Revenge

April 17, 2008

1 Samuel 25:33-34 GNB
(33) Thank God for your good sense and for what you have done today in keeping me from the crime of murder and from taking my own revenge.
(34) The LORD has kept me from harming you. But I swear by the living God of Israel that if you had not hurried to meet me, all of Nabal's men would have been dead by morning!"

If we listen to the Lord, He will guide us. The trick is often to know who is speaking for the Lord in our day to day conversations with people.

David and his men had been on the run from Saul. They had protected the sheepherders of a man named Nabal, which by the way translates fool, an apt name for him. When it came time to sheer the sheep, David sent men to request some food as a return favor. Seems like the fool did a foolish thing and told them to get out of sight, he did not owe David anything. Well, those were fighting words, and David saddled up the horse and rode to meet Nabal.

Nabal had a wise wife. She ran out to meet David with the food that he had requested and pleaded for her husband and the people who worked for him. That is where today's verses come from. David saw that there was wisdom in what she was saying. Nabal had not done anything worthy of killing him, David was just angry. She had stopped him from following things through. David had been stopped from doing a sin of taking a life.

If the story stopped there it would be a good lesson. But it does not. The next day when the wife returns to Nabal and he is not drunk, she tells him what she has done. From the description of things, he had a heart attack and dies three days later.

In the end Nabal got what was coming to him. It was not David's job to do it thought.

How often to we take the punishment of those around us into our own hands. Be it a person we know, a neighbor, coworker, or even a spouse there is some thing in us that wants to see them punished. When we do not see God doing it we want to take it into our own hands. Learn like David did, not to punish someone for their errors. In the end they hurt you and God and God will see it through in His time.


Read through the Bible in one year in Historical order
Today
1 Samuel 25:1-27:12
Tomorrow
Psalms 17:1-15, Psalms 35:1-28, Psalms 54:1-7, Psalms 63:1-11
http://tinyurl.com/24beby for a daily reading tool