Peace: Abigail

Sermon Summary:

This powerful exploration of biblical peace challenges us to move beyond our shallow understanding of what it means to be peaceful people. Through the remarkable story of Abigail in 1 Samuel 25, we discover that true peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the active restoration of what is broken. Abigail didn’t wait for permission or follow social norms when she saw two hotheads about to engage in senseless bloodshed. She took initiative, entered into the danger, and did the hard work of reconciliation. This narrative beautifully illustrates that biblical shalom is far more than inner calm or stress relief. It’s the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight. The Hebrew concept of shalom speaks to wholeness, restoration, and things being put right. When we understand that Jesus himself is our peace, that he reconciled all things through his blood shed on the cross, we realize we’re not called to manufacture peace in our own strength. Instead, we’re invited to participate in God’s restorative work in the world. We’re not peace keepers who passively avoid conflict, but peacemakers who courageously enter into brokenness to bring restoration. This transforms how we approach difficult conversations, fractured relationships, and broken systems around us.

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Sermon Points:

Key Takeaways:

• Peace is not just the absence of conflict but the restoration of what is broken
• Abigail demonstrated peacemaking by actively intervening in a crisis between David and Nabal
• Human efforts at peace are temporary; the world needed a permanent solution
• Shalom means wholeness, universal flourishing, restoration, and “the way things ought to be”
• Jesus is the ultimate peacemaker who brought lasting peace through His blood shed on the cross
• The cross represents God’s reconciliation of all things to Himself
• Peace is a gift from God’s Spirit, not something we earn through our own efforts
• We live in the “overlap of the ages”—experiencing Christ’s peace now while awaiting full restoration
• Christians are called to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers—actively entering into brokenness to participate in God’s restorative work
• The church embodies shalom through ministries like divorce care, grief share, disaster relief, and personal reconciliation

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Scripture References:

Sermon Transcript:

Good morning. It’s good to be with you this morning. As actually, I’m not sure if Sarah mentioned it or not, but our pastor, Dr. Wiles, is on his study leave a little bit early. We’re experimenting this summer with a couple weeks early study leave, which will give us Dr. Wiles back a couple weeks early, and we’ll see how we like that. Always good to experiment and change things up.

My name is Katie Hodges. I’m one of the associate pastors here, and I get to join in this sermon series of Making a difference or Difference Makers. And so before we get going, I feel that I have an obligation to you to deliver a picture of my family. And so I’m going to just get that out of the way. Out of the way for you.

Yep, job done. Job done. We could all go to lunch. It is. It’s accomplished.

So there’s my husband Ryan, who is not in the room yet because he’s in a Sunday school meeting. And then Jack, Ben, and Sam hodges. So in 2022, I had triplets. Most of y’ all were here for it. You kept us alive, and so I’m grateful for that.

So I actually had this photo embedded deeper into the sermon, but I feel like when I get to that point, I’m kind of on a roll, and so I didn’t want to pause and jump to that. So we’re going to keep going, but that’s my family, and we’ll go from there. So this Sunday, I get the privilege of talking about the third fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. And so today we’re going to talk about peace and we’re going to look at a story from the Old Testament in the book of First Samuel, chapter 25.

I’m going to paraphrase it for you because it’s a long chapter. But before I do that, I would like to pray for us. So why don’t we all pause and let me offer a prayer for us as we begin.

Lord God, we ask as we open your word, as we trust that it intersects with our lives today and our lives as a church. Will you give us a word? Will your spirit help us from distraction? Help us be unified as a church. Help us to hear a word from you and walk in your spirit, to be your kingdom.

People in this world be with us here and now in Jesus name, amen.

So 1st Samuel 25, let me set the setting for that. In 1st Samuel 25, David is on the run from King Saul. He has hundreds of men Living with him. They’re living in the wilderness in the Israeli desert, and they’re surviving day to day. It is tense and it is tiring.

Nearby where they are, there is a wealthy rancher named Nabal, and he’s throwing a massive feast of abundance. For months, David’s men acted as free and unofficial security force, protecting Nabal’s flocks. So David sends a polite request for a little food. And Nabal doesn’t just say no. He insults David’s character.

When feast time arrives, David sends messengers with a simple request. The messengers say this. Would you share some food with us? And Nabal’s response is insulting. Who is this David?

Who is this son of Jesse? Why should I take my bread and my meat and give it to a bunch of runaway servants? When David hears the report back from his messengers, he says this. Strap on your swords.

400 armed men of David begin marching toward Nabal’s household. By nightfall, bloodshed seems inevitable. But one of the servants tells Abigail. Abigail is Nabal’s wife. The scriptures described her as intelligent and discerning.

She immediately recognizes the danger. Her husband has foolishly insulted a warrior who is already living under enormous pressure. Without waiting for any permission, she makes a quick plan. She gathers bread and wine and sheep, grains, raisins and figs. She loads donkeys with enough food to meet David’s request.

And she heads out to literally intercept him and his men. As she rides into the wilderness, she meets David and his armed men. And then she does something remarkable. She gets off her donkey. She bows before David, and she takes ownership of a situation that she did not create.

She acknowledged Nabal’s foolishness. She appeals to David’s better nature. She reminds David that God has called him to eventually be king, and she asks him not to stay in his future reign with needless revenge. In essence, she says, david, don’t become the kind of man your enemy wants you to be. Let God handle the justice.

Don’t carry regret into your future.

Her words stop David in his tracks. He Responds in verse 35, go home in peace. I have heard your words, and I have granted your request. So the swords are lowered, the attack is canceled, and the household is spared. David praises God for sending Abigail and says she has kept him from taking vengeance into his own hands.

Later, Nabal dies. In essence, God takes care of him, and David eventually asks Abigail to become his wife.

Abigail saw two hotheads about to go into a needless battle. She intervened at great personal risk. She asks for no permission, nor does she respect social norms. And she rushes into harm’s way to prevent senseless bloodshed, as it’s put in verse 31.

Here’s what I want you to take from this peace story. The kind of peace that we’re talking about today. The kind of Bible peace, it doesn’t just happen. Abigail took initiative and she entered into conflict and she did the work of reconciliation. In fact, what I want you to hear early on in this is peace is not just the absence of conflict, but it’s the restoration of what is broken.

In Abigail’s case, the relationship between these two bands of men was broken. The two hot heads were about to draw swords, and she restored dignity and honor and helped avoid senseless bloodshed. In the doing, she shaped David into the future king he was becoming. And don’t miss it. She trusted God to work out the details.

This peace requires a peacemaker, and Abigail was ready for that moment.

But we all know in here that the peace Abigail brought that day was temporary. We know that David and Israel did not go on to live perfect and peace filled lives. The world as it was remained fractured. Abigail brought peace to a crisis, but she can’t bring peace to the whole human story.

If you know your Bible well, you know that David still struggles and Israel still fractures. Kings rise and fall, tribes split, exile eventually comes. The pattern doesn’t break, it just gets worse. Israel needs more than a momentary peacemaker. They need lasting peace.

And all of Israel longed for it, and all of Israel felt it.

Isaiah prophesies for just this. He says in chapter nine, for unto us a child is born. He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. The greatness of his government and his peace. There will be no end.

The world was waiting for that kind of peace.

Imagine with me a scenario.

Imagine a man is out cleaning his gutters by himself. You ought not do this. If my dad is listening, please don’t. He missteps off the ladder. He loses his footing.

He tumbles down, and he falls in all the wrong ways. He hears a gnarly crack, an intense pain, and he looks down to see his leg resting at an impossible and jagged angle. You get the picture. He has a severe and complex fracture.

And instead of calling for help, dialing 911, he decides he’s going to fix it himself.

Yalls, giggles. Not mine. He eventually lumps inside. He pulls out a bottle of ibuprofen, takes a few pills. He finds a roll of duct tape and wraps it tightly around his pant leg with a piece of Leftover lumber that he found in the garage.

He grins and says, there, I’m fixing it. I’m taking control. It’s going to be ok. But we all know it’s not ok. The pills wear off.

The agony returns. The duct tape doesn’t hold the weight. Days turn into weeks. And because human bodies are quite resilient, the bone does kind of heal. But it’s healing wrongly.

The jagged and shattered edges are knitting together in overlapping raw and chaotic lumps. Every step shoots pain. His leg is deformed and he’s crippled. He did not cure himself. He just tried to DIY his own brokenness.

Finally, a year later, humbled and exhausted, he walks into the office of a surgeon. The doctor looks at the X rays, looks at the man and says, why did you wait so long?

You tried to band aid a disaster. You can’t take over the counter medicine to fix this. You cannot manufacture your own healing. The surgeon tells him the hard truth. To make this right, to give you a whole and working body, I have to take you into the operating room.

I have to put you to sleep. I’m going to have to re Break what healed crooked. I have to open the wound, realign the edges and secure it with steel pins and plates. I have to do for you what you could never do for yourself.

So it is for us.

So it was for the Israelites. The world was waiting for a permanent fix that we cannot do for ourselves. They were anticipating a savior who would put us back together and bring us peace in ways that we cannot do ourselves.

And this is where Jesus enters the human story. God sees us in our sin and our suffering, and he makes a way. God sends himself. The great designer of shalom enters into our lives.

He was and is the answer to this question, how do we find real and everlasting peace? It’s Jesus. But what I want you to hear is that Jesus didn’t come just to bring you inner calm, though he did. A relief from anxiety, though he does, or just comfort from pain. It is that, but it’s more.

Jesus came to bring God’s shalom, Peace. The Greek word in the New Testament, Irene, which we’ll get to. It corresponds to the Hebrew word in the Old Testament of Hebrew shalom. It’s one of those huge words. If I were Dr. Wiles, I would say it’s part of a semantic domain that accompanies many different words that are similar to it.

One of those is in Deuteronomy 27. Israel is instructed and they’re building the temple to go find an uncut stone, a stone that is Shalem. That’s uncut, whole, blameless, perfectly intact.

In Exodus 22, these are the rules. If a stolen animal is found alive and return, shalom, payment or restitution needs to be made. Amends need to be made. Payment in full. When a debt is paid, the relationship is no longer fractured by obligation.

This is shalom. So shalom, over and over. It’s not just the feeling of being stress free or calm. It is restoration, wholeness, defracturing of what is fractioned. It’s repaying debt, it’s reconciling relationship.

Doesn’t that sound like what Jesus does? What Jesus is and what he’s still doing for us today. Theologian Cornelius Platinga puts it like this, and it’s on the screen because it’s long. But keep with me the webbing together of God, humans and all creation in justice, fulfillment and delight, what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. Did you catch that?

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a ceasefire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means. I’ve heard this before. Universal flourishing, wholeness and delight.

A rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed. It’s a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its creator and savior opens the door and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

For the younger theologians in the room, let me translate this for you. What Cornelius Platinga is describing is basically what happens at the end of every single episode of Paw Patrol.

Marshall, Rubble, Chase, Rocky sky, and Zuma provide shalom to Adventure Bay. Every episode starts because the shalom of Adventure Bay has been completely disrupted. A lost otter is separated from its family, or chickaletta is stuck on the roof again. Things are not the way they ought to be. But Ryder and his team of pups don’t just sit up top at the lookout and talk about it.

They slide down the ramp, they jump in their vehicles, they enter into the chaos, and they bring restoration. They return the lost sheep to Farmer Yumi, they foil Mayor Humdinger’s bad plans, and they restore people peace to Adventure Bay. This is shalom work. It’s entering into a mess to rebuild, recover, and put things back in their proper place. It’s pretty close to God’s shalom.

Peace. And this is what Jesus came to do. It’s what his life, death and resurrection brought us. The cross was in the most cosmic sense, Jesus making right what had been made wrong.

This is the most transcendent reality, that through his death, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him. As Isaiah says, and in the most imminent way, your peace, or lack thereof, whatever is troubling you, hurting you, disjointed in your life, God sees it, he knows it, and he restores it. Ephesians says it like this. He Himself is our peace.

This peace is a gift from God’s spirit. It’s not earned. If you work hard enough, you can finally feel at peace. Sometimes it’s not justified. Your life may be totally chaotic.

My life has been, and sometimes in this present moment is totally chaotic. But I am not waiting for everything to fall in line for me to feel God’s peace. It is a gift of his work and His Spirit. Your life can be disjointed, and through the cross today you can feel at peace.

Paul puts it this way in Colossians 1 on the screen. We start at 19, but I was reading it earlier and I want to go back a little bit more. This is the way Paul sums up what I’m trying to say. Colossians 1. I’m going to start in 15, but 19 will catch up with us on the screen.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Think about that. For in him all things were created. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for Him.

Jesus is who we’re talking about. He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. That’s Shalom. He’s the head of the body, the church. He’s the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead.

So that in everything he might have the supremacy. And here’s what’s going to be on the screen. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through Him. Catch it. To reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

Do I keep going? Should I keep going? Oh, gosh. Okay, I’ll keep going. Sorry.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death, to present to you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. This is the Gospel. This is the cross.

This is the fix. This is the righting of the wrongs. This is the redemption that we cannot do for ourself. This is the surgeon setting right that way, which was so very broken. This is shalom and you can have it and we can embody it.

Thank you, Jesus, for the cross. Thank you, Jesus, for a path to peace when we can’t find it for ourselves.

So with all of that said, what does that do for you and for me? Does it mean we’re fully restored? We don’t feel any pain anymore? Are we removed from everything that brings us anxiety? No.

Obviously we live in this overlap of the ages, as our pastor would call it. We live in an inaugurated eschatology. The life and healing of Jesus is springing forth, available to us in unimaginable ways. Yet we live in a world that is still broken. But we rest in the promise and in the peaceful hope that one day Jesus will return and all things will be made well.

And if we don’t see him in this lifetime, we’ll see him in his eternity.

So Jesus talks about this in his very first sermon. What does this do for us? What kind of people does this make us? When Jesus gets on the mount in Matthew and starts the sermon on the Mount, he’s gathered a large crowd of followers and they’re trying to figure out what he’s about and if they want to be a part of it. And so he lays out terms of discipleship.

And in there, there’s a moment where he says this, Blessed are the peacemakers. He doesn’t say peacekeepers. He doesn’t say peace lovers. He doesn’t say peace feelers. He says peacemakers.

It’s not passive, it’s active. It’s the work we saw in Abigail. It’s the same deep work we see in Christ. Peacemakers enter into what is broken and fractured in order to participate in God’s restorative work. I can be a really good peacekeeper.

I can sit in a meeting and I can bite my tongue. I can sit with my relatives and hear all their hot button political opinions and keep my mouth shut. I am a good peacekeeper.

But when I’m at my best for the kingdom, what do I need to turn into a peacemaker? I need to know the wisdom of when to open my mouth in a meeting and say, that’s not right. We’re not going to do it that way. I need the courage to call out those in my circles when they’re not living the Jesus way. It’s not enough for me to passively get along with everybody.

Sometimes you have to make waves to actually have stillness in your water.

It is not easy to enter into brokenness. It’s the harder path. It’s the narrow road. But it’s the Jesus way.

So what does this look like at First Baptist Arlington? Do you want to know what I see? I narrowed it down or we’d be here all day. This is what I see. Shalom peacemaking looking like at First Baptist Arlington?

It looks like divorce, care and grief share helping people rebuild their lives in a safe and loving space. On Wednesday nights, it looks like Texans on mission rebuilding fences in Kerrville to restore God’s peace to a broken people.

It looks like a friend asking another friend to coffee to ask for forgiveness for that thing they know they did wrong. And it’s still just gritting between them and it’s that other friend extending that forgiveness that they want through the love of Jesus. It looks like living out the peace that Jesus has already invited us into.

And we don’t just walk into conflicts hoping that we can manufacture peace. We enter into conflict knowing that we belong to the One who made peace by his blood and embodies it in us as the fruit of those who are walking in his spirit. What a gift.

So I want you to hear this good news today. Jesus brought through the cross an everlasting peace and you can have it. You can have it today and you can embody it into the world through his spirit. You’re not called to do it alone. You are not the source of peace for the people around you.

You are carriers of the peace that has already been given to you. So this week, don’t just ask, where is there conflict in my life? Where can I bring peace? But ask, where is God inviting me to participate in His Shalom Restoration of the world because we’re the church. We’re the Body of Christ.

We’re his redemptive tool for the restoration of the world. And we can be His Shalom people today.