We may spend more than one week in this chapter. It's rather lengthy and there are a number of things to observe, but tonight the focus I'd like for us to have is on meekness. Once again, what we considered last week from chapter 24. And we'll consider that and perhaps next week we'll come at it from another angle. highlighting different aspects of what we find here. But this is one of those passages that is just quite beautiful. It's like the whole book of Ruth. You read it and you think, ah, of course there are heartbreaking aspects to it, quite literally. But if you don't know what I'm referring to, you'll see it tonight. But there's something so sweet. Reminds me why the name Abigail is such a beautiful name. What a beautiful person she was. And one of the newer members of our church, soon to be next week, her name is Abigail Ruth O'Malley. What a good combo, huh? Abigail and Ruth. All right, beloved, let's pray and then we'll read this passage and hear it preached. Lord, thank you for your grace, which has been extended to your people throughout the ages, enabling them to honor you and recovering your people from sins we're gonna witness tonight in this passage. We thank you for the kind of restraining grace that Christ himself brings and ask that as we read, as we hear your word read and preached that we would see Jesus simply put and that by seeing him we would be transformed into his image. that not only our intellects would be informed, but that the desires of our hearts would be improved or reoriented toward you, and that we would have a sense of clarity about what it means for us in this season of our lives to live for you like Christ. Amen. 1 Samuel 25, this is the word of the Lord. 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 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. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved. He was a Calebite. David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep, so David sent 10 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." When David's young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David, And then they waited. 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 strapped on his sword. And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword. And about 400 men went up after David, while 200 remained with the baggage. 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.' Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves, and two skins of wine, and five sheep already prepared, and five sieves 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. 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 mourning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him. 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. Please let your servant speak in your ears and hear the words of your servant. 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. Now then, my Lord, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from blood guilt 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. And now let this present that your servant has brought to my Lord be given to the young men who follow my Lord. 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 will 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 blood guilt 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. Then David received from her hand what she had brought him. And he said to her, go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice and I have granted your petition. 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 10 days later, the Lord struck Nabal, and he died. 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. Then David sent and spoke to Abigail to take her as his wife. When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife. And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord. And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife. David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. Saul had given Michael, his daughter, David's wife, to Paltai, the son of Laish, who was of Galilee." God's Word. Well, beloved, tonight what we want to do is to focus our attention on the theme of meekness. Meekness. Meekness can be described in many ways. The Psalm we plan to sing tonight, Psalm 37, is really an exposition of that character quality. Our Savior commended it when he said, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And meekness, beloved, is the characteristic of doing precisely what David did at Abigail's prodding. That is, not fighting on one's own behalf. but letting the Lord be your defense. Meekness is something we express in the face of opposition, persecution, antagonism, sin. It is a posture of strength that says, I do not have to repay you evil for evil because I know that God sees and He will do what is just. It is not to be Weak-spined, so to speak, it is just to trust God to seek vengeance and to not mete it out yourself, for you know that he will do it better than you. If we turn where we looked last Lord's Day, in the book of Romans, chapter 12, we find a handful of instructions from our apostle that point in the direction of meekness. Starting at chapter 12, verse 14, the Word of God instructs us in this beautiful grace Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves. but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will keep burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That's one of the most helpful New Testament expositions of meekness and applying it to our hearts. But here, when we come to 1 Samuel 25, we recognize the importance of meekness. And I think here, as we compare it to chapter 24, we see the importance of being consistently meek. consistently meek. And we're going to consider that tonight because this is an arena in which our own sin, we can be convicted by our own sin here and grow in the grace of our Savior. So three points for this evening. First, we're going to consider David's initial, even surprising, lack of meekness toward Nabal. And then we're going to consider the possible reasons for such. And finally, David's recovery to meekness with the help of Abigail. David's lack of meekness, surprising lack of meekness, the reasons for such, and David's recovery to meekness. Now, if you recall the previous passage, the reason why David's lack of meekness is surprising, And his lack of meekness is obvious, but the reason is because of where he had just been and what he had just been doing in the former passage. It's obvious David is not showing meekness in this passage. When we see here what David is plotting to do, he tells his men as soon as he gets rebuffed by Nabal, he says, strap on your sword. to all of his men. He straps in his sword. He takes 400 men and he goes to Nabal's house and then he commits himself to slaughtering the whole household. Reminds you a little bit of King Saul, doesn't it? Now, of course, this isn't Nob with all the priests that get slain, but it's a kissing cousin. He's going to wipe out a whole man's household. In fact, it reminds me of, um, Lamech in Genesis chapter, I believe it's five, could be chapter four, where he says to his two wives, I'm gonna kill a man for speaking against me or for slapping me. I don't remember off the top of my head, but he overblows his offense and seeks great vengeance. And it's a picture of great sin. We think for a second, why is it that David is doing this? He displayed great meekness in the passage just previous in the episode just before this with respect to King Saul. King Saul had been seeking his life. King Saul had been unjustly trying to persecute David over and over and over again. Saul was his mortal enemy. There was more pain and bitterness in his relationship with Saul because he was also his father-in-law who then gave him a wife and took his wife away. I mean, the amount of interaction with Saul, the amount of pain and frustration and dysfunction in his relationship with Saul was great. And he should have had high expectations for Saul. He was the king of Israel. He was his father-in-law. In David's conscience, we might say, he knew that Saul was the Lord's anointed. He knew he was the king and this really helped David to be meek toward him. David never avenged himself. In fact, when, in the last chapter, David and his men are in the cave and then Saul comes in, and takes a nap in the entryway of the cave. And David has the opportunity to slay him and has men counseling him to do just that. The same men that he's now telling strap on a sword, by the way. When they're telling him to kill Saul, he refuses against all this pressure. Even when providence looks like this is what he's supposed to do. God's just basically laid Saul out for him to kill right before him. And he exercises great meekness. He does not defend himself. He does not take justice into his own hands. And so he has the capacity evidently by God's grace to be very meek in an intensely difficult situation with great antagonism. And he's an example of Christ there. And right in the next passage, there is a man who has offended him. this man's offense is not small, but it is not as great as the offense that he suffered at the hands of Saul. Nabal has not sinned actively against him. Saul has sought to kill David's life, but Nabal has just refrained from letting David have a share in the hospitality of the shearing time, which is a festival time. They get together as they shear the sheep and there'd be a a kind of a household feast of sorts, and usually there would be many people invited to those celebrations. And David did do him a great favor with his young men in protecting his men as they were caring for the sheep for a season of time and at no expense. And so David thinks it's quite reasonable to come in and to benefit from their festival. It's an offense. We'll look at it more, but it was a matter of omission. It was a lack of kindness, not murderous intent. These are two different things and yet here David's ire is solicited to great degree and he acts completely differently than he did in the previous chapter. A surprising lack of weakness from this man. What are the reasons for such? Well, We could speculate any number of things. There's any number of indications in this passage that may teach us what possibly could have been at work in David's life and his heart that would have prompted him to act so differently. We might suggest that in the last passage, when Saul praises him, when Saul testifies to him after having been spared mercifully by David's meek approach to Saul, and Saul tells him, surely you will be king, And Saul tells him that you have been better to me than I was to you. You returned me good for my evil, etc. That David felt like, wow, I really just did it. By God's grace, I have done what is righteous. I have really passed the test here. I have surpassed my brethren who have been wicked and wanted me to slay Saul. I resisted that temptation and I have spared Saul's life. And now I'm enjoying this vindication. Saul himself before his hundreds or thousands, his thousands of men and before my hundreds of men has just testified that I will be king and God will establish my kingdom and that I'm better than him. And is it possible that in this moment of public praise and vindication that David did not guard his heart sufficiently and pride crept in? He felt like he had the right now to deal with people in a contrary way as to the way he dealt with Saul. Possible. I would be so tempted. Is it possible as well that Samuel's death plays a role in this? Perhaps Samuel had been a man who was not only, I think we should assume this was the case, who had been praying fervently for David. Is it possible that a lot of the deliverances David enjoyed were not just merely because God intervened, but that God was using the faithfulness of Samuel to solicit his activity, so to speak, that the Lord was involving this means of Samuel's prayers for David? And perhaps what's unscripturated is that frequently David received correspondence from Samuel counseling him. Perhaps Samuel's living testimony was a ministry to David, even from a distance when he wasn't with him. But now Samuel has died, perhaps a source of prayer has fallen off the map, and now he is laboring a little more independently from the Lord. Could be a legitimate factor. Did David perceive Nabal as simply beneath him? I mean, he's dealing with Saul and Saul is sitting greatly against him, yes, but Saul is above him. Saul is the king. He has a deferential posture towards the one who's the Lord's anointed in this exalted position. But Nabal, he's a common shepherd like I used to be. And maybe his heart was not ready to deal in a righteous way with those that he esteemed to be beneath him. Perhaps actually he was too much like him. They were both shepherds. They were both Judahites. Maybe David had a sense of self-righteousness, saying, I never would have done this to anybody. If this was my household, if this was Jesse's estate, we would have invited anybody. We would have been glad to invite the people that protected the shepherds into the feast. Here you are. You're inhabiting the same kind of position I am. In fact, you're only two streets down from where I was raised, and you aren't able to walk in the same kind of grace. What gives? Perhaps David's position in life as a former shepherd, Even a Judahite caused David to have higher expectations of Mabel that just offended him. Perhaps all of these things are legitimate parts of the picture, but at the end of the day, we must be able to say there was no good reason for David to abstain from meekness. Now, I list all of those reasons, not because, well, I list all those reasons because I think that these are the kind of excuses we give ourselves. This is the way our hearts often function. Oftentimes, the Lord puts us in a position where we manifest a significant grace. He works in us, and we're able to perform a good work or do something that requires a lot of God's help, and we do it, and it bears fruit. And then we say, huh, yeah, people are praising me. I've done what I'm supposed to do. This is a temptation for us church officers in the context of this church, this community, by the way, brothers. But it's a temptation to all of us where we serve. And then we suddenly give ourselves a break. We're not as zealous. We're not as disciplined. And we may treat people in the church with great kindness and then go home and be quite mean with our children, our spouse. We let off the gas. of our dependence on the Lord, our sense of holiness and the sense of what he would have us do. Perhaps we ourselves don't realize just how much our ability to walk by faith and grace, our ability to love others is dependent upon the prayerfulness of others. Perhaps we take that for granted. We don't realize how much of our graces is supplied to us by God because he's answering others' prayers for us. And we assume that our grace is just coming from us or because of our study in the scriptures or our prayers. We don't realize how dependent we are on others. Perhaps we have a sense of sobriety when we're in the company of the saints, the people that we know we need to be, you know, on our best behavior around, the pastor, the elders, the deacons, the congregation, perhaps their particular people, that we have a sense that we need to be on our best behavior before them, like David before Saul. But then when we're in the privacy of our homes, we act quite differently. or we're with people that we simply esteem to be beneath us in our pride. Perhaps we have a sense of greater expectation of those that seem to be in the same position we're in, like David and Nabal, both shepherds and Judahites, and it's a self-righteousness that comes forward because we think we would have done better than they have done, and they're in the position we're in, and we're not able to tolerate that sin in others with mercy and with patience. Here we have, I think, ample cause to repent, ample cause to confess sin and turn to the Lord and say, not just with meekness, with all of our graces, we can be subject to these kinds of things. And it should teach us to humble ourselves. It should teach us to be zealous, to give God thanks for His grace. It should teach us to never pull the foot off the gas, so to speak, of our dependence upon the Lord. That we need to consistently walk in His grace, not just when it seems to us like it's a high-pressure, important moment, but throughout all of life. This is a revelation of David's heart. Yes, he was a man after God's own heart. Yes, he was a hundred times more suited for the kingship than Saul in spiritual ways, but he was a broken man like you and me. And we have a revelation here, and this is true of all of us. We need to be able to receive that for ourselves. That kind of conviction of our sin. Now, one final thought. How did the Lord turn David around? How did he restore him to meekness? Well, I'm not going to fully exposit Abigail's heart or her speech to David tonight. I want to consider more of it next Lord's Day, but I do want to at least make a beginning so that we understand, at least this much, how she really represented Jesus to him. Think of what she does when she sees David. First of all, she's prepared all of this gift. She is performing the righteousness that her husband failed to perform. This is like Christ's act of obedience, fulfilling the law on behalf of us when we fail to do it ourselves. There's a matter of righteousness. Nabal should have given this supply, invited David and his men to the feast. He didn't do it. Well, Abigail does what he left undone and gathers this abundant amount of food and brings it to David. Then when she sees David, she bows before him. She serves him. She takes the posture of a servant toward him. Reminds you of Jesus. Taking off his cloak, wrapping it around his waist, getting down and washing the feet of his disciples. And he does something greater on the cross, doesn't he? Humbles himself so low to care for us in our need. And what are the first words that come out of her mouth? On me alone, my Lord, be the guilt. She's willing to suffer herself for Nabal's crimes. She's willing to bear the punishment that rightly belongs to him. Here we have. a glimmer of the kind of character that flows from us, should flow from us, as we recognize the atoning sacrifice of Christ. We see the beauty that he was willing to suffer for our sins in our place when he was perfectly innocent. Notice how there is a character of Christ being formed in her, and when David sees it, it ministers to his heart. It teaches him to recognize, whoa, whoa, whoa, I've been operating in accord with perhaps a form of the covenant of works. You obey, you get blessed. You disobey, you get hell. But here I have one who is operating according to grace. One who is willing to pay the price on someone else's behalf. One who is willing to perform the righteousness that someone else deserved. And so, beloved, this is ultimately what turns David's heart again toward mercy. Mercy, not for the king, but for a fool. If you didn't catch it or didn't read the footnote, I should have mentioned this earlier, the word navel means fool. Why his parents called him that, I don't know. It's a word that probably could function almost in the sense of like jester, you know, funny guy, but it has this other nuance of fool, in any case. And he's able to express mercy, and the Lord preserves him. So many good things flow from this in David's life. It is truly beautiful, and it centers around Abigail's Christ-like approach to her husband and to David. And this is what our Savior is for us. And this is, beloved, what we can be for one another. If by the grace of Christ, we have the ability to demonstrate these kind of character qualities in our relationships with one another, we can turn away wrath. We can help one another walk in accordance with Christ's character. And we can manifest the same kind of beauty that we see in Abigail, which is ultimately the beauty of Jesus. May that be an encouragement to you. And next Lord's Day we'll come back into this passage. I will give you a little assignment. Read the section of Genesis, near the end of Genesis, that pertains to Jacob and Laban and Rebekah and Leah and be ready to see how David is the new Jacob and Nabal is the new Laban in this story. We're going to consider that next Lord's Day and get into a little bit more of Abigail hopefully as well. a little bit of typology and Christology. But let us now pray. Father in heaven, thank you for our Savior's meekness to us, for his willingness to serve us in an exceedingly self-humiliating way, to take upon our guilt, to perform for us our righteousness, and to therefore enable us to turn away from sin and live in your righteous way. We want to be meek. We want to trust you to judge. You prove faithful in this instance and you will always prove faithful to judge your enemies. But we ask Lord God for the grace now to live and serve you and you alone as we see Jesus in one another and in your word. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.