David was working for Nabal, protecting his servants and product from harm and theft. David did his job well. When Nabal began shearing his sheep for the feast day, he refused to pay David what he could at that time. David has instructed 400 of his men to equip their swords and they are going up to deal with Nabal. David was cheated, but his present reaction is not just. His anger is about to produce murder, possibly genocide—like we witnessed as a result of Saul’s anger and envy in Chapter 22.
We know that we ought not to sin. That notion is a common sensical one even in the vilest of worldviews. It’s good to do good and not evil; No one usually argues against that statement. Everyone tries to act according to what he or she thinks is good instead of evil. It seems no one simply does evil because it is bad. Even Hitler and Stalin justified their respective genocides by moralizing. Different people believe different things are sins, we act on impulse, and our emotions get the best of us. The battle against sin is not an easy one because we are often blinded to our own shortfalls. You often hear it in people who complain about others for gossiping; They are usually gossiping about those they accuse and do not even realize what they are doing. How can a person fight against what he or she does not readily see? Is it possible for us to overcome our sin?
1 Samuel 25:18-38
Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread and two jugs of wine and five sheep already prepared and five measures of roasted grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on donkeys. She said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
It came about as she was riding on her donkey and coming down by the hidden part of the mountain, that behold, David and his men were coming down toward her; so she met them. Now David had said, “Surely in vain I have guarded all that this man has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him; and he has returned me evil for good. May God do so to the enemies of David, and more also, if by morning I leave as much as one male of any who belong to him.”
When Abigail saw David, she hurried and dismounted from her donkey, and fell on her face before David and bowed herself to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the blame. And please let your maidservant speak to you, and listen to the words of your maidservant. Please do not let my lord pay attention to this worthless man, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name and folly is with him; but I your maidservant did not see the young men of my lord whom you sent. Now therefore, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, since the Lord has restrained you from shedding blood, and from avenging yourself by your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek evil against my lord, be as Nabal. Now let this gift which your maidservant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who accompany my lord. Please forgive the transgression of your maidservant; for the Lord will certainly make for my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil will not be found in you all your days. Should anyone rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, then the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living with the Lord your God; but the lives of your enemies He will sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And when the Lord does for my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and appoints you ruler over Israel, this will not cause grief or a troubled heart to my lord, both by having shed blood without cause and by my lord having avenged himself. When the Lord deals well with my lord, then remember your maidservant.”
Then David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me, and blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodshed and from avenging myself by my own hand. Nevertheless, as the Lord God of Israel lives, who has restrained me from harming you, unless you had come quickly to meet me, surely there would not have been left to Nabal until the morning light as much as one male.”
So David received from her hand what she had brought him and said to her, “Go up to your house in peace. See, I have listened to you and granted your request.”
Then 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 did not tell him anything at all until the morning light. But in the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him so that he became as a stone. About ten days later, the Lord struck Nabal and he died.
Our plans (v. 18-22)
Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread and two jugs of wine and five sheep already prepared and five measures of roasted grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on donkeys. She said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
It came about as she was riding on her donkey and coming down by the hidden part of the mountain, that behold, David and his men were coming down toward her; so she met them. Now David had said, “Surely in vain I have guarded all that this man has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him; and he has returned me evil for good. May God do so to the enemies of David, and more also, if by morning I leave as much as one male of any who belong to him.”
Here, we see two different people with two very different plans. Abigail plans to offer David gifts in order to keep him from seeking retribution. David plans to seek retribution because he and his men worked in vain—They served Nabal and Nabal withheld his goods, repaying evil for good. David utters a curse—May God repay Nabal evil for evil if David does not succeed. David has determined that his plans are just and God-honoring. He is so convinced of His righteousness that he believes God will carry out the work for David if David fails. I’ve done this before—asked God to do the most ungodly things because I believed they were holy pursuits. It happens because we can’t see what we can’t see. We strive to follow Christ. We strive for holiness. How can we avoid sin we are unaware of? How can we possibly know about those sins we commit believing our own plans to be godly?
God’s intervention (v. 23-31)
When Abigail saw David, she hurried and dismounted from her donkey, and fell on her face before David and bowed herself to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the blame. And please let your maidservant speak to you, and listen to the words of your maidservant. Please do not let my lord pay attention to this worthless man, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name and folly is with him; but I your maidservant did not see the young men of my lord whom you sent. Now therefore, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, since the Lord has restrained you from shedding blood, and from avenging yourself by your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek evil against my lord, be as Nabal. Now let this gift which your maidservant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who accompany my lord. Please forgive the transgression of your maidservant; for the Lord will certainly make for my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil will not be found in you all your days. Should anyone rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, then the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living with the Lord your God; but the lives of your enemies He will sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And when the Lord does for my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and appoints you ruler over Israel, this will not cause grief or a troubled heart to my lord, both by having shed blood without cause and by my lord having avenged himself. When the Lord deals well with my lord, then remember your maidservant.”
Here, Abigail does what David did previously, when Abiathar fled to him (1 Samuel 22:22). David took the blame for Saul’s genocidal acts at Nob. It wasn’t so long ago that David recognized Saul’s sin and unrighteousness. Here he is blind to his own even though he is about to do the same sort of evil Saul did in Chapter 22. Abigail recognizes Nabal’s folly, takes the blame even though she is not guilty, and trusts that the Lord will stay David’s hand. Abigail offers David gifts for him and his men during the feast days. She recognizes God as the one who seeks vengeance against His enemies and exalts His anointed king. She even asks David to remember her when the Lord deals favorably with David.
We are very good at pointing out the flaws in others, aren’t we? David was quick to seek retribution against Nabal for Nabal’s sin. Too often, this is our approach. We see something wrong with someone else and point our fingers, saying, “You have issues. I want nothing to do with you. I will tear you down.” We believe we are just in doing so because we are often blind to our own sins. We might do this without even realizing we are blaspheming God by seeking our own vengeance. On this basis, people mock Christ’s bride, local churches they believe to be terrible, preachers and authors they believe to associate with false teachers, and denominations they believe to be turning from Christ. They believe they are just in speaking so hatefully because they are blind to their own sins. This is not to say that we should never address sin or false teaching. It is to say we should remove the logs from our own eyes; Then we will be able to see clearly enough to remove the specks from our brothers eyes (Cf. Matthew 7:5), to build them up and not tear them down.
Look at the way Abigail addresses David’s sin. She approaches David as a fellow sinner and reasons with him. That’s what Jesus will teach us to do in His sermon on the mount and with regard to church discipline in Matthew 18. That’s what it means to practice discipleship in the context of the local church, the body of Jesus Christ. Because I am often blind to my own sin, God has given the church to build me up, spur me on to greater love and good deeds, and encourage me all the more as we see the day of Christ’s return approaching; That’s one reason it is so important for me not to neglect the gathering together of believers (Cf. Hebrews 10:24-25). We do reason with one another concerning our sin and the pursuit of holiness. We do not mock or throw stones at the bride and body of Christ. Yes, we have issues. If we did not, we would not need to gather for the purpose of our sanctification.
Our sanctification (v. 32-38)
Then David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me, and blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodshed and from avenging myself by my own hand. Nevertheless, as the Lord God of Israel lives, who has restrained me from harming you, unless you had come quickly to meet me, surely there would not have been left to Nabal until the morning light as much as one male.”
“The mind of man plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). David recognizes his error, blesses Abigail for deterring him, and recognizes God as the one who worked things together to restrain him from this great sin. Did you know that God takes the time to shepherd His people? Did you know that He is the one sovereign over human sin? Do you remember Hannah’s doxology in Chapter 2? Her song set the doctrinal focus of the narrative in 1 Samuel. She sang:
He (God) keeps the feet of His godly ones, But the wicked ones are silenced in darkness; For not by might shall a man prevail (2:9).
There are many people out there teaching that we must kill sin by our might or religiosity. That is a fight we cannot win. We are not sovereign over our sins. We cannot often see our own sins. We are not aware of the evil we do or we would not do it. We believe we are just in our actions even if those actions are filthy rags before God (Cf. Isaiah 64:6). Who keeps the feet of His godly ones? God does. The wicked are left trying to prevail by their own might and muster. That is the difference between biblical faith and worldly religion—God makes His people holy; those who are religious but lost try to make themselves holy. That’s even the difference we have seen between David and Saul. God uses the healthy local church community to keep the feet of His godly ones.
Concerning your sin and mine—God had a purpose for handing us over to sin before bringing us into the grace of the Messiah. He delivered us over to sin through the Law so we might recognize our unrighteous nature, so we might recognize His holiness (Cf. Deuteronomy 31:26; Romans 5:20-21; 11:32; Galatians 3:19). He offers forgiveness in Jesus Christ such that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ no matter how we have offended God by transgressing His Law (Cf. Romans 8:1). God has provided the community of faith, His church on this earth, for the pursuit of holiness—our being conformed to His glory; He is the one sovereign over our sanctification, the only one who keeps us more and more from sin as we are sanctified. If we are in Christ and still sin, wittingly or unwittingly, it is because God has not kept us from that sin. As our great shepherd, He has allowed us to wander. He has a purpose for everything He does (Cf. Romans 8:28). His purpose for allowing us to sin even though we follow Him is to show us that we don’t yet fully know Him relationally:
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments (1 John 2:1-3).
Today, I cannot challenge you merely to strive to kill your sin and be holy. Scripture reveals the impossibility of such a religious pursuit. Even though much human religion teaches us to be righteous, we cannot really or truly profit from such self-made religion or self-abasement (Cf. Colossians 2:23). Like Martin Luther, you would only go mad trying to beat your body and mind into submission. Instead, we resolve to sit at Jesus’s feet together and learn from Him. His burden is light and His yoke easy (Cf. Matthew 11:28-30). Let us seek simply to know Him. He will guide us in the paths of His righteousness, not our own. Do you want to sin less against the people in your life? Stop merely trying to do more or keep yourself in line. It won’t work. Know them more relationally. The more you love others, the less you will sin against them. That is the secret to a happy marriage, obedient children, and caring parents. Love one another instead of focusing on outward action. The outward action will follow as God works out our sanctification.
So David received from her hand what she had brought him and said to her, “Go up to your house in peace. See, I have listened to you and granted your request.”
Then 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 did not tell him anything at all until the morning light. But in the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him so that he became as a stone. About ten days later, the Lord struck Nabal and he died.
Nabal had a great net worth. He enjoyed his life. He kept for himself. The Lord required his life, and he died a wicked man. What is it worth to gain the whole world, education, revelry, or anything else but lose your soul? Learn from Christ. Plug in to a healthy local church to be built up and build others up in Christ; That is the only everlasting and forever worthwhile pursuit. Don’t miss your opportunity.
Lord, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13).
andrew paul cannon 
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