Brower, Jonathan: The Perils Of Pride Session 2 ~ 1 Samuel 25

Well, good afternoon again. If you'll open your Bibles with me to First Samuel chapter twenty five. We started watching the declension, the downward spiral of David. We saw that fear came in, and he started running from the Lord. Instead of turning to the Lord and cleaving to the Lord. It led to a life of deceit. One deceit led to another, and then there's lies, and it just became a terrible sham. We made the statement that the real purpose of life is to know the Lord, and that's why faith is so pleasing to God. The Bible reminds us, he that comes to God must first of all believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And it tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please God. If we believe that God is, and we believe who he is as revealed in his word, then the only way that we should react is one of trust and submission to him. And we find ourselves, because of that, in a precarious position, because the flesh, we're told in Romans chapter eight— the carnal mind cannot be subject to the things of God. It is not subject to the things of God. And so submission to the Lord in total trust is really the first true sign of a converted life. A person who will totally trust in the Lord one hundred percent, unreservedly. Now, in chapter twenty five, we see David about to make another grievous mistake. He is going to take from God that which is God, and it's the word vengeance. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I shall repay. When we as the people of God take revenge or vengeance, we actually take from God that which is God's rightfully. We rob God of the ability to do that. We're going to see David about to make a terrible mistake, but we're also going to see how God can use an individual, a woman, to prevent it, to teach the lesson. We can never underestimate the importance of intervening on the part of another believer in using the scriptures in their life. You will never understand how important that really is. And ladies, I say to you, not just because my wife isn't with me this trip, but I say to you this, that men do not really value your input in their relationship like they should. I am today what I am in the Lord, by the Lord, his grace, and because my wife is a godly woman. I would not be who I am today except for my wife being a godly woman. She has intervened on my behalf many times, and I value that, and I think we're going to see that as we move through this message. This message basically is one on submission and subjection to the will of God. In chapter twenty five, we find in verse one— and there's a lot of verses here. We're not going to do like we did in the earlier one and read them first and then make comment. We're going to move our way through it together and make comment on spiritual principles as we go. In verse one, we find Samuel dies, and the prophet of the Lord now is out of the way. David, probably because of that, feels a little bit more isolated because now he doesn't have Samuel or somebody he can go back and to talk to. I know it's going to directly affect Saul because in a few chapters, Saul's going to miss having Samuel there, and he's going to go to the witch of Endor, and he's going to find himself in a terrible position at the end of his life. But here in chapter twenty five, we find in verse one Samuel dies, and in verse, uh, the end of the verse, David arises, and he goes down to the wilderness of Paran. He finds himself in the wilderness, a desert, a deserted place, and when he's there, he finds that he has a great need, and he'll make a great request of this man. This man, according to verse three, his name is Nabal, which being interpreted in the Hebrew means fool. Now, we'll see later how Saul will say, probably tomorrow, I have played the fool, literally saying I have played the Nabal. And Nabal simply means fool. And we see here that he was a man who had great earthly possessions. In verse two at the end, he was a man very great. He had uh three thousand sheep, he had a thousand goats, and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now, isn't it interesting, the first time we see him, he's shearing sheep. Now, all shepherds have to shear sheep, but it's interesting that that's the point the Spirit of God identifies with, because when we met David the first time, he was tending the sheep and pasturing the sheep, and in here, Nabal, we find him shearing. Nabal only cares about himself and what he can get from the sheep. That's all he cares about. That's why he's a fool. To be a fool in the Bible is, one of the aspects is, first of all, not to believe there is God. The heaven- the fool has said in his heart, the psalmist said, there is no God. To be a fool in the Bible, also here, is to be consumed with yourself and things that are pleasing to you. That is ultimately foolish. You- if you live your life to- for yourself only, you will be totally dissatisfied. It's only when we give our lives to others that our life becomes satisfying. That's the paradox of the Christian life. The weaker we are, the stronger we are. When we give our life, we find our life. It's just the paradox of the Christian life. Now, verse three says that this man Nabal had a wife, and his wife's name was Abigail, and her name in Hebrew means father of joy. N- na- names mean something in the Old Testament. They tell us a lot about the individual. And so what we find is this: we have a foolish man who is obsessed with his possessions and a godly woman. And this verse tells us she had understanding, and she was of a beautiful countenance, but the man was churlish and evil, even though he was of the house of Caleb. Now, you young men, let me tell you, you will be told by other men that you can't find a woman with brains and beauty. That verse tells me that's wrong. You can. That was Abigail. She was beautiful, she had, she had brains, she had discernment and understanding, and she was a godly woman. You young men need to marry godly women, and you need young women to marry godly men. I didn't say Christian, because here's what happens. Oh, he's a Christian. Are you? Mm-hmm. Oh, it's okay then, and they get married, and it ends in disaster. The Bible says, how can two walk hand in hand, that is united together, except they be agreed? It's not just that you're a Christian. If that was true, anyone here could marry anyone here. Okay, Christian, Christian, okay. No, if it was me, I'd find a godly woman whose desire is to know the Lord and to obey the Lord and serve the Lord. Then you'll be okay. That's what you have to find. But anyway, David sends a request to him through his servants, saying, and I'm going to paraphrase verses six through nine— when your men were in the wilderness, I was good to them. Now I'm in the wilderness, and I need some help from you. I need some food for my men. Now, verse ten comes Nabal's answer. We want to look at that for a moment, because it reveals why he's really foolish. Nabal answers David's servants and says unto them, Who is David? Does, does that remind you? See, when I read my Bible, I'm always linking things together. Verses that sound like other verses, phrases that are repeated. Doesn't that remind you of Pharaoh? Who is the Lord? Who is the Lord that I should obey him? It's a, it's a word of disdain. He probably was thinking, you know, he claims to be a king, but look at him, he's running, he's acting like a madman, like we saw. He really isn't very much of a king. Who is this guy anyway? Who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays, n- nowadays that break every, uh, break away every man from his master. Verse eleven really reveals his heart. Look at this, and tell me this doesn't remind you of something. Shall I then take my bread and my water and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be? Who does that remind you of? The I man. Who's an I man in the Old Testament? Do you remember Nebuchadnezzar? Look at the city that I built, and I, and my wisdom, and I, and God had to take him to his knees. Nabal's a fool. He's a man who's, who is so possessed by possessions, he apparently doesn't know the Lord. I mean, what are pos- earthly possessions when you know the Lord? A- answer that question. And I don't mean to intend to speak on this, but we live in a very materialistic society, and that materialism is killing our local assemblies and our relationship with the Lord. How important are material things to the Lord? The other day I was in Jacksonville traveling home. I was there on Sunday night and Monday morning. I was staying with a friend, and he says to me, he goes to a big church there in Jacksonville. He says, tell me about tithing. I said, what do you want to know? He said, well, when they tell you to bring everything to the storehouse. I said, that's in Malachi. That has nothing to do with the New Testament. I said, show me in your Bible tithing in the New Testament. And he got his Bible out and spent a good time. He said, here it is in Matthew. I said, written to the Jew. Find something in the, in the New Testament, in the teachings of Paul or Peter or some of these, and I'm not an ultra dispensationalist, I'm just saying find something where Paul commanded it. He couldn't find it. And he said, well, what is the tithing then? I said, tithing was a total of twenty three percent of their annual earnings, because there was three of them that they paid during the year for the operation of the temple and for the operation of the priesthood. It was a national tax to run their religion. I said, you know, they also had to give, besides that, watch this now, free will offerings. Bring your tithes and offerings into the storehouse and see if God doesn't bless you, it says. The offerings were free will. They were thanksgiving offerings. They were I love the Lord offerings. I said, when you get to the New Testament, do we have a temple anymore? No. Do we have a priesthood anymore? No. I said, throw the tax away. There is no taxing anymore. There's no tithe, but we still have free will offerings. And he said to me, boy, this is perplexing to me. I said, why? I said, because you realize everything you own now is the Lord's, and that's a little bit bigger than your ten percent you've been giving. And he said, yeah. I said, well, the Bible teaches us that. He was playing Nabal. I'll give the Lord a little bit here. These are my sheep that I've shorn for my people. Why would I give them anything from me and my, me and I? And that's the world we live in. How important are material things to the Lord? Very little. You know why? By the way, this was the rebuke of Israel in the Psalms, in Psalm fifty, when he said, gather my saints together unto me, I have somewhat to say unto them. Your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, they don't please me anymore, they're grievous to me. If I wanted to eat, would I ask you for food? You know what he's saying? The person who measures the span of the universe from creation to creation, it fits, it says, in the span of his hand, from his thumb to his pinky. Think of that. Now think about how big his mouth would be then. And we're going to give him a little lamb and think we're really feeding the Lord today. Material things, God created material material things by just saying, let there be. He just willed it, and it was. And if God wants a material thing, he can will it. There is no big thing with material things, but yet to the church, it's the biggest thing today. Give us ten percent. we'll you'll get a hundred back, and you get fleeced every time you turn on the TV or you listen to the radio. Listen, God's not concerned about... Listen, if Nabal was to give every sheep he sheared to David, God would have honored him. And God would have said, let there be more sheep in Nabal's sheepfold. And it would have been all over with. God's not concerned. He's concerned about the heart. He's concerned about the person. He is concerned about that relationship. But Nabal was a fool because he didn't understand that. And so David's men go back, and in verse thirteen, David says, okay, gird every one of you, your, you men, your swords, we're going. And next to that you can write, how quick can a believer revert back to the flesh? Vengeance. David! Remember this now, God is in these years preparing David to rule. How can you be a king if every time you get upset, you want to take your sword out? Can you imagine? He'd be the only one in his kingdom. Every time there was a problem, he'd be lopping heads off. Isn't it the same thing he said to Nathan when Nathan told him the parable of him and Bathsheba? He said, this man shall surely die for what? David, calm down. But that's the way we are too. Boy, we want it. He said what about me? I had a woman, I went to the assembly at, in Danville a couple months ago on a Wednesday night, and a woman came up to me afterwards and she said, John, I have a question. And she said, I have a woman, she's, she's bad-mouthing me, and she's spreading lies about me, and I really don't know what to do because it's grieving me at work and it's grieving me here in town, and what should I do? I said, let me a- answer you this. What would a dead person do? She said, nothing. I said, fine, go thou do likewise. What do you mean? I said, you died in Christ. You have no rights. You're not your own. The Lord says he'll take care of your enemies. He'll be your vengeance. Don't worry about it. Just go on with your life. Watch the Lord take care of it. Don't you, well, I got to go get a pound of flesh. No, you don't got to get a pound of flesh, and you don't have to justify yourself either. Let the Lord do it. They gird their swords on their hip, and they take off, and one of the young men go, and they tell Abigail in verse fourteen. you know, they're gonna go, and you're about to become a widow. Whoa. If I was Abigail, knowing Nabal, I would have said, yeah, thank you, Lord. What thou doest, do quickly, Lord. I would have said that, wouldn't you? Just like when God said to Moses, stand back, I'm going to destroy these people. I would have said, OK, Lord, go for it. Start all over, they are bad. No, but Moses knew this, he was one of them. And Abigail realizes something. David, you're going to be a king, and you haven't learned the greatest lesson. You don't w- wield the sword in vain for your own vengeance. Vengeance is the Lord's. You're gonna have to reign and rule over people, and you've got to watch the Lord and trust the Lord. So it says in verse eighteen, Abigail made haste. She took the bread, she took the wine, she took the, the quarter pounders and the French fries, and she took the Happy Meal for the kids, and she packed everything up, and she intervened, and she cut David off before he got to Nabal. Uh, and David, she meets David. Verse twenty one: now David had said, surely in vain have I kept all this fellow hath in the wi- wilderness. You know what he's saying by that? Watch this now, it's important, because we say it too. It was for nothing that I obeyed the Lord and was good to his people. It was, I got nothing out of my taking care of his people and being godly to his people and providing for them. I, we only do things because of what we can get for ourselves. At school, I'm constantly to, we, we have fights every day now. I mean, there's two or three. We had a fight the other day. I was in Florida. My wife called me, John, you remember this girl? Yes. Do you remember the guy before you left that got suspended for this? I said, yes. Well, he got in a fight with the girl at lunchtime. He hit her, he broke her cheekbone, caved in her sinus cavity, broke her nose in four places. She's in the emergency room in intensive care. We are constantly having fights, and when I walk those kids after I break them up and I separate them and sit them down, I will say to them, why did you do it? She disrespected me. I said, what kind of respect do you demand? Are you the president of the United States? No. Are- are you anybody? No. Well, then wh- how can you be disrespected? You don't have any respect. Well, you know, she said this, so I did this. I said, you should have walked away. Why? What would I get out of it? Nothing. You're just doing it because it is right to do. And if anybody in this world should do things because they are right with character of God, righteousness, it is us. We should do things not because we get. You know, this is the same cry in Malachi chapter four when they said, in vain we have served the Lord. We didn't get anything out of s- Well, I obeyed the Lord, what did it give me? Look at us, we're still in captivity, we didn't get anything out of it. No, you do it because it's right. Isn't that a test, isn't it? Are we going to obey the Lord because it's right or not? Are we going to do things because of what we get out of it? Well, I tell you what, I turn off the TV when I come across, or radio station, one of those preachers saying, if you give, I'll, you'll get a hundredfold. I would say, how much did you give? You keep getting and getting. What are you doing with all that money? You know, what he's saying is, if you want a blessing, give to me. It's what you get for your obedience that counts. The answer is no. You give, and you don't let your left hand know your right hand what you're doing. It's over with. The Lord knows it's done with. You do it because it's right. We had something just happen recently in our school, and, uh, it's not a big deal. I moved so Conrad can have to move the video machine. Um, we had somebody, someone broke into our, our lounge and, and knocked over the, uh, snack machine. They broke in to get in there. So the principal, who is the head basketball coach I've been coaching with for twelve years, who I've known intimately and have watched him grow spiritually, um, he said to me, well, the police aren't going to charge anybody because they didn't break the machine. Let's go in there and lift it up. And so they called the guy to come, you know, redo the machine because all the stuff apparently would be all messed up. And we went over there, and as we lifted it up, and by the way, we looked on the cameras and found the two kids. They weren't supposed to be there at five o'clock at night. We caught them. We know who they were. They were being processed. So we lifted the machine up, and apparently what happened was they, they laid it down on its back feet and shook it and then lifted it back up and would take things out, and then they'd lay it down again and shake it, but this time it got too heavy, so it fell and made a loud noise, so they ran. So when we lifted it up, the whole inside where you push the door to get what you want out was just chock full of everything. So I said to him, get a, get a box or a bag, and we'll load it up, and when the guy comes to work on it, we'll give it back to him. So I filled a, I filled a one of these paper garbage, not garbage, grocery bags up, weighed about thirty pounds, full of chocolate and peanuts and everything else. And so I'm walking out, and he looks at me and he says, you know, I could use a candy bar right now. Now, I expect my wife to say that because my wife and chocolate go hand in hand. It's just the way it is. If all I have to do is buy my wife a chocolate bar every day, and she's done. And that's, that to me, that's fairly reasonable. I mean, seventy five cents a day is not bad at all for a happy wife, and I do that. And so I looked at him and I said, you know what? If we do, and I would just study this chapter, and this is how the Lord works, because otherwise I would have said, yeah, let's have two or three. because his rationale was they ate them, they took them, they don't know how many is missing, they'll blame it on the kid. And I said, if we do, we're no better than the kid. And it was like, poof. But you know what? That's what David said when he said, you know what? In vain was I good to his people in the wilderness. In other words, I didn't get anything out of it. God is looking today for people who will honor him and submit to him just because it agrees with his character. Not because of who we submit to, not because of what we submit to, but because we submit to the Lord on the throne. We only see him on the throne, and everything in between doesn't matter. There's only one cause, a first cause for every believer, it's the Lord. I don't care if it's good in your life or bad, it comes from the Lord. Do you believe that? You don't want to say that. I wouldn't either, because something is going to happen if you say yes. Now, watch. He says at the end of verse twenty one, he hath requited me evil for good. The other day we had our Special Olympics. I came home Monday night, and Wednesday before I came here, we had Special Olympics in our school, and I love to do it. Don't ask me what I competed in. I helped run the thing. Now, I like the Special Olympics, and I love my special need kids in school, and they're very loving and everything, and there's a, I have a, a police officer, this, um, young black girl, she works with me, and she's a Christian, and I've had to help her through some things. Her mother passed away, and her mother was a godly woman, and she got bitter for- with the Lord because her mother passed away, and we had to sit down and, and allow the Lord to work in her life and show her that her mother's really better off being with the Lord right now, and she needs to let go of all that because it's just grieving her, and she did, and she finally went back to church, and she was doing well. And so we were there, and um, and we were doing, we were giving out the Special Olympics t-shirts, and there's a state trooper there and her mother, and this state trooper's a female, and so what this young girl that's uh, our SRO, she said to me, uh, go up and get two t-shirts and two hats for them, and you give it to them because they're arrogant. And I said, no. I said, honey, you don't render evil for evil. Rather, you ra- you render good for evil. And she tapped me and said, I hope I get to where you are someday to be able to do that. And I looked at her and I said, you're gonna do it today. And I went up and I got the shirts and the hat, and I came down and I gave it to her, and she said, you're right. That's so wrong of me. Do you see how easy the flesh can creep into our lives? What do- I look at David here, and I say, David, if it was me, I'd do the same thing too. I mean, I have had things happen to my daughter where the first thing I want to do is get on my camel, ride over, and beat the tar out of the guy. But as a Christian, you don't do that. You go before the Lord, you let the Lord minister to you. So here's Abigail, and see, she gets, verse twenty three. sh- Abigail sees David, and she falls off the ca- her camel, and she falls before David on her face, she bows to the ground, she falls at his feet, and she said, Lord, Lord, little L, Lord, because he was king, uh, Lord, let the sin of my husband, let his wrong fall upon me. I mean, she's, this woman's so godly, she calls it for what it is. She doesn't say, you know, my husband was having a bad day, oh, you know, and we've had an argument, so when he saw you and your man, he got... Uh-uh. Look what she says. Let not, verse twenty five. my Lord, little L, I pray thee, regard this man of Belial. You like that? She said, my husband's one of Satan's. She calls him for what he is, even Nabal, for as is his name, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with. He matches his name. You know what she's saying to him? What great admiration would you get from your men for killing a fool? You know, I- all the time I go into the gym, and the kids know, excuse me, that I coach girls' basketball for twelve years. We have good programs. We've won the district eleven times out of twelve. and, you know, we have a, we've, we've been, we've gone to the States. We went to the States this year, came in second in the regional. And so, you know, I'll go walk into the gym, and all these boys, everyone's a star, and they got the ball, and they're behind their back and between their legs, and, you know, they're just going out, come on, B, come on, you know, and I'm like, I always look at them and I say, you know, what kind of joy would you get out of beating a fifty-nine-year-old white man? I said, I'm so bad I can beat myself. And, and then they start to loosen up, you know? That's what she does. She says, what kind of glory? The man's a fool. Why would you even kill him and his men? The man's just a fool. There's nothing in that for you. He's wrong. You have to re- what she's saying is this, realize the source of your aggravation. Can I say something to you? What can you expect as a Christian from a world, when you read Ephesians chapter two— that is a ch- that is full of children of wrath, their mind is alienated from the life of God, they're under Satan's control. What do you expect from them except bad? And yet we get aggravated. Why? I say we because I do too. And then look at verse twenty eight. It's important to where we're headed with this thing. Verse twenty eight says, I pray thee, forgive the trespass of thine handmaiden, for the Lord, underline it, will certainly make my lord a sure house because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord. Verse twenty nine, yet a man, Saul, is risen to pursue and to seek thy soul, but thy soul of my lord shall be bound in a bundle of life with the Lord. And then in verse thirty one, we hear, but when the Lord shall de- have dwelt well with my Lord, then remember thine handmaiden. And next to verse thirty one, you can write this, listen, David, vengeance is the Lord's, and he'll take care of it when he does. You remember me. Listen. She's asking him, when the Lord takes care of her husband, to remember me, is it any wonder when Nabal dies, guess what David does? He goes and he takes her for a wife. That's, I know, that's startling. Some of you look like deer in the head, like, what? You didn't read the rest of the chapter yet. We're getting there. Now watch, she simply reminds him, number one, he's a fool. You're not going to get anything out of it, and consider the source. And number two, God takes care of him. Now watch, Two lessons of this chapter that I wrote down in the margin of my Bible. The first is this, no matter how great the man of God may be, he can fall at any moment, like David. Get your swords, we're going, let's get them, kill them all. And the second lesson was this, no matter how big a man is in man's eyes, God's can take care of him in Nabal. That's that, those are two amazing truths. And you know what? He hearkens on to her. He listens and turns around. He feeds his men. Now watch what happens in verse thirty six. Abigail goes home, and Nabal is partying with the boys, and he's drunk. And when Abigail came to Nabal, behold, he was at a feast in his house like a feast of a king. Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk. Wherefore she told him nothing less or more until the morning light. I will not witness to a person who is drunk or under the influence of drugs. I've heard all the stories about, yeah, I did, and he sobered up right away. Forget it. Don't even throw that, don't even throw your pearls before that swine. She's smart here. She says, I'm not going to tell him anything. He won't remember it in the morning anyway. Then verse thirty seven says, when it came to pass in the morning that the wine was gone out of Nabal, his wife told him what these things, what she had done. Now watch this. His heart died within him, and he became as stone. Next to that, write this, he had a stroke. He couldn't move. Nothing was going on. And it came to pass ten days later that the Lord smote Nabal, and he died. Now mark it down, God can take care of your enemies because your enemies are really God's enemies. We don't have to go around and take vengeance on anybody. We don't have to require any kind of punishment from anybody. All we have to do is look past them, render good for evil, give them a godly response, commit it to the Lord, and sit back and watch the Lord work. Now, I know someone sitting there saying, you're speaking to me, but you don't know what I'm going through. Well, let me tell you what I want to happen to my wife and myself. Back in nineteen eighty six, I befriended a man in Danville for the best of reasons. He was a wild mountain man with a sixth grade education. Nobody liked him in town, and he was a drunk. And through the process of time, he showed his colors, and something happened. And when I went to talk to him about it as a Christian, he looked at me and my wife, and without a blink he said, if I ever see you again, I'll kill you. And the man was deadly serious, deadly serious. So much so that when we went home that night, my wife pushed the chairs behind the lock doors. She got our dog out and put her in the living room, got the guns out that we hunt with and laid them all around. And I, the next morning I woke up and I said, honey, we can't live this way. This man can only hurt us if the Lord wants him to hurt us. And if the Lord wants us to be hurt, we're going to be hurt. And if he doesn't want us to be hurt, that man's never going to hurt us. And in nineteen ninety, we set back those things away from the door, and we committed this thing to the Lord, and we saw verses over and over again about be still and know that I am God, be still and see the salvation of the Lord. And I would sit there and I would think, I know I have proof that this man poached animals out of season. I have proof that he, that is in his business, he, he had a convenience store that he's cheated on his taxes, and I'll tell you what, I'll just go after him and have him put in jail. And every time I did, the Lord blocked me through a scripture verse. Every time, it was very evident. We finally just said, Lord, he's in your hands. And I didn't hear from him again. I'd buy it, go by his store, he'd give me one of these dirty looks with a cigar, like, don't stop here, I'll kill you. He called the school one time and told them lies that I was sleeping with the kids, and they investigated and found out the call came from his store, that it was unreliable, and they cleared me. The man was totally evil. Wasn't easy committing that to the Lord, but we did. In two thousand and four, he found out he had liver cancer from his drinking. And I was away on a trip, and he called my house, and he wanted to have me to come over, but my wife and I weren't home. I said to Betty when I got home, look at the number on here, it's from his store, he called me, I need to go by, and she said, oh no, I wouldn't go by. It's a trap. And I didn't. And I got a call from his wife a few days later that the man had passed away, and it broke my heart. It broke my heart. Because at one time we were very close, he had even come to the chapel and heard me preach, he had known the gospel. And a few months later, when I was back at Danville, one of the elders, there's only two elders, and one of them said to me, listen, I need you to come by my work in the morning, I have something to tell you. And I said, OK. I thought it was going to be bad, because you always do. And I went in the man's office and sat down, and he said, John, I want to tell you something. I said, so and s- he said, so and so had been calling you, wanting you to come, he wanted to talk to you. But instead he called me, and I went. And I went in to see him, and there was this man who once weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, all of one hundred and twenty, bleeding out of his ears, his nose. He was two days away from dying. And when I walked in, he said to me, and he asked me, is it okay for Christians to be cremated? And I said to him, first make sure you're a Christian. And he said, I want you to know that I'm only trusting in the finished work of Christ. I've heard all those things, and I know when I die, I'll be with the Lord. And he said, I want you to get a message to John and Betty, and I want you to tell them I'm sorry that I hurt my best friend that I've ever had. I wept like a baby, and I realized that if I would have done that vengeance myself, I would have never, ever heard those words. When we let the Lord take care of our enemies, he takes care of them. If David would have lifted up his hand against Nabal, he would have never been able to write those psalms about the Lord is my hightower, the Lord is my buckler. The sweetness of his hymns would have went right out. He would have had to write, I took vengeance, and I did the Lord's work, and I did what God wouldn't do. They would have been a different group of psalms. Brethren, God wants us to submit to him so much that we will even trust and eat at a table he prepares for us in the presence of our enemies. It's convicting, isn't it? Turn with me, if you would please, to First Peter chapter two, and we'll finish in this portion. It's amazing to me when I study my Bible, I try to study an Old and a New Testament together, and when I do, it never ceases to amaze me how the Lord shows me that they're kind of parallel and linked together. One of the sub-themes, I should say one of the three themes of the book of First Peter. The first starts out with, in the first cha- chapter and a half, with the great common salvation. Then it moves to chapters two and three in First Peter to the great submission that we have, the common submission that all believers would have, and then in the last third of the book, we get onto the, the, uh, the common experience, which is suffering. In chapter two, he reminds them, as he does in chapter one, that they're strangers and pilgrims. And as strangers and pilgrims in this world, and if you know what an alien is, it's simply somebody living in a foreign place, having no rights or privileges. And that's what we are. Our citizenship is in heaven. We don't, we don't, we don't have rights and privileges in this world. Our, our rights and privileges are in, in heaven, and that's where we look. And so we act differently. You know, pilgrims and strangers act differently in the country they're in. You know, we speak different languages, and our cultures are different because we're not of that, that, that nation or that nationality. And he reminds them of that. And he tells them that the key thing, the key relevance that they have in this world is this world submission, this word submission. Look at verse thirteen. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of the Lo- of man for the Lord's sake, whether it's a king or governor, but you do it because it's the will of God, verse fifteen. You do it as the servants of God, verse sixteen. You honor all. Whoa, but you don't know they're killing our people. My wife has been killed into by a lion in the, in the arena, and they're lighting my, my, my children on fire on stakes, and we know that all the first century, how they suffered. The Lord says it doesn't matter. You do it as unto the Lord. Then he goes on to say, now you servants be subject to your masters with all fear. And that word servant there means a household servant. It could be an employee to an employer. He could simply be saying, employees, be subject to your employers with all fear, not only to the good and the gentle, but to the evil ones. Why? Because God is pleased by it. It's thankworthy to the Lord. Oh, but you don't know my boss. No, but the Lord does. And according to the book of Colossians, he says this, when they do evil to you, God will recompense them for the evil, and when they deny you and take things from you that is rightfully yours, even pay in the long time and eternity, God will give you that right you'll never lose. So we can submit to them, not because they're worthy of it, because we do it to the Lord. We do it as unto the Lord. And then he goes on and he says in chapter three, verse one, likewise, you wives be in subjection to your own husband. Oh, but you don't know my husband, they would say in that day and age. As a Roman citizen, I'm just a, I'm just chattel. I'm just something owned. Do you know women in the, in the Roman Empire? That's true. If they didn't please their husband, they could put him, their wives to death. Yeah, it was no big deal. Same with a slave. You're no good better than a slave. And now the woman's saved, and she's saying, but you don't know my husband. Obey that wretch? Yes, obey that wretch. As long as he doesn't tell you something unscriptural. When he says something against scripture, he loses authority. He steps out of the sphere of his authority, and his, and his authority's gone. By the way, that's a big thing to do. You don't know my husband. He says, you don't know my spouse. I'm supposed to look? How do you do that? Notice, uh, chapter five, verse five. Likewise, you younger submit yourselves to the elder. Hold your hats. I ate with them this morning. I know what some of you are going to say, but you don't know them. You don't know them. You don't do it because they're worthy of it. You do it for the Lord's sake. And, by the way, he goes on to say, yea, watch this, all of you be subject one to another anyway. Submission is that one of the first signs of true repentance in a, in a converted life, because the flesh no longer is dominating, the Holy Spirit in the person is. Philippians two thirteen says, for it is God in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. So when I become a Christian and the Spirit of God resides in me, he gives me the will, the desire to do his will, and gives me the power to do it. So a Christian can't boast when they do something in obedience because the desire came from the Holy Spirit, and the power to do it came from the Holy Spirit. That's why we have believer's baptism. Why? Because the first sign of a good conscience to God is, what does God want me to do now? We had the privilege of leading our, our daughter-in-law, but when my son and her were liking each other, we had the privilege of leading her to the Lord in, in our house. And before I could say, do you want to pray and ask God to forgive, man, her head went down on her own. She started, oh God, forgive me, and I, I accept Christ. When she came up, she had a big old grin on her face because she'd been crying. And you know what her next words were to me? What does God want me to do now? And she said it with a smile. It wasn't, oh, I wonder what he wants me to do now. I said, he wants you to stop doing a lot of things you've been doing. She goes, I know, I know. How that's amazing. Submission is a key. If you're having trouble submitting in your life, it's because you're, there's something wrong with your relationship with the Lord. You do not see him as overall, above all, and, and, and it's causing a problem. Let me just take a moment, because I want to address the wife and the husband again from chapter three. I love this portion, because men like to do this. I did it when I first started studying. I would look at my wife and I would say, honey, you're the weak vessel, so you're to submit to me. And luckily, my wife was a student, and she said, excuse me, you forgot the r, you know, like pirates do, r backy. R, you forgot the r on the end of that word. Weak r. Oh, it does say that, doesn't it? Because in chapter one, men, it says, all flesh is as of the grass. We are all weak. Women are weaker. Oh, good, you got that in there anyway. At least I can tell her she's weaker because I can bench press two eighty and she can't. No, that's not what he's talking about. It has nothing to do with, yeah, because they're weak flowers, you just have to enjoy them and put them on the... No, has nothing to do with that. Look, you have to take it into context. Are you ready for something here? I, I noticed two of the elders are leaning forward with their ears open. Where is this boy going? Look, if you would please, at chapter three verse seven. Likewise, you know, one thing I like about Bible study, doing it is this, the Bible will always answer itself if you just read it enough. It always does. Now watch. Likewise, you husbands, dwell with them, your wives, according to knowledge. What does he put that in there for? What he sim- can I paraphrase it? Likewise, you men, dwell with them according to what I just taught you, according to the knowledge I just gave you. That's the knowledge he's talking about, how to dwell with them. What was that? That they have to submit to you? Even if you're an unbelieving husband, they've got to put themselves in that position because God desires from the woman a quiet and peaceable, submissive spirit. That's what's of God, a great price. Dwell with them according to that knowledge, that they take that place willingly in submission to the Lord through you and to you. Now watch. As unto the weaker vessel. As unto the weaker vessel. Why are they weaker according to the teaching that he just said, the knowledge that he just taught? Watch this, it's most marvelous. They are weaker because of the place they take willingly in their role submitting to you. They put themselves in a very vulnerable position of having to follow a weak vessel like I am, and like Abraham, I'm going to make bad decisions. That's why they're weaker. They're weaker because of the place they take in submitting to you and to me as men. Do you understand what I mean by that? Sarah submitted to Abraham. He said, let's go to Egypt. Oh, Lord. It goes on to say there that even as Sarah called Abraham Lord, but she never did, but she did in action because she followed him to Egypt, knowing that she could have to pay a price. And what did God do? He honored it by protecting her and bringing it out. Women are weaker because, brethren, they have to put themselves in a role to submit to people like us, and we at times make very bad decisions. I hope you honor your wife. I hope you re- realize what your wife is going through. And that's why I said to you before that I'm only as good tonight, as good as my wife allows me to be in her submission, in her godliness, and I thank the Lord for that. I didn't always value that, but I do now. There's some wisdom in getting older, isn't it? Let's just finish because we have five minutes, I believe, right? We're getting too close to messing up dinner, and I don't want to do that, because I've learned there's some meetings you can go over and get away with, but when it comes to the meal, I don't want all the women that are preparing it getting mad at me, and I don't want Jimmy and the younger guys who want to eat get mad, so I'm going to be very nice about this. How do we do this submission? In other words, you know, we stand up, we say, be ye holy, for I the Lord am holy, and then people say, how do you do that? And we stand up, we exhort people with all these imperatives, and they always want to go, how do we do that? Okay, I want to do that, but how? How do we then submit? How- what is the key to submitting? I believe in the portion that we read, there, there are 6, there are six positives and one negative. One is this, we don't do it because we fear punishment. We don't do it because we fear punishment. We do it because we fear the Lord. That fear isn't an oh, oh, it's a reverential understanding of who God is. And so we do it for that reason. Now, just look at chapter two, and I'll walk these through you, you can mark them down. Here are the incentives for submitting. Verse thirteen, underline it, for the Lord's sake. I am weary of traveling and, and getting advice or giving advice about problems in assemblies, not here, up down the East Coast. When I hear things like, but if we do this, what will the people do? They'll leave. And if we do this, what will this happen? Because this will go. And what will happen if we do this? Because so and so will be mad. It never is, is it for the Lord's sake? It never is, what does the Lord get out of it? The Lord's sake never is there, and it should be number one. What's at stake for the Lord? David, think about what you're going to do. You're going to ruin everything in your future that the Lord is working in your life. The Lord's sake. What it means, what does my obedience mean anyway? I'm just a teenager. The Lord's name is at stake. The Lord has a lot at stake. Our obedience means everything. Number two, verse fifteen. Underline it. Is the will of God. And I don't know about you, but I've learned a k- secret, secret to life. Here it is. There's only two people I have to please. The Lord a hundred percent of the time, and my wife fifty percent of the time. What is the will of God? Oh, young person, always ask yourself, what is God's will in this area? And if you don't know, don't respond, don't do anything until you find out from the scriptures, this is the will of God. Number three, verse sixteen, Underline the word servant. Servants of God. And there the word is doulos. It does not mean household domestic. It means the slavest of slave terms. It means I am owned, I have no will of my own, he is my master. There was no going free, there is no going free. I have no will of my own. You do it because you are not your own. You're bought with a price. That's right. To be a Christian doesn't mean I just mean I go to church. I am no longer my own. I'm no longer my own. I have not the right to do with myself what I want to do. Some of you know I have a tattoo on my right forearm. I got it before I was saved, when I was in the Marine Corps. I'll go to some place, and they've never seen me in my shirt, and say, you're a Christian, you have a tattoo? I said, I got it before I was saved. I wouldn't do it now. My body is the Lord's. Everything I have is the Lord's. I'm a bond slave of the Lord Jesus. Why Romans six says, I once was a slave of sin, now I'm a slave of God and righteousness. That's what it means to be converted. Peter's going to say in chapter four, it's sufficient for you to do the will of the Gentiles, now you do the will of God. It's sufficient that you once did your own thing, now you do the will of God. And it's time for all of us to realize that should be the motivating factor in all that we do. Not will it make me happy, not will it make me popular. Is it God's will? Anyway. Verse seventeen. Underline this. Fear God. Reverence God. That's the big problem. When I can't submit to the Lord, it's because I don't really have a good glimpse of who he is. David, would you rather deal with Nabal or let God do it? I mean, David could have got wounded. He would have at least got tired fighting Nabal and his men. God just went along and said, psst. Nabal had a stroke, got cold, laid down. Ten days later, he died. Nothing easier than that. David didn't even lift a finger. Marvelous. Reverence that kind of a God. He can take care of our problems better. Verse nineteen. underline this phrase, for conscience towards God. Very important in our life that we realize this, that my conscience is clear bef- it's purged before the Lord. That we know that as far as we stand right now, what you see is what you get. There's no hidden things, and there's especially nothing between me and God. All the accounts are settled. My, my conscience is clear. And the moment you don't obey the Lord and submit in one of those areas we talked about, that conscience is going to get, just like the candy bar. No, we can't do that, because we wouldn't be any better than the people that broke into the machine. And the last motivation is this, verse twenty, and I believe it's the key. The la- end of the verse is this, this is acceptable to God. And the word acceptable means this, pleasing. Now, I don't know about you, but I think it's really a motivation to do what's pleasing to my Heavenly Father. Why do you not do this? Because it doesn't please my Father. Why do you do this? Because it's pleasing to my Father. Well, isn't it a marvel to watch your children grow up? I close with a simple illustration. I go off for a month, I come home, my grass is knee high. It takes me two days to cut it. I got to cut it three times, start up high, work down low, go. I don't even know what to do with all the grass. I got an acre and a half I have to cut of two acres, and I'll tell you this, it just is a problem. I say to my son, son, it'd be nice if you cut the grass while dad's gone. Well, if you got a riding mower, I'd do it. So I buy a riding mower. Guess what? I come back after traveling a month, and guess what? My grass is knee high again. Son, it would be nice if you just cut the grass for dad while he was away. Once in the middle of the three, four weeks, just cut it once. So I go away another trip, a couple months later, I come home. I'm driving from the airport, my wife has picked me up, she said, honey, you're gonna love the yard. You don't have to do a thing tomorrow, but unpack and relax. I said, okay, what does he want? It's just common, isn't it? Didn't you ever think that? I wonder what he wants. I get home, I say, son, why'd you cut the grass? He said, I just thought you'd be pleased with it. How much more your father in heaven? Let me ask a question. Is your heavenly father pleased with you today? Don't answer it to me. It doesn't matter to me. I have to answer that question to myself every day. For this is acceptable to God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. And we praise you for your mercy and your grace. Father, we thank you that you, you deal with us not according to what we deserve, but you know with our frame that we're but of the dust. You're so gracious and long suffering. And Father, we understand just as you sent Abigail to David to intercede on Nabal's behalf, that you send people into our lives, and you intercede on the Lord's behalf on our, in our lives, and we thank you for that, Father. Father, if you've been speaking to somebody through this message, may they find peace and rest in committing their problems to you. You're omniscient, you're omnipotent. Father, you know all things, and you can take care of the, the biggest problems that we have, and you take care of them to your honor, to your glory, and much more completely than we ever will. And Father, we thank you for allowing us to open your word and having your spirit speak to our hearts. Bring forth praise and honor and glory to your name. And Father, now as we're about to eat, we thank you for the provision. We thank you with for that time, and we just acknowledge it as coming from your hand by your grace and mercy to us. We pray that the words of our lips and the meditation of our heart might be acceptable as we fellowship together in your sight. Father, we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.