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VOW
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Lesson Three: The Wise Woman
of Abel
You can feel it welling up inside. Your heart pounds away. Your chest begins to draw in shallow breaths of air at rapid pace. All your senses heighten. Every muscle in your body becomes taught with energy, ready to fire in action. And, at the command center of it all, your brain is quickly calculating the best response.
In each case, a person is confronted with a crisis. Decisions must be made, and made quickly. What kind of decisions will they be? Will the response to the crisis be one of fear and panic? Or, will the response be courageous and wise, ultimately faithful to Christ? Take a moment to think about the last major crisis in your life. Share with the members of your circle the feelings you experienced when that crisis burst into your life. Thankfully, we have the promise of the presence of the Holy Spirit, who stands beside us in such moments. And, we have the witness of the Word of God and the great men and women of faith therein who have confronted crisis victoriously. Such a person is simply known to us as the Wise Woman of Abel. Let’s examine her story. With A City Under Siege, Courage Must Rise Forth Every king has enemies. One of King David’s enemies was a “worthless fellow” (II Sam.20:1) named Sheba. He invited all the men of Israel to rebel against the King. Only the men of Judah remained loyal to David. Sheba had to be dealt with. The person who could do the job was named Joab. Joab was ruthless in his loyalty to David. If there is any doubt, hold on to your seats and read II Samuel 20:8-12. But be advised! Little in this chapter is the stuff of a nice sweet Sunday School lesson. This is a time of war. Gruesome things happen in war and the Bible never seeks to sugarcoat the events. In due time, Joab’s troops discover that Sheba is hiding somewhere within a fortified city, Abel. Joab orders his men to begin constructing a ramp against the city walls, so that they could easily overwhelm the defenses, storm the city, and eliminate their foe. Can you imagine how it must feel to know that on the other side of the wall there is a powerful force bent on destroying anyone and everything in order to accomplish the mission? For forty days in 1863, the women of First Presbyterian Church in Vicksburg, Mississippi were under siege. Two powerful military greats, Grant and Sherman, had come to Vicksburg, known then as the Gibraltar of the South. President Lincoln knew that the war would only be won if Vicksburg could be taken. And so, from positions to the North, East, and South, Union troops shelled the city relentlessly. From the West, Gunboats on the river fired canons with indiscriminate aim. Churches and homes were destroyed. Numerous civilians perished. With the city totally surrounded and supply lines cut off, people were literally starving to death. Under such terrible circumstances, Christian women busied themselves feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and wounded, and praying for peace. Was there any alternative? Surely. They could have hid themselves from the rain of cannonballs. They could have withered in fear and withdrew from the needs around them. Whenever a crisis confronts us we have choices to make. Will we respond with fear or courage? I’m proud to be the pastor of a congregation built on the faith of courageous women under siege. When the city of Abel came under siege, a solitary woman steps to the stage of history. Tradition remembers her as the “wise” woman, but look at how her courage shines! To say that she had no fear would be to underestimate the seriousness of the situation. Any sane human being would have been afraid. The difference for her, however, was in her obvious refusal to let fear govern her decisions, her actions, and her response to the danger that awaited her as well as her entire city, on the other side of the wall. Her response is a testimony of courage. That’s the first great life lesson she teaches us. Face crises with courage! When the enemy, whatever form it may take, is beating at our door, courage is the faithful response. Then a wise woman of Abel called from the city, “Hear, Hear! Please tell Joab, “Come here that I may speak with you.” So he approached her, and the woman said, “Are you Joab? And he answered, “I am.” Then she said to him, “Listen to the words of your maidservant.” And he answered, “I am listening.” Then she spoke saying, “Formerly they used to say, ‘They will surely ask advise at Abel,’ and thus they ended the dispute. “I am of those who are peaceful and faithful in Israel. You are seeking to destroy a city, even a mother in Israel. Why would you swallow up the inheritance of the Lord?” (II Samuel 20:16-19)With great courage, she rises above the rest of her city and takes it upon herself to confront the threat and find a solution not only for her own benefit, but for the sake of her entire community. Where does that kind of courage come from? Some might mistakenly see courage as a “manly thing;” something that simply requires a surge of testosterone. Not so, according to Scripture! Courage is first and foremost, a gift from God that comes as the assurance of the abiding presence of Christ. Courage reminds us that we are never alone. Courage tells us to face the crisis head on because Christ, who is the ultimate Victor, has already fought and won the biggest battle. But courage is also a choice. Abraham Maslow taught that virtually ever decision in life falls into at least one of two categories. It will either be a choice based in fear or courage. Few of our decisions based in fear will be productive. But a courageous decision is one Maslow called a “growth choice.” Decisions made in faith and courage always move us forward in a positive direction in life, not only for ourselves, but for the people around us. Had the unnamed woman of Abel made a decision based solely on fear, she would have run and hid herself and the entire community might have perished. Another conventional perspective on courage might say this about confronting an enemy: Real courage involves balling up the fist, and fighting to the death. That’s an extremely narrow view of courage. Sometimes courage gives birth to battle because there are times in life when the most faithful response is to fight back, but that’s not the only faithful response! And that leads to the next great life lesson the unnamed woman of Abel teaches us: Sometimes, true courage gives birth to wisdom. In the Midst of Crisis, Wisdom Finds the Way She is known as “wise” because she sought an alternative to violence. Authors Ann Spangler and Jean E Syswerda, in a wonderful devotional book entitled, Women of the Bible - A One Year Devotional Study of Women in Scripture, point out the following: “The men in this story appear to behave only in conventional terms: mobilize the army, build a siege ramp, violently smash the city walls, squelch the rebellion. But the woman looked for another solution, one that would keep the peace and spare lives on both sides. Because she acted wisely and well, interceding on behalf of her people, innocent lives on both sides of the city walls were spared.” p. 194.It took great courage to face the threat, and great wisdom to seek an alternative in the form of negotiation. That kind of wisdom is not out of our reach, for it, too, is a gift from God. The next time you find yourself confronting a threat, try practicing this kind of courageous wisdom: 1. Courageous wisdom thinks. How many times have we found ourselves in the urgency of a crisis making significant decisions without really thinking them through? How many times have we said, ‘If only I had thought....’ And yet, how many times have we taught our young children to “stop, look, and listen.” When facing a crisis, we must think before we act. In her decision making, she resisted the temptation to rush headlong in fear. She had to stop and think. Wisdom said to her ‘there is a solution to the problem...we don’t all have to die.’And so it happened. We can focus on the gory details or we can seek to discover where the story intersects our lives. That very point is found in the truth that our greater threats reside on the inside. Once the inner threat was rooted out, the external threat blew its trumpet in retreat. (II Samuel 20:22) It simply faded away. This is perhaps the most valuable lesson the wise woman of Abel teaches us. Root out the internal threats and the external threats, which seemingly loom larger, just might dissipate! What is the internal threat to us all? Sin. Sin which manifests itself in many self-destructive ways. Hunt for it. Find it hiding and root it out. Dare I say it? Kill it and throw it over the wall of your life. But don’t stop there! Jesus once told a story about man who made great strides in ridding his inner life of its dark demons. (Read Matthew 12:43-45) The good news is that we do have the ability to make progress in eliminating the inner threats. By God’s grace, we can identify the sin that lurks inside and do battle with it. But we must remember that when we remove something unholy which had taken up space in our lives, we must fill that now empty place with something Holy. Otherwise, we leave ourselves vulnerable to an even worse condition. Think and pray about these questions: What is my biggest inner threat? 4. Courageous Wisdom chooses her battles carefully! With the greater threat having been determined, the wise woman of Abel then chooses which battle to fight. Fight an entire army that surrounded the city, or fight one enemy at a time? The answer was very simple.There are times in life when it feels as though the whole world is against us. Problems are mounting at home, at work, even at church. Some have to do with personalities clashing. Some have to do with money. Some have to do with unmet expectations, etc. It may feel at times that nearly every relationship in our life seems strained. At times like these, the burden upon us seems so overwhelming that we feel as though we’re being crushed. But the wise woman of Abel teaches us to objectify our problems. Don’t see your problems as an army surrounding you. Choose wisely and deal with one problem at a time. John Claypool tells the story of a young girl who had a real problem with a recurring nightmare. In her dream, she is running through a dark forest of trees. The crooked limbs reach out to grab her. She runs seeking a way out of the forest. And suddenly she stops in a clearing. Ahead of her is an horrific dragon moving towards her with piercing red eyes and ghoulish fangs. She turns to run away in the opposite direction, but there too, stands another dragon as awful as the first. Again, she turns only to find another dragon. Totally surrounded, with the dragons closing in she screams for her life and wakes up in tears. Night after night the terrible dream plagued the young girl. Her parents struggled to know what to do to help her rid herself of the nightmare. Finally, her father said, “Darling, I want you to pray, and I’ll pray with you, that God would help you in your dream to fight the dragons.” That night, sure enough, the same little girl was racing frantically through the same dark forest, with the same scary trees reaching out to grab her. She stops in the same clearing and directly ahead, she sees the same dragon, fangs and all. But this time the dream was different. In her hand she held a sword and her dragons were all lined up single file! The next morning she came down to the breakfast table looking cheerful and well rested. Her parents asked, “Tell us, what happened. Did you have the nightmare?” She sat up straight in her chair and smiled, “Oh yes. I had the dream, but this time it was different. All my dragons were lined up, and I realized that I only had to fight them one at a time.” And so it is with you and me. We don’t have
to run and hide. We don’t have to cower in fear. When if feels
like the weight of the world is upon you and an army of problems surround
you, stand with courage. Stand with wisdom. For
Christ stands with you to help you defeat your greatest threats one at
a time.
For use as a closing prayer, the great hymn of Martin Luther: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark
never failing;
Did we in our own strength confide, our
striving would be losing;
And though this world with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us;
That word above all earthly powers, no thanks
to them abideth;
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