Sermon 8 - When Anger Almost Gets The Best Of You Series

Introduction:

A. One day while delivering a rather dry sermon, a minister noticed that he was putting his congregation to sleep.

1. To wake folks up, he declared, “I lived with a woman for over 17 years who was not my wife!”

2. As you can imagine, the sleepy heads in the pews quickly woke up and paid attention.

3. He then clarified, “Well, the woman was my mother” and he proceeded to talk about the effect his mother had on him.

4. It so happened that another preacher was present that day and was amused by the wit of the preacher and made a mental note to use that same statement back at his church.

5. So, on his first Sunday back home in his own church, the preacher opened with the same line he had heard the other preacher use: “For 17 years I lived with a woman who was not my wife!”

6. An awkward silence lingered as the preacher realized that he had forgotten the punch line.

7. Finally, he added, “And for the life of me I can’t remember who she was.”

B. Today, we are going to look an episode in David’s life when his anger almost got the best of him and how a good woman came into David’s life and saved the day.

1. Like David, many of us have had amazing spiritual women full of wisdom who have made a huge difference in our lives.

2. The last thing we want to do is to forget them, nor forget the blessing they have been to us.

3. Another thing we don’t want to forget are the spiritual lessons that we have learned from them, from others, and from experience.

The Story:

A. Chapter 25 of 1 Samuel opens with the announcement of the death of Samuel the prophet.

1. The Bible says: Now Samuel died, and all Israel assembled and mourned for him; and they buried him at his home in Ramah. (25:1)

2. The entire nation gathered and mourned the passing of Samuel with profound emotion.

3. Samuel had been the last of the judges to guide Israel under God, and in his own right he had been a pretty good judge.

4. When the people had asked that he be replaced by a king, Samuel had warned them about the consequences of such a choice and now they were suffering the consequences of that choice.

5. Samuel had certainly played an important role in David’s life having anointed David as Israel’s next king and having been an important source of strength and comfort for David.

6. But now the great man of God was gone, and the nation mourned, and David mourned, although I’m sure he was not able to assemble with everyone else for the services.

B. As the story continues in this chapter, we are going to be introduced to a very rich, yet foolish man, named Nabal and his wise and beautiful wife, Abigail.

1. We are also going to see our hero, David, who had been modeling patience and self-restraint came very close to losing it all in a fit of anger.

C. So, let’s set the stage: Saul was still king and David was still on the run.

1. David and his six hundred fighting men had been moving about behind the scenes, fighting various bands of robbers and raiding parties in the wilderness.

2. And in the process, they often protected shepherds from attack from those bandits.

3. The wilderness of those days was a very dangerous place, what you might call a high-crime district.

4. Bandits frequented the wilderness preying on travelers and plundering the defenseless.

5. One of Jesus’ most famous parables is about a traveler in the Judean wilderness who got robbed and beaten by thieves – The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

6. So, David and his men had been offering their services, like an unofficial neighborhood watch group or security squad.

D. Some modern commentators have accused David of working a “protection racket” like the mob, where you extort money from people on the pretext of “protecting” them, but in reality you are threatening to be the one who inflicts the damage if they don’t pay.

1. But I do not believe that that was what was going on, and the text certainly doesn’t insinuate that.

2. Nabal might have thought that’s what David was doing, but he was wrong.

3. David and his band of men were fugitives, but they weren’t criminals.

4. They had in fact been offering their services in hope of a generous response from the owner.

E. Let’s pick up the story in verse 2, “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, a Calebite, was surly and mean in his dealings. While David was in the desert, he heard that Nabal was shearing sheep.” (25:2-4)