We had a woman come from India, a guest, and speak with us some months ago. Frances was her first name. She has a ministry in India called Mukti. It's a ministry to women, to girls actually, it's a school. And ever since that visit, she and I have talked a time or two, and I've had this burden to write a daily devotion or daily infusions for, for women who have been oppressed and traumatized. I've been working kind of in my free time on consulting with some ministries that minister to women who are oppressed in different parts of the world. And one such woman that I have been kind of trying to better understand her situation is Abigail in the Old Testament. It's in 1 Samuel 25. And for the last three or four weeks, I've been thinking about her, her context, and I put this message together. One might say that it has something in common with the current events of the last week or two. That's certainly not my intention. Perhaps there are some, some overlap, but I would say that's not at all what this is about. But she finds herself in an interesting situation, and I think we all can learn from Abigail. This message is entitled Beauty on the Trail. And it's about ego. If you've studied ego in college, I mean, you could study ego from all these different perspectives. Sigmund Freud had a lot to say about it. ministers have something to say about it, the Bible has something to say about it. If you want to oversimplify the word ego and really understand what it's all about, on the negative side of ego, it can mean, it can stand for EGO, it can stand for easing God out. There are times in our life when we ease God out of our immediate perspective. We can ease him out of the immediacy of his influence in our decision making. and it leaves us really sort of in the flesh. In the flesh is an interesting prepositional phrase, really. I'm not sure we all are on the same page in understanding what it actually means, but I hope to further clarify that today. What does it mean to operate in the flesh, and what does it mean to operate in the spirit? These are two very distinctly different things with different motivations, and I think we need to really understand what the difference is and when we're in the flesh and when we're in the spirit, okay? That's part of it. The other part of the story is conflict resolution, for which I know that there is, not all of us are totally immune to conflict. It's just a part of life. And conflict is on a personal level, a marital level, a family level, community level, church level, government level, geopolitical level. Conflict is everywhere. So those three things, ego, conflict, resolution, and flesh versus spirit, is what I hope to tackle today. And it starts with a character by the name of Nabal. Nabal is a character, he's a scallywag is what he is. He's a... Well, his name means fool. Does that give you any idea what he's like? He's not necessarily the guy you're gonna vote over for dinner multiple times. Maybe once, not twice. He's a fool. And he's got some issues in his life. And being very wealthy probably doesn't help his issues. Not that being wealthy is anything wrong with that, but for him, I think it may be, you get the impression it adds to him a better, a deeper sense of security and confidence, maybe even arrogance. and Nabal is a fool with a lot of possessions, material, a lot of money, and perhaps greed overrides his compassion, perhaps. You get that impression anyway in what we do read of him. He's definitely strong-headed, strong-willed, self-honoring, I think would be another way to put it, and unfortunately self-serving. One might say, based on what you read about Nabal, that he is Slovenly and a drunk. I'm not painting a very nice picture of Nabal, but I don't know that there's another painting to make of his life. This is kind of his nature at this point. One of his many problems that creeps up on his radar is David. David becomes a problem for Nabal. And Nabal is not always right. And Nabal is not always wrong either, which pretty much names anybody on the planet. We're never always right and we're never always wrong. And certainly he's not fallible, infallible. Nabal's other challenge is his capacity. Maybe you've had people like this in your life before. The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, these people just lack the capacity for who you need them to be. It's not in their toolbox, whether it's a result of their upbringing, their teaching, their conditioning, their spiritual reality. We all, at one point in our life, just simply lack the capacity to understand, or the capacity to act appropriately, or the capacity to be compassionate, or the capacity to be not self-centered. Most of the people in the church today, before they came to Christ, had the greatest lack of capacity to operate as Lord of their own life. They just simply didn't have what they needed, myself included, I'll put myself at the top of the list, did not have the acuum to actually be or to operate, and then we go through life trying to minimize that lack of capacity and to maximize our abundance in Christ. That's what sanctification is in many respects. But Nabal right now, as we read about him, he just lacks the capacity. When people lack capacity, what we do is we expect things of them that they cannot give us. Said another way, people who lack capacity disappoint us. It's almost foolish to expect something of them they cannot give us. And unfortunately, sometimes those people are our parents. Or Sometimes they're our children. They're everyone around us at any given day. They just simply lack the capacity. Well, Nabal lacks capacity. Matthew 7 and 6 says, do not give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. Some translation described Nabal as a cur, C-U-R. Everybody know this word? Crossword people probably know this word. A cur is a dog. Nabal's a dog. And don't give dogs that which is sacred. Don't enter into conversations with people who can't understand where you're going anyway. you're casting your pearls before swine. That's not an insult, it's a principle. It's not meant to be derogatory towards the person, it's meant to keep you from wasting your time. Don't do it. It's really not gonna help, it's not going to influence them at all, just let them be. Sometimes leaving somebody in their own misery is a ministry to them. Sometimes trying to help them out of their trouble is not really in their best interest. Sometimes they have to, as you guys might hear this phrase, hit bottom. Well, Nabal's bouncing off the bottom. That's his problem. Nabal is totally in the flesh. All right, we'll get to the story in a minute. Second character of the story is David. David has a problem. and namely it's King Saul. King Saul's trying to chase him down and kill him, which makes him a fugitive from justice, or injustice in this case. David too has an ego, as we all do, and David can operate in the flesh like anybody else, and he does a pretty good job with the best of them. He might be a man after God's own heart, but he's not always right, he's not always wrong, and he's not always infallible. Sometimes he admits it, he takes responsibility, but sometimes he operates in the flesh like we all do. What else is new? He is strong-headed, he is at times self-honoring and maybe at times self-serving, maybe at times not. He can be right in a situation and he can approach it in a wrong manner. He can be right in a situation and approach it in a right manner. Yeah, but David's problem is King Saul. and he sings about it, he writes songs about it. And what does he write about? He writes about safety and refuge like over 40 times. And he understands what it means to be on the lam. He understands what it means running for your life and having the responsibility of leading others who are running for theirs. He understands a hiding place and he understands not what it's like to be a dog, but to be hunted like a dog. He knows that. His problem, his other problem is Nabal. and Nabal's lack of gratitude. Big question, does David have the capacity? More often than not, because of David's relationship with the Lord, he has the capacity to act and to react and to be proactive. He has the capacity for wisdom. He has the access to the one who has all wisdom. He has capacity to receive and to make good decisions. Does he always exercise that? No. Does everybody? No. No doubt he has a place in history, he has a destiny, and there's no doubt he's gonna be the future king. Question at this point is, when and what kind of king? Can he operate totally in the flesh? Without question. And the third character in the story is Abigail. Abigail's problem is Nabal, because she's married to him. See her problem. Second problem she has is David. She's caught in the middle of him. Her additional concern is the safety of her servants, the people that work with her, remaining safe, having a future, being provided for, acting with wisdom, and at the same time trying to be yourself. If you're looking for something that probably at Abigail's highest peak, she's a Proverbs 31 woman. Proverbs 31 woman is the pinnacle of femininity. It's wise, it's compassionate, it's helping the poor, it's being who God has created you to be and then some. When she's at her best, her best is really good, and we don't have much understanding in the scripture of her not-so-good days, so she's looking pretty good. She's both beautiful and intelligent, says the Bible. Beautiful on the outside, beautiful on the inside, intelligent, spiritually wise. Actually, if you think about it, Abigail's a foreshadowing of Christ. She finds herself between two opposing people, two opposing entities. She is a foreshadowing, a prophetic look at the insertion of Christ in the Old Testament. What she does is Christ's role as intercessor, as peacemaker. Abigail is a picture of Christ. 1 Samuel 25 and 18 says, Abigail acted quickly. She took 200 loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five sieves of roasted grain, and 100 cakes and raisins, and 200 cakes and pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. So basically the story goes like this. Nabal is enjoying the harvest of sheep and his big bank account, and he's celebrating. David sends some men to him and says, listen, we've been driving around the countryside here, protecting your herds, looking out for your men, looking out for your home, looking out for your family. We've been taking on this Robin Hood role of looking after people in the area, and we'd just like a little sheep to eat. That'd be all right. A little grain to munch on. And Nabal sends the men off like, are you crazy? You're not getting a thing from me. It's his greed and his hoarding and his lack of understanding and compassion, his lack of fair-mindedness that really just incenses David, sends him off the edge. And David says, mount up, get your swords. All 400 of you, 200 of you stay here and look at the supplies. We're off. We're headed over and we're gonna kill this cur, gonna slay this dog. We're gonna figure this out. We're gonna make this happen. We're gonna eat all this food. This is not cool. We're leaving with a plunder. Is David in the flesh? You bet he is. He's, has he got righteous indignation? Maybe on some initial level, but the fact of the matter is, the guy is pretty hacked off, he's tired, he's on the lam, he doesn't have, he's up against a wall, and he's gonna absolutely fillet Nabal's family, friends, and take everything he has, including his own life. Nabal and David are basically you and me. Fact of the matter is, we could go either direction on any given day at any given moment. We could operate totally in the flesh in Nabal's kind of way, or we can act totally in the flesh in David's kind of a way. Either way, we're capable. We have that capacity. That's the fact. Now, Abigail, cooler heads prevail. She has something that is becoming absolutely not talked about, unheard of anymore. In cultural circles, it's a thing of the past, it's an old school thought, as biblical as it is, but it doesn't override the flesh very often at all nowadays. Abigail has a fear of God. A healthy, respectful, reverent fear of God. A healthy, balanced, check in her spirit that I cannot go the way of the flesh and absolutely disrespect my Lord. I have to walk in the fear of God. The fear of the God is the wisdom and knowledge are the beginning of all understanding of the fear of the Lord. She has both wisdom, she has understanding, she has knowledge, and she's not emotionally amped up and making absolutely out of character decisions about what to do with her feelings. She has feelings, but they're all checked by and under the self-control of Galatians 5 and 2, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. The Spirit of God is checking her spirit. She's under the authority and the lordship of God and will not defy him or deny him or minimize him in her behavior. It's fear of the Lord. Now, what we operate in today, more often than not, is the fear of man. Fear of man, though, is the pressure that's laid to bear on our decision making as to whether someone will like what we do, not like what we do, what we say, and what we don't say, the fear of man. Fear of God is core central to Abigail's motivation. The fear of God means that you will actually make decisions that will be risky in the eyes of other people. That the decisions you make and the behavior you conduct and the things you say, and more importantly, or equally important, the things you do not say, have a risk to them in the eyes of you losing something in your life, a friendship, respect. It will open you to ridicule, to gossip. It will cause people to not have favor with you. They will leave you, they will break away from you. This is the fear of man. I don't see that in her. She is going to risk what she, go and gamble and stand between two opposing forces and 400 people, men, who have been out without a date in six months. She's going to go stand before these men as they come at her household and her cur of a husband and she's going to seek to be an intercessor between two opposing forces and she's gonna take a gamble. That's called Respectworthy. Does she have the capacity? She has the capacity to tell the truth. And not only that, is willing to do so. She also understands the two opposing parties and she's not going to be a peacekeeper, she's gonna be a peacemaker. Blessed are the peacemakers. What is a peacemaker? A peacemaker is one who brings God into a situation as opposed to simply inserting them in a situation between two people and keep them hopefully from killing each other. Is she motivated by flesh or ego? The answer is no. Yeah, there is an element of self-preservation, but God never called us to be a masochist anyway. She is motivated by the Spirit of God. She's now looking at a future king, and she's also dutifully, if you wanna use that word, standing up for her wretch dog of a husband at the same time. And I don't know how you could be more Christ-like than that. I don't know how anybody can see Christ not as somebody who stands up for the unredeemed and takes a risk and gives his own life, his reputation, is abused for the abused, is mutilated for the mutilated, is emotionally traumatized for the emotionally traumatized and will By the propitiation, the substitution of himself, he'll stand for, in the presence of God, the Father, he'll stand, he'll take the punishment for those dogs who haven't yet had the capacity to even accept him. He foreknew our need of himself and redemption and demonstrated his love for us while we were yet sinners, he died. Romans 5 and 8. Hmm. Yes, she is a prophetic foreshadowing of Christ. She is a peacemaker before peacemaking was ever talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. And she has a greater fear of God than she does a fear of man. Can the church learn from her today? Yes. I think in part that's what she was written about. And that's why we're talking about her. Because in this instance, the church will have to make a decision. Are we actually going to have a greater fear of God, a fear of man, or are we going to follow God first and follow man second? The conclusion to those questions, the answer to those questions have yet to be seen. And they're not one in the same. They are not always one and the same because no one's always right and no one's always wrong. Following God and have a healthy reverence for God above any man, any man, is first and foremost in Abigail's mind. Generations are watching and Abigail, our intercessor, is one who, this is interesting, you get the idea She prays more than she speaks out. Said another way, when she speaks out, it's a result of her prayer. She doesn't speak out and then pray. I think we need in our world today, people who speak a whole lot less and pray a whole lot more. It'd be interesting to find out what would actually be said if we prayed in advance of what we said. Because just like David and just like Nabal, we can get in the flesh. Flesh is getting ahead of God. Prayer first, word second. I think for the most part as a culture and if we're not careful as a church, we might be inverting those two things. Ezekiel 22 and 30, I look for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land, and I would have to destroy it, but I found no one. God is looking for a church that will pray more than we speak. And I hear it all the time. You gotta speak out, you gotta speak out, you gotta speak out. True, true, true. But it helps if you pray beforehand. I can't remember the last time somebody had a burden to pray for revival. What we have a burden to do is tell everybody how to fix everything. And we can't all be right, because we're disagreeing with one another 50% of the time. Not enough prayer, too many words. Where words are many, sin is not absent. Prayer first, speaking second. There's a lot of confusion today. God is not the author of confusion. Connect the dots. Mark 3 in 25, Abigail sees this, she knows this. She hadn't even heard it yet. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Her house can't stand, it's divided. David's house won't stand, it's divided. Your house won't stand, it's divided. The House of Representatives, if divided long enough, will not stand. The legislature won't stand, the government won't stand, the nation won't stand. There has to be a uniting at some point in time because the division won't last. Not me, he says me, he says Jesus, the rabbi, the teacher. A house divided cannot stand. I don't know how long you can stand being divided, but inevitably at some point in time, It will not stand. I was watching a hockey game, US Canada, the other day, and I was thinking of the Miracle movie. I was just a kid in 1980. Well, I was 18. Yeah, I was a kid. I was watching the hockey match in the Olympics live. I remember sitting on the floor watching it. And I can never, I'll never forget, USA, USA. That was forever embedded in my mind. And when they did it in the movie, I was like, man, that's awesome. And chills up and down my spine, USA, USA. I'm thinking to myself, what would they say today? S-A, S-A, S-A. Because what's united? From what are we united around? I don't see a united at all. That can last for a while, it can't last forever, so says Jesus. So we have to think about this as a church because Proverbs 14 and 34 says, righteousness exalts a nation. The church makes the call. The church makes the call. I see people in the church publicly viscerating one another in social media. And I'm thinking, how did we get so in the flesh? They're eating one another's young. They're destroying one another verbally in front of the whole entire world in the name of Christ. Fear of God? or fear of man. It's interesting. So, will we go the way of Nabal? Will we go the way of David? Will we go the way of Abigail? I was thinking about how she handled herself on the road. She made 200 loaves of bread. I've watched my wife try to make sourdough bread over the last couple of months. I guess, I don't know, getting the right combination of altitude and temperature and all the stuff, the starter to make sourdough bread. How anybody could make 200 loaves, I don't know, that's just beyond my, Absolutely boggles my mind on how that would happen. So she had to get help to make 200 loaves. She made 200 loaves for 400 men, each person. It's a half a loaf. Not enough to linger too long, not enough to stay around too long, just enough to have a few pieces of bread, satisfy them, and maybe get them to move on. She's not looking to camp out and have a week-long festival here. She made a half a loaf per man. She had two skins of wine. Okay, 400 guys aren't getting drunk on two skins of wine. So they're gonna get a little bit to drink, and they're not gonna have a party, but they're gonna have enough to wanna move on. She's not looking to have these people camp out outside her home. Five dressed sheep. We had a picnic out front here at 4th of July, and we had one pig for a barbecue, and it fed about 200 people. She's not looking at these people sticking around a long time getting fat and happy and drunk. He's got just enough to make them happy, but not enough to get them to linger. 200 fig cakes. Everyone gets a half a fig cake. And if you had the figs in Israel, ooh, they're good. A bushel of grain. I guess that's for later. And 10 raisin cakes. I don't know, man, that doesn't sound like it's going too far. She had to get people to help her make that food. She had to get her helpers and servants to help her make that. She's wise enough to know that there's safety in a multitude or many counselors. There's safety in getting people to help you, to make good decisions, to complete tasks. I have a problem with my left knee, as you well know, a knee replacement. And I'm on my second doctor. Seems like if you have a doctor around here, they usually leave, go off somewhere. So I just decided Gainesville's where I go to the doctor. I can't just have people coming and going around here. That's another situation. But he called me at home the other night, the doctor did. And he says, I got your situation, I got your MRI, I got your records, I got your pictures, I got your x-rays. He says, I sat down with 16 doctors the other night, and we all looked at your knee. And here I thought he was just taking his time to call me back. He goes, 10 out of the 16 suggested this, and six suggested this, and we decided to go this direction. I thought, good for you, man, good for you. I thought you were just taking a couple minutes to look it over and give me a call if you were gonna call, but you got 16 other people involved, nice, like it. So they put a plan together. That's Abigail. She moves methodically. She takes people to help her. And she doesn't go solo between two opposing forces. And this is what she says. Please forgive your servant's presumption. He's humble. The Lord with a capital L, your God, will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my Lord, small l, because you fight the Lord's battles, building up his ego. And no wrongdoing will be found in you as long as you live. Not exactly true, but it sounds good. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, King Saul, the life of my Lord, small l, will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the Lord your God, big L. But the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. For the Lord has fulfilled for my Lord every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him ruler over Israel. What are you gonna do with this woman as you're on your way with your 400 swords? How do you respond to that kind of intentionality, that kind of humility, that kind of Christ-likeness, that kind of meekness that actually causes one to inherit the earth. How does one respond even in the magnification of their flesh in the moment with all of the testosterone and amped upness that David has to march in there and kill everybody in the house? Her demeanor shut him down. Her demeanor caused his flesh to just dissipate and the spirit in him to come up. She knew how to handle a conflict unlike what I see happening in our world today. We have no idea how to handle a conflict. She, in the spirit of Christ, came up against the spirit of an antichrist, because David was acting totally opposite of what God wanted him to do. Was he justified? Yeah, I guess so. You could probably bend it that way. Was he right, ultimately? No. If he was right, then God would have sent him out of the house and not impeded his way by Abigail herself. We need Abigails in this world. We need men and women who fear God, who will stand between people who are absolutely in conflict and figure out a way to bring them united because without unity, there's no anointing. Someone's gonna have to figure this out. You can be right and do something in the wrong way. You can be wrong and turn around and do it in the right way. The outcome is not always the same for both. Abigail is on top of her game. God looked for someone to stand in the gap and she was it. I think, I don't think, I know. that I personally need to be more quiet about what's going on in the world today and make my talk and my rhetoric and the way that I speak proportional to the amount that I pray. Look at communion, what a night, the Holy Communion, the last few days of Christ's life. Judas was more divided than he's ever been, and he'll never come back to being united. It's about to absolutely go down, and Judas is gonna be lost. He's gonna be so divided against Christ, so divided against his friends, and so divided in his mind, he is the ultimate double-minded man. He has a greater fear of man than he does of fear of the Lord, and it's not coming back, it's not altering. Only temporarily does he sense his wrongdoing, his repentance. But he's divided, he's a divided man. You could be a divided culture, divided government, divided family, but the worst to overcome is a division in your own mind. A double-minded man is unstable in all he does. And that's the definition of it right there. Peter was divided for the rest of the evening with Christ, but he comes back. He betrays him three times, but he comes back to being united again, to his credit. Did he have the capacity to hear God? Yes, we had already heard him with a divine revelation. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter, flesh and blood did not reveal that to you. That was by the Spirit. He has the capacity to hear. He just deviated from it temporarily, and he denied Christ three times, but he came back to unity. It's funny, he could not hear the Holy Spirit that night, and he ended up cutting off a man's ear. I find that somewhat humorous. The first thing God did is put the ear back on Malchus. Why? Well, in part, it was on the ground. In the part, he wasn't the enemy. Our enemy's not flesh and blood. And it had to resonate. It had to resonate with Peter. Peter, you gotta put your ears on. You gotta be able to hear. You gotta be able to shut your ever-loving mouth and hear the Holy Spirit. Let me put this ear back on in case you need something to recollect after you stand around the fire and butcher me time after time after time. Peter was divided, but he did return. And at the end of the day, I heard this this week, Bodies keep the score. You know, I really don't wanna know how much sickness that we deal with in our life is the result of harboring stress and resentment and bitterness. I don't wanna know. is I don't wanna be disappointed. At this table right here, we're gonna come to this table and enjoy a meal that's Christ himself, his broken body, his body broken for you. I've looked at that in many different ways over the years, but today I'm thinking to myself, Is it possible, science says it is, that part of our brokenness, our own flesh, our own bodies, our own sicknesses that we harbor, our own diseases we ask for prayer for, are rooted in sicknesses rooted in prayerlessness, stress, worry, anxiety, And maybe his flesh was broken, sure, to combat Gnosticism and all the false religions of the day, to accentuate the fact that he had flesh and blood and he was fully God and fully man and we're all doctrinally correct. Perhaps another issue here that we probably need to look at is his flesh was mutilated and scarred and beaten to remind us that in our own physical flesh, if we don't walk in the fear of God and we walk in the fear of man, we just might be susceptible and vulnerable to more causes of illness than we would have been had we just followed him. Abigail is a prophetic foreshadowing of Christ. There are Nabals in this world and there are Davids. I don't wanna be in either's camp. I'd rather be in the sweet corner pocket of being exactly where Christ wants me to be, saying exactly what he wants me to say, sensing exactly what he wants me to sense. not worried about the ramifications, but risking the truth before people. Not tell them what their itchy ears wanna hear, but what needs to be heard between two opposing opinions. I'll stand there all day long like an Abigail and I'll speak the truth. We need to pray more and speak less. Pray more and speak up more once we've prayed. Because I see so much flesh. So much flesh. It's frankly embarrassing. The enemy is not flesh and blood for the 150th time. Take your eyes off the flesh and blood that is not the enemy and put it on the true enemy because he is ravaging us for a lack of prayer and intercession as the body of Christ. Place not your confidence in man, place it in the Spirit of God. And allow the blood of Christ to cover your mistakes. your shortcomings, your sins, but don't ever stop standing up for Christ in any context and do it as He would, not as perhaps your flesh and mind dictate it should be done. That's why I love this table. It works. It works in any situation. in every context, and it works every solitary time. The blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of your sins. The blood of Christ that compensates for a lack of capacity. The blood of Christ that unifies and brings the anointing. The blood of Christ that sanctifies and justifies and atones for our sin. the blood of Christ, exactly what we need in our spiritual diets, the staple of atonement, time and time and time again. Thank you, Lord, who is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore, though our perceptions and our need of Him are constantly altering. Walk not in the flesh, walk in the Spirit. And the fullness of the broken body of Christ and the blood of the Lamb will flourish in your life. And you'll be the prophetic foreshadowing of Christ in somebody who doesn't yet know Him. This world is looking for Christ. and they shouldn't have to look so hard and they shouldn't have to look beyond certainly us in the process. It should be quite obvious, more obvious than perhaps it is. Let's pray. If we are witnesses and eyewitnesses of Christ, then our testimony should be consistent, undeniable, accurate, formidable, righteous, holy, humble. We should be peacemakers and not peacekeepers. We should take risks. We could stand up for the glory of God and defend our Lord, not betray Him, in word and in deed. We, Lord, as a church in this country need your help. We need to be the people you're looking for that stand in the gap. Nabal perished. David flourished. Help us to pick the narrow road. the at times more difficult road. As you, on the night you were betrayed, chose freely, nevertheless, thy will be done. Thank you for that example. We follow you and we ask you to flourish within us to that same end. In Jesus' name.