Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 57

For the worship leader. A prayer^[a] of David to the tune “Do Not Destroy,”^[b] when he hid from Saul in a cave.

² A certain man in Maon owned property in Carmel, a town south of Hebron near the Dead Sea. This man was very rich: he owned 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats. It was sheepshearing time in Carmel, which was celebrated with feasting and generosity. ³ This rich man’s name was Nabal, which means “foolish,” and his wife was Abigail, which means “my father is joy.” She was smart and beautiful, but he was mean-spirited and bad-tempered, an embarrassment to his Calebite tribe.

⁴ From his hiding place in the wilderness, David heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep, ⁵ so David gathered 10 young men to send to Nabal asking for gifts.

⁹ When David’s young men came to Nabal, they delivered David’s message and waited for Nabal’s response.

¹² So David’s young men returned to him by the same road and told him what had happened.

All of them put on their swords, including David, and about 400 of his men followed him while 200 remained behind with their supplies.

¹⁴ One of Nabal’s servants recognized his master’s insolence and told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, what was happening.

¹⁸ Then Abigail, knowing the stakes, rushed about gathering gifts similar to what her husband should have offered: 200 loaves, 2 jugs of wine, 5 sheep (butchered and dressed), more than 50 quarts of roasted grain, 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 fig cakes. She had these loaded on donkeys.

But she never stopped to speak to her husband Nabal. She had decided to approach David herself.

²⁰ As she rode down the mountain on a hidden trail, David and his men were approaching, and they met.

²¹ Earlier David had made an oath.

6 Here’s another troubling issue. If you have a grievance against another follower of Jesus, do you have the audacity to bring that brother or sister into the civil courts rather than submitting yourselves to the authority of God’s people? ² Don’t you know that His people are destined to judge the world? If you have the authority to judge the world, can’t you handle these small matters and render a better judgment than the civil courts? ³ Further, don’t you know that we are destined to judge the heavenly messengers? So if we are to exercise authority in the heavenly realms, can’t we take care of the conflicts that arise in this life? ⁴ To put it another way, if you are asking the courts to adjudicate your mundane conflicts, aren’t you placing your problems under the authority of judges who have no standing within the church? ⁵ My words should embarrass you. Is it possible that you have no one among you with the wisdom to mediate between two siblings? ⁶ So one brother sues another brother in public and drags the dispute before outsiders who have no allegiance to Jesus?

⁷ The truth is that these public lawsuits cause all of you to lose and lose big. Wouldn’t it be better to be ripped off or defrauded? ⁸ In fact, you are guilty of ripping off and defrauding your own brothers and sisters, not the other way around.

^9-10 Do you need reminding that the unjust have no share in the blessings of the kingdom of God? Do not be misled. A lot of people stand to inherit nothing of God’s coming kingdom, including those whose lives are defined by sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, sexual deviancy, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander, and swindling. ¹¹ Some of you used to live in these ways, but you are different now; you have been washed clean, set apart, restored, and set on the right path in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Anointed, by the Spirit of our living God.