Folly

I was thinking about *Romeo and Juliet*. This great, tragic play by Shakespeare. And the role of hastily spoken words. Young Romeo and Juliet fall in love and make these hasty vows to each other. But then as the story progresses, right, and Romeo hears that Juliet's dead, and he rushes to the tomb. And then with these words, you know, "With this last kiss, I die." He takes the poison and dies. And then she wakes up and finds him dead. So then she takes it and dies. Like... words matter because they shape the direction of our life. They have impact. They have results.

This morning in 1 Samuel chapter 25, we're going to see a story that really fleshes out that proverb that we just looked at, that hasty words create absolute chaos and pain in our lives. So let's dive into the text. Starts this way, verse 1.

1a Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah.

Samuel's been such a key figure in the book of 1 Samuel so far. He's really the last of the judges, the first of the great prophets. He's the first prophet that guided all of Israel since Moses. He is the kingmaker. He's the one that anointed Saul. He's the one that confirmed God's message of rejection of Saul. He's the one that anointed David in his place. Samuel has been a key figure, but now he has died. Crazily this is not the last time though we're going to hear from Samuel, but that's a whole other sermon.

1b Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran.

So David is still with his 600 men and they are still out in the wilderness, the place of chaos, the place of danger. He's still hiding and escaping the wrath of Saul, who even though last week Saul said, "Hey, I'm not going to kill you," David's still out in the wilderness, which tells you he's got a sense of where Saul really is at.

And it says in verse 2:

2 And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel.

How rich, you say? He had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats. That's like Bill Gates' wealth. He's loaded. He's from Carmel.

I've been trying to show you as I've been walking through Samuel that the author, over and over again, is intentionally creating contrast. And so now the contrast in this chapter, one of the contrasts in this chapter, is going to be between this man who's unbelievably wealthy. He's in Carmel, which is this lush, fertile area. He's got incredible amounts of livestock and wealth. And then you've got David, who's been anointed and chosen by Yahweh to be king over Israel. And where is he? He's hiding out in the wilderness.

And it says that he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. That's going to become important to this story. So it's the time of the year when the sheep are going to be sheared. And that is a time in the ancient Near East and for ancient Israelites, it was always a time of celebration. It was a time of feasting and rejoicing because this is when all the hard work of the animal husbandry that's been taking place is going to bear fruition. They're going to shear and they're going to harvest the wool. And so this is a time of celebration and rejoicing.

3 Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved; he was a Calebite.

Very often Old Testament names and the meanings of those names are very significant. Nabal means fool. It means empty, an empty vessel, right? Like there's just not a lot going on up there. And I wonder about why his parents named him that. Right? Like, I wonder about the thinking process. Or was this a nickname that he earned in grade school? You know what I mean? Like, whatever it is, here is this man and his name, it means fool, foolishness.

And then he's got a wife and her name is Abigail. And Abigail means “my father's joy”, which that raises a whole bunch of questions for me too. My father's joy. If she is her father's joy, why did he marry her off to the fool? Right? If you're reading this in Hebrew and you understand the meaning of the names and you read, oh, so the fool is married to my father's joy. Okay, something's being set up here.

And the contrast between them is far deeper than their names. “The woman was discerning and beautiful,” - just like my wife! I can't read this text without this memory from high school flashing into my mind. I went to visit another church with a girl that I was dating on Mother's Day. And the guy was preaching out of this text on Mother's Day. And I kid you not, the pastor on Mother's Day read those lines: The woman was discerning and beautiful. And then he looked out at the congregation and he said, "Now that's a rare combination."

So it's a pretty traditional church. So after the service, he was in the back shaking hands with everyone. And I stood there and watched. And I don't think a single woman shook his hand on the way out on Mother's Day. I started calling him Pastor Nabal after that.

So Nabal the Fool, he's married to Abigail. She's beautiful. She's discerning. But the man “was harsh and badly behaved.” Even though he was a Calebite, he's a descendant of Caleb, that great hero out of the history of Israel through the wilderness. Joshua and Caleb were such examples of faithfulness and righteousness. God bless them. They were the only two that made it out of the wilderness into the land of promise. Here's this descendant of Caleb, but now he's just Nabal, a fool.

4 David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep. 5 So David sent ten young men. And David said to the young men, “Go up to Carmel, and go to Nabal and greet him in my name. 6 And thus you shall greet him: ‘Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have. 7 I hear that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel.

There's some interesting things happening here. So David has been with his men out in the wilderness and Nabal's shepherds and herdsmen have been grazing their flocks out in the wilderness and in the surrounding areas and David and his men have been showing hospitality to the shepherds. They've been providing protection. They haven't been stealing from Nabal and his flocks. They've been providing this incredible service of safety and protection for Nabal.

And so David now sends these messengers. And there's a little play on words in the Hebrew here. It says: I heard, which is the word shama, which you know from the great prayer, the Shema: Hear O Israel. It's a word that means to hear, but it's not just simply to listen, it's to hear and to act wisely. And so the author's saying: David heard that Nabal is now shearing, and so now he's giving Nabal the opportunity to hear about what David has done, how David and his men have protected his flocks, how Nabal's prosperity is actually in some part dependent upon David's kindness and hospitality towards Nabal.

8 Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your eyes, for we come on a feast day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.’”

Once again, David is showing great respect. He's being very polite in the way that he's doing. He's not demanding, but he's... Listen, they're in the ancient Near East, and hospitality is everything in that culture. He's saying to him: Listen, I was hospitable to you, now it's your turn to be hospitable to us. We're coming, this is a big time of feasting, you're celebrating how God has blessed you, you're sharing, there's going to be a great feast, we're going to come, please, please be hospitable.

9 When David’s young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David, and then they waited. 10 And Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters.

So Nabal's initial response, it's actually very derogatory. It's very dismissive. Who is David? Who's the son of Jesse? I don't even know him. Of course he knows him because he knows he's the son of Jesse, which hasn't been said. It's fascinating to me. There's many servants who are breaking away from their masters. He knows who David is. He knows the break between David and Saul. He knows that David's out in the wilderness. He knows all about this.

11 Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers and give it to men who come from I do not know where?”

Nabal is living up to his name. Nabal is proving the truth of Proverbs 10:14 (ESV), which says:

14 The wise lay up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.

So David has come with a very polite, very respectful ask for hospitality, and Nabal responds with rudeness and dismissiveness, and he's derogatory, he's insulting, and he is bringing ruin upon himself.

Let's keep reading.

12 So David’s young men turned away and came back and told him all this. 13 And David said to his men, “Every man strap on his sword!” And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword. And about four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.

David sends these messengers with a polite request. Nabal responds absolutely foolishly. He insults David, the slayer of Goliath. He insults David, the man whose songs were written about his exploits and victory in battle. David is a wonderful poet and musician, but David is a warrior par excellence. He has been since his childhood. And Nabal has just insulted a man of war.

And so David responds and reacts here as that man of war. Strap on your swords. He's insulted and he's angry. He's angry. So now David is going to live out one of the Proverbs.

1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Nabal's foolishness, his harsh words, stir David to anger. And much like Bruce Banner, you're not going to like him when he's angry. Anger is deadly. Deadly. Anger is deadly, and we're in a time and a culture right now that is embracing anger. It has been for quite a while. The seeds of this, they're deep, and they go back. I remember growing up seeing the bumper stickers: If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

We're living in a season and a time right now where anger and moral outrage is seen as a virtue. And listen, it's not a virtue because you have to actually do something for it to be a virtue. You don't have to do anything to be angry. You don't have to do anything to be outraged. And yet we somehow think, we embrace anger. We even embrace it within the church. And anger is deadly. It's dangerous. It's destructive. Anger is a tragic and terrible thing to embrace.

Proverbs 19:11 (ESV) says this: Good sense makes one slow to anger. Like God is slow to anger. Good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook an offense. Anger leads us into such folly, doesn't it? Hasn't it for you?

Today is my dad's 74th birthday. He's not here. But I grew up hearing a story that my dad used to tell over and over and over again about when he was first in Bible college. He was just starting Bible college. He was in one of his first theology classes. He was super excited. He was sitting up front like all the good A students do. And he was so excited for this first class. And class starts, and he hears behind him what he thinks is the clicking of a pen. And you know how people do that, you know, just sit there clicking their pen, and it starts to annoy him.

My dad is not generally an angry person, but there was something about that pen that was driving him crazy. And it was getting worse and worse and worse, and he starts to, like, feel that anger. And so he's getting ready to turn around and very self-righteously say: Will you please stop clicking that pen? I'm trying to learn here. He's getting ready. And when he turns around to explode in anger, he sees in the back of the room a blind woman typing on her Braille machine her notes.

He talks about what could have been the end of his Bible college career, how if he would have embraced that anger and exploded on the blind person in the back of the room, he probably wouldn't have had the courage to go back to that class ever again. There's something about that story. I heard it so many times growing up, and it stayed with me because it's such a beautiful illustration for me anyway of the potential of anger. He was so convinced that someone was clicking their pen. What he was angry about wasn't even real. I mean, he was ready to explode, and it would have exploded his reality.

And David is walking down that same path. He's angry. He's angry. And just because he's David, the man after God's own heart, listen, the scripture doesn't shy away from the fact that David makes lots of mistakes. This is not David acting righteously. This is David being driven out of anger. Get your swords. He insulted us. Let's go kill them all. A bit of an overreaction. That's what anger does. It always overreacts.

Fortunately, we've got Abigail, a woman who is beautiful and discerning, who is going to intervene, and she's going to illustrate yet another proverb, Proverbs 12:18 (ESV): There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Let's see how Abigail does that.

14 But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them. 15 Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them.

So this servant of Nabal, he knows what's going on. He goes, not to Nabal, he goes to Abigail and says: Hey, you need to know what just went down. David sent some men. Nabal railed at them, sent them away with nothing. But these men treated us perfectly. They gave us great protection. They honored us. And now Nabal is dishonoring them.

16 They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. 17 Now therefore know this and consider what you should do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his house, and he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.”

I almost want to feel bad for Nabal. Almost.

18 Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared and five seahs of parched grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.

I love the threads that weave through the story. And this, of course, is reminiscent of David's gift to Saul just back in chapter 16, or God's gift to Saul back in chapter 10. Wine and bread and a donkey. All of these things keep coming back over and over and over again.

19 And she said to her young men, “Go on before me; behold, I come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. 20 And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them.

So here is this woman with a donkey loaded up with all sorts of food and gifts, and here come 400 warriors with their swords strapped on, ready for battle. Quite the contrast.

21 Now David had said, “Surely in vain have I guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him, and he has returned me evil for good. 22 God do so to the enemies of David and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.”

Hasty words. The fool has a better chance. David, much like Saul, makes this ridiculous, hasty, and foolish vow. Nabal treated me poorly. He returned my good with evil. So may God—always got to bring God into this—may God do so to my enemies if I don't kill all of them by morning. David's in a rage. He's fully embraced that anger.

Now listen, Nabal insulted him. Nabal was wrong. David had done right. Nabal did respond to him with evil. But now David is exasperating that evil by being driven by anger and making foolish vows.

23 When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground. 24 She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant.

So amazing. She comes to him and says: It's my fault. She didn't even know that they'd come. But she's going to take responsibility for bringing peace into this situation.

25 Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.

May God protect me from being the kind of fool whose wife would talk about him that way. There's something so broken about Nabal. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him.

Now then, my Lord, as Yahweh lives, and as your soul lives, because Yahweh has restrained you from blood guilt and from saving with your own hands. She's rebuking him in such a beautiful and humble and peaceful way. I'm here because God has sent me to save you from bringing blood guilt upon yourself and for taking salvation, which belongs to who? To Yahweh. For taking salvation into your own hands.

26 Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal. 27 And now let this present that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. 28 Please forgive the trespass of your servant. For the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live.

She's calling him out to be who God called him to be. She's calling him back from the precipice of anger and the blood guilt that he's about to bring upon himself. David's going to respond to sin with sin. She pleads: Let's not let that kind of evil be found in you as long as you live.

29 If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. And the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.

What's David known for? His greatest victory, taking down Goliath with a sling. So she's calling out to him, trying to bring him back from the craziness and the chaos of anger. No, no, God is your salvation. You don't have to take it into your own hand. God is the one that will sling out your enemies. Do not do this thing, David. Don't be owned by your anger.

30 And when the Lord has done to my lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you prince over Israel, 31 my lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause or for my lord working salvation himself. And when the Lord has dealt well with my lord, then remember your servant.”

So on the day that when you become the king that you've been promised to be by God, you're going to look back with a clear conscience and you'll be able to boast that God did it and you didn't take things into your own hand.

32 And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! 33 Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand!

Once again, David is great at sinning. But David is also great at repenting. She calls him out and he owns it. You're right. And may God be blessed for sending you to me. May God be blessed for protecting me from myself. May God be blessed from protecting me from anger. He continues:

34 For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.”

Which shows you where David's heart and state of mind was. He was going to wipe them out because he got his feelings hurt. We've all been there.

David relents and repents. Confronted by his folly, he immediately changes course. Nabal, well, that's a different story. He's not quite in the same position.

35 Then David received from her hand what she had brought him. And he said to her, “Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition.”

36 And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, 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. So she told him nothing at all until the morning light. 37 In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. 38 And about ten days later the Lord struck Nabal, and he died.

Nabal was holding a feast in his house like the feast of a king. So who's the king? David's the one that's been anointed as king by God, chosen. Where is he? He's out in the wilderness. Nabal has rejected him, and he's throwing a feast for himself like he's the king. And he's so drunk, she told him nothing at all until the morning light. Which, once again, shows her discretion. Having a conversation with a drunk person, while amusing sometimes, generally not beneficial. So she goes to bed.In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone, which might be an ancient way of describing a stroke or an aneurysm or a heart attack or something like that, but he hears how close he came to death. He hears how close his foolishness, his folly, not only almost brought death upon him, but upon everyone in his family. And when he hears it, he collapses.

Note verse 38: About 10 days later, Yahweh struck Nabal and he died. There is an irony here, a poetic justice at play. God essentially gives Nabal what he wants. Nabal has been hard-hearted, so God makes his heart hard. This is divine justice. Nabal has gone against Yahweh, gone against Yahweh's anointed, and has elevated and promoted himself above all else. And so God comes and gives him what he asks for.

Now, I wish the story ended here. Because the story ends here: David learned his lesson. He's preserved and protected from folly forever. Nabal gets justice and we could move on, but we got to read the conclusion.

39a When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.”

So David acknowledges it, he blesses God, he's grateful that he didn't take salvation into his own hand, that he didn't take vengeance upon himself because vengeance belongs to the Lord. He acknowledges that. But that’s not where it ends:

39b Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife.40 When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” 41 And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” 42 And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

43 David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. 44 Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim.

It's like a tragic episode of *Sister Wives*. I mean, how does... So Saul takes his daughter, Michal, who's been David's wife, and gives her to another man as a petty insult to David. And David now is just gathering for himself wives, which is very common in the ancient Near East and very common for ancient Near East kings and leaders and wealthy people. And every time the Bible relates a story of a man taking multiple wives, the consequences are unbelievably horrific.

Let me just say this as clearly as I can. This is a descriptive passage, not a prescriptive passage. This is not the Bible saying: You don't get to say to your wife, "Hey, I'm going to go get another wife because David had two." This is not God endorsing it. The Bible is going to describe all sorts of things that David and others do that are not good and not right. And sometimes God stops them from it, and sometimes he lets them experience the consequences of it.

As we continue on through the story of David, David has some amazing highs, but he's got so much heartbreak and tragedy in his life. And almost all of it is directly traced back to the fact that he has multiple wives and multiple women and multiple children with those women, and his family is as dysfunctional as it gets.

So David is spared from one folly only to jump into another. It's the perfect description of out of the frying pan and into the fire. That's where we are. His hastiness in taking Abigail and Ahinoam is pure folly. And so we're back where we started at the beginning. Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There's more hope for a fool than for him.

I don't know of many things that make us more hasty in our words than anger. The idea that we've been treated unjustly. That we're on the side of right. That we know the truth. There's something about the mindset, the state of being, the heart of anger that brings with it a sense of self-righteousness and entitlement and freedom to say whatever we want to say because we're on the side of right. And those kinds of hasty words always lead us into folly.

And church, they don't have to be just spoken. Because we don't live in a world where people actually talk to each other much anymore. Just go to a restaurant. Watch couples on dates staring at their screens. Watch families around a table staring at screens. They're still talking, just not to each other.

There's something about the freedom of typing something out. We will type things so harsh, so mean-spirited, so angry that we would never have the courage to say face-to-face to another person. The reality of social media and technology that has integrated itself into every aspect of our lives is making us more angry and more prone to hasty words, which means we're bringing more and more folly into our lives on a regular basis.

Jesus had a thing or two to say about words, about what we say, about the consequences of that, of what it reflects about who we are. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says this:

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

So in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is doing a bunch of stuff, but one of the things that he's doing in this early section is he's taking commandments from the Torah, from the law, and he's saying: You think this is what makes righteousness. You think it's only about the external. You think it's only about the extreme. So we can all agree that murder is bad, right? I'm not even sure we can all agree that murder is bad in our world today.

But Jesus says: We can all agree that murder is bad. You've heard it said that whoever murders will be liable for judgment. But I say to you—now Jesus is going to up the ante—Jesus says: I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Anyway, that doesn't seem very realistic, Jesus.

Everybody gets angry. And while we are so comfortable with murderers being liable to judgment, it’s a whole different animal for people that get angry at their brother. But then he says this: Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says to his brother: You fool, will be liable to the fire of hell. That's upping the ante.

Words matter. Words matter. Because words are a reflection of our heart. And the position and the posture of our heart that are reflected and expressed in our words are a reality of our hope, our allegiance, and our relationship to the one who made us. Words matter. And the consequences of our words are anything but trivial.

So in a world of social media warriors, of virtue signaling, of unbelievable constant temptation to express yourself out of anger, we need to hear the sober warning of Jesus to be careful about what you say, to be wise and thoughtful about what you type, to think a time or two or ten before you send that tweet. Because foolish words, angry words, hasty words are folly and bring destruction. This is not who we are called to be.

I feel like in this moment of time, in this season that we are in as a culture, as a people, we as the people of Jesus, as the called out ones, as the ones that have been adopted and accepted into the family of God, who have been indwelt with the Spirit of God, who have been given the ministry of not condemnation—church, we've been given the ministry of reconciliation. We, above all else, need to be wise with our words, careful with what we say and how we communicate, because our words matter.

Let me end this morning with this well-known refrain from James, the beginning of his epistle.

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;

I have many struggles with sin. Anger has been one of them that's been very constant throughout my life. Part of it is that it's so easy to rationalize and justify our anger. It's so easy to convince ourselves that our anger is a righteous anger. And if you've been in the church long enough, you've heard the rationale before: Jesus flipped over tables. I'm like: I trust Jesus to flip the tables. I've met you. More importantly, I've met the man that I stare at in the mirror every morning. I don't trust my anger.

In a world where we're being encouraged to embrace our anger, to fuel our anger, to live out our anger, to rationalize and justify our anger, church, the way of the gospel calls us to a different way. This is one of those ways in which we have to swim upstream. We have to be willing to count the cost and stand differently, live differently, reflect the light and the glory of the gospel differently.

In a world where everyone is angry, if we are the people that are not controlled and consumed by our anger, that's our prophetic voice. We should be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. And here's the reason. And I quote this to myself on a daily basis:

20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Your anger, as good as it feels, your anger, as righteous as it makes you feel, and even if you're right—David was right, right? But he was going to do the absolute wrong thing. The anger of man, that's not your fuel. The anger of man is not your hope. The anger of man is not enough to sustain you, let alone produce the righteousness of God in your life.

Church, let go of that anger. Let's walk a different path. Let's seek righteousness, not in our own hands. That's where James goes:

21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

You're going to walk out of here today and it might take a couple hours, it might only take a couple minutes, and somebody or something is going to make you mad. It's going to push that button. It's going to take your mind to the places that it's been so many other times before. You're going to be faced with that choice: Am I going to be led by my anger? Will I be driven and controlled by it? Will I be consumed by it? Will it take me into folly? Or will I let the wisdom of Jesus set me free?

Don't merely hear this word this morning. Put it into practice. Confront your anger. Challenge it. Give it to Jesus. And let the grace of God be sufficient for you.

Somebody say amen this morning.