The First Step
“Now there was a man in Maon, whose business was in Carmel; and the man was very rich, and he had three thousand sheep and three thousand goats.” I Samuel 25:2
Have you ever gotten “the short end of the stick”, or thought you were being mistreated. You probably thought you deserved better treatment than you got simply because of who you were. Well, that’s kind of the situation that we see I Samuel 25. Nabal, honestly that was his name, thought that just because of who he was and what he had that he could treat people anyway that he wanted. Nabal means fool; I really don’t think his parents expected much, and he showed his foolishness here. Every time you or get full of pride we act like Nabal, or we play the fool.
When David, the anointed King of Israel, sent messengers to him to ask for provisions because he and his men had been protecting Nabal’s men Nabal said no. He said I’m not giving you anything for two reasons (1) I don’t know who you are, and (2) I don’t owe you anything. He basically told David who do you think you are asking me for anything. Nabal was so full of pride that he thought he was a self made man, and he didn’t owe anybody anything for what he had. Pride can be a good thing to have because it will make you work hard to do your best. However, the Bible warns that too much pride can be the first step we take on the path to destruction. Nabal was so full of himself that he would not see the benefits that he had gotten from David.
Sometimes, we all get like that because we think that acknowledging help from someone lessens the honor we deserve. It doesn’t, it just admits that sometimes you needed a hand, and that does not make you weak, or lessen your efforts it just makes you look human because there is no such thing as a totally self made man or woman.
I want to look at one more side of pride. In David’s response to Nabal we see another dangerous part of pride. I Samuel 25:13 says, “And David said to his men. ‘Each of you gird his sword.’” David was insulted by Nabal, and he intended to do something. By his words Nabal had hurt David’s pride, and David wanted to make him pay for the insult. David said in his mind, if not out loud, I’ll show you who I am. David was also full of himself!
Sometimes we all get full of ourselves and demand that we get the respect that we think we deserve. The Apostle Paul told the church in Rome, “For through the grace given to me I say to every man among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment as God has allotted to each a measure of faith,” Romans 12:3
It’s hard for us, as humans; to be humble that’s not in our character. We like to blow our own horns, and make sure that people do not “sell us short”, but Christ said in the beatitudes, “Blessed are the meek”; so we are commanded by Christ not to be ruled by our pride because He knows that when we are led by our pride we are far from Him. At the root of almost every form of sin is a prideful heart! It was pride that led to Satan’s rebellion, and when we are filled with pride we are more like Satan than Christ!
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Father, I thank You for sending Your Son as the perfect example of humility, and I ask that You would take all pride from me and fill my heart with the humility and love that Your Son showed. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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