saul has gone back to the Jerusalem area. Had it been left at that point, it would have been bad enough. But David’s pride is hurt. He is not calling for the Ephod this time – no way. He takes 400 men and sets out to kill every man who works for Nabal.

What has happened here is that one sinful assertion of power has led to another more sinful assertion of power – one sin has led to another. One failure to consult God’s will leads to a chain reaction of cover-up and sinful insistence by David that he get his own way.

God, however, has a lesson in store for David. Thankfully, this does not get out of hand, because David is a “Man after God’s own heart.”

I want to bring to your attention a few verses of Scripture about anger:

Ephesians 4:26 – In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. David has given Satan a foothold.

Psalms 37:8 – Refrain from evil and turn from wrath; do not fret – it only leads to evil.

Proverbs 19:11 – A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.

Matthew 5:22 – But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

What we have here in David is a proud, angry man. His pride gets hurt, which justifies his righteous anger. Once you go down that road, there is no going back, is there? It is like Eve asking, “What can be wrong with eating a piece of fruit?” It starts a whole chain reaction that makes us have to back and fill to cover up our first sin.

A story is told about Alexander the Great who, as you know, conquered the entire known world in his time. Cletus, a childhood friend and a general in his army, became drunk and insulted Alexander in front of his men. Alexander became so enraged that he hurled a spear at Cletus intending to scare him. Unfortunately, the spear killed his friend, and Alexander was filled with remorse. It may be that he never got over it.

The formula is simple. If we fail to control our anger, our anger will control us. Aristotle once said, “It is easy to fly into a passion – anybody can do that – but to be angry with the right person at the right time and with the right object and in the right way – that is not that easy. It is not everyone who can do it.”

Well; Nabal was an easy man with whom to get into a fight. He was called “surly and mean.” He had a bad attitude in business – taking advantage of anyone with whom he was dealing. He was a rich man – very rich, in fact. That means he was loaded and threw his weight around. To top it all off, Nabal’s name means “Fool.” David, then, took on a man named Fool who lived up to his name.

So, because his pride is hurt, David takes 400 men to kill just one fool who doesn’t know enough to listen to his wife. That is a definition of insanity, is it not? This is the same David who refrained from killing Saul because Saul was the “Lord’s anointed.” But here, Nabal is an ant who can be stomped into submission for failing to acknowledge that David was going to be king. “I’ll show him who is king of the mountain!”

David was blinded by rage. That is what anger does! It takes control of the mind and turns sane men and women into raving lunatics. It causes us to say things that we wouldn’t ordinarily say and puts us in the position of not being able to take our words back. It also puts us in the position of having to repent later, which is a very humbling experience.

Nabal was a fool, but his wife, Abigail, was everything he was not. Even her name meant “My father is joy” – not too bright, perhaps, in arranging her marriage to Nabal. Knowing David’s proclivity for the opposite sex, I imagine it did not hurt her to be beautiful as well. When she hears what her foolish husband has done, she takes the steps necessary to make matters right.

We are given an insight into Abigail’s nature – even her standing with God. She takes a very big risk by doing this without telling her husband, who would only prevent her from interceding. If it were Michal, Saul’s daughter, she might have said, “This is what I have been waiting for! I’ll just sit here and wait, and David will take care of the old buzzard for me.” Instead, she worked behind the scenes to protect her husband. In fact, she literally saved his life.

Before Abigail reached him, David had just said, “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.”

Is this statement not just like those of Saul – invoking God in the outcome of his own evil ways; taking the Lord’s name in vain? You will recall from last week’s sermon that because David hemmed himself into Keilah, Saul was convinced that God had handed David over to him. It was God’s will that Saul kill God’s anointed, therefore. How easy it is for us to begin the downhill slide into Saul’s superficial trust in God’s love and sovereignty. One simple sin can begin the downslide; one simple act of grace, however, can reverse it, provided we are men and women after God’s own heart.

When Abigail meets David, she falls at his feet. She refers to him 14 times as “my Lord.” Her logic is straight out of the Sermon on the Mount. She prays that all David’s enemies will be as foolish and vulnerable as is her husband, Nabal. She reminds him that if he stoops so low as to kill Nabal, it will hang over his legacy like a dark cloud. If he does what his anger is telling him to do, he will regret it forever.

David has just invoked God’s severe dealing with him should he leave even one of Nabal’s men alive.

Now, he in effect backs away from God’s judgment

This gross error in the life of David has been sidelined by the grace of God. That is what it means to be a “Man after God’s own heart.” It has to do with how you handle yourself after you have been corrected. The still, small voice of the Holy Spirit that is trying to reason with us is otherwise drowned out by the cry of anger in our hearts.

David, a “Man after God’s own heart,” had this to say:

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 took the gifts from Abigail in good faith. He was obedient to the timeless command of God, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord…Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:19).

Like a dutiful partner, Abigail waits until her husband is sober and tells him what she has done. He has a stroke and dies 10 days later. David marries Abigail and probably takes all of Nabal’s property, not that any of that was his reward for holding his anger in check.

This is not just a lesson about anger. It is a lesson about a lot of emotions that happen to us when we fail to stand on the foundation of God’s love for every one of us. It could be fear or pride or lust or jealousy, instead. What we must do when these emotions overwhelm us is to bring them quickly to the Lord and ask for help. When emotion comes over us, we need God’s help to respond properly.

We have seen in the past several sermons in what way David was a “Man after God’s own heart.” He listened when corrected, and he respected people who took the risk to do the right thing, as Jonathan and Abigail did.

If we here at the NMMH are people after God’s own heart, we need not fear the future nor react to a perceived slight. Our enemies are legion – mostly those of local Christian Right churches for whom the standard of righteousness is the Sinner’s Prayer rather than the Redeemed Life. The future and retribution of our enemies, however, remains in God’s hands.

“Wait on the Lord, Be of good cheer. Wait, I say, on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).