Samuel No.20 Restraining Grace

We're reading this morning from the first book of Samuel, chapter 25. Now Samuel died, and all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him at his home in Ramah. Then David moved down into the desert of Maon.

A certain man in Maon, who had property there at Carmel, was very wealthy. He had a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel. His name was Nabal, and his wife's name was Abigail.

She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband, Achalabite, was surly and mean in his dealings. While David was in the desert, he heard that Nabal was shearing sheep. So he sent ten young men and said to them, go up to Nabal at Carmel and greet him in my name.

Say to him, long life to you, good health to you and your household, and good health to all that is yours. Now I hear that it is sheep shearing time. When your shepherds were with us, we did not ill treat them, and the whole time they were at Carmel, nothing of theirs was missing.

Ask your own servants and they will tell you. Therefore be favorable towards my young men, since we come at a festive time. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can find for them.

When David's men arrived, they gave Nabal this message in David's name. Then they waited. Nabal answered David's servants, who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days.

Why should I take my bread and water and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men coming from who knows where? David's men turned around and went back. When they arrived, they reported every word. David said to his men, put on your swords.

So they put on their swords and David put on his. About 400 men went up with David, while 200 stayed with the supplies. One of the servants told Nabal's wife Abigail, David sent messengers from the desert to give our master his greetings, but he hurled insults at them.

Yet these men were very good to us. They did not ill treat us, and the whole time we were out in the fields near them, nothing was missing. Night and day they were a wall around us.

All the time we were herding our sheep near them. Now think it over and see what you can do, because disaster is hanging over our master and his whole household. He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him.

Abigail lost no time. She took 200 loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five sears of roasted grain, 100 cakes of raisins, and 200 cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. Then she told her servants, go on ahead, I'll follow you.

But she did not tell her husband Nabal. As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending towards her, and she met them. David has just said, it's been useless, all my watching over this fellow's property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing.

He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him. When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed down before David with her face to the ground.

She fell at his feet and said, my lord, let the blame be on me alone. Please let your servant speak to you. Hear what your servant has to say.

May my lord pay no attention to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name. His name is fool, and folly goes with him.

But as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my master sent. Now since the lord has kept you, my master, from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, as surely as the lord lives and as you live, may your enemies and all who intend to harm my master be like Nabal. And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my master, be given to the men who follow you.

Please forgive your servant's offense, for the lord will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my master, because he fights the lord's battles. Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my master will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the lord your god.

But the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. When the lord has done for my master every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him leader over Israel, my master will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. And when the lord has brought my master success, remember your servant.

David said to Abigail, praise be to the lord, the god of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. Otherwise, as surely as the lord, the god of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by daybreak.

Then David accepted from her hand what she had brought to him and said, go home in peace. I have heard your words and granted your request. When Abigail went to Nabal, he was in the house holding a banquet like that of a king.

He was in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until daybreak. Then in the morning, when Nabal was sober, his wife told him all these things and his heart failed him and he became like a stone.

About 10 days later, the lord struck Nabal and he died. When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, praise be to the lord, who has upheld my cause against Nabal for treating me with contempt. He has kept his servant from doing wrong and has brought Nabal's wrongdoing down on his own head.

This is the word of god. Tell me, how long were you in India? Three weeks altogether. How often do you travel abroad in a year on average? Well, for this year and last year, it's five times a year.

And what basically do you do when you go abroad? What's the purpose? Is it technical, pastoral or what? It varies from place to place, but usually it's a matter of rebuilding fellowship and improving communication links. It's not always easy to share ideas and to reach a proper understanding simply by letter. So visiting and just being with the people is very helpful.

Sometimes pastoral involvement, if there's a particular problem, particularly with missionary folk, with all the stresses of living in other countries. How long have you worked with FIBA? Since 1973, so it's 13 years. Well, we're very glad to have you and your wife and your family here with us in Worthing.

God bless you. Our Father, hear our unspoken prayer and praise, and respond in your greatness and in your kindness to the needs of your servants here, and ultimately send us from this place quickened, our minds informed perhaps more clearly about the concerns that you have for us, our minds more determined to serve you and to honour you in all that we do, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Please be seated. And let's turn to that lengthy but choice passage that Tony Ford read to us, 1 Samuel chapter 25. We've been working our way Sunday by Sunday through the book of Samuel, and one of the advantages is in following this procedure, which has been my practice for a long time at the tab, is that the Word of God dictates its own syllabus.

It's not just the choice of the preacher as to what your subject matter is, rather the Word of God dictates. And we have discovered, I think you will all agree, those of you who are regular here, that in this old historical book from which for some we've blown the cobwebs off, there is located truths that are of great importance for us in the 20th century. And so this morning we will uncover something which for a number of you will be new, and for others of you it will be a reinforcement of what you've been taught down the years.

One of the most remarkable things about God is His grace. Grace is a lovely word. If you want to define it, well, the classic definition is the unmerited favour of God.

The unmerited favour of God. It's that which God gives, that He doesn't have to, He doesn't give it because you deserve it, He gives it, well, because it's His nature to give. Now, if theologians were present this morning and if one was speaking to you, he would tell you that of the grace of God there is that which is common and there is that which is special.

By common he would not be meaning that it's a poorish quality, but rather every man, every woman, whether or not he acknowledges God, receives the grace of God in some degree. Here's the Apostle Paul, for example, in Acts 14, and he's speaking to some pagan people, and he talks about the rain that falls and the sun that shines, and the effect that those twin gifts of nature have upon the soil, producing fruit and so on and so forth. Now, everyone benefits from that, but it's the common grace of God that He distributes lavishly throughout the world that causes us to have our food, the common grace of God.

But above and beyond that, there is the special grace of God. That's the way in which God calls to Himself a people like you and me who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior. Now, not everyone does this.

I mean, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? It's the reason for Phoebus' ministry. Why would they be wasting their time in the Seychelles if everyone was Christian? There would be no point at all. But the fact of the matter is that there are a large number of people in our world who do not know the gospel.

Thus we sing, let the song go through the earth. Jesus Christ is King. They don't know it.

They need to be informed. But you do know it, at least the majority of you. And so the apostle, when he's writing in Ephesians chapter 2, makes reference to the grace of God.

We are saved by grace, not of works lest any man should boast. It is the gift of God, this special grace that brings salvation. And so in that respect, the majority of us here are doubly blessed.

We receive the common grace of God, the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the clothing that we wear. We're also sustained by the spectacular grace of God inasmuch as He sent Jesus Christ to die on Calvary's cross for us. Aye, but there's something else that I want to direct your attention to today.

Not just the common and the special grace of God, but the preventative grace of God. You say, what on earth does that mean? Well it means what the adjective qualifies it as meaning, that which prevents, the preventative grace of God. Do you ever thank God, incidentally, for prayers that He wasn't foolish enough to answer? There were times in your life when you prayed for certain things and you wanted them most earnestly, but He didn't give you what you wanted.

Now in one sense, it's into that area that the preventative grace of God takes us. The preventative grace of God is not something that you will necessarily enjoy on first receipt. It's that grace of God that causes you to adjust your circumstances.

Here you were in a certain frame of mind, you determined a course of action, but some things happen, perhaps tragic, perhaps sad, very often displeasing at any rate. And as a result of that bundle of situations, you couldn't do what you predetermined to do. And later on, as the years perhaps rolled by, you appreciated that this was God's intervention in your life.

He prevented you from doing something that you would have done, and had you done it, it would have been to your spiritual dishonor. Now here is David. He's been a fugitive, if you remember, not voluntarily, he's been forced out of normal civilization, normal centers of civilization by Saul.

Saul is the king, he does not have the ability to sustain the security of the land of Israel, and the Philistines, always a menace in Old Testament times to the Israelites, are invading the land, skirmishes one after another, and Saul, the demented king, he doesn't have the wherewithal, he doesn't have the ability to preserve security in the land. And here's David, the fugitive. He had 400 men, it's grown to 600 men, and his men are bringing peace and stability in areas where farmers and shepherds otherwise would be hindered.

And in this tract of land where David makes his headquarters, over by the hills where there are some caves, he's moved to headquarters for the third or fourth time, there's a man of great influence, his name is Nabal. He comes from a very important family, he traces his ancestry back to a man called Caleb. You remember that Sunday school chorus, 12 men went to spy in Canaan, 10 were bad, 2 were good, some saw the giants, I can see by the smile on your faces that some of you are as old as I am, you can remember that scripture union chorus.

Some saw the giants great and tall, some saw the grapes in clusters fall, 2 saw that God was in it all, 10 were bad, 2 were good. Well, the poetry may not have won the I. Stedford prize, but at least it got across the teaching of scripture. Caleb was one of the two, Joshua was the other, and from the descendants of Caleb came a man by the name of Nabal, an important man, an influential man, a wealthy man, and a fool.

It was the occasion of the sheep shearing, a sort of harvest festival, if you like, when men brought their flocks together and saw how greatly they had increased in riches as a result of the multiplication of the sheep. It was a time when according to Deuteronomy, and I think it's chapter 14, poor men could send to rich men and say, will you help us? And David did exactly that. He's in need of help because he's got 600 hungry men and they can't get a Big Mac, but a lamb chop might do.

And so David sends his men to Nabal and asks for provisions in a very kindly, in a very modest way, and Nabal rejects David's request in an uncouth, churlish, boorish fashion, and as a result David, with passions ablaze, determines to do something which if he is successful will be to his eternal discredit, his eternal dishonour. Now it's at that point that the preventative grace of God comes in. Now obviously you can't identify with David, at least not precisely, but in principle it could be, and I should be amazed if it's not the case, it could be that there is someone in this congregation who has in front of them a particular choice, a bundle of circumstances, and you've already made up your mind what you're going to do, and it could be that you're wrong.

And if you do what you've predetermined, if you've reacted in the way that you, if you react in the way that you think you ought to, then you'll make a mess of it, as David made a mess of it. And what you want is an ounce of the preventative grace of God to be directed towards you. Well, with that in mind, let's have a look at David and this particular circumstance, and let's consider first of all the situation which needed it, the situation which needed the grace, the preventative grace of God to be directed towards him.

We run just over the story, picking out the main features again, and very quickly at that. For David, he was going through a time of great sorrow. In the first verse of the 25th chapter, is smuggled in a piece of information with an economy of words, which would have been devastating for David when he heard the news that's bound up within that verse.

Samuel is dead. We've forgotten about Samuel, haven't we, over these weeks? You see, he's there in the early chapters, but he's no longer there in the middle chapters of this book that bears his name. Not that he's a recluse.

Saul doesn't want David, neither does he want Samuel. Saul is a double fool. And Samuel goes off to his own village of Ramah, and there, as an old man, he intercedes before the Lord, saying to Israel, God forbid that I should sin in ceasing to pray for you.

David knew he had a friend in Samuel there in the sort of remoter areas of his life, because David and Samuel were not to meet very frequently at all. But Samuel is dead, and the news of the death comes to David, and David knows that if his life was in peril before Samuel died, then the perilous situation is increased now considerably. And you know, my dear friends, it's sometimes when the crushing news of bereavement hits you that you need the preventative grace of God.

There are never a group of people that I feel I ought to pray more for in a tab congregation, or any congregation for that matter, than those who've been suddenly bereaved. It's then that you might react wrongly. It's then that the decisions that you make may be wrong, your life partner's been taken away, and you're on your own.

At such a time as that, you need the preventative grace of God. And what's more, the situation which needs this preventative grace is extended further in David's case, as I bring to you the reminder that he is in the face of a shocking ingratitude. He stares into the face of a shocking ingratitude.

Nabal, he should have known better. He should have dealt with David in a more kindly fashion. There was David.

He had been on the testimony of Nabal's own men, a wall between his shepherds, his sheep, and the Philistines. He guaranteed security, and Nabal hasn't got the grain of good manners even to say thank you to David. You know, my friend, the Nabals of this world proliferate.

I hope that we have no ungracious Nabals here. I was once told that mothers and fathers who send their children to Sunday school but don't come to church themselves are sometimes more quick to express gratitude than parents in churches who come along with their families Sunday by Sunday. I don't say that of the tab.

I say it as a general remark, which I've heard. I use it as an illustration to provoke you to a thankfulness, for ministries received however they came before you, whatever agency God used in his sovereignty. You be careful to express your thanks.

Nabal was churlish, and David's passions were high at a time of great sorrow in the face of shocking ingratitude, and when he was smarting from a stinging rebuke. You see, when Nabal is accosted by David's men, he answers his servants, verse 10, who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days. Why should I take my bread and water and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men coming from who knows where? I, me, my, mine.

It's the rich fool all over again, isn't it? You find Nabals throughout the scriptures. Who is this David? Of course he knows. David is the of whom the Hebrew maidens were singing just a few years ago.

Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. Who is this David? He's the man to whom young men look up with respect, for he felled the giant Goliath when Saul was paralyzed with fear. Who is this David? He's the anointed of God, Nabal, and you don't talk to David and describe him in the fashion that you have just used.

You see, Nabal, or rather David, can take the apathy of Israel. He can take the rejection of Saul. At least they are dignified enemies, as Matthew Henry puts it.

But a man like Nabal, that he should get away with this sort of thing. Not David. He's not going to allow it.

You see, David is suffering from the bereavement of Samuel. He has come up against crass ingratitude, and he's stinging with the insult of being likened to a vagabond and a runaway thief. Now you put those factors and you mingle in with the passion of David, this man who's a poet, who's an artist, and as a result he'll swing in his personality from great highs to great lows.

And you have got a most explosive character ready to take vengeance on Nabal. Now you see, it's at a time like that, that you need the preventative grace of God. The actual context that befits David is not important, but the principle is, and you're thinking people, or else you wouldn't come along Sunday by Sunday.

You know the circumstances that figure in your life, where the preventative grace of God is absolutely necessary. Thank him for his common grace. Thank him for his special grace.

Aye, but have your ears and your eyes open to pick up his preventative grace. Well, if that was the situation which needed it, here is the intervention which provided it. And it emerged from an unlikely source.

I refer to Abigail, one of the great women of the Old Testament. Abigail, who means joy of my father. How she, Abigail, got fitted out with him, Nabal, I do not know.

Of course, they were in the time when marriages were fixed. And doubtless Abigail's father loved her. But if he married her off to Nabal because of his wealth, he never did his daughter a more serious injury.

But you know, there are Abigails who survive even unhappy marriages, who have to take over spiritual leadership because their husbands do not have the stature to attain to such, and they retain their dignity. And David was to find that from the household of Nabal, albeit not from the master himself, would come a distilled wisdom that needed to be poured into the heart, into the mind of David. From the most unlikely source, God's intervention comes in the form of a grace which will prevent David from folly.

She spoke to him with an unusual perception, with an unusual perception. Not only does she apologize for the foolishness of her husband, which characterizes his demeanor, she acknowledges this. After all, it's pointless lying about your husband.

And it's pointless incidentally overlooking his strengths, his strengths he has. She comes to David and she tries to redress the balance and she has taken the precaution of ensuring that from the herds and from her larder, ample provisions have been made for David and for his men. But it's not only just here that I find Abigail an illustration of the preventative grace of God.

Not only in what she does on the domestic front, but in the spiritual perception that she has. You see, there was a comment earlier on in Samuel, do you remember, that the word of God was rare in those days. That's the authorized version, I forget what the NIV, how it renders it.

But the idea is that there weren't many that picked up, that had their antennae towards heaven and were able to pick up the signals and transmit what God was saying. Some of you are aware that I don't follow the normal Puritan Calvinist conclusions about women's ministry. I don't apologize for that.

I'll apologize for that when I go to the mission field and find that three quarters are men and not one quarter women serving God abroad. But I've got certain justifications besides the pragmatic situation of the 20th century where we push women out abroad and say they can't do very much at home. I have other considerations to bring to your mind when I say that sometimes we have fallen short of realizing the possibility, the potentiality that there is in women's ministry.

Here in the Old Testament, who was picking up the word of God when it was rare? Hannah. She prophesied. Uncle Eliter writes incidentally.

Abigail. She echoes what Hannah and Hannah's offspring, the recently departed Samuel, would have said. And she speaks to David and with prophetic vision she maps out the fact that David is going to be the king of Israel.

The Lord's servant will make a lasting dynasty, she says. I can't read the verse number. 28.

Because he fights the Lord's battles. Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live. Here is a woman ministering to David.

Here is Abigail with the preventative grace of God showing David that he ought to think twice or three times before he continues on the course of action that he has predetermined. And then with even greater theological articulation or, if you like, spiritual eloquence and insight, she talks about David's well-being. In the provisions of God.

What are you, David? Verse 29. Your life is bound securely in the bundle of the living by the Lord your God. She's got the picture of the careful peasant who has bound together a harvest sheaf so tightly, so carefully that not one grain, not one ear shall be lost.

Now, David, you're like that. You're bound in the sheaf of God's purposes. You have a destiny that is unique, David.

Far be it from you to lure yourself to Nabal. Nabal is like a stone that's carelessly taken and put in a sling and shot away. It's valueless, David.

But the sheaf is valuable. Your life is worth something. His life is worth absolutely nothing.

Listen to what you're doing, David. Balance the situation right. Should a man of your dignity, should a man who has such a future mapped out as you have, sink to the level of this fool back home? How eloquent can be the words of a woman when inspired by the living God? And David stops and he responds to what she has to say.

I, Abigail, many shall later say of you as they said of Hannah and as they said of Mary the mother of the Christ, blessed are you amongst women. For when the word of God was rare, you risked saddling your own donkey, and proceeding from your own home to confront the future king of Israel and putting him right. The intervention which provided it.

And now, and quickly, the application which flows from it. This preventative grace of which we have an illustration, what is the application? Be prepared, my friend as David was, to review decisions that you take emotionally and in a haste. Let's go back to the grace, you see.

The grace of God. Common grace, right? Special grace? Preventative grace. Now one of the things that you can say about preventative grace is this, that you can accept it or you can reject it.

We live in a world where ecology and waste are great problems. We destroy our environment by the way that we pollute it. But one of the greatest, if you like, inverted commas, ecological disasters in our world is the way that the grace of God counts for nothing in the lives of many a person.

When Paul writes to the Romans, speaks of the grace of God, he says his grace was not poured out towards me in vain. Abigail, you see, is a very weak woman. I don't say that as a chauvinist.

I've acknowledged and honored her memory. But she represents the weakness, if you please, of preventative grace. It is not superimposed upon you.

You are not a puppet on a string. You have a responsibility as a normal human being to respond to what God brings into your life, to readjust your circumstances. Now when your Abigail comes, do you not only spot her? Do you listen to her? Or do you say it's so weak? The correction has come from such an inadequate source? I won't respond.

I won't react. I won't rearrange my circumstances. One of the hardest things it is, my brother and sister, for you, if you've been on the Christian journey for 30 years or 40 years, much more difficult now than it was when you were a young Christian, when in the pristine experience that was yours you were looking to your mentors to speak the Word of God into your life.

One of the hardest things for you is to take correction. I speak by way of personal testimony. The Abigail has come.

The Word of God is spoken to you in a myriad of ways, not necessarily through the pulpit here. Maybe by a challenge that was given to you. Maybe it's by the reading of Scripture.

Maybe by a conversation. Maybe by some kindly Christian friend putting his arm around your shoulders and wounding you. And you didn't appreciate the wisdom of Solomon who said faithful is the wound of a friend.

Nobody speaks to me like that. Nobody tells me what to do. Nobody asks me about my quiet time or the way that I handle my finances or the disciplines of my Christian life.

I am on my own. It is between me and him, I but my friend. Say that and you reject the Abigail.

Say that and you're blind to the preventative grace of God. It's within the economy of God to send you reminders to help you, for you're like a hoop going down a slope that a child may have, and he has a stick, and the hoop needs to be tapped one way and then another way, or else it will rear to the right or to the left. And the preventative grace of God is to stop any exaggerations coming in your life, any imbalance, any swerving from truth, any failing to be true disciples of Jesus Christ.

I don't know to whom I'm speaking, but I would be a fool if I could say that of a congregation of 500 people, this message doesn't apply to some, if not to all. You see, here is David, the strong David. He's got right on his side.

The anointing oil of Samuel is hardly dry upon his forehead. Certainly it's there within his memory. He knows what his destiny is, and Nabal should be done to death.

Nabal, he has insulted David. The situation dawns which needs the preventative grace of God, and for David to realize judgment is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, even when you're destined to be king of Israel. There are sovereign authorities which God maintains for himself, and he will not give to another.

The situation which needs the preventative grace of God. Here is the intervention that provides it. Thank God for Abigail.

Thank God for the way that He will take the most unlikely source and speak into your life if you're humble enough to take it. Aye, but some of us are just not humble enough. So then there is the application that I bring to you.

Be humble, to spot your Abigail, and to thank God for him or for her or for that bundle of circumstances, even for that sickness that came that prevented you from doing what you would have done if you were in full health, for anything that made you stop in your tracks and to listen and to take heed, lest on David's part his conscience might be saturated with blood that was unnecessarily spilt, lest your conscience might be eclipsed with the grief of things that you got yourself into that Almighty God wanted to prevent you from. Thank God, I say, for His grace, common, special, and preventative. Amen.

Now let's turn to 417. 417. Teach me thy way, O Lord, teach me thy way.

417. Teach me thy way. Be something of the greatness of your servant David, inasmuch as he was prepared to let his plans be deflected by a woman, and we thank you for the way that the circumstance continues to be told in scripture as to how you interposed what was your will in the affairs of Abigail and Nabal and David.

Now help us always to look to you and may we have the humility to respond to the small voice that corrects us when otherwise we would go recklessly ahead. Help us then Lord, prepare us as we take bread and wine to feast upon the salvation blessings of our Lord Jesus and may that be a further stimulus and encouragement as we proceed through this world as his disciples. Amen.