On Beauty and Being Realigned: Oct.21, 2007
On Beauty and Being Realigned October 21, 2007
Big Idea: Beauty realigns us with God…
In his harrowing book Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer describes his personal account of climbing Mount Everest… he writes attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act--a triumph of desire over sensibility.
Those who begin their ascent of Everest do so with vigor, determination, and passion, but many for various reasons don’t finish their climb well…
According to Dr. Andrew Sutherland, at the Nuffield Department of Surgery, in Oxford, most of the deaths on Mount Everest occur… coming down the mountain after a climber has reached the summit…And many people begin their spiritual life with God well… with promise, passion and purity of heart, and then, somewhere along the way they reach a peak, descend, and crash…
The apostle Paul describes these kind of people as shipwrecks, and not a single one of us is immune from this potential danger.
David began his spiritual journey so well.
As a young boy, shepherding his dad’s sheep, David demonstrated that he had a great heart for God….
As an adolescent David showed great faith in God, in stepping out and taking on the great Philistine giant Goliath.
As we saw last week, when David was fleeing from King Saul who trying kill him, David showed great strength and faith in God’s plan by resisting the temptation to kill King Saul--when he had an easy opportunity to do so when Saul happened to come into the cave where David and his men where hiding to relieve himself.
Today we will look at David as he faces a seemingly irresistible temptation in the Desert of Paran. We’ll see how he does.
We’re going to be looking at 1 Samuel 25 today. If you have your Bibles please turn there.
Let me take a moment to set up the context. David and his 600 discontented, indebted men who have banded together with him are in the desert of Paran. The wilderness was a place of beauty, but was also a high crime area. Bandits would hide out in the wilderness--ready to mug and even murder a traveler take their money or their possessions. Herdsmen who watched over flocks in the desert of Paran would have been in danger from the outlaws. While David and his men are in the wilderness they are voluntarily working to protect the flocks of a man named Nabal.
1 Samuel 25 vs. 2 we see Nabal being described as “very wealthy”—he had 1000 goats and 3000 sheep. He is also described as a fool… Commentator Walter Brueggemann describes Nabal a man whose possessions precede his person. His life is defined by what he owns; in fact, as Brueggemann points out, Nabal is described in terms of his possessions before he is actually named.
“Fool” in the Scriptures is not necessarily someone with a low IQ, but someone who has centered their life on anything other than God. It might be money; it might be possessions; it might be fame; it might be power; it might be another human being. Nabal, who owns many herds in the desert of Paran, is described as a fool.
His wife, Abigail in contrast, is described as a person of wisdom and beauty…a woman of good understanding and of lovely appearance.
David and his men provide voluntary protection for Nabal’s sheep. In verse 16, we read that night and day they act like a wall around the sheep Nabal’s shepherds were herding.
As a teenager growing up in North Surrey, I remember there was a group called “Guardian Angels,” who voluntarily dispatched themselves at the Whalley exchange bus area, a place then notorious for crime. These “angels” were young men sporting berets on their heads and had some knowledge of martial arts, and they provided protection for people who might otherwise be mugged or beaten up.
David’s men served as a kind of unofficial, but highly effective, “guardian angel” troupe. David and his men were protecting Nabal’s flock during sheep-shearing time. It was a time of great work for the shepherds, but it was also a time of profit and celebration. As people gathered for the harvest of the wool, banquet tables were also set with food and drink. According to the custom of the day, during sheep-shearing season it was common for the owner of the sheep to set aside a portion of the profits he had made and give them to those who protected his shepherds and sheep while they were out in the field. Owners gave those who protected their shepherds and sheep a certain percentage of their earnings, kind of like we might tip a waiter. No law said you had to do this, but it was a customary way to show appreciation.
David and his men had been protecting Nabal’s shepherds and sheep, so during sheep-shearing time David sent ten young men out to Nabal to ask him for some food and drink and some supplies. David and his men had been giving Nabal and his shepherds a great protection service, and David and his men also in need of food and supplies as they were eking out a living in the wilderness…. They were great volunteer workers, but they were also desperate for money—a little bit like the people who uses squeegees to clean your windshield when you’re stopped a traffic light…
But when Nabal heard the request for food and supplies, he acted as if he had never heard of David--though David was famous as the young man who had killed Goliath. His wife Abigail knew of David and, in fact, as we see in verse 30, anticipated that he would be the future king. Not only did Nabal dismiss David’s request, but he rebuffed David as some kind of outlaw…
In 1 Samuel 25:10 we read:
10 Nabal answered David's servants, "Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days. 11 Why should I take my bread and water, and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men coming from who knows where?"
And David, who up until now has been a model of patience and prudent restraint, loses his temper. He is ready to spill blood and see heads roll.
13 David said to his men, "Each of you strap on your sword!" So they did, and David strapped his sword on as well. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed with the supplies…
400 men put on their swords.
In verse 22, David says:
22 May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!"
Mobilizing 400 men to take out Nabal and his household was overkill… but David was enraged. He lost all sense of balance, all sense of virtue, all sense of God.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever been so angry that you felt like all of your virtue is being pushed out of you like sweat on a hot day? Have you ever had someone in your home or in your workplace or school or out in some public place do something that makes you want to go after them, and lose all sense of God’s presence…all sense of any virtue?
I remember being in Rome with my wife not long after we were married. We had just pulled into the train station and not long after we had walked out of the train a cab driver approached us and offer to give us a ride to our hotel (a little lesson—always get a cab in Rome at the official cab line)… it took about 5 minutes to the hotel, but when we got there the cab driver said it was going to cost about $50 dollars… I said where your meter reading? He said his meter was broken)…. I got in this fight—verbal fight—with him.. and my wife was afraid--I was going start hitting this guy… Growing up in North Surrey that would not have been out of the question…
I lost all consciousness of God…
So did David when he was rebuffed by Nabal….
Abigail, Nabal’s wife gets a word from one of the servants that David’s men are planning to strike down Nabal because he has refused to give food to David’s men even though they’ve protected his flocks and because Nabal has insulted them. Abigail lost no time. She quickly assembles a feast for David and his men.
In verse 18, we read…
Abigail acted quickly. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.
If this were being shown in a movie, you would see scenes of David’s men strapping on their swords…music in the background…cutting to Abigail and her men taking loaves of bread out of the oven. We would see David mounting a horse and the music intensifying. Abigail and her servants lashing the bread to the donkeys…mounting the donkeys…the music climaxes as David rides out to Nabal’s house through the wilderness. You see Abigail and her servants riding out towards David and his men.
When Abigail sees David, she quickly gets off her donkey and bows before David with her face to the ground.
I Samuel 25:24ff
24 She fell at his feet and said: "Pardon your servant, my lord, and let me speak to you; hear what your servant has to say. 25 Please pay no attention, my lord, to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name—his name means Fool, and folly goes with him. And as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my lord sent. 26 And now, my lord, as surely as the LORD your God lives and as you live, since the LORD has kept you from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, may your enemies and all who are intent on harming my lord be like Nabal. 27 And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my lord, be given to the men who follow you.
Abigail falls at David’s feet and in a poignant, wise and beautiful speech says, “Please! Please! Don’t do this! This action isn’t worthy of the Prince of Israel. Remember who you are. Remember God’s anointing…God’s mercy. Don’t stoop to fighting grudge battles. Your task is not to exact vengeance. That is God’s task. You’re not God. Nabal as his name signifies is a fool. Don’t you become one, too.”
28 "Please forgive your servant's presumption. The LORD your God will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my lord, because you fight the LORD's battles, and no wrongdoing will be found in you as long as you live. 29 Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my lord will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the LORD your God, but the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. 30 When the LORD has fulfilled for my lord every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him ruler over Israel, 31 my lord will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. And when the LORD your God has brought my lord success, remember your servant."
“One day you will become a king. God will protect you. Your life is bound securely in the treasure pouch of God. And God will hurl the lives of your enemies like stones from a sling. Why shed blood needlessly and have this staggering burden on your conscience?”
The speech is as wise and beautiful as Abigail is…
We see in verses 32-33 the effect of Abigail’s speech on David…
32 David said to Abigail, "Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. 33 May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands.
David had done so very well in his ascent for God… and was about to become a victim of his own unbridled rage, but God brings something beautiful into his life to realign with the will of God.
Abigail according to verse 3 is both wise and beautiful. God uses this beautiful human being to prevent David from exacting unnecessary violence, God uses Abigial to realign David with the will of God.
When we are full of vengeance wanting to settle a score with someone--or sin in some other way--God can use beauty to bring out of ourselves and realign us with Himself.
It has long been a tradition in the Christian life, particularly in the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity, to see beauty as a pointer to God. Beauty is not in the world just for our senses to enjoy, but exists as a pointer to some reality just beyond our senses…
C.S. Lewis in the Weight of Glory says that the beauty we find in nature, music, books can move in us a longing for an eternal beauty…
Lewis says the eternal beauty is not located in these things, but only comes through them…
Lewis says the eternal beauty that comes through these things arouse in us the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited….
Beauty on earth can realign with the eternal beauty…
When we find ourselves full of ourselves as David was, off to avenge a bruised ego, beauty can realign us to God and His will for us…
Richard Rohr says that suffering and beauty draw us out of our smaller, untrue self.
One of the most deadly things for our spiritual life is self-absorption. Beauty has a way of drawing us out of our self-absorption and focusing on something other than us…
The famous composer Leonard Bernstein who did not believe in God, who was an agnostic, said… I don’t believe, but when I listen to Beethoven’s fifth symphony, I am tempted to believe that something “checks out” in the universe, I’m led to wonder if there isn’t some transcendent beauty in the universe…
If we want to create the kind of structure that will realign us with the will of God, we will expose ourselves regularly to beauty…
Each day, I and many of you seek to begin our day and/or end our day exposing ourselves to the beauty of God’s Word which points us to God… to the Christ…
Just over a week ago I was in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee at a place called Blackberry Farm meeting with a mentoring group that I have been part of for 8 years… we were on this beautiful 4200 acre farm with rolling pastures horses, sheep… and one of the best of best fly fishing river on the continent… In morning when I would run, I would see the mist coming off the ponds and people fly fishing on the banks… And in this place of natural beauty I am re-pointed to God…
We live in place where the beauty all around can point us to God…
When I talk to men about overcoming sexual temptation sometimes I will encourage them, with the counsel a mentor figure gave to me as younger person… he said among other things, expose yourself to art… or beauty is some other form. Because the quest for sexual experience, at a deeper level is the quest to experience beauty.
Someone has said “Where there is excess, something is missing.” If we are missing beauty in our lives, we may find ourselves seeking to fill that void in unhealthy ways.
As Abigail brought beauty in David’s life, so people filled who reflect God’s beauty can realign us with God.
In a very profound, my wife through the force and direction of her life points me to God… I have close friends, several of whom I meet in Tennessee, a couple of weeks ago who point me to God… Do you have friends whose lives point you to God?
Simone Weil, the French mystic in Waiting for God says, Nothing among human things
has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God than friendship for the friends of God!
When David was full of anger about to fall off the mountain of God’s will for his life by committing murder, God brings beauty into his life to realign him with the will of God.
When we are in danger of falling off the path of God, God can use beauty to draw our lives back in the treasure pouch of God.
Is God doing this with you?
Give thanks…
Commit to Christ…
(The sermon can be hdard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
Big Idea: Beauty realigns us with God…
In his harrowing book Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer describes his personal account of climbing Mount Everest… he writes attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act--a triumph of desire over sensibility.
Those who begin their ascent of Everest do so with vigor, determination, and passion, but many for various reasons don’t finish their climb well…
According to Dr. Andrew Sutherland, at the Nuffield Department of Surgery, in Oxford, most of the deaths on Mount Everest occur… coming down the mountain after a climber has reached the summit…And many people begin their spiritual life with God well… with promise, passion and purity of heart, and then, somewhere along the way they reach a peak, descend, and crash…
The apostle Paul describes these kind of people as shipwrecks, and not a single one of us is immune from this potential danger.
David began his spiritual journey so well.
As a young boy, shepherding his dad’s sheep, David demonstrated that he had a great heart for God….
As an adolescent David showed great faith in God, in stepping out and taking on the great Philistine giant Goliath.
As we saw last week, when David was fleeing from King Saul who trying kill him, David showed great strength and faith in God’s plan by resisting the temptation to kill King Saul--when he had an easy opportunity to do so when Saul happened to come into the cave where David and his men where hiding to relieve himself.
Today we will look at David as he faces a seemingly irresistible temptation in the Desert of Paran. We’ll see how he does.
We’re going to be looking at 1 Samuel 25 today. If you have your Bibles please turn there.
Let me take a moment to set up the context. David and his 600 discontented, indebted men who have banded together with him are in the desert of Paran. The wilderness was a place of beauty, but was also a high crime area. Bandits would hide out in the wilderness--ready to mug and even murder a traveler take their money or their possessions. Herdsmen who watched over flocks in the desert of Paran would have been in danger from the outlaws. While David and his men are in the wilderness they are voluntarily working to protect the flocks of a man named Nabal.
1 Samuel 25 vs. 2 we see Nabal being described as “very wealthy”—he had 1000 goats and 3000 sheep. He is also described as a fool… Commentator Walter Brueggemann describes Nabal a man whose possessions precede his person. His life is defined by what he owns; in fact, as Brueggemann points out, Nabal is described in terms of his possessions before he is actually named.
“Fool” in the Scriptures is not necessarily someone with a low IQ, but someone who has centered their life on anything other than God. It might be money; it might be possessions; it might be fame; it might be power; it might be another human being. Nabal, who owns many herds in the desert of Paran, is described as a fool.
His wife, Abigail in contrast, is described as a person of wisdom and beauty…a woman of good understanding and of lovely appearance.
David and his men provide voluntary protection for Nabal’s sheep. In verse 16, we read that night and day they act like a wall around the sheep Nabal’s shepherds were herding.
As a teenager growing up in North Surrey, I remember there was a group called “Guardian Angels,” who voluntarily dispatched themselves at the Whalley exchange bus area, a place then notorious for crime. These “angels” were young men sporting berets on their heads and had some knowledge of martial arts, and they provided protection for people who might otherwise be mugged or beaten up.
David’s men served as a kind of unofficial, but highly effective, “guardian angel” troupe. David and his men were protecting Nabal’s flock during sheep-shearing time. It was a time of great work for the shepherds, but it was also a time of profit and celebration. As people gathered for the harvest of the wool, banquet tables were also set with food and drink. According to the custom of the day, during sheep-shearing season it was common for the owner of the sheep to set aside a portion of the profits he had made and give them to those who protected his shepherds and sheep while they were out in the field. Owners gave those who protected their shepherds and sheep a certain percentage of their earnings, kind of like we might tip a waiter. No law said you had to do this, but it was a customary way to show appreciation.
David and his men had been protecting Nabal’s shepherds and sheep, so during sheep-shearing time David sent ten young men out to Nabal to ask him for some food and drink and some supplies. David and his men had been giving Nabal and his shepherds a great protection service, and David and his men also in need of food and supplies as they were eking out a living in the wilderness…. They were great volunteer workers, but they were also desperate for money—a little bit like the people who uses squeegees to clean your windshield when you’re stopped a traffic light…
But when Nabal heard the request for food and supplies, he acted as if he had never heard of David--though David was famous as the young man who had killed Goliath. His wife Abigail knew of David and, in fact, as we see in verse 30, anticipated that he would be the future king. Not only did Nabal dismiss David’s request, but he rebuffed David as some kind of outlaw…
In 1 Samuel 25:10 we read:
10 Nabal answered David's servants, "Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days. 11 Why should I take my bread and water, and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men coming from who knows where?"
And David, who up until now has been a model of patience and prudent restraint, loses his temper. He is ready to spill blood and see heads roll.
13 David said to his men, "Each of you strap on your sword!" So they did, and David strapped his sword on as well. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed with the supplies…
400 men put on their swords.
In verse 22, David says:
22 May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!"
Mobilizing 400 men to take out Nabal and his household was overkill… but David was enraged. He lost all sense of balance, all sense of virtue, all sense of God.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever been so angry that you felt like all of your virtue is being pushed out of you like sweat on a hot day? Have you ever had someone in your home or in your workplace or school or out in some public place do something that makes you want to go after them, and lose all sense of God’s presence…all sense of any virtue?
I remember being in Rome with my wife not long after we were married. We had just pulled into the train station and not long after we had walked out of the train a cab driver approached us and offer to give us a ride to our hotel (a little lesson—always get a cab in Rome at the official cab line)… it took about 5 minutes to the hotel, but when we got there the cab driver said it was going to cost about $50 dollars… I said where your meter reading? He said his meter was broken)…. I got in this fight—verbal fight—with him.. and my wife was afraid--I was going start hitting this guy… Growing up in North Surrey that would not have been out of the question…
I lost all consciousness of God…
So did David when he was rebuffed by Nabal….
Abigail, Nabal’s wife gets a word from one of the servants that David’s men are planning to strike down Nabal because he has refused to give food to David’s men even though they’ve protected his flocks and because Nabal has insulted them. Abigail lost no time. She quickly assembles a feast for David and his men.
In verse 18, we read…
Abigail acted quickly. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.
If this were being shown in a movie, you would see scenes of David’s men strapping on their swords…music in the background…cutting to Abigail and her men taking loaves of bread out of the oven. We would see David mounting a horse and the music intensifying. Abigail and her servants lashing the bread to the donkeys…mounting the donkeys…the music climaxes as David rides out to Nabal’s house through the wilderness. You see Abigail and her servants riding out towards David and his men.
When Abigail sees David, she quickly gets off her donkey and bows before David with her face to the ground.
I Samuel 25:24ff
24 She fell at his feet and said: "Pardon your servant, my lord, and let me speak to you; hear what your servant has to say. 25 Please pay no attention, my lord, to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name—his name means Fool, and folly goes with him. And as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my lord sent. 26 And now, my lord, as surely as the LORD your God lives and as you live, since the LORD has kept you from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, may your enemies and all who are intent on harming my lord be like Nabal. 27 And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my lord, be given to the men who follow you.
Abigail falls at David’s feet and in a poignant, wise and beautiful speech says, “Please! Please! Don’t do this! This action isn’t worthy of the Prince of Israel. Remember who you are. Remember God’s anointing…God’s mercy. Don’t stoop to fighting grudge battles. Your task is not to exact vengeance. That is God’s task. You’re not God. Nabal as his name signifies is a fool. Don’t you become one, too.”
28 "Please forgive your servant's presumption. The LORD your God will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my lord, because you fight the LORD's battles, and no wrongdoing will be found in you as long as you live. 29 Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my lord will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the LORD your God, but the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. 30 When the LORD has fulfilled for my lord every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him ruler over Israel, 31 my lord will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. And when the LORD your God has brought my lord success, remember your servant."
“One day you will become a king. God will protect you. Your life is bound securely in the treasure pouch of God. And God will hurl the lives of your enemies like stones from a sling. Why shed blood needlessly and have this staggering burden on your conscience?”
The speech is as wise and beautiful as Abigail is…
We see in verses 32-33 the effect of Abigail’s speech on David…
32 David said to Abigail, "Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who has sent you today to meet me. 33 May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands.
David had done so very well in his ascent for God… and was about to become a victim of his own unbridled rage, but God brings something beautiful into his life to realign with the will of God.
Abigail according to verse 3 is both wise and beautiful. God uses this beautiful human being to prevent David from exacting unnecessary violence, God uses Abigial to realign David with the will of God.
When we are full of vengeance wanting to settle a score with someone--or sin in some other way--God can use beauty to bring out of ourselves and realign us with Himself.
It has long been a tradition in the Christian life, particularly in the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity, to see beauty as a pointer to God. Beauty is not in the world just for our senses to enjoy, but exists as a pointer to some reality just beyond our senses…
C.S. Lewis in the Weight of Glory says that the beauty we find in nature, music, books can move in us a longing for an eternal beauty…
Lewis says the eternal beauty is not located in these things, but only comes through them…
Lewis says the eternal beauty that comes through these things arouse in us the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited….
Beauty on earth can realign with the eternal beauty…
When we find ourselves full of ourselves as David was, off to avenge a bruised ego, beauty can realign us to God and His will for us…
Richard Rohr says that suffering and beauty draw us out of our smaller, untrue self.
One of the most deadly things for our spiritual life is self-absorption. Beauty has a way of drawing us out of our self-absorption and focusing on something other than us…
The famous composer Leonard Bernstein who did not believe in God, who was an agnostic, said… I don’t believe, but when I listen to Beethoven’s fifth symphony, I am tempted to believe that something “checks out” in the universe, I’m led to wonder if there isn’t some transcendent beauty in the universe…
If we want to create the kind of structure that will realign us with the will of God, we will expose ourselves regularly to beauty…
Each day, I and many of you seek to begin our day and/or end our day exposing ourselves to the beauty of God’s Word which points us to God… to the Christ…
Just over a week ago I was in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee at a place called Blackberry Farm meeting with a mentoring group that I have been part of for 8 years… we were on this beautiful 4200 acre farm with rolling pastures horses, sheep… and one of the best of best fly fishing river on the continent… In morning when I would run, I would see the mist coming off the ponds and people fly fishing on the banks… And in this place of natural beauty I am re-pointed to God…
We live in place where the beauty all around can point us to God…
When I talk to men about overcoming sexual temptation sometimes I will encourage them, with the counsel a mentor figure gave to me as younger person… he said among other things, expose yourself to art… or beauty is some other form. Because the quest for sexual experience, at a deeper level is the quest to experience beauty.
Someone has said “Where there is excess, something is missing.” If we are missing beauty in our lives, we may find ourselves seeking to fill that void in unhealthy ways.
As Abigail brought beauty in David’s life, so people filled who reflect God’s beauty can realign us with God.
In a very profound, my wife through the force and direction of her life points me to God… I have close friends, several of whom I meet in Tennessee, a couple of weeks ago who point me to God… Do you have friends whose lives point you to God?
Simone Weil, the French mystic in Waiting for God says, Nothing among human things
has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God than friendship for the friends of God!
When David was full of anger about to fall off the mountain of God’s will for his life by committing murder, God brings beauty into his life to realign him with the will of God.
When we are in danger of falling off the path of God, God can use beauty to draw our lives back in the treasure pouch of God.
Is God doing this with you?
Give thanks…
Commit to Christ…
(The sermon can be hdard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
posted by Shigematsu at 4:08 PM
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