CBFC Worship Service 7/26/2026

Thank you, Jared.

Good morning.

Usually I'm our service leader, but today you get to hear me as our as our pastor for this morning.

How great is our God, right?

I feel like it says it all.

If I have to do absolutely nothing else but just proclaim that God is great, then then my work here is done because that really says it all.

That God is at work, not just here at CBFC, but in our own lives.

And that really is the greatest thing.

So as I was preparing for our message today, I was I got to see I'm 1 Samuel 25, and I was going to do the whole book.

And I was like, okay, this will be good.

This is um, you know, it will be a few verses, I'm sure.

There are 44 verses in in the in the chapter of 1 Samuel 25.

So then I had the great idea.

I'm like, well, then I'm gonna have everybody stand for the seven-minute reading.

Everyone's gonna hate me at that point.

But then I thought it would tire people out, and then you might fall asleep for what I'm gonna say.

And I'm a little insecure about that, so I'm not gonna do that.

I'm gonna read all 44 verses.

You can stay seated, it's completely fine.

I'm gonna even recap it at the end of this, so because there's a lot.

I'm used to reading children's books.

There's usually really big words and big pictures, so if I stutter around, please just go with it.

It's totally fine.

Um, but no, I'm really looking forward to going through 1 Samuel 25.

This week is I was preparing, it it's it's a roller coaster when you're preparing for a sermon.

That just the way the Lord works in and through you.

I look at preparing for a sermon as like going down in a mine.

My whole job the entire week is mining, and I want to find one diamond that I can bring out and present.

And 1 Samuel 25 does not just have one.

There were so many.

There's so many things I cannot touch on that I want to touch on, but I only have a few things that we're going to talk about.

So if you're sitting there and you're like, man, Andrew really missed these points, you're exactly right.

I totally missed some things that I should have talked about, but the things I wanted to present are the things that I found as diamonds down in the mine as I was preparing for this week.

So let's open our Bibles, 1 Samuel 25.

Now Samuel died, and all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Rama.

Then David arose and went down to the wilderness of Paran.

And there was a man in Moan, 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 Calabite.

David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep, so David sent ten 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 shears.

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, they will tell you.

Therefore, let my young men find favour 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 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 from my shearers, and give it to the men who come from I do not know where?

So David's young men turned away and came back and told him all of this.

And David said to his men, Every man strap on his sword, and every man of them strapped on his sword.

David also strapped on his sword, and about four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred 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 they were in the fields, as long as we went with them.

They were all 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 seas 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 Nabel.

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 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 belong to him, and he has returned 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 belongs with him.

When Dav when Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey, and fell before David on her face and bowed on 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.

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 his 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 the 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 seek your life, the life of my Lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living and in the care of the Lord your God.

In 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 appointed you prince over Israel, my Lord shall have no cause of grease, 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 hurried and came 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 there was one when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became like a stone.

And about ten 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 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 Anahom of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives.

Saul had given Mikal, his daughter, David's wife, to Palti, the son of Laish, who was of Gallum.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you so much for your word.

Thank you for the truth that you have in front of us today.

And Father, I just pray as we we go through this incredible chapter that, Lord, that you would convict us of the sin in our own lives and that we would just turn towards the perfect gift in your son.

We thank you that you're great.

We thank you that you're so good.

And we give this all to you.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

So I think that took most of the sermon.

But all that to say, let's recap.

So I don't know if anyone's like me.

I feel like my mind, as soon as someone starts reading after a minute, I usually tune out, so sorry about that.

But let's go through it.

Samuel is dead.

Samuel dies.

He gets basically one verse to go through everything this man has done.

At this point, David then sends his ten young men to go to this guy named Nabal.

He's got a lot.

Nabal says flat out, no, I'm not giving you anything.

David gets really angry.

He mounts up his soldiers, 400 of them, and they head to go kill Nabal and the men in his household.

But Abigail shows up, Nabal's wife, and Abigail stops everything and points David back to God.

So a massacre doesn't happen.

Justice is served, by the way.

We all love that, right?

Someone runs a red light, and then like there's a police officer right there and they get caught.

We're all like, yes.

Justice is served.

Nabal dies ten days later, has a stroke.

And then David takes Abigail to be his wife.

That's what we just read.

That is the story of what just happened.

It could have happened so differently, and it would have changed David's kingship forever if it did.

But in God's sovereign plan, it happened just the way that it did.

So let's go through this.

Samuel's dead.

What do we know about Samuel?

Well, this is his book.

We don't know really who wrote it, but Samuel was the last of the biblical kings.

So he was a spiritual leader of Israel.

He was a prophet.

He spoke for God.

He would go to Saul at two very pivotal times to confront Saul when he would do something wrong.

And he anointed David as the future king.

He was truly the spiritual guide of the nation of that day.

He was a really big deal.

And he just died.

I would have thought if I was writing this that I would have given Samuel an obituary of like the like 44 verses of an obituary, and he got about 20 words, was how all of this ended.

So we don't know a whole lot.

We know there was mourning in that land.

We know that there was a large service as well, but beyond that, we don't know a whole lot.

But we do know that it was a big deal.

After this happens, one verse, we go immediately into David potentially making a really, really big mistake.

He's about to do something, he's about to commit mass murder.

I'm not suggesting that because Samuel is dead, the spiritual leader of the day is dead now, that all of a sudden David's focus on God changes, but I do think it's a little ironic, I'll say that.

As I was preparing this week, there was a little irony there that David is about to make almost the biggest mistake he's ever made, and it just so happened to be right after Samuel died.

And then the Lord used somebody else that we wouldn't expect to actually turn David away from what he was going to do back to God.

I like movies like Lion King.

I'm a big Lion King fan.

My kids don't like it, my wife doesn't really like it.

Greg, you like it.

So there you go.

Um Simba, his dad dies, he goes out into the wilderness, and he's looking, he's trying to find something.

He's trying to find himself, he's trying to get answers, and he finds Timon and Pumba.

Don't really have a lot of wisdom, but they give him some some wisdom.

Simba's looking for wisdom, he's looking where to go, probably from like the big lions, right?

Like the top dog.

That's where he wants his answers from.

Greg, you know the movie.

You know where Simba actually gets his wisdom from is from Rafiki.

It's it's a it's a silly, dumb baboon, is who gives Simba the wisdom that he is looking for.

And Abigail, by no stretch, is like that.

But it there is similarities that where we sometimes get our wisdom from is not what we're always searching for.

And I find that in my own life of where I think I want my wisdom, it doesn't always.

I get so much wisdom from my own children.

And and it could be from an angry neighbor one time.

Like you can get wisdom from anywhere, but it's not always where we're looking for it.

And in this story, David is getting wisdom from a very unlikely source, and it's not Samuel a prophet.

So let's continue.

Nabal, what do we know about Nabal?

Nabal is a fool.

His name literally means fool.

So F-O-O-L, by the way, not F-U-L-L.

So it's not, he's not fool of anything.

It's he's dumb.

And I don't know how else to put it, I don't know if Nabal's mom didn't like him, but to nail like you look at names carry a lot of weight, and Nabal's name describes him really, really well.

He's a fool.

But what does it lead with?

It leads with what Nabal has.

He has wealth, he has lots of sheep and goats.

In today's language, that's lots of cars and houses, by the way.

I don't think many of us are farmers and we have lots of sheep and goats, but Nabal had it all.

He had a probably a huge property, lots of livestock, he had servants.

From the outside, he looked successful.

But it then also says he was harsh, badly behaved, and was a fool.

So not something any of us most likely are aspiring to, uh, but it does give us a little bit of a glimpse of when somebody is introduced, it tells a lot about their heart.

It tells a lot about who they are.

And Nabal is an example of that of something that we shouldn't aspire to this at all.

This is not what any of us want to be remembered by, and this is how Nabal is known.

So at this point, Nabal is being protected by David, and he doesn't, and he fully knows it.

And David is about to go and ask for something.

When I first read this, by the way, I was like, man, David's asking a lot.

He's just like showing up at Nabal's house and saying, like, hey, can I get something?

And the as I my first pass through on that, I'm like, that's a bold ask right there.

That's uh that's a he's asking a lot.

And as you dig down deeper and you keep reading through it, he's not.

He's not asking a lot at all.

The culture of the day, when a traveler showed up, was to, at the complete bare minimum, give them food and give them water.

That was the minimum.

And it was assumed that if somebody showed up, that's what you would give them.

These young men, and David sent ten young men to be clear.

He did not send an army, he didn't send himself.

I would have thought David maybe would have gone himself.

Maybe that'd be a little intimidating.

The future anointed king is asking if you can give me anything.

He didn't do that.

He sent ten young men to go and ask.

And they asked in the most polite and peaceful way.

It was, we are coming to you in the name of David.

Peace be to you, peace be to your servants.

Do you have anything that you could spare?

And the culture of the day would have been, of course, here's some water, here's some food.

What do you need?

It's not like 30 years ago when someone would just like show up at your house and you always had like tea and coffee ready.

Like that was kind of like how things went 30 years ago.

Cookies.

Now somebody shows up on an house and everyone's like ducking down.

Like, did someone get a text?

Is someone showing up at our house?

Like, what's going on?

Like Amazon.

Well, it usually is Amazon.

But it was very different.

Back then, when somebody showed up unexpected, you greeted them with food for water.

There's no local wahwas around.

It was you would literally give them what they needed.

That was hospitality of the day.

David's men were not just seeking hospitality.

David's men provided security for what Nabal had.

He was providing protection for the shepherds that Nabal had.

He was essentially owed something at this point.

To be very clear, David earned a lot and was just simply making a very kind ask.

It gets worse.

It's sheep shearing season.

Probably does not mean a whole lot for.

I don't know if there's any sheep shearers here.

Most likely not.

But sheep shearing season, what that you were waiting for that.

If you had sheep, you couldn't wait for sheep shearing season because that's payday.

That's when you get your money at that point.

And so during this time, it's sheep shearing season, and Nabal's getting all of his money, he's already wealthy, everything's coming in, he could easily be generous at this point.

It is so easy for him just to be like, you know what, guys, you're right.

Let me give you some food and water.

He doesn't even get close to doing that.

I was trying to think of an example of what this would look like in our day, because it's not common that travelers just show up and ask for something.

But it would be like if you were driving a pickup truck down 663 and you had five gallons of gas in it, and you see Daniel Cabacian on the side of the road in his Toyota without gas, and he's standing there with his hands up like this, and you look at him, and he looks at you, and he's like, I know you've got five gallons in the back of your truck, and you floor it and just go right past him.

It's like it makes come no sense at all what Nabal is doing.

It is wrong for the culture, and it shows his heart most importantly.

It shows his heart is not just foolish, there's probably wickedness in his heart as well.

Continues to get worse.

Uh Nabal does not just say no and send them on their way.

He then pretends to not even know who David is.

He's like, who is this David anyway?

He's the son of J.

Who is this guy?

It's almost one of the biggest insults you can give somebody is to pretend that you don't even know them, right?

Like if you have a friend and you just decide to turn your head and walk away and walk right by them, it's really insulting.

So Nabal then takes it completely as far as he possibly can and yells at these servants that David sent and says he doesn't even know who he is.

When he talks about not giving anything to David's men and to David's servants and to David, there was a common word that he used.

I'm not sure if anyone picked it up, but it's the word my.

He used it three times, and then he used I as a fourth.

So all looking inward at himself.

He said, My bread, my water, my meat, and my shears, everything is his.

And I'm not pointing a finger at Nabal saying that he is wrong for this, because we all do it.

I do it, where I think things are mine.

But when you do that, you have also forgotten that everything you have has been received from the Lord.

And it's a it's a grave mistake.

I'd go as far to say that Nabal stopped seeing himself as a steward of what the Lord had given him, and he started seeing himself as an owner of what he had.

And I'm saying this as a guy who has also done this, where it is very easy to see what the Lord has given us and say, this is mine.

I've earned this, I deserve this.

We don't deserve anything.

We are merely stewards of what the Lord has given us.

We are not owners, and it can happen very, very quickly.

It's pride.

It's pride in our lives.

And pride typically doesn't just show up one day in our life and all of a sudden you're prideful.

It is a slow fade.

And it happens, it can happen over the course of many years, it can happen over the course of decades.

That is what happened to Nabal.

Pride.

Pride is what filled his heart.

And with the outpouring of that, is a foolish, harsh, mean man.

Let's transition and look at David now.

So David gets this information.

He quickly says, by the way, David had a lot of things he could have said at this time.

It would have been like, all right, guys, let's sit down, let's talk about this.

Let's uh Nabal doesn't want to give us anything.

Where do we go with this?

No, David is very quick and he says, Every man strap on a sword.

You know what?

Get my sword too.

We're killing them all.

That is his response to this.

Shouldn't be that out of line.

David's a warrior, right?

David, this is what he does.

Saul has killed his thousands.

David is tens of thousands.

So he's David is thinking to himself, I'm sure, is like, who does this guy think he is?

Like, who does he not know who I am?

Nabal owes me like lots.

You know what?

We're gonna go kill him.

At this point, I think it is crystal clear what's happening.

Not David did not see it in the moment, but I think we can surmise that David is angry.

To say the least.

Anger clouds judgment, and it happens fast.

Moses, numbers 20, Moses struck the rock, right?

He was frustrated, he was angry, and he struck the rock, and it changed his life forever.

He did not go into the promised land because of his anger.

Or think about when somebody sends you an email or a text message and there's a lot of emotion in it, and you're angry.

What do we typically do?

You type as fast as you possibly can.

You're like, I'm gonna, you're a keyboard warrior all of a sudden, typing out what you want to say.

Anger is a powerful emotion.

And it can cloud the way we see, it narrows our vision, it makes immediate action feel necessary, like we need to do something right now.

It exaggerates what actually happened, it'll exaggerate the offense, it minimizes our consequences, and tries to convince us that our revenge is real justice.

These are all lies from the devil.

Anger is it not just seized, anger seized today, whereas wisdom will see tomorrow.

But the problem with anger is we all have it, we all struggle with it at times, and it comes out in a really emotional way and can cause a ripple effect of sin after that as well.

Some would say David's response is justified.

And I thought about that this week.

I was like, was David justified in the way that he felt?

I think he was.

I think he was a little justified.

He was owed something, but it doesn't make it right.

It's like it's like the saying, uh, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It's David was a warrior, this is how he's gonna deal with this.

It does not justify it, his actions, but the way he was thinking, you can finally, you can understand.

It's a humbling moment as we read this because David is one of the heroes of the Old Testament, right?

Like, I can't wait to get to heaven one day.

I want to sit with Moses, I want to sit with David, like I want to talk to these guys.

So this is a really powerful moment when you're seeing David using one of his greatest strengths that the Lord has given him to lead him into sin and potentially commit mass murder.

It's a really big deal what's happening.

It's even possible to say that the future king who God has anointed is one angry decision away from looking like the rejected King Saul.

In one decision, David can go from looking like the future king to looking like who the king that they had of the day who was rejected.

We read the Psalms, and I didn't know Jason was going to do that, but we read a psalm this morning, I think it was 103.

Um, but in the Psalms, we we read a lot of like, Bless the Lord, O my soul, or the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

And what we read this morning, it shows David's heart.

I don't, I have not read the psalm, though, yet that says that there was a dad that that disrespected him and that he wanted to go massacre his family over it.

That doesn't, I don't read that in the Psalms.

And I think it's because also David realizes that this wasn't a wise thing that he did.

He's very open uh in the Psalms about how he feels, but what he was about to do here was not wise.

It is not worth something to then be writing in the Psalms.

Let's go to Abigail.

We know she's discerning and she's beautiful.

That's all we know.

She's wise and beautiful.

That's the way she's described.

A lot better than the way Nabel was described, though.

I'll just put that out there.

That Nabal was described really poorly.

Abigail was described, at least in a very nice way.

So she finds out what her husband has done because a servant tells her, hey, just so you know, this is what happened.

This is kind of a big deal.

She doesn't waste any time.

She immediately gathers up supplies.

She sends a full caravan with supplies ahead of her, and she says, I'm coming.

Also tells us that Nabel probably had that much, by the way.

If your wife can gather a whole lot of your things, not tell you disappear, and you're like, Where'd all those sheep go?

Like, like, you probably have a lot if your wife can do that.

I think Abigail fully understood the gravity of the situation because she was acting so quickly and so wisely.

I also think it's incredible that Abigail knew that David and his army was coming to kill her family, most likely, and maybe their servants, and ruined the life that as she knows it, and it shows zero hesitation.

We don't see that Abigail was torn over this and that she was on her knees in prayer and be like, Lord, what do I do?

I don't know about this.

It was she saw a problem and she acted boldly, putting herself completely between an army and her family.

So when Abigail's heading to David, the caravan's now going out in front, she's finally able to see David.

This whole time, by the way, I've been like envisioning like, what do I do in this situation?

Like, all right, I'm gonna be coming up with a really good sales pitch.

I'm gonna be like, all right, David, look, we gotta talk.

This, I know, Naples' an idiot.

Um what can we just like let's pair this back a little bit?

Like, let's let's figure this out.

What can we do?

Like, I'll give you 1,500 sheep, maybe.

Like, I'm thinking of my offer that I'm gonna make.

And Abigail and I could not be more different.

In wisdom, what does she do?

She falls off of, she gets off of her donkey and just bows down in front of David and says, David, you're right to do what you're about to do.

I take all the guilt on me.

I'm so sorry for what my husband did.

It's all me.

I'm taking everything.

She accepts complete responsibility for her husband's actions.

And there's zero sales pitch after this.

All she does, and there was a lot of lords in there, by the way, if you were reading along in your Bible, you have seen like the lowercase lord, that was her giving deference and respect to David.

All the uppercase L's, that is talking about Yahweh, God, our Lord.

So all she does in that period of her words, is she's just pointing David back to God.

She's not taking it any further of saying, like, let's negotiate.

It's David, you know who you are.

You are the you are the future anointed king.

Trust the Lord.

Don't let silly Nabled have anything to do with the actions that you want to take.

Just trust God.

That's all she says.

As I was preparing this week, I was you listen to a lot of different sermons, you read about what other pastors and some commentators might say about this.

And I thought this was interesting.

One of them said that, boy, Abigail did not submit to her husband well in this situation.

She didn't tell her husband, took their stuff, and just headed off.

And I was like, I'm gonna dig on this a little bit.

I might even bring it up on my sermon.

Our culture today, with the way submission should look like from a wife's perspective, by the way, I also love that I don't think there's tons of men out there who don't know the scriptures at all, but man, they know one good one, and it's wives, submit to your husbands.

Like, that is that is, I've heard it.

Our culture today, there's like a continuum of submission.

It's I'll just do whatever my husband says, I won't think for myself.

And then, I don't know, women rule the world.

Like, there's there's a very large continuum here.

And I would also like to say that the Bible speaks about submission in a really beautiful way.

Abigail does not just sit back and let her husband call the shots.

She's sprung into action, risking her life to try and save her entire family.

You see, biblical submission is not the surrender of your wisdom, and it's not the surrender of your conscience or your obedience to God.

That's not what biblical submission looks like.

By Abigail refusing to go along with Nabal's foolishness, she's actually protecting her husband.

She's protecting her family, and ultimately, she's actually protecting David's kingship.

By not going along with what her husband wanted, she's protecting a future king.

If she just said that I'm going to just submit to my husband, he's got, he makes all the shots, he's got this, must be really smart.

He's so smart, he's great.

Um, there would have been people that died.

Her entire family could have been massacred.

And David's kingship would have looked different.

The Psalms would have been different.

The way he was a king would be different if he did that.

Abigail completely stopped what was about to happen.

And she did it in a way where biblical submission works.

Biblical submission, Abigail demonstrates that biblical submission is deeper than doing whatever your husband tells you to do.

She understood her highest allegiance was to God.

She didn't do this perfectly.

In fact, she kind of downed her husband a little bit in that.

I don't know if that was fully what her expectation was, but uh, but it is still a fantastic example of what submission should look like.

And so I wanted to I want to bring that up because I feel like the church sometimes gets that wrong.

But what Abigail did, she did it beautifully.

So after all this, David says, Thank you so much, Abigail, for showing up.

My goodness, I was about to make a huge mess of everything, and you just came and saved me from doing that.

Thank you.

So she goes home, Nabel has a feast.

The fool is acting like a king.

He's drunk, and I can't even imagine the turmoil.

Imagine the donkey ride back when you're like, I gotta tell my husband about what I just did.

She gets home, she can't.

He's drunk.

It's not the right time.

Truth is always right, but timing still matters, right?

Truth never changes, but the way you position it and the timing is so important.

So the next day he gets up, she's like, listen, we gotta talk.

I can't even imagine the way this conversation went.

I can only imagine from her, her heart must have been racing.

Nab, I gotta tell you what I just did.

David was calm, he was gonna kill you.

He's gonna kill all of our boys, he was gonna kill lots of people.

I stopped it.

Thanks be to God.

What happens?

He has a stroke.

Some versions might say it may have been a heart attack of some kind, but has a stroke, and then 10 days later, dies.

Justice isn't always served the way we want.

This is one of the stories I'm glad I got 1 Samuel 25, because justice was served.

And I was like, as I'm reading this, I'm like, yes, this is exactly what I wanted.

David was reminded that vengeance is ultimately the Lord's.

It's not, it's not ours.

We want it to be.

I'll speak just for myself.

When there is a wrongdoing, I want to be the one that makes it right.

I was reminded to think about Joseph.

Um sold into slavery.

Twenty years went by when he was sold in slavery and his brothers lived like life was normal.

No justice at all.

We wouldn't see that as justice.

We want his brothers to be held accountable.

But 20 years go by, no ramifications.

Justice didn't disappear, it was simply delayed in God's sovereign plan.

And it's a constant reminder, especially for all of us who want to see justice and make it right, is you just gotta trust.

And it is so easy to say, and it does not take the sting out of today when you want to serve justice, but ultimately it's the right thing.

There's three hearts in all of this.

Three hearts.

It's Nabal's heart, it's filled with pride.

He ultimately dies.

David, his heart, was filled with anger.

And that anger was about to lead him somewhere where he was about to make potentially the biggest mistake of his life up to that point.

And then there's Abigail.

She responds with wisdom, probably a calming nature, I would also think, and because of that, preserves a future kingship for David.

It's really convicting, especially when you get to prepare for a sermon and then have to give it, that your heart you realize is all of these things at different times.

I would, by the way, if you're sitting here right now and you're like, Andrew, my heart is always filled with wisdom.

All right, you might struggle with a little bit of pride too.

So let's also just level set.

But if you can be honest with yourself and say, yeah, I definitely respond in anger.

I respond in pride.

And yeah, there's sometimes I'd respond in wisdom also.

But you to understand it and feel it, it's a sobering reality that we all face.

One of the heroes of the Old Testament struggles with the same thing that we struggle with.

Jesus himself got angry righteously, didn't sin, but it's a very strong emotion, and it's something that needs to be harnessed.

The conclusion is simple.

Remember me.

Did you guys catch?

Did we catch that?

I didn't make a big point to say it loudly.

In verse 31, Abigail says, Remember your servant to David.

And it just continues on.

Nothing else.

And I had a striking, I could not shake that I'm like, I've heard this before.

I know it.

This has happened before.

Or it is in Scripture, remember me.

It's the thief on the cross.

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Both Abigail and the thief on the cross are speaking to a king.

Both of them understand that they need mercy.

And both of them ask to be remembered favorably.

This is the gospel.

It's happening in 1 Samuel 25.

We have nothing to bring to the king of the universe.

All we can do is fall on our knees and plead for mercy.

It's the only thing we've got.

It's like whenever you go somewhere to a friend's house, you want to bring something.

You want to bring flowers, you want to bring a dessert, you want to bring food.

Like we all have this natural thing inside of us that when we go somewhere, we want to bring something.

However, one day, all of us are going to face it.

And when we meet the king of the universe, the only thing we can bring is nothing.

And it just so happens that I think bringing nothing is the hardest thing you can possibly bring.

Sinclair Ferguson said similarly, the only hands that can receive the grace of God are empty hands.

Romans 10.

Romans 10, 9.

If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

There is nothing more true than that.

At the cross, Christ took our guilt upon himself.

He did not, Jesus did not merely calm God down.

I want to say that again.

Jesus did not calm God down.

He paid our penalty once and for all.

That's the God that we serve.

This question, the question I want us to be asking, the question we should not be asking ourselves after reading through this is which person am I most like?

Don't ask yourself that.

If that's what you're thinking right now, take that out of your head.

Do not sit there and say, out of 1 Samuel 25, who am I most like?

I want to be like Abigail, but I'm probably like David.

Don't.

I don't want us thinking like that.

The question should be this.

Will I come to the king like Abigail and the thief?

Will I come to the king like Abigail and the thief?

Completely empty-handed, confessing my sin, trusting entirely in his mercy.

Because everyone comes who comes to the king that way will never be turned away.

That is our God.

He is all throughout the Old Testament.

He was actively involved in David's life.

And it all got to work so beautifully through Abigail.

That's incredible.

Let's bow our heads.

Lord, we thank you for your sovereignty.

We thank you that you ultimately control everything, the universe by the word of your power, and we don't even know how to even understand that.

But we're thankful for it, God.

Lord, I confess that I've acted like David, angry in my own flesh.

And Lord, I ask for forgiveness for it.

And for times when I've acted in pride, Lord, let us act in wisdom.

And we cannot do it in our own strength.

So, Father, we give it to you.

We ask for wisdom boldly, that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit, and we would be just a beacon of light to others, all because of what you have done for us.