1 Samuel Lesson 43
Deliverance through Abigail continued –
25:32-39
I’d like to remark about John Milton that I made about the position of
the Puritans and therefore I thought I would begin by reading a few sentences
out of one of his works, Areopagitica which was a work that was know,
for those of you who were not students of John Milton, this was a work that
Milton wrote to attack the concept of censorship. John Milton was against the censorship of
literature in his time. The same reason
he was is the same reason I have warned against Christians getting involved
was, (quote): “Of the harm that may result hence, three kinds are usually
reckoned. First is fear the infection
may spread,” and that’s usually a reason for censorship. But here is
And that was simply the point that if you’re going to bring censorship
in you’re going to have to, to be logically consistent, censor portions of the
Word of God. And of course the people
that gravitate toward this kind of thing are always the kind that object to the
same passages in the Word of God, which can only lead you to the fact that they
are trying to impose an anti-Biblical standard upon the Word of God. But there’s another phrase that’s close to
that that also speaks to this problem and not the problem of censorship but the
problem mentioned this morning, to show you that Christians, when the church
has been really alive for Jesus Christ, have never been passive toward areas in
the culture. Listen to this most amazing
passage.
He’s talking about Julian, the apostate.
This was back in the second and third centuries, back in the early days
of the Christian church. Now I want you
to listen to the accusation that the heretics made against the Christian and
ask yourself, could they make this accusation against us today. “Julian, the apostate, and enemy to our
faith, made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning, for
said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our own arts and sciences
they overcome us. And indeed the Christians
were put so to their shift by this crafty means, and so much in danger to
decline into all ignorance,” and then he goes on to point out that this led to
a decrease in learning in the church. But the reason for it was historically is
because the Christians were using their learning as a tool to witness for
Christ, and those who are obstructing the application of the Word in all areas
are Satan’s handmaids who would wish, then, to emasculate the Christian power
in any given age in any given culture.
So an illuminating Jew of history, through the eyes of
Turn to 1 Samuel 25 and we’ll finish this great chapter in the life of
David. This chapter, you recall is
another great act of deliverance by God and the theme of 1 Samuel 25 is simple:
David is restrained from anger by a woman, one of the most beautiful women in
all of God’s Word, a tremendous woman on the inside and on the outside, a
marvelous combination, her name: Abigail.
And you might recall several points about Abigail before we begin at
verse 32. Last time we remember how she
was trained under Samuel’s teaching, but actually had Abigail had several areas
in her training. She apparently was not a wise woman when she married Nabal,
because Nabal means an idiot, and her husband’s nickname was stupid. And she was not the one who gave it to
him. Abigail did not call her stupid;
the other men in the village called him stupid. And she said yes, my husband is
called stupid because he is stupid. But
when she used the word stupid she didn’t mean it the way we usually mean the
word stupid. The way she meant the word
stupid was he had a calloused conscience and it showed in his business
dealings.
So we’ve come to several things in Abigail’s training program. Two men figured prominently; Samuel and
Nabal. Samuel was the one who taught her the doctrine; she learned the Word of
God through the ministry of Samuel. How
do we know this? Because the truths that
she is learning were truths that were confined to the prophetic circles at this
time in the history of
However, the other part of her training was application of the Word with
Nabal. Now that’s a real challenge; she
had the greatest prophet of all time teaching her the Word and she had the most
difficult situation for a woman to apply it.
And she came out a winner.
Abigail is a fantastic woman and God trained her over a long time
period. It wasn’t easy for Abigail to
learn; it wasn’t easy for her to go to the heights that Samuel’s teaching would
take her, to the depths that Nabal would take her. But she became a strong
woman and a woman who had discernment, a woman who had something on the inside
to go with the cover, which is rare. But
Abigail was one of these gems on the female side of the fence. And she’s going to be noticed by David, but I
want you to notice that before she arrived in the situation she went through
rough training, and it was not easy for Abigail. That woman suffered and suffered and
suffered, but because of her suffering she came out purified. So ladies, when you think you’re discouraged,
everything is going against you and you think you are in the worst possible
situation, and how did you ever marry that idiot you’re married to, and all the
rest of it, just remember Abigail; look at what she turned into, out of the
worst possible situation. And men, you
can reverse the principle and apply it to your own lives. This is for both sexes, but in the story it
applies to the woman, but the principles are reversible.
That was her training; what else do we notice about Abigail. Second, what she did when she saw a situation
come that she recognized was a violation of God’s plan, she moved rapidly and
skillfully. She was a woman who was
quick and skillful. That also is a mark
of maturity, to be both quick and skillful is quite a feat. Sometimes you can be skillful but it
takes you time. Other times you can be quick and you regret
that you were so quick. But to be both
quick and skillful at the same time, that is an accomplishment. Abigail was that kind of a woman. She moved and we’re going to see a point in
the text tonight that tells us that one of the things that fascinated David
about Abigail was how fast she moved. When she knew what the Word of God said,
she moved, immediately, no hesitation.
But the third thing that we noticed about Abigail that’s the most
intriguing of all, is how she was able to turn back the King of Israel, a man
in a society that was very pro-masculine, and do it successfully without once
losing her femininity. That is a feat
that surpasses all the others. How she
was able to act authoritatively and submissively at the same time, brilliant
accomplishment. This woman gets A+’s in
every category. She knew how to handle
men without being a man. And few women
know how to do this. When a woman gets in a situation like this, 9 times out of
10 they become men in the way they act.
And when a man gets in a similar kind of situation he begins responding
like a woman, they just lose the differences completely. Not Abigail, she never
once lost her femininity in this fantastic encounter.
Tonight we pick up the text at verse 32, she’s made her plea to David,
David is standing there. Remember there
are hundreds of men in back of David, they are along a road and Abigail has
stopped the march of the soldiers. The
soldiers are all clustered around, what are they doing now? Abigail was very smart, she saw that these
soldiers were going to put the heat on David to just get Abigail out of the way
so they could raid the ranch of Nabal. When she saw this, she said David, how
about taking these things and giving them to your soldiers; smart woman. This of course diverted the men from
bothering David, and therefore this left David in a position where she could
talk to him. This woman had smarts all
over; she got his attention so he’d listen to her first. She kept her respect in his eyes so he would
continue listening. And she dealt with
factors that would interfere in her communication with her husband; brilliant,
brilliant accomplishment. And so David,
verse 32, back in fellowship, responds to this fantastic woman.
Verse 32, “And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel,
who sent thee this day to meet me.” This
refrain, “Blessed be Jehovah, God of Israel,” is a Hebrew refrain that occurs
many, many times, both in the Old Testament and even in modern synagogue
worship and it simply means that God let His character gain the respect that is
due it. In other words, that God’s
essence be honored in the eyes of men.
“Blessed be God, the LORD.” Now
this phrase also shows that David, being back in fellowship, recognizes who is
in back of Abigail. This is the secret
of a godly manipulation, I hate to use the word manipulation but I’ve used it
so let’s stick with it. Here’s a woman,
how does she work with a man? Now all
you girls that are single ought to learn this, before you’re married so you can
save some man from having to train you.
You ought to learn there are ways of dealing with men, and then there
are other ways of dealing with men. One
always gets a negative and that is when you start nagging. When you start pushing, when you start
flapping that beautiful mouth and begin to sound off, that is guaranteed to
close the eardrums of any male within fifty feet. That is not the way, girls, to talk to men,
and you’ll never get them to listen to you by doing that kind of thing. They’ll just turn you off every time. And don’t complain it’s their spiritual
problem; it’s your spiritual problem.
The woman knows how to deal with a man, and in this case what she does
so impresses David because David recognizes in back of that woman the Lord
is. She is submissive to the Lord in
such a way that when she acts toward her man, her man responds to her without
losing his masculinity either. He does
it because basically who is he responding to?
The Lord in back of the woman. So
this phrase in verse 32 that comes forth from David’s lips immediately tells
you what caught his attention about Abigail; he saw the Lord in her, that’s why
he responded. And therefore this is the
kind of response. Now ladies, that’s the
kind of response; if a guy is going to hate you because you stand with the
Lord, then let him, he’s a cluck and you should get it all out in the air. Ladies, learn something tonight and that is
that you don’t get involved with unbelievers; it violates the Word of God at
every point. And you have no excuse for
socially getting involved with unbelievers at all, under any conditions. So just clear the decks and find out what it
is that you’re dating, believer or unbeliever, find out!
So Abigail is submissive to the Lord.
And therefore David, the king, responds to her. Now this response that he has in verse 32 is
a fantastically positive response. David is amazed, he’s impressed with this,
and it takes something to impress David. David has been around, David is
leading a group of soldiers that will one day, in his generation, become the
greatest army the world ever saw. Out of
those six hundred men, at least ten or more are going to be full generals in a
matter of years, a tremendous leader of men, a tremendous king. The one man God singled out in history as a
model of Jesus Christ His Son, and that is the man who is impressed by
Abigail. And he recognizes that the Lord
sent her “this day to meet me.”
Then in verse 33 he describes what it is about her character that he’s
admiring so much here. He says in verse
33, “Blessed by thy advice,” the King James says, now that is the wrong
thing. He appreciated the advice but
he’s not telling her that; he is telling her something else, he is saying “Blessed
by your discretion,” in other words, not the content of what she said, although
he liked that too, but what’s so impressed David was the way she said it. Wouldn’t it be neat if Abigail had some sort
of school, Abigail school, coaching girls on how to do it, and she’d train you,
how I did it for David. But David
admired her discretion, and the word here, the word “advice” is not the word,
it is “discretion.”
To show you how else it is used in Scripture turn to Proverbs 11:22,
this shows you the Hebrew norm for a woman.
“As a jewel of gold in a pig’s nose, is a beautiful woman without
discretion.” And please notice, the pig
with gold in his nose, which is more obvious, the little piece of gold stuck in
his nose or this monstrosity on four legs.
What’s more obvious? Obviously
the pig is more obvious than the gold.
All right, then it turns around and it says so “is a beautiful woman,”
this is a woman who is physically impressive, and yet the divine viewpoint is
exactly the opposite to the way it’s read in American culture. The man with wisdom and the Word of God
wouldn’t see her… her beauty physically would occupy as much attention as a
piece of gold in a pig’s nose when he learned that this woman had no discretion. She couldn’t apply doctrine to come in out
the rain. This woman is a complete
spiritual clod. And that would be so
repulsive to this guy that he wouldn’t even notice her physical beauty. All he could see was that pig, just a pig,
that’s all he could see. And that was
his picture of a woman without the Word of God.
Now isn’t that a beautiful picture; guys, you ought to cut that verse
out and stick it on your mirror, every morning when you shave memorize the
verse.
Back to Samuel, that is how the word “discretion” is used. I hope we’re clear that David is looking at
Abigail’s discretion. Now obviously
Abigail is physically attractive also; David notices the cover as well as the
content of the book, but that isn’t what impresses him. What impresses him and stands out is this
woman’s character, and that’s why he doesn’t even mention her beauty here in
verse 33, he says “Blessed be your discretion, blessed be you, who has kept me
this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own
hand.” And he is pleased that she
brought him closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is the effect that she has upon him. Now you see why David, as a godly strong
spiritual man, responds to this female.
Why? Because God speaks to her,
that’s why. And a woman in Abigail’s position
never has to worry that the right kind of guy isn’t going to take notice. Never has to worry, never; any man who is
walking close to the Lord is going to notice; he’s got to notice an Abigail,
and David did.
And so in verse 34 he goes on to the details of why he noticed, and the
mechanics of this thing. “For in very
deed, as the LORD God of Israel lives, who has kept me back from hurting thee,”
now remember he was on his way to wipe out Nabal’s ranch, except, that’s the
“thee” there, it’s not on the road.
Remember, she came up to the road, she said David, if you’re going to
kill my husband, and you’re going to wipe out our ranch, start with me, I’m
standing right in front of you. And of
course David didn’t but that’s not talking about that incident. “Thee” refers to his intent to destroy the
whole ranch which obviously would have included this woman. “…who hath kept me back from hurting thee,
unless [except] you had hastened,” there’s the second time that verb occurs in
the text, and that again alerts us to the fact that the Holy Spirit is pointing
out that this woman took decisive action at the right moment… decisive
action.
She used the faith technique but the faith technique has two parts. It has a resting and a doing; it has a
resting in the sense that there are things for which, as a limited creature,
you and I cannot produce; we cannot bring these things to pass and at that
point we have to rest. But there are
things which, as limited creatures fall inside of our limitations and God expects
us to do it. And this woman moved; she is not sanctification by works, she just
simply obeyed the Word and she knew what was right. And David said, “unless you had hastened and
came to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning light
any male.”
Verse 35, “So David received of her hand that which she had brought him,
and said to her, Go in peace to thine house; see, I have hearkened to your
voice, and I have accepted your person.”
Now that last phrase is a neat little phrase about how they
thought. The Hebrew doesn’t say I have
accepted your person; the Hebrew says “I have raised up your faith.” Now what does this mean? You check a concordance and you find where is
this phase used elsewhere in Scripture.
One of those places is Genesis 19:21, and we can see how this phrase is
used, to lift up your faith. What does it mean when David says to Abigail, “I
have lifted up your faith.
Genesis 19:21; this is the situation where the angel of the Lord is
talking to Lot, they’re in Sodom and they have a little problem there, and so
Lot is in negotiation with the angel of the Lord. And in Genesis 19:18, “Lot said unto them,
Oh, not so, my Lord,” in other words, the angel has announced judgment upon the
city. Verse 19, “Behold now, thy servant
has found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou has
showed me in saving my life; I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil
overtake me, and I die. [20] Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it
is a little one. Oh, let me escape
there…. [21] And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this
thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for which thou hast spoken.
[22] Hast thee, escape there; for I cannot do anything till thou be come
there.” In other words, Lot wants to
escape to another city where he’s going to be safe, and the angel of the Lord
has to wait until Lot gets out of the way because He’s going to blow Sodom
right off the map.
And if some of you notice your maps in the Bible the south end of the
Dead Sea didn’t always look like it does on the map. The Dead Sea used to stop right there; this
little edge in the Dead Sea is a very shallow area and this bridge of land
across here was broken at the time of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
and water after the tremendous explosion, which appeared to be natural gas,
blew out here and destroyed this whole area, then these waters poured in. In fact in the time of Josephus you could take
a boat across the Dead Sea and actually look down and see the remnants of the
city of Sodom and Gomorrah. So it was
historically buried under the south end of the Dead Sea. And there was a tremendous explosion and
there would be debris and everything else from the fallout of this thing, and
so the angel of the Lord waited until Lot got out of the way until He detonated
the thing.
Now, the phrase in verse 21, “I have accepted thee concerning this
thing,” that is the phrase, “I have lifted up your faith. Now from it’s use here can you guess the way
that phrase is used in the Word of God, I’ve accepted you. It means I accept your request and it is used
by a superior to an inferior. The angel
of the Lord says this to Lot. So it is
an expression of superiority and acceptance by a superior.
Back to 1 Samuel 25:35, when David says I “have accepted thy person” it
shows you he hasn’t cowered in his authority before this woman; he has accepted
her but he still is in his office. He
says I have, as a superior accepted your advice, but that does not mean I
forsake my office.
Now in verse 36 another admirable quality of Abigail. “And Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold,” now
this shows you that after this whole incident Abigail knew that her right man
at this point in history was Nabal. And
so she went back to him; it would have been easy for her to stay with David and
his men, but she didn’t. She went back to this clod. And the reason that she did was that it was
right in God’s sight, that’s why. And so
she went back and when she came back they were having a big part. A big party, “and, behold, he held a feast in
his house, like the feast of a king,” it says, “and Nabal’s heart was merry
within him, for he was very drunk. Wherefore, she told him nothing, less or
more, until the morning light.” Another
example of the fact that she knew how to deal with men under many different
situations. When her husband was roaring
drunk in the middle of a party wasn’t a situation in which she could just trip
in and say oh honey, guess what I just did.
That was the time when she kept her big mouth shut, and she was very
wise in doing it, because he wouldn’t listen to her anyway, because by this
time he was drunk, “very drunk” it says.
And interestingly, a footnote here for those of you who like word studies,
the word “merry” is the word towb in
the Hebrew that is translated good, and beautiful, and I cite this as an
indicator to you that when the Jews said something was beautiful, he meant that
it was enjoyable, and not necessarily moral or amoral. The point is that joy to a Jew included both
the spiritual and the physical. And when
he says his “heart was merry” it doesn’t require too much imagination to see
what the situation was. And he was
enjoying himself, just roaring drunk.
Now why was he enjoying himself drunk.
Let’s go into Nabal’s soul a little bit.
This man is obviously in compound carnality.
So let’s study a little bit about alcohol and compound carnality and why
he could have a merry heart. Let’s go
through the steps to compound carnality.
First it starts out with rebellion against God’s Word in some area;
rejection of no revelation. Not
something unknown, you can’t reject something unknown, rejection to the known
will of God. The second thing that
happens is that you have darkness, the Holy Spirit begins to decrease the
perception, allow the sin nature to take over and decrease the perception of
the individual. If you want these steps
in detail they’re taken from Romans 1:18 and following. And then after that human viewpoint sets in;
because of the decreased perception, now we begin to have satanic doctrine
infiltrating into the soul of this person.
And this human viewpoint has a certain characteristic, a characteristic
or a function of human viewpoint. Human
viewpoint serves man a very important function.
Do you know what it is? It’s to
insulate his mind against the conscience.
Human viewpoint is built to do that.
It is especially arranged knowledge, sorted together in the mind, to
keep conscience away, to keep the threat of God’s criterion of right and wrong
away from him, I don’t want to listen to it, so I arrange my thoughts and
arrange the facts in my mind in such a way that I can insulate myself against
the pressure of my conscience. And human
viewpoint has this function.
Unfortunately, for people in this situation, the human viewpoint isn’t
sufficient to do the job because you can never totally insulate yourself from
your conscience. And so you get up here
to hatred which is primarily a violation of the first and great commandment,
and this would be rephrased as “thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, with all thy
heart and with all thy soul.” Thou shalt
rebel against the Lord they God, thou shalt rebel against His authority with
everything you have. And this is hatred,
first towards God, and then toward anything that reminds you of God.
And now obviously you can see in this situation Abigail is going to
remind Nabal of God. And so Nabal cannot
stand Abigail, we can just predict that because he’s in compound carnality, their
marriage is shot at this point because he hates her, not because of who she is
but because of who she’s identified with.
Every time she walks through the door she reminds him of something, so
he hates her. The end result of this
kind of a life is absolute frustration, where people run to anything and
everything for happiness. This is why
people run to alcohol. This is why Nabal
runs to alcohol, they are frustrated, and momentarily it does make their heart
merry. The Word of God says yes it does,
momentarily. The results are very, very
tragic indeed, but momentarily the Word of God does agree, this does make the
heart merry, and it forms a relief for a moment. But here’s something that you want to know
about this kind of thing. Where did this alcoholism start? Did it start because Nabal was dropped on his
head when he was a baby, or did it start because he went on negative volition
after he was born. Obviously, Nabal had
a spiritual problem back here that later caused his alcoholism. His alcoholism is not a disease, it is simply
the result of sin. And therefore you
have negative volition, the inability to handle business of something, the
ranch got to him, and he couldn’t stand God and so this thing gets piled up and
piled up until finally he started hitting the bottle. But the bottle wasn’t where he started in his
trouble, the bottle was the end of the trouble.
Now that’s the whole point and this is why the Word of God has a completely
different perspective on liquor and alcohol than many, many people in this
country in fundamentalist circles. The
Word of God puts it the way it is, and alcohol isn’t the problem. The problem is sin back here and rejecting
the authority of God’s Word. That is the
problem, not the alcohol. The alcohol is
a convenient device brought in in the final stages of compound carnality. And therefore we find that drunkenness in
Scripture is condemned because of what it has been caused by, not because in
itself it is something that is automatically wrong.
Now let’s look at the result here, we’ve got alcoholism , the
alcoholism, once it gets started, leads to a physical disease, under the
principle of Romans 1 where it says three times, “God gave them up, God gave
them up. Look at Romans 1 because it’s
talking about the physical body. This is
where, every once in a while you have people confused. Is alcohol a physical disease or is it a
spiritual problem? It’s both; it starts
out as a spiritual problem but it winds up as a physical problem too. Romans 1:24, “Therefore,” at the final stages
of apostasy, “God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their
own hearts,” and what does it say, to dishonor their spirit? “…to dishonor
their bodies,” it is physical, in other words, what does God do here? What is man called in the Scripture? Man is called Adam; what is the earth called?
Adamah, so therefore if man is taken
from the earth and the earth is cursed, then the curse is that which man’s body
is made of and therefore the curse works on man. Now normally what keeps the curse down in our
bodies is grace; theologians have a word for it, it’s called common grace. And the common grace works to suppress the
results of the curse for a while. Common
grace does not save. Common grace only
makes it possible for you to hear the gospel and be saved during your lifetime
but common grace by itself apart from God’s Word does not save anyone. The common grace acts only as a
restraint. So the common grace here acts
to restrain the results of this thing.
What happens, and it would be beautiful as scientific research
progresses we could pin down where the trigger mechanisms are in the body, but
the Bible seems to hint that there are definitely mechanisms in the body, which
if manipulated or allowed in some connection with the human spirit, when these
are triggered, deterioration will follow certain lines.
Now one of these lines is explained here in the context, “God gave them
up to uncleanness,” etc. Verse 26, “God
gave them up unto vile affections,” and so on, this is homosexuality here as an
illustration, but it’s not the only one.
You have homosexuality but you also have alcoholism. Again, in our
society these two things, people always debate, is this spiritual or is this physical? It’s both.
It starts out as a spiritual problem and winds up as a physical
problem. Why? Because of the rejection of God’s grace, over
a long time period, and this results in this kind of playing out. Can it be
dealt with? Yes, it can be dealt
with. A person who is an alcoholic will
be an alcoholic the rest of his life only in the sense that if he hits the
bottle again he’s a goner. But the
alcoholic has learned to develop strength of character so he just stays away
from the thing and he’s okay. But let
him get around the bottle and he has a problem, and that’s because his body has
been injured. And an alcoholic can be
cured, in that sense; he can live a normal life and move on and not get into
the corruption and all the rest of it; same thing with the homosexuality
thing. But there’s serious damage
involved, and that’s what the Bible points out and warns against.
There are several things also why the Bible warns against
alcoholism. Go to Genesis 9:21; [“And he
drank of the wine, and became drunk; and he was uncovered within his tent.”]
alcoholism and being drunk leads people to commit all sorts of gross things;
one sin piled on top of another to cover it.
In Genesis 9;21, the first drunk of the postdiluvian civilization was
Noah. By the way, he was a
believer. Did you know that, believers
can be drunk, in case you’re ever shocked someday; oh I saw somebody drunk and
they can’t be a Christian. Oh yes they
can be. Noah was; not an excuse, just a
fact. Noah was a drunken bum at this
point and it appears in the text that he got involved with homosexualism. So you can see how one thing leads to
another. You can go in Genesis 19:32 to
Lot and when he gets drunk he gets involved in incest with his daughters. So one thing leads to another. And obviously then the Word of God condemns
this sort of thing.
Ephesians 5:18, here’s a final note, this is the ultimate answer of
Scripture to alcoholism, to everything else.
“Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the
Spirit.” Now usually you hear this very
piously explained, that when a person is drunk they’re under the control of the
alcohol and when they’re filled with the Spirit they’re controlled by the
Spirit. There’s a degree of truth to
that, but that doesn’t happen to be the major way this passage can be
interpreted by context. By context it is
not comparative. Every verse preceding
verse 18 in the text is not a comparative verse, it is a contrast verse, so
it’s contrast. What is the
contrast? What happens in drunkenness;
basically you have anesthesia occur; anesthesia of the mind, anesthesia of the
body; it operates through the nervous system and so on, and that’s what
happens. What is the opposite of
anesthesia? Sensitivity; the filling of
the Holy Spirit is precisely the opposite of drunkenness; it is a maximum
sensitivity, both of the mind, of the body, and of the spirit. And that is a sign of the filling of the
Spirit. It’s not walking around talking
in some idiot language; that is like drunkenness and you might as well, if
you’re going to do that have fun and be drunk.
But if you’re going to be filled with the Spirit, for heavens sake,
appreciate the dignity of the Third Person of the Trinity and understand that
He doesn’t go wandering around like some drunken idiot; the Holy Spirit is
interested in recreating perfect men, men that are honoring, men who are
rational; men who use all of the facilities that God gave them, not just their
tongue, but everything. That’s the work
of the Holy Spirit.
But then there’s something else about verse 18 that we want to connect
up with Nabal’s merry heart and that is the joy of the filling of the Holy
Spirit. The filling of the Holy Spirit
gives towb, alcohol gives towb, both of them give something that
is enjoyable. The Holy Spirit works on
your mind and your emotions through your spirit side. Alcohol works on your mind and emotions
through the body side. So you have the
same thing, towb, that occurs in the
soul, but towb can be produced in the
soul from either your spirit side or your body side. And what Paul is saying is what kind of towb you want is towb that comes from the spirit side, through the filling of the
Holy Spirit, that gives you genuine towb,
genuine enjoyment. And the best part is,
there’s no hangover.
Turn back to Proverbs 31:6 to see how alcohol is treated in the text of
God’s Word. Here are the legitimate uses
for alcohol in Scripture. “Give strong
drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy
heart. [7] Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no
more.” That is a tranquilizer, it is
also used as a tranquilizer in 1 Timothy 5:23.
Every drunk in the United States has quoted 1 Timothy 5:23, well Paul
told Timothy to take wine for his stomach’s sake. Well he told him because Timothy was a pastor
and every while working with a bunch of dumb sheep he had problems with his
stomach. The point is, it’s used as a
tranquilizer in these verses and is not meant as a justification for
drinking. If you have problems with your
stomach, go to a doctor.
The second reason for alcohol in the Old Testament is Deuteronomy 16:13,
this was their feast and they wanted towb
and they got towb, both through
the body and through the spirit; they enjoyed it, and in verse 13 they used it
for enjoyment, “Thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, after
you have gathered in thy corn [grain] and thy wine. [14] And you shall rejoice
in thy feast, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your manservant, and
your maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger” and so on. In other words, they served alcoholic
beverages at the feast. They were not
served to produce drunks; they were served to a group of people that had
wisdom. Now we have a problem in this
country and that is there never has been such a collection of idiots in the
history of civilization as in the western world. And thus alcohol has become a problem, you
have to exercise extreme caution with it today.
And this is why some people have opted to be tea-totalers, and that’s a
legitimate option if you wish to opt that way.
But you have no biblically authorized right to pick on believers who now
and then take a sip of wine or something else.
That is none of your business.
The only we have is Scripture that condemns the unwise use of alcohol,
and it does so happen today because of the stupid people that we have to be
very, very cautious. There are some
people that have problems with alcohol; to you it would be a sin to look at it,
you can’t even get near the cork, and for you, you shouldn’t get near the cork,
you shouldn’t have it anywhere around you, for you it is a sin, but for someone
else it might not be. If you went to
France and Germany you would see believers who regularly drink wine and beer;
they have Christian fellowship and they would be drinking beer, what would you
do? Say I can’t drink, I’m an American,
we American fundies don’t drink. Why do
Americans have to be the biggest group of idiots in the church? The German Christians aren’t bothered with
this and the French Christians aren’t, but some American fundy trots over and
he has problems; this is why American missionary activity on the continent of
Europe has been so badly hurt, because missionaries have gone from the United
States and tried to import American culture overseas and it just doesn’t
work. Germans are going to have their
beer, period, American missionaries or not; so just relax about the issue. You mind your business and use this kind of
thing wisely.
Back to 1 Samuel, let’s see that happened at this party. Abigail didn’t
walk in and say oh Nabal, you shouldn’t have been drinking, naughty,
naughty. She didn’t walk in like that,
she walked in and kept her mouth shut, probably said the bum, and then went to
bed and relaxed and had a wonderful night’s sleep. Nobody else had in the whole house, they were
moaning and taking aspirin and everything else all night. And she was relaxed because she knew what she
was going to do in the morning, she had a plan.
So verse 37, “But it came to pass in the mourning, when the wine was
gone out Nabal, and his wife told him these things, and his heard died within
him, and he became as a stone.” Now he
was stoned before, but now he became a stone.
And this apparently is a stroke, this the last area of a compound carnal
Christian going the sin unto death. Here
it is if you want to see one; he has obstructed God’s plan so much that he gets
in God’s way and God is just going to remove him physically.
How does Nabal earn the sin unto death; let’s go back a little bit and
see if we can recreate why Nabal is in this problem. Why does God take Nabal out of the way, like
He is taking believers out of the way today. We had a question on one of these
cards about why is it that this [can’t understand words] God doesn’t discipline
like He did Ananias and Sapphira. Do you
want to know why? Because if He used
that as the discipline throughout the entire church there wouldn’t be any left;
God, at the beginning of every dispensation always lowers the boom in a
spectacular. Those of you who know
dispensationalism should go back, every time a new dispensation begins watch
how God lowers the boom hard, at the beginning of the Law what did He do? Mount Sinai.
And the beginning of the Apostolic era he did it again. But the sin unto death in this case is caused
by the fact that Nabal almost destroyed David.
Nabal, with his rudeness, Nabal with his dirty dealings in business,
Nabal with all of his resentment toward David was the one who was obstructing
the David who was the messiah. He got in
his way, that’s why he committed sin unto death, and so God got him out of the
messiah’s way. And that is why David
seems to be so heartless in verse 39.
Verse 38, “And it came to pass about ten days after, the LORD smote
Nabal, that he died,” after ten days he dies, [39] “And when David heard that
Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the LORD,” you say O David, you can’t be a
believer, isn’t David rejoicing in vengeance?
Not at all. David is rejoicing in the fact that an obstruction to the
plan of God has been removed. God has a
plan for his life and Nabal stood in the way; thank you God, for getting that
obstacle out of the way. And that is a
legitimate cause for thanksgiving to God.
Believers who stand in God’s way, who obstruct His plan and His
operation are asking for trouble like nothing else. God will tolerate gross sins in your life;
God will tolerate all sorts of things in your life, but one thing He will not
tolerate is you stepping into His way.
Don’t ever try to obstruct the plan and operations of God’s Holy
Spirit. You’re asking for it if you
do. And Nabal got his. And that’s why David adds, after “Blessed be
the LORD, who has pleaded the cause [of my reproach from the hand of Nabal]”
who has pleaded my lawsuit, the word is rib,
but the “b” is pronounced like a “v,” and it means lawsuit. The lawsuit is a point of God’s
character. God has promised to David
that He is perfectly righteous, He is just, that He is going to get David on
the throne if David will trust Him.
David has a legitimate point about God’s righteousness and justice. God if You don’t take care of Nabal, I’m
trusting You to do it; now if You don’t take care of that, You cannot expect me
to trust You with more obstacles. Now
that’s the claim David has on God’s essence.
If God doesn’t clear the obstacle then David’s faith technique is
hanging in thin air. God has God to do
something to justify David’s use of the faith technique here, and so this is
why he says You have pleaded my cause, You have pleaded my case, “and has kept
his servant from evil; for the LORD has returned the wickedness of Nabal upon
his own head. And David sent and
communed [talked]with Abigail, to take her to wife [in marriage.]”
Now why does David recognize this woman; let’s review a few points about
the best woman and the best man; these are not positions in the wedding
ceremony. Some of you have learned this
under right man and right woman, I use the word best man and best women, so I
hope there’s no fuss that I’m using a different word. Let’s look at the first divine institution
and innocence. Divine institution two in
innocence; marriage in the Garden of Eden exists as a simply model and it looks
this way. Adam and we’ll put Isha
because her name was Isha, not Eve until after she became a believer, after the
fall, then you have the Lord. Here’s the
way it works; the Lord gives the plan to Adam, the plan and responsibility
falls on the male’s shoulder, not his wife… not his wife. Men, that means if you have children it is
not ultimately your wife’s responsibility; you can delegate but you are judged
for how well she does her job. You can’t
delegate the responsibility totally away from yourself. God’s plan is that the man be in charge of
the home. He takes the knock; if the
home is out of order the woman doesn’t get disciplined, the man does. So the plan is given to Adam, and then Isha
is his ‘ezer, that means the perfect
one to fit him.
Men, those of you who are single, listen; you can spot your best woman
by understanding God’s plan for your life.
You don’t have to understand every detail, but if you get an idea of how
God is leading you, just as Adam had in his life, an idea of what God wanted
you to do, you’re going to know your right woman because she’s going to be the
one that is going to be the missing link in that plan. The plan, as God unravels it to you, will
have missing parts to it and if you’re sensitive to God’s leading you’ll
recognize the right girl because she will fit into that missing part, she’ll be
the missing part. Without her you can’t
do that plan right, not the way God wants you to do it. So you can recognize your woman by the fact
that she’s going to fit and the pieces will fall together. Same with you girls, you can recognize your
right man because God has trained you, even when you haven’t realized it, God
has been training you back even when before you became a Christian, God was
putting you through certain pressures, certain trials, certain blessings,
certain background, all of those things are going to come to fruition when you
meet your right man. You’re going to
realize more and more how God has been training you to fit into his life. Now this is the model given in innocence. But we have to recognize a fall has taken a
place, so we come to divine institution number two in the fall. What happens in the fall? In the fall many things happen, the first
thing that happens is we have a reversal, the Lord is here, Eve comes up here
and Adam is underneath; Eve becomes the initiator…Eve becomes the one who
decides whether to eat or not to eat, Eve does.
She usurps her husband’s authority, she begins to act like the man, she
begins to initiate, he begins to respond; he acts like a female. Now that’s always a sign of carnality in
marriage. You watch it, you can see it
in your own marriage, you can see it in other people’s marriages. When you’re out of fellowship the man always
takes on a feminine roll; he begins to react, he throws fits, he stomps out the
door and so on. That’s just like a
woman, and guys, that’s exactly the way we look when we’re carnal. And when you women get out of fellowship you
act just like men.
So the first thing we notice about the fall is a complete sex reversal;
women start acting like men; men start acting like women. The other thing is that you have all sorts of
problems with death, you have divorce and you have other things that crawl in
as a result of the fall. So this knocks
out the problem of right man/right woman, because now, because of death alone
there can’t be just one, so we go now to the third stage of divine institution
number two under grace. God in grace, by
the principle of 1 Corinthians 10:13 always will supply your needs, He will always
make a way and under this condition, under the restraints, that is, two things,
restraints that God has placed in your life and restrains you by your own
stupidity have placed in your life, within those limits God will provide for
you, and relative to those you have your best man or woman; they are best
relative to your situation at that point in history, if it is God’s will for
you to marry in this area. So divine
institution number two under grace comes less than ideal, always less than
ideal. You can see why he recognized
Abigail as his right woman, she understood him.
You saw this happening on the road; when that woman looked at David and
she said David, God has a plan for your life, David you must do this or you’re
going to violate God’s plan for your life, David said this is the woman who
understands my soul, this is the woman who has been trained for me, this is the
woman without whom I may not be able to complete God’s plan, she understands
where God is leading me and compliments him.
Now we’re going to have a fellowship and I’m going to ask Bob to come to
the pulpit and lead us in a closing word of prayer.
[40, “And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel,
they spoke unto her, saying, David sent us unto thee, to take thee to him in
marriage. [41] And she arose, and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and
said, Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants
of my lord. [42] And Abigail hastened, and arose, and rode upon an ass, with
five damsels of hers who went after her; and she went after the messengers of
David, and became his wife. [43] David also took Ahinoam, of Jezreel; and they
were also both of them his wives. [44] But Saul had given Michal, his daughter,
David’s wife, to Palti, the son of Laish, who was of Gallim.”]