He faced Saul the way he faced Goliath—by facing God more so. When the soldiers in the cave urged David to kill Saul, look who occupied David’s thoughts: “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord” (1 Sam. 24:6).
When David called out to Saul from the mouth of the cave, “David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed down” (24:8). Then he reiterated his conviction: “I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord’s anointed” (24:10).
In the second scene, during the nighttime campsite attack, David maintained his belief: “Who can stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?” (26:9).
In these two scenes I count six times when David called Saul “the Lord’s anointed.” Can you think of another term David might have used? Buzzkill and epoxy brain come to my mind. But not to David’s. He saw, not Saul the enemy, but Saul the anointed. He refused to see his grief-giver as anything less than a child of God. David didn’t applaud Saul’s behavior; he just acknowledged Saul’s proprietor—God. David filtered his view of Saul through the grid of heaven. The king still belonged to God, and that gave David hope.
Some years ago a rottweiler attacked our golden retriever puppy at a kennel. The worthless animal climbed out of its run and into Molly’s and nearly killed her. He left her with dozens of gashes and a dangling ear. My feelings toward that mutt were less than Davidic. Leave the two of us in a cave, and only one would have exited. I wrote a letter to the dog’s owner, urging him to put the dog to sleep.
But when I showed the letter to the kennel owner, she begged me to reconsider. “What that dog did was horrible, but I’m still training him. I’m not finished with him yet.”
God would say the same about the rottweiler who attacked you. “What he did was unthinkable, unacceptable, inexcusable, but I’m not finished yet.”
Your enemies still figure into God’s plan. Their pulse is proof: God hasn’t given up on them. They may be out of God’s will, but not out of his reach. You honor God when you see them, not as his failures, but as his projects.
Besides, who assigned us the task of vengeance? David understood this. From the mouth of the cave, he declared, “May the LORD decide between you and me. May the LORD take revenge on you for what you did to me. However, I will not lay a hand on you. . . . the Lord must be the judge. He will decide” (24:12, 15 God’s Word).
* * *
See your enemies, not as God’s failures,
but as God’s projects.
* * *
God occupies the only seat on the supreme court of heaven. He wears the robe and refuses to share the gavel. For this reason Paul wrote, “Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. ‘I’ll do the judging,’ says God. ‘I’ll take care of it’” (Rom. 12:19 MSG).
Revenge removes God from the equation. Vigilantes displace and replace God. “I’m not sure you can handle this one, Lord. You may punish too little or too slowly. I’ll take this matter into my hands, thank you.”
Is this what you want to say? Jesus didn’t. No one had a clearer sense of right and wrong than the perfect Son of God. Yet, “when he suffered, he didn’t make any threats but left everything to the one who judges fairly” (1 Pet. 2:23 God’s Word).
Only God assesses accurate judgments. We impose punishments too slight or severe. God dispenses perfect justice. Vengeance is his job. Leave your enemies in God’s hands. You’re not endorsing their misbehavior when you do. You can hate what someone did without letting hatred consume you. Forgiveness is not excusing.
Nor is forgiveness pretending. David didn’t gloss over or sidestep Saul’s sin. He addressed it directly. He didn’t avoid the issue, but he 49 did avoid Saul. “Saul returned home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold” (1 Sam. 24:22 NIV).
Do the same. Give grace, but, if need be, keep your distance. You can forgive the abusive husband without living with him. Be quick to give mercy to the immoral pastor, but be slow to give him a pulpit.
* * *
Forgiveness is choosing to see
your offender with different eyes.
* * *
Society can dispense grace and prison terms at the same time. Offer the child molester a second chance, but keep him off the playgrounds.
Forgiveness is not foolishness.
Forgiveness is, at its core, choosing to see your offender with different eyes. When some Moravian missionaries took the message of God to the Eskimos, the missionaries struggled to find a word in the native language for forgiveness. They finally landed on this cumber-some twenty-four-letter choice: issumagijoujungnainermik. This formidable assembly of letters is literally translated “not being able to think about it anymore.”2
To forgive is to move on, not to think about the offense anymore. You don’t excuse him, endorse her, or embrace them. You just route thoughts about them through heaven. You see your enemy as God’s child and revenge as God’s job.
By the way, how can we grace-recipients do anything less? Dare we ask God for grace when we refuse to give it? This is a huge issue in Scripture. Jesus was tough on sinners who refused to forgive other sinners. Remember his story about the servant freshly forgiven a debt of millions who refused to forgive a debt equal to a few dollars? He stirred the wrath of God: “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt. . . . Shouldn’t you have mercy . . . just as I had mercy on you?” (Matt. 18:32–33 NLT).
In the final sum, we give grace because we’ve been given grace. We survive because we imitate the Survivor Tree. We reach our roots beyond the bomb zone. We tap into moisture beyond the explosion. We dig deeper and deeper until we draw moisture from the mercy of God.
We, like Saul, have been given grace.
We, like David, can freely give it.
7
BARBARIC BEHAVIOR
ERNEST GORDON groans in the Death House of Chungkai, Burma. He listens to the moans of the dying and smells the E stench of the dead. Pitiless jungle heat bakes his skin and parches his throat. Had he the strength, he could wrap one hand around his bony thigh. But he has neither the energy nor the interest. Diphtheria has drained both; he can’t walk; he can’t even feel his body. He shares a cot with flies and bedbugs and awaits a lonely death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
How harsh the war has been on him. He entered World War II in his early twenties, a robust Highlander in Scotland’s Argyle and Sutherland Brigade. But then came the capture by the Japanese, months of backbreaking labor in the jungle, daily beatings, and slow starvation. Scotland seems forever away. Civility, even farther.
The Allied soldiers behave like barbarians, stealing from each other, robbing dying colleagues, fighting for food scraps. Servers shortchange rations so they can have extra for themselves. The law of the jungle has become the law of the camp.
Gordon is happy to bid it adieu. Death by disease trumps life in Chungkai. But then something wonderful happens. Two new pris-oners, in whom hope still stirs, are transferred to the camp. Though also sick and frail, they heed a higher code. They share their meager meals and volunteer for extra work. They cleanse Gordon’s ulcerated sores and massage his atrophied legs. They give him his first bath in six weeks. His strength slowly returns and, with it, his dignity.
Their goodness proves contagious, and Gordon contracts a case. He begins to treat the sick and share his rations. He even gives away his few belongings. Other soldiers do likewise. Over time, the tone of the camp softens and brightens. Sacrifice replaces selfishness. Sol-diers hold worship services and Bible studies.
Twenty years later, when Gordon served as chaplain of Prince-ton University, he described the transformation with these words:
Death was still with us—no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. . . . Selfishness, hatred . . . and pride were all anti-life. Love . . . self-sacrifice . . . and faith, on the other hand
, were the essence of life . . . gifts of God to men. . . . Death no longer had the last word at Chungkai.1
Selfishness, hatred, and pride—you don’t have to go to a POW camp to find them. A dormitory will do just fine. As will the board-room of a corporation or the bedroom of a marriage or the backwoods of a county. The code of the jungle is alive and well. Every man for himself. Get all you can, and can all you get. Survival of the fittest.
Does the code contaminate your world? Do personal possessive pronouns dominate the language of your circle? My career, my dreams, my stuff. I want things to go my way on my schedule. If so, you know how savage this giant can be. Yet, every so often, a diamond glitters in the mud. A comrade shares, a soldier cares, or Abigail, stunning Abigail, stands on your trail.
She lived in the days of David and was married to Nabal, whose name means “fool” in Hebrew. He lived up to the definition.
Think of him as the Saddam Hussein of the territory. He owned cattle and sheep and took pride in both. He kept his liquor cabinet full, his date life hot, and motored around in a stretch limo. His NBA seats were front row, his jet was Lear, and he was prone to hop over to Vegas for a weekend of Texas Hold ’em. Half a dozen linebacker-size security guards followed him wherever he went.
Nabal needed the protection. He was “churlish and ill-behaved—a real Calebbite dog. . . . He is so ill-natured that one cannot speak to him” (1 Sam. 25:3, 17)2 He learned people skills in the local zoo. He never met a person he couldn’t anger or a relationship he couldn’t spoil. Nabal’s world revolved around one person—Nabal. He owed nothing to anybody and laughed at the thought of sharing with anyone.
Especially David.
David played a Robin Hood role in the wilderness. He and his six hundred soldiers protected the farmers and shepherds from brigands and Bedouins. Israel had no highway patrol or police force, so David and his mighty men met a definite need in the countryside. They guarded with enough effectiveness to prompt one of Nabal’s shepherds to say, “Night and day they were a wall around us all the time we were herding our sheep near them” (25:16 niv).
David and Nabal cohabited the territory with the harmony of two bulls in the same pasture. Both strong and strong-headed. It was just a matter of time before they collided.
Trouble began to brew after the harvest. With sheep sheared and hay gathered, it was time to bake bread, roast lamb, and pour wine. Take a break from the furrows and flocks and enjoy the fruit of the labor. As we pick up the story, Nabal’s men are doing just that.
David hears of the gala and thinks his men deserve an invitation. After all, they’ve protected the man’s crops and sheep, patrolled the hills and secured the valleys. They deserve a bit of the bounty. David sends ten men to Nabal with this request: “We come at a happy time, so be kind to my young men. Please give anything you can find for them and for your son David” (25:8 ncv).
Boorish Nabal scoffs at the thought:
Who is David, and who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants nowadays who break away each one from his master. Shall I then take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men when I do not know where they are from? (25:10–11)
Nabal pretends he’s never heard of David, lumping him in with runaway slaves and vagabonds. Such insolence infuriates the messengers, and they turn on their heels and hurry back to David with a full report.
David doesn’t need to hear the news twice. He tells the men to form a posse. Or, more precisely, “Strap on your swords!” (25:12 MSG)
Four hundred men mount up and take off. Eyes glare. Nostrils flare. Lips snarl. Testosterone flows. David and his troops thunder
* * *
Olive branches do more good than battle-axes ever will.
* * *
down on Nabal, the scoundrel, who obliviously drinks beer and eats barbecue with his buddies. The road rumbles as David grumbles, “May God do his worst to me if Nabal and every cur in his misbegotten brood isn’t dead meat by morning!” (25:22 MSG).
Hang on. It’s the Wild West in the Ancient East.
Then, all of a sudden, beauty appears. A daisy lifts her head in the desert; a swan lands at the meat packing plant; a whiff of per-fume floats through the men’s locker room. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, stands on the trail. Whereas he is brutish and mean, she is “intelligent and good-looking” (25:3 MSG).
Brains and beauty. Abigail puts both to work. When she learns of Nabal’s crude response, she springs into action. With no word to her husband, she gathers gifts and races to intercept David. As David and his men descend a ravine, she takes her position, armed with “two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep dressed out and ready for cooking, a bushel of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred fig cakes, . . . all loaded on some don-keys” (25:18 MSG).
Four hundred men rein in their rides. Some gape at the food; others gawk at the female. She’s good lookin’ with good cookin’, a combination that stops any army. (Picture a neck-snapping blonde showing up at boot camp with a truck full of burgers and ice cream.)
Abigail’s no fool. She knows the importance of the moment. She stands as the final barrier between her family and sure death. Falling at David’s feet, she issues a plea worthy of a paragraph in Scripture. “On me, my lord, on me let this iniquity be! And please let your maidservant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your maid-servant” (25:24).
She doesn’t defend Nabal but agrees that he is a scoundrel. She begs not for justice but forgiveness, accepting blame when she deserves none. “Please forgive the trespass of your maidservant” (25:28). She offers the gifts from her house and urges David to leave Nabal to God and avoid the dead weight of remorse.
Her words fall on David like July sun on ice. He melts.
Blessed be God, the God of Israel. He sent you to meet me! . . . A close call! . . . if you had not come as quickly as you did, stopping me in my tracks, by morning there would have been nothing left of Nabal but dead meat. . . . I’ve heard what you’ve said and I’ll do what you’ve asked. (25:32–35 MSG)
David returns to camp. Abigail returns to Nabal. She finds him too drunk for conversation so waits until the next morning to describe how close David came to camp and Nabal came to death. “Right then and there he had a heart attack and fell into a coma. About ten days later God finished him off and he died” (25:37–38 MSG).
When David learns of Nabal’s death and Abigail’s sudden availability, he thanks God for the first and takes advantage of the second. Unable to shake the memory of the pretty woman in the middle of the road, he proposes, and she accepts. David gets a new wife, Abigail a new home, and we have a great principle: beauty can over-come barbarism.
Meekness saved the day that day. Abigail’s gentleness reversed a river of anger. Humility has such power. Apologies can disarm arguments. Contrition can defuse rage. Olive branches do more good than battle-axes ever will. “Soft speech can crush strong opposition” (Prov. 25:15 NLT).
Abigail teaches so much. The contagious power of kindness. The strength of a gentle heart. Her greatest lesson, however, is to take our eyes from her beauty and set them on someone else’s. She lifts our thoughts from a rural trail to a Jerusalem cross. Abigail never
* * *
Soft speech can crush strong opposition.
(Proverbs 25:15 NLT)
* * *
knew Jesus. She lived a thousand years before his sacrifice. Never-theless, her story prefigures his life.
Abigail placed herself between David and Nabal. Jesus placed himself between God and us. Abigail volunteered to be punished for Nabal’s sins. Jesus allowed heaven to punish him for yours and mine. Abigail turned away the anger of David. Didn’t Christ shield you from God’s?
He was our “Mediator who can reconcile God and people. He is the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for every-one” (1 Tim. 2:5–6 NLT). Who is a mediator but one who stands in between? And what did Christ do but sta
nd in between God’s anger and our punishment? Christ intercepted the wrath of heaven.
Something remotely similar happened at the Chungkai camp. One evening after work detail, a Japanese guard announced that a shovel
* * *
Christ lived the life we could not live and took the punishment
we could not take to offer the hope we cannot resist.
* * *
was missing. The officer kept the Allies in formation, insisting that someone had stolen it. Screaming in broken English, he demanded that the guilty man step forward. He shouldered his rifle, ready to kill one prisoner at a time until a confession was made.
A Scottish soldier broke ranks, stood stiffly at attention, and said, “I did it.” The officer unleashed his anger and beat the man to death. When the guard was finally exhausted, the prisoners picked up the man’s body and their tools and returned to camp. Only then were the shovels recounted. The Japanese soldier had made a mistake. No shovel was missing after all.3
Who does that? What kind of person would take the blame for something he didn’t do?
When you find the adjective, attach it to Jesus. “God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him” (Isa. 53:6 MSG). God treated his innocent Son like the guilty human race, his Holy One like a lying scoundrel, his Abigail like a Nabal.
Christ lived the life we could not live and took the punishment we could not take to offer the hope we cannot resist. His sacrifice begs us to ask this question: if he so loved us, can we not love each other? Having been forgiven, can we not forgive? Having feasted at the table of grace, can we not share a few crumbs? “My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other” (1 John 4:11 MSG).