The Under-appreciated Gift of Repentance

A Christmas Carol and the Ominous Opening of 1 Samuel 25

Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. Everybody knows that intro.

It's the beginning to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and we know from that introduction that something ominous is about to happen because Ebenezer Scrooge's life has been shaken up. He was happy in his greed, happy in his miserliness.

He had a partner in all of his exploits in London, terrorizing the poor and gaining to his greed and we know that something is about to happen. When Dickens starts the story that way, I think that maybe this with the Christendom that he was a product of, maybe he had a story like 1st Samuel 25 in his mind because 1st Samuel 25 starts this way.

Then Samuel died and all Israel gathered together and lamented for him and buried him at his house in Ramah and David arose and went down to the wilderness of Paran. We start chapter 25 with a nation unstable.

They've lost their spiritual father and they are a nation ruled by a tyrant who is petty, he's insecure, he's rash, and he's tearing the country apart because he's conscripted the military of Israel to hunt down a loyal son of the nation, in fact one of the nation's heroes who slayed Goliath.

The death of Samuel, we see a bit of unification here. The people come together again because this great man has died and it's a thing where the people want to probably return to a day where there was some peace.

Well we didn't have conscription of armies which was something that Samuel had warned the people against when they wanted a king like all of the other nations. See Samuel walked with God and the leader that Israel has at this point in King Saul does not walk with God and so it's difficult to not lament and the tyrants have to take away all of those figures, all of those father figures that their death causes lament.

It's not an accident in our country as we undergo a revolution that statues of great men are torn down. The reason why is because those are unifying figures. Those are figures that remind us of our past and remind us of a history where we were more aligned with the ideals of Scripture and more aligned with Christendom.

So it is in chapter 25 that this chapter starts ominously and it is going to be ominous because Samuel 25 is one of those great stories of 1st Samuel that's going to tell us that the future of the nation of Israel and the future even of God's prophecies dating back to Genesis stands on the edge of a knife because David almost falls to his ruin in this chapter.

It's not a coincidence that Samuel's death is recorded here in this place but it draws attention. It draws attention to the state of Israel but it also draws attention that something ominous is about to happen to God's man.

That things are not going to stay the same and Samuel was a restraining force against evil in the nation and when Samuel's taken out of the way, narratively, I want you to see it. I think 1st Samuel is one of the most majestic pieces of literature ever written as a story and when we see Samuel, the restraint of evil taken out of the way, we see God's man David nearly fall into the abyss in this chapter.

It's unlikely that he would have ever recovered from the action that he's about to take in this chapter. So let's look at it. We're going to spend some time in the story. If you've been flipping around, you'll notice that this chapter is quite lengthy and it's quite dense also and so I'm going to try to remain disciplined.

There are many, many directions that you can go here. This is a rich story that has lots of side trails. It has lots of themes. It has lots of things underneath the surface but I think that it does have a highway and I'm going to try for us to stay on the highway here and not get lost in the weeds and so at the bottom of this, sometimes I hold these until the end and try to reveal but I've given you in the title what I think the main highway of this story is, is the sovereign nature of God's repentance.

God causes his people to repent. God protects his own promises. God will surely do all that he has purposed and he will use any means at his disposal to make sure that that happens, even the most unlikely means that you could imagine.

Nabal, the Foolish Rich Man, and David’s Protection of His Flock

But here we start with some weird words, right? We are introduced to this fool, this man Nabal, whose name means foolish. He's vile by his own wife's mouth. His wife calls him a son of Belial. We've heard that used to describe Eli's sons.

He's a very, very bad man. We would finger wag him, okay? Not a good guy but he is great in the world's estimation. As I just read, this man has many sheep and many goats and he's a rancher and it seems with Doeg that we have all kinds of bad guys that are in the sheep business during this time in Israel.

And so this great man has had protection and that's where the conflict of this story comes in, is that Nabal, in this uncertain time with roving warriors all over the place, with Philistines constantly making insurgent runs into Israel, it's a time where a man like Nabal who wants to grow on the riches of a sheep, it's really helpful for him to have protection.

And he does have protection because we learn through this text as it opens up that David has brought his men, we'll call them the 600 deplorables at this time, and they really are strange men, right? These are not warriors.

These are like renegades that are all united in one purpose and that is we don't like Saul, okay? Saul's messed us up, Saul's made us disaffected, and so we're gonna go live in the cave because it would be better to live in the desert and in a bunch of caves than to be under the thumb of Saul.

That's who they are, okay? They are united by basically their destitution. And so this man has protection because David has gone and he's found a refuge for a time in Nabal's fields and what David has done is that he has taken his men and he has protected the ranches of Nabal and his men have guarded them.

And David's men are pretty violent, okay? We're gonna see that in this chapter. And in this time, I've actually listened to these side trails, right? I've listened to a lot of history this week and we in our culture, because we have a central state where if somebody steals from you, you go to the police, back in this time it was an honor system and people who were not good to their word needed to be killed.

Because if you didn't have your word, no one would do business with you because you would rip them off, okay? And so for us, we lose a little bit in context that what David has done here is he has provided a service to Nabal by bringing his men out there and by protecting them from raiders, from robbers, from invading armies, all this sort of thing.

Verse 7 says, now I have heard that you have shearers. David sends his men to say this, now your shepherds have been with us and we have not dishonored them nor have they missed anything all the days they were in Carmel.

So David has protected them. His men have not lived off, they have not plundered Nabal and his ranchers. Instead what they've done is protected and lived and they've asked for nothing. They've done a good service.

And now at a time of harvest, at a time of plenty, David is going to make an ask and it's going to be a reasonable ask. The ask is going to be, will you feed us? Will you feed us? We're hungry out here.

And now we find the rank foolishness of Nabal. He's a very foolish man indeed, as many rich men are. Here's what Nabal says to this request. David says, we've protected you, can you give us some provision?

Here's what Nabal says in verse 10, look at it. Nabal answered David's servants and said, who is David? And who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants today who are each breaking away from his master.

Shall I then take my bread and my water and my meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men whose origins I do not know? Sorry for the harsh language here, but Nabal essentially says, David, this guy, this son of Jesse, he's a bastard and nobody's ever heard of him before.

He's a renegade. I'm not going to give him anything that I have. And understandably, David gets very angry, very, very angry because he's been working for free. And notice here, the author is weaving these things in.

What Nabal says in this discourse is he sounds just like Saul, except with an extra pinch of insult. Because it's not only your dad is a nobody, who is the son of Jesse, whoever heard of that guy, he goes one step further.

And I think he implies, if this lowly Jesse, if he is even who you come from. Now, would any man take that standing up? I don't think so. And especially not in a culture whose system is based on honor.

Because for those of you in the old American West colloquialism, these are fighting words. And this would almost certainly cause a duel. Okay? This would necessitate a duel. Because if David's going to be spoken about this way, then not only, forget the kingship, David's not going to be able to have standing with anyone in Judah or with anyone in Israel if he lets these words stand.

And so that's the system. That's the system. There's a law broken here. And David is furious. We see it in verse 13. David said to his men, each of you gird on his sword. So each man girded on his sword, and David also girded on his sword.

And about 400 men went up behind David, and 200 stayed with the baggage. So you may not pick it up, but hopefully through the course of this book, Bart and I are trying to teach you that context is so critical to understanding what the author is trying to do here.

When we look back just a couple of chapters ago, we see that David's men stand up at Keilah. David asked the Lord, should we go intervene for the men of Keilah and save their city? Because the Philistines have raided.

They're holding it. And God says, yes. And David's men come to David and say, wait, I don't know if we should do that. That doesn't sound very good. David inquires again, and his men go. We see here no such action by David's men.

No such action. And that absence is really important, because this is the key, right? David, in just the last chapter, he spared Saul, right? He was in the cave, and he cut the corner of his garment off, and David was convicted in his heart for that action.

But here we see no such trepidation, because what David is going to do with no interjection from his men is he's going to put on swords and kill every man in the household of Nabal. That's what's going to happen here.

A little bit more than a duel, would you agree? They're not meeting at dawn to have a fencing tournament. What they're going to do is they're going to maraud. They're going to protect their baggage behind, and they're going to go kill and take everything that Nabal has.

But what David has done here, and we see the first means of God's protection of David, because understand, if David takes this action, then he's dead in Israel. Because what he will have done has been just like all the other kings around who rape, pillage, and plunder whenever they need something that somebody in the countryside has.

Understand that one of the key themes when we look at 1 Samuel, the key theme between David and Saul is the people of Israel want a king just like every other nation, and the king of God's choosing is going to be nothing like the kings of the other nations.

And so David is going to do his best pitch here to be like a king from any other nation. He's going to try to act like a Philistine king or like Nahash back in chapter 11, where he's going to just take what he wants.

That's what's going on here. But David in his righteousness has set up firewalls around himself already, and this is where we're going to start to see the turn for us into application and start to see the turn into what do we glean from this story.

I'm going to read this part in its entirety because what David's done is he's put his men among Nabal's men, and they protected them. And pick it up in verse 14, one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, saying, Behold, David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master, and he rushed at them angrily.

That means that Nabal derided them, and he came aggressively screaming furiously what I just read to you before. Who is this son of Jesse? Nabal's not calmly talking about this. He's screaming it at them.

He's spitting. He's furious. He rushes at them aggressively. Picking it back up. Yet the men were very good to us, and we were not dishonored, nor did we miss anything as long as we went about with them while we were in the field.

They were a wall to us both by day and night. All the time we were with them shepherding the sheep. So now know and see what you should do, for evil is decided against our master and against all his household, and he is such a vile man that no one can speak to him.

We can learn something here. Men fall when they are isolated and when they are not going about righteousness in their life. There's not one of us in here. There's not one of us that's above this. If we live our lives in such a way that no one knows what we're doing, that we're in isolation, that we are not doing good to others around us, then take heed lest you fall, because what happens is there are natural defense systems that are built into the Christian life whenever we love our neighbor, and David is going to be saved by the means.

See what happens here. God uses the men of Nabal to go to his wife and to try to intercede and say, a terrible thing is about to happen to us, and this is all made possible by the good conduct of David and his men.

What he's been doing for weeks and months is living amongst Nabal's men, treating them well, and so this is out of character, and they are afraid, and it's interesting that the appeal comes to everybody besides Nabal, and the men say, why?

We go to you, Abigail, which is scandalous. We go to you, Abigail, because our master is so disgusting that we know he won't listen. This is talking to a wife. Your husband is so vile that we know he won't listen, so can you do something?

This is desperate. They know the danger that's coming. It also shows the complete foolishness of Nabal. You know, I think it's a side eddy in this. Don't be like Nabal. Don't be like Nabal, and if you want a finer point on that, there are many men and women in the church, and some of them occupy pulpits that are just like Nabal.

Did you know that? Just like him, who are vile, who are foolish, and how do we know? They won't listen to anyone. They won't listen to reason. They will not listen to the needs of people that are in their care, and when we do that, we set ourselves up just like Nabal, and we might as well rename ourselves so that we're known in the community as fool.

It's a dangerous thing to be like Nabal. Don't be like him. Don't be so pig-headed and obstinate that you can't listen. Don't let your first response to someone rebuking you be violent anger and hatred.

Don't let it be that, because guess what happens? When you treat a few people with violence and anger, when they count out your sin, do you know what they're going to stop doing? Telling you about your sin, and then in a very Romans 1 sort of way, you're left to your own devices, and that's God's judgment on you.

We have too many Nabals. All right, side eddy done. Let's get to the main point here, and I think the main point's fairly obvious when we look at this text in context, but I want to read a set of Proverbs first.

Proverbs 17 12 through 15 says, let a man meet a bear robbed of her cubs rather than a fool in his folly. He who returns evil for good, evil will not depart from his house. The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so abandon the dispute before it breaks out.

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh. So let's look really pointedly at what's happened in this story. Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 24 give us the law that pertains to this situation.

Deuteronomy 24 15 through 16 says, you shall give him his wages on his day before the sun goes down, for he is afflicted and sets his soul on it so that he will not cry against you to Yahweh and it becomes sin in you.

We pay people who work, and we pay them quickly. We don't hold someone's wages for three months because they're going to cry out to God and your guilt is going to be on you. Those of us who have people in our care that we pay, we need to pay them in a timely way.

If not, then the sin goes up to before Yahweh. And I think a background in this story is that Nabal's sin causes him no fear with Yahweh. No fear. He's just acting this way and he's not afraid of anything.

Verse 16 continues, fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers. Each shall be put to death for his own sin. David is about to slaughter a whole household because of his sinful rage.

So Nabal has withheld wages and he sinned against the Torah. But David is about to visit the sin of the father on all of his sons. And that's a greater sin. And what's going to happen is that he, like the proverb said, he's about to start strife and he's about to get into a fool with his folly.

And so he would be better off to be confronted with a mother grizzly bear who you just messed with her cubs. Okay, that's the situation David faces because it's not Nabal who's his real enemy. He's about to set himself up against God.

It's an extremely dangerous thing here because in this saga, remember Saul has been set up as a deplorable man. He's disgusting, right? The commentators need to say it flat out. Saul, despicable, terrible king of Israel.

Awful. In fact, in the story, that's the device that he serves is he's a king just like every other one. Just like Abimelech. Saul's just like him. Except he coats a little bit of Yahweh on top which makes him even worse.

Okay, even worse. But David is prophesied to be the king who is of the unending line of the savior of the world. A godly king. And do you know if David does this, that's all in jeopardy. It's cosmic stakes because when we zoom out and look at context, in chapter 24, David restrains himself from killing Saul and his conscience is smitten.

And he thinks, maybe I acted, maybe I acted a little bit too boldly. Maybe I went a little too far. I'm going to trust the Lord. But then in 25, Nabal, who is Saul's spiritual brother, a son of Satan, David is provoked and he's sorely tempted to do evil action.

And with partiality, he's not only going to take action against Nabal, he's going to kill every man in Nabal's house so they can take the plunder. David sounds like Saul. He's going to take murderous vengeance on those who have upset him.

And the whole thing is stopped by the most unlikely source imaginable. This is absolutely crazy. David is incensed and he's muttering to himself as he's walking down the road. The great prophet, well, maybe not prophet, the great poet of our time, Scott Stapp said, I know I can't hold my hate inside my mind.

What consumes your thoughts controls your life. Great song. David is holding hate in his mind. And what's about to happen is violence, terrible violence, because he is muttering and he's trying to justify himself.

Look at verse 21 and 22. Surely for a lie, 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 belonged to him.

You can see the terrible sinfulness of sin here, can you not? What David has done now, look, he doesn't go all the way like Saul did in chapter 23 of just straight up taking the Lord's name in vain, but what David has done now is he has rationalized his sinful behavior, his law-breaking behavior, and he's brought a curse on Nabal's house and he's invoked God in that curse.

Now notice he doesn't invoke God's wrath on himself if he doesn't take every life, okay? He's invoked God's wrath on his own enemies, specifically on Nabal's house, and he cloaks the whole thing. He's returned me evil for good.

He robbed me, he stole from me, so I'm going to genocide him. Sounds right? Sounds proportionate, okay? And then a crazy, crazy thing happens. As David's wandering down the road and he's muttering to his men, all right, side point, don't be like this, guys.

Don't stoke each other up to sinful wrath. It's very easy to do. It's very easy when someone is pouring out the malice of their heart because they have rightly been wronged. It's very easy to stoke each other up and to escalate the situation into even more sin.

Blessed are the peacemakers. And you know what? Sometimes a peacemaker has to get dirty in the conversation by saying, brother, do you do right to contemplate this wickedness? And I will tell you, most men that I have been around, if you say something like that to them, they're either going to stop in their tracks or they're going to get furiously angry at you.

That's why it's difficult. And that's why we've lost the art of courage in America is because we are afraid of a man speaking back to us that way. But David doesn't have good friends here. He doesn't have a Jonathan.

We know what Jonathan would have said already. He said it to his dad. Jonathan said, why are you going to spill this innocent blood? What has he done to you? And Saul is raging. Oh, that son of Jesse.

I'm going to take him out. Is anybody with me? Jonathan's like, I'm not with you, dad. David has no one like this here. He's seething. He's walking down the road. And then Abigail comes out and she approaches this man.

And there's so much that's weird about this story. What we're about to get is the longest discourse by any woman in the Old Testament, by Abigail. What a character. Notice what happens. She has bypassed her husband.

For us patriarchy people, it's kind of a difficult one for us. Abigail steps aside her husband and she goes around him and she meets David in this rocky crag and she has a message. And in another way, she looks so Christ-like in this passage.

There's a typology to the ministry of reconciliation that Jesus brought because what she does is she brings first food. Massive amounts of food. So she meets the physical need of David in verse 18. It recalls other stories of faithful people of God nourishing armies of God.

She doesn't tell Nabal any of this. We pick that up in verse 19. He doesn't know she's there because he's an idiot. She bows humbly when she sees David. This part gave me fits all week. She takes complete blame for her husband and for not seeing the work of David's men.

And she throws herself at the mercy of David. It's incredible. It really recalls. And I wonder, I wonder if it's not the words of Abigail that David so famously pens in Psalm 51 when he's confronted with his sin.

And he says, against you and you alone have I sinned. And Abigail sounds so much like that here. I've sinned. And we get the conscience issue going on where we don't understand what Abigail's talking about.

It's not her responsibility. It's just simply not. It's not her household. It's Nabal's household. But she hasn't been watching. And she didn't know what was happening. But David's men have had this relationship.

And so Nabal's men come to Abigail. And she acts. And she walks out. And she meets David. And she gives some prophecies. Okay. So let's look at them. There are four. They start in verse 26. In verse 26, she says that Yahweh will restrain David from shedding blood and saving himself by his own hand.

Was that not the conflict of chapter 24? Abigail predicts what's going to happen. And she instructs David on what's going to happen. That you will not save yourself by making this move. And Yahweh himself is going to restrain you from shedding innocent blood.

She says in verse 28, the evil will not be found in David all of his days. Now that's curious. We're going to have to come back to that. Because it seems like that one's false, right? Because David very famously sins with Bathsheba.

She prophesies of the coming dynasty of David which will result in David's house enduring. Boy, is she right about that one. Because that king is on the throne today. And David's line will endure forever through his son, Jesus Christ.

His earthly son. Then she says that David's enemies will be slung out in verse 29 while David will be bound in the bundle of the living with Yahweh. What an amazing text. And we see this in verse 29. The messianic part of this is that God's enemies are going to be scattered, dispersed, until they're all bundled up and eventually thrown into the lake of fire.

So where are they going to be bundled? They're going to be scattered just like at Babel. But then they're going to be bundled up away from God. Whereas God's friends through David are going to be brought together and held in close with Yahweh.

What an amazing promise that is. And we have to ask ourselves, what has David done to deserve that in this chapter? David's about to make Abigail destitute. He's about to take everything she's got. And she says, your kingdom will endure and every enemy of yours is going to be slung out and scattered while every friend of yours is going to be held in the embrace of God.

What an amazing thing. And then we get to the title, the blessing of repentance. Because we see a lesson in contrast here that over and over and over again when Saul is confronted this way, his response is to lash out in anger, to lie, and then to pursue and chase.

David's response though, we're going to read it. Pick it up in verse 32. David says, This is how a man of God responds to rebuke. Sometimes it doesn't happen immediately. But men and women, we have to understand something.

Romans 3 applies to all of us. And it says that there is none of us seeking him, not a single one. It says that under our tongue is the poison of asps. It says that our throats are an empty tomb, a stinky grave, and that our feet and our hands run to shed innocent blood.

And we know this is true. We know this is true from boyhood for me. The first thing I wanted to do was when something went against me was to get angry and shoot it with my pellet gun. Okay? Or to beat it with a stick.

That's what we are about. We are about violence and lies and malicious slander. But what God has done, because Romans 3 goes on to say that Jesus Christ came and was the just and the justifier. That means that he made us just by taking the punishment for our sins so that he could be just because he himself never sinned, but be the justifier because he made us in him sinless.

And therefore, he is not evil when he saves us from the punishment of hell. That was in the balance. And so what Jesus has done is he has made it to where we can recognize the gift of repentance because we didn't conjure it up ourselves.

Think. Think what your first response to being rebuked is. Is it not to be defensive? Oh, I didn't mean that. Did I really say that? And then to start to lie. No, I didn't say that. You heard me wrong.

You don't get it. We are quick to talk that way. We are quick when confronted to say, I didn't go that far. OK, you just didn't understand how good my intentions were. And that's not what David says here.

What David says is, I surely was going to kill every male in this house before sunrise. That's what I was doing. But you, Abigail, with your discernment to come to me, you saved me from this great evil.

She did. So the woman has courage. The wife has courage. And David sees it for what it is. And he's thankful for the means of repentance. And did you know, I started most of the week, I had who's running this thing anyway is the title of the sermon.

And the reason why is because too often we try to glory hog repentance itself. And what we do is we try to think, oh, in the innocence of my heart, I have turned from my sin because I didn't like it and I didn't like its consequences.

So I turn to you, Jesus, because there was just a spark or a seed of goodness in me. And we glory hog. But did you know that every single time you've repented of your sin, every single time you've been burdened and convicted and knew, and this is how we know, because David gives us a template in Psalm 51, when we know that we have sinned against God and we turn from that, that's God's gift to you.

That is the Holy Spirit doing that. Did you know that? The Holy Spirit is doing that. Give him praise. I've never repented of anything because of my goodness. It's only by the grace of God. And when we set ourselves up as being too big to fail, too isolated for anyone to talk to, and too powerful to let the commoners in on our day-to-day life because they wouldn't understand anyway, we are not acting like children of God.

We're acting just like Nabal. We're acting like sons of Belial, vile men. Should we run from that? And then understanding that when we run from that, why do we run? It's because the Holy Spirit made us run.

Did you understand? Very truly, and not ethereally, but very practically, physically, and spiritually, we are only in this place today because the Holy Spirit has made that so today. And we ignore him.

We ignore his goodness. And we pray thinking that our pious prayers are going to please God when truly he has given you life, no less than that. And the word in this text is that God protected his own promises and his own prophecy by doing the obvious thing, which was bringing Abigail to intercede and to mediate, but then doing the less obvious but more glorious thing, which was turning David's heart to repent in the first place.

He brought the means and the result. God did all of it. That's the glorious lesson, and we don't understand it all the way. Anyone who says they do is selling something, probably a book coming out soon, okay?

We don't understand God's sovereignty because it's a mystery, but he is sovereign. And he is in control of your heart. He's in control of Saul's heart, Nabal's heart, Abigail's heart, and David's heart.

And he turns them for his means. That's what it means when scripture says that he turns the hand of the king like water. Who's running this thing? God is. And then David learns a valuable lesson. It's maybe the crucial lesson that he's going to take into the next chapter, and that is this.

It seems like evil holds sway, doesn't it? Doesn't it seem like Nabal gets away with this? Hey, he didn't feed you. Abigail did the end around. Here we go. Verse 36, 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, very drunk. So she did not tell him anything, small or great, until the morning light. And then what happened? She told him, and his heart was like a stone in his chest.

And then in verse 38, we see very explicitly, let's look at it. Verse 38, now it happened that about 10 days later, Yahweh smote Nabal, and he died. Just so the author doesn't, he doesn't do this very often, but he gives us this explicit thing, right?

Who killed Nabal? God. God killed Nabal. Another side, Eddie, we could go on, but it's an important one. How's your fear of God going? How's it going? Because God provides means with our friendships. He provides means when we love our neighbor by building fences around us.

And as we see moral failure after moral failure in Christendom, the one thing that is always in common, the one thing that's always in common with these moral failures is being too big to fail and too powerful to be accountable.

Over and over, over and over. If no one's speaking in your life, if no one knows what you're doing, if no one is allowed in, then you are set up for the fall. And the reason you've set these structures up in the first place is because you are falling.

Because sinners hide their sin, and wolves love to be wolves that cloak themselves like sheep and hide. See, they're very public with their piety, but they're very private with their outflow in their life every single time.

But see, we don't see that with David. We see David right out there. His men know what he's doing. His men are around him. And David starts to understand that God's running this thing. He's reminded of something that he had forgotten.

So the Lord turned Nabal's evil back on his head in verse 39, and the foolish man who was a son of Belial, just like Eli's sons, is dead, and his household goes to God's man who marries Abigail. How do we trust the Lord?

How do we fear him? You should ask yourself this often. Because when we see our sin, we usually get broken by our sin when it starts to affect things that are in our life, when it starts to affect our relationships, when it becomes not very fun being married because of our sinfulness, or when our friends start abandoning us because of our sinfulness, and we're blind to it until God graciously gives us those consequences.

But let me cast a better picture to you. What if you were convicted in your conscience merely because, and primarily because, you fear God? This is the greatest, the greatest fence that we have against sin is a healthy fear of God, because God is all-powerful, and he is a consuming fire.

And when you sin against him, he knows. And we try to build these little strictures together, where we try to hide things, and we patch it up, and God is laughing at it. He sees every thought in your head, and he sees every action, and he logs every keystroke, and he sees every image on the phone, and he hears every word spoken and unspoken to your wife, and every anger that's hidden in your heart against your children to provoke them to anger, he knows it.