Listen, there's a lot of students here. How many of your students tonight? Would you raise your hand?

All right, yeah. Let's give them a hand. They're fighting the battles right now.

School just started. Am I right? I'm not going to ask if you like it, if you're happy that school's started. But we need to pray for the students of our fellowship of our nation because they are slugging it out in the battles and they get asked questions and deal with temptations and issues at a very intense level.

We want to talk about a very important issue tonight. As we mentioned, it was anger. In fact, I just want to confess I'm really angry right now.

I'm just kidding. I'm just-- it's just a joke. I'm really not angry.

But we have some people that we want to bring out-- Paul and Carrie Brown, who head up our self confrontation ministry, our step by step, and Marsh Shanaberger, who is one of our youth pastors. Would you please welcome them? All right. First of all, Marsh, you're an angry person generally. Is that correct.

That's completely true.

Yeah?

I just want to confess that before the whole church.

I've had you guys come out here for the reason that you deal with this issue on a personal level, on a counseling level, as well as teaching people biblically how to overcome it. How big of an issue is this in your experience in counseling with people?

It's a major issue almost with everyone. It seems like everyone has experienced or does experience frequently the feelings of anger. And so it's very common.

Are there some issues that people deal with more than others? What are the causes of it? What would be a common thread that you see in people, a pattern that you see?

Marriage is a big issue, anger within the--

You can relate!

But we see it just-- there's so many issues throughout the day. It seems like when students address anger, it's a continual process. They'll address one subject at one class meeting and then another subject in another that they experienced that day. So it's from work to home to finance problem problem, just right up and down the line.

Marsh, you deal with lots of people both as a pastor on staff and also working with younger people, with high schoolers, et cetera. Do you find there are certain causes of anger more than others, certain ones that harbor it because of situations in their lives? What would those be?

Yeah, probably the most common for like a student, a high school student, would be that of their parents. Either they're mad at their dad or their mom because they feel like they've been treated unfairly or harshly. And then probably the second one is a friend or someone who they trusted who they feel like has betrayed them or done something that they feel like ticked him off.

Right. What have you discovered is the biggest obstacle to overcoming anger?

Probably the biggest thing is an unwillingness to understand that it is a focus on self. That's probably the main thing. And then there are a lot of other issues that are involved in it, and one of them is that a lot of people don't understand that as believers, they have the ability to overcome anger.

It's just like the world has talked them into believing that if you were abused as a child or if there's been some other issue in your past that you're a victim of that where the Lord says that you are not. He says that all of your circumstances, he's going to work them to your good and wants to conform you to the likeness of Jesus and that by the fruit of the spirit, because of the spirit that lives within us, we can overcome it. And a lot of people don't understand that. So it's not only that they don't want to judge themselves first and that they don't want to realize that that anger is, like the introduction said, that, you know, it's a matter of really being upset with God's sovereignty and denying that he is sovereign in your life and your circumstances. He wants to work them to your good.

That's great.

So there's lots.

Yeah, we do have a tough time, don't we, calling sin sin. We want to call it something else. It's legitimized by society rather than saying it's something that is an attitude that offends God that, we must identify, confess, and turn from. Do you find that that's-- you teach this in the step by step class. What do you see happen when people come to that understanding of it's a real problem with self and I have to confront that and deal with it? What changes do you see occur in that process?

Oh, it's marvelous. It's one of the reasons that the ministry is such a blessing to us because we get to see that happen. And it happens more commonly than it doesn't happen with those who stick with it. I mean, you know, a lot of times they drop out for various reasons. But those who stick with it and really work on it and are committed to the Lord to work on it, it is wonderful to watch how marriages are put back together.

I mean, you know, there are people who-- there have been people who have actually signed divorce papers but decided to go ahead and take the course. And the next thing you know, they're back together because they learned how to deal with the anger and they learned how to deal with the issue of self. So it's just a wonderful thing to see how the Lord can put it all back together if we would just remain committed to him and doing it his way instead of our way or the world's way.

Beautiful. Marsh, did you have something to say?

Yeah, I was just going to say one of the things that's so beautiful from our end when we get to meet with people is to see the lights turn on. You know, I'm just thinking about an instance yesterday where I had someone in my office and that anger and that bitterness was just there. You could see it on their countenance when they walked in.

And for me, it's been a really rediscovery of the gospel, the power of the gospel, the grace of God to free somebody and realize what Christ has done for them. And that's been the key for all of us to dealing with our anger and that self. And yesterday I just think of this instance with this one individual, just the lights turning on and then realizing they don't have that right because they've been forgiven.

OK, we know that everybody deals with it. You mentioned that. And it seems to be pretty clear in the scripture.

Otherwise, they wouldn't write about it so much. However, do men deal with it more than women? Do women deal with it more than men? Do you find anything along those lines?

You can go ahead.

Notice I ask him the question. He's going to answer this. They're going to answer this.

It appears that the men experience anger more than women, but from our course materials, the homework assignments, and what we see, it's pretty much the same. It seems like everyone is experiencing or has experienced anger. The men react more openly in expressing it.

And they're more volcanic.

That's right, and for that reason, it seems like maybe the man are the angry side. But we find that that's-- it's pretty common pretty much right across the line.

Have you ever dealt any of you at all with somebody who had a real huge problem with this and you saw what God did in changing that individual-- a success story?

Mm-hm.

Let's see. Without giving any specifics, there was-- this has probably been about maybe 8 or 10 years ago. And there was a couple that we actually were making sure that the back doors of the church were open because we weren't sure how volatile this was going to get.

And we saw that couple come together just in the most beautiful way because both of them had this incredible commitment to the Lord. And when we helped them to-- especially the man to help-- we helped him to face that he was focused on himself and he was wanting to defend his rights, what his perceived rights were. And when we helped him to see that God works all things to the good of those who love him and wants to conform us to the likeness of Jesus and, you know, just as we talked him through those kinds of things, his heart was just broken for the Lord. And they're still together and they're doing beautifully.

Beautiful.

We had another couple that we were counseling, and they got up and went out on the driveway and had this knock down, drag out battle. I don't mean that they were hitting each other, although there were times when they did. That marriage is still together because of the power of God's word and doing it the way that God says to do it rather than just wanting to stand up for our own rights and be the boss. If God was the boss, it works better.

And by the way, there's credibility built in here. You guys have been married 45 years. Is that right? That's great. Congratulations.

We have an internet question. We have several tonight. We can only deal with a few.

We got a lot of response on this issue. So we realize we hit a hot button quite literally. And the question we want to deal with together as a group is from Rhonda. And it says, Skip, what does the Bible mean when it says be angry and sin not?

That's a good question. It's a common question whenever the subject comes up. Be angry and sin not, the Bible tells us in Ephesians. So it's addressed to me, but we have a panel here tonight. So I'm going to let you guys take a whack at it.

And I'll start.

You-- go ahead, Marsh.

Because I'm on the end. You know, Jesus demonstrated that personally and obviously, he's our model. He is our messiah, our savior, the one who was so upset with the way that the worship of God was handled in the temple.

Remember, he did the whole whip thing with the money changers and got him out of the temple courts. I'm kind of speaking youth talk now. So some of you are kind of--

The whip thing.

The whip thing.

Is that right?

So that was kind of--

The whip thing.

But he's our example. And he would get angry at sin but he would love the sinner. And it was always the self-righteous people that he would rebuke. But those who-- anyone who came broken and humble, he extended love to them. I think he's our example in how to do it.

You guys want to piggyback on that?

One of the things that we see in class that seemed to be such a relief is that the feeling of anger is not a sin. It's what we do in that--

Very good--

--response that leads us or tempts us to sin.

Right, because otherwise, we're going to fall into the same trap and-- the victim trap. Like we're talking about now, they found perhaps an anger gene. So it's-- I'm genetically predisposed to hurt you.

I can't help it. It's the way I was born. And so I beat people up. And you might have propensities to do all sorts of aberrant behavior. But the choice to actually do it is-- that's the fulcrum point.

That's right.

And we have to understand that anger, the Bible says, is a work of the flesh. But at the same time, there is an anger that is not sinful anger if it's based and motivated by love for God and love for others. And so it's going to love what God loves and hates what God hates.

That's righteous anger. That's good anger. We ought to all hate sin.

Sin put your savior on the cross. Sin destroys relationships. It absolutely decimates relationships and the world, life. So we ought to hate it.

And to hate sin and to even show that is a righteous indignation. There's nothing wrong with that. It's based on not selfish but on anger because we love God. Well, that's all the time we have. Let's give them a big hand and we'll continue worshipping tonight.

A person who has given to anger is like the ruler of a city who opens the gates to his enemies. Let's consider this illustration because it demonstrates the destructive nature of anger. When we lose control of our temperament, we aren't the only victim. Those around us suffer as well. In fact, the root of abuse, neglect, and other harmful behavior is anger. But habitual, lifelong anger issues can be overcome when they are dealt with biblically.

I had many people trying to help me for a long time. I've been reaching out for seven years to get help for my anger. I've went through the doctors, medical doctors.

The best help I got was when I came to the church and I asked for biblical counsel. They led me straight to the truth, to the word, where to go, what to do, how to do it. And now it's all about application.

Tonight, we will look to the Bible to find methods of doing right when others don't and learning caution when dealing with angry people.

I was really getting into the video. Hey, would you welcome our internet audience for just a minute? Say hi to them.

You know, speaking of the issue of anger, we're not going to get to it right. away. We're going to see how it develops in this story. But a lot of people have asked me, well, why is that in our culture if we're so sophisticated a culture, so advanced a culture, do we have to deal with this?

Why is it such an epidemic problem? Well, think about it. We have a film industry. We pour billions of dollars into each year that features violence incessantly.

In fact, it's interesting as I hear people talk about movies. Even Christians talk about films. Oh, it's a great movie. No sex. People die, violence, but it's OK.

And then the second thing is we in our schools are teaching kids they came from animals. Your ancestry, your great grandfather, is the monkey in the zoo. You are nothing but a biological mechanism.

You are a fortuitous occurrence of an accidental circumstance. You're an animal. And so we tell them that year after year and then we marvel when they start acting like animals. We've programmed that. That's part of the problem.

Well, tonight, turn in your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter 25. We get a story of what I like to call Beauty and the Beast. I'm not speaking of the Disney feature of Nell and her relationship to the prince turned the beast. This is the story of Abigail, a real beauty, married to a beast named Nabal who then also tames another beast of a man named David, who has quite an anger problem, a real issue with this.

Somebody once said I read that when God wants to do a great work, God first gets a hold of a man. He has to grab a person, get a hold of that man, and do a great visionary work in his life so that that guy gets a vision for something God wants him to do, like Moses. God got a hold of a man before a movement started, or Joshua, who took the children of Israel across the Jordan into the promised land, or David or Paul, the great missionary of the early church. So when God wants to do a great work, he gets a hold of a man.

And the saying kept going. When God wants to do an exceptionally great work, he gets a hold of a woman. And you know, women don't always get credit like they should.

Abigail deserves a lot of credit because she is placed at a very strategic time in David's life and keeps him from doing a dumb thing, giving full vent to his anger. And she turns him from that because she foresees with great insight the future of this man, how this incident could keep him from becoming great. It's a tale of a good woman in a bad marriage-- a good woman in a bad marriage and a good woman who encounters a bad situation. And she makes the best out of both.

I'll tell you what else this story shows us as so much of the Bible does. It shows us that there's no one perfect even in the Bible except for Jesus Christ. He's the only perfect one. But everybody else is flawed.

There is no perfect king. There's no perfect prophet. There is no perfect apostle, disciple, and there is no perfect church either.

We're all sinners. We're all flawed, and one thing I love about the Bible-- it doesn't paint little halos above its heroes. It shows who they really are, warts and all, flaws and all, sins and all, David included.

We're going to look at three segments of this chapter, at least I've divided it up into segments so that you can look at it, and it'll kind of keep the flow for you. First of all, the woman who married the wrong man-- that's Abigail. The woman who made the right move-- same gal. And then finally, we're going to look at this woman who mended a royal mess.

So those three things you can keep in mind. First of all, a woman who married the wrong man-- now when I say that, I say she married the wrong man for her, but he married the right gal. I mean, this guy needed this chick badly.

Verse one-- then Samuel died. Very important time in the nation-- a heart breaking moment. The spiritual leader is gone.

The Israelites gathered together and lamented for him and buried him at his home in Rama. And David arose and went down to the wilderness of [INAUDIBLE]. Why? Because he's got Saul who wants to kill him, that's why. Get as far away from this maniac as you can possibly get.

Now there was a man in [INAUDIBLE] down in that area whose business was in Carmel. And the man was very rich. He had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats, and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Notice it doesn't give how much money was in his bank account because in those days, that's not how you measure wealth.

You measure wealth by, well, how many camels you own? How many sheep you got? Now This guy has 3,000 sheep, 1,000 goats. That's pretty wealthy for those days.

Not quite as wealthy as Job-- Job had 14,000 head of livestock. 7,000 of them were sheep when God blessed him at the latter part of his life. Then there was Solomon, who when he sacrificed to God when the temple opened, he sacrificed 120,000 sheep.

But for the most part in a local setting, this guy was wealthy. He was rich. Now it says he's in Carmel.

This isn't Mount Carmel. This is down south in an area known as Hebron. Khurram El-- Hebrew words that mean the vineyards of God. Speaks of a very lush place to grow things like grapes.

You may remember when Moses sent 12 spies into the land and they came back. And remember they carried between two guys, Joshua and Caleb, this huge array of fruit. This was the area they went to, this area of Carmel.

They left [INAUDIBLE]. They went up and they were in the valley of Eshkol. That's the same area down south by Bethlehem and Hebron.

It says the name of the man was Nabal-- the name of his wife, Abigail. She was a woman of good understanding and beautiful appearance. Great combo-- good understanding and beautiful appearance.

But the man was harsh and evil in his doings. He was of the house of Caleb. Now remember, Caleb was a great guy.

Too bad this Nabal couldn't take out after his ancestor Caleb who wholly followed the Lord and was given that territorial region of Hebron. He was of the house of Caleb. So here you have, on one hand, a guy with bucks, a bad guy with bucks, a beautiful gal with brains.

And they're married to each other. All goes to show you, opposites do attract, truly. Now I often like to say that it's not looking for the right person when you get married. It's being the right person.

The same time, there are occasions where I have known people to marry and you look at their relationship and you think, oh, she married the wrong guy or he married the wrong gal. For instance, Job-- he was the most righteous man in all the earth. Trouble happened to him. He lost everything, including his kids, his servants, his oxen, his property, his health.

He bows down and he worships God. His wife comes in and she says, her counsel, hey honey? Curse God and die.

Thank you. God bless you. I mean, what kind of counsel is that? Curse God and die?

Well Job was righteous because he turned to her and said, you're like a foolish woman. You're foolish. Curse God and die.

He was married. He has a right guy but married to a gal who counseled them to curse God and die. I think of a guy by the name of John Wesley, a great evangelist.

He got married at age 47 to a wealthy widow. She was a bad egg-- very cold, hostile, austere, aloof, a hindrance to his ministry. They stayed married for 20 miserable years.

Eventually, she left him-- just a horrible situation. She didn't want anything to do with the things of God, it would seem. Then I think of Socrates. Socrates, that notable philosopher of Greece-- it seems he had a contentious wife. I don't know that. I just inferred that by his writings, his counsel. He once told his young group of students that he was mentoring.

He said, by all means, young men, get married. If you get a good wife, you'll be very happy. If you get a bad wife, you'll become a philosopher. So after reading that, I thought, he didn't have a great marriage.

Nabal means fool. Now I don't know if his parents actually called him that. What's your kid's name? Fool.

It could be that this name just stuck with him. I don't know how he got his name, but I do know he lived up to it. He was a fool.

Now when we hear that, we hear the word fool, we may think of somebody who's a moron. You know, he's just not all there. The lights are on, nobody's home.

He's one burrito short of a combination plate. Whatever metaphor you want to use to describe it, he's just not quite all there. He's a moron.

I heard of a guy who had-- his ears were burning red as he came into the room where his friends were. And his friend said, hey, what happened to you? He goes, well, I was ironing my shirt and the phone rang, and instead of picking up the phone, I just instinctively picked up the iron. [IRON SOUND]

His friends studied him and he said, well, OK, that explains one side. Why are both your ears burning? He goes, oh, the same guy called back. OK, that's a moron.

But in scripture, the word fool doesn't refer to a moron per se, somebody who has lost mental acumen. It refers to somebody who is morally all not there. The fool has said in his heart, what? There is no God.

That is so foolish given the evidence to say there is no God. And Nabal was a moral fool. He didn't do what was right over and over again.

Now it says he's rich. He's wealthy. And comparatively speaking, he was.

The Hebrew word means fat, heavy. In other words, this guy was loaded with money. He had all sorts of resources.

By the way, there is a volatile combo-- wealth and foolishness. You put both of those together, not good, not good. Somebody who's not wise with money and has a lot of it-- I could name names, but I'm not going to mention Ozzy Osbourne.

But you know, there's some people I see on TV and I think, they shouldn't have money. They're dangerous people, what they could do with it. It says he was harsh and evil in his doings.

Now this is his profile. This is who she is married to-- harsh, evil in his doings. In other words, he's stubborn. He's belligerent. We would say he's a jerk.

That's Nabal. Now Abigail, her name means, my father is joy. Again, I don't know who gave her that name, probably her father.

It could be that she had a dad that was determined, I'm going to have a good relationship with my daughter because I see so many dads that don't. I'm going to make sure that I'm a delight to her. So it could be that she's married to a guy-- didn't have a good relationship with her husband, but she has a great relationship with her father.

Verse three says that she's a woman of good understanding. Now this causes us to wonder a little bit. If she has such good understanding, why did she marry this creep?

Well, it certainly could be that she gained good understanding after she married him. Now she didn't bail. She didn't leave the relationship. But she wised up quite a bit. You're going to see her wisdom and her understanding in this chapter.

It could be that she grew in wisdom, grew in understanding because of the grueling circumstances she was in. You know, sometimes I hear men speak about their wives in such demeaning ways. And they'll even say things like, well, you know, she's a woman. She's not too smart. And I usually will say, you know, I have to agree with you because she married you.

Don't speak ill of your wife. You know, I've told you that old legend, one of my favorite old genesis jokes, legends about Adam having a conversation with God. And he says, God, thank you for Eve.

It's really neat. She's a real blessing. Why did you make her so soft, so beautiful?

And God kind of looked at like, you can't figure that out? I did that so that you would love her. Oh yeah, well, I do.

It worked. It's a great idea, God. I have one other question. Why'd you make her so dumb? And God said, so that she would love you.

I'll tell you, in this story, the dumb one is the husband, not Abigail. She is a woman of great insight, great understanding, even more so than David. By the way, before we jump into the rest, let me just warn those of you who aren't married yet, be careful who you spend the rest of your life with. Be careful who you marry, before you jump in and go, oh, I know this is the one for me.

It's estimated that most people have four or five true loves, true loves, before age 21. True-- this is the one. Hey, let me just tell you-- be careful. Til death do us part is a long time usually.

Let's look at verse four. We go from the woman who married the wrong man to the woman who made the right move, and you'll see her beauty come out in this. When David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was sheering his sheep, David sent 10 young men.

David said to the young man, go up to Carmel. Go to Nabal and greet him in my name. And thus, you shall say to him who lives in prosperity, peace be to you, peace to your house, and peace to all that you have.

Common greeting-- Shalom, Shalom, Shalom. Now I have heard that you have shearers. Your shepherds were with us, and we did not hurt them nor was there anything missing from them. All the while, they were in Carmel.

Ask her, young man. They will tell you. Therefore, let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we have come on a feast day. Please give whatever comes to your hand to your servants to your son David.

Let me you what's going on here. Before this day, David and his boys, his 600 men, were out in the wilderness hiding from Saul. While they were out there, they encountered the shepherds of Nabal.

The shepherds typically take their sheep along green pasture paths, places for water. And David's men were a wall, a hedge, of protection. Even to this day, there are Bedouin marauders who will come in and steal, kill.

I was sleeping one time for a couple of weeks on the beach down in [INAUDIBLE]. A lot of kids were in the summertime just living out on the beach. I was one of them during that time down in Israel.

You just take your sleeping bag, unroll it on the sand, sleep out under the stars-- great experience. But we were warned about Bedouin robbers And he said, oh yeah, whatever.

Two nights later, we were robbed. My friend, who is a physician friend of mine and my roommate in Southern California, had his complete backpack taken, his clothes, his wallet, all his money gone. We went to the authorities. They said, boys, you're lucky. This happens a lot, and we find people with their throats slit.

So here's David performing with his men a nice gesture of protection being like the policeman on the block. OK, it's shearing time. That's typically after the summer, right about now. The sheep come and they have a big party. It's a feast.

3,000 sheep, there's a lot of wool and a lot of food. Typically the guy who's the owner, Nabal, would have a big feast, invite friends, neighbors, family, give them wool, give them food, and would compensate the shepherds and the policeman, those who protected the shepherds.

So this was common courtesy to say, we're the guys that protected your shepherds when they were down yonder. We watched out for them. So when David's young men came, they spoke to Nabal according to all these words, in the name of David, and they waited.

They gave him the message. They're standing their, arms folded, tapping their feet. Come on.

You know, they should have been first on the list to be rewarded. Then Nabal answered David's servants and said, who is David and who is the son of Jesse? Now there was no mention of the son of Jesse.

This guy just comes up with the information. It could be that he heard from them or it could be that he really did know and he's just pretending not to. Who is David?

Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants nowadays who break away each one from his master. Shall I then-- now listen to this.

Shall I then take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed from my sheers and give it to men when I do not know where they're from? Can you see this guy's problem? He's self-centered.

It's all about me. It's all about my needs. He is a self-centered beast.

He is an unapproachable egomaniac. If you think, oh, you're being a little harsh on the guy, well, you're about to hear from his own employees what they think of him. You know, Benjamin Franklin once said he that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

If you're that kind of a person, you think you're just something special, you'll find you don't have a lot of friends. You might wonder why. It could be because you're just focused on yourself so much. You'll have no rivals.

Now here's a guy that says, who's David? A, he's pretending because his wife Abigail knows everything about David. And she even knows David is going to be the next King, that God has chosen him as the King of Israel.

So it could be that he's pretending ignorance so that he doesn't have to follow through with this. Or number two, it could be that he's just genuinely ignorant. I mean, seriously.

There are people that have no clue what goes on in their culture. One night I was flipping the stations, and I don't like the show and I don't watch the show, but I did watch this segment of the beginning of the Jay Leno show where he's on the street asking people things like, do you know who the vice president of the United States is?

And they-- oh, let's see. Ziggy Marley? The Marlboro Man? I mean, just lame answers. They have no clue about their own culture.

Some people are just focused so much on their little world, their business, their pop culture, the music, that they really have no idea who's doing what. We don't know which is which. Verse 12, though.

So David's young men turned on their heels and went back. And they came and told him all these words. Then David said to his men, every man gird on his sword.

So every man girded on his sword. David also girded on his sword, and about 400 men went with David and 200 stayed with the supplies. Now at this point, David goes ballistic.

I asked for some food and some wool. They didn't give it to us. That's the last straw. We're going to kill him.

I say ballistic because he's not going after Nabal. He's going to go after all-- every one of the men, all the males. Kill them all.

Why? I could guess. I could say he's been in the wilderness too long-- isolation way out in the desert.

You know, he's been a fugitive. Kind of gets to you after a while. I could venture another guess and say, he's really, really hungry.

He's having a bad hair day. I mean, I don't know. But this clearly is overkill. This is an overreaction.

You know, kill them all? OK, you're hungry, David. And what he did wasn't right.

Kill them? I mean, this is like sending an ICBM with a 100 megaton warhead into the New York City area to kill rats in the subway. There are better ways. You don't have to use that much firepower to do the job.

So we have a beauty, Abigail, and two beasts, one who is hard hearted, one who is hard headed-- hotheaded, at least. And they're about to collide. And she's caught in between them-- the beauty and two beasts.

Lets go on, look at verse 14. Now one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, saying, look, David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master and he reviled them. He insulted them.

It's a strong word. David came and his men said, peace, peace, peace. This guy insulted him, your husband.

But the men were very good to us. Listen to their testimony. We were not hurt nor did we miss anything as long as we accompanied them.

And we were in the fields. They were a wall to us both by night and by day. All the time we were with them keeping the sheep.

Now therefore, no one consider what you will do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his household. For he is such a scoundrel that no one can speak to him. That's the employee's testimony of the boss.

He's a scoundrel. He's unapproachable. He's mean spirited, and you're his wife. You've got to do something.

Now I can't help but reading this-- as I read it, I can't help but remembering my own struggles in my teenage years with anger. I was an angry young man. You could ask my mother. You could ask my father.

In fact, I think I was probably very angry because of the way I felt my father treated me. And I would be the first to say, I'm a victim. He's harsh.

He's mean. I can't approach him, giving me the right to act like a jerk. So I did jerky things.

I kicked in the door of the bedroom with my foot trying to be Mr. Joe Karate. And I put a huge hole in it. And my parents just put tape and cardboard over it for years.

It was like a reminder. Oh yeah, I remember that. I threw my brother through a window.

I told you that story-- threw me through the same window. We kind of exchanged window throwing. I found a switchblade out in the driveway-- kind of beat up, rusty.

And I was flashing it around with my brother and I'm cool, and he says, you're not cool. And you know, he was 6 foot 8. I'm only 6' 5".

He was the tall guy. And so he took a pencil, I took the switchblade, and I jammed it. I jammed the knife in his arm. He jammed the pencil on my arm and my mom saw this-- in her kitchen, no less.

Oh my goodness! So I'm giving you parents a little hope here. You're thinking my kids aren't as bad as the preacher.

Here's the point. We all have our little buttons, don't we? We all have those little issues, those little triggers that when somebody pushes them, sometimes even we can go ballistic and become irrational.

For some of you, driving is like that. Drive along peaceful, thank you, Lord hallelujah-- somebody pulls out. [CAR SOUND] The Sermonator the Terminator.

I'm after him. Yeah, but you just-- forget what I preached on. This person needs to be followed.

Where are policemen when you need them? I'm an FBI chaplain. I'll fill in for you, Lord. Don't worry about it.

Now, have a couple of questions from the internet that deal with this and I saved until now to go over them about anger. Again, we've got a lot of questions about this. Here's a question from Fred.

And I'm going to bring this up now before we go on and see how this is resolved. Fred asked this question. Man, is this ever the topic for me.

My friends see me as the nicest and most mild mannered guy you'd ever want to meet-- like Clark Kent, I suppose. But since my wife filed for divorce last year, I've been filled with anger, rage, bitterness, and pain. It seems that no matter how much time I spend on my knees and in the word, I just can't shake it.

You know, Fred, the Bible says Jesus was right when he said the flesh-- that which is flesh is flesh. Your flesh is never going to change. Your flesh is never going to be reformed.

Your flesh, the old, nature, is always going to have a propensity for evil, for sin, for wrong. You will perpetually be attacked in the area of anger, lust, greed. We all are. And this obviously, Fred, set you off in a way that you didn't know you could be set off, and you're voicing anger.

Now it's OK, as we talked about at the beginning, to feel anger, be angry. But don't let your anger lead you to sin. Be angry and sin not.

Don't follow through with it. Don't go with the impulse. So because you're perpetually attacked, Fred, you have to perpetually deal with it.

Don't ever think the feelings are going to completely go away necessarily. They may diminish, but the flesh is the flesh and the spirit is the spirit. So I would say, number one, you probably already done this.

You mentioned that you are. Number one, you pray. And when I say pray, I mean you confess your sin before God. And you ask him to help you with it. And you determine to change from it.

Number two, Jesus said go to the person that's the offended party alone. See if you can reconcile. Maybe you've tried that. Maybe it didn't work. You've tried to bring reconciliation.

Third thing I would say, Fred, is choose. Choose to forgive. Notice it's a choice, not a feeling. That means you're going to think about that person, to be filled with anger, and you're going to pray.

And you say, I've tried to approach him. It didn't work. So now I'm going to choose to love and forgive that person.

I don't feel like it. I feel angry inside. But I am making a choice to go against my feelings because if you're going to be always waiting to feel over it, you'll be waiting until your death bed.

It's not going to happen. You have to make a choice to forgive. That's what Jesus said.

Now we have another question. Dear Skip, somehow I trigger my husband's anger rather quickly. Just this morning he rides with me to work and he was mad at my driving. How can I prevent this?

Now, why did she ask me the driving question? Well, now this might sound simplistic, Priscilla, but you know, you may want to drive separately, first of all. Seriously.

I mean, if you drive together and you're always get mad at each other, tell him to take his own car or you take your own car or let him drive. You know, there are backseat drivers, by the way. They sit next to you.

You did that wrong Why did you do that? Look at that. Look out!

Let him have the wheel. In other words, come up with a creative solution to deal with the problem. If the problem is your driving, I don't know.

Maybe you are a bad driver. Seriously. And if it's an issue, that ought to get fixed too. I'm going to leave this one alone.

Let's go on. Oh my. I walked right into that one.

OK, let's see what Abigail does, shall we? Now remember, in verse 3, she was described as a woman of good understanding. That's why one of the servants in verse 17 comes up to her in distress knowing she's a woman of good understanding and says, consider what you will do. Consider what you will do, for harm is determined against our master.

Stop. Freeze the frame. Here's a guy coming to the gal who's married to the wrong guy.

He's a scoundrel. He's unapproachable. And she hears from him, there's a guy that wants to kill your husband.

Oh really? What's his name? I mean, maybe a little voice inside said, you go, girl.

You encourage this David. Kill him. Kill him good! Get out of town.

I find it striking that she honors the vows. She's still married to him. She doesn't see this as her God given out. She listens to it and she comes up with a plan. You know, I read an article from either the Associated Press or the UPI about-- it was from New York-- about a young married couple having an argument immediately after their wedding.

According to the district attorney in New York in this particular county, the 21-year-old bride ran over and killed with a car her 23-year-old newly married husband immediately after the reception due to an argument. They were arguing, she ran him over. That's one way to win an argument. It's not the good way.

That kind of anger in a brand new marriage-- well, Abigail, verse 18, made haste and took 200 loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep, dressed-- you know, lamb chops-- five seahs of roasted grain, 100 clusters of raisins, 200 cakes of figs, loaded them on donkeys, and she said to her servants, go on before me and see I am coming after you. But she did not tell her husband Nabal. So it was that she rode the donkey. She went on-- she went down under the cover of the hill, and there was David and his men coming down toward her, and she met them.

What a picture-- what a picture. Two caravans approaching each other-- one is a caravan of retaliation, the other is a caravan of reconciliation. Whole horde of people to get even another woman and the supplies ready to reconcile-- a whoremonger. I shouldn't say-- a warmonger.

What a dumb word to use for that. A warmonger and a peacemaker-- you know, the Bible says words fitly spoken are like apples of gold and settings of silver. That was what not to do.

I'm just really angry about driving still, I think. I'm going to hitchhike from now on. [INAUDIBLE] I need a drink of water. OK, back to the story.

David's on the warpath. He's a warmonger. He's after Nabal.

Abigail comes to meet him with a feast. How do you handle an angry man? Feed him.

There's the moral of the story. Give him food. It'll change everything.

She comes with what he basically wanted. He's out there in the wilderness, so she thought, OK, in wisdom, I'm going to give him a feast, and I'm going to humble myself before him and try to turn this angry man, this beast, in the other direction. And she didn't tell her husband.

And some people bring that up. Oh, she didn't tell her husband. This isn't God's method.

Baloney. I'll tell you why. She would have told her husband, it would be suicide. He would have done the dumb thing, the wrong thing, got himself and everybody else killed.

Abigail knew because she says so. Dave is God's anointed. He is the next King. God's going to raise up an eternal kingdom even through him.

She had an insight into this guy just from the stuff going around. And she knew that God's hand was upon him. And she knew that her husband wouldn't understand it, and there is a time when we must obey God rather than men, and this is one of those times. She goes, I'm not telling him. I'm just going to go to David.

It was the wisdom that God gave her, and David's going to say, praise the Lord God sent you. Otherwise, I'd have done. I'd have killed him. What's sad to me is that some of the best wisdom in life can come from those closest to you, i.e. Your mate.

Abigail was a wise woman. I wish her husband would have listened to her. And yet husbands especially can so disregard the wisdom of their wives by their own stubbornness, hard headedness, scoundrelness, if that's a word-- probably not-- their own anger, their own disposition. They can totally disregard God's gift of wisdom in a mate.

Listen to what Martin Luther said years ago, time of the Reformation. He said the men are almost lions in their own homes, hard toward their wives and their servants. Of course the Christian should love his wife. He is supposed to love his neighbor. And since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love.

And he said, I always practice what I preach. His wife was named Katie, and he said in domestic affairs, I always defer to Katie. Otherwise, I'm led by the Holy Spirit. But at the home, it's like the Holy Spirit speaking to my wife, and I defer to her.

Now David said, verse 21, surely in vain I have protected all this fellow has in the wilderness. Now he's saying this to his men. He had said this when they meet. This is a conversation David is sharing with his guys.

I protected all this fellow has in the wilderness so that nothing was missed of all the things that belong to him. And he has repaid me evil for good. May God do so and more also to the enemies of David if I leave one male of all that belongs to him by morning light. This is a typical, self imprecatory oath that you find all over the scripture. They do that to add weight and depth to their fervor.

Now when Abigail saw David, she dismounted quickly from the donkey, fell on her face before David, and bowed to the ground. So she fell at his feet and said, 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 maidservant. Please, let not my Lord regard this scoundrel Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him.

She would know better than anyone. But I, your maidservant, did not see the young men of whom my Lord whom you sent. Now therefore, my Lord, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, since the Lord has held you back from coming to bloodshed, from avenging yourself with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek harm from my Lord be as Nabal.

And now this present which your maidservant has brought to my Lord, let it be given to the young men who follow my Lord. Please forgive the trespass of your maidservant, for the Lord will certainly make for my Lord an enduring house because my Lord fights the battles of the Lord and evil is not found in you throughout your days. She has a different approach than her husband, doesn't she?

Humbly bows, didn't say, mine, mine, mine. Says, my lord my lord, your maidservant-- six times in the passage refers to herself as your servant, your slave. Very humble.

And you might say, yeah, but she-- look at! She bad mouth her husband, called her husband a fool. Listen, this wasn't new knowledge.

This was common knowledge. She wasn't, like, divulging gossip or-- everybody knew it. All the employees knew it. David knew it. She was just stating the obvious here.

And notice, who takes the blame for her husband? She does. Let it be on me.

Let me take the rap for it. I wasn't there. Please forgive me. I didn't see this happen, but I'll take the blame for it. Now there's a good example of words fitly spoken-- her words, not mine, her words.

Now look at verse 29. We're going to finish off the chapter. And this is a woman who mended a royal mess.

And boy, did she mend this mess. She continues, yet a man has risen to pursue you and seek your life. Who would that be?

Saul. She knows all about it. But the life of my Lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living.

That's one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament. Your life will be bound in the bundle of the living with the Lord your God. God is going to keep you alive until he's finished with you.

And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the pocket of a sling, imagery that David as a young shepherd boy years before could have related to and still could. And it shall come to pass when the lord has done for my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and appointed you ruler over Israel that this will be no grief to you nor offense of heart to my lord either that you have shed blood without cause or that my lord has avenged himself. But when the lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your maidservant.

And David said to Abigail, blessed is the lord God of Israel who sent you this day to meet me. And blessed it is your advice and blessed are you because you have kept me this day from coming to bloodshed from avenging myself with my own hand. For indeed as the lord God of Israel lives who kept me back from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, surely by morning light, no males would have been left to Nabal.

And so David received from her hand what she had brought to him and said to her, go up in peace to your house. See? I have heeded your voice and respected your person.

Good advice, man-- good advice. David, David, stop, man. Think about what you are doing.

You are going to be the next king of Israel, and I know that. You are going to be the next king. This isn't going to look good on your royal record-- needless bloodshed.

Now this is good because David will do many dumb things. This is one dumb thing he didn't do. He wanted to build the temple later on and God said, you can't. Your son Solomon is going to do it because you've shed too much blood.

He obviously had an anger issue his whole life. And here's a woman who in this particular incident was used by God to keep him from it. It's a good example right here of the truth of Proverbs 18:21.

You know what that says? Death and life are in the power of the tongue. She used the right words at the right time and kept this man from doing something dumb.

You know, the average person spends one fifth of their lives talking. I know I probably do a little more than others. Some of you do also more than others.

The average is one fifth of your life you spend yapping. Here's my question. How much of that yapping is important yap, is edifying yap, is helpful yap, is godly yap? How much of it is?

This was strategic yap right here, keeping this guy from this sin. She kept David from regret. She kept her servants from harm. She kept her husband alive.

Verse 36-- now Abigail went to Nabal. You get an insight into this character. There 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 drunk. Therefore, she told him nothing. Wise woman.

Don't tell your strategy to a drunk. It's not going to do you any good. Oh, they're going to get [MUMBLING]. She's going to-- he'll forget about it the next day.

She just let him alone-- he's drunk-- until morning light. He starts to party, doesn't, it seem, even notice his wife's gone. Starts without her.

See what kind of a guy he is? He's drunk watching Monday night chariot races or whatever he's into. The guys are around.

It's a party. So she waits until the next day. So it was in the morning-- I would put in parentheses he has a hangover, but I won't do that because I'm not going to add to the scripture.

When the wine had gone from Nabal and his wife had told him these things that his heart died within him and became like a stone, then it happened after about 10 days that the Lord struck Nabal and he died. Seems that he has a stroke or a heart attack, some-- probably a stroke that caused a paralysis, and for 10 days he suffers, then he dies. She didn't come home and nag.

She didn't come home and say, you jerk. I just save your drunken hide. Didn't do that.

She did the right thing and left the rest to God. She did the right thing and she left the rest to God. Gentleness and righteousness will get results when nagging fails.

It will. Oh, you'll be hurt if you yell and scream and retaliate. It won't be effective. Gentleness and righteousness will get results.

Let me ask you a question. Which is stronger? Which is more powerful-- the sun or wind?

Some are saying the sun. Some are saying, [INAUDIBLE] I don't want to do this. Actually that was the subject of one of Aesop's Fables you may remember.

The sun and the wind were having an argument as to who was more powerful, who was stronger. And they raise their little voices. And so they said, let's have a contest.

See that man, that traveler on the road down there? Let's exert our power on him and see who's more powerful. Let's see, said the sun, who can get that man to take off his coat, to get it off of his body.

So the wind started and ferocious howled, hoping that the wind would just rip the coat off his body. But all that did is cause the man to close the coat in over him tightly. Then the sun came out and just turned up the heat all the way. He was so sweaty, he took his coat off by himself.

The first beast, Nabal, is out of the picture. The second beast, David, is tamed. And both of them were dealt with by a very sunny, peaceful, godly, smart woman whose gentleness and wisdom and righteousness prevailed.

Verse 39-- so when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, praise God. That's what one translation said. Blessed be the lord who has pleaded the cause of my reproach.

Aren't you glad the Bible's honest? Here's David the hero. You'd think, oh, no, no. Saints are supposed to say, oh no.

He said, hallelujah-- who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal and kept his servant from evil. So God took care of him. For the Lord has returned the wickedness of Nabal on his own head, and David sent and proposed to Abigail to take her as his wife.

Boy, this guy moves in quick. Well, beauty and brains-- got to have her. But he shouldn't have.

Why? He was married to Michal. When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they spoke to her saying, David sent us to ask you to become his wife.

And she arose, bowed her face to the earth, and said, here is your maidservant, a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my Lord. That's a nice way of saying, yeah. So Abigail rose in haste, wrote on a donkey attended by five of her maidens. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

David also took Ahinoam of Yizre'el. So both of them were his wives. So he's got three now.

But Saul had given Michal, his daughter, who was married to David, David's wife, to Phalti, the son of Laish, who was from Gallim.

So he was doing that to get back at David. David replaced them both with two more. I'm not going to justify his behavior. It was wrong.

But I want to conclude with these lessons. Number one-- you can do right even if others around you are doing wrong. That's a lesson you can learn from Abigail.

David was doing wrong. Her husband was doing wrong, and you can do right. The easiest thing to say is, well, they deserve it. Well, they started first. But you can do right when everybody else is doing wrong lesson.

Number number two-- respond to hurt rather than react to it. And I would say David is the example not to follow-- instant flare up. Kill them all.

No, that's re-acting. That's overreacting. That's overkill.

Respond to hurt. Respond wisely to it rather than react. And you may need some help to do that. You may need a friend.

Number three, approach people humbly when they are offended. Reproach people humbly. Abigail came to David, bowed down.

Forgive me, you know, just took all the blame on herself-- very soft answer, turning away wrath. And then number four, be cautious when dealing with angry people. Be cautious when dealing with angry people, especially drunk angry people.

Be cautious. Be wise. Don't jump into an angry person's path and cause them to just reach the edge. Back off. You can control that.

A final note-- let's just close with this. Abigail warned David against doing something that, if he would have done, later on he would have regretted for the rest of his life. Look back at verse 33.

David says, blessed are you. And he says, going on, you've kept me from coming to bloodshed. There will be many things David is going to regret in his life. At least this is one less thing.

Here's the best way for us to live. The best way for us to live is to make right choices now so that we won't regret it later. You know how many people I meet that have to look back over their lives saying, I should of and I didn't and I would have and I could have?

So by God's grace and strength, make choices that are right now that you won't regret later on. For instance, you're never going to regret living for God as a young person. If you're in your teenage years or college years and there's pressure around you to sort of fit in, not be too spiritual, not go overboard-- you want to fit in, be cool-- don't do that.

You'll regret that later on. You won't regret fully living for Jesus Christ now. Ask Solomon. He blew it, big time.

At the end of his life, he said, seek now thy creator in the days of your youth before you get old. Start young. For that matter, if you're middle aged, you'll never regret at this point in your life getting serious with God.

Second, you'll never regret showing love to people around you who are in your family that you may be holding a grudge against, forgiving them. You'll never die regretting that. You'll never be on your death bed saying, I shouldn't have forgiven my ex-husband. I should have been angry at my kids more. You'll never do that.

And finally, you will never regret making a decision, if you haven't yet, to repent of your sins of your past and turn your life over to Jesus Christ as lord and savior. Some of you may be very good, religious, moral people short of acknowledging that you need your sins forgiven and giving your life wholeheartedly to the lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Peter's words to the people of Jerusalem in the book of Acts is repent and believe. So wherever you're at in life, if you haven't made a commitment to Christ, listen to the words of the gospel, of Jesus, of the apostles, all saying basically the same message. Give your life to Christ.

You'll never regret it, and you'll be able to walk away and say, blessed be the Lord. I remember being at that church that one night, gave my life to Christ. And I am kept from a life of foolishness because of it. I'm going to give you that opportunity in just a second to make that decision. Let's pray.

Or we close the service talking to you just like we began it. We sang songs to you. We mused on your goodness.

And for some people, they really sang it and meant it. And others, they just kind of watched and listened because it's not real yet in their lives. Father, we pray that those who are with us in our family living room here tonight who have not yet acknowledged their need of a savior to save them from sin to give them as a free gift only upon their accepting free eternal life and a change of life, a changed attitude, a changed future, purpose, meaning in life, a sense of peace, confidence in daily living that can only come from knowing that our guilt is removed and that we're right with you.

And so father, with that, we would pray that you would bring more into your kingdom tonight, some that have gathered here would make choices, right choices. Because the truth is, we'll never regret making a decision to make Jesus Christ not a part of our lives, but the lord of our lives. Makes sense that if Jesus isn't lord of all, he's probably not lord at all. And so we pray that you would become savior and lord for many tonight.