Let us turn to The Reading of God's Word, page 315. In most of the few Bibles, 1 Samuel, chapter 25. And we'll read verses 1 through 42. And we'll be really looking at verse 2 through the beginning of verse 39. And then we'll come back to the mess of David's marriages, Lord willing, next week. But this week, we'll read about how God uses Abigail to preserve David from a mess. 1 Samuel 25, and we'll begin our reading at verse one. 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 Moen whose business was in caramel. The man was very rich. He had 3000 sheep and 1000 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 strap on his sword. And every man of them strapped on his sword. And 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 no one can speak to him. Then Abigail made haste and took 200 loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared and five sayers of parched grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and 200 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 the cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her and she met them. Now David had said, surely in vain I have guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness so that nothing has missed all that belonged to him and he has returned for me evil for good. God do so to the enemies of David and more also if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him. When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground. And she fell at his feet and said, on me alone, my Lord, let 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 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 navel. And now let this present that your servant has brought to my Lord be given to the young men who follow my Lord. and 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 turned in you so long as you live if men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life and the life The life of my Lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God, and the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And when the Lord has done to my Lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you Prince over Israel, my Lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause, or for my Lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dealt well with my Lord, then remember your servant. And David said to Abigail, blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel who sent you to stay 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. And 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 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. And she followed the messengers of David and became his wife. So far the reading, the grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our Lord endures forever. Dear congregation, there is a close relationship between anger and foolishness. The unrighteous anger which we all struggle against is that which is pitted against godly wisdom. We might say that godly wisdom is at war with ungodly folly. And in our text today, that war is played out. It is, we might say, the war of Abigail's wisdom against the foolishness of two foolish men. As some have summarized, have nicknamed this passage, it's the account of a rose between two angry thorns. Now the folly is not the same of one and the other. The account has something to teach us about sanctified wisdom, growing in wisdom, for the folly of one man will cling to him, the folly of the other will literally be stopped in its tracks. And so let's consider these things together as God's people who know the importance of wisdom as the Apostle Paul says it in first Corinthians one all God's people are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And so our theme of wisdom this morning is this, learn discernment against folly and anger. And first let's look at anger rising. the anger rising in our text. And as we come to the beginning of our text in 25 verse 2 and 3 and 4, we're given an unusual introduction to a new person. And the first thing that is unusual is that his name means folly. This is unusual because we would not expect parents to just name their child Fool. And there's been some explanations given for how Nabal, which means fool, could get his name. One of the suggestions, and this may well be, is that in the Hebrew that word used to have two different meanings or two very similar sounding names. And the parents were thinking of the other thing, but then when he grew up to be such a fool, Nabal, meaning fool, is what came to be attached to this man. And this is his name, and then we get some details about him, especially this, that he is very rich, 3,000 sheep, 1,000 goats. And then we know also where he's from. He's a man of Judah. Carmel, in verse 2, is not the more famous Mount Carmel, upon which Elijah once battled the prophets of Baal. This is the Carmel to the south, which is part of the tribe of Judah. It's a fertile land in the tribe of Judah. And indeed, we know what part of the tribe of Judah he's from. He's a Calebite, it says. But who is Caleb? Well, Caleb came to be part of the tribe of Judah. He was the righteous spy as they were entering the land. But Genesis 36.11 tells us that Caleb was, before he was assimilated into the tribe of Judah, he was a descendant of Esau. And so now let's put these things together. What do we have? We have a man whose name might mean two very different things, one of them folly, one of them probably something more pleasant, the meaning now lost to us. And he has a descent which might hint of two different things, either from the righteous Caleb or from Caleb's ancestor, the unrighteous Esau. And it is to this man, that 10 of David's men are sent to ask for food. Now, I think we need to stop right here and think about how different the world was then than the world is now. Because today, we would not expect that we could just walk up to some rich person and say, you should really feed 600 people and their families. Remember, David has 600 men and the camp includes those men's families. You know, this is a little strange. This isn't something we would just do today. You don't just walk up to a rich person and say, hey, you want to feed 600 men and their families? You should really do that. That sounds weird. We would not expect a rich person to just say, yeah, here's a great feast for you, but, but in this day and in this circumstance, this is not at all A strange thing to do. There are at least three reasons why David's men would expect that this request would be honored. And the first reason is cultural expectation on a feast day. Again, the world is different than it used to be, but not so long ago when class distinctions were still more clearly defined, even in Western countries like Europe and England and all those, there was this general expectation that on certain feast days, like a harvest day or like a shearing of the sheep day, which we have here, that the rich would provide some big feast for really the whole community. to just go beyond even then Western culture and now to look back at Eastern culture, Eastern hospitality, it would be the expectation that even strangers would be included in that culture. abundance of providing, especially on a feast day. And the men of David know this. Notice they mention it's a feast day. They mention that in verse 8. On this feast day, let us come and share in your feast. And culturally, they would have every expectation that that would be answered by such a wealthy man. So the first reason is cultural expectation. The second reason, this one probably makes a little more sense to us immediately, and that is, David says, well look, I've been protecting your shepherds for the last however long, and as long as we've been with them, night and day, they have been safe. And so that's the second reason, is because David's band is not some marauding uh... band of soldiers that's been stealing from naval on the contrary they've been protecting nabels flocks that's the second reason and then the third reason because of who david is uh... now uh... for those who have been working through first samuel we're gonna kinda step back for a moment we're gonna remember something way far back and that is the anointing of david and that was a a a semi secret uh... thing when Samuel first anointed David. And the text doesn't tell us exactly how or when this happened, but now that we've come to 1 Samuel 25, the anointing of David is no longer really a secret. It's now something which is becoming generally known. Certainly, Abigail, in verse 30, knows that David is the anointed prince. And he's the one who will be king. And so gradually this has become known. And we've also talked in recent chapters about how David has begun to embrace his responsibility as an appointed prince. And so when we put those things together, it's no longer a secret that David is the anointed king to be. David might, because of his position, have some expectation that Nabal would feed him and his men, and that might even be magnified further by the fact that they're of the same tribe. They're both men of the tribe of Judah. Despite these things, Nabal says, well, absolutely not. I think we need to work through those reasons in order to understand that this is this would really be a shocking answer. No. I'm not going to feed you. He is, he is being a fool. This would have been the expected hospitality of a wealthy man It was not some strange thing they were asking for. He says, no, this is mine. Look at how many times he speaks about I and my in verse 11. Shall I take my bread, my water, my meat, I have killed all that is, right? It's like, yeah, this is mine. And then, And this is something which is quite common. We even have an expression for it. He must add insult to injury, or injury to insult, however you want to say it. And so before he says that in verse 11, in verse 10 he says, oh, well, you know, David, he's some rebel against our king. He's just some servant who's rebelling against Saul. And so I have a right to deny him these things. Now this is commonly how folly works. How self-righteous foolishness works. Well, no. I'm just going to go do my own thing. And by the way, because other people are so terrible, I'm justified in doing whatever I want. Even if that accusation against others, as this accusation against David, is completely unfounded. self-righteousness must justify itself. The nabal is a fool and a self-righteous fool who must add insult to injury. In response to this, now David's anger is going to rise. So now we've got two angry men. And what does David say? Put on your swords, verse 13, and I am going to strap on my sword as well. And that takes us into our second point, anger questioned. Because even though David had a good reason to expect hospitality, Can we question David's anger? Can we say, well, you know, he might've had all these good reasons to expect food, but does that mean that he should be angry? No, it does not mean that he should be angry. For all of the cultural expectations and good reasons that David could have had to expect Nabal to say, yes, come to the feast. There's no law against Nabal refusing to feed 600 men and their families. And even if there was a law, David is not yet the crowned king. David does not yet have a position of authority to carry out punishment against law breaking. You see, it might seem to be justified, but it is not. And brothers and sisters, does that not describe so much of the anger that we all struggle against? We have all these good reasons to be angry. Well, I should have expected this. I would expect my friend to do this. I would expect my spouse to do this. I would expect my child to do this. I would expect this from that. And I got all these good reasons to do it. So-and-so was a complete fool for saying no to me or whatever it is, right? And then, excuses, supposedly, justify anger, but they do not. Excuses do not justify anger. Previous good behavior does not justify anger, right? I mean, maybe maybe David's even building up more things in his mind like, man, I was just I was just so gracious and merciful with Saul. I can't, you know, I'm not, I don't have to be merciful to this guy. He's not the anointed king. So I can take it out on Nabel now, right? We justify, we excuse, we build up. We say, well, I've been good in the past, so now I can go and do whatever I want. Anger is almost always comes wrapped up with justifications, excuses. Brothers and sisters, let's know what anger is. Anger is almost without exception, unrighteous anger in scripture. And then most of the times that it's righteous anger, it's God's righteous anger. And in the handful of righteous anger moments that we see in the Bible, no anger. is so often, as David's anger is here, an unjustified anger. And so it's going to be questioned. Praise the Lord that David is going to have someone stand up to question David's behavior here. There is a servant who comes to Abigail The servant knows that Nabal's not worth talking to. He's not going to listen, especially once he's made a decision. Maybe if Abigail had been there in the moment, and that's actually what she's going to imply, things would have been different. But since Nabal's made his decision, the servant is concerned they're going to get wiped out. Notice, again, David didn't say, you know, if he says no, come back, we're going to wipe him out. No. The servants are standing there and they're thinking, Nabil, what are you doing? David has every right to expect that you'll do this for his men. And the servant just assumes that they're going to get attacked now because it's like, Nabil, what are you doing? So he goes to Abigail and Abigail, verse 18, she's going to respond quickly. She is going to respond quickly. She gets together a gift as quickly as she can. She heads down and she stands before David and his army. Now, okay, picture this. Speaking a word of love and wisdom to try to point out unrighteous anger in our friends and our family members, It requires bravery, doesn't it? To tell someone that they're acting in an angry way and they should stop. And picture Abigail here. She literally just stopped and bowed down before 400 armed and angry men. That is not an easy situation to speak in. And so she stands before 400 armed and angry men. Well, she bows before and she makes her speech of wisdom. Now we're not going to look at every detail of Abigail's speech, but let's pick out a few things. First of all, notice that Abigail is as respectful as possible towards her husband and takes as much blame upon herself as she possibly can. and verses 24 and 25. Basically, what she says in those two verses is, please blame me. If I had been there, Nabal wouldn't have answered this way. Now, Nabel's a fool. So once he's made his decision, she doesn't think she can go to him and reverse it. But she's saying, if I had been there in the moment, I think I could have influenced him. And we would not have responded this way. So blame me. I wasn't there. She's taking as much responsibility as she possibly can. She is being as respectful of her husband as she possibly can. But she does not hide from the truth. She does not call a lie something true. She does not call foolishness wisdom. And so she is going to call her husband a fool because he was a fool. And that's in verse 25. Folly is his name. Nable is his name. She's not going to sugarcoat the situation, we might say it. Now let's pause here for a moment. I said we sang from Psalm 14, so we come back to Psalm 14. What is at the most foundational level of foolishness? Well, on its most basic level, foolishness is a denial of God. The fool says in his heart, there is no God, Psalm 14.1. What does Psalm 14 go on to speak about? Psalm 14 goes on to speak about how we are all sinners. No one seeks after God. People of God, what I'm saying is, let's not read 1 Samuel 25 and think, okay, this is just about how uh... i'd need to be like abigail and not like naval no we are all naval we are all fools we all fail to seek after god we are all sinners who need we are all fools who let us hope we are fools like david who when we are confronted with our mistakes with our foolishness let's rephrase that just a little bit differently when we're confronted with our sins Let us repent of our sins. Let us be willing to face our sins for what they are. Now Abigail, she's speaking about another, but she's willing to call foolishness what it is. We must be willing to do that for others. We must be willing to do that for ourselves. And we all have a foolish rebellion in need of God in our hearts. And that's really the most important thing about the speech of Abigail, and this is going to take us into our third point, is that the speech of Abigail is saturated with the name of the Lord. And at the heart of her speech is, we might summarize it this way, David, you're thinking on your own terms. Let's think upon the Lord's terms and upon what the Lord has done and is doing and will do. And that takes us into our third point, anger, halting. Nabal is known as the kind of man who does not change. Verse 17, Nabal's a worthless man. He cannot be spoken to. By contrast, one of the marks of a Christian, the mark of a Christian is not that we're not fools. No one seeks after God, Psalm 14. But one of the marks of a Christian is that the Holy Spirit will grab hold of us And we'll acknowledge that foolishness. We'll allow our sins to be pointed out, and we'll confess those sins. We'll confess that we need the Lord's ways. And Abigail is so carefully and beautifully saying, David, think upon the Lord. Look at some of her language, especially in verses 29 and 30. Think of the present care of the Lord upon you, David. And at the end of verse 29, she makes this allusion to how God delivers by the use of a stone in a sling. What is she doing? She's making David to remember God's past deliverances, the Lord's strength, because David made it so clear it was not his own strength, but it was the Lord through him that used that stone to slay the giant Goliath. She's reminding David indirectly, beautifully, wisely of what the Lord is doing and has done. And then in verse 30, she's reminding David of what the Lord will do. The Lord has anointed you. The Lord will establish you, David. Remember what the Lord does for you and will do for you and do not take these things with your own wrongdoing. Do not take the position which the Lord has given to you and enter into it as a man with blood guilt. Oh, here is, here is a a humble but still strong confrontation of anger that God gives from the lips of Abigail. Now she also speaks to Nabal when he's informed. He is halted in the sense that God is going to use this moment to bring judgment upon him directly. God is going to strike him down, and it is God who does it. Verse 38 makes that clear. But for David, he is confronted, and his anger is halted. He's literally stopped in his tracks. People of God, the call for when we consider anger is not never be angry. I mean, we do want to grow in the spirit and not be angry. But we do all have anger. We do all have unrighteousness. And so this halting is a beautiful picture of repentance and what we are called to do as God's people. Stop. Do a 180. Turn around. Go the other way. Do not carry your anger through to its destructive end. And then as we are turning, praise the Lord. Oh, look at David's language of praise. He praises God in verse 32. He acknowledges his wrongdoing that God is keeping him from in verse 33. People of God, God still works in much the same way. Judgment for those who do not repent is not always the same as it is for Nabal here. It's not always miraculous and swift, but God still judges sinners who do not repent. But the stopping of sinfulness, the halting of our sinful desires, and then turning us to praise him, this is still very much how God works. May it be so in our lives that we would see our sinfulness that we would have friends brave enough strong enough to stand up in the gap in the valley before our swords in their scabbard and say what are you doing. Consider the Lord and then may we consider the Lord and stop and praise him and praise what he has done and praise that that he does forgive us of our sins as we repent and trust in him. He has sent his very son to die on the cross for those sins. So let's ask ourselves a couple of questions. Now, I said we don't want to only read 1 Samuel 25 and say, am I Abigail? Because we need to remember the foolishness that we all have. But we can say, am I willing to speak godly wisdom? And sometimes standing in front of friends, family members, Seeking to speak with a respectful, godly wisdom against the anger, the sin that we see. Sometimes that feels like standing in front of an army of 400 armed men. It takes great courage to stand and speak of the sinfulness that we see that must be addressed. To seek in love, to halt it in its tracks. And just consider how easy It is to not say something. After all, when we point out sins to someone, they might not like it. So we do want to ask ourselves, am I willing to speak godly wisdom? But even before that, we need to ask ourselves this, am I willing to listen to godly wisdom? Am I willing to listen? Am I willing to listen to God's word itself? Am I willing to listen to the to the Abigails in my life, the brothers and sisters in Christ that God would put in my life to speak a word of wisdom directing me to see my sins which must halt. And we ask, am I willing to listen? Nabal was a worthless man. You could not speak to him. You could not change his mind. You could not point out wrongdoing to him. David, by God's grace and by the influence of the Holy Spirit, was a man after God's own heart who had sins. And we're going to look at that, even especially next week. He had the sin of anger rising here, but by God's grace, that anger is halted. He's brought to repentance. He's brought to praise for the Lord. So praise be to the Lord who can save us, who can Stop us in our tracks. Who can show us our sins and our need of him praise be to the Lord who takes away the very blood guilt of our sinfulness with the poured out blood of Jesus Christ. And so may the Lord lead us to think in these terms may the Lord lead us out of folly and into wisdom and may this be for our blessing and may the Lord use our words for the blessing of others. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty we thank you for showing us wisdom at work and for showing us